Once Upon a Time in Storybrooke - OUAT DR

Chapter 15 - A Missing Person

I had tried to reassure Mary Margaret that David would be fine, this was Emma we were talking about, and tried to get her not to worry but that didn't stop her from doing just that. We decided to drive back to her loft and have tea and wait until we heard from Emma that she was off duty so we could ask her for whatever information she could give us.

That time came a lot sooner than expected – we hadn't even finished our first cup of tea before she texted and said she was walking along Main Street towards Granny's. We ran down to join her, catching up with her easily. Mary started in immediately with the questions about David but Emma assured her he was fine, no word from Kathryn still, just that she found out about the two of them, gave her a "well-deserved slap" and then disappeared.

That's when Mary Margaret began to realize that people would think David had done it to be with Mary Margaret, or vice versa, and she needed to be prepared. It all looked bad on both of them, and people were going to talk. Emma was about to get into it more when we noticed Ruby standing at the bus stop, a suitcase next to her, and the sleazy Dr. Wale chatting her up. He noticed us then as we approached and thought twice about whatever it was he had been thinking of doing in pursuit of Ruby and left. 

That's when Ruby told us that she had gotten into a fight with Granny and quit her job. She didn't know where to go or what to do, all she knew was that she wanted to get out of Storybrooke. Emma explained that buses out of town don't just happen, you need to have a destination in mind, and Ruby's face fell. That's when Mary Margaret invited Ruby to stay with her and Emma until she figured things out. Emma immediately got a look and I told her she could crash at mine any time so she let it go. Mary's loft was spacious, but not that spacious.

Emma did in fact end up crashing at my place that night. The next morning it was rainy, so Emma and I drank coffee on my back balcony, talking and catching up. Once she headed off to work, I cleaned up around the apartment, enjoying the day off. I ran some errands and decided to pop into the Sheriff's station and see what Emma was up to once I had run out of things to do for the day.

Before I got there though Henry came out, and we almost ran into each other. He explained Emma was about to go out in search of David, who was apparently wandering around the woods in a weird state. Henry asked if I had heard about Ruby yet and when I had said no he excitedly explained that Ruby was Red Riding Hood and an actual badass if she could only remember it, and Emma had given her a job at the Sheriff's station. We said our goodbyes as he ran off to meet his mom – Regina – for their plans and decided to turn around and head out, not wanting to bother Emma if she was about to leave.

I wandered by Granny's but didn't find August anywhere, and Mary Margaret wasn't answering my texts, so I decided it was time to go do my favorite thing – explore.

Storybrooke had a surprising number of different trails to hike through the vast woods that surrounded the small town. There were even mountains - if you wanted to drive two hours away. The woods were beautiful around Storybrooke, thick with easy trails to walk. Honestly, it reminded me a lot of the Pacific Northwest and the trails I used to walk when I lived over there. 

As I wandered the trails I let my mind wander too. Storybrooke was very different than what I had expected from a small town in Maine, I never seemed to run out of things to do the way you normally would in a small town. 

I was walking the trail towards the Toll Bridge, wanting to walk along the water's edge before it got dark, when I heard a scream. The bridge was in sight and I ran toward the scream, finding Ruby crouched on the bank of the river, sand all over her, freaking out. 

In front of her was a box. A small wooden box that had sand still sticking to its sides, having clearly been dug up from the hole Ruby was crouched in front of. I asked her what was in it and she just shook her head. I used a stick to nudge it open and saw a heart – an actual human heart. I heard Emma on the speakerphone then and told her we had something and she needed to get here right away.

Once she got there she bagged everything as evidence, took pictures, and cordoned off the area before giving me a lift into town, taking my statement before Ruby got back with her bug. 

I left them to do their police work and walked home in utter astonishment. These things don't happen in real life, do they? What in the world was going on in this town?

I retreated to my apartment and a nice hot bubble bath and tried to shake off the fear I had seen in Ruby's face and what her discovery might actually mean. 

It just didn't feel right – the heart, Kathryn's disappearance, any of it. 

Everything was just too..... Weird. Kathryn going missing the day after she confronted Mary Margaret, a human heart being discovered in some wooden box at the place David and Mary liked to meet up at when they were having their affair, it just didn't make sense. If David had killed Kathryn, why would he make it so obvious it was him? It couldn't be Mary Margaret, she was the last person who would do something so brutal, especially not over a broken heart. And what would she have to gain from it anyway? 

The answer was simple - she had nothing to gain, everything to lose. Just like David. So there was no way either of them could be the culprits. Plus, we didn't even know if the heart was Kathryn's (although, admittedly, who else's heart would it be?) she was still just a missing person at this point. 

Maybe it would all work out. Maybe it hadn't been a human heart at all.

I decided to let it go, hoping Emma would have better luck than I had in my attempt at puzzling out all this. I had a sinking feeling this was only the beginning of a major shitstorm.