1.06, The Shepherd

[the_fairest]

Her last hour had been entirely too confusing.

First Dr. Whale assuming that she'd resigned from the hospital due to their atrocious date and his lack of reaching out after. Then Mayor Mills threatening and then outright stating that she'd single handedly wrecked Kathryn Nolan's marriage. Only to end up in Milliways, by way of the school, with the greater conundrum of Michael, and whatever newest even more awkward event that had happened between him and Emma.

Leaving her with a clue further to her roommate who had been avoiding The Door and the whole topic, one red jacket and a very stuffed envelope. The last of which, unmarked, she kept turning over in hand. She'd even picked up the letter opener from her desk. But she was staring at both without the ability to move her hands closer together. She wanted to know, but Emma wasn't someone to get to through force.

A point she was beginning to note Michael had yet to see, and hoped he might before causing a third even greater space between them. Even if Emma wasn't and hadn't confided the happenstance of the second. Maybe that was part of not forcing someone to do anything. It was letting them have the space to not choose you and not choose to talk, too. To let them set their own boundaries, their own pace, their own comforts.

Conflicted, Mary Margaret set down the thick closed envelope and picked up a piece of her own mail, slicing through the top of it with a fast flick of her wrist, using a small golden sword letter opener, and taking some frustrated relish in the sound of the slicing paper that rent the silence of her classroom.

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[willalwaysfind]

He'd returned to Kathryn, to their house not long after leaving Mary Margaret standing in front of her doorstep. He'd spent the better part of that evening and the afternoon that followed poring over old photos, trying to summon up some kind of memory to associate with them. His hair had been shorter back then, she'd said, and he'd complained about longer hair being harder to take care of. None of it made an impression, not even when she'd kissed him sitting there on the sofa, a kiss he'd interrupted almost right after it had begun.

This isn't right, he'd told her, and she'd gone off to bed alone, empty, hurt. He'd felt for her, he really had, but it was proving impossible for him to create feelings out of thin air. It still is. And the feelings he does have - are decisively not for her.

He's too impatient. In the end, that's what proves to be his weak spot - that, of course, and Mary Margaret. The school isn't difficult to find, and her classroom is even less of an obstacle after that. He doesn't move to interrupt her right away, especially when he notices her standing there alone, wielding a letter opener. Only when he's certain he won't startle her does he finally speak up.

"Careful," he says, soft enough not to scare her but loud enough to be heard. "Looks sharp."

[the_fairest]

Her heart gave a painful lurch, eyes going wide. No, she couldn't handle this, too. Not after all of that. Not at her work. Not just as class was going to begin. 

"You can't be here," she blurted out. Then, thrust the letter down at her desk, unread, standing and grabbing her workbooks. Needing something to do, something more to keep between them. 

[willalwaysfind]

"I - " He fights to think of an excuse, any reason. Everything he comes up with in the span of those few seconds seems measly, weak, and he knows she deserves nothing less than the truth, even after she'd pleaded with him to stay away.

"I needed to see you."

[the_fairest]

Even with her heart racing, she can hear the nervous uncertainty in his first word. The desperate solemnity in his following sentence, asking her to understand again. Neither is as loud as Regina's words about Kathryn being left on a whim, in how even I'd she hadn't known  she would soon. 

And here he was. In her classroom walking toward her. All blue eyes. Uncertain. Wanting. Being solemn. Her fingers clutched the books in her arms in a death grip, as she shook her head. "Tell me you didn't leave your wife because of me."

But even as he shook his head, walking toward her, she knew she couldn't let him get closer. Let him start yet. She walked forward, almost like she could use her book clutched to her like a battering ram. Starting to put books down on the desk at either side of the row, hard and fast, as she got closer to him.

"I do not want to destroy your marriage."

[willalwaysfind]

"No," he insists. Of that much he is certain, and he pushes away from the doorframe to walk closer to her, winding his way among the rows of desks until he reaches the one that will take him directly to standing in front of her.

"You're not. It's me," he says, glancing down at her. "I don't want to hurt her either, but the most hurtful thing to Kathryn would be me pretending." Even now, a part of him isn't completely certain that he hasn't managed that much already, trying to feel what isn't there.

"She needs someone to feel about her - the way I feel about you."

[the_fairest]

His answer at first had filled her with something. Something like hope. That maybe he was making the right decision. For himself, for Himself and Kathryn. For the right reasons. Until he got to those last words. Until with those last words he made it about her. Made Regina right. Made her the reason this marriage had crumbled.

Kathryn's marriage. David's marriage. David staring at her, and her unable not to gasp a breath in, closing her eyes, her teeth couldn't press tight enough for that second. Even as her heart gave a sideways leap. Like a leaf caught up in a windstorm. And she refused to open her eyes, clutching the books.

"I'm really trying hard to stay away from you." She could hear the way her voice cracked, thin and unsteady along its edges. Having to look down, holding the books harder, and taking steps toward him, not looking up. Forcing him back through the row, thrusting more primers at desks. "To do the right thing."

[willalwaysfind]

With each step she takes, he's forced back another step, giving ground for the sake of not crowding her too severely as she places each book on a desk with slightly more force than absolutely necessary, maybe even to emphasize her point.

And yet he can't help it when a chuckle slips forth, permeating into his question - he can't tell what he's more amused by, the insistence with which she utters the words or the way she's going through the motions of her day, or at the very least attempting to.

"Why is that the right thing?" he asks, shifting the coat in his hold from one hand to the other.

[the_fairest]

"Because you have a life!" She could barely keep her voice from becoming a bark of sound, in what felt like it was snapping, or desperately pleading, even when it didn't sound it to her ears. Because he did. And she was a good person.


(And it never, ever, even once, felt like it was the right thing.)

[willalwaysfind]

"With someone I didn't choose," he says, the words almost drowned out by the ringing of the school bell as they both stop, holding in place.

Children are already starting to file in for class and he knows he's running out of opportunity, but he needs to say what he came here to say. "The man who chose that life - whoever married Kathryn - is gone."

He can already see her forming a response in her head as his voice drops to a whisper.

"The man here wants someone else."

[the_fairest]

She's shaking her head, not sure if she's doing it, and breathing out and in slightly faster because her students are all walking in now. Or because of the way he's leaning into her, as though forcing her not to look away.

As if he knew what his words meant, what they kept doing to her. The way it kept bringing up the surprise at Regina saying he'd left Kathryn. The way it all beat a pulse against the other words she couldn't force far enough away: I'm choosing you.


I want you.


She closed her eyes, grit her teeth and then shoved it all. Reaching out, with all her willpower, to shove his arm and him from the row of desks, from herself, her classroom, her class, her life, her morning.

"You really have to leave me alone."

Before she gave in. Before she couldn't stop it.

[willalwaysfind]

She closes her eyes, and for a minute he isn't sure how she'll respond, and when she lifts her hand to his arm he looks down, expecting - well, he's not sure what he's expecting. It ends with her maneuvering him out towards the door, among the desks and around the children filing in, asking him to leave. Again.

"Is that truly what you want?"

He can't stop himself from asking, like he has to know for sure, because it still feels as if she's holding something back from him. Something she doesn't want to admit to herself, let alone him.

[the_fairest]

He should not be able to make even a word like truly fire through her.
What she wanted didn't matter. What she wanted didn't matter. What she wanted--

"Go," It came out louder and more sudden than she meant, and so much more like a plea than a command. If David kept talking she was going to fall apart from every choice she was supposed to be making. To *not* be making.

Right here. In her classroom. Surrounded by her students.

Her steps were faster, she was pushing him faster out the door.

Looking to her class and not to him, as everything felt like it was falling.

[willalwaysfind]

She's pushing him out, and yet it still doesn't feel like a no he's hearing, a go with any kind of insistence beyond the desperation of the moment. His hand catches at the doorframe and he realizes this is his change to make a final plea of his own as he uses the momentum to turn, calling out to her in the doorway.

"Meet me tonight. At least think about it," he quickly adds, before she can find the space to reply.

"I'll be at the bridge where you found me at eight o'clock. Think about it until then and decide. If you don't show, I'll know - and I'll never bother you again. But if you choose this - if you choose us - " His expression breaks into a smile, unabashed. Excited. Almost boyish.

"You know where I'll be."

[the_fairest]

Mary Margaret couldn't believe him when he started talking, again, after she'd turned to her classroom. Pulling her back with more words, more requests. This time to meet him. Where she'd saved him. But more startling was the sensation of dread that iced through her when he said he'd never bother her again. That was supposed to be what she wanted, right?

For him to never come back? For him to get the hint and go back to his wife, to live his happily ever after marriage, away from her? For him to stop fighting so hard, making all these impossibly grandiose claims that hounded her in all her waking and dreaming hours?





For him to stop smiling the way the way he did, like he knew the deepest secrets she had, stop letting his voice drop to that that hushed whisper, so that her stomach tightened with a startling ache at the word us, and plummeted through her legs, and shoes, beneath the floor, deep into the ground, leaving her bereft of the ability to think, of anything at all beyond what he was offering, when suddenly he turned and walked away?
















(Dear Lord, she needed Emma right now.)