A/N: "Ira" means "Watchful One" and "Greer" means "Alert" or "Watchful". Also "Herb," like "Dope," is slang for marijuana and one of the meanings of "Carliss" is "Carefree," but it can also mean "Fool". Just because we never saw Watchy in Storybrooke doesn't mean he wasn't there! And we never did find out Dopey's day job during the Curse…

Small snippet of dialogue taken from S1E8: Desperate Souls.

Chapter 26

Emma's hand was shaking as she backed away from Graham, pulled out her phone, and punched three numbers on her touch screen. A second later, she heard it ring and waited for the operator's voice. It didn't come. Instead, almost at once, the phone on her desk sounded. Crud. She couldn't answer that; not with Graham lying there. But what if it was another real emergency? And why wasn't 911 picking up? A scary thought struck her and, without ending her call, she picked up the extension on the desk. "Sheriff Station, how m—" Her cell phone had stopped ringing. And it was her own voice on the other end.

She was 911.

She uttered a word she'd have been embarrassed to speak aloud, had Henry been there. A moment later, she was eyeing a list of Emergency numbers on the corkboard on the wall and calling the hospital.

"Emma?" As soon as she heard the quaver in her roommate's voice, Mary Margaret knew something was wrong. "What is it? What's happened?"

"I'm at the hospital." A moment's hesitation, before she added more softly, "the morgue."

Maybe she'd only imagined the quaver; Emma sounded calm enough after all. No, Mary Margaret realized. It wasn't calm. It was shock. "Are you okay?" she asked. What on earth are you doing at the morgue? I didn't know we even had one, though I guess we must. Of course, we must. I just… don't remember hearing about anyone being there before. For a fleeting moment, she had a sensation that there was something odd about that, but it passed, as Emma finally answered her.

"I'm fine," she said dully. "B-but Graham…"

Mary Margaret waited. "What about Graham?" she asked finally, after what felt like forever, but was probably more like thirty seconds. Thirty seconds was more than enough time for her mind to go to the obvious—ludicrous—place. Because why would Emma—or Graham—be at the morgue?

"He's dead!" Emma blurted, with a ragged edge to her voice that horrified Mary Margaret. "One minute, he was bandaging a cut on my forehead and the next minute, he was gone!"

Dead? Mary Margaret heard and understood what Emma was saying, but she didn't want to believe it. We were just talking this afternoon! How…? How didn't matter. And Emma had cut? When and how had that happened? That didn't matter either. "Do… do you want me to meet you there?" she heard her voice asking. "At the hospital?" She wondered how she could sound so calm when her mind was running in fifty directions at once.

Emma's response was barely a whisper, but there was no mistaking the gratitude in it. "Please."

Mary Margaret nodded to herself. Still holding her phone, she moved over to the coat hooks and took down her jacket. "I'll be there as soon as I can. Fifteen minutes?"

"…Kay." The call ended, but Mary Margaret had a feeling that the nightmare was just about to begin. She didn't drive often and she hated driving at night, but she didn't hesitate a moment before grabbing her keys and heading out to her Jeep Wagoneer.

So there was a morgue at the hospital, Mary Margaret noted, as she followed the directions she'd been given at the reception desk. She wondered whether she'd actually have to be in the room with all the… Or would it just be Graham's in there? Either way, she wasn't sure how comfortable she'd be in a room with a dead body, even if she wouldn't see it.

She stifled a sigh of relief when she rounded a corner and saw Emma sitting on a bench outside a pair of stainless steel swing doors, her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She looked up when Mary Margaret placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"They're doing an autopsy now," she said, speaking in a monotone. "I don't know how much longer it'll be."

Mary Margaret was about to join her on the bench, when she thought of something. "I think I passed a coffee machine on my way here. Do you want a cup?"

Emma nodded. "Black, no sugar," she said. "Wait. Was it just a coffee machine, or was there one for snacks, too?"

"I think there were two or three machines," Mary Margaret said. "Sorry. I wasn't paying attention. Do you want something from there, too?"

Emma fumbled in her pocket and pulled out her wallet. "Maybe an Apollo bar?" she asked. "My minds going all over the place; maybe something to eat will help me focus."

Privately, Mary Margaret wasn't sure that sugar was going to help with mental concentration, but she took the five-dollar bill that Emma held out, murmuring only that she'd bring her back the change. Five dollars should be more than enough for coffee and a candy bar, but if it somehow wasn't, Mary Margaret resolved to make up the difference herself and not mention it to Emma.

It was over an hour later when the doors opened and a short man with a neatly-trimmed brown beard and moustache stepped out accompanied by a younger man, clean-shaven and baby-faced. "Deputy?" the bearded man asked, and Emma looked up. "Hi," he said. "I'm Ira Greer. I'm the medical examiner." He motioned to his companion. "This is my assistant, Herb Carliss. He doesn't speak," he added.

Emma nodded. "What was it?" she asked.

Greer shook his head. "Sudden Cardiac Death is one of those self-explanatory causes that really tells you nothing, but it looks like Sheriff Humboldt suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or, in lay terms, a thickened heart muscle. It's genetic and, while it's rare, it's one of the leading causes of cardiac arrest in people under the age of thirty-five."

"So it's… rare, but it's common?" Emma asked with a frown.

Greer sighed. "It's rare for a seemingly healthy young man to suffer a cardiac incident, ostensibly out of the blue, but when that happens, this condition is the cause, more often than not. Deputy, do you know whether the sheriff experienced any fainting spells recently?"

"No," Emma said, eyes widening slightly.

"Shortness of breath? Chest pain?"

"Not that he told me." Emma took a breath. "But he… he said his heart was… missing. And he had to find it. I know how that sounds, but… he told me that this afternoon and less than three hours later, he…" She jerked her head toward the metal doors from which the two men had just emerged.

"Well, the thickening wouldn't have presented that symptom," Greer said. "It can cause a fast heartbeat, but so can a lot of other things. Stress, physical activity…"

Emma lowered her eyes. "When he told me what I just told you, I put my hand… I was trying to prove to him that he had his heart where it should be, so I put my hand on his chest. His heart was beating fast. But he was also running a fever and he was freaking out. I never thought that…" She looked up again. "If I'd told him to come to the hospital and get checked out, could they have found the problem before this happened?"

"Most of the time," Greer reassured her, "SCD occurs without warning. And even if there are warning signs, well, as I was saying, there are many explanations for a fast heartbeat. Fainting would have been more worrisome, but considering the sheriff's youth and fitness level, I don't know if anyone would have necessarily thought to test for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. And considering the relatively short amount of time that elapsed from when you noticed faster heartbeat to the sheriff's cardiac event, there's a fair likelihood that the event still would have occurred before we'd have received the test results back." He shook his head. "Don't blame yourself, Deputy. I know a bit about how to watch for this sort of thing and I'd probably have missed it, too."

"So, it was natural causes," Emma said, intoning it as a statement, rather than a question.

"Completely," Greer nodded.

"What… what happens now?" Mary Margaret asked.

"Well, we'll notify the sheriff's family, if he has one. And then," he shook his head sadly, "I guess we'll be releasing the body to the funeral home once we can make the proper arrangements."

"Is there anything else we need to do here? Or that Emma needs to do, I guess?" Mary Margaret added.

Greer shook his head. "No, Ms Blanchard," he said sadly. "I think we've got this one." He looked at Emma again. "I guess, seeing as you and he worked together, I should express my condolences to you."

Emma blinked. They'd barely 'worked together' for a week. She hadn't known Graham, not really. But she thanked Greer just the same, sounding more than a little dazed. And when Mary Margaret offered to drive her back, she didn't protest. It was only when they were out in the parking lot that she thought to ask, "Is it okay to leave my bug here overnight?"

Mary Margaret shrugged. "I don't think anyone's going to tow the deputy's car. And if someone does, I'm sure the impound lot will release it to you, no questions asked."

Emma almost smiled.

Once back at the loft, Mary Margaret put a pot of tea on to boil. She set down two plates, cups, saucers, and teaspoons. She took the lid off the ceramic cookie jar and set the jar down on the table. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she got out the whiskey bottle and a shot glass and set those on the table, too.

Emma practically lunged for the bottle.

Mary Margaret sighed and sat down at the head of the table at the end closest to Emma's chair. "Maybe I could use some of that," she admitted, getting up again to get another glass.

Emma shrugged. "If you're not fussy, you can just pour it into the teacup," she said. "I'm tempted."

Mary Margaret shook her head. "I think a shot's enough for me," she said, taking the second glass and returning. "I don't even know why I'm doing this," she sighed. "I don't exactly like the taste."

"Why'd you buy it then?" Emma asked.

Mary Margaret shrugged. "I don't really remember. It must've felt like a good idea at the time." She sighed. "I can't believe he's gone. We were just talking this afternoon and he was fine. I mean, he wasn't fine; he was jumpy and worried and he wasn't feeling well, but there wasn't anything to suggest that he'd…" Her voice trailed off and she shook her head.

Emma started to down her own shot, but stopped and set the glass back down, frowning.

"What?"

"You said you didn't remember why you bought the whiskey," Emma said. "Do you remember buying it?"

"Pardon?"

"Anything about the day?" Emma asked. "Was it sunny out? Were there people ahead of you in the checkout line? Was it your twenty-first birthday and you just wanted to get a bottle of something because you could?"

"Emma… I-I don't understand. I've had this bottle for, well… forever, really. You can't expect me to remember…"

Henry had told her that everyone in this town walked around in a haze. She'd seen for herself that nobody seemed to recall a mayor before Regina Mills had been elected. Mary Margaret couldn't remember buying a bottle of whiskey. Maybe it wasn't unusual to have forgotten something minor that had happened years ago, but… "How long have you been teaching fifth grade?"

Mary Margaret blinked. "What does that have to do with the bottle? Or Graham? Or anything, really?"

"Just answer the question," Emma pressed. "Two years? Three?"

"I-I don't know," Mary Margaret said. "Let me think. It feels like forever. I mean, I know it can't be forever, but I can't recall a time when I wasn't."

"How about when you were in college?"

Mary Margaret laughed. "Well, of course I wasn't teaching then! But that was such a long time ago—"

"How long?" Emma demanded. "Who were your teachers? Who did you hang out with?"

"Emma…" Mary Margaret seemed to shrink into herself. "Where are these questions coming from? You… you're scaring me. A little."

And you're scaring me a lot, Emma wanted to say. You're about my age. If you went to college full time straight out of high school, you would have been about twenty-two when you graduated. If you went part-time, then maybe you were twenty-three or twenty-four. Even if you're a couple of years older than me, you can't have been teaching for more than a decade, so why can't you remember anything that happened before that? She didn't say any of that, though. Her mind felt like it was going at light speed. Right before Graham had died, he'd said that he remembered. He'd said that. He'd smiled. And less than a minute later, he'd been dead. Correlation wasn't necessarily causation, but what if there was a connection? Maybe there was some kind of mass conditioning going on and if anyone woke up and realized what was going on, it triggered some kind of… kill switch.

No. That was crazy. And besides, Henry seemed to know what was going on and he was fine.

Unless Regina was protecting him.

Did that mean that Regina knew things were screwy here? How was she okay? Unless she was involved with… with whatever the hell was going on. Maybe she and Kathryn were working together.

And maybe, Emma thought, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this that didn't involve mind control and conspiracy theories. Like early-onset Alzheimer's.

In the whole town? Plus, I've known a few people with Alzheimer's. Not very many, but enough to know that whatever this is, that's not it.

Whatever the answer was, it was clear to Emma that she wasn't going to find out by freaking out one of the few friends she had in this town. "Sorry," she said. "I guess I'm just a little jumpy. I had a couple of cups of coffee before you showed up at the hospital; maybe it's the caffeine."

It was a weak excuse, but Mary Margaret seemed to accept it almost gratefully. "You've just had a friend die in front of you," she said. "Of course you're jumpy."

Emma nodded. "I saw you put water on for tea," she murmured. "I don't suppose you have herbal?"

"Chamomile or peppermint?"

"Peppermint," Emma said, and Mary Margaret got up to get some. Emma forced herself to drink it, even though she wasn't really in the mood. If she didn't have tea in her cup, she was going to pour herself another shout of whiskey and that wasn't a good idea.

Mary Margaret drank her own cup silently, her body language telling Emma that she was open to talking or listening, but she didn't push. Finally, Emma pushed her chair away. "I think I'm just going to go upstairs and try to get some sleep," she said.

"If you change your mind and want to discuss…"

"Maybe," Emma allowed. "But don't count on it. I'm really not that great at spilling my guts." Then she thought back on recent events. "Not usually, anyway."

"It's up to you," Mary Margaret assured her.

"Thanks. And… seriously, I'm sorry about before. I guess I'm just… not used to small town life. And then this happened and…"

"And you spend a lot of time with Henry, who has a very vivid imagination," Mary Margaret smiled. "A young man dies suddenly, you want answers, and suddenly the stories Henry tells start making you wonder."

"But they're just stories, right?" Emma asked.

"Of course," Mary Margaret agreed. "I mean, they'd have to be. Fairy Tale characters living in a small town in Maine?"

Emma nodded, smiling back a little.

Graham's death was almost certainly due to natural causes. That it had happened right after he'd claimed he 'remembered' but before he could elaborate on what he'd meant by that assertion had to be a coincidence.

And if it wasn't, if someone was somehow… watching or listening in on conversations, hopefully, she'd just managed to convince them that she was buying the 'official' explanation and didn't think that there was anything suspicious about Graham's death at all!

Neal picked up on Emma's agitation when he called her later that night to let her know that he'd arrived back in Boston safely. "I'm just going to pick up the mail, make sure the bills are paid, and then I'll be on the next flight to Bar Harbor."

"Neal," Emma's voice was too controlled for her to have good news, "Graham's dead."

"Graham." Neal wasn't sure he remembered the name, but Emma hadn't told him about many people. "Your boss, right?" he guessed. "The sheriff?"

"Yeah. The ME said it was a heart attack. Natural causes. It could be, I guess."

"From the way you're talking," Neal said slowly, "I take it he wasn't middle-aged, out of shape, and overweight."

"No," Emma said. Haltingly, she went over the events of the night before, touching briefly on her altercation with the mayor, but focusing more on its aftermath.

"A… and then, I think I sort of lost it on Mary Margaret. I must have sounded, she must have thought I was nuts. But Henry's right. Everyone's in a haze and nobody seems to have a handle on how long ago anything was that hasn't happened in the last couple of months."

You mean, anything that happened before you showed up there, Neal supplied mentally, though he didn't voice the thought aloud. Truthfully, he was going through his own freak-out right now. The sheriff's talk about his heart being missing, his dying right after he'd ended a relationship with the woman who seemed to be running the town…

The Evil Queen. August told me that the Evil Queen created that town with a curse. A Dark Curse. I don't know much about the finer points of magic, Light or Dark, but in the stories the old folk told around the bonfires after the harvest was in, there was usually some Dark witch or wizard who enslaved someone else by ripping out their heart. Or murdered someone by crushing it. But how can I explain that to Emma? "Hey," Neal said gently, "you'd just seen someone die in front of you. I don't think anyone would blame you for losing it for a little bit afterwards."

"She didn't," Emma admitted. "I mean, she wasn't exactly… comfortable with it, but I can understand that."

"So…"

"Something is going on here," Emma said. "I don't know if I can figure out how to get to the bottom of it and maybe I don't have to, but I don't think it's safe for Henry to be here. And what if Regina's trying to be on her best behavior because I'm here and if I go back, she gets worse? Or decides to go on the run with Henry before I can come back, or…"

"Emma?" Neal asked. Then, slowly, "What exactly are you saying?"

Emma took a breath. "I'm saying that I want you to get in touch with a lawyer before you come down here. Find out what's involved in getting custody of Henry. Because I'm not leaving town without him. Not unless I know he'll be safe if I do."

Neal swallowed hard. He wanted to see her again. He wanted to meet his son. But he didn't want to see his father again. And if he did as Emma asked, he could delay that inevitability for just a bit longer. Plus it would help to allay her worries. It was almost a win-win. "Okay," he said. "I'll make some calls."

It took Emma a while to fall asleep that night, but she did in the end. When she woke up, it was after eight and Mary Margaret had already left for school, so Emma didn't get an opportunity to talk to her again until suppertime. By then, after a full day's work for both of them, she was able to see her thoughts from last night as the crackpot theories they almost certainly were.

"It's fine," Mary Margaret reassured her when Emma tried to apologize again. "You were upset. A-and you had every right to be. I am, too. Not at you!" she added hastily. "But anytime someone Graham's age passes it's upsetting!"

Emma nodded. "Do we know when the funeral is?" she asked.

"I guess you didn't read today's Mirror," Mary Margaret said. "It's tomorrow. Graham didn't have any family. It's just going to be a quiet affair, I think."

"No family?" Emma repeated. "What about his parents?" At Graham's age, she would have expected at least one of them to still be alive.

Mary Margaret frowned. "I don't know," she said. "Graham never mentioned them and the obituary in the paper didn't either. I guess he must have been an orphan."

Emma's suspicions came flooding back. Seriously? You guess? I mean, if this were Boston or New York or even Phoenix, I'd get it, but this is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. You said you and Graham have known each other for, like forever. And you guess he must have been an orphan? She was about to ask Mary Margaret about her own parents, but she didn't think she'd get a satisfactory answer on that one either and she didn't want to be right about it. There was something weird about this place and she wasn't sure she wanted to keep digging to find out what.

"I made some calls," Neal told her. "Just to firms that offer you a one-hour free consult and I've got some appointments lined up over the next couple of weeks. Five of them," he added. "Do you think that's enough shopping around," Emma heard him heave a sigh, "or do you want me to call more?"

Emma felt a pang. They hadn't seen each other for over a month and what she was asking him to do was keeping them apart for longer. Plus, Henry was Neal's son, too and Neal deserved to meet him. "Five is enough," she said. "Go ahead and book the flight. I'll meet you at Bar Harbor Airport. Or Bangor, if that's easier; it's a little farther away, but there might be more flights in."

This time, Neal's sigh was one of relief. "I'll get right on it. Love you."

"Love you, too."

A fair number of people turned out for the funeral, Regina and Henry included. The mayor wore a stylish black dress and a hat with a veil that made Emma think she looked as though she was Graham's widow. She delivered the sole eulogy in calm, polished tones, nothing at all like the cold fury she'd shown on the night she and Emma had last seen each other. From Regina's speech, Emma couldn't tell whether she was suppressing her grief at Graham's passing, or whether she truly didn't care.

Neal called her later that day to let her know that he'd be landing in Bar Harbor on the morning of the seventh—fourteen days from now. "Another firm I'd left a message for called me back this morning," he explained. "They slotted me in for the fifth. I figured one more wouldn't hurt."

"No," Emma agreed. "That's fine."

"Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah," Emma nodded, her fingers playing absently with the deputy star on her belt. With Graham dead, she was the closest thing this place had to a law enforcement officer and she was going to keep wearing it until a new sheriff was appointed or until she left, whichever came first. "Yeah, I'll see you on the seventh."

Twelve days later, Emma arrived at the sheriff station and noticed that the voice mail light on the old-fashioned desk phone was blinking. It wasn't an emergency; the emergency line would have forwarded to her cellphone. Curious, she played back the message. Why the hell was Gold calling? And why was he asking her to stop by his shop instead of telling her outright? It wasn't like anyone else was going to pick up the message.

Emma considered. Gold's shop was just a block or so away from Granny's and Emma hadn't packed a lunch today. She'd stop there on the way, she decided firmly.

At half-past noon, Emma pushed open the shop's front door. To her surprise, Gold wasn't behind the counter. She caught a whiff of an unpleasant odor in the air and wrinkled her nose. "Gold?" she called. "In here?"

From the back, she faintly heard a voice heavy with sarcasm drawl, "Well, it is my shop."

She ventured behind the counter and pushed aside the curtained partition. The odor was far worse here and it was coming from some sort of paste that Gold was brushing onto a piece of fabric. Lanolin, he informed her when she asked.

"It smells like livestock," she choked out, and she really didn't care what Gold was using it for, though he told her anyway. She just wanted to know why he'd called the sheriff station so she could get back out in the fresh air.

"I just wanted to, uh, express my condolences, really," Gold said. Emma blinked. There had to be more to it than that. "The Sheriff was a good man," he went on, and then his eyes flicked down to her belt. You're still wearing the Deputy's badge," he said with something that might almost have been surprise. "Well, he's been gone two weeks, now, and I believe," Emma's eyes widened as he reminded her of something she'd skimmed over that first week when she'd been familiarizing herself with the policies and procedures manuals, "that after two weeks of acting as Sheriff, the job becomes yours…"