Disclaimer: refer to all previous if necessary. No. I don't own it.

A/N. Quasi-AU Red Swan. Emma and Snow postpone their lovely wander to FTL for a more convenient time. Thus, we have a very Red Swan Wolfstime (potentially in three parts).

But if I could choose I'd let it hurt you

/-\

There is no calm in the wake of the storm. Emma's learnt that, if anything, over the years. All of the stories, the poetic little ditties, the songs and the proverbs – they all talk about the calm, the lull, the peace before all hell breaks loose, but they never promise a concord after. There's nothing poetic about the aftermath. She's okay with that.

Storybrooke descends into chaos after it's hit by Hurricane Mister-fucking-Gold. Henry tells her she's broken the curse, Mary Margaret – Snow – says it, Ruby whispers it to her when she drops in to the diner for a break and the brunette slides her a hot chocolate and a glass of scotch – 'on the house,' of course – over the counter. She's broken the curse. The storm is over.

She doesn't have the heart to point out the lack of happy endings.

Instead, she goes back to work. There is no lack of it. The Storybrooke personalities of every single resident seem to have some kind of storm damage claim to make – there's always something new to complain about, and it stacks up. That's the easy part, though. The mass identity crisis means that blood feuds and life debts suddenly seem to pop up all over the place. Stopping the mob from skinning Regina alive as soon as the curse breaks is the first altercation Emma has to intervene in, but it is far from the last. David offers to help her out – the responsible prince, the responsible parent that should-have-been. Still, it's not until the town's grocer tries to shank his neighbour as penance for a goat theft in a past life that she hands him the deputy badge and writes him onto the payroll.

She enjoys keeping busy – the town's growing list of problems leaves her exhausted at the end of every day, lets her sleep without ruminating on the sleeping curse that almost stole her son from her, or the dragon that used to lurk beneath the library. It prevents the overexposure to her sudden claim of family – limits the amount of pushing Snow can manage in a day. She gets to know James, rather than David Nolan, when he stands beside her through the long hours, dealing with the stupid little squabbles, the grudges and the bloody histories, guiding her through the parts she doesn't know, picking up when she stops but never overtaking. It is one of her better choices, because she doesn't understand this dual life the townsfolk are leading. She has never been anything other than Emma Swan, and she doesn't know what they're all going through. So when Regina gets her magic back and the townsfolk flock towards the town limit in a panic she can't talk them down – but David stands in the truck bed and loudly declares "we are both," and she stops seeing her roommate's indecisive lover and starts seeing the prince, the leader, the man she could think of as a father one day.

There is no calm after the storm. The chaos is only just beginning.

Henry bunks with them most nights, because Regina is high on the town's most wanted list (not to mention struggling with her practical Sith Lord background) and staying with her all the time is a safety hazard. He dreams about a girl in a burning room, and wakes most nights with tears in his eyes but a family waiting in the wings to support him. He goes to school with Snow, and she brings him home afterwards so he can spend his afternoons faux sword-fighting with the deputy sheriff. And Emma watches, and smiles, and worries about his nether world, and sometimes talks to Snow in small asides as if they're still just roommates and friends, and sometimes tells her figments of her past and her pains as if they're more than that. Family. Really. Warming up to the idea is slow, but not impossible.

It seems strange, the way their names change in her mind. Calling her roommate Mary Margaret just seems wrong in some innate, quiet way, but calling her anything else is jarring. So it becomes "Snow", but never "mom". And sometimes "Mary Margaret" slips out, when they fall into old habits and Emma forgets, for a moment, that this isn't entirely the world she knows anymore (it always reminds her harshly enough). They are closer in some ways, and estranged in others, and Emma doesn't know how to handle that. So she focusses on other things – feuds, and grudges, dragging answers out of Regina and Gold – about the land they come from (still there somewhere, and waiting for their return, and if they get enough fairy dust they may even be able to go there), about Henry and what's happening to him – breaking up the work with diner visits and tired smiles at Ruby over the counter.

Even then, David becomes 'James', and Ruby becomes 'Red'. All in the little ways – there's something different in the way they smile, the way they stand. James is decisive and steadfast where David Nolan couldn't pick a path and stick with it. Ruby's self-confidence shifts, and now she's comfortable in her role, but not in her body. The overt flirting with much of the local populace goes, and Red stands stronger now, but more reclusive.

The little things only last so long. There is no calm after the storm, only a lull before the next one. And it comes with the phase of the moon.

/-\

It's a night of celebration.

She considers cutting in when she sees Billy cornering Red. The girl's been on edge for days, and while Red herself has never brought up the problem, Snow has. Not seriously, or anything – not to betray her friends secret, but just in passing, more to allay Emma's concerns than anything else. She hadn't mentioned until the third time Red forgot Emma's lunch order, and the second time the waitress spilt hot coffee on her lap. The clumsiness didn't fit with the intensity she was treating her job with, and Emma was more worried than annoyed by the erratic behaviour. Snow had simply said "Wolfstime is coming. She's getting anxious." The rest, Emma had figured out from James and from Henry's book.

It doesn't matter, really. Ruby was her friend before the curse broke, and Red is now. Sure, she apparently has a tendency to turn into an actual legitimate animal every month – but then, who doesn't go a little crazy around the full moon? There's science about that stuff somewhere.

Still, she sees Billy approach the girl out of the shadows, and sees the discomfort on Red's face, and remembers the date and the moon cycle printed in the paper that morning, and she is about to cut in when Belle does it for her. Instead, she diverts her attention to Henry, seated alone in one of the booths with a mug in his hand that holds something far too familiar.

"Kiddo. Is that coffee?" He looks up at her guiltily, but he doesn't deny it – knows better, it seems, than to test her super power as well as her sense of smell – and she manages a small, tired laugh when she drops down to the seat across from him. "Okay. Out with it."

"I'm… nervous," he says, and it draws her complete attention away from Red and Belle and Billy, pulls her focus solely on him. She loves him. He's her son. And he needs her now, in his quiet way. "I'm still having nightmares. And it's wolfstime tonight, right – Ruby's been acting… weird."

Not for the first time, Emma has to sigh at the perceptiveness of her kid. If nothing else, Regina taught him one good thing – because that wasn't from her. She was disillusioned at his age – all the foster kids were – but she was still naïve. Horridly so. All the way up until eighteen, when a pregnancy and a prison sentence put all of that to rest.

"Don't you worry about Red," she says lightly. "She's got enough people keeping an eye out and waiting to give her a hand-" Or a crossbow bolt, she thinks. "-nothing is going to go wrong. And you know I'll be right in the other room tonight if you need me. Snow and James, too. And your other mom is only a phone call away."

He stares at her for a long moment, but the emphasis is too much. The smile breaks out. He can't stop it. He's never said so, but Emma knows he thinks it's funny, the way Emma has fallen into addressing Regina these days. It makes him happy that she acknowledges Regina's role in his life and doesn't grudge her for it. It makes him feel loved that she implies her own place in his little world – not as his friend, not as the woman who gave him up, not as the town saviour, but as his mom.

One of them, anyway.

He grins, and he laughs, and Emma wards off her own concerns about these dreams he's been having and Red's imminent dilemma, and reaches across to steal his coffee mug. "Now how about you go get us both a cocoa to celebrate this wonderful step on the road toward a world without indoor plumbing."

She watches him leave the booth and make his way to the counter, eased for the moment, if nothing else. It has her smiling. At least, until the district attorney drops into the seat across from her, anyway. She hasn't dealt with him often enough to even consider him an acquaintance, truly, and she always associates him with the Kathryn Nolan case and his dedication to getting Mary Margaret convicted, so she is not particularly pleased to see him. Particularly considering James's assertion that this man was an ex-king in another life. And kind of a psycho.

"Can I help you, Mister Spencer?" she asks politely. She doesn't particularly like the man but she has enough enemies in her life without creating more. The way he sneers at her across the table tells her well enough – being polite isn't going to gain her any favours. Whatever this is about, it's not going to be pleasant.

"I have concerns about your deputy." Emma just crosses her arms over her chest and stares at him on the other side of the table, brow quirked for emphasis. "He's a liar. A shepherd pretending to be a prince. He wasn't fit to run the kingdom, and he's sure as hell not fit to run this town."

Well. If he doesn't want a friendly conversation.

"And I might consider those concerns were he actually the one running it," Emma replies dryly, unmoved. She has spent weeks with James. The curious nature of his lineage has already been addressed. "Not to mention, if the rest of the town didn't disagree with you. Oh, and while we're at it, if we were living in the fifteenth century when who birthed you actually mattered, at all."

The sneer grows more pronounced, but Emma isn't particularly intimidated. She's faced dragons and seventeen years in the foster system – a failed king with the false life of a district attorney doesn't really faze her.

"Just like your father, I see," the man scowls, and Emma has the disjointed urge to reply with a quick 'which one?' because James may be her blood father but he's not the only dad she's ever had, and pissing this guy off just seems like a brilliant idea. She restrains it. "Defiant until the end. But never willing to deal the final blow. I'll expose you both for the weak, common blooded fools you are. James ruined me, once. I'll destroy you all."

Emma just stares at him for a long moment, brow furrowed. She doesn't mention the fact that while if James is a shepherd, Snow is very much blue-blooded, and whether by marriage or by birth right all three of them have their royal entitlements – or would have, in the other world. Nor does she take the time to remind him that they do not live in that world any longer – kings and queens have no purpose here. There are laws, rights, principles that didn't exist wherever all these people came from. Albert Spencer is not the first to revert to archaic ideals, and he won't be the last, but every time Emma comes across one of these people she just can't help but wonder if everyone has truly gone batshit insane. There must be something in the water. There is a system now – democracy where the monarchy once stood. She's a sheriff, not a princess, and she will never claim otherwise.

But this isn't what she says to him, because she somehow knows he won't listen. No. She stands up and puts her hands, palms flat, on the table, leans down to look this stupid man straight in the eye and glowers. She won't be intimidated. She knows better.

"I am not my father," she says instead, steely and quiet. "But I'd love to see you try."

It says something that she is more concerned about Belle, standing alone across the diner with a troubled expression, Ruby's absence, her deputy's sudden lack of presence, than this man, threatening her in a booth in the middle of a party. She's not sure what, exactly, that says, but she knows it definitely says something. Belle frowns when she approaches, but points her towards the kitchen without a word, obviously somewhat concerned. And, perhaps, a little more respectful of Red's privacy, if they're going to go there.

She makes her way out the back just in time to pick up the conversation about frozen lasagne and cages, and stops to lean on the counter just inside the door. Ruby pauses for a long moment when she sees her, and Emma understands – the fear, the secret, the judgement she expects. Ruby doesn't know that Emma knows – but then, she never really knew that Emma didn't know either, so…

Emma allays it with a touch of her hand in passing, grabbing at Red's fingers for a fraction of a second after the brunette has put her stack of frozen lasagne on the counter and freed them. It's a wordless exchange – a glance from Red, Emma's bare hint of a smile that says 'it's okay' and the squeeze of her fingers that says the message is wholly received and very much appreciated. It doesn't do much else for her countenance, though – the brunette seems just as anxious as ever when James asks what the cage is for.

"Tonight's the first full moon since the curse broke. It's the first night of wolfstime," Red explains quickly, moving back towards James and the cage. Maybe more the latter. Anxiety, anxiety. Emma doesn't say anything – leaves it to James, her deputy with the lifetime of crazy world-with-magic experience, as she's learning to do. Better off stopping to learn than rushing in like an idiot – most of the time, anyway. There are exceptions.

"But I thought you learned to control the wolf in you ages ago?"

"Yeah, but – thanks to the curse I haven't turned in twenty-eight years," Ruby says, and Emma doesn't understand the process, but there's a familiar theory. She hasn't stolen a car in eleven years – she's not sure she'd be so skilled these days, either. "I might be rusty. I can't let what happened last time, what-" Her head jerks a little to the side, almost involuntary, and Emma watches, wondering why it seems like that was a draw towards her. "-happened to Peter, happen to anyone else."

They talk about a hood, and Emma frowns but doesn't say anything. It's when the conversation turns to "I know you" and "Snow trusts you" that she really turns her head. It sounds like an old argument with new acoustics. And it doesn't halt Red's fears. The brunette tracks her way into the freezer-turned-cage, and Granny moves to shut the door, lock her in, but Emma is quicker.

"Just a second," she says gently. The old woman frowns back at her, but pauses nonetheless. It is Red that stares out at her with troubled eyes, exasperation, frustration, fear. The blonde just rolls her eyes and pushes off from the counter, pulling off her jacket as she goes. "You know, magic doesn't exactly work the way it's meant to here, right?" she asks dryly. "You might not turn at all. Hell, maybe you'll turn into a Chihuahua instead."

"Emma," comes the warning growl. Jokes are apparently a no-go with anxious-Red. Emma snorts.

"For the morning," she says, holding out her jacket. It's not the 'you don't need to be locked up' that she's pretty sure Red's expecting, or the 'let me put you out of our misery' that she fears. It's just a red leather jacket in an outstretched palm that says 'well, if being locked in a freezer floats your boat, who am I to argue?' It's just support. There's something in Red's eyes when she takes the jacket – deeper than Emma can really identify, but something that rings within her too. There are no words. Just that loaded gaze.

Then her hands are empty and her arms are bare. She steps back out of the way and they lock Red in the freezer, eagerly awaiting the morning.

/-\

Emma's not so sure she's surprised by the early morning call. The many years and the shitty people, and the newfound awareness of magic and all things incomprehensible, has taught her a lot about free thinking. Hope for the best but expect the worst, and never be loud about either.

She doesn't know if Granny calls James as well, if he hears her phone and assumes the worst, or if it's just that he's been up all night and waiting for it despite last night's bravado, but he is waiting in the kitchen with a travel mug of coffee for her when she rushes her way out, ready to go. The drive to the diner is quick and wordless, and tenser than usual. As sure as James is about Ruby's true nature, Emma can still see the trepidation in his posture. The fear. She, on the other hand – she's never lived this aftermath. She reserves her hopes. She knows not to make assumptions.

They're hardly out of the car before Granny barrels through the diner's door, urging them loudly to get back in the vehicle. And Emma wants to – to follow that direction and take that path and find her friend, calm the inevitable storm of the morning. But while Red accepted her presence in the conversation last night, Emma's not too sure she's the first thing the waitress wants to see when waking up at her most vulnerable. Ruby is her friend, but Red is a whole other animal – literally. She's not sure they're on that level – or even that she's capable of recognising that level if she ever reaches it. Emma knows loyalty, not comfort. You learn what you live. And she's ill-equipped to be what Red needs this morning, whatever that is. She doesn't know. Just that it's not her.

"Find her," she directs simply, stepping out of the way and letting Granny take the passenger seat. "There's something I need to see."

The other two both frown, but Granny is antsy and eager to go and James seems to realise it's one of those times he should just be the deputy with her and nothing else. Car doors slam and the engine turns over and then they're off, rolling on route to park nearer the woods. Emma just frowns, watching them go. When they've turned the corner she makes her way into the diner, caught by a morbid curiosity and that stupid familiar pull in her gut that says 'there's more to this story- find it'. She hates that feeling. More often than not it gets her into trouble.

The diner's front door is completely intact, no damages, no problems. None of the tables or chairs have been moved. For a moment she wonders what the fuss is about – but then she finds her way out to the kitchen, the make-shift cage that failed and she sees it. Claw marks, jagged and cutting into smooth metal and reinforced walls. The door ripped from its hinges and left on the floor. Shelves destroyed.

Red was certainly no Chihuahua.

Emma has lived her life based on deductions, and this definitely isn't a list of hard ones. The cage looks like it has been wrecked. But there is something vital missing, and something obvious still there. She doesn't know what the wolf did after getting out last night, but she does have her suspicions on how it did so in the first place. She isn't entirely satisfied with her investigation, but she calls it in lieu of catching up to Charming and finding Red. As familiar as she is with breaking and entering – vestiges of a past life she likes to forget she lived – and all the physics of general destruction, she's still not an expert. Emma's not sure she wants to make any real judgements without another set of eyes. There's too much at stake here. Ruby is involved.

The car parked across the road when she leaves the diner, locking the front door behind her, has her frowning. Black, with tinted windows, but even so she's pretty sure she knows it. It's been parked outside the station on the odd occasion. That car belongs to Albert Spencer. She would ask what he's doing parked across from the diner at this time of the morning, but the car starts up and rolls off before she's even made it down to the sidewalk. The pull in her gut racks up a notch.

She sidelines it when she gets the call about a double park by the cannery. Small time issues, small town folk. But she is the sheriff, and it's her job, and while the whole "Red went running around as a giant wolf last night" thing is kind of important, it's not as immediate. She dials Charming's number with a sigh.

"You find her?" she asks when he picks up, earns an affirmative. "Does she remember anything about getting out last night?"

Because god, wouldn't that make things easier. Put her fears to rest, allay her suspicions and her gut feelings. What she would give for casual happenstance right now. But no, he says, Red blacked out. This one's on Emma. Detective work. The whole shebang.

She hopes she's wrong about everything.

"Someone's double-parked over by the cannery. I'm walking. But pick me up on your way," she tells him quickly. She wants to mention the freezer, her new theories and her little observations, but she thinks it may be better shown, or said in person instead of over the phone. She doesn't want to hold him up too long – or whoever called in the parking issue. The townsfolk are generally pleasant enough, but they tend to get impatient sometimes. And then they get irritable. And then they get annoying. She thinks about that dark car with the tinted windows and the none-too-subtle threats of the night before and continues. "And keep Red with you. Until we know what happened last night, I don't want her off on her own."

"You think that's a good idea?"

"Best we can do. Your people haven't exactly shown their level-headed mediation tactics over the last few weeks, James. I don't want her running into someone she's unknowingly wronged. They'd just as likely stab her as sue her. Maybe more likely." She pauses, grimaces at the thought. "If she's not happy about it, tell her that I will arrest her."

"Don't you need a reason for that?" James asks, and despite the serious nature of the whole conversation he really just sounds amused, now.

"I'll make one up. Like it matters in this town, anyway."

He laughs and says he's on his way and hangs up, and Emma is about to put her phone away when it rings again.

"Snow?"

There is a vague panic in her mother's voice when it comes across the line, and for a moment Emma's heart drops into her stomach. This is it, she thinks, this is what Red's afraid of. But then Snow actually explains, and Emma has to think that this is maybe actually worse than that. Henry's dreams are burning him – literally.

"I think I know the cause, but the burns are more than I ever experienced after my curse," Snow says. Emma wants to go home – this is her son, she should be there – but there are other duties to handle, and she is not the only one capable of looking after Henry, nor the only one entitled. "I'm not sure what to do."

"I'll call Regina," Emma says reluctantly. "No matter how much you hate each other, she's still his mother too. And better versed in sleeping curses, if that's what this is. There's nothing I want more than to come home and deal with this, but she can, and we have other problems. Red got out last night."

"I'm sure she didn't do anything," Snow replies, barely an ounce of doubt in her voice (but still an ounce, nonetheless). Emma frowns.

"I'd bet on it," Emma tells her. "She's not the one I'm worried about." She remembers dark eyes and a dangerous scowl and promising words, and a dark car parked across the road. "How much can you tell me about Albert Spencer?"

/-\

James catches her three streets over from the cannery, pulling up beside her in the police cruiser and waiting impatiently for her to get in. Widow Lucas doesn't move from the front passenger seat, and Emma is too old and too tired and too thoughtful to care. Sliding into the back is an idle action, and taking Red's hand across the vacant space between them is even more so.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" James asks her, glancing in the rear-view mirror in hopes of an answer, but Emma just frowns, ignoring the way Red seems to withdraw as far away from her as she can in the back seat, both cringing and glowering but never retracting her hand. Once, she knows, Ruby looked for more in her life than what she had. And now, Red fears what she found. What it means for her. What it means for Emma, who notes her jacket, slightly dirtied from its night out in the woods on Red but hardly left worse for wear. Who examines Red's mostly clean hands and wonders how they're capable of gouging claw marks into steel. Magic, she guesses. It's plausible.

But ripping that reinforced door right from its hinges? She's not so sure.

"Maybe," she tells him, distracted by suspicions and dark cars and gut feelings. It isn't even minutes before the car pulls up to a stop again and Emma releases Red's hand, trusting her friend to keep herself together for a little while longer.

"That's Billy's truck," Red says when she has her hand back, opening the door to get out – and there goes any and all thoughts of asking the girl to stay in the car. Emma sighs and follows suit.

"Great!" James exclaims. "Who do we call to tow a tow truck?" It's somewhere between exasperated and slightly joking, and Emma nearly smiles as she comes up beside him. Nearly. But then Red's freezing up again with a cautious inhale. "What is it, Ruby? What's wrong?"

"I smell blood."

It's the red alert. Charming is going straight for the truck's cab, the driver's side door, looking for clues, and Granny is stalking off down the other side of the truck, following scents and the rest of her senses. Emma, though – Emma keeps her eyes on Ruby, keeps herself three steps behind and follows the girl wherever she goes. She is not left disappointed.

She can hear Granny and James by the truck when they find what they're looking for – Billy's torso, she presumes, because suddenly enough she's stuck staring at the bloody waist, the guts and gore above the stiff legs, jeans and work boots still intact, strung out on display over the bin edge. Red is screaming, a rough, tortured sound, and Emma is slower to react than she would specifically like to be. Something about blood and entrails does that to a person.

"It was the wolf," Red says, "It was me."

She is pending dissolution into sobs and hysteria, and Emma isn't good with words. She never has been. So she does the best she can with what she has – the best of all bad habits – and reaches out to grip Red's arm. More force than usual – not for a monster, or a killer, or an animal, because Red is none of those things, but for a horrified bystander, a shocked friend. Her grip is harder for the purpose of detaining, but it is not driven by law or legal duty; it's concern. She seizes Red's arms, arrests her gazes, directs her away from Billy's lower half and back towards the cruiser. Red seems caught between fight and forfeit. She quietens down after the minutes pass, tearful but keeping a lid on the hysterics.

"Are you going to arrest me, Emma?"

And despite the tears, the shaking body, the tense set shoulders and the horror, her quiet words are all too easy to hear. Emma just tilts her head, yanking Ruby around none-too-gently and pressing her back against the side of the car with firm hands and dark eyes. She comes to her own conclusions when she meet's Red's gaze. She's always been good at that – perception and deduction, invasive guessing games. It's how she tells the liars from the honest. She wonders if anyone has ever looked at Red before – just looked – when Wolfstime comes and the burden drags along with it. She wonders if she's the only one to see. She's quiet when she asks, and Red stares back at her, all storm beneath the surface, tear tracks and fear.

"Is that what you want?"

It's not a confirmation, it's a caution. Emma's not sure who grasps it least – her, whose lips parted for the words, or Red, who furrows her brow above her tears and stands motionless beneath Emma's hands, stiff on her shoulders. She doesn't supply answers – probably doesn't have them – and Emma resigns herself. She can't search the girl forever. Not with a murder on the pavement ten metres from them.

The idea of looking again, at what's left of Billy's body, makes her stomach roil, but it's kind of her job. Sort of. God, she wishes it wasn't. Still, she waits until Charming comes over before letting Red go at all. Only when he's close enough to grab the brunette if, for whatever reason, she decides to make a run for it, does she actually start to move away. She doesn't want to arrest Red, particularly, but she doesn't trust the rest of the town to leave this alone, whatever this turns out to be. If it comes down to it – to seizure versus her friend's personal safety – Emma will pull the handcuffs. Better her good graces than her life.

She pauses Granny before the sheet can be pulled over Billy's torso and swallows back the bile. This isn't what she had in mind for the morning – at all.

"Red's kills in the past," she starts quietly, knowing that the old woman is close enough to hear. "Did she display them like this?"

"What?"

"Half hanging out of a garbage bin, metres and hardly a blood trail in between?" Emma asks, glancing up at Granny, at the curious expression, the perturbed purse of her lips.

The inconsistencies lurk at the back of her mind, all the way from the freezer door at Granny's to the mutilated body of the mechanic in front of her. Red's behaviour is avid resignation, too quick to believe the worst – not what Emma knows of her. But Emma does know how to look at things, look at the facts, catalogue and derive. Add and subtract. Things don't add up in her head just yet, and somehow she feels like she knows where this is all meant to go, but she doesn't quite know how to get there. She kind of wants to be sick, lurking around the blood, the halved body of someone she's met a few times but has never really known. But she needs to ask. She needs to know.

"How do wolves kill, Widow?" she asks. "How does Red kill?"

Granny looks like she wants to respond, but Red and Charming are arguing over by the car, and the townsfolk are trickling on to the scene. Emma glances at Billy's torso one last time, grimaces and pulls the sheet back over him, and then stands to follow Widow back towards the car.

"I know who you really are, Ruby – even if you've lost sight of it," she hears her deputy saying, loud and with far too much conviction. Emma scowls. This is the David Nolan in him, struggling to move past his previous lack of faith when the woman he loved was put in a similar situation. Too similar. Too much. And it's too late for these words – whether he's directing them at Ruby, or Red, or himself. It's too late, and too much has happened, and the doubts have all crept in to take hold.

"Lock me up," Red tells them, and that's all Emma needs. She knows how this is going to go. James can argue as much as he wants, but Red needs to be appeased, just for a little while. "The freezer couldn't hold me, maybe a jail cell will. I don't need to be protected from other people, David – other people need to be protected from me."

James looks like he wants to argue, but Emma shakes her head at him and waits until Red has been ushered back into the car.

"She didn't do this, Emma," he tells her vehemently when the door is closed, as if the thin wall of glass and metal will stop Red and her super senses from hearing them. And Emma knows – Emma knows that, somehow. She doesn't have a doubt about it, really – Red didn't do this, and it's obvious in Granny's second thoughts when she asks the hard questions, stacking up in the facts and little observations. Red didn't do this – didn't kill the mechanic, didn't miraculously bust out of her cage in the middle of the night to terrorise the town, even if it looks that way. Emma knows. She thinks Red knows too.

But telling her that, saying that it's not her fault and it has nothing to do with her, isn't going to help, regardless of how true it may or may not be. They can say what they want, but it has no effect – Red will hear them, but she won't listen. She doesn't want to.

"Let me worry about Red," she says. "You can worry about the crime scene."

He's her argumentative, loyal father, yes – but he's also her deputy, so he does as he's told.