#mostly to give Emma a friend and Storybrooke a mayor who isn't Regina

[diddykongfan]

well in that case: Librarian + 77 d; if that's good for you

“I might even be able to tell you when there’s a ghost around before you know it yourself.” - Demons Are a Ghoul’s Best Friend, Victoria Laurie

So, I do not recall exactly when you asked for this, @amaryllisblackthorn, but I found your ask and the quote I was supposed to use as inspiration waiting around in my drafts and I am so sorry that it’s probably been three years? Just. Judging by when most of my Librarian + fics were written. For the delay, I sincerely apologize.

Anyway, this fic became a monster of a multi-chapter, if I’m honest with you, because of how I finally got my inspiration on what it could be - and as such, this particular post is only the prologue. Though, with all the pieces that are in play, I don’t know when other chapters are actually going to come, because I just have so much to work with.

Gremma, obviously. Though the prompt comes from Victoria Laurie’s Ghost Hunter Mystery series, the AU is based more around Heather Graham’s Krewe of Hunters series. Basically the formula I derived from the Krewe of Hunters and applied to Gremma goes as such: “psychic investigator + skeptic who probably actually has a bit ofpsychic ability themselves + gruesome murder + ghosts most likely, probably ahaunted house too = sparks flying!” and in that vein, since we all know who the skeptic in the relationship is (*looks pointedly at Emma*), Graham is gaining ghost-sensing related psychic abilities!

Despite the paranormal goings-on, this is absolutely a No Curse Modern AU, with a bit of role reversal in that Graham is the one to come from out of town while Emma is established as Storybrooke’s Sheriff.

There is a murder right here in this first part, just as a warning to the reader, and there will most likely be other dark moments later on, so read at your own discretion.

Things Half in Shadow, 1/?

The Storybrooke graveyardisn’t known for being haunted; it is, very much so in the opinionsof those in the know, but it’s a fact that the folks trying to drum up tourismrefuse to acknowledge, despite the draw New England hauntings tend to have.

Maybe it’s not being thesite of a great tragedy that saves it from such a cheap fate, the MotherSuperior muses as she walks among the tombstones. She’s never liked the idea ofghosts, of souls denied their final rest, but she has believed since the day ofher own biggest failure - the day Bae Gold went missing. Even now, no one knowswhat happened, not fully, but she would have sworn before a judge that theteenager had come to her that day, terrified of his father, looking for advice.

But he couldn’t have,because at the time that she would swear she saw him, he was also seen gettingon board his stepfather’s boat, though Captain Jones himself had been down atthe Rabbit Hole.

She’d had a soft spot forBae - so sweet, and willing to believe in a way that she foundwas getting rarer as years passed, to believe not just in a higher power but inthe goodness of man. It wasn’t the first time he’d come to her because hisfather’s abuse of power unsettled him, just the most openly frantic.

Except he could not havebeen two places at once, and he has come to her since - though it’s been nearlytwenty years, and he hasn’t aged in that time, he does appear in her officeevery year like clockwork, the anniversary of that last day. He doesn’t speak,anymore, just stands silent in the corner, and she mourns his bright spark and regretsnot doing more to help before he was lost to them all.

(Others might write offher visions of Bae as her own guilty conscience. But she knows the clock on thewall read 8:15 that night, when he arrived, and multiple witnesses at the docksconfirmed the same time for their sighting. She knows that something happened,something��not just in her mind.)

Since then, she’s quietlyaccepted the souls between the headstones, makes a point to keep them companyweekly, as she’s doing now. Even if she has not seen them, she can feel in herheart it’s the right course of action.

But Bae only visits oncea year, the end of June, and on this chilly October evening, she is as far fromexpecting to see him as is humanly possible.

Yet there he stands, overthe grave his mother has occupied since her heart attack. He looks almostalive, the darling boy.

“Sister!” she could swearshe hears him, swear there is fear in his eyes, “Sister, you have to run!Run now!”

How odd. Butshe trusts in God well enough to know if Bae is telling her to run, He sent theboy for her protection.

Unfortunately, perhaps due to the surprise of seeing him unexpectedly, shehesitates to act on it too long for the warning to be of any use, somethingcrashing into the back of her skull with a sickening crunch as the boy’sfrantic spirit fades from view.

…

A few years ago, when theteam had only just formed, Graham might have been surprised to find Aurorasitting atop her husband’s desk, journal and pen in hand, glaring at whatevershe’d written like it personally offended her.

Now, not so much. Thoughhe is unsure why he’s faced with this sight instead of… Well, Phillip hadcalled him in to meet, hadn’t he? There had been a voicemail on his phone tothat effect, and stating he should just walk in when he arrived, when he’dwoken that morning. He’d gotten in as soon as he could. And yet, the man isclearly out of the office, for the time being.

Aurora’s dreams areplagued by spirits begging for help, but they can only communicate with herthrough oftentimes gruesome images.

He knows she envieshim his form of speaking to spirits - he feels, sees, andhears them in the waking world, where they are far more eloquent, so long asthey actually know they’re dead. If not, they tend to be in a state of shock,wondering why no one can see them, hear them, and why they’re- Stuck, for lackof a better word.

“What was it this time?”he asks. It may not be what he’s here for, and if it was particularlydistressing he would probably be the worst at providing any sort of comfort,because his social skills are… Lacking, as Ruby puts it. But he knows that ithelps Aurora to have someone listen, and he can do that, at least. She looks upat him, and her anger from before falls into sadness.

“A woman,” shesays, “Her son’s been missing twenty years, but I didn’t feel him. She’slong dead, but she was terrified for a nun that used to be kind to the missingboy. I think the nun may already be gone, I saw– She was on the woman’s grave,and there was… Quite a bit of blood.”

Between the six of them,blood and gore and murder are nothing new. He was NYPD Homicide before he wason this team, Belle worked in forensics in New Orleans, Ruby had been asmall-town deputy… Phillip had been in the FBI three years before getting thisassignment. August was an expert at special effects and sleight of hand, andspecifically debunking fake video and audio, but he’d gained experience on thejob. Aurora had been a nurse before her abilities got her invited in – sheisn’t squeamish, so that she seems reluctant to say what she saw attests thather vision must have been worse than usual.

Aurora’s visions, whenthey aren’t already on a case, almost invariably precede their getting calledin. He knows that as well as he knows that Ruby believes her ability to findmissing people is somehow tied to her sense of smell, as well as he knows thatBelle relies more on her research and logic and forensics than she does on herability to see past events as though they were taking place in front of her, aswell as he knows that when they first started this team Phillip didn’t believe any of them actually had abilitiesbeyond the normal (Phillip still is, in many respects, a skeptic first andforemost – though much more open to possibilities now than when the teaminitially came together).

For the past few years,these people have been more of a family than he ever had in his life. So, givenhow things tend to work out for their little group, he knows that the visionwith the nun is very likely to become their next case, however it is thatalways works itself out. So he contemplates for a minute before choosing hisnext question.

“Did you get any namesfor Belle to start researching?”

She usually does – andthen it’s usually up to him and Ruby to get Belle researching before whateverproject she’s been working on between cases distracts her too much. And provideher with caffeine.

“Not this time,” Aurorashakes her head, “Not people. Not even the ghost that contacted me. But I didsee the sign for the cemetery. Storybrooke.”

…

The moment the call had come through, Emma had known it wasgoing to be a long day.

On the phone, Kathryn had been completely composed as shereported finding a dead body on her trip to the graveyard to leave flowers forher late fiancé, Frederick. But, then again, Kathryn Midas is a lawyer and theyoungest member of the town council; composurehas long been her trademark.

Emma had called in Marian and called in Doctor Whale – her deputyand the closest thing the town has to a Medical Examiner. Technically, there’ssupposed to be an election for M.E. whenever the election for the Sheriff’soffice comes due, but no one has actually run for it in years, and thus theposition falls to whatever Doctor is available.

Not that there have been an abundance of murders, or even suspicious deaths, inStorybrooke, to put it to any sort of actual test, but the system works well enough.

Kathryn’s statement in person hadn’t varied at all from whatshe’d said on the phone, except in that the shock was starting to cause herusual demeanor to come apart. She visits Frederick every Sunday, had been onher way to his final resting place when she’d seen the body and the blood and,dropping the flowers she was holding, immediately dialed her phone and stayedwell back to not disturb anything.

The blood alone had made it obvious that the Mother Superiorwasn’t going to be moving anytime soon.

“My initial findings are that it was blunt force trauma tothe back of the head,” Whale stands from his place surveying the scene. “I’llknow more after a more detailed examination in the morgue, of course. Judgingby the injuries and the blood, I’d say this is your crime scene – she wasn’tbrought here and posed after death.”

To be honest, this is the first crime more complicated thanpetty theft that she’s had to deal with since becoming Sheriff; definitely herfirst truly violent crime. Storybrooke isn’t perfect, but it’s always beenalmost too peaceful. Like somethingout of the world’s most sterilized and boring fairytale. She doesn’t complain –it makes her job easy, means she can spend plenty of time with her son, and more crime is not something any saneperson would want.

Although it does mean that she’s a bit out of her depthswith this. Knows what she’s doing, intheory, worked hard to get her criminal justice degree as a single mother,and on the surface it’s just like any other crime – find who had the motive,means, and opportunity, and find evidence, make an arrest and send them tocourt, let the jury reach a verdict.

But theory and practice are not remotely the same. And,considering who the victim has been identified as, and the fact that it’s a murder, this is the highest profilecrime in Storybrooke in something like 20 years – since she was a kid and oneof the local teenagers had disappeared.

“Emma?” She turns to where Marian had been stringing up thecrime scene tape to keep out gawkers who might trample their evidence, is morethan a little surprised to see her best friend standing there. Elsa has been Mayor a little less than a year, now– shouldn’t she be in her office, working on legislation orwhatever it is her job technically entails?

Still, she heads over. The Sheriff’s department does answerto the Mayor’s office, meaning Elsa is technically her boss, and it could beimportant.

“Anything wrong, Elsa?”

Her friend rubs gloved hands together, a nervous habit thatEmma knows well. Then, she lets out a sigh before speaking.

“Ruby called.”

The words don’t seem relevant, not really. Ruby was theirfriend, was Emma’s deputy before Marian moved to town; she’d been invited tojoin some government team after finding a few missing people after thehurricanes that had plagued the coast for the past several years, and it hadbeen a great opportunity for her career, but they haven’t spoken much since.

“You know her team is… Unconventional,” Elsa continues, andEmma crosses her arms. Yeah, unconventional is one word for it. They’ve been inthe news from a few high-profile cases they’ve solved. Supposedly, they’re allpsychics, looking at supernaturalangles to their cases to find the living, breathing humans behind them.

“One of her teammates had a vision, she said. A nun. Dead.On a grave. In the Storybrooke cemetery. Anna told me you called her to look after Henry so you could come out here, so as soon as I heard what Ruby had to say I came to see you myself.”

There’s not many ways she can respond to that; she doesn’tbelieve in psychics and visions and the paranormal, but Elsa doesn’t exactly have a reason to lie abouta story like that. About Ruby calling her to say those things.

“Why did you need to come see me?” Ruby’s teammate’s “vision”has to be a coincidence or something. Anna telling her sister about babysitting Henry for her is innocent enough, something that the younger of the Arendelle sisters would have no reason to hide if Elsa invited her to lunch and she needed to explain why she couldn’t come. Neither of those things explains Elsa being here in person instead of just calling about it.

“Ruby was worried the minute she heard Storybrooke might beinvolved. She wants – well, she wants to bring a few of her teammates down hereto help you look into things. On a volunteer basis. Considering the cemetery’sreputation, it might be prudent to-”

“The cemetery’s reputation as haunted, you mean,” Emma interrupts, her stare absolutely deadpan.The reputation that has no merit in anything except people’s imaginations; it’sjust a cemetery. A burial ground. There’s no spirits haunting the place. There can’t be, because those don’t exist.

“Listen, you know I don’t want to overstep my bounds. TheSheriff’s department is your office. But these are law enforcementprofessionals. One of them was a forensics expert, one of them was NYPDhomicide. It can’t hurt, can it? You’reshort-staffed, and Storybrooke hasn’t had to deal with something like thissince…”

Since her step-grandmother had killed several people,including her grandfather, in some sort of misguided attempt at “revenge” oversomething her mother supposedly did. But that was before she was even born,which most likely says something about the town that she doesn’t dwell on to figure out. Just because herpredecessor had thought there were holes all over the story in the Bae Golddisappearance and had a very thick file on it gathering dust in the office didn’tmean it was something of this magnitude.

“I told Ruby it was up to you,” Elsa says, instead offilling in the blank of the last time Storybrooke had a case anything likethis. “She said you would be in charge of the investigation, no one isinterested in stealing your jurisdiction. They don’t have any active casesright now--”

“Elsa, stop,” she shakes her head, brings a hand up to pinchthe bridge of her nose as she thinks. Normally she would laugh the offer off,say something along the lines of not needing ghost hunters mucking up her investigation. But they are professionals in the law enforcementfield first, Ruby herself is proof of that. And it could be nice to see herfriend again, and, more importantly, more relevantly, they have actualexperience in murder investigations that she and Marian and even Doctor Whalesimply do not have.

“I’d like to meet them before I make a decision. Can I getthat at least?”

“I’ll call Ruby back, see what we can arrange, okay?” Elsasmiles, pulling her phone from her pocket. Emma turns back to her crime scene,resumes photographing the scene and gathering evidence, refuses to feel like she’s just been manipulated into agreeing to something - she didn’t agree. Not yet.

There’s really nothing else to do but work on solving thismurder.