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[notinthebook]

 She kind of feels like she should have heard from Mary Margaret by now.

Right?  Isn't that sort of the deal?  True, she didn't tell Mary Margaret about everything that happened with Michael, but...that's hardly the same thing as David leaving his wife.

Unless...

She thinks back to the jacket and envelope left so neatly on her bed, and guilt roils in her stomach.  She probably should have told Mary Margaret.  At the very least, she shouldn't have found out from Michael trying so hard to get here to talk to her that he'd ended up shunted straight into a burning building.

(She still feels really kind of awful about that.)

But Mary Margaret...she wouldn't hold that against her.  Right?  Maybe she's just been busy.

Either way, the office is unbearably quiet, and she could really use a little good news, so she tosses aside her half-eaten sandwich and grabs her phone to call her roommate.

Hopefully at least one of them has some good news.

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[the_fairest]

She's outside sitting on a bench, watching the children running to and fro. So completely free and at ease. Innocent. It makes her feel even heavier than she thought she could feel, and she'd chosen this instead of having to make small talk in the teacher's lounge through lunch.

An excuse to be outside, have solitude, quiet.
Or, screaming children aside, a given definition of it.




Until her phone rang. Her shoulders tightened. It couldn't be. She pulled it out of her purse (relieved it wasn't Dr. Whale, disappointed it wasn't David) and stared at Emma's name.

It rang twice more in her hand as her chest tightened, before she swallowed and opened it. Hitting the button as she put it up to her ear. Her voice sounded to her about as fake as it had all morning, when she simply started with, "Hey."

[notinthebook]

Three rings.

Is that a lot? Mary Margaret's so organized, so quick to be friendly and available that it seems long, long enough for Emma to glance back at Graham's office and watch him for a second as he goes through paperwork, head lowered, before the phone picks up and she turns away again.

"Hey."

She frowns. "Are you in the middle of something?"

[the_fairest]

"Just recess."

She says it like its an answer.

Even though she's using it as an excuse.

Emma's voice twists the boulder in her stomach.



Except, somehow, it makes it easier to breathe, too.


Leading back to her time sensitive question.
And away from herself almost instantly.
"Is something wrong?"

[notinthebook]

Yes.

"No."

The last thing Mary Margaret needs is for Emma to lay all her complaints out on her. Besides, Graham's right there, and she's still not sure why it should matter to her anyway, so she just moves on. This phone call is about Mary Margaret, not about her. The least she can do now is be a good friend.

"Just wanted to check up on you. You know." She doodles idly on a piece of paper, wishing she sounded more convincing; to herself, if no one else.

"See how things went."

[the_fairest]

Even distraught she catches the pause.
The one before Emma answers her question.



The one that screams at her because it is Emma.
The wall that she holds around herself always.



The wall that -- leave her thoughts when Emma gets to her point, and Mary Margaret's throat tightens. Along with the hand holding the phone to her ear. Surprise that really isn't much surprise, so much as sudden guilt and fear, and wanting it to be the very last thing Emma called to talk about: her.

Causing first, "Oh."

[notinthebook]

There's something wrong.

It's there in Mary Margaret's stripped-down sentences, the fragments she's using. Expressions are impossible to see over the phone, but tone is everything, and Mary Margaret, sweet, sincere, wonderful Mary Margaret who has probably never lied in her life, can't hide behind hers.

It's been there since she answered the phone, but now: that oh sinks like a rock in Emma's stomach.

Immediately, Emma's on guard.

"What's wrong?"

[the_fairest]

"Nothing." Is even worse than oh.
It's too fast, and it's too true.

Because nothing did happen.

At least not with David.


"There's -- there's just not much to tell really," Mary Margaret floundered. Looking at her knees instead of the children. "David, he..."

Did what she always said he would.

Remembered his whole life.

Picked it over her.





And now she's supposed to be able to say it?

[notinthebook]

David.

He...

Emma listens, waiting for more.

But more doesn't come.










"I am going to kick his ass."

[the_fairest]

"Emma, don't." She isn't sure if she means not to hurt David. Or not to say she's going to hurt David. "It's not his fault."

It's not like he picked last night to remember.
It's not like she didn't already tell him it was low.


Before bursting into tears, getting drunk, and sleeping with someone else. She was hardly defendable now.


"He just-" She shrugged even though Emma couldn't see it. Even as she had to look up at the children. "He remembered." She swallowed. Forcing herself. Maybe she couldn't disparage him to Emma. But she could shoot her own self in the foot.

The heart. "Kathryn." Beat. "Everything."

Beat. "These things just happen."

[notinthebook]

She leans forward at her desk, voice coming in a vicious whisper. "They do not 'just happen,' Mary Margaret. He told you he was sure."

In a way, this is a release. All the tension that's been winding up -- her jacket, the envelope, arguing with Michael.

(This is volunteering?)

David, though. David deserves it. Who could possibly treat Mary Margaret, the single best, kindest, warmest human being she's ever known, so badly? The thought of her being hurt, the pain in her voice, tugs violently at Emma's insides. The instinct to protect, to defend -- it's gnawing at her, helpless, because there's nothing she can do.

Quieter. This is the most important thing.

"Are you okay?"

[the_fairest]

If saying Kathryn's name hadn't hurt enough, hearing Emma say He told you he was sure is like having nails that lodge right in her heart. No walls to stop them. She's never had the like.

"He didn't know....all this then."

"You can't know when memories will come back, or if."

It's why you sign wavers and take classes before being allowed to help with volunteering in certain wards. Understand sometimes people might attach themselves to you. Especially highly traumatized people. That you aren't supposed to encourage them.

Aren't supposed to lo-



Emma's last question hits her too soft, too hard.
She's done things as bad as David did now, hasn't she?

"I'm here? I managed to take a shower, drink my coffee and teach my morning classes." This probably isn't a very convincing answer. Especially as it waffles entirely and never actually addresses the question itself.

[notinthebook]

No matter what anyone says, sometimes just getting up in the morning and going to work is an absolute hell of a heroic achievement, and a day like this, with Mary Margaret sound so heart-broken and trying so hard not to, Emma's got to go ahead and put in that category.

"That's a start."

There's a long moment's silence where she licks her lips and tries to figure out what to say. There must be something, anything, but the problem is that she'd given Mary Margaret her opinion yesterday and it had turned out to be, surprise surprise, the wrong one.

"Do you need anything? I could come by. Or pick something up for dinner. Or..." She's reaching, knows it. "...Whatever. Anything at all."

[the_fairest]

Her stomach rumbled slightly. Coffee and stair watching over breakfast. Recess after the smallest of lunches. Dinner would not be so avoidable with Emma in the know.

"We could do Chinese?"



There was the smallest pause, and it wasn't so much connected, as maybe a better sort of answer to Emma's real question. "And ice cream?"

[notinthebook]

Her smile's faint, and more worried than light-hearted, but it's there, and it's in her voice.

"You know what, that sounds perfect. I'll get the food, you find us a stupid movie to watch, and we'll just chill for the night. No talking required. Unless you want."

She kind of thinks neither of them especially want to rehash the day.

"Okay?"

[the_fairest]

"One moment, Emma." Mary Margaret leaned down to extricate the soccer ball that rolled under the bench she was on. The murmur of her voice carrying as she laughed, light and trying, and gave it back to children calling, voices high and happy, saying thank you, before they whispered off back into the distance.

She put the phone back up. "That does sound great."

It does, even if her stomach turns and twists. She wants to be doing anything but focusing on it, on either of them, since neither of them will leave her thoughts. But finding the words for any of it is still hard.

She must have something else they could -- "Oh. Hey, did you find the stuff I left you?"

[notinthebook]

Oh.

That.

"Uh--"

She glances, guilty, at the envelope on her desk.

Michael. He's...

She doesn't know what to do with that thought, so she pushes it aside.

"Yeah, thanks. Sorry you had to play messenger boy." She transitions like a train jumping its tracks and careening into a demolished building. "So, uh, any particular kind of ice cream, or should I just get whatever kind has the most stuff in it?"

[the_fairest]

It really is. A crashing train.

A slamming door. That wall.


Michael's desperation. Inviting himself here.
Even that had been more clear than Emma's words.



Mary Margaret found herself releasing a breath she hadn't known she was holding, wasn't sure when she'd started holding. It wasn't even that she'd expected more...but she'd expected more.

"It's fine. I hadn't meant to forget to give them to you yesterday at the station. Uh." She thought. "Whatever uses chocolate too times in the title. Or sounds like you might get sugar shock just touching the carton."

[notinthebook]

"Well, things yesterday were..."

She pauses, wishing she hadn't started that sentence but unable to keep from finishing it. "Distracting," she decides, eventually. It's pretty lame, and she winces at herself. Staring at her desk, she ticks one cherry-red fingernail against the lonely cap of a pen, listening to the silence at the other end of the line and wondering how there can be so many things she wants to say and absolutely no words to say them with.

When did it start being harder to pull herself away than to reach out?

"That sounds awesome," she says, finally, because she can't say anything else. "I'll be home around six."

[the_fairest]

Distracting. To Emma. To David.

It's an effort not to raise her hand to her mouth, not to let the stinging at the edge of her eyes become more than a shine that might have been caused by the sun.

It's stupid. She knows Emma didn't mean it like that, but she ends up raising a hand to wipe away the first tear to escape since waking up. Trying to focus on the food and movie and later. Later, not at her work. "That'll be great, Emma. Thanks. I should go. The kids."

[notinthebook]

"Yeah, okay."

She bites at her lip, wishing she could think of one thing, one stupid thing to say that might make any of this better, but in reality anything she could come up with (she runs through a pathetically short list) would probably only make this worse.

Still.

"Hang in there, okay? I'll see you at home. With Chinese and ice cream."

And any jokes or funny stories or helpful advice or admittedly awkward sympathy she can manage to pull out of herself for the sake of the woman at the end of the line.

"See you later."

[the_fairest]

"You, too."



Mary Margaret rubbed her cheek clean with the back of her knuckles and her hand. Smiling at the gaggle of girls who ran by shrieking with a snaking, black-and-black, jumping ropes trailing behind them.

Mary Margaret stared after them for a long few minutes, crossing the playing ground, surveying all of them. Watching all that they were doing, that they were safe, and not doing anything against the rules.

When she looked down she realized her phone was still open, held in the curve of her hand against her leg. Emma had been trying to help. Even if the word echoed wrong, went too well with David saying she was feeling he just didn't understand.

They both wanted her to know they'd cared, for different reasons, from different places. The numb irony was lost that she scrolled through the names, until her fingertip stopped at the mid W's, at the one person who never pretended to. Care.

Guilt and the whole roll of emotions staring at his names. Remembering what he'd, she'd, they'd. She hadn't told Emma either. She shouldn't feel guilty. She shouldn't. She was an adult. She could make these choices. Go through with them, and keep them to herself.

She shouldn't feel guilty.

But she did, even as she clicked call.