follow_the_wolf | That chasm between memory

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That chasm between memory

For the better part of thirty years he had been limited to the strict boundaries of Storybrooke, to a single small town and its surrounding forest where he had ranged so far and wide in his life before the Queen's yoke had settled across his shoulders. It was all but unthinkable, as even in those years before the dark curse he had been sent out on excursions into the villages and lands under Regina's control. Such expeditions had been rare in eight years and had never been times that Graham had in the least enjoyed who he was or what he had been made to do, but still the memory of them echoed in his thoughts until shoved forcefully away in favor of exploring the first new surroundings he had had in decades.

He wished to get the lay of the land, as it were, and had spent the majority of the past days devoted to exactly that task. Although he had avoided the doors not trafficked regularly (as far as he could see) by the hotel's other residences, the reminder of the Prince's words on the matter keeping him cautious, he doubted his caution would keep him from those for long. There was the matter of why he had been brought to the hotel that plagued him, as much as the how, although the latter he assumed had to do with magic. But whose?

He explored this new world carefully until a careful stock taken of his having only the clothes on his back and a few bills in his wallet had forced him to consider a slightly more long term concept, that of procuring employment at the hotel for the time being. It required some asking around and a visit to the hotel office, but a short time later he secured himself a position among the hotel's security, having little idea else what use his skills could be in such a setting.

The days since his arrival had allowed his memories to settle more sure in his head, the breaks between Huntsman and Graham lining up more neatly for all the fact that Graham's hazy experience when seen through the Huntsman's eyes left him nauseous too often. The complications of Regina and of Emma and of the feelings he had buried years and years before in order to keep them and the woman he harbored them for safe made no small tangle, but still he found himself drawn down to the hotel's bar with the understanding of who he was likely to find there.

He took a seat, setting his forearms on the table in front of him and tried to catch the eye of the woman with her dark hair spilling over her shoulders. "Hello, Ruby."

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Ruby's shifts at the bar were a pleasant part of her day in that it gave her an environment in which she was secure. She was used to slinging drinks and food, used to talking to people and making herself useful, and for all that was uncertain about her new environment she did find herself liking the people she was slowly getting to know. The sight of she Sheriff, looking so familiar and handsome amongst all that was still new and foreign to her was not an unwelcome sight, as it never had been. There had seemed a point in time that Ruby might've nursed a bit of a crush on Sheriff Graham but that seemed long ago, and fruitless besides. He'd always been as removed from her as the moon itself, and though she flirted with him as happily as she flirted with anyone else, she never expected much in return.

"Well, if it isn't my favorite Sheriff," she said as she made her way over to him, propping one hand on her hip and grinning down at him in welcome. "Do you still wear your star around here, Graham? I always found that to be an especially sexy touch, like a superhero."

"That may be because I'm the only Sheriff," he replied, allowing a smile to pull at his lips as he looked up at her. The thoughts of who he had been in Storybrooke weren't quite so painful when she spoke of them, he found. A fact he was glad enough for if he was not able to speak to her about everything that had come before the Queen's curse. The last was a topic he thought he might need to discuss with the Prince, his understanding of temporal dissonance and any potential fallout he might cause with a slip of the tongue keeping him wary of saying the wrong thing to the woman who smiled down at him then.

"My star?" he echoed, finding that he had become distracted in looking over the sweet beauty of her face and the inevitable comparison of her to the Red he had known so briefly. He shook his head with an expression that only played at being rueful, his fingers drumming light on the tabletop. "No, I thought it might be a bit presumptuous to go flashing my badge everywhere, but I will have to remember you thinking so."

All of him was a mess, the tangled skeins of what resembled his love life more than he should be trying to add to by flirting with the woman who was at once both the woman he had loved and an entirely different creature. Still, he could not help himself when she smiled at him like that.

"Details, details," Ruby said breezily, still smiling down at him. Sheriff Graham had always been friendly if not a little distant, and sitting before her as he was just then she could not help but think that coming here had changed him somehow, as he seemed different from the man he'd been back in Storybrooke. His gaze was warmer and more welcoming, and he seemed more prone to verbal banter than he had been in any time she'd known him before. Or, it could've been nothing, she supposed, other than the fact that she was one of two people he recognized from his home. Of the two theories, she was far more prone to believe the latter. The Nexus was a strange place, and in strange places one always tended to cling to the familiar, or at least that was her working theory.

The fact that he was flirting back was a novel sort of pleasure, and her grin widened at his words of remembering that she found his Sheriff's star sexy. She found him attractive was what it really boiled down to, and while she'd given up ages ago on trying to turn his head and he'd since gone on, apparently, with Emma, she couldn't help her flirting any more than she could help her next inhalation of air. "Well, perhaps you'll flash it to just me and make me feel all special like," she said. "Though if you'd like to consider the ramifications of that first before acting, I could go get you a drink to stew on?"

Through the filter of the Huntsman's memories, of those long ago few days he had spent in her company when his heart had so briefly been his own, it was difficult to not be aware of the differences inherent between the woman that was Ruby, and the woman who had been Red. Not for any glaring fault he could find in the woman who stood before him, or thought less of her for the brazen inches of skin on display at her stomach, her long legs. No, he liked Ruby from what he remembered through the haze of Storybrooke. What little he had been allowed to know her, that was. It was no fault but simply a change between woman and werewolf that did nothing to settle the things in his head.

Perhaps he should have kept himself away from her to try to find clarity on his own, rather than let himself be pulled back in towards her while knowing she was bound to confuse everything just a little more. Perhaps, but it wasn't going to happen.

He smiled at her once more and nodded, "A coffee would be good, thank you. Best stay away from alcohol for a bit, made something of an ass of myself the last time."

Ruby began to make a note in her notepad about his coffee, figuring she could remember such an order easily enough but starting a bill just in case he wanted food. His comment about making an ass out of himself caused her gaze to shift up and a smile to tip her lips. She did not know to which time he was referring exactly as she had no idea what the Sheriff got up to when he was by himself, but she had seen him rather drunk that last night she'd seen him alive before finding him here. He'd been in Granny's drinking like a fish and throwing darts, though he hadn't made any sort of ass of himself. At least not with her, anyway, though with Emma it could've been a far different story. They'd been rather intent on something that night.

"Mmm. The last time I fed you booze you were still quite handy with darts," she said. "I remember that quite clearly." Mostly because in the process of throwing darts he had removed his leather jacket and had stood there looking far too delicious in his shirtsleeves and vest. Not that she would mention that to him right now.

The memory was still fresh enough for him to have no trouble shifting between Sheriff Graham's memories and the Huntsman's, and for all that he nearly winced at his having stumbled toward Emma to kiss her or the...

It was best not to think of what he had done after Emma had pushed him away, the sharpness of every detail threatening to bleed into the solid world around him with Ruby watching him intently. His smile was more strained then as he nodded, trying for a benign comment where he had trapped himself into a line of thought better not investigated. "I never miss," he told her, trying to remember whether he had thanked her for the drinks she had served him or not but the details of it were hazy where what happened after were too clear.

He shook off the weight of his own memories for a moment and chose to ask instead, choosing what he believed to be an easier topic. "How long ago was that? For you, I mean."

Ruby watched as something fell over Graham's face then, and recalled that for all she remembered that night with a touch of fondness, mostly because it had been a quiet evening for the most part and she'd gotten to watch him from a distance, it would've been almost directly before the events that would lead to his death. This Graham had apparently come from soon after, and she thought that perhaps reminding him of it had made him think of his time with Emma, and how he apparently missed he and whatever else he and the other woman had gotten up to that night before he dropped suddenly and unexpectedly dead.

"A few weeks," she said, then smiled brightly at him, wanting to leave the awkwardness behind them as she leaned in and gently tapped the tip of his nose with a fingertip. "And let me just say, I've always loved a man with good aim. Now, the coffee. Do you want anything else to go with that?"

The memories that clung to him were the same that had made him who he was, or at least suggested who he might be among the ruins of two lives he had lived. And yet it was impossible to not smile back at her when she smiled down at him so dazzling, all white teeth and red lipstick, bright eyes and honesty in what had to be shades of the woman he had known so long before. Whatever else was at play within this Nexus Hotel, he could not deny that he wanted her to keep smiling at him like that. No more than he could fail to realize that any world where he remembered who she had been to him was better than a world where he did not.

The Prince searched for a way home, but Graham was not sure he wanted to go anywhere that wasn't right then and there with her. Even if she remembered nothing of him but the man he'd been in Storybrooke.

"A sandwich might be good," he told her, leaping on the idea more for drawing out his time there while she was around than for any real recognition of hunger. "Whatever you'd think is good, Ruby."

His answering smile was one that almost took her by surprise in its ease and dazzling quality, causing her to pause a moment to simply look down upon his face. Ruby liked making people smile almost as much as she liked turning heads and raising eyebrows, but there was a part of her that wanted so much to see people happy. Graham, as handsome as he was, was twice as attractive when he smiled up at her like that. So much so that she felt a bit of a flutter in her stomach.

"A sandwich? Alright," she said after realizing she'd been looking down into his eyes for a second too long. She felt almost guilty for the giddy feeling he brought out in her just then. It was one thing to flirt with a handsome man as indiscriminately as she would with the next handsome man that came along, and quite another to flirt openly with a man who was quite possibly otherwise involved. Ruby liked to flirt but she tended to dial it back when a man was otherwise claimed out of due respect, and Emma was a woman Ruby liked very much. Even if she wasn't here, Ruby didn't want to step on anyone's toes by mooning about. "That should be easy enough. I'll be right back."

She walked back behind the bar to get the coffee pot and a cup, putting in an order for a hamburger while she was there, and returned to sit the cup in front of him and pour it while he watched. "Sugar?" She said.

Had he had any doubts as to the power of the Dark Curse to erase all that all of them had been, the fact that he had spent twenty-eight years seeing the woman in front of him on almost a daily basis and not smiled back at her as he was then would have surely brought that home. He had gone nearly every morning for his first cup of the coffee of the day and so many late nights when he had planted himself into the far booth of the diner with a stack of paperwork. She had been there each and every time, and yet while she had smiled and flirted, in the emptiness of his memories and the hollowed set of his world, he had never been more than polite.

He let her go with a nod, watching her as she went. While it was not without an appreciation of the sway of her hips or the length of her legs, such things were secondary to an overheard conversation to do with an upcoming event at the Nexus. Valentine's Day was foreign to him beyond the markers that Storybrooke had attached to it. Even there he had not understood the idea of it, not hollowed or caught beneath the cold hands of the mayor. Only as the world had bled back into him had he caught a whiff of it. Only with Ruby smiled at him did he want a taste of what it was supposed to be.

He nodded again when she returned, his mind made up. "Yes, please." After a pause, he tipped his head back and asked, "Hey, Ruby?"

Ruby busied herself with pouring his coffee, watching the cup as the deep brown liquid poured from the pot and into the white china cup without managing to miss by a drop. Pouring coffee was something Ruby was long practiced at, and even though she was currently distracted by not trying to look at the man in front of her too intently her hand was steady. She was already moving to grab the sugar for him when he answered, remembering instinctively how he took his coffee. She'd had plenty of time to learn his preferences, after all.

She sat the sugar down on the table while she moved to put the desired amount in his cup for him, glancing up when he said her name. "Hmm?" She asked, smiling again when their gaze met.

Graham watched with interest more than amusement as she poured out and mixed his coffee just as Ruby always had. Despite the fringe awareness of the woman, as he had been aware of all who had lived and worked in Storybrooke within his jurisdiction as the Sheriff, he realized that he knew little of what she had been up to beyond what had always been on display. Her flirtations and appeal had been obvious to everyone around her, and he remembered many comments over the years of wanting to get out of the small town and finally get to live her own life. Free from her Granny's restrictions and harsh opinions.

"Would you have any interest in going to that dinner with me?"

The words spilled out of him before he could so much as rehearse them in his head to be sure he wasn't about to offend her by acting more on what his memories called for than what their relationship actually was. Or even of considering whether it was right to follow the desire to be with her despite the fact that she did not remember who he really was. "If you'd rather, we could make it just a friendly thing. Whatever you'd want."

Edited 2014-02-10 02:28 (UTC)

Ruby wasn't sure if she was someone that was hard to surprise, but growing up in Storybrooke she knew she hadn't truly been surprised all that often. So little had changed in her remembered life that everyone and everything in it had generally acted the same for as long as she'd been aware of them. Emma, mother to the mayor's son Henry had been the first surprise she'd felt in a long time and now, Graham asking her out to Valentine's Day dinner, was the second.

She supposed it could've been merely that it would be nice to go out and she was the only woman he really knew here in the hotel, but when he tacked on that it could be a friendly thing if she'd rather, Ruby sat down her sugar spoon to study him. It seemed silly to worry about his attachment to Emma when, where she'd come from, Graham had been dead and Emma had been carrying on with her life. But Graham had come before that, and it seemed important to know what approach he was taking when asking her out. Was his situation with Emma not that serious? Was he making the best of slim pickings? Or was he just a man that liked to have more than one woman at once?

"Well," she said after a moment, attempting to put her thoughts together in a way that didn't sound giddy at the thought of a date with the Sheriff and instead adult and functional as though men like him asked her out all the time. "I would love to go with you. But whether or not it's a "friendly thing" or not would depend on you." She propped one hand on her hip again and braced the other on the table, considering him. "What's going on with you and Emma? Whether she's here or not right now, if you two have a thing I couldn't 'date' you in good conscience."

"Could you- could you sit down?" Graham gestured to the seat across from him, the discomfort wrought by her words in referencing Emma one he should have already expected but had put entirely out of his mind. "Just for a minute?"

Had she anything of her memory of being Red, he thought he might have been able to explain himself a good deal better. Or at least she would have known the conflict between old and new memory, an understanding of what he had had to go through under Regina's rule, all making his need to explain a damn sight less important for a simple dinner invitation. He used the gap in their conversation necessary to allow her to take her seat to straighten out the snarl of his thoughts on the matter.

He wanted to tell her that while he had had something of an infatuation with the other woman, all of it paled beside the knowledge of who Emma's parents were. That even had he not already given his heart to the woman Ruby had once been, years before the Curse had hit and mere days before he had had to trade his heart to the Queen in order to secure Red and Snow's safety, there would have been no future in a flirtation with the daughter of one of his only friend's in the world.

"I am a bit of a mess right now," he told her instead, giving her half of a smile to soften his confession. "But I am not involved with Emma." He leaned in across the table, attempting to tell her all he could not say aloud as he kept his eyes on her. "I promise."

When he offered her a seat, Ruby moved to sit down, sighing a bit in relief at how nice it felt to take her weight off of her feet. It was her own fault for insisting on heels all the time she supposed, but she'd gotten used to some things and her sense of style (or lack thereof, as Granny would swear) was something she stuck to diligently, even here. He also looked much the same, and Ruby liked that. She'd always thought his vests were rather cute.

When he started to speak, Ruby was snapped out of her thoughts and brought back to the present, listening as he told her that he and Emma were not involved. It didn't occur to her that he might be lying, not with the very earnest way he leaned in to hold her gaze and sent another horde of butterflies to flight in her stomach. She felt suddenly almost bashful under the weight of his question, finding it all so unbelievable when she thought she would've been done with big surprises upon landing in this world.

"Alright, then," she said with a nod. "It's a date."

Edited 2014-02-10 06:29 (UTC)

Never in a million years could he have imagined that in deciding to spare Snow's life would lead him down the path he had taken in life. One piece of mercy for a young woman who had not deserved and he had been dragged into a cage of the Queen's making not once, but twice. Neither had he ever anticipated that the only successful attempt to escape her clutches had brought him immediately to the woman he had fallen hopelessly in love with. Or that the love he found in mere days would be one he would have had to sacrifice almost immediately and lose even the memory of having known her.

What he might tell Emma when he next saw her, in regard to the kiss they had shared at the potential of something that he had felt whenever around her, he did not know. The irony was not lost on him that the very kiss that had given him back everything was the one that set them apart forever. He owed her for that. Likely for more than she would ever know.

He could not think of Emma when he looked at Ruby. Whether or not she remembered him, he could not help but want to be near her, to see her smile, hear her laugh. When he had offered to make his invitation one purely out of friendship, it had been with the understanding that if all she wanted of him was a friend, then he would be satisfied with that much of her. No matter how much it might hurt him to set his feelings aside, his respect was surely no less than she deserved.

Still, relief crashed through him as she agreed, and he smiled widely at her for it. "Good," he said. "Good."

There was a feeling inside her as she gazed into the brightness of his eyes and the dazzling quality of his grin that felt as eager as two grappling hands on her heart. It was likely the first taste of perhaps-returned infatuation, the feeling of a beginning, and for all people could misconstrue of Ruby, it was not a feeling she was used to. She wondered then, desperately, what she should wear and how she should act and what, most of all, Graham suddenly liked so much in her that he'd decided to ask her out after all this time. She supposed it was a pointless question, as it did not change that she'd said 'yes' and that she now had a Valentine's Day dinner date with the Sheriff.

Perhaps, in time, if something came of the two of them she would have to ask, but wasn't that silly to even think of? Ruby wasn't the sort of girl to start building castles in the sky from the first moment an attractive man showed her any sort of attention, so she briskly shoved those thoughts back onto whatever long-forgotten shelf they'd fallen off of. She detested it when her friends became stupid over men, and she would not make the same mistake.

"I think it will be very good," she said, deciding to continue the light, teasing quality of their conversation. It would certainly keep her thoughts from straying to more matronly things. "I'll have to find something very special to wear for my favorite Sheriff. Not every day a girl gets asked out by the best lawman she knows."

The emotion that built within his chest at her agreement, at the smile on those red lips and the brightness of her eyes was one that he hardly recognized. It would have been novel in isolation to be able to feel genuinely pleased or happy that to have it in such intensity was all but overwhelming. It had him simply looking at her and unable to look away, thinking nothing of the wrongs and rights and complications inherent in who he or she or they might have been, what they knew of themselves and each other.

He understood that those long-caged feelings that were held then in his chest and felt as if they might burst out of him were his alone. Even had she remembered those few days so long ago, there had been nothing spoken other than that he could only have borne the weight of his sacrifice if he knew that she, Snow and the Pack were safe.

Still, though he was little more than a distant acquaintance to her, he could not help but hope. There had been too little hope for him.

"I'm the only lawman you know," he told her, taking a twist on his early words and allowing them to settle through him easy enough. Whatever else he might be and might have been, he thought he'd indulge in the warm glow of her respect for as long as it might last. "Even here, I just signed up for a job in security."

"You keep saying that as though it has anything to do with you being my favorite," she told him with a playfully scolding tone, shaking her index finger at him. There had been a time, it seemed, when even making direct eye contact with the Sheriff had dazzled her, as he was truly a dazzling man to behold. Still, years of regular contact had gotten her used to his particular brand of beauty, but it left her no more immune. Sitting there with playful conversation and him looking at her with an intensity she'd never thought to see come across his face left her feeling that initial bout of dazzlement again, and she had to clear her throat before continuing on with her initial, but side-tracked thought.

"A job in security suits you, it's true," she told him with a nod. "I'm sure there will be all sorts of ladies lining up for a bit of search and seizure, should you request it. If they're smart, anyway." She looked around at her surroundings and gave Graham another smile, this one a touch more wry. "I guess waitressing is my calling, too. You know, I always thought I'd get out of Storybrooke and do something far more impressive but... I guess when jumping worlds it's best to stick with what you know, eh?"

Graham let his expression furrow into one of a thoughtfulness that was entirely playacted, as if he might have been interested in either playing on his position or in what ladies she thought might be lining up. A moment after and he shook his head, "No, I don't they will be."

The room was not empty of other people and he was very much aware of the fact that their time together was so limited, but he didn't want her to have to leave him just yet. She would soon enough but not yet. It made him greedy for her company, even as he shook his head at her words, believing not an inch of them. "Waitressing might be what you do, Ruby, but it isn't who you are. You are," he leaned in against the table, meaning every word, "Worth far more than that. More than you know."

Humility was an attractive quality in a man who looked the way Graham did, and the way he so easily brushed off her comment about women lining up for him made her smile. She knew that whether he reciprocated or not, he would be one to get more than one or two admiring glances, or perhaps even more than that. For all the attractive people she'd met in the Nexus already, Graham surely stood out among them. What woman wouldn't leap at a chance with him? God knew she'd tried more than once, and now that he seemed interested, almost eager to be with her, she felt giddy and almost flustered beneath his attention.

At his words, then, she blinked at him for a second, her first instinct to laugh such an earnest, overwhelming compliment away until she saw the seriousness in his expression. It wasn't as though Ruby spent her life feeling ignored or lacked confidence as a general rule, but that he would speak so highly of her, even if it was just some sort of platitude meant to flatter, left her feeling stunned and even a bit emotional. She swallowed thickly, at a loss for what to say before settling on another smile. "Graham... Thank you. Gosh. That's the nicest compliment anyone has ever given me."

The years he had lost to Storybrooke had put him into closer contact, at least superficially, with the inhabitants of the Enchanted Forest than he had ever had before the Curse. It was as true a fact as any, and yet the world as represented by the Nexus and its environs was one almost unimaginable after such limited boundaries as those of a single town and the forest that shielded it from outsiders. He had seen more new faces in a few days than he had in decades. As of yet he could not say of who of their number might be friend and who might be foe, and the task of sorting out the two seemed daunting even without the addition of the promise of new worlds behind new doors.

Still, that uncertainty of the world around him was not what had driven him to Ruby and her smile. Or, at least, not all of what had seen him seeking her out as he had. Even where that second felt as if it dragged on into an eternity and he had had to wonder whether he had stepped too far past the fragile boundaries of their acquaintanceship in being more honest with her than she might understand, he could not and would not regret having said the words to her.

Her smile then was like the dawn breaking, tossing aside his uncertainty for the pleasure of having made her smile and proven that she was not as far from him as the lapse of her memory might have suggested. "You don't have to thank me, Ruby," he told her instead, giving her a smile that quirked a second wider before settling into something easier. "Not for telling the truth."

While anyone who knew Ruby could describe her as a flirt, her style of flirting was mostly complimentary and with little intent. She liked to make people smile, liked to make them feel good, and if showering them with compliments she happened to believe were true, she saw no harm in that. She had flirted with Graham time and again back in Storybrooke and he seemed to take her no more seriously than anyone else at the time, though now the way he looked at her was quite different. Ruby had been on the end of reciprocal attention before, though it hadn't always been from someone with which she might've necessarily wanted it. With Graham, she thought that might be something she liked indeed.

There was a thrill to it, a flare of feminine power, though not the sort of power she would attempt to use to manipulate him or anyone else, as that was simply not Ruby's way. It was the faint flicker of knowledge that she might actually be desired in return that made her wonder about taking her flirting to a more intentional level, as she hadn't in quite a long time.

She uncrossed her legs to push herself up from the table, walking the few steps necessary to be standing almost directly beside him, and propped one hand flat on the table again. "Well, I do thank you, Sheriff," she said, moving her other hand to brace on the back of his seat as she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek, leaving a bright red lip print amongst the darkness of his beard. "I'll go get your food, alright?"

How many times he had sat in the same exact booth in Granny's, how many times he had begun his morning with a coffee or ended it with a drink, he could not even begin to guess. Had it been every day of the Curse that he had looked up into Ruby's smiling face and felt nothing? He could remember only at the fringes of the details of his world that she had flirted with him, but he had never thought anything of the tilt of her lips and the shift of her body as she sunk into one hip or the pitch and lift of her voice when he spoke.

Even as he knew he couldn't appropriate all of her time for himself, as much as he might have liked to.

How successful he was at keeping something of the surprise from his face as she leant in, moving close enough to press her lips to his cheek. His smile was startled, if not immediate and he nodded. "Sure thing, Ruby."

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That chasm between memory

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