The Promises Meme

[alethiometric]

the promises meme • Comment with your character's name and fandom in the subject line. • Select an option or roll RNG for a prompt. • Play! prompts i. family. A promise made in the name of family, whether literal or metaphorical. ii. business. No personal feelings involved. Just a working agreement. iii. romantic. A promise to your lover, something that binds you together. iv. enemy. Looks like you made a deal with the devil. v. too good to be true. A promise with hidden caveats. vi. false. A promise you don't intend to keep. vii. broken. A promise you've betrayed. viii. fulfilled. The time has come to make good on your word. ix. bound. A promise you have to keep, whether by threat, blackmail or magic. x. secret. A pact you can't reveal. xi. forever. You're promising forever after. xii. never. You promise that something will never happen. Ever.

Comments

[sheriffing]

It's not that late.

[Meaning he could still get back to Granny's at a decent hour if he wants to sleep and hit the road tomorrow. After what happened tonight, Emma's sure she won't be able rest. She thinks of a shower as she climbs into the car, hoping most of the paperwork can wait until morning.]

This is...not what I was expecting.

[How could anyone expect that someone would have cut Kathryn's heart out? No one in town seems capable of that.]

I'm going to have to tell David.

[clinically]

You don't need to keep trying to put me to bed. I'm not eleven.

[He's having similar thoughts about the prospect of sweet dreams tonight as he backs out into the long, empty road back to town. Besides which, now he's going to be on official paperwork in this investigation (an investigation which increasingly looks like a woman murdered directly after he showed up in town). It's likely there will be something to keep him in the morning.]

You don't have anything concrete to tell right now. Until they run the DNA on... that... it's anybodies. [He taps a hand on the steering wheel.] Not that it's much easier telling someone to prepare for the worst than it is telling them afterwards.

[Surgeon. One of the not-so-perky parts of the job.]

[sheriffing]

Technically it's anybodies, but no one else is missing. And this seems...new. So unless someone decided to stop here to hide it near the car of a woman who was already missing, we know it's hers.

[There's no question about that, and no hope for Kathryn. David will be at the top of the suspect list. Emma hasn't hated this job as much as she's hated Regina trying to tell her how to do it, but this, she hates.]

And I wasn't trying to put you to bed, I was just reminding you that you can leave this insanity at any time.

[He wouldn't know Kathryn if he saw her, he's not a suspect. Besides, a jewelry box? That's not something a guy brings in his luggage if he's just passing through.]

I wouldn't blame you if you headed out tonight.

[clinically]

No one else is missing. Which doesn't rule out anyone else being dead and you not knowing about it yet. I'm not trying to play morbid chicken over this, just pointing out that if it gets out that it's hers and it's not...

[Well, he'd say it would make matters worse, but there has to be a finite degree of how much worse they can get, right? Chase thinks about his own life for a minute and decides not to tempt fate by voicing that out loud.

The sheriff is sitting in a car with a murderer right now. There are all kinds of things people don't know about each other and for a long few minutes the weight of his own knowledge makes Chase fall silent. When he speaks again it's slow, sticky-throated.]

No, I'll—[He'll what. Make sure she's okay? Because that's absurd.]

Maybe tomorrow.

[sheriffing]

Tomorrow.

[Emma accepts that possibility with a nod and little else. He's not like her, in a few days (or less) he'll be gone. It was probably a bad idea to tell him as much about the case as she did, but he's not a part of it. This isn't his problem, just something he took on because he wanted to get a drink with someone he wouldn't be punching later on.]

A lot's going down tomorrow.

[They'll have more answers tomorrow. She'll see what fingerprints she can pull from the box, and hopefully find something other than her own. Regina's warning to do her job echoes in her head, and she knows she's getting hell for this either way.]

[clinically]

[The hospital is one of the few buildings in Storybrooke where the lights stay on all night. It illuminates the parking lot, which could still use one or two more freestanding lamp posts to act as a guide. But it's nice to be somewhere bright. It feels just a fraction warmer somehow.]

That might be a talent for understatement. [He exhales as he pulls the car into a space, looking down at his jacket packed round the box in her lap, then up at her already too-drawn face.] You'll get through.

[He brings a hand to rest over hers as he says it.]

[sheriffing]

I always do. [She admits that with a slightly bitter edge creeping in to the soft, low agreement. So far, Emma didn't ask for backup in going out, and she deliberately didn't accept help while they were in the forest. Comfort, however, she accepts willingly, leaving her hand under his until she realizes she's just dragging this out and pushes her car door open.]

Come on, you need to get through one last visit to Storybrooke General. [She holds tight to his jacket on the way up to the door, speaking to the first nun who approaches her and then rushes off to find someone. Hopefully they'll be so shocked, they might work quickly.]

I'm sure it's not the most advanced hospital you've been in. [Maybe the least.]

[clinically]

[Comfort is something he can be very good at, if only for the night. And this, like the last night he spent here, and the night before, could (should) be he last in town.

There's some small reluctance as he draws his hand back, but he follows her soon enough.]

When I was at med school I spent a rotation treating patients on sheep stations out in Western Australia. Half the time their idea of a clean working environment involved dousing the table with sheep dip. [He bumps a shoulder with her.] It's not the least.

[For such a small place, having a decent sized hospital with facilities for long-term care is actually quite impressive. It's certainly preferable to having to ship emergency cases to the next town over.]

Though, sheep stations tended to have less nuns.

[That might not be the most comfortable observation, but he deflects any question over it with a wry smile. This is more about distracting her from the wait than anything else.]

[sheriffing]

You get used to the nuns after a while.

[At least Emma has, now that she realizes they don't go around judging people. She has never taken any interest in religion, but these women seem determined to help people more than to push their faith on everyone else, and that's something she can respect.

The thought of Chase being uncomfortable is enough to make her lips twitch with amusement, but a smile - not quite. She's still holding a box with a heart in it, and she knows it's the heart of a woman who only wanted to start her life over after a painful betrayal. Kathryn didn't deserve this; no one deserves this.]

You don't seem like the sheep station type.

[If it sounds like she's implying that she expects he likes to be comfortable, she is. Most people would, it's not meant as an insult.]

[clinically]

It's not like I was raised on one. [Actually, he was more or less raised by nuns.] But three months swapping the OR for a clapped out little bush plane and on-the-spot trauma work hundreds of miles from the nearest emergency department sounded like fun.

[And it had been. As well as a chance to get away from being who he was, the son of who he was, the reputation his father had around the hospital and the long shadow the man cast. New Jersey had been a later extension of the same thought.

He's used to the way most people take him. There are enough silver spoon and yachting jokes to last him a lifetime - and it's not something he can exactly deny. There was always money in his life. He's used to some of what it can offer.]

But [he concedes,] you're right. I hate sheep.

[sheriffing]

I hate she smell.

[She's thinking less of sheep and more of the scent in Gold's shop the day he was working in the back. Emma's type of roughing it involves living out of a car, not living in the middle of nowhere. What's harder, she couldn't say for sure. But doing what she did wasn't easy, even if there were days when it felt like an adventure.]

But it's not as bad as this.

[The box, the heart. His jacket - she will definitely be paying to have it cleaned for him. When the man they're waiting for finally decides to come over, she does all of the talking, not bothering to explain Chase's presence in an effort to keep him uninvolved. He'll be in her reports, there's no way around that, but he doesn't need random people asking him questions.

She unwraps the box and sets his jacket on the counter while she waits so that the heart can be removed without disturbing the box. They don't do it there, and she almost asks to watch, but she allows them to take it away so that they're stuck waiting again.]

Sometimes I hate people, too.