— What, then?
— Don't you think, — Emma said, — that hearts can kind of see truth? A little better than eyes?
— I’m surprised to hear you say that, — said Mary Margaret.
— Who said there wasn’t a romantic in me? — Emma said. — Somewhere. Deep down.
— Not me.
Mary Margaret was surprised by her friend’s advice, but in her heart she knew that she wanted to go, she wanted to choose David. She didn’t understand how they’d gotten here quite as fast as they had, but she didn’t care.
The mayor had a meeting that night, and Henry took the opportunity to sneak out and come to Emma and Mary Margaret’s apartment.
At the door, Emma took one look at him and said, — You can’t keep doing this.
— She’s out, — he said. — She won’t be home until like ten!
Emma begrudgingly let him in, knowing that she was close to helpless against him when he got that excited about things. It was only eight o’clock, after all, and Mary Margaret had come in, changed her clothes, spilled her guts, and hurried out an hour ago.
— So, — Emma said, sitting down across from Henry at the table. — What should we do?
— You didn’t let me tell you the end of the story, — Henry said. — About Prince Charming.
— That’s right, I didn’t.
— I know you think it’s stupid, but it’s important, — Henry said. — I saw the way he looked when he was asking about her. And it’s natural!
— Why is that? — Emma said.
— Because of the ring, — Henry said.
— Explain.
— After Charming agreed to stay as Prince Charming, he had to go and say good-bye to his mother for the last time. She knew he was being forced to marry Abigail, and that he believed in true love, so it was his mom who gave him that ring. When she gave it to him, she told him that love always would follow the ring.
— Cute, — Emma said. — He and Snow White fell in love trying to get the ring back.
— Right! — Henry exclaimed. — So it turned out that love did always follow it.
— Kind of, — Emma said. — I guess so. — She did always like that about fairy tales, the way prophecies would end up coming true, but in a way no one ever expected.
— It’s a nice story, — Emma said.
— It’s not a story.
— Fine, — Emma said. — It’s a nice story about something that’s not a story.
— I think next time you see Mary Margaret, — Henry said, — you should look at what she wears around her neck. Before you think you’re so smart.
— Why is that?
— Because she has it, — Henry said. — That’s the ring.
Emma realized she knew what he was talking about — she’d seen the ring on a chain around Mary Margaret’s neck. She hadn’t thought much about it and had never asked her what it was. She’d always just assumed it was a family heirloom.
— So just to get this straight, — Emma said. — Your teacher, who is Snow White, who is also my mother, who has fallen in love with a man with amnesia, who is Prince Charming, is right now wearing a ring around her neck that was, for a time, in the possession of a gang of greedy bridge trolls and which was, before that, stolen by her from Prince Charming who was on his way to give it to King Midas’s daughter, Abigail.
— Who is actually Kathryn, — Henry added.
— Got it, — Emma said. — All cleared up.
Henry nodded.
— Yup. All cleared up.
Mary Margaret went to the toll bridge knowing she was going to get hurt Despite the fact that she’d believed David when he told her about his feelings, the man was flaky somehow, he was… he didn’t know who he was. Not literally, not metaphorically, not any way. Why was she letting herself fall into this?
Because a part of you believes, came an answer from somewhere within herself.
She was early to the bridge, and she went down beside the water to listen to it trickle, to wait. The moon was big and bright. Her hand went to her necklace, and she twisted the ring between two fingers as she wondered what life might look like with him. Would the town hate her for taking David away from a married woman? Did it matter? She didn’t know. Love was worth quite a lot, though. She knew that much.
She waited alone for what felt like a long time. The pleasure of the fantasy was now starting to shift into anxiety. He was late, and this brought reality into sharp relief. Another side of her — the skeptic — began to tick off all the problems with this situation, starting off with what was glaringly obvious: She didn’t know him. She did not know this man and was acting like she loved him. How much, she wondered, could loneliness make you believe in something you’d invented, just to make it hurt a little less?
— Mary Margaret.
She turned and smiled, saw him.
— You came, — he said, moving toward her. He stopped when he reached her, and held her arms as she tried to embrace him.
— Of course I did, — she said, looking worried. — But you sound… disappointed.
— It’s not that, — he said, still out of breath. — It’s that I… I remember.
Mary Margaret looked into his eyes, considering this, then took a step back.
— Your old life, you mean, — she said flatly.
— Everything, — he said. — I–I got lost on the way, and I went into Mr. Gold’s shop, and I saw this… this windmill for sale there. And I had this whole flood of memories about Kathryn, about getting the house together. I–It’s in there, Mary Margaret. A lot of things are in there. And I’m remembering.
— And you remember that you love Kathryn.
He stared at her.
She didn’t say anything — she had no interest in letting him off the hook.
— I don’t know, — he said. — I just don’t know. But I remember her now, and I feel like I have to honor those memories. It’s the right thing to do.
— The right thing to do, David, — she said, her voice quivering, — was to not lead me on in the first place.
— I know that, — he said. — I’m so sorry.
— I understand, — she said. — You’ve made your choice.
Her eyes were dry. She felt more angry than hurl. Angry at herself for not knowing better. This was all just a result of her loneliness, and the feeling she’d always had that she deserved more — so strong it sometimes felt like she’d even had more, somewhere, at some time, and was being tortured by the illusion of a life in which she had very little.
— I don’t know, — he said.
An arrow pierced her heart. Hearing him work out his feelings so violently, so sloppily, so cavalierly…
She turned.
— I guess it’s just not meant to be after all. You should go, — she said, her back to him.
— Mary Margaret.
She said nothing, walked away.
She didn’t cry until she was alone.
Emma didn’t know the details, what had happened between David and Mary Margaret, that Mary Margaret had headed for the bar, that she’d had more to drink than she’d had in the last six months combined, and that Dr. Whale was talking into her ear. As Emma patrolled the town, though, she sensed a new tension in the air. Storybrooke didn’t seem so sleepy anymore. Affairs! Intrigue! She kind of liked this new Storybrooke. If she were to ask Henry, he would probably say that it was her presence pulling apart the status quo. She still…
— What in the…? — Emma said out loud.
She stopped the car.
Case in point.