part two of three

for the record, since we don't have a character name yet, "chris" is christopher gorham's character

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—don't you drink their poison too

She dreams of the day Henry was born, so familiar: she glances to the side and Neal is there and he's smiling and they're happy, and she looks back at Henry, heart so full of love she can hardly breathe; she looks back up and it's the stranger — Killian, that was his name — standing beside her with that soft look on his face he was wearing when she opened the door. The bed dips as he sinks into it beside her and cups the back of Henry's head as she leans back into his arms.

He kisses her temple and she wakes up.

.

"I saw that guy again," Anna tells her, and Emma chokes on her coffee.

"What?"

"Crazy Hot Pirate Guy," she explains. "He was at the cafe on the corner, I stopped to have a cup of coffee with him. He's actually pretty cool," she says thoughtfully, tapping her chin with a pen. "Real old-school gentleman, he paid for my drink and a scone and stood up when I got out of my chair, the whole thing. Also introduced himself by kissing the back of my hand, which — I don't know if you know this — is the hottest thing in the entire world."

"Well, you can… have him," she replies, even though the thought of the man kissing Anna turns her stomach and she can't say why. Anna sees through her, giving her the classic bitch please look. She (badly) feigns ignorance. "What?"

"Even if I — look, Emma," she starts, finally getting up and joining her, leaning on her desk, "you've been dreaming about this guy for a year. And… the way he's talking about amnesia… I know we were talking about past lives and obviously he's not from a real past life, like reincarnation, but," she goes on, leaning forward, "if he is from some past you can't remember — and the way he talks about you, I would bet my entire bank account — "

"All seven dollars of it," Emma mutters petulantly. Anna glares.

"Like I was saying, if he's telling the truth and your memories have been tampered with — "

"By what?" she cuts in, using volume to hide her unease. She's been a skeptic her entire life but this is… like the psychic said, it defies all other explanation. "Some shady government agency? A cackling witch in the woods somewhere? 'Tampering with memories' is something that happens in movies, Anna, not reality."

"Like. I. Was. Saying," Anna snaps shortly, crossing her arms. "Then he really would be part of a past life, which would explain the dreams. Whoever messed with your memories couldn't quite erase him. He obviously meant something to you."

"Anna," she sighs, and pinches the bridge of her nose to both stave off a headache and hide the fact that she's starting to think Anna might have a point. But that doesn't make sense. "You need to stop with all the conspiracy theories. First the moon landing is a hoax, now some shady — someone has messed with your friend's memories… Anna, you have to stop believing everything you hear."

Anna stays quiet for a long moment, and when Emma glances up, the guilt starts to sink in — she looks genuinely hurt. Finally, she takes a deep breath and pushes off her desk.

"It's better than believing in nothing," she says softly, and walks away. But she catches herself at her own desk. "Oh, by the way," she adds, much colder than Anna's ever been to her, "I told him you've been dreaming about him."

"What?" she cries, eyes widening. "Why would you — "

"Because he deserves to know," she counters loudly, completely uncaring of the stares coming from their coworkers. Emma is too horrified to be embarrassed about them. "He deserves to know that it's not a lost cause, that the woman he loves hasn't completely forgotten him."

The woman he loves.

She could hardly deny it, but she isn't sure she likes having it so explicitly spelled out to her. "He doesn't love me," she replies weakly, and Anna scoffs.

"Keep rocking that denial, girl."

.

Anna still hasn't forgiven her by lunch — Emma can't really blame her, she was unnecessarily harsh — and the idea of eating the little frozen dinner she brought for herself makes her nauseous, so she makes the (stupid, inevitable) decision to go to the cafe, justifying it with if he was there this morning at 7:30, surely he won't be there now.

Even though she knows damn well he will be.

She isn't wrong.

For half a second, she considers joining him, but then takes her own table inside, feeling his eyes on her the whole time; when he doesn't follow her in, she's honestly surprised, and a little disappointed.

Just as she's thinking that she should stop kidding herself, that she has to go and talk to him again, if only to lie like a rug and tell him that Anna was lying about the dreams, one of her other coworkers shows up, looking out the window uneasily.

"Who's the leather fetishist staring at you?" Chris asks, and Emma waves a hand.

"Just some crazy guy who keeps trying to get me to help him with something," she replies dismissively. "Thinks I'm… I don't know, it's weird."

He stares at her in slowly-growing horror. "Emma, some lunatic is stalking you? Why haven't you called the police?"

"No, it's not — " she says hastily, holding up both hands in supplication. "It's not like that, he's not — I don't think he's stalking me."

"Then what's he doing here, half a block away from your workplace?"

"Chris, he's harmless."

"What makes you think that?"

She can't explain it. She only told Anna about the dreams because she dragged her out to drinks one night and Emma had about three too many, ended up drunkenly divulging secrets like the (heavily censored) story of what happened with Henry's father and the fact that she was having explicit dreams about someone she didn't know.

Through no fault of anyone's but the bartender who supplied her with entirely too many whisky sours, Anna knows her better than anyone else. Chris doesn't have the same kind of security clearance, in spite of and in part because of how desperately he wants it.

"He… It's just a gut feeling," she answers, wincing at how lame that response is. To her total lack of surprise, he doesn't look convinced.

"Well, my gut says otherwise," he counters quietly, honestly and extremely concerned. "Look at him, Emma!" he hisses, glancing at the window; Killian is no longer watching her. "He's obviously dangerous. And probably some kind of freak, who wears that much leather in the middle of the day?"

"I dunno," she mutters, "I think it's kind of hot."

Chris doesn't seem to know how to respond to that, which is what she was hoping for; maybe if she makes him uncomfortable enough, he'll leave.

It's not that she doesn't like Chris, or that they aren't friends — after Anna, he's probably the closest friend she's ever had — but it's clear that he wants more and she doesn't, and now — with the man from her dreams showing up outside her door and kissing her — she feels particularly awkward around him.

"It's fine, Chris," she says, gathering her things and standing up. "Really."

As she leaves, she notices that Killian is gone.

.

He's there at the cafe when she passes by the next morning — but he's busy flirting with the waitress (who clearly has the opposite of a problem with the leather) and doesn't appear to see her. She tries to swallow the irrational jealousy, with little success.

.

He's there again at lunch — and she's figured it out, she thinks: he's spending all this time at the cafe because he promised not to go to her apartment again and he doesn't want to just linger on the sidewalk outside her building. But the weather has been nice, the cafe is close and gives him a good excuse to stay close to her — and it's up to her, whether or not she wants to talk to him.

She hesitates, but finally decides to go over to his table; she doesn't sit, instead standing at the chair opposite him, hands planted on the back of it.

"Why is it so important that I listen to you?" she snaps. He blinks, apparently unfazed by the lack of pleasantries.

"Because the people you love — little though you may recall them — are in danger," he replies simply.

"Yeah, sure, whatever you say," she says, injecting her tone with as much dismissal as she can. "But what does that matter to you?"

He seems to deflate a little, sinking further back into his seat, expression pained. "Don't make me say it, love," he murmurs, self-loathing increasing with every word.

A black hole opens up in her gut; her heart clenches and the breath is pulled from her lungs and her fingers go a little numb and she doesn't know why this is affecting her like it is because Anna said this, she quietly knew this, he's made no effort to hide it.

"Why?" she explodes, and it's obvious, it's written on his face, on the flinch and the wince, that he knows what she means. "Why me? My life was going just fine, until you showed up and — and screwed everything up!"

He glances around at the people staring at them now and stands abruptly, and she gets the odd sense that he's being sucked in by the same black hole, he's got the same sort of tense motion and shallow breathing. "Let's not do this here, shall we?"

She almost tells him to go to hell, but the gravity between them is too strong; if she leaves now, she'll just come right back. "Fine."

They walk down the street aimlessly, somewhat awkwardly, until he finally stops on the edge of the park and pulls a bottle of purple liquid out of his pocket. "I know not to hope you'll believe it," he starts quietly, turning it over and over in his hand, "but this potion… it should restore your memories."

"You're right," she snarls, "I don't believe it."

He looks up as though praying for answers to fall from the sky, and slips the bottle back into his pocket. "Emma, the very last thing I want is for you to come to any harm, I swear it. I've already told you, I wouldn't be here, had I any other choice. Look at me," he says desperately, turning to her and looking her straight in the eye; an electric shock dances across her skin, "have I told you a lie?"

She starts to ask him how he knows about that, but catches herself — he'll just tell the same story, and, at any rate, the way he asks that question strikes something deep inside her, the same familiar lurch she felt when she saw him at the door. Less than memory, more than déjà vu.

Emma can't keep up the anger; the look on his face is too sincere.

It's hard to breathe.

"Just because you believe something doesn't make it true," she replies in a low voice; he deflates again.

"Emma — " he starts, but doesn't get anywhere.

"Freeze!"

She's just as startled as he is; two cops are coming closer, guns raised. The one who spoke waves his gun at Killian, who holds up his hands, expression wooden. "Step away from the girl."

"Wait, what is this?" she asks, staring at them in mounting… fear. Fear for him. She's afraid that something bad is about to happen to Crazy Hot Pirate Guy. "It's fine, I'm not — Look, officers, I don't know who called you, but he's not threatening me."

"Caller said you might say that," the other officer replies, pulling Killian's arms behind his back and cuffing him. "Said the mad leather junkie here somehow had you convinced he wasn't gonna hurt you."

"He isn't," she snaps.

"So why's he trying to get you alone?"

Killian glances at the cop then, in affronted confusion, and gets out, "I'm not trying to — " before the cop jerks on his arms sharply to shut him up.

"Look, the guy who called us said he's been stalking you, is that true?"

"I — " she splutters, because the answer is both yes and no. "Not — I wouldn't call it stalking…"

The officers, not surprisingly, aren't convinced; in fact, quite the opposite — she can practically hear the words Stockholm syndrome passing between them when they glance at each other.

"Right, well, you got into a bit of a fight at the cafe back there," the first cop says, and she scoffs.

"I wouldn't — that wasn't a fight, I just — "

"Just to be safe," the other one cuts in, and they're already leading him away.

She tries to catch his eyes as he passes, and insists, "I didn't do this, I swear, I didn't call them."

He glances back at her, expression brittle. "I never thought you did," he lies.