A sweet scent drifts through the air when Emma gets out of her car, one that speaks of the summer to come. It mixes with the unmistakable scent of the stables, of hay and horses and polish for the irons. The morning mist is burning away as the sun climbs higher, promising a hot day for Maine in April. Hooves thunder down the track on the other side of the infield, and though she is still tense, a few of the knots in Emma's chest loosen.

This is what home feels like.

Her heels click down the concrete, then the tile, and finally up the stairs. She nods at faces she knows - a little older, a little sadder, just like her - and enters her new domain. Screens and machines whir to life as Emma wakes the control room up, and she steps out onto the observation deck. She throws the windows open and watches as some of the horses are exercised. She's early, but she wanted these moments to herself, the peaceful time of day before the day-to-day business begins. She loves to watch them fly, long-buried memories of the wind in her hair resurfacing. A smile escapes her just as another bay breaks free of the gate.

The break room down the hall has coffee, and that's the only other thing she cares about at the moment. One of her cardinal rules - no drinks near the switcher - is tossed out the window as she re-familiarizes herself with the panel and the rows of intimidating buttons. It's unnecessary, tasks she's done a thousand times before, but the whole show rides on her not screwing everything up when it matters.

Not like everything else. It's almost overwhelming, darkness creeping in the edges of her awareness. She shuts it down, and focuses on getting acquainted with everything.

Her phone buzzes a few times as the morning wears on, but Emma ignores it in favor of cursing Equibase or the computers freezing up on her - she should definitely talk to the owner about getting some updated equipment, what is this, 2004?

She jumps when a cheerful voice greets her, "Hi! You must be the new director."

Directors do not curse in front of their coworkers, she thinks, and plasters what she hopes isn't a forced grin on her face. "Hi. Yeah, I'm Emma Swan, nice to meet you."

The woman, long brown hair liberally streaked with bright red - is she really that tall or is it just the shoes? - and lipstick to match, shakes the offered hand. "I'm Ruby Lucas, I'm your graphics tech. So, you're becoming friends with Arthur!"

Confusion settles across her face, and Ruby laughs. She pets the switcher. "We call him Arthur. I wish I had a great story to go with it, but it's really just the first name Elsa said when he was throwing a fit one day and not doing a thing we asked, and it kind of stuck."

"I… see," she says, and she really doesn't, but she's the new girl and she supposes she should play nice for a while.

"Oh, you'll meet Elsa later, she's the sound tech. I come in super early, because -"

"You have to be here when racing services call with changes, yeah I know," Emma says, and internally winces: that came out harsher than she intended.

Ruby doesn't seem fazed and just sits down in her chair, twirling a feathered pen between her fingers. "So you do know your way around here; we were wondering if we'd have to break you."

The woman's grin is wolfish, and the phone ringing right then likely saves Emma from a thorough interrogation. Ruby picks up to cheerfully talk to someone named Billy and take notes. It's fascinating to watch someone talk so animatedly while on the phone, and Emma hides her smile in her coffee cup. She fiddles with the controls to the remote cameras, and grimaces at the state of the pictures. Ruby hangs up, and turns back to her computer. As she stands, Emma asks her to call one of the tower operators to take care of the one. "We have cleaning supplies in here, right?"

"Yeah, supply closet. Need help with the ladder?" Ruby asks, not looking up as her long nails clack away on the keyboard.

Emma glances at the ladder set out next to the wall, and then down at her platform stilettos. "Remind me to bring flip-flops or something to keep in here," she orders as she kicks her heels off.

"You got it, boss," Ruby's voice is amused as Emma pads out the door in her bare feet, cleaning bucket in one hand and an eight-foot ladder over the other.

-/-

He does not have time for this.

Killian crosses his arms over his chest, staring the young man down. Bluff's blinkers are missing, and the lad is digging his heels in, and post time is in an hour, and the season hasn't even started and their odds are on the out, and bloody hell he does not have time to argue about particulars and teenage stubbornness. "I groom them at home, what's so different here?" Henry argues.

"Here is such a thing as rules and regulation. At home, we have my rules, and I don't give a shite about who takes care of what as long as it's done. Here, we have the commission, and they do give a shite. They rather like things to go their way, or they can get quite nasty with their punishments. And if you think after the fiasco of last season they'll let anyone associated with one owner near another's horses, then you've got another think coming," Killian tells him.

He regrets his wording almost immediately as Henry's shoulders hunch forward and his face goes blank. "Fine."

The lad stalks into Bluff's stall. Killian watches him for a moment, and when he hears Henry talking quietly, stalks out to the paddock himself.

There are Bluff's blinkers, laid out across his assigned stall. How they got there was a mystery for another day, when his mind wasn't clouded by a thousand other things.

So, in October, or something along those lines.

Killian swipes them down, and leans against a post, taking deep breaths to calm down as he checks over the cloth carefully for splinters. The last thing he needs is a distressed horse on opening day.

This is the problem with overly familiar owners, he thinks. He much prefers the way of things at home, where owners are safely shut up in the clubhouse and he is left in peace in paddock. Here, it seems he can't turn around without tripping over one of his employers. If it isn't an adult, it's the boy, who spends half his days mucking out stalls and luring whatever secrets he can out of anyone with knowledge to share. From what he has gathered, Henry has practically grown up in the shedrow, and treats it as his own domain. Which, fine, it partly is, but everyone associated with the Horn is under scrutiny by the entire racing world at the moment, and the boy needs to understand that. He's fifteen, he doesn't understand feck all.

A feminine grunt, followed by a wooden clatter, brings him out of his thoughts. Killian looks up, and is immediately glad he's already leaning against something. Perhaps Bluff kicked him in the skull when he was being led from the trailer last night, for surely he must be dead to be seeing visions of angels. And then he calls himself seven kinds of eejit for having such wild fantasies, but he blames his upbringing.

Give an Irishman enough time in his own fantasies (and perhaps a bit of whisky) and he believes all sorts of fairytales.

The woman - angel? Check for own pulse later - steadied her ladder and climbed, a look of determination on her face.

He's never been one to notice a woman's clothing, but something about the way her black skirt hugs her, and the red shirt draping about her lovingly, it draws his eye down her form… all the way to the bare feet. A smile threatens, and he looks back up to her head, her blonde hair swaying with her movements.

She's vigorously cleaning a ball on a pole, and the ladder is wobbling with her movements, and some part of Killian's lizard brain awakens and tells him, Eejit, go and steady it before she breaks herself.

-/-

"Need a hand?" A lilting male voice asks.

Emma glances back to see the source striding over to her. "I'm good, thanks," she tells him, and goes back to her task.

She rubs at the enviro-dome hard, and her stomach swoops in fear as she almost loses her balance. Her ladder steadies, and she looks down to see him grinning up at her. "Now see, a quick 'yes please' may have saved you a few hairs on your pretty head from going gray already," he tells her, the Irish treatment of his 'r's more prominent with the layer of honeyed-flirting he's added.

Emma rolls her eyes, going back to work. "My hero," she drawls.

"Oh, she's tetchy," he says, and she can hear the grin.

"She not only has a name, but she's got a bottle of cleaning solution, and she isn't afraid to dump it in your eyes, Irish, so back off," Emma snaps.

"And what is her name?" He asks.

Emma ignores him, and studies her handiwork. She digs out her phone - when did I get all these texts from David? - and calls up to the control room to ask Ruby if she saw any other spots that needed cleaning. She's aware of the man's presence below, his gaze putting her on alert while she's on the phone, and then as she descends. She refuses to think about the last time the paddock was properly cleaned as her bare feet hit the ground. "Thanks," she tells the man shortly as she folds the ladder back up.

It sits heavy on her shoulder; the rag and bottle hang in her other hand. "You sure you've got that, lass?" The man asks.

Emma turns slightly to give him what-for, and stops when she finally gets a good look at him.

Something about him rankles her, in every sense of the word.

For starters, there's something familiar about him. She's good with names and faces, and it's annoying that she's not able to place the astonishingly handsome face with the too-blue eyes, the thin scar across one cheek, and the five o'clock shadow, or the black hair that looks like he's been doing some of his own flying that morning. He's too tall, and from the way he fills out his faded t-shirt, too heavy to be a jockey, so she figures he's an exerciser, or perhaps an involved groom. He has an easy way about him, coupled with a sense of self-assuredness that explains the flirtation. Her guard climbs higher as all of this processes - she's known too many men with that air, knows all of their tricks. "I've got it," she says.

She always has it.


After a quick foot scrub in the bathroom sink - and it's seriously no joke, trying to wash one foot while balancing with the other on a six-inch spindle - Emma meets her other coworkers. Elsa initially comes off as demure, but when the judges call about equipment not working, Emma is surprised at how fired up the other woman gets about their subpar manners and ham-handedness. Elsa also appears to have a mild obsession with tea - she places a brightly decorated tin box near her station that's filled with what sounds like every kind of tea imaginable inside. Emma's not even sure most of those names are in English.

The two in-house cameramen are a mix of new and familiar faces: she doesn't know Jefferson, who doesn't say much but greets her kindly anyway. But she could never forget Victor, a longtime friend of David's, who greets her warmly with hugs and condolences. Emma brushes the latter off: it's over, has been for a long time, and doesn't let on that her bruised ego and heart appreciate the sentiment anyway. She is also surprised that Victor gives Ruby a kiss - have I really been gone that long?

"Two minutes to showtime, folks," Emma says, slipping on her headset.

"Emma Swan, is that you?" Another familiar voice crackles in her earpiece.

There's a fraction of a second before the voice registers in her brain. "Well, if it isn't Sean Herman, all grown up," she teases. "How's Ashley, and the baby?"

"Not a baby anymore, she's in second grade."

Emma gapes, no matter that Sean can't see her reaction, and then the loudspeaker crackles to life with welcomes and information, and the broadcast team shifts their focus to their work.

There are a few slipups as the team shakes off the cobwebs of the offseason; some missed shots, tracking the wrong rider, computer errors that aren't anyone's fault. Inside, she's frazzled and panicky, the thought of some bigwig barging down into her territory to rip into all of them resurfacing after every mistake, but Emma projects calm to everyone. She made a promise to herself years ago, after one bad manager, to never be the kind of blowhard boss that made everyone edgy and sullen. "Good race everyone," she says as Elsa starts replays of the fourth. "Sean, next time let's try a wider shot and we'll see how it looks if we get the full field as they round the back quarter."

"You got it Emma."

Ruby seems to be absorbed in her phone at every turn, but no amount of pointed looks Emma shoots at her deter the other woman from doing whatever it is - Angry Birds? Twitter? Surely there's nothing worth Instagramming in here.

But when it counts, she's paying attention, and just as Emma opens her mouth to switch to the paddock camera, Ruby's nails clash against the keyboard again and she's wiggling the joystick into position. She catches Emma's eye and winks. "I know when I'm allowed to play, Mom."

Emma abruptly shuts her mouth, and ignores Elsa's quiet giggle behind her. She turns back to the screens. Elsa flips a switch, murmuring, "You're going to get frown lines if you keep scowling like that."

"I'm not scowling!"

She's totally scowling.

"I'll add 'skin serum' to the list of things to remind you about, boss."

Dammit.

Elsa scoops up Emma's coffee cup as she leaves for more hot water, saying something about topping it off for her, and Emma accepts distractedly. Her scowl disappears when she sees Henry come onto the screen, leading one of his mom's horses around the warmup ring.

Her nerves flutter again; they haven't seen each other in person in years, only exchanging emails every couple of days. Regina had promised not to tell Henry she'd moved back to town. Emma wants it to be a surprise, probably the first good surprise the kid has had in the last couple of years. He looks good, handling the horse (she could never keep them straight, Regina had particularities about appearances and honestly they all look the same to her) that's at least sixteen times his weight with ease, wearing the colors to show where he belongs.

As the commentary begins, Emma finds herself listening for once. Demon's Bluff, the horse Henry is handling, is the favorite to win, so extra care is given to detail his training and care. She holds her breath as the commentary turns to his stabling, but nothing more is mentioned past the new owner and trainer of the Huntsman's Horn Stables, Killian Jones.

Ruby pans the camera across as Henry leads Bluff to his stall. The trainer is there, his black Stetson covering his face as he flicks through his iPad, the sleeves of his red flannel shirt rolled up against the heat of the day. The name, Killian Jones, rings a bell in Emma's mind - with how often she has fallen in and out of the racing world in the last thirteen years, it's not surprising that some names have stuck. But the trainer holds himself the way a young man does, and the faces she envisions from years ago are all older and weathered. Just before Ruby pans away, the trainer lifts his head and Emma's jaw drops as his face is revealed: the man from the paddock.