A Curse Upon Thee 18B

“You… I shouldn’t have called… I-I…” David Nolan was standing in the exact middle of the hallway outside as Finn and Emma walked out the apartment door, the man tall and blond and handsome as ever, even by the time the crime scene techs arrived. The man didn’t move much for all his rambling, sounding not too different from the homeless woman Finn had just helped as he stood like a cheap plaster statue. Hands raised high, he just shook his head as his whole world collapsed around him. “She… Mary Margaret didn’t do this…”

He clearly wasn’t talking to Finn, or Emma, or even the guys in the yellow windbreakers hauling equipment through and out the door as they roped off the apartment. “I know that…” His voice cracked, splitting right down the middle as he finally looked up. “Mary Margaret wouldn’t… she couldn’t…”

Finn almost felt bad for the guy.

Almost.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Davey.”

Two sets of eyes, blue and green from two different blondes, turned Finn’s way. Both of them clearly confused, Finn pursed his lips as they almost looked oddly… similar?

“Finn…” Emma’s voice pulled him back, her green eyes narrowed right at him. “What are you talking about? We have a heart sitting there… in that apartment. My apartment.” She let out a breath, something more than just tension set free with it. “Mary Margaret’s apartment.”

“Well, yeah, I have eyes.” Finn rolled them, mouth a flat line even as both hands shook against his jacket from inside the pockets. “But we all know who found it, right?”

His boss’s mouth opened in a slight ‘o’ as those same green eyes slid to the tall man standing next to her. “…yeah, yeah, we do.”

It took David a second to piece it together, the man still shaking. By the time he did, though, he blinked back at the both of them, palms up and in front of his chest. “I… I didn’t…”

“Maybe.” Finn cut it short with one word before the man could go on another five-minute unfinished babble-on again. “Maybe you didn’t. You probably didn’t. You look like a goddamn mess, but not a bloody mess. And I don’t know you, but you don’t look stupid enough to still be there after calling in an anonymous tip.”

Finn glanced over at Emma. “Is he?”

“No.”

“Your first character witness and from the sheriff, go you.” He looked back at the wide-eyed David, the man still too frazzled to be insulted. The dude was a walking talking mess and Finn almost felt bad at delivering even more bad news on his head, but what he had to say next was also obvious.

If he couldn’t handle that, then… “Unfortunately, you’re still the husband of the missing wife and also kinda cheating on her, so unless we find evidence Mary Margaret is secretly an axe murderer, you’re still suspect numero fucking uno.”

Another shudder of a breath left David Nolan, the man slumping back against the wall. “O-oh God…”

“You should go.”

David looked up again, hands raised from his hands to stare at Emma.

“You should go.” Her voice wasn’t unkind as she repeated the three words, but it still came with the same heaviness to it she used when she was officially wearing that silver badge. “We’ll handle this.”

David didn’t move, the man looking past her to stare at the door.

“David.” Firmer now, the cop’s voice came loud and hard as a bullet. “Go.”

After a few long seconds of staring, the man finally stumbled his way out of the hallway, one hand bracing against the wall for support — mental or physical, Finn wasn’t sure — before he disappeared around the corner. 

The second his footsteps fully faded to nothing, Emma turned back to Finn. “The hell, Phineas?”

Full name, wow. “What?”

She glared right at him, the woman only ten years older than him managing to merge mom-energy she claimed not to have with police authority. “Maybe everything you just said.”

Finn looked back through the door at the technicians moving around, the last bit of yellow tape going up. “Was any of it not true or…”

“There’s a thing called bedside manner, Finn.” His boss said his name with a sigh. “Try and find some.”

Finn clicked his tongue, hands still moving even as he clenched his fists tight. “That’s for doctors, Em. We’re cops. We can be as rude as we want.”

That actually did stop Emma for a moment, the woman tilting her head from side to side as she seemed to mull that over. “Try not to abuse your authority, please.”
Finn tilted his head back. “Shoulda said something before I used your computer to print myself a driver’s license.”

“…you’re joking, right?”

Finn didn’t answer that.

The sheriff of Storybrooke opened her mouth as if to say something else but, after a long moment, her posture shifted out of the corner of his eyes. She leaned in and Emma Swan’s voice dropped low enough that the forensic techs definitely couldn’t hear what she said to him next. “What did you feel?”

Finn blinked at that, tearing his eyes away from the door. “W-what?”

“Don’t play dumb.” Emma Swan crossed her arms over her bright-red leather jacket, lie-detecting eyes locked firmly onto his. “I brushed it off back there because David was around but we both know you said something about  ‘bad vibes.’ Hell, you looked green the second you walked in there. So…” 

She leaned in even closer. “What did you feel?”

Finn’s jaw worked for a second, one hand coming free from his jacket to run through his messy mane he called a hairstyle. How do I… It was hard enough puting Jujutsu shit in terms Emma could understand, but explaining a whole sense she didn’t have was just asking for way too much.

Even still…

“It’s… wrong. Whatever I’m getting off that isn’t like ‘end of days’ evil, but it’s definitely up there with something I wouldn’t wanna ever touch.” His head tilted back towards the door, vaguely in the direction of the wooden box being swarmed by techs with cameras and other tools. “More than anything, the energy on that thing. No way it’s MM’s, though.”

“Energy.” He could tell Emma wasn’t trying to be deadpan but it still didn’t stop what he heard.

“Yeah. Energy.” He clicked his tongue, three syllables hitting harder as they punched their way out. “Everyone’s got a… a signature, I guess. Like if a fingerprint had a face…”

Emma blinked. “So, a face.”

I mean, if you’re gonna fuck up the analogy. Finn bit back a sigh, aware he already fucked it up first. “Yeah, anyway… Mary Margaret’s is…” He frowned, brow furrowing as he tried to translate the intangible into something a cynical sheriff could digest. “Warm. Gentle. Like… I dunno, like fresh-baked bread, and forest air and clean linens or some shit. It’s soft.”

Emma’s eyebrow went up in a slow, skeptical arch.

“Yeah, and I know how that sounds.” Finn clicked his tongue again, hands shoved back deeper into his pockets. “But that?” He jerked his chin back over to the apartment. “That’s… What that thing is… it’s just controlled and dark and mean. It feels like stepping into a freezer full of dead things. And I’ve felt it before.”

“Where?”

Blue eyes leveled at green. “Who do you think, Em?” 

Emma was quiet for too long, jaw tight as a muscle ticked near her ear. 

Finally… “Can you prove it?”

“Hell, to anyone who could sniff a courtroom?” Finn laughed out loud, the sound scraping the back of his throat. “No. Fuck no. ‘Your Honor, my invisible magic radar says the Mayor is a psycho witch with heart-killer powers.’” He raised an eyebrow back at Emma. “Yeah, that’ll go great.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.” She didn’t have to sigh for Finn to hear the defeat in her voice. “It doesn’t matter what we know, then. Knowing doesn’t mean shit if we can’t prove it.”

One of the techs — some middle-aged guy with thinning hair — popped his head out the door and lowered his camera from his face. “Sheriff Swan? We’re gonna need to bag this and get it to the lab at the hospital. Dr. Whale’s gonna want to run some tests, confirm it’s human.”

“It’s human.” Emma didn’t even look his way.

“Still gotta confirm it, ma’am.”

The sheriff sighed. “Yeah. Fine.” She waved a hand his way. “Do it.”

Finn folded his arms over his chest, both he and Emma looking at each other. Regina.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Small towns didn’t have much going for them.

Unless you were looking for community, then they had a lot going for them.

Unfortunately, that community came with one thing

Gossip.

Finn didn’t know how it happened so fast, even with Sidney Glass and his shitty little tabloid newspaper. Whatever it was, the Storybrooke gossip mill had already done what it did best, churning up misery into entertainment for the small town of roughly four-thousand. Meaning that by the time Mary Margaret was officially brought in for an initial round of questioning that evening, half the town already knew the basics.

And they’d already held court with the public opinion deciding that she was guilty.

Finn saw it happen in real-time that evening standing outside her apartment, a bitter cup of coffee in hand as Mary Margaret was escorted out at Emma’s side, the woman with her head down and teary-eyed as she hugged her cardigan tight against the evening chill.

An older woman with a face like a dried crabapple was walking down the street toward them as she took a hard deliberate left, the woman crossing the street entirely as if the schoolteacher was suddenly radioactive. Mary Margaret’s face went a chalky pale, the younger woman faltering  for a half-second even as Emma held her up with a gentle hand.

“Unbelievable.”

His eyes slid to the left where Ruby stood beside him, his girl’s arms crossed so tight over her chest it almost looked painful. “That’s Mrs. Patterson. Mary Margaret tutored her kid for like half of last year. Three days a week. For free.”

“Yeah, well.” Finn took a slow sip of his coffee, hot liquid almost making him wince as he tipped the cup back. “People are shit.”

Ruby almost growled. “You’re not wrong.” 

They stood there in silence, cold evening air biting at Finn’s cheeks until a dark car drove down the road; an older half-beat sedan that didn’t seem to be moving all that fast. The speed — or lack of it — became even more obvious as it slowed down just enough for the driver to roll down his window and shout something into the quiet night.

The engine noise drowned out the exact words but the tone was clear enough. Mary Margaret flinched like she’d been hit, Emma whirling on the car as it peeled off into the night. 

“I’m gonna kill someone.” Ruby’s eyes tracked the taillights, fingernails digging into her own arms.

Finn took another sip of coffee. “Get in line, Bee. Get in line.”