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snowbellewells · 5 months ago

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Self Promo Sunday: "Run to Me (in the Dead of Night"

This week's re-run of @cssns fics is also from the inaugural run back in 2018. I'd had the idea for it running around in my head for quite some time, and the @cssns finally gave me the opportunity and the push to finally get it started. This one is an MC that picks up around the time the original curse broke in Storybrooke (end of season one/start of season two) and then goes wildly divergent. And there are werewolves... ;)

If you haven't read this before, I hope you will check it out and enjoy it now. I've always been rather proud of it. And definitely be stunned and amazed by the artwork created for me by @wingedlioness. I'm still thrilled just staring at it. <3

It can be read from the beginning HERE on Tumblr,

HERE on AO3, and HERE on ff.net

By: @snowbellewells (TutorGirlml on ff.net)

~~ prologue: leaves on the wind

The crisp fall air of late September blew Emma Swan’s long, golden curls back over her shoulders and off her neck, tangling them together and causing a shiver to skitter through her as the chilly breeze of early evening glanced along her bared skin. Even as she clattered down the front steps of the diner, eager to get out of the rather close and over-warm space and the heavy, grease-scented air, she still felt it: the sense that had been following her around lately, more than any simple gossip or slander would account for, resting heavy on her shoulder, of being watched. Glancing around the outdoor seating area of Granny’s and down the quiet main street, deserted but for a few leaves blown here and there and Marco tinkering with the sign that hung over the door of his repair shop and pausing on his ladder to offer her a friendly wave and doff of his cap.

Emma tried to shrug off the troubling impression; eerie though it was, she wasn’t sure that it wasn’t just some manifestation of her own jumbled thoughts and fears, a tingling in her bones that had been discomforting her ever since the curse broke, almost a week ago now. Willing her hard-earned nerve and bravado to reassert themselves, Emma rolled her eyes at herself and how she had just mentally referred to the curse that had changed everything she’d come to know on its head as casually as if it were laundry day or a trip to the movies – just a regular little life-altering occurrence – and gathered the still warm carryout bags Ruby had pressed into her arms just a moment before closer to her chest as she picked up her brisk pace down the sidewalk. Something in her psyche wanted to kick her for running as she left Storybrooke’s most popular eatery behind her, but Emma honestly wasn’t in the mood.

The tiny hairs along the back of her neck prickled as she crossed the opening of the alley between Gold’s pawn shop and the library. She threw a glance down the dim space, but told herself to relax and blew out a frustrated breath before squaring her shoulders and moving on. Whatever sort of creepy premonition vibe she was picking up on lately, it simply had to be in her head. For one thing, this was the smallest, sleepiest, stuck-in-the-eighties town ever; beyond fights at the local watering hold between whom she now knew were three of her mom’s dwarves and guys she had learned were Jack Sprat, Tom Thumb and a definitely not-so-little Jack Horner, and the occasional clichéd kitten up a tree, nothing ever happened here – or at least, nothing of the normal criminal variety. Besides, she already knew who the supposed villains were – and she was well-acquainted with the fact that skulking around subtly wasn’t any of their styles.

No, the sense she felt was probably that same one she had experienced some time back, when Mayor Mills had run her smear campaign trying to overturn Emma’s appointment as deputy. Then, it had been judgmental eyes on her back and whispers that ceased when she walked into a room; now it was awkwardly hushed awe and averted eyes or slight bows when she tried to approach a group casually, and still the constant scrutiny – ill meant or not – and whispers, probably about how unprincess-like she, as their long lost princess, had turned out to be. In any case, the way it made Emma’s skin crawl uncomfortably really didn’t change that much from one case to the other.

Curling she and Graham’s dinner more protectively into her elbow, Emma sighed resignedly as she walked on, kicking at a stick on the pavement at her feet. Thinking back to those unpleasant weeks when she had almost given in, packed up, and moved on, the upheaval of the last several days didn’t seem quite so intense. Back then, it had seemed as though she was clinging to her tenuous bond with Henry by such a fragile, thin thread. Graham offering her the deputy sheriff position – and thus a legitimate reason to remain in town – had been a genuine boon, and when it had seemed as though that might slip through her fingers too – as good things always seemed to do in her life – Emma had almost hit the road once more. She’d been so close to taking off back to Boston, or anywhere really, it didn’t matter… she was always going to be alone.

No matter where she went, people never truly changed that much. Emma had learned that long ago, though Henry’s boundless optimism and the quaint little town’s charm had almost let her forget. It never got easier to ignore the labels that had followed her for most of her life – brought back to glaring focus by the newspaper expose Henry’s adoptive mother had ordered in her bid to see Emma ousted from her new town role. ‘Runaway’, ‘Thief’, ‘Orphan’, ‘Hussy’, ‘Teen Mom’, ‘Jail Bird’…those nasty words dogged her steps for the few days after the paper’s publication in the suspicious narrowing of eyes and disapproving pursing of lips as much as in any audible speech. For all too many moments, it had looked as though the little berg she had begun to hope could be a real home was going to turn its back on her. No matter how far or fast she ran, the barbed tips of both truth and rumor about her never failed to pierce Emma��s hard-won armor. She might be good at pretending the wounds didn’t sting, but she knew now more than ever that she would do well not to forget just how quickly the tide of public opinion could turn.

Even now, with the curse broken, and her tentatively coming to believe that she had not been an unwanted infant abandoned carelessly on the side of some deserted road, the lost little girl inside her still flinched at cruel jabs both real and imagined; there would never be enough time passed to make that completely go away. The childhood and adolescence she had weathered was an inner wound that would always draw blood – even as getting to know Henry, his forgiveness for her giving him up, his boundless blind faith in her, and meeting her parents after all the years lost, and learning how desperately they had indeed loved and wanted her, how they’d had no other choice but to give her what seemed her best chance and believe they would be reunited someday; even all those truths being brought home to her couldn’t undo everything else she had known before.

Upon reaching the sheriff’s station at last, Emma raised her chin from where she had buried it in her collar against the chilly wind and her hair being whipped across her face and into her eyes. She turned the knob and pushed into the station’s dingy and antiquated entryway, also finally shedding the odd sensation of eyes following her as she entered the squat cinderblock building. She could feel her mood lift slightly almost at once. In truth, this was the first job she had genuinely enjoyed doing in years – not only because she was good at it and got paid well, but for the fulfillment and sense of purpose it brought. Clearly, Graham had needed the second pair of hands; they’d be putting the filing back in order until next December, and the man couldn’t make a decent pot of coffee without somehow getting grounds in it to save himself. Still, he respected her and they worked well together. Emma was determined not to let down her guard and grow too comfortable again, but this sleepy little hamlet could almost feel something like a place to belong – not a description she would ascribe to any of the other places she had landed before.

A wry smile curled her lips just before she called out to let Graham know she was back with their food. She certainly wouldn’t take back Henry’s appearance on her doorstep and his bringing her here – whatever happened next. And watching the first real friend – outside of her 10-year-old and her own mother – she had made in years muttering to himself in his office, rifling through the haphazard piles of paperwork stacked all over his desk and running an occasional frustrated hand to swipe his errant curls off his forehead, she grinned even more warmly. They had exchanged one kiss – some months back now – but had decided to simply remain friends rather than risk the comfortable working relationship they shared and Henry’s hurt, as he cared so much for both of them, if it failed. They had somehow managed to simply go on as if it were a one-time gesture of affection and remain the partners and friends they were – for which she was constantly grateful. Graham was warm, open, supportive, and just lighthearted enough to crack truly awful jokes simply to see her roll her eyes, snort, and smile, but he was also capable and as driven as she was, determined to do their jobs well and protect those in their charge.

Stepping into the doorway of the lamp lit office, Emma had raised her hand to knock on the frame, but Graham looked up alertly before she could even complete the motion; hazel-deep eyes finding hers unerringly as if he had sensed or scented her presence before it could be humanly possible. She used to marvel at the uncanny ability her boss possessed; be it hearing, smell, or some other awareness, it was impossible to sneak up on him or catch him by surprise. Of course, now that the curse was broken, Emma knew, though she was still trying to wrap her head around it, that it was his werewolf nature allowing him that ability – his lupine senses were heightened and made him effectively alert and aware of everything. Smirking slightly she had to admit to herself that wasn’t at all a bad skill set for a sheriff to possess.

Shuffling forward almost bashfully, Emma held out the to-go bag in explanation, even as Graham waved her in without question, a welcoming smile on his scruffy face and stood to pull the visitor’s chair facing his desk over to the end of it where they could eat together more comfortably. Graham took the still steaming brown bag that Ruby had handed her with an understanding and apologetic smile not five minutes before and began to spread their meal out on his desk. They’d shared their evening meal right there nearly every night they both worked since he had hired Emma, and it was a settling bit of routine normalcy that soothed her jangled nerves as she sunk into the seat before her.

Graham looked up at her with a grateful crooked smile and the bright eyes that Emma would challenge anyone not to be charmed by (there was a reason she had kissed him that one time after all). “Thank you, Deputy,” he quipped, a playful emphasis on her title. “It was definitely time for a break.” He gestured at the stacks of files and paperwork all over his desk at those words.

Once they had both settled into their seats, Graham didn’t hesitate to take a huge bite out of the Philly Steak hoagie he’d ordered, munching happily and even closing his eyes in bliss with a low hum of satisfaction deep in his chest. For a moment, Emma could only watch, trying to remember if her friend – for all that he looked so trim and wiry – had always had such a voracious appetite and she merely didn’t notice before, or if it was a trait of his recently reacquired wolf within. She was still sometimes too stunned to believe that both he and his adopted sister Ruby, her two closest friends in Storybrooke beyond her parents (that was taking some adjustment too) could both shift into large wolves by the light of the moon. They had been born with the ability in the Enchanted Forest, and that side had merely been buried along with their true identities while under the curse. It was why Graham’s birth parents had abandoned him in the woods – or so he had told her, as he could only assume when he didn’t even remember them – to be found by a preteen Ruby on one of her nightly runs and brought back to live with she and Granny, folded into their little family as simply as if he had already belonged there. Emma had yet to see either of them transform, but she also knew in her bones that neither of them would lie to her. She had simply attempted to reconcile this one more bit of her new normal in her mind and move on without treating her friends any differently; even if, in moments like that, she did gawp at them in wonder. “That good, huh?” she finally managed with a chuckle, amused enough by his good natured enthusiasm and almost child-like joy to put aside her own cross mood and paranoia of being followed.

Then, she bit into her own first taste of Granny Lucas’ unparalleled onion rings and let out her own ecstatic moan at the hot, crisp, greasy goodness on her tongue. Graham laughed out loud in response, the whooping, uncalculated ring of it doing much to completely repair Emma’s clouded outlook. “I don’t know,” the sheriff countered her previous jest saucily, “you tell me.”

Emma nodded enthusiastically, her own eyes alight as well, and her mouth full of her first buttery toasted bite of Granny’s grilled cheese. When she could speak again, she conceded gladly, “Yep, you’re right. Granny’s is the best – and Ruby slipped bacon on here for me again. It’s like Heaven between two slices of bread!”

Graham snickered at her creative praise, and the two of them settled into a comfortable silence, busily munching on the food spread out before them and humming in pleased enthusiasm. Once they were finished, Emma began gathering up wrappers and napkins as Graham sat back contentedly in his chair, wiping crumbs from his front with his hand and grinning at his deputy in full-stomached satisfaction. “Well, that hit the spot,” he stated cheerily, eyes sparkling when she nodded in agreement with his words. He paused a moment, as if uncertain whether he should voice what he was about to say or not, then added, “I’m glad. You look a lot happier than you did when you first came back in here.”

Though she truly attempted not to – had long since decided in the months she and Graham had worked together side-by-side that the good hearted sheriff was trustworthy – Emma felt herself stiffen and begin to close off. She didn’t need any more concern over her emotional state and how she was dealing; her mother was doing enough of that to serve for a dozen people. The barrier she threw up was almost involuntary, no matter how well-intentioned she knew her boss was. Old habits were hard to break, and even more so when she felt half the time as if the town’s very borders were closing in on her, that she would never find “normal” again, and as if her every move was being scrutinized and probably coming up well short of what must have been expected in a long lost royal.

To his credit, the soft-spoken lawman didn’t push and delve into further questions. He backed up slightly, hands raised in appeal, before lifting a file from the stack before him and turning to put it in the corner cabinet, offering her a bit more space as if he had read her mind. ‘No, more likely he sensed the fear or frustration on me,’ her mind supplied unhelpfully, remembering his heightened shifter senses once more. Though he had his foster sister, and Granny, and Henry blatantly adored him, trailing after the sheriff or begging him to ride along on patrols, Graham seemed like a somewhat reluctant loner himself. Emma sensed he understood self-protective walls and keeping others at arm’s length all too well, even if she didn’t know everything he had been through. He might be willing to listen, but he clearly wouldn’t force her to talk.

She could ask him how he seemed to know, seemed to be on the outside looking in, but it really wasn’t fair when she was unwilling to share in return. Ruby had explained to her once – on an ill-fated girl’s night that only she and Ruby had made it to the end of – Mary Margaret and Ashley ducking out embarrassingly early – that shifters like them could only be contained for so long, and that though he had loved she and her gran and been happy with them, he had mostly returned to the forest when he came of age, living off the land as a skilled huntsman with a wolf he considered his brother at his side. It was only after a month when he hadn’t stopped in for even a supper or a quick visit, that they learned he had been commissioned for a job by the Evil Queen – and when he had failed to return, she had feared him dead. It wasn’t until befriending Snow White and hearing she and Charming’s whole story put together that Ruby had learned the fate of her adopted sibling was much worse: he had been made into one of Regina’s heartless black knights, his very mind and will subject to her whims and control.

Henry had told Emma all this as well, long before her waitress friend confided in her with newly-restored memories post-Curse, but Emma hadn’t truly believed him at the time, merely nodded along to humor her highly imaginative son as he’d flipped through his storybook not long after she and Graham had shared their single, ill-fated kiss. Graham’s collapse just afterwards, her panicked 911 call and what the confused Dr. Whale had vaguely labeled some sort of isolated cardiac event, had given cooler heads time to prevail where taking the romantic feelings behind that kiss much further had been concerned. At the time, Emma hadn’t questioned his awed “I remember” epiphany, chalking it up to disorientation from his impending health episode. Now she knew that somehow his memories had been returned to him before the curse breaking did the same for everyone else in town. Henry had been thrilled, and she knew that Graham had listened to her son seriously after that, truly joined his “Operation Cobra”, because he knew Henry was right, and wanted to help bring everyone back to themselves as well. He just hadn’t attempted to share it with her, knowing she would think him crazy and that it would push her even further from the truth. Instead, he had bided his time, and helped where he could, waiting and hoping and believing until the Savior could no longer deny who she truly was.

It made Emma chuckle lowly, and shake her head in amused disbelief; their whole world had changed, and yet here stood her friend, patiently waiting as he always had. He turned to look over his shoulder at her sound from where he stood at the open filing cabinet, head tilted to the side as he studied her curiously, until Emma finally admitted, “Yeah, I wasn’t in the best mood. It felt like everyone in the diner was wondering how I could possibly be their Princess. My parents keep fussing over me and trying to make up for 28 years in a week, and we still don’t know where Regina’s hiding or what she might be plotting next. It’s just…it’s a lot….that’s all.”

She blew out a breath, still not sure what compelled her to open up exactly. To her intense relief, Graham didn’t try to offer empty platitudes about it all being fine and not to worry. He merely nodded in understand, adding, “I’d imagine so. Our world back in the Enchanted Forest – your own family even – wasn’t real to you at all, and now it’s all been dumped in your lap.”

Emma bit her lip to hide its almost quivering a little at the emotion he summed up so succinctly. She wasn’t used to feeling so shaky and out of her depth – and she certainly didn’t like it. That didn’t even begin to factor in the weird sensation of being watched that she had experienced repeatedly, nor of being followed, though she kept feeling it crawling up the back of her neck the last couple of days. That had to be just a reaction to the other upheavals around her –if she could only convince herself of that fact.

Suddenly, Emma had to get out. The pressures of wondering what the Evil Queen might throw at them next, how to keep her son safe – while at long last getting to actually learn to be his mother, trying to reconnect with her own parents, and trying not to disappoint everyone else looking on, was overwhelming her once more. The walls of the station seemed to be drawing in, along with the suffocating weight of all that responsibility mentally added up as well. It really was more than any one person – a sane one anyway – should be expected to handle at one time.

Luckily, it had taken her long enough to fetch their dinner, that a quick glance at the clock back out into the main room over the coffeemaker and microwave showed that it was nearly quitting time anyway. She needed to get back to her room at the loft – if only for five minutes completely to herself to put her head back on straight – before she hyperventilated.

Before she could voice some excuse about the supper not sitting right or needing to help Henry with his homework, Graham looked up at her again, warm gaze concerned and voice soft in understanding, “Emma, you don’t look like you’re feeling well…”

She started to protest, even as she had been about to claim just that, but she didn’t want to seem like she was slacking, nor for her distress to be so obvious. She used to have a much better poker face. Graham waved off whatever comeback she was about to voice anyway. “Seriously, this place is so quiet they shouldn’t pay both of us to be here anyway. I’m closing up myself as we speak. I’ll put the phone on rollover to our cells at 9:00, and then I’m heading out too. You’re only gaining about twenty minutes.”

Shaking her head at his once more almost unbelievable kindness, Emma didn’t even try to protest further. Instead, she slung her jacket back over her shoulders and nodded her acquiescence as she stood. “If you’re sure,” she finally caved, “but make me return the favor sometime, okay?”

“Done,” Graham assured her, his expression genuine and further comforting her that he didn’t resent the early exit or her needing some time to regroup.

Another minute, and she was out the door, hesitating but a moment on the curb outside to button up her red jacket and pull her knit beanie down over her ears against the chill in the late September breeze. She stepped out briskly, crossing the street and picking up speed as the night had already lengthened into dark and the air had gone chill. It was only as she passed by the storefront with Dr. Hopper’s offices above on the second floor that a scuffling noise caught her ears enough that she turned sharply, peering once more down a narrow alley between buildings. She could have sworn the shadows shifted as something – or someone – drew further back out of sight. Emma tried to focus on the area where she had seen movement, practically holding her breath as she stared into the hovering blackness. Whatever had alerted her was clearly long gone though. She wasn’t running around in the night alone chasing what was probably a stray cat, nor was she going to let her jangly nerves imagine even more monsters than the ones she had already learned were real.

Turning back to face the street, Emma made herself move on toward the home she shared with Mary Margaret – and now David and Henry too. She couldn’t help the foreboding that skittered up her spine; no matter how many times she told herself she wasn’t being followed, that nothing was there, she was no longer sure that reassurance was true.

As if to seal her unease, just as she closed her fist over the door handle to enter their building’s stairwell up to the loft, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end in the night stillness. And it was then that a stark, shivering note rose on the chill air – coming from the nearby forest at the edge of town, but carrying in a haunting, wild cry, clear as a bell. It was the howl of a wolf, letting them all know it was there.

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@anmylica @booksteaandtoomuchtv @myfearless-love @undercaffinatednightmare @stahlop @xsajx @bluewildcatfanatic

@winterbaby89 @hollyethecurious @artistic-writer @belovedcreation @motherkatereloyshipper @jonesfandomfanatic

@donteattheappleshook @the-darkdragonfly @xarandomdreamx @elizabeethan @let-it-raines @resident-of-storybrooke

#self promo sunday #cs ff #cs fanart #cssns recap fics #cs werewolf au #ouat au mc #run to me (in the dead of night)

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