Fic: A Hand to Hold (Part 4 of Skeptics and True Believers)
Title: A Hand to Hold (Part 4 of Skeptics and True Believers)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Angst
Characters/Pairings: Mad Swan (Emma/Jefferson), Archie Hopper, Regina Mills
Summary: Emma comes home, the night after she and Mary Margaret are kidnapped, to find Jefferson sat on her sofa. They now have a problem: he keeps being pulled back there
Chapter 1: Like Bites of Poisoned Fruit
Chapter 2: Patchwork Sanctuary
Chapter 3: Cages and Keys
Emma walks Jefferson to his first meeting with Dr Hopper, and even offers to wait outside.
She hopes he won’t do something drastic in the time between her leaving him and them meeting up again. She’s actually reached a point where doesn’t think that he’ll drug her again - but she still doesn’t eat anything she didn’t buy and prepare herself - or that he’s going to break any laws or stab her in the back.
They got through a whole movie together the night before. They even laughed at the same jokes.
So she’s okay leaving him with Dr Hopper, and going to see to Miss Ginger’s missing garden gnome. She walks along the street, for once without her human shadow, and she’s genuinely smiling.
Until she almost runs right into Regina: that knocks the smile right off her face.
“Sheriff Swan, I was hoping to bump into you soon.”
“What’s the problem, Madame Mayor?” the less time Emma has to spend with Regina, the better it was for everyone.
“My problem is that you’re harbouring a dangerous lunatic.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Jeffery Capper. He’s been seen creeping through town, peering in windows, running through the woods in the dead of night. He’s sick, Sheriff Swan, he needs help.”
“He’s with Dr Hopper right now.”
“I think we both know that that won’t be enough. He’s a danger to himself and others.”
Emma watched her for a moment, eyes narrowed, “He’s getting better.”
“And you’re a qualified psychiatric professional.”
“Obviously not… I don’t think that locking the guy up is the best solution.”
“For whom, Sheriff Swan? For him or for the town?”
--
Jefferson watches Dr Hopper, as Dr Hopper watches him.
He’s giving something away. He can feel it, there’s a nervous twitch in his right index figure, or a manic tilt to his smile. Jefferson lived an entire life trying to not be seen; Hatter was watched every hour of every day, a shiny, crazy bird in a shining cage.
But Hatter isn’t here, the Curse has seen to that, and Jefferson almost misses him. Being Hatter makes things easier, the pain can balance out anything the world throws at him. Hatter can scream and howl at the moon, and holds nothing inside. Hatter would give Archie what he’s looking for and then some.
But Hatter isn’t here.
“How are you feeling today, Jeffery?”
“My name is Jefferson.” He stresses his name, sounds it out, rolls it around until it becomes an internal war cry. He’ll behave like a rational, sane human being, like he belongs in this slate-grey mindfuck of a town, but he won’t wear Regina’s lie around his neck.
“Shall we settle on Jeff?” Archie’s smiling, trying to set him at ease, and he stretches his lips into a smile.
Jeff will work for now.
“Alright.”
“So how do you feel, today?”
“Today I feel…” he considers, looks to the side, tries to find the emotion he knows is in there somewhere, “Bored.”
Archie nods, “Do you often feel bored?”
“I can’t leave town, and there isn’t exactly a bowling alley and a multiplex around the corner.”
“And do you feel trapped here, in Storybrooke?”
“Everyone’s trapped here.”
“You’re not alone in feeling that.” Archie’s voice is measured, soothing, and Jefferson hears none of the sharpness that lies create. This man believes what he’s saying. “But it’s not a pleasant feeling, is it?”
“It’s like… being trapped inside a box at the centre of a hedge maze.”
They continue in this fashion for an hour, and Jefferson becomes more adept at masking the truth. This man cannot see Hatter, should not see Hatter. Hatter would be locked away, sectioned, labelled a lunatic and shut away, far from the world.
Jefferson is enjoying his freedom. Emma is helping to bring him into the world.
And then, five minutes before their time is up, Archie strikes a massive, throbbing nerve, “What about family?”
“What about family?” Jefferson stills, his muscles tense. He can’t do this, not now, not yet.
“Well, you haven’t mentioned anyone to me except for Sheriff Swan, no parents or siblings. I was wondering if there was anything you wanted to discuss?”
“I’m an only child, and my parents passed away years ago.” He pauses, and tries to swallow down the words, summoning the Curse from the corners of his mind to smother Hatter’s voice, screaming Grace’s name in the blackness.
But he can do this; he can keep his mouth clamped shut.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Were you ever married?”
And Jefferson’s shaking, all over, his heart racing faster than the day he slipped through the Queen of Heart’s tearoom, running for the Hall of Mirrors. Hatter smiles. His silver dagger teeth gleam in the darkness of Jefferson’s mind. And he whispers, softly, Alice.
“Jeff?” Archie prompts, concerned by his silence.
Archie is an insect in a little tuxedo, holding an umbrella over his tiny green head. And oh, Grace would have loved that: she would have carried him in her palms, cupping her hands to shield him from the wind.
Hatter’s smile reaches Jefferson’s lips, wide and manic, and Archie frowns, “Are you feeling alright?”
“Splendid.” Hatter replies, and then he’s across the room, his hand around Archie’s throat, “Stop your questions, cricket, you don’t need the answers.”
He expects Hopper to fight back, to throw him off or to struggle. But he doesn’t. He relaxes back in his chair, Hatter’s hand around his throat, and just looks up at him “I can help, Jeff,” he chokes out, “You just need to let me.”
Hatter can’t see what he’s trying to pull. He can’t hear the jagged lies; taste the bitter, sour tang of deceit or self-interest.
Jefferson regains his eyes, and stares in horror at his hand around Archie’s throat, “I… I apologise…” he stands up straight, lowers his trembling fingers to his side.
He runs, as fast as his legs can carry him, out of the office and into the waiting room. He collides with Emma at the front door, and he knows he looks a mess. His eyes are still wide as dinner plates, his nemesis lurks in the back of his mind, and the terror raises the hairs on the back of his neck, around his scar.
Emma looks at him with more fear than he’s seen on her face since the night he pointed a gun at her head.
He knows her distress mimics his own.
--
She comes out of her room on Saturday morning, and it’s her day off. She’s still in pyjamas, assumes Jefferson will still be asleep. The man sleeps like the dead.
They haven’t spoken about the incident with Dr Hopper. She’s afraid to ask, and she knows he doesn’t want to explain.
Dr Hopper keeps calling; it seems rude to answer, to deny Jefferson the chance to tell her the truth on his own. She’ll go see Archie herself on Monday, if Jefferson hasn’t opened up by then.
But she’s learnt from her relationship with Henry that, with therapy, it’s better to allow the patient to help himself.
He’s sat on her sofa, watching cartoons. The title card comes on while she watches from her bedroom door, something about a Robot Unicorn Attack. “That seems highly developed and mature.” She mutters.
He turns around, and today is one of his good days because he’s smiling like a child with a new puppy, “It’s amazing!”
Despite herself, she’s intrigued. Because he’s so endearing when he’s like this, when he’s happy and innocent and just… sweet. Like the best friend she never had. So she comes around to sit next to him, and they curl up under Mary Margaret’s hand-stitched crazy quilt on the sofa.
“That’s Silverwing,” he points, seriously, to a rather evil looking unicorn that’s just come on the screen, “He’s the bad guy, but he secretly has a heart of gold. He lost his true love, you see, and it’s made him bitter and twisted.”
“Cartoons are complex these days,” she says, “In my day it was just a cat chasing a mouse.”
“I might have elaborated a little. Evil isn’t born, it’s made.” He frowns, “I hope they realise that before Harmony and Sunflower throw him into a giant ceiling fan.”
She laughs, and he’s laughing too, and the sunlight streams in from the windows.
“How can you even watch this?” she asks, after a minute, “Won’t it set off an episode or something?”
“I can handle things like this,” he answers, eyes on the screen, “It’s not as randomly weird as Wonderland, and it’s not as cruel or fierce. Everything is what it seems, and the evil is trapped behind the screen.”
And she understands. How can she not, when she reminds herself everyday that Henry’s Evil Queen is trapped inside a book, and that she doesn’t really run the town? A belief in fiction can be a powerful reassurance, especially in this world where magic seems so close and so menacing.
So they watch the cartoons all morning, reruns of Fairly Odd Parents, of Spongebob Squarepants, and even a few Loony Toons that Emma remembers from her childhood. And all the jokes are funnier, and weirder, and more surprising when viewed through adult eyes. She wonders if maybe he’s driving her insane, wonders if ever she would have done this in the days before their strange little friendship. Perhaps a little madness isn’t always a bad thing.
Their feet are pressed together under the quilt, the only skin-to-skin contact they’ve ever had. Emma finds no fear in their proximity, despite their history.
Because he can’t hurt her, not now: not now that they’ve sat together in the sunshine, and trapped all the monsters in ink and pencil lead, behind a television screen.
--
He sees Grace in the street, just once, and then it’s all the time. She’s everywhere: in the comic book store with Henry Mills, in the 7-11 with her new mother, around corners and reflected in shop windows. And he never says a word to her, never approaches her.
He’s her father, and he wants her to be happy. And here she is, smiling with her friends, chatting with shopkeepers, playing hide-and-seek in the park. What father couldn’t delight in seeing his child so safe and so at peace?
He wants her to smile at him, so he smiles at her.
And she always smiles back, his Grace: she is a girl born of sunlight, her mother’s daughter through and through. Alice always had a smile for every creature she met. Alice never judged at first sight, and Grace inherited that trait. She smiles like there’s nothing wrong with the world, and for those moments wishing makes it so.
Emma doesn’t notice the smiling, but she sees Grace. Even though she calls her Paige, even though she steers Jefferson away the second she catches sight of her.
And he’s glad for her presence, for her warm and stable hand on his forearm, her fingers weaving between his, guiding him away from the pain of Grace’s blue eyes and beaming grin. Emma is a mother herself, and she understands how it is to have to avoid your own child.
So she’s there to stop him from doing something stupid. She’s there to keep Hatter in his cage, to keep him from snatching his daughter into his arms and running far and fast.
She keeps him sane, better than any Curse.
And then she takes him for ice cream, and they smile across the table, and a little more of the sadness in her eyes falls away every time. He’s bringing the Alice out in her, the brightness and curiosity, the innocence.
They smile together like children, like conspirators, like the only sane people in a world of lunatics.