Huh.
A thumb pressed hard into his side, the digit poking deep at his ribs as he waited for it.A wince.
A twinge, even.
A white-hot grind of bone against bone that forced his breath to hitch the night before.
Huh. He pushed harder, enough for the knuckle to whiten as he tried to get a single sense of what had kept him up for at least an hour. Nothing… At least, nothing past a dull phantom soreness, but he’d dealt with worse after a good few hours in a batting cage without stretching first.
This should have been far more than that.
Not when he’d taken on a demon straight from hell and been hit so hard he’d seen literal stars behind his eyelids. Lying on the wet pavement, waiting for his lungs to collapse as he tasted his own blood, he’d been expecting a good week in the hospital — at minimum — but now…
Just sixteen hours later…
"Stop touching yourself."
Chad bit down a laugh at the sound of the rasp, head leaning back to bump the cushion of his plush chair. “Couldn’t have gone with some better phrasing there, Red?”
The end of his sentence forced a flinch from the other speaker, Chad blinking for a moment as he fully turned to look at the girl in question. Ruby Lucas shook her head for a moment, the sheriff’s assistant — and sometimes server — slouched low on a black-and-white chaise lounge on the other side of the office. The girl had her red sneakers kicked up on the pristine upholstery, a fresh new flannel — red as ever — tied around her waist as she lay there in dark jeans and a red tank top.
Dark hair pulled back in a messy knot, she blew a strand out of her face before bothering to even look at Chad; flinch seemingly forgotten. “I gave you six courtesy pokes. You’re on number twelve about now.”Chad rolled his eyes as he let his hand drop. “Just doing a little structural integrity check.”
His gaze dropped back down to those hands of his; the same knuckles that had been scraped raw and bleeding onto asphalt now pristine as they had been the last morning. See, I can accept Ruby, sure…
Honestly, the girl was a werewolf and well, who really knew what they could do?On the other hand, he was just a normal young man. Of means, sure, but those means didn’t include healing like Wolverine. Humans don’t just sleep off cracked ribs.
"I get it.” Ruby spoke up again. “You expect it to hurt, and your brain just sort of misfires when it doesn't."
"Dealing with that right now, actually." Chad clicked his tongue. “Although I probably shouldn’t look the gift horse in the mouth too much, right? I could be wrapped up like a mummy right now.”
“Yeah…” Across the polished desk of marble and mahogany, David Nolan let out a husky groan as the man shifted his weight in the executive chair. “Imagine that.”
Unlike him and Ruby, the two other people in the office were thoroughly battered, looking exactly like men who’d come off lucky after a back-alley slaughter. Thick white bandages were wrapped tight under David’s shirt, a gash stitched shut across his forehead and covered over with a decent amount of gauze. Graham chose to stand, unlike everyone else, even though he only looked marginally better than the mayor; a dark purple bruise along the resurrected sheriff’s jawline, left wrist wrapped in white athletic tape, and his left leg favored heavily.
“No, werewolf biology, I get.” His head dipped over to the barely-there Ruby, the girl already on her phone, before gesturing at his own chest. “But what about me? Blue light or not, I feel kinda good for a guy who got tossed around a city street a couple times.”“Magic.”/“Magic.”/“Magic.”Blue eyes blinked at the one-word answer echoed from three different voices, surround-sound making it hard to know who to face. “Is that just the answer to e-”“Yes.”/“Yes.”/“Yes.”
Graham punctuated his own “Yes” with a chuckle as he leaned further up against the window. “I hate to bring this up, but you might have heard that I wasn’t alive this time last week. So yeah, lad, magic.”Chad nodded his head slowly for a few seconds, processing that. As much as he hated answers like that, he also couldn’t deny the simple truth of it. “...alright, then. I’ll take the loss.”Not like it’s my first in this place.
Past that, though, Graham’s situation raised some questions he still needed answered. For instance… What’s the lifespan with magic in the mix? Accidental or unforeseen deaths were one thing and after last night, he doubted they were minimal at all; but extending what you already had, though? Questions for later.
He crossed his arms, head tilting again as he scanned the posh room done all in black and white with clear expense put into it; crown molding and well-designed marble floor in question catching his eye. “Follow-up question for now, though. This is a municipal building in a town of four thousand or something. Why is it done up like it belongs to my great-aunt Bree?”To be honest, that wasn’t entirely true. For one, Great-Aunt Breanna would never in her life be this minimalist with her color scheme or understated in her taste. A lot more gold and jewelry, for one.
“It’s…” David’s hands rubbed at the bridge of his nose, exhaustion bleeding out of him with a sigh. “It’s Regina’s office. Or it was."
"Ah. Right." Chad raised his eyebrows, a half-smile ghosting his lips. "Evil Queen has excellent taste in mid-century modern upholstery. Got it."The afternoon settled in as he nodded again, just one more absurdity after the Nightmare attack they all lived through the night before. So, that’s why we’re not in the sheriff’s office.
"With King George gone..." As if reading Chad’s mind, David leaned forward to swallow a mouthful of air. "I mean, with Albert Spencer dead, the town council is a mess, meaning I have to step up a bit more than I have before. If we're going to hold this town together, I have to do my part."
We? Chad raised an eyebrow. “Beautiful sentiment, Mr. Mayor. Really is. However…” Chad leaned forward across the marble to look the man in the eye. “It doesn’t solve my immediate issue.”David blinked back at him, eyes still bleary from whatever mix of painkillers he was on. “Which is?”"I have absolutely no idea what the hell I’m telling my father tomorrow.” He shook his head too quickly, a small headache tight behind his eyes. “My uncle is already looking for his annoying baby boy and heir apparent. If I tell them my wizard cousin got sucked into an alternate dimension by a demon and I spent the night fighting a werewolf-”“Not a werewolf.”Chad rolled his eyes again, Ruby’s interruption helping no one. “-fighting a monster with superpowers, the McHale family is going to roll into this town with a PMC and…” His mouth worked for a moment, sighing out loud. “I don’t know, a priest."
"We can help you workshop a story, no problem." David brightened for a moment, an immediate problem clearly giving the man some direction. "We can say Finn went up north. Off the grid."
"Yeah, no.” Chad snorted loud as he leaned back against the chair, fingers locked over his chest. “Thanks, but absolutely no thanks." He looked at both men in front of him. "You guys are the worst at lying. Just terrible. A five-year-old could crack your alibis. I'll handle my family on my own. Just tell me what else I need to worry about in this town."
Graham shifted his weight against the wall. “Well, the magic is spreading. Storybrooke might not be so locked off at this rate.” The man raised a hand, two fingers gingerly rubbing the bruise along his jawline. “It’s already past the town line, bleeding into the woods nearly a quarter-mile out.”
“Wait-wait-wait.” Ruby’s legs swung off the chaise, green eyes finally off her phone. "So that means what, exactly? Our memories still…"Chad frowned as Ruby trailed off, knowledge of the Curse still hard to take in as much as he believed it all. Magic memory wipe, too. This town has everything.
"Aye, well…" Graham nodded in the wolf-girl’s direction. "Anyone ever under the original curse… they cross that quarter-mile, their memories go and they’re right back to being exactly who Regina made them."
Ruby let her head hang, knot falling free as her hair fell over her face in a wave. “So, we're still trapped.”“Not trapped, exactly.” Graham tilted a palm, a frown on his face. “Those memories trail back, it seems. Bit by bit, if you give them long enough. And the way the border’s expanding, a few more years at this rate and distance will be less of a problem.”
Wait… Chad frowned, jaw tight as he looked up at Graham."How do you know that? Did you throw someone over the line to test it? How’d you figure the exact distance even?"
David tensed all at once, eyes dropping to his desk; Graham suddenly finding the space above the closed door interesting at the same time. After a few seconds of odd silence, it was the mayor who chose to break it. “Mister Gold…”“Gold.” Chad repeated the name softly.
"Yes. Gold." David echoed the name out into the office. "He's been checking the perimeter for us, using his magic to map the spread of the changed magic."
The young man let a patient sigh stretch over the desk before his eyes rose in time to meet David’s again. “So… the one who threw my cousin down a well and started all of this. The demon running this sick little checkerboard.”"Chad, listen—" David started, palms falling flat on the marble desk top."No, David, you listen.” His interruption was as polite as he could manage, voice forced tight and focused to push as much anger away as humanly possible. “I threw myself in front of pretty much certain death for you last night. I respect what you had to deal with… with all this. But if you’re working with the psycho who disappeared my little cousin, I’m bringing heat down on this town by sunset tomorrow. I don’t care about the magic.”Another breath left him, air hissing through tightly clenched teeth. “I will bury him.”“...I understand.”
Chad blinked over the table at him. “Do you?”“I do. I understand your anger, Chad. I swear it.” David spoke the words like a decree, the man pushing off his hands as he rose to his feet. “Every day in this town, I have to push myself to make nice with a woman who’s tried to make my wife’s left hell since she was a child, who cost me the chance to see my daughter grow up. The same woman who’s the real reason my wife and my daughter were sent off into a world I wasn’t sure still existed.” The man pulled in a breath of his own, deep and heavy. “That’s why I need him though, Chad. My wife and daughter ended up in the same place Finn is and, more than likely, he’s found his way to them. And I need Gold around to help them get back if possible.”Chad stared back at David, jaw set tight as the mayor spoke.
“I don’t know how long that’s going to take. I don’t know what magic he needs to work. But Gold is powerful, and he’s our best bet right now.”
The sound of a tongue clicking against teeth bounced off marble flooring and crown molding as Chad tore his eyes off David Nolan. Man can make a speech, I guess.
"Alright.” The word almost went muffled as Chad’s hands rose to scrub at his face. "Jesus Christ, I’m sorry, okay? I forgot your family got caught up in this mess too. This is just... it's kind of a lot for me.”
The young man bit back a sigh as he raised his face from his hands. “At least you still have your son here with you. That's something."
"Oh, you mean Henry?” David blinked, thick brows furrowing together. “No, he's my grandson."
Chad froze, hands still resting on his face as he stared at David for three solid seconds.
"...yeah, okay."