That chasm between memory

[follow_the_wolf]

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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[littlerubyred]

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."

[follow_the_wolf]

"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."

[littlerubyred]

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."

[follow_the_wolf]

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."

[littlerubyred]

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."

[follow_the_wolf]

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."

[littlerubyred]

"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?"

[follow_the_wolf]

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."

[littlerubyred]

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."

[follow_the_wolf]

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."

[littlerubyred]

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?"

[follow_the_wolf]

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."