follow_the_wolf | Ms. Scarlet in the Conservatory with a Dark Curse

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Ms. Scarlet in the Conservatory with a Dark Curse

Memory throbbed like an exposed nerve as Graham wandered through the first floor of the hotel, attempting to look at everything at once but seeing little with wide, confused eyes as he set one foot in front of the other with no goal in mind beyond simply moving. The walls of his office had spun around him, leaving Emma and one last glimpse of her confused face in his wake before he had been dropped into the middle of the grand lobby, the gleaming wood and open spaces startling after the drab insides of his office.

He pulled to a stop in the conservatory, his head tipping back to feel the warmth of the sunlight on his face. There he sucked in a breath and allowed himself a moment, only a moment, to pretend that the lush greenery that surrounded him was of another world. The smells were all wrong, no wet earth or woody oak. The light was wrong as well, too clear without the dappling wrought by the sunlight being scattered by the leaves. Still, it allowed him to sort through memories old and new.

He could hardly think within walls on the best of days, he had forgotten that. He had forgotten so many things.

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Selfish though it might have been, he was glad for the minor violence of the other man's reaction to the name. Not for any desire to see him suffer, he had not known David Nolan as more than a John Doe who had disappeared from the hospital only to wander blind into the woods. No, David Nolan meant nothing to him, it was that there in that flinching reply that he saw the hope that he was not the only one to have remembered who he was. That the Prince had fought against the Queen would have been enough all on its own to allow him some leeway in the Huntsman's mind, but the fact of him being Snow White's love that gave him his allegiance.

He remembered Snow as Mary Margaret's reactions to his broken memories too well to not be cautious with what he said in front of Ruby, the desire to not drive the woman beside him away making him choose his words carefully.

"David," he began, his brow furrowing as he leaned slightly towards the other man. "Is anyone else here from Storybrooke?" He tried without saying directly to indicate in any way possible that he knew about the Curse, while still keeping his words vague enough to not alert Ruby. "Mary Margaret?" And then, with a strain he was unable to keep from the name he gritted out through his clenching jaw, "Regina?"

All Ruby knew of the man standing in front of her was that he'd been a former coma patient who her good friend Mary Margaret had fallen in love with, and he supposedly with her, despite the fact he was married to another woman. Whether or not Ruby thought Mary Margaret's decision was a wise one had little to do with anything, as Mary Margaret was Ruby's friend and therefore had her steadfast loyalty. If what Mary Margaret had done was wrong, this man was equally guilty, though as far as she knew this man hadn't had any of his property defaced or faced any sort of public shaming as Mary Margaret had. Even more so, he had hurt Mary Margaret, who was easily one of the nicest people Ruby knew.

Ruby, while generally pie sweet and good natured, felt not even one ounce of warmth for the man standing in front of her. She wouldn't be outright cruel as Ruby could never manage that, but she felt like she owed it to Mary Margaret to not pretend everything was peachy keen with him, either.

"Or your wife," she added on. "Mr. Nolan. Is Mrs. Nolan in attendance?"

"My wife isn't here," he says, picking his words carefully given that his ire at Regina for placing him and Abigail under the same doomed umbrella of marriage still eats at him. He still wonders if Frederick is going to come after him with a sword, some days. He looks to Graham, flashing a regretful smile. "Though I wish she were," he says. "And last I saw of Regina was...well, a world away," he says.

If they still think he's David Nolan, there's no way he can tell that he, Emma, Snow, Regina, and Captain Hook have joined forces with Rumplestiltskin on the high seas. They'll think him insane, for sure. "What about the others? ...Leroy?" he asks, faltering when 'Grumpy' nearly comes off his lips. "Mother Superior? Have you seen anyone else, Red? You, Graham?"

And that one, he doesn't even catch, so used to calling her by the right name.

With no idea of where they were or how they had come to be there, there should not have been a spark of disappointment in answer to the Prince's words. The last he had seen of Mary Margaret had been of her so concerned for his well-being and him so unable to assure her or truly appreciate that Regina's curse had done nothing to dim her kindness. It had buried the fearsome and bold woman he had met when they had met a second time in a forest, but the kindness of her had not changed in the least.

As for Regina, he bit out a "Good" before snapping his jaw shut to keep anything more from spilling out of him, glad as he was that the Queen was far from him. There was too much already at war in his head and complication enough in seeing Ruby and not Red there with him, he decided he would rather take a chance at the Prince's company (and perhaps commiseration for their time under the curse) and the sweetness of Ruby's smile and take what time he had to try to piece himself together once more.

The bite in Ruby's tone had his eyebrows kicking up, surprised, but while he was curious why she would be angry with David Nolan, he figured he would learn eventually. "No," he said instead, shaking his head in answer to the Prince. "But I haven't exactly seen much of this place yet."

Ruby admittedly knew little of the two man standing with her. They were not amongst the townspeople that had made themselves readily available to her for conversation and the like when visiting Granny's, though she knew something of each of them, just as she knew something of everyone in Storybrooke. The Sheriff had always been a welcome sight, even if he had maintained polite distances in all the time she'd known him, and while David Nolan was a recent addition to Ruby's life, he'd surely made an impression.

His words about wishing his wife were there made her want to grind her teeth, though even though she knew of the trouble he and Mary Margaret had stirred up together, there was something about David Nolan that made her bite back the urge to snap at him any further. Before she'd known what was going on she had thought him likable enough, and she suppose there had to be something about him if someone as generous and sweet as Mary Margaret had fallen so head over heels for him she'd been willing to do all that she'd done in order to be with him.

She took a deep breath through her nose and then exhaled to calm what was left of her brief spark of temper before speaking. The Sheriff seeming so pleased that the mayor wasn't here was an interesting twist, but then again she knew Madam Mayor was a bitch, just as everyone else in Storybrooke was aware of it. Not having her around certainly wouldn't dampen Ruby's stay, that was for sure.

"I arrived just a few minutes ago," she said. "I was walking out of the diner, and instead of out onto the street I was here. Graham was the first person I saw, and then you." She glanced around. "It looks like a hotel. Is that what it is? How is it even possible?"

It was on the tip of her tongue to add that she and Sheriff Graham had also come from apparently different points in time as in the place Ruby left the Sheriff had been dead for weeks, but she figured that was best left for a conversation in which the Sheriff wasn't present.

He can't remember the last time he's been so frustrated (which is a lie, given that he finds that frustration every time he tries to escape the hotel without any success). He watches Graham and then Ruby, stares at the both of them and wonders how things can be so different between them. He breathes out deeply and knows he shouldn't tell the truth, but he wants to.

Though, if they can't even remember who they really are, that might be one hell of a headache. "I have no idea what it is, only that I've been trapped here. This place doesn't want me to get back." Maybe it has something to do with this situation. Maybe he's supposed to be here to help them remember. "You don't remember anything else?" he asks the both of them cautiously, meaning heavy in his words. About who you are?

The truth of the matter was that the Huntsman had never understood why men (and women) played with their words in shades of truth and called it subtlety. It had seemed to him to be a waste of both time and breath, but where he wanted to keep from driving off Ruby by sounding like a madman if he spoke plainly to Snow's Prince and told him that he had guessed that the other man had remembered who he was as well, Graham found that he had little ability to play subtlety and be understood. He had tried by asking for Snow's counterpart in the hopes that it would do something - the only connection he knew of between himself and the man in front of him being through her - but he couldn't claim he was surprised it had failed. There seemed to be a certain finesse to it that lay out of his reach and he tried to keep his own frustration from spelling itself out across his face.

Between the flinch at the name he'd been cursed with and the slip of his tongue that had him misnaming Ruby as Red, it seemed clear the Prince remembered. Or as clear as anything seemed when their situation was what it was and his head felt overfull with clashing memories.

Where Ruby looked at their surroundings, Graham stole a look over at her and wished again that when she looked at him again it would be with recognition of more than who they had been in Storybrooke. The second looking over the familiar shape of her face in profile was an indulgence he allowed himself only a moment before he shook his head, turning his attention back to the Prince. Understanding where they were had to be a priority, the idea of being trapped anywhere after being kept in a cage for so long already one that hardly put Graham in anything like an amorous mood.

"I was with Emma at the office," he said, the quicksilver recognition of who the woman was to the Prince almost making him wince himself as it occurred to him. He continued, picking his words with care in the hopes of getting a message through to the other man still without alerting Ruby. "We'd been talking about a book Henry showed me. And then I was here."

Ruby listened to Graham's recollection of his last memory before arriving at the hotel, tipping her head slightly at the mention that he'd been with Emma. It seemed as though she'd heard a lot of that, through some various means of gossip or another, just before the Sheriff had died suddenly and unexpectedly in his office with the woman in question. Was that the moment he was referring to now? Instead of dying, had the Sheriff come here? Time travel and world jumping seemed too grand a thought to even start to process, though it would have to be entertained at some point, if nothing more reasonable presented itself.

"I was in the diner," she said. "I'd just had a fight with Granny, quit, and told her I was leaving town. When I walked out the door, I walked in here instead."

It seemed like a strangely morbid form of wish fulfillment, now that she thought about it, and felt a tug of guilt that when she didn't return home by dawn as Granny would expect, Granny would worry.

He wants to share his own story as to where he's been, but it might not go over very well. They might think he's insane, even the Huntsman, who has this flickering like he might understand. At least he's got something to base their timeline off, because he remembers the scandal of Ruby quitting like that. "Emma," he breathes out, unable to help his rueful smile, thinking of how his stubborn daughter had just dove into the ocean to save their lives. "She's okay," he says. "She's fine, where I am."

Even if Graham himself might not be and even if Charming has managed to maroon himself in a strange hotel.

He feels bad ignoring Red, but his focus is on the Huntsman now. "And Henry's book? Pretty fantastic stories in there, aren't there?"

While there was the likely chance that Ruby had had her argument while Graham had been wrapped up in chasing the fevered dream to Regina's crypt, Graham understood at least enough of magic to know one could never assume what its effects might be. She could have left from the very same moment he had thought to kiss Emma again, caught up in Sheriff Graham's infatuation and his gratefulness over being freed from Regina's control, but he would not have bet his life on matters being as straight forward as that. Not where David seemed to have remembered himself and Ruby showed no sign of the fierce creature he had met those few years before the curse had struck. All he could assume, he decided, even as he released a breath and nodded in something like relief to hear of Emma being safe, was that it was likely some magic was involved. How or why, he did not know.

He did not ask for calendar dates as he understood at least in a broad capacity that time did not work the same way within Storybrooke as it had anywhere else, the vagueness of it having lasted as long as he could remember of his time there - time enough for the daughter of Snow White to have been a grown woman.

"When I left you had only come out of your coma some weeks ago, David" he said instead, choosing a concrete event that should have stood as an important marker for both David and Ruby, Storybrooke's new ability to change making such news town-wide knowledge. "Am I right in guessing it has been longer for the two of you?"

He had to fight the pull to look over at Ruby when the Prince latched onto his comment of Henry's book, knowing that while he wanted to be able to search her expression for some hint of recognition, it was best not to work harder to make her suspicious of his behavior. "There are," he agreed, attempting to keep his tone mild, as if the book was only a book and no world changing artifact. "I rather enjoyed the story of Snow White and thr Huntsman that he showed me, but I have always been fond of the forest."

Edited 2014-02-06 19:19 (UTC)

"Snow White stories were always my favorite, too," Charming says, the stupid smile on his face completely clear about how his emotions lie when it comes to supposed wives. "And it's been a lot longer than a few weeks," he promises. "I haven't been in a coma for ... well, I think it's probably been close to a year, now? At least, that." Time gets hard to keep track of when you're under the thrall of a sleeping spell or jumping between worlds and he tries to keep it straight in his mind, but it's rough, sometimes.

Charming can't help a bemused expression when the Huntsman says his own is his favorite story. "He was pretty heroic, saving the Prince and all," he says. "The Prince probably was more grateful to him than anyone in his life, getting him back to Snow the way he did." It's the best way he has of saying thank you without outright telling him.

If it had not been for the fact that his choices, as limited as they had been, had allowed him to do some good and protected the woman who had never deserved the death sentence Regina had laid upon her, Graham would have likely never spoke of his own story as being a favorite. Not even in attempting to communicate his knowledge of the Curse to the Prince. He had paid too dearly for that mercy and for every small attempt of one after for him to be able to think of the fresh revelations in his head with enough distance to appreciate what he had done.

"She did seem a singular woman." He wished then that he knew more of what had happened to Snow in those intervening years of their first meeting and their second. Beyond what information he had gathered through his connection to the Queen, as unquestionably biased and incomplete as those reports must have been.

Unused to gratitude, Graham was taken a moment off guard by the Prince's words. He ducked his head slightly in acknowledgement and took a second to decide that he had to catch the Prince alone at a later time to talk, then remembered the situation at hand and turned back to Ruby, placing a hand flat over his heart in a show of apology. "Ruby, I'm sorry. It's been a long and tiring day, I did not mean to lose focus." He turned to the Prince to repeat Ruby's earlier question, "Is this place safe?" with the rider of, as exhaustion began to claw at the edges of him "Is there somewhere to sleep?"

"She really is," Charming says, beyond passionate about Snow's virtues. He could talk all day about them, but when the Huntsman looks to Red again, he's reminded that they're not alone. Ruby Lucas probably doesn't want to hear David Nolan rambling on about a woman from a fairytale. "It's beyond safe," he assures. "Some people say that if you open a door, you can't exactly expect where it'll lead, but I haven't had any kind of luck with that. Every time I open a door, it's only to more of the hotel," he says.

"If you find one that leads...well, home-adjacent, I hope you'll let me know. I'm very eager to get back there."

Ruby had grown up working in her Granny's diner, and because she'd put so many hours into being a waitress she still maintained a waitress' manners and instincts. The two men taking off on a conversation about Snow White and a book of fairy tales seemed strange to her. So strange, in fact, that she assumed it was some sort of inside joke she was not a part of and simply took a proverbial step back to let them have it out. She had no idea what their conversation stacked up to, but she supposed when put side by side with walking out of the familiar and into some sort of otherworldly hotel place, two grown men, one of them presumed dead for weeks, randomly discussing the merits of Snow White's character was definitely the less weird option.

When David began to speak of the hotel again, though, she left her bemused half-idling thoughts to the side to listen once again. "Well, good to know that it's safe," she said, as at least there was that much.

"Magic?" Graham asked immediately on the Huntsman's instincts, the word falling from his tongue before he had so much as thought to pause and consider the fact that of their number it was Ruby who would not think of magic as an everyday consideration. A day, two before and Graham would have laughed off the idea himself. The loss of the Curse's hold over him had changed far more than he had had time to consider properly, but while he had not seen any of the telltale purple smoke of Regina or Rumplestiltskin's magic in his having been transported to the hotel, he could not entirely rule out the possibility. "Or just talk?"

Whether he himself had any desire to go back to Storybrooke was too complicated a matter to understand with his head beginning to flat out ache and the weight of his bones seeming to double beneath his skin. Still, he nodded automatic to the Prince's request. The Prince without his Snow White made no sense in the world, the straight forward agreeing to the request seeming as much a part of helping the woman who was his friend as any act he had attempted to carry out for her. Easier than nearly any of them in the past, really.

"Good, good," he echoed, taking a deep breath and letting it out again. "I think I need some sleep- is there any way of keeping in contact here?"

"There's a fairly strange, magical, system where you write down information on paper and it gets distributed, though it goes to everyone," he warns. "And I think there's phones available for use." While David Nolan remembers how to use them, Charming himself isn't entirely as keen on the pieces of technology. "Maybe everyone should get some rest and we can regroup, try and find a way back home?" he suggests.

"Oh wow," Ruby said at David's announcement of a strange writing system. It had become quite obvious that they were dealing with something that was well beyond at least her understanding, and while she could read the tiredness plain on Graham's face, she herself was not ready for sleep, not even close. She would, however, relish the chance to be alone with her thoughts, and she supposed getting a room in this hotel, if that's what it was, and attempting to figure it all out would be as good an option as any.

"I think that's a wonderful idea," Ruby said. "Do we...Check in? Are their rooms?"

The idea was basic and a good one, and it had Graham nodding in immediate agreement. There was much to think on in the present and much to discuss later. Too much to swallow in a single sitting in a strange environment. He had to wonder on the Curse and the strange implications to do with the Prince having come from more than a year after his waking and disappearing from the hospital, the memory of who he had been so long ago clear in his eyes, while Ruby was...Ruby. Cheerful and bright and unknowing of who she had been before.

Both the writings the Prince talked of and the phones could be used, of course, for as much as the Huntsman might have preferred some more familiar way of communicating, it wasn't as if there were likely to be carrier pigeons to carry notes to one another.

He stood and waited for the Prince's answer, wondering why he of all people would be thinking of carrier pigeons. Wolves didn't keep carrier pigeons.

"I kept looking for a room until the door handle opened, but I don't think the front desk is a bad place to start, either," he says, watching Ruby carefully and looking for any indication that she remembers what's been happening. In a way, part of him is glad that she hasn't yet lived through George's manipulations, but he wants her to remember for his sake, at least.

"Maybe we can meet up again sometime soon and talk," he says heavily.

Ruby had to wonder yet again at the safety of her situation when the doors could be so volatile, but if David Nolan said it was safe she figured that would be enough for now. He seemed relatively unharmed if not stressed and a bit different than she remembered him, but that was likely just the newness of the situation.

"I would like that," she said in reply to David's statement of them all meeting up again. "Do you have a room number or someplace definite we can come find you/"

"1937," he replies. "It's on the first floor, you just have to keep wandering." He gives the both of them a grateful smile, aware that there are obviously some issues they're going to have to work out, but he doesn't care. They're here. "I really am glad to see the both of you," he confesses. "Truly."

Somehow there was some relief in having a plan in place. Released from the watchful eye of Regina and knowing that their surroundings were safe - he took stock in David's opinion on that matter as he doubted that years fighting of fighting the Queen would have made the man lax when it came to searching out threats in the world around him - Graham let out a breath and nodded. Where everything else was unsettled, he had to agree. He nodded, "We will talk more later."

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Ms. Scarlet in the Conservatory with a Dark Curse

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