The last time he had seen Red- no, Ruby, had been while been getting drunk. Embarrassingly, terribly drunk. Every dart he had thrown had met its mark, and every step had been as steady as the last, but he remembered with a pang of regret his having thrown a dart just shy of hitting Emma. Ruby had served him drink after drink and spared him her usual flirtations and he had hardly noticed, too intent on proving he was capable of something more than the emptiness that filled him.

He gave her a small smile as she moved in closer, hardly wanting to put her off when she was the only bit of familiarity he knew in that strange place. There was so much he wanted to say to her then that he understood he could not or should not, leaving him to swallow the words down in exchange of shaking his head and instead replying, “I don’t know. I was in my office - with Emma.” He paused there, tilting his head as he considered that with a hand rising unconscious to touch a spot over his heart but even that was soon pushed away and his thoughts turned back to the matter at hand. “And then I was here,” he finished.

At the uncertainty that rang in her voice and shone clear on her face, he reached out a hand to touch her shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. “Hey- it’ll be okay. Wherever we are, we’ll figure this out.” He gave her that small smile again, secure in nothing himself but that the place did not feel like one of Regina’s tricks. They always had an oily taint to them and he had certainly seen more than enough of them in his time with her to be able to recognize them.