A/N: Some events and dialogue taken and tweaked from S1E7: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Chapter Twenty-Four

Emma had the coffee with a strawberry pop tart to go with it. Mary Margaret opted for eggs and toast. Both women ate and drank mechanically, not really saying much more. After Mary Margaret excused herself to go to class, Emma sat looking around the empty kitchen. She thought she wanted something else to eat, but nothing really struck her fancy.

After a few minutes, she shook her head and mounted the stairs to the loft. Thanks to her night shift—unexpectedly cut short though it had been—she didn't need to report to the sheriff station until four this afternoon. And if Graham was wise, she thought, as she grabbed her football jersey nightshirt and started to get undressed, he would be out on patrol when she got there, because at the moment, she wasn't at all sure she could trust her temper if he tried explaining himself again!

She was in luck. Graham wasn't at the station. In fact, from the look of things, Emma wasn't sure whether he'd been at the station at all that day. She wondered whether he called on Regina when Henry was at school, too. Not her business, she reminded herself. Storybrooke was a small town. He was probably out on patrol and maybe he had the station's main line forwarded to his cell phone in case of emergency. Whatever. She had the office to herself, just like she'd wanted.

There wasn't much paperwork on her desk. No surprise; she'd been barely three days on the job and she hadn't done much that required a written report yet. Her gaze fell on a book case and she pulled down a copy of the Maine Revised Statutes Title 17-A otherwise known as the Maine Criminal Code. She was more or less familiar with the Massachusetts version, at least those parts of it with direct bearing on her line of work. As long as she was here, though, and as long as she had a mayor on her back who would be all too eager to catch her messing up, Emma didn't think it would hurt to read up on how the law worked in this part of the world.

The material was hardly what she'd consider exciting, and she wasn't much of a reader in the first place. The book was written in plain English, though, and it was well-organized. She started taking notes.

Sometime later, she smothered a yawn, stretched, and looked out the window. To her surprise, it was practically dark. A glance at the clock told her that it was nearly half-past seven! She'd been sitting here for more than three solid hours! Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn't had dinner yet. And she hadn't brought one with her. It was pretty dead here, and the supper rush was probably almost over at Granny's. She hesitated only a moment before taking her jacket down from the peg and heading out into the evening. If there was an emergency in the next half hour or so, she hoped it would keep until she got back—or that the call would go to Graham's phone; she wasn't sure how to set things up so it would forward to hers, yet. Something to ask Graham when she saw him, she supposed. And she still wasn't in any hurry to do so!

Emma parked her car in the motel lot and tried the door. It opened easily and she walked past the unmanned reception desk toward the entrance to the diner. She slipped inside, walked past the bathrooms, rounded the corner, and felt her good mood evaporate. Graham was there. And from the look of him, he'd been there for some time. She was about to turn on her heel and clear out when Ruby spotted her. "Emma!" she exclaimed. "What can I get you?"

"Nothing," she said tersely, walking past the two of them, heading for the door to the street. Let them think she'd just been taking a shortcut through the diner; now that she'd been noticed, leaving the way she'd come would look too much like running away. Even if she was running away, she didn't want it to look like it.

As she reached the door, a dart whizzed past her, missing her head by scant inches and embedding in the door frame. For the barest moment, she was startled, but that feeling vanished in an instant, replaced by sheer fury as she whirled on Graham. "What the hell?" she demanded of him. "You could have hit me!"

Graham smiled remorselessly. "I never miss," he drawled. "You've been avoiding me? Since last night when I saw you—"

"Leaving the mayor?" Emma finished his sentence. "And yes, that is a euphemism. And no, I've been at the sheriff station. Working. I'm not avoiding you, Graham. I just have no interest in having this conversation. It's your life. I really don't care." With that she pushed open the door and stepped outside. Graham followed.

"If you don't care, then why are you so upset?"

Emma sucked in her breath. "I'm upset because normal people don't throw darts at other people's heads!" she snapped.

"All right," Graham said. "I'm sorry about that. I just… Why don't you come back inside, have a drink with me at the bar… Don't run away, Emma. Please."

"I'm still on duty," Emma replied, walking quickly.

"So after your shift," Graham pressed, trotting to keep up with her. "Look, can we just… talk about this. Please?" he repeated. "I need you to understand."

She had so not signed on for this when she'd taken the job. "Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe so… I can understand?"

"Graham. I'm your deputy. Not your therapist." She shook her head. "You want analysis, talk to Archie."

He cut in front of her, and wheeled about to face her. "I want to talk to you," he pleaded.

Emma felt herself slide into defensive mode. She didn't want a fight—not a verbal one and definitely not a physical one. Especially not with her boss. Who happened to be a cop. But right now, Graham was showing a side of himself that spoke of desperation. Desperate people sometimes did desperate things. And if one of those things involved grabbing her or hitting her, she wasn't going to be caught off guard and she was going to put up a struggle. "Your bad judgment is your problem," she informed him. "Not mine."

"You don't know what it's like with her!" Graham exclaimed. "I don't feel anything! Can you understand that?"

She didn't want to be his shrink. Couldn't he understand that? "Bad relationship? Yeah," she snapped. "I understand a bad relationship. I just don't want to talk about yours."

"Look," Graham said, and Emma could tell that he was trying to calm down now, "I know you and Regina have your issues, and… And I should have told you about us before you took the job."

"Yeah," Emma said, relaxing just a bit. "Why the secrecy? We're all adults. You can do whatever you want."

Graham winced and seemed to wilt further. "Because I… I didn't want you to look at me the way you are now."

Emma blinked. And then with some confusion, she asked, "Why do you care how I look at you?"

"Because."

"What?" she demanded.

He pressed his hands to her cheeks, pulled her face forward, and kissed her.

Emma's eyes went wide. And then she brought her hands together and shoved him away hard. "What the hell was that?" she cried out.

"Did you see that?" Graham gasped.

"How much have you been drinking?" Emma snapped. "That was way over the line!"

"I'm sorry." Graham yelped. "I just…"

"What? You what?"

"I need to feel something," Graham said miserably.

Emma took a breath. "Listen to me, Graham," she said firmly. "You are drunk and full of regret. I get it. But whatever it is you're looking to feel? I can tell you one thing. You are not getting it with me. I am in a relationship, with a guy I love and I am not interested in dating anyone on the side. Clear?"

Graham looked stunned. For a moment, Emma actually thought he was about to break down in front of her. She thought she saw him give a slight nod, but she didn't wait for confirmation. Instead she crossed the street and kept walking southwards.

This time, Graham didn't follow. After she'd gone another block, she turned east, walked a block and then turned north, headed back to Granny's parking lot to get her car.

She called Neal from the parking lot. "Hey," he greeted her, before she could say what was on her mind. "I finally have some great news. We got him!"

Emma's fury at Graham evaporated in an instant. "You did? Seriously!" Her lips curved in smile. "Neal, that's fantastic! So you're…?"

"I'm coming home," Neal said. "I'm still waiting on flight confirmation; the department's supposed to be taking care of booking me, but if they don't get back to me soon, I'll check the airlines myself; I almost don't care if they reimburse me or not. I figure I'll probably be pretty wiped and jetlagged when I hit Boston, so I'll spend a night or two at home, but then I'll be on my way to Maine. Uh…" He paused. "Since you have the car, I don't suppose you could pick me up at the airport?"

"No problem!" Emma assured him. "Uh… I think it's near… um…" she thought for a moment. "Bar Harbor!" she finished triumphantly. "Is there an airport there?" she asked a moment later.

"I'll find out. Hey, it's going to be great seeing you again. And meeting Henry. And being someplace warm! At least, warmer than Alaska at this time of year."

Emma laughed with him.

"So, uh…" Neal still sounded cheerful, "you called me. Was it just to talk, or was there anything else on your mind?"

Telling him about Graham now was only going to sour what was shaping up to be a better evening than it had started out. "I… uh… just wanted to hear your voice," she said. "Actually, my supper break's just about over, so I'm heading back to the station. Can we talk more later?"

"Sure. Hey. Love you."

"Love you too," Emma said, and ended the call. As she started the car, she found herself relieved that Neal didn't have her superpower.

Emma didn't get a single phone call for the remainder of her shift. Her eyelids were drooping and she would have welcomed a report of a cat stuck in a tree; if its branches were low enough, it would give her a chance to practice her pull-ups. Then again, with her luck, any cat so stranded would probably be up in Regina's apple tree. She could vouch personally for it having no low-hanging branches. Not anymore, anyway.

As she left the station and got back into her car, she felt herself tense up again. She wondered whether Graham would be in front of Mary Margaret's hoping to talk to her again. Or feel something, she thought, more angry than nervous about that prospect. She didn't want to deal with that tonight. If she did, she had a feeling that even if she was in the right, she'd be in more trouble than she needed. Slugging a cop was a bad idea. Slugging your boss was a horribly bad idea. Slugging your boss who happened to be a cop—or ramming a knee into a somewhat vulnerable body part of his (even if it was well-deserved)—crossed the line from 'bad' to 'excruciatingly awful' as far as ideas went. And since she wasn't sure if she would be able to restrain herself if Graham was staking out the loft, she was going to drive around for a while.

Six hours and a newly-refilled gas tank later, she finally decided that Graham must have either given up or fallen asleep in his parked car by now and she headed back. No car other than Mary Margaret's was parked on the street outside. Emma sighed with relief, and then reflexively brought her hand up to smother a yawn. Amazing how tired a day of basically doing nothing could make you.

She went inside, made her way into the loft, and headed upstairs, not bothering to turn on the downstairs lights as she started to get ready for bed.

There were flowers on the table when she came downstairs the following morning. She'd chucked them into the garbage before Mary Margaret could tell her that they'd come from Whale, not Graham. Once she'd gotten over her shock, she was more than happy to congratulate her new friend. Maybe Mary Margaret would be okay. Maybe she was moving on from David.

Emma didn't believe that for a second, and she honestly thought Mary Margaret could do a lot better than Dr. Whale—and what the hell was up with people in this place not seeming to have first names? Gold was one thing, and even that was more than a little weird. But if Mary Margaret was going out with Whale, shouldn't she be… comfortable enough with him to not call him by his last name? It was still better than seeing her friend miserable, Emma thought to herself. So what if Whale was the rebound guy? They were two single adults—which was more than could be said about David. If they wanted to have a little… fun, where was the harm, so long as they both knew how things stood?

And this was so not her business, Emma reminded herself. Even if Mary Margaret was asking her for advice. Except she wasn't, Emma realized. What she was really looking for was validation. Emma was more than happy to give her some—particularly since Mary Margaret wasn't asking if she and Whale made a perfect couple or whether Emma minded if he moved in with them or other questions that Emma didn't think she'd be able to answer honestly and still be supportive.

"Maybe I shouldn't have called him," Mary Margaret murmured.

"Oh my G-d, you called him?" Emma exclaimed. "That is definitely not a one-night stand."

"I'm still learning!" Mary Margaret protested. "I never had one of those before. I felt guilty."

"Why?" Emma asked. "There's nothing wrong with what you did."

Mary Margaret still looked uncertain. "Did you…?"

Emma shook her head. "Not really. I mean, I… experimented a little. When I was in high school. But after I dropped out and ran away from my last foster placement, I met Neal and, well, when I was in juvie, it was all girls and when I got out, I ended up in a town about half the size of this one and I didn't really meet a lot of people. I guess," she admitted, "I sort of crushed on my boss, but he was kind of old for me. Not… Well, okay, I guess technically, he was old enough to be my father—if my father were a teenager when I was born—but I didn't think of it like that. And he didn't think of me like that," Emma continued. She wondered what Ray would think of the goings-on in this town. Maybe she ought to call him. "And then," she added, "Neal came back into my life, so one-night-stands were kind of off the table for good after that. But the night you invited me to move in with you, I think you told me that you were a teacher, not a nun?" Come to think of it, she hadn't seen Mary Margaret wearing that crucifix necklace for the last few days.

Mary Margaret smiled at that. "I did say that, didn't I?" she replied. Then she shook her head. "I'd probably feel better about it if he hadn't also been that bad date I was cutting short."

"Oh." Emma absorbed that. "Well, maybe he realized he messed up and he was trying to do better?" She didn't fully believe that was the case, but Mary Margaret seemed to relax.

"So," the teacher said curiously, "why would you think the flowers were from Graham, if he's… seeing Regina?"

Emma felt her face grow warm. "Uh…" Great. She didn't really want to relive the events of last night now. But Mary Margaret was looking at her, waiting for an answer and Emma couldn't come up with a reason beyond the messy truth, though maybe she could spare her friend all the details. "Let's just say that you're not the only person who tries to explain your love life to me," she sighed. "Except that in his case, I… seriously didn't want to listen. I thought this was his way of trying to get me to have that conversation after all. Dumb, right?"

"Maybe a little," Mary Margaret said, but she was smiling again.

Emma was relieved when her friend let the subject drop.

Emma headed back to the sheriff station after breakfast. There was still no sign of Graham. Emma wasn't sure if it was because he was now too embarrassed to face her, or if he was still in that funk and taking some kind of mental health day. She didn't much care, but she had to admit that she was relieved to have the office to herself. Even if there wasn't anything there for her to do. She didn't really want to get back to the Maine criminal code. She had a pretty good idea of what the felonies were and, admittedly, she probably wasn't going to be dealing with many of them. This was Storybrooke, Maine, not Cabot Cove, Maine, so she strongly suspected that there weren't going to be many murders here. Sighing, she took a much thinner volume down from the shelf that was labeled "Title 29-A: Motor Vehicles and Traffic." Yeah, illegal U-Turns and lane changes were probably more relevant here. Still boring, though, she thought, as she resigned herself to more reading.

Mary Margaret stopped by several hours later. "I just had a weird conversation with Graham," she said, almost as soon as Emma greeted her.

Emma's eyebrows shot up. "Oh?"

"He came into my classroom when I had a free period and he was asking if we knew each other from somewhere else. I mean, we've always known each other; I can't recall a time when I didn't, but I've never lived outside of Storybrooke and neither has he."

Emma nodded. And then, feeling a little foolish about it, she picked up a notepad and pen and began jotting notes. "How did he seem?"

"Agitated," Mary Margaret said. "Confused. He was also running a fever, I think, so that could explain some of it. But he was asking if we'd met in another… life."

Maybe he was having some kind of breakdown, Emma thought, feeling a twinge of guilt. Not that what had happened last night had been okay by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe she shouldn't have been so flippant when she'd suggested he see Archie. It might have been the right call, after all. "Okay," Emma said. "I'm guessing you told him…?"

Mary Margaret gave a slight laugh. "Well, how do you answer a question like that?" she asked. "I don't even know if I believe in reincarnation, but if Graham and I knew each other in a past life, I certainly don't remember it!" Her expression sobered. "He was asking if he'd ever hurt me, if I believed in past lives… It sounded like he'd been talking with Henry. But when I mentioned that to him, he didn't seem to know anything about the storybook or the effect it's been having on Henry's imagination."

Emma felt her heart rate speed up. "You told Graham about Henry?" she repeated.

"Yeah," Mary Margaret said, sounding surprised. "Why?"

Why indeed, Emma wondered. Graham was going through… something right now; that much was clear. Still, there was no reason to think that Henry was in any danger. Or that Graham posed a threat to her son. So, why am I thinking it? she wondered. "Uh, are classes out for the day?"

"Mine are," Mary Margaret said. "It's another hour or so before school ends, though. Why?" she asked again.

Emma smiled uneasily. "Probably no reason," she said. "Things are pretty quiet here. I may leave early. I'll see you back at the loft. Oh, um… sorry about the flowers this morning. Let me know if Whale gives you anything else before I trash it."

Graham didn't come in that afternoon, and Emma was debating whether to leave as she'd told Mary Margaret she might. Instead, she went out for a drive around town and discovered a traffic pile-up on Main Street, thanks to Walter Dormer. She recognized the security guard at once—he'd been asleep on the job when David had slipped out of the hospital after waking from his coma and switched the tapes to cover for it. Now, it appeared that Dormer had stopped at a red light and dozed off before it could turn green. She'd been shaking her head when she wrote the citation.

"It's the first time it's happened to me," Dormer had protested unconvincingly.

Emma sighed. "Pull over," she said. "Park. Granny's is just a half a block away. Get some coffee before you head home. And… try to get some sleep at home for a change?"

The rest of her patrol passed uneventfully and she headed back to the station to type up her report. Once she had, though, she realized she wasn't sure where to file it. And Graham wasn't back so she could ask him. Emma sighed. Then she slid the report into a folder and placed it on Graham's desk. Spying a dart, she picked it up, weighed it in her hand for a moment, took aim, and fired it at the dartboard hanging on the wall. It missed by a mile.

"Our tax dollars always hard at work, I see," a voice that was almost pleasant said from behind her.

Emma didn't miss the sarcastic edge, so sharp you wouldn't even feel it when first it sliced into you. She turned to face Regina with a too-friendly smile. "Graham isn't here," she said. "I assumed he took a sick day. With you."

Regina smiled back coldly. "Oh, so you're aware of us? Good. That's why I'm here. Because I'm also aware of your relationship with him."

Her… what? "I don't have a relationship with him," she retorted.

"Oh?" Regina drawled. "So nothing's ever happened between the two of you? You forget, Ms Swan, I have eyes everywhere."

And they only see half the story, or they'd have seen me push him away. Who's riling up your suspicions, Regina? Are you running the show here, or is someone trying to manipulate you? And why? It was too bad that the mayor already disliked her. Emma was starting to think that if the two of them sat down together and talked, they might be able to get to the bottom of what was happening. As things stood now, though, the last thing Regina wanted was to get chummy with her and she'd be too suspicious of any overtures on Emma's part. And if it were to turn out that Regina was the mastermind of whatever was going on here, then the last thing Emma ought to do was discuss her suspicions with her. Better to keep them to herself for now. She sighed and half-turned away. "Nothing that meant anything," she said firmly.

"Well, of course not," Regina said, smirking a bit. "Because you're incapable of feeling anything for anyone. There's a reason you're alone, isn't there?"

You might have eyes everywhere, Regina, but you don't have ears. I haven't made any secret about having someone in my life, but obviously, word about that hasn't got back to you. Well, I guess you'll find out sooner or later, but not from me. Aloud, she said, "All due respect, the way I live my life is my business."

"It is until it infringes on my life," Regina countered. "Stay away from Graham. You may think you're doing nothing, but you're putting thoughts in his head. Thoughts that are not in his best interest. You are leading him on a path to self-destruction. Stay away."

Emma's eyes narrowed. "Seriously? Are you threatening me?" she started to ask, but the mayor had already spun on her black Jimmy Choo and swept out of the office and Emma wasn't about to chase after her.

Shaking her head, she retrieved the dart from the wall for another attempt.

This time, she hit the four in the double ring.

The door of the inner office slammed with a bang and startled, Emma looked into her son's excited face. "Henry!" she exclaimed.

"Graham believes me!" Henry all but shouted. "He knows I'm not making it up! He knows my book is real!"

Emma held up her hands at chest height, palms outward. "Calm down, Henry. Now. Tell me slowly. What's going on?"

"He believes me!" Henry repeated. "He knows he's the Huntsman!"

Emma felt like she needed a cup of coffee or something a good deal stronger for this. The whiskey, however, was back at Mary Margaret's and maybe drinking in front of her son in the middle of the afternoon wasn't setting the best example. She walked over to the coffee machine and poured herself a cup of the battery acid that was cleverly disguised as coffee, adding several plastic spoonfuls of sugar to mask the taste. Only after she'd forced herself to gulp down half the contents of the Styrofoam cup did she look at her son again and say, "Maybe you'd better start at the beginning."

Henry did.

After he'd left again, nearly as excitedly as he'd arrived, Emma took another sip of her now-cold coffee and made a face. Graham had gone looking for answers… or therapy… from a fifth-grader. On the one hand, maybe it was good that he was starting to wake up to the strange things that were going on in this town. On the other hand, approaching a ten-year-old for advice—especially a ten-year-old whose grasp on reality was a little flimsier than it ought to be—was a good deal less good. "I told him to talk to Archie," she muttered under her breath. "There is no way that he misheard 'Henry'. So how…" Realization and the memory of another conversation she'd had today came crashing in on her. "Mary Margaret," she groaned.

She tamped down her anger. It wasn't Mary Margaret's fault. She couldn't have known that Graham would go running to her son for advice; the whole idea was crazy. "Sorry, Archie," she muttered, remembering that the psychiatrist had cautioned her about using the word. But it was! What had Graham been thinking? How stable was he right now? Could he possibly pose a danger to Henry, after all?

Suddenly her ruminations about brainwashing seemed a little less out there. If that… hypnosis or-or conditioning wasn't permanent, if it was somehow wearing off o-or cracking or… Was she even being serious? The whole idea was something out of science fiction or a comic book or… something not real. If she really wanted to know what was going through Graham's mind right now, then asking him might be a real good way to start!

"And I know just where to go looking for him," she added under her breath as she yanked her jacket off the coat hook and headed out the door.