#every spring welcome home comes back swinging and punches me in the gut

[thattheater-kid]

I just went through the Welcome Home website update and WHATTTT. CHAT WE ARE COOKED.

Anyway, beyond that initial what the actual fuck reaction, I noticed that Wally’s voice changes a lot throughout his audio. I can’t tell if it’s meant to be some kind of creepy audio distortion thing or if we’re meant to take those changes as part of his actual voice, but it genuinely sounds like more than one person trying to talk. Even his personality and attitude shifts through the audio, with a much more harsh and demanding tone when he tells us to talk as opposed to when he tells us to “lend an ear”. In addition, that part of the audio when he explains that term sounds a lot like a kids’ show host explaining a new word to children, which makes sense. However, earlier in the audio, when he tells the listener to talk sounds a lot harsher in comparison in a much deeper voice than normal for Wally, before immediately switching back. Then, throughout the audio his voice keeps dropping or raising in pitch to the point of being jarring.

It sounded almost like different audio clips spliced together, different people talking. It sounded like at least two separate people talking, maybe even three, but it was very chilling honestly. It could just be a sign of Wally’s clearly deteriorating sanity as he’s getting more and more frustrated with his situation, but it’s absolutely unnerving, and calls back to the popular theories of Wally being possessed by Home or some other entity, or even one I read a while ago (probably back around the time of the spring or summer 2023 updates) about Wally having DID (or another CDD).

As for Julie’s audios, holy fuck. She dropped swear words. That’s how you know we’re cooked. One thing I noticed is that her “inner monologue” voice (and I believe that’s her real voice) sounds a lot like Sally’s voice, specifically compared to Sally’s voice when she tells her scary story in the Happy Haunting to Boo and Yours segment from the Halloween 2023 update. I’m assuming they probably just have the same voice actress? But I found that interesting and I’m wondering if that might come up again, just because there’s an explanation doesn’t mean it won’t mean anything.

Also, I’ve seen a few interpretations about Julie’s breakdown and what it might represent (I saw someone mention fertility issues, which is a really interesting take and probably more correct than mine), but for me it hit very close to home as a former gifted kid and as a college student. Her wanting to show off what she can do to her friend and feeling like she failed when she can’t do it right, wondering what her friends and family will think of her and worrying she’ll get in trouble or have to go back to her family felt very real to me as someone who started college this year and finally got out of my house and away from my family, and then started struggling. I can’t tell you how many breakdowns I had that sounded just like Julie over the phone with my friends, crying that I’m going to fail and get kicked out and have to go back to my parents house. Hearing that in Julie’s audios broke my heart because it’s so real to me.

This update was insane, I’m so terrified and excited for the next one!

[himbowelsh]

Kiss prompt no.3 for Harry and Kitty! 🥰

sha-la-la-la my oh my, looks like the boy’s too shy  💋 (accepting!) 

3.   kissing so desperately that their whole body curves into the other person’s

He steps off the train with his bag over his shoulder and a spring in his step  ---  one his thigh, which still sometimes aches during rainstorms and long runs, doesn’t appreciate. A little pain never stopped Harry before. Paratroopers, he reminds himself, put up with plenty more than that... and even if he’s not strictly a paratrooper anymore, well, he didn’t earn those jumpwings for nothing.

His grin only dims when he scans the platform for familiar faces, and comes up blank. It’s not like he expected a welcoming party — he’s one of twenty fellas in uniform coming home on this train alone — but… well. He expected something. Someone. 

Kitty’s last letter is still in his pocket. He read it ten times since this morning, vibrating with anticipation of finally seeing her again. After two years — and hell, if it doesn’t feel longer than that! It feels like Harry’s spent a lifetime without his love… missing her, dreaming of her, haunted by her in the morphine-hazy days while his wound was healing. He imagined her specter in the frigid Bastogne woods, slipping through skeleton-tree silhouettes. He imagined brushing the snow from her eyelashes, dancing with her around the drifts and bomb craters, kissing life back into her frozen hands as they grew blue and lifeless…

Kitty’s been with him in a thousand ways since the last time he saw here. There were her letters, of course, endlessly cheerful and full of rambling stories from home — he saved every one. Then the care packages, knitted mittens and homemade cookies gone stale over the long journey… that picture she had taken in her favorite pearls, just because he asked her for a new one. The articles she sent from home, the Wilkes-Barre Journal mentioning their hometown heroes by name. The letter with a red-lipsticked kiss pressed into the bottom of the paper, Christ Almighty…

He’s been dreaming of Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, for so long… that not seeing her feels like a punch to the gut.

He gave her the right time, didn’t he? The right day? She knows when he’s supposed to be pulling in, he made sure of that —

Another soldier shoulders past, nearly knocking him over. A protest is already on Harry’s lips when he turns, to see the man being embraced by a well-dressed woman. He loops his arms around her waist, swinging her off her feet; she lets out a noise that sounds like a sob, rumbling his uniform as she grips him.

For a minute, he can’t help staring. Something sour and sharp twists in his stomach, a longing he can’t grasp with both hands. When Harry finally tears his gaze away, his throat feels tight.

She said she’d be here…

Slowly, he shuffled forward along the platform. It isn’t crowded, but he searches each face all the same. A telltale flash somewhere, that’s all he’s looking for — a head full of bouncy curls, a smile that could light up the night sky, a sparkling laugh or bell-clear voice calling his name…

He sits down on the bench. He waits.

He’s all alone.

Ten minutes pass, then half an hour. By the time the crowd has thinned down to nothing, the sun is already starting to set on the horizon. Against a backdrop of gold and salmon, shadows stretch longer, and the train station feels lonelier than ever. Harry exhales, long and low, through pursed lips. There’s a paperback in his bag  ---  he finished it on the train  ---  and a half-done crossword puzzle he picked up in New York City, but he doesn’t feel like either of them. If he looks away for a second...  well, the irrational thought’s caught hold in his head that Kitty will slip by and he’ll miss her.

She’s not coming. That’s the other irrational thought, a thousand times worse than the one before. As the moments tick by, the more likely it seems. Nixon’s teasing words ring in his ears  --- �� if she hasn’t run off with some 4-F by now...   that’s not even funny...

He scrubs his palms against his knees, nauseous. Jumping into Normandy wasn’t as bad as this. Even then, he had Kitty’s photo in his pocket, and the reassurance of her kisses as soon as he got back, if he got back. Now, it’s a different uncertainty, a buzzing dread that stirs his nerves into an electric storm. He never worried about coming home hurt, even coming home in a box...  because at least then he thought Kitty would be there to welcome him back.

He’s made it back in one piece, and she’s not here.

Something inside feels like it’s breaking. Harry pushes it down, smothering it like the burn of sore muscles and frostbite. Worse pain than this, he reminds himself. You’re a paratrooper. A tough son-of-a-bitch. Paratroopers don’t cry, damn it.

When he rises from the bench, heaving his bag up with him, he doesn’t...  even if his eyes sting, and his throat feels too tight to force out a word if he tried.

He could walk home, he considers, making his way to the stairs leading down from the platform. Hitchhike? Maybe some nice Patriot will offer a ride to a guy in uniform. He’s been travelling all day, and he’s rather not heave this bag all the way back to his mother’s house  ---

The stairs are steep, several flights descending down in a long stretch to the parking lot below. Bathed in dying gold light, Harry can just make out each step...  and a figure, too far away to make out, at the very bottom of the stairs.

She’s wearing a mint green dress, and a hat with a turned up brim. Her hair flies about like it’s escaped from their pins in some struggle  ---  curls, he realizes, catching the light like liquid gold. She stumbles on the bottom step, obviously in a hurry, and only catches herself with one hand on the railing.

Harry’s looking down. She looks up.

Their eyes meet, and the world explodes into radiant color.

“Oh my God  ---” From a distance, he registers his bag dropping to the ground; but Harry’s too caught up to notice, too busy throwing himself forward down the stairs. It’s quicker going down than going up...  but she’s moving just as fast, practically bounding up the steps in unsteady kitten heels.  (She hates heels, can’t stand them, swears she’ll only wears them for special occasions  ---)

They meet each other halfway.

Kitty laughs out loud as she falls into his arms. Immediately, he’s gripping her like a lifeline, like he’s parachuted into the ocean and she’s the only raft keeping him afloat. He presses his face into his hair, inhaling the sweet smell of her, registering her urgent babble from a distance.

“I’m so sorry, the car broke down, I waited at the side of the road for an hour, a nice lady had to stop and show me how to fix it, I was worried for you the whole time  ---”

“I knew you’d come,” he breathes.

Kitty pulls back, hands on his shoulders; her eyes are wide, impossible sweet and unbearably earnest. “Of course I would. You silly, silly man.”

He always imagined that their first kiss would be sweet — something tender, like a reward for making it back alive. Instead, he kisses her like a drowning man desperate for air. His hand knots in her tangled curls; she grips his shoulders fiercely, and presses back with all the fire he remembers, what he fell in love with in the first place. She holds him like she’s determined to never let go again. Kitty presses against him, body angling into his own, and Harry grips her like a prayer. Until the sharp tang of salt forces its way into their kiss, he doesn’t realize he’s crying. When he pulls back, breathing hard, tears streak Kitty’s rosy cheeks as well.

“No, no,” he hushes, wiping them hastily with his thumbs before pressing another kiss to his brow. “I’m home… I can’t believe I’m really home.”

“I missed you so much,” she declares, caressing his cheek like she’s trying to memorize the outline of his face. When Harry breaks into a grin, she beams back, managing a shaky giggle.

Forget the ships, forget the trains… seeing that smile is what truly brings him home.

“I’m here,” Harry declares, leaning in to press another kiss to her lips. “I’m here, Kitty… and I’ll never go anywhere again without you.”

[yeehawbisexualold]

You're a Marshmallow, Emma Swan

A CS Veronica Mars AU.

Rated T. 4.3k words. (1/?)

A/N The first chapter very closely follows the pilot in order to set up the characters and plot. Future chapters may not be as verbatim. Also, words in italics are used to represent voice-overs. Although David will be her father, I decided to keep Emma’s last name as Swan because Veronica Mars is such a distinctive name and so is Emma Swan and I don’t think Emma Nolan or the Nolan family would pack quite the same punch.

Welcome to Storybrooke high school. If you go here, your parents are either millionaires or work for millionaires. Storybrooke, California, a town without a middle class. If you’re in the second group, you get a job—fast food, movie theaters, mini-marts. Emma Swan’s after school job means tailing philandering spouses or investigating false injury claims.

She gets out of her car, a beat up, yellow bug, to see a crowd formed around the school’s flagpole. The source of the crowd’s interest, she finds, is a naked boy, duct taped, precariously to cover his private bits, to the pole with the word snitch (misspelled as “snich”) painted across his bare chest. She pushes through the hoard of spectators, gawking at the scrawny boy’s misfortune. “Who’d that guy rat out?” “Why doesn’t somebody cut him down?” “Yeah, I’ll do it. I wanna be the guy up there tomorrow.”

Reaching into her pocket, she tells the guy snapping a selfie on his phone to move.

“Who died and made you the queen?” the jack ass asks as she pulls out her pocket knife. He backs away silently when she snaps it open near his face.

“You’re new here, huh?” she asks the kid as she begins sawing away the duct tape near his wrists. He nods. “Welcome to Storybrooke High.” The bell for class rings and as the crowd begins to disperse, she sardonically cheers “Go Pirates!”

She cuts away enough to free him but leaves him with the pieces that protect his modesty.

In advanced placement English, she rests her head on her desk, falling asleep to the sound of her droning teacher’s voice.

“Did anybody complete the reading?” the woman inquires, removing her glasses. “Emma? Emma Swan, congratulations you’re my volunteer. Pope, An Essay On Man, lesson one.”

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest. The soul, uneasy and confined from home, rests and expatiates in a life to come,” she speaks from memory.

“And what do you suppose Pope meant by that?” the teacher quizzes.

She twiddles her fingers. “Life’s a bitch until you die.”

“Thank you, Miss Swan, for that succinct and somewhat inappropriate response.”

~

Random locker searches are the latest tactic the administration has adopted in its losing war on drugs. Except for Emma Swan, the searches aren’t random. She knows when they’re going to happen before Vice Principle “Grumpy” does. (His real name is Leroy but the students of Storybrooke aren’t much for respecting authority.

“Emma Swan. This should be good,” one of Sheriff Zelena Mills’ lackeys says with a smirk.

“Will you please open your locker?” Grumpy asks.

She twists in her combination and swings open the door to reveal a perfectly bare locker. Well, bare to the exception of a photo of Grumpy framed by a red heart and taped to the metal door

“Wow,” she huffs with a grin. “This is a little embarrassing.”

~

Emma sits alone at a round, red plastic lunch table, stabbing her disposable fork into the atrocity the school calls lunch. She stares blankly across the outdoor cafeteria at a group of rowdy students.

I used to sit there, at that table. It’s not like my family met the minimum net worth requirement. My dad didn’t own his own airline like Greg Mendell’s or serve as Ambassador to Belgium like Tamara’s. But my dad used to be the sheriff and that had a certain cache. Let’s be honest though. The only reason I was allowed past the velvet ropes was Neal Hood, son of software billionaire Robin Hood. He used to be my boyfriend. Then one day, with no warning, he ended things.

The most obnoxious of the students perches himself on Neal’s lap, rubbing his chest as he smirks at Emma.

And let’s not forget Killian Jones. His dad makes 20 million a picture. You probably own his action figure. He built his career on being the British bad boy and his son tries his damnedest to upstage his levels of naughtiness. Every school has an obligatory, psychotic jack ass. He’s ours.

Neal pushes him off and turns his attention back to Tamara who’s snuggled herself up against his side and Killian simply sits next to him clapping his hands together and pointing at Emma with a wild grin.

A figure sits down across from her, partially blocking her vision of Killian’s antics.

“You ok?” they ask, startling her out of her focused glare.

“What?“ 

It’s the kid she cut down earlier.

“You look, I don’t know, hypnotized.” He explains, opening his lunch.

“Did I say you could sit here?” she snaps at him. As soon as he stands, shoving his lunch back in the bag, she feels remorse. Killian pisses her off but that’s no reason to treat the new kid, who’s already had a rough enough first day, like shit. “Wait. Of course, you can sit here.”

He sits back down with a smile.

“That was cool what you did.”

Before she can respond, she’s interrupted by a voice behind her.

“My bitch. Weren’t you supposed to wait for me at the flagpole?” The bare sleeved, tattooed interrupter crouches down and gets in the kids face. “I’m not sure I could have made that any clearer.”

The kid looks like he’s going to shit his pants. 

“Leave him alone,” Emma demands and the guy turns his attention to her.

“Love, the only time I care what a woman has to say is when she’s riding my big ole hog and even then it’s not so much words as just a bunch of oohs and aahs, ya know?” He asks planting himself in front of her.

“So it’s big, huh?”

“Legendary.”

“Well, let’s see it. I mean if it’s as big as you say, I’ll be your girlfriend.” She smiles brightly and gasps as if she’s just had a thought. “We could go to prom together!”

When he just laughs and leans back she continues “What seems to be the problem? I’m on a schedule here.”

“Dude, don’t let blondie talk to you like that!” his friend chimes in.

“Sounds like your buddy here wants to see it too.”

“Hell, I’ll show you mine!” the buddy shouts but is interrupted by Grumpy, arriving to break up the disturbance and ask Emma why trouble follows her around.

“So what did you do?” she asks the ‘snitch,’ who’s name she learns is Henry, after everyone clears away from the table. If she just confronted Will Scarlet, the leader of the local biker gang, she deserves to know what she was standing up for.

He explains how he works at the local gas station and while he was working alone last night, some of the guys walked in and stole alcohol from the store, stuffing bottles in their jackets and only paying for a pack of gum. He tripped the silent alarm but when the police came—"We don’t have police here. We have a sheriffs department.“—and he went outside, he realized an entire gang sat in the parking lot. Intimidated by all of the guys, he told the sheriff he pressed the alarm by accident. “You need to go see the wizard, ask him for some guts.” The sheriff told him before hauling the two bikers away.

“Go see the wizard? She said that?” Emma asks once he’s finished his story. “Congratulations, in your short time here, you’ve already managed to piss of the biker gang and the local sheriff.”

~

She heads to her fathers P.I. office, Swan Investigation, after school and is surprised to find Regina Hood’s car there. She hates Emma almost as much as she loves her son.

She sits down at the reception desk and busies herself with paperwork, waiting for Regina to walk out. Ingrid, the local, low-level lawyer walks in and offers “her father” a case to discover how the strip club her client works for keeps their liquor license and help her client make a deal.

After Ingrid leaves, Regina walks out of her father’s office.

“Don’t get the wrong idea, David. I don’t like you,” she says coolly, strutting past in her clean, pressed, white pantsuit, her chin tilted back in an air of arrogance. She turns her icy gaze to Emma. “I hate the fact that I’m here. But I know if anyone will be dogged and resourceful in this matter, it’ll be you. Don’t call me at home, I’ll call you.”

And then she’s gone, the air feeling decidedly less chilly without her presence.

Sure she’s a bitch. But can you blame her? After all, dad did try to send her husband to jail for life.

Her dad joins her to eat and she attempts to figure out why Regina was here. He ignores her attempts at questioning him, joking about the plastic resemblance of the cheese on their sandwiches. But after enough grilling, he reveals that Regina believes her husband Robin is having an affair—late nights and motels—and that he took the case because they need the money.

“Good, I would have been pissed if you hadn’t.”

“I wouldn’t have cared if you were.”

They continue eating together until the phone rings and her father announces he has to leave for a trip to El Paso, demanding she leaves the Hood case alone. She nods in response, knowing full well she’s lying.

~

She follows Robin Hood to his office. As she sits in her car, staring up into the windows of the building, she thinks about her best friend Milah, Robin’s daughter. Leaning back against the seat she recalls the pep squad car wash they worked in October of last year, both of them wearing the tight t-shirt and shorts combo, Emma with her hair in pigtails and Milah with hers long and loose.

“I’ve got a secret, Emma Swan,” she giggled, conspiratorially as she rubbed a soapy sponge along the hood of a car. 

Those were the last words Emma ever heard from Milah. Later that night, she was found dead by her pool.

Emma’s father had been driving her home when he received a call about a disturbance at the Hood estate. When they arrived, David instructed her to stay in the car. But she saw Neal, sitting on a bench with his arms tucked around himself, rocking back and forth, his face ashen and his eyes wide, filled with an emotion to this day she can not name. All it took was one look at him and she was rushing in the house to see what happened.

“Where’s Milah?” she asked, her chest tight. All he could offer in response was a scrunched brow and a mouth, shaking into a frown.

Outside she found the area swarming with cops, a grieving couple, and by the pool, the lifeless body of her dead best friend—eyes wide and unseeing, blood dripping down her face from the gaping wound above where her temple met her scalp.

But everyone knows the story, the murder of Milah Hood. It was on the cover of People Magazine. It made entertainment tonight. The town was flooded with journalists. And of course, everyone remembers the bumbling, local sheriff. The one who went after the wrong man.

That bumbling sheriff was my dad.

Six weeks after Milah’s death, her crime scene video was leaked by someone in the sheriff department. In a matter of hours, millions of people around the world had seen the grizzly footage. Someone had to be held responsible and that someone was David Swan.

“So, Swan, does your dad still think that Milah’s father did this?” Killian confronted her in the school computer lab. “That’s my girlfriend. Your friend. Neal’s sister. Your dad is destroying the Hood family. What’s the matter with you people? What’s the matter with you?”

She knew he was lashing out because he was hurt but so was she. When he maliciously spit out the words, “I’m done with you.” She thought good because she couldn’t help but hate him a little bit for the way he was treating her.

Her father’s belief that Robin was the murderer no longer mattered. An emergency recall removed him from office and the investigation was no longer in his hands. Her mother wanted to move out of Storybrooke. The loss of status and loss of income was too much for her.

They had to move because they could no longer afford to stay in their house but Emma and David were not going to be run out of town.

~

A pair of Milah’s shoes were later discovered on the house boat of one Triton King and her father’s successor, Sheriff Zelena Mills’ face was plastered across the news for her amazing arrest.

~

Emma’s dad may not have been right about Robin but, sitting in the parking lot of a skeezy motel named the Camelot, she knows Regina is right about him now. She can’t imagine it’s a business meeting that’s being conducted at one in the morning, behind the door of one of the upper-level rooms.

Before she can get any substantial evidence, her car is swarmed in the parking lot by none other than Will’s gang.

“Car trouble miss?” he asks with a smirk.

“Might be a loose belt but if you wouldn’t mind checking under the hood,” she answers sweetly.

One of the guys walks up to her open window and her dog Wilby, affectionately nicknamed backup, jumps out. The guy lands flat on his back as the dog snarls at his throat. Another stomps up, yelling at her to call off her dog and she tazes him in the chest. Down he goes.

She calls Wilby off.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll call it a draw,” she tells Will.

“Love, come on, it’s too late for that.”

“Here’s the deal,” Emma informs him, no bull shit face in place. “Leave that kid at school alone for a week and I’ll make sure your boys walk.”

“Why do you care for that kid so much, anyway? Things I heard about you… You must really lay the pipe right.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” she says cheerfully with a sarcastic nod of her head.

Mr. Electricity begins to lift himself up, using her door as leverage, and she charges her tazer in front of his face as a warning.

“Alright, one week. But if you don’t get them off, I’m coming for you, your boy, and your little dog too. And remember, if you get lonely out here, Will love you long time.” He kisses the air at her as he revs his engine.

Quite a reputation I’ve got, huh? You wanna know how I lost my virginity? So do I.

It happened at a party at Tamara’s, that much she knows. She’d curled her hair and put on one of her favorite dresses—white, knee length, and flowy. Her reason for going was simply to show everyone that the way they treated her didn’t affect her.

It was a mistake.

As she walked through the crowded room of people from whom the only attention she received was pointed whispers and giggles, people whom she once considered friends, she was handed a drink. She didn’t know who handed it to her but she chugged it down.

Before long she was stumbling around dizzily and then everything went blank. She woke the next morning, alone in bed, a soreness between her legs and her underwear on the floor. She walked through the house, crying silently, an entirely new type of pain tightening her chest.

She’d thought she’d felt all the pain a person could feel—being unceremoniously dumped by whom she thought was the love of her life, having her best friend murdered, all of her old friends turning against her, and her mother leaving her and her father. But there was at least one thing left the world had to throw at her, one more thing to show her that life truly was a bitch and things would never be the same.

In the present, Robin Hood steps out of the motel room door and Emma snaps as many pictures as she can before he shuts it behind him.

She doesn’t actually get a shot of the woman’s face but she gets some pretty good images of him talking through the door way and the license plates of each car in the lot. That should be enough to get her started.

~

The next day at school, she sits at her usual table. The kid she’d saved is already there.

“You should hear the things people say about you,” he begins.

“You didn’t have to sit at my table,” she grumbles. Who is this kid? She saves his ass and he chooses to sit at her table for what? To make fun of her?

“And what a fine table this is. What do you suppose it’s made of?” he ponders, tapping his closed fist against the shiny top. “Oak?”

“Look, if people are saying such awful things…” she trails off, shaking her head.

“Well, I figure I’ve got a choice. I could either go hang out with the jerks who laughed at me, took pictures of me while I was taped to that flagpole. Or I could hang out with the chick who cut me down.”

It feels good, his kindness, and a warmth blooms in her chest at the thought of a possible new friend.

“So you wanna get the bike club off your ass?”

“Can we come up with a code name?” he asks, eyes wide with hope.

“Sure, kid.”

She laughs at school for the first time she can remember since Milah’s death.

~

Her dad returns that night and as he prepares steak on the grill, Emma tells him she got pictures of Hood at the Camelot. He reprimands her for disobeying him but then asks to see the photos. He looks through the stack of images and pauses on one of the license plates of a car.

“I want you to stay away from Robin. You hear me?” he commands firmly, in the serious father voice he so rarely uses.

“But dad, why?”

“Listen to what I said, Emma. Stay away from him. I’m telling Regina I’m dropping the case.”

He storms into the apartment, leaving the grill unmanned.

~

When Grumpy conducts his next “spontaneous” locker search at school, he makes a stop at Killian Jones’. Killian opens the door, expecting to be in the clear, only to showcase a lovely bong in the shape of a naked man, one hand on his hip, the other grasping the bowl placed where it’s penis should be.

“What’s this, Killian? This appears to be a device used to smoke marijuana.”

Killian looks around the hallways, flooding with people now that the class bell has run and as he’s lead away, his confused eyes land on Emma standing beside Henry.

“I know it was you!” he shouts, angrily, jamming his finger in her face. “This isn’t over, ok?”

She fake yawns at him, patting her hand over her mouth. Henry grins at her side.

“You’re so cute and innocent. I’ll get you for this,” he threatens as he’s pulled away by Grumpy and the deputy.

Jefferson, the residential stoner, passes by and offers her a high five. She’d recruited him in art class the day before to make the bong for her.

Phase two of operation freedom was done.

After school, she drove home to the sheriff’s department. Phase three. With a remote control detonator, he sets off a spark in the bowl of the phallic bong residing in the evidence lock up. The smoke from that sets off the fire alarm and the woman behind the counter calls the fire department.

Then, after the flaming crisis is handled, she heads to the fire department.

“Did you make the switch?” she asks the fire chief who then hands her a large envelope with a video tape inside.

A lot of people in this town still love dad. That comes in handy.

~

The residual love of her father only gets her so far though and sometimes she is left to her own devices.

Using a phony accent she makes a phone call pretending to be the secretary of the sheriff’s department, claiming to be having trouble with the computer’s system. She asks the man on the phone to run a set of plates involved in a hit and run for her. Except there was no hit and run and the plate number she if reading off is from the car parked at the Camelot the night she watched Robin.

“I’ll be damned, that’s some family,” the man on the other line says, chuckling.

“What is it?”

“That car is registered to one Kathryn Swan.”

She hangs up the phone in shock just as her father opens his office door.

“Explain to me again why we’re dropping the Hood case.”

She’s going to give him one more chance to explain himself, to tell her the truth, to tell her why her mother’s car was parked outside the Camelot the night Robin Hood visited it. But he doesn’t take it. Instead, he sips his coffee and gives her some bullshit excuse about corporate espionage, telling her it’s dangerous and they don’t get paid enough.

He asks if she wants to rent a movie and she walks out, leaving him alone in the office.

She heads to the court house and asks the receptionist which direction the bikers case is.

“Emma! I haven’t seen you since…” the woman trail off uncomfortably.

The last time I was here? Come on. That’s easy.

The last time she was there was the morning after Tamara’s party. She’d limped up to the counter, eyes smudged with mascara, and said she needed to report a crime.

After she sat in front of Zelena and reported what happened, Zelena chuckled in her face and asked “Is there anyone in particular you’d like me to arrest? Or should I just round up the sons of the most important families in town.”

Emma sat silently, shocked and dismayed. She knew Zelena was mean but this was downright wicked.

“I’ve got not a shred of evidence to work with here. But that doesn’t matter to your family now does it?” The woman continued on ignoring the tears streaking down Emma’s face. Ignoring her disheveled appearance, her wild hair, her red eyes, her torn dress. Ignoring the pulsing pain Emma could feel through out her entire body, not a pain physical in its origin but manifesting itself as such and causing her anguish never the less. “Look at this, she cries. I’ll tell you what Emma Swan. Why don’t you go see the wizard, ask for a little backbone.“ 

Emma left Zelena’s office with no answers to what had happened to her and no hope of ever finding out.

Now she sits in a courtroom, watching a smug Miss Mills deliver her testimony of her account of the night she arrested the two bikers at Henry’s place of work.

“Your honor, can we show the tape?” the opposing lawyer requests.

When the tape is loaded, no robbery is to be seen. Instead, an officer walks a prostitute to his car and is seen opening the door for her, getting in on his own side, and then guiding her head down to his lap.

Phase one of operation freedom had been staking out the strip club and recording the footage of their interesting ways of keeping a valid liquor license.

“Sheriff Mills is this how you run your department?” the judge questions.

Emma finger guns at Zelena and walks out of the court room.

She meets Henry at the beach and presents him with the actual footage of the robbing. He thanks her and tells her that “Underneath that angry young woman shell there’s a slightly less angry young woman just dying to bake me something. You’re a marshmallow, Emma Swan.”

She grins and turns her head away, amused but unwilling to admit it.

They spend some time flying around his remote controlled airplane. Just as she’s getting the hang of it and actually having some fun, Henry interrupts her.

“Emma, look at your car.”

She turns to see Killian lounging across the hood, crowbar in hand, surrounded by his 09er buddies (the richest of the rich, those residing in the the prestigious 90909 zipcode.)

“Do you know what your little joke cost me?” he asks, hopping off the car and swinging the crowbar.

“Well, I’m pretty sure you won’t be getting your bong back.”

He smashes a headlight. “Wrong answer.” He twirls the metal in his hand. “Would you care to guess again?”

She crosses her arms across the chest of her red leather jacket, keeping her face impassive, unwilling to let him phase her no matter what.

“Clearly, your sense of humor.”

And he smashes another head light.

“Nope, the correct answer is my car. That’s right my daddy took the Jolly away. And you know what I won’t be having?” He questions, resting the bar behind his neck and stepping closer to her. He leans in her face and answers his own question with a smirk and raised brows. “Fun, fun, fun.”

She wants to smack his British accent right out of his mouth.

“Uh, Killian,” his friend warns as a heard of bikes pull up along side them.

It doesn’t take long for Will and his friends to flip the situation in her favor.

“What do we have here? Vandalism?” Will asks. “No, the only vandalism that happens in this town goes through me.”

Killian tells Will he doesn’t have a problem with him and Will tells him he’s wrong. With Will smashing in the hood of Killian’s friend’s car (with the crowbar he’d pulled out of Kilian’s hands) and his biker buddies tearing apart the inside, they’re easily convinced to “head for the hills.”

~

Emma sits in her car outside of her father’s office building, watching him move around through the window.

This morning, when I woke up, I had one person in the world I could count on. But if there’s one thing you learn in this business, the people you love let you down.

David leaves, driving away in his car and she heads into the building. Her dad thinks she doesn’t have the code to the safe but he’s wrong and until now she hasn’t had to use it. She types the code in and opens it to find a large file, stuffed with folders and papers. As she pulls the contents out she realizes it’s the Milah Hood murder file, some of the evidence less than a month old, including the photo of her mother’s car she took the Camelot.

If the confessed killer is already in jail, why hasn’t dad given up on the case?