Not My Homeland Anymore

Chapter 10: I Haven't Met the New Me Yet

Emma stared down at the sheriff's badge in front of her, rolling it between her fingers. She'd been putting this off for the past couple of weeks, telling herself that this situation wasn't permanent, that Graham would be back, or that someone else would be coming to take over for him.

It had been a phone call from Gold, of all people, calling to congratulate her on the promotion, that had finally made the truth sink in. No one else was coming. Graham was gone off to… wherever he'd disappeared to, and there were no other replacements incoming.

She'd never planned on being in this town for more than a few weeks, and yet it had been almost two months, and somehow she was now the sheriff.

Sighing, she stood up.

Guess I'm really doing this, huh?

Emma unpinned the badge, about to attach it to her jacket, when she heard a voice behind her.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said the mayor, pointing towards the badge. "That's not for you."

"It's been two weeks," Emma said, confused. "Promotion is automatic."

"Unless the mayor appoints someone else within the time period." Regina walked towards her, smiling. "Which I'm doing today."

"So who's it gonna be?" And why did she feel… disappointed? Hadn't she just been hoping someone else would show up to take over instead of her? She wasn't even sure we wanted to stay a deputy, let alone become sheriff.

"After due reflection, Sidney Glass." The newspaper guy? Emma wasn't even sure how to respond to that. "And as for you, Miss Swan, hiring you here was Graham's mistake. Now that he's been replaced, you can consider yourself fired."

"You can't do that," Emma protested, wondering why she was fighting this.

"I think you'll find I can," the mayor said, snatching the badge from Emma's hand. "I think it's time you left. That's what you do best, right?"

Neal sighed, pulling up another fallen bookcase. Thankfully,mostof the books seemed to have survived intact, but many of the shelves had not been so lucky. And the mayor had already told him that the town's budget was spread thin from the street repairs. They could afford a few replacements, but most of these would have to be repaired.

Luckily, Neal was pretty sure that he could do most of those repairs. Still, the mountain of work in front of him was daunting. He had to clear all the bookcases out of the room, and organize them by what could and couldn't be repaired. He had to remove all of that scattered books and check their conditions to make sure that they were all shelf worthy. He had to repair the bookshelves he could and order replacements for those he couldn't. He had to get everything back in its proper place.

And he had about five days to get it all done. Single-handedly.

Oh, Henry had offered to help, eager to get the library reopened, but he was also ten years old. Neal didn't expect him to be able to handle much manual labor.

I wish Pops were here. Not that his dad would have been much physical help- his gimp leg would have prevented him from moving or carrying much in the way of heavy loads. But Neal's father had always been fastidiously organized, and he had made sure that his son could appreciate the value of a hard day's work. Then again, he'd probably be telling me to stop complaining and get the job done.

Mary Margaret walked into her apartment to find Emma engaged in what appeared to be one-on-one combat with a toaster while the boombox blared something loud and grating.

Concerned, she shut off the music and turned to her roommate.

"Toaster broken?" What's wrong?

"It wasn't when I started with it," Emma said, sighing. "Pretty sure it is now. I just needed to hit something."

"What's going on?" She'd never seen the other woman this agitated.

"Do you think," Emma grit her teeth, continuing to wrestle with the toaster, "that I'm a… flake?"

"I'm sorry?" Mary Margaret wasn't sure how to respond to that. Her roommate certainly had some issues with commitment, but she wouldn't call her a flake, exactly.

"Do you think Henry thinks I'm going to ditch this town- and him?" Emma only glanced up to meet her eyes for a moment before staring back down at the toaster, but Mary Margaret could see the vulnerability hiding there.

"Of course not," Mary Margaret said immediately. "Emma, where is this coming from?"

"Just something Regina said to me today," Emma said, jabbing the knife into their poor abused toaster. "Right after she fired me."

"Regina fired you?" Mary Margaret was starting to get a clearer picture here, and it wasn't pretty.

Before she could inquire further, there was a knock at the door.

And of course it was Mr. Gold. Well, never let it be said that Mary Margaret didn't know when it was time to make herself scarce.

"Mr. Cassidy."

Neal looked up from the bookshelf he was in the process of putting back together as the mayor walked into the backroom.

"Mayor Mills!" He hopped to his feet. "I know, I know, this place is still a mess, but I'm working as fast as I can to get it ready to open up before the holidays."

"I'm sure you are," Henry's mother said, waving her hand dismissively. "But you could probably use an extra pair of hands, right? I'll send Henry over after school."

"I'm sorry?" Neal felt his brow furrowing in confusion. "I just assumed you wouldn't want him involved in this kind of heavy work."

"Well, when the alternative is him spending time with a known jailbird…"

"What do you mean?" He reached out a hand to take the newspaper she was holding out to him, and he read the headline a few times to make sure he hadn't misunderstood.

Ex-Jailbird: Emma Swan Birthed Babe Behind Bars.

The article was written by Sidney Glass.

"As you can see-"

"Why would you do this?" Neal interrupted, appalled.

"Excuse me?" His boss was glaring at him, and normally that might make Neal rethink his actions, but for this…

The fact that Emma Swan had spent time in jail didn't surprise him as much as it probably should have. He'd known she had a couple of screws loose since he'd met her, and she'd been young when she'd had Henry.

"Henry is going to read this, you know," he said, shaking his head. "What election could be worth that?"

"Well, when the opposition decides that the best way to win is to associate with the likes of Mr. Gold…"

"What?"

"Tell me you didn't."

Emma stared at the man in front of her, keeping a hand on the doorframe.

"What are you doing here, Cassidy?" She'd been printing out campaign flyers when she'd heard the frantic knocking at her door. She hadn't known who was there, but the librarian was the last person she'd expected to darken her door.

Emma hadn't seen him since letting him and Graham out of jail, and while she'd decided he wasn't worth resenting, she certainly wasn't interested in forming any kind of friendship with a man who reminded her so much of her lying jerk of an ex-boyfriend.

"Tell me you aren't working with Gold." He spat out the name like it was the worst kind of curse. "Emma, you know-"

"Know what?" She crossed her arms, wondering who he thought he was to tell her what she could and couldn't do. "Know that I'm a grown woman and don't have to justify my decisions to anyone, let alone some snot-nosed brat who can't even buy his own drink."

And that wasn't right, Cassidy wasn't a child, but right now she was so annoyed she didn't care.

"Emma, please, trust me," he pleaded. "You already owe Gold one favor, you don't want to be even further in his debt. Please."

And that was such an echo of how Henry had responded that Emma couldn't help but move back to let him in.

"Alright, sit down," she said, gesturing at the table. "Now, what did Mr. Gold do to make you so afraid of him?"

"How did-"

"I recognize that look," she said, crossing her arms. "Spill."

She watched some of the tension drain from his eyes as his shoulders slumped.

"He ruined my life," Cassidy said, sighing. "He ruined my father's life."

"Your father?" She'd hadn't heard much about his father. Mary Margaret had told her that he'd died a few years back, and that Ne- that Cassidy had skipped town for a while afterwards, but nothing else.

"Mr. Gold," Cassidy said, tapping his fingers on the tabletop, "is the reason Pops is dead."

"Are you telling me he killed your father?" Emma wasn't stupid. She knew that Mr. Gold wasn't exactly nice. But a murderer?

"He may as well have," said Cassidy, looking down at his hands.

"What-"

"That's what he does, Emma!" His eyes met hers, and she recognized the anguish in them. "He finds people who are vulnerable, people who are desperate, and he gets his hooks into them and squeezes until there's nothing left and then he squeezes some more."

"So he's, what, a loan shark?" That wasn't surprising, exactly.

"He's worse than that," Cassidy said, shaking his head. He reached out to grip one of her hands between his. "Look, I know we don't like each other. We're not friends, and you have as little reason to trust me as I do you. But please, believe me when I tell you that no election is worth this."

"Okay," she said, gently pressing her spare hand on top of their joined ones. "Okay."

Neal's father couldn't have always been in as much debt as Neal remembered. There must have been something that started it, some reason he'd needed to borrow an inordinate amount of money from a few too many people. Neal had never known the cause, and couldn't even hazard a guess at what it might have been- both the house and the shop were rentals, neither of them had ever exactly wracked up a pile of medical bills, and Pops wasn't a gambling man.

Whatever it had been, the fact remained that the elder Mr. Cassidy had found himself owing a lot of money to a lot of people, not all of whom were willing to patiently wait for him to scrounge up the money to pay them back. And some had been willing to do anything to get what was theirs.

Neal only had the vaguest of memories of the attack. Heknewhe'd been in middle school at the time, but somehow it always felt so much farther back than that, as if it was something from when he'd been a small child. As if the time after had stretched much longer than the time before.

He knew he'd been on his way to pick up his dad from the shop, as he always did at the end of the school day. He knew that he'd been stopped by a group of men he hadn't recognized, that at least two of them had had knives, and he thought he remembered seeing the holster of a gun.

He couldn't remember exactly what had happened after that, what the men had said, what he'd responded, when or how his father had found out and arrived, though he knew it had all happened in a matter of minutes.

What he did remember was his father sprawled on the street, his cane lying useless next to him, one of the men standing with his leg stretched out obviously having tripped him. He remembered running to Pops, heedless of the weapons pointed in his direction, desperate to help him up.

He remembered stranding on the street corner, shivering, the weight of his father's arm slung over his shoulder.

Neal knew that this was when he had shown up. He'd had a smile that made Neal feel cold inside, and worn a suit Pops had made and a pair of shoes polished so brightly you could see your reflection in them.

But it was more of the feelings that he remembered. He remembered a fear creeping into the very marrow of his bones, of being more terrified of the man who'd spoken softly, who'd carried no weapons and made no crude insults, than of the men who'd held blades to his throat and called him and his father all sorts of unspeakable things.

He knew that he must have recognized the man, although he couldn't remember actually doing so.

Neal didn't remember what had happened after that, whathehad said to make all of the attackers disappear, or how Pops had gotten him home after it was all over.

But he did know what the end result had been.

Pops had already owed Mr. Gold money, of course, not to mention that the wealthy man also owned both the house they lived in and the shop Neal's father used to make his livelihood. But after that day, things had been… different.

Nobody had needed to tell Neal exactly what kind of deal had been made, because the results had been obvious. Neal's dad, the perpetually debt-ridden tailor, no longer owed money to every loan shark in town.

He'd owed it all to one.

Something in Pops had snapped that day. Neal didn't know if it was fear from watching his only son nearly die, or stress at being so hopelessly in debt to the most feared man in town, or something else entirely.

That was the day he'd lost his father.

Oh, sure, Pops had held on physically a few more years, his heart waiting until a few months before Neal's graduation (and the debt had all been paid off) to finally give out from what the doctor had called "a stress-induced heart attack."

But he hadn't been there, hadn't been present, hadn't been the man Neal had always known and loved. He'd practically lived at the shop from then on, always, always, always working. And even when he'd been home, he'd been so stressed and exhausted Neal was lucky to get more than a few coherent words out of him.

Some teenage boys spent their high school years sneaking out of the house after curfew. Even if Neal had been the sort to be tempted by that kind of thing, he wouldn't have needed to do any sneaking. Some spent the time going on dates and arguing with their parents over what they were old enough to be trusted with. Neal had spent the time teaching himself to cook (poorly) and trying to convince his dad to get some sleep for once.

Some boys spent the last months before graduation planning their last summer before college. Neal had spent that time planning a funeral.

And Neal had always known, on an intellectual level, that none of that was exactly Mr. Gold's fault. Gold had saved them.

But knowing something intellectually isn't the same as feeling it, and the only thing Neal had ever felt was that their once happy- if not always easy- lives had taken a turn for the worse the day Mr. Gold had gotten involved.

Neal wanted nothing more to do with that man.

Which was, he supposed, how he'd ended up here, putting his own sweat and tears into fixing up a library that he'd honestly never cared all that much about.

Well, that's not totally true. There was one thing he cared about that he'd gotten from working here.

"Hi, Henry!" Neal said, waving at the boy who'd just walked in. "Can you help me unpack these boxes?"

Mr. Gold hadn't looked happy when Emma had come down to his shop and told him she would win- or lose- this election without his help, but thankfully he hadn't protested all that much, either.

The next couple of days had whirled by in a blur, and before she knew it it was time for the debate.

She stood backstage, peeking out from behind the curtain. She knew she needed to focus, make sure she was totally prepared, and yet she couldn't stop thinking about something Cassidy had said to her.

"He finds people who are vulnerable, people who are desperate."She wasn't desperate, was she?

If she was being honest with herself, she knew that she was. But why?

Her eyes met Henry's. He smiled at her, and she felt something in her chest squeeze.

Oh.

Win or lose, she promised herself that the first thing she would do when this was all over was have a talk with her son.

Neal had decided not to attend the debate. He still had a few more things to take care of before the library could be opened the next morning, and he already knew who he was voting for.

It wasn't such a hard decision, when it came down to it. On the one hand, there was Emma Swan. Emma, who he didn't actually like all that much, who was loud, and rude, and quite probably insane. And on the other, there was Sydney Glass, who everyone knew lived directly in the mayor's pocket.

And it wasn't that Neal disliked Regina Mills, per se. She was his boss, and she'd always treated him fairly. But she certainly wasn't perfect, and Neal's childhood had left him disinclined to give too much power to any single individual. Especially after seeing what levels she was willing to stoop to for the sake of winning.

So he submitted a ballot marked Emma Swan without a second thought and then went back to making sure all of the library records were organized.

"Henry," Emma said, looking at the boy sitting in the stool next to hers. "I need you to know something."

"What is it?" His face was so trusting, so innocent, that it hurt.

"Whether or not I win this election, I'm not going anywhere," she told him.

"I know that," Henry said, shrugging.

"You… you do?" How could he know that when she hadn't even known that herself until just now?

"Well, I know you could leave," he said, tilting his head slightly. "But I don't think you will."

"Why?" Emma didn't know why his answer was so important, but she held her breath anyway, waiting for it.

"Because this is where you belong," he said, nodding. "Storybrooke is where you were meant to be."

Before she had the chance to let those words sink in, the doorbell to the diner jingled.

Regina scowled as she placed the sheriff's badge in front of Emma Swan.

"There was a very close vote," she said, forcing her lips upwards. "But somehow, word of how you stood up to Mr. Gold got around, and it seems people really seem to like the idea of a sheriff brave enough to tell him no."

She still wasn't sure how that rumor had spread so quickly, and she didn't like it one bit.

For now, though, she could admit when she'd been beaten.

But as her mother had always taught her, losing one battle didn't have to mean losing the war.