#&. ruby

Being back in Boston was something Emma hadn’t imagined would happen any time soon. Since being brought to Storybrooke by Henry, she’d adopted the small little town as her home. For the first time since she could remember, she had decided to stay in one place for longer than just completing a job, and it had all been because of a little boy who had worked his way into her heart. Her son had found her, and when she’d finally allowed herself to let her walls down around the kid, Emma had found a reason to stay. And after a lifetime of running, it had felt nice.

Things had been easy for a bit, but just as it seemed to always be her life, it never stayed that way. Though she hadn’t believed him at first, Henry had been right all along, about everything. The curse that had brought Storybrooke into existence, Regina truly being the Evil Queen from the fairytales, and even about Emma being the daughter of Snow White. The curse had broken when she’d finally allowed herself to believe in him, that everything he’d said held at least some bit of truth, if only because he believed it. And just like that, everything changed; the other shoe dropped, and suddenly she had a whole new set of problems. It was overwhelming, to say the least, though after finally finding the family she had wished for for so long long, Emma could hardly bring herself to complain. She saw how everyone in the town reacted to the curse being broken, too, how happy everyone seemed to be. At least, she had thought they were.

Her parents had been thrilled to receive their memories back, and be reunited with their friends. Emma had thought everyone else had been too, even if they were now stuck in Storybrooke without the ability to cross the line without losing all their memories. She had thought they all been happy to have their memories, but somehow in the chaos of all the sudden new burdens that came with being the savior and finding how she fit into these new lives of everyone in town, she had completely missed the fact that not everyone was as happy as the rest seemed.

Truthfully, it hadn’t even crossed Emma’s mind that anyone would be overwhelmed by suddenly having two lives, from everything that Henry had told her, she would have thought they’d all be happy to be able to remember their lives before coming to the modern world. But when she realized Ruby had left town without much more than a note to her grandmother and Snow, she realized her mistake. Though it wasn’t the same, Emma knew what it was like to find out that there were two lives you had to suddenly lead, and just how overwhelming it could be. And that was just with her own memories in her mind, nothing from a previous lifetime in a land far away. She couldn’t blame Ruby for wanting to forget, but she also couldn’t help but feel responsible. Whether it was because she was the savior, or simply because she had come to care for everyone in town, Emma couldn’t say. But whatever it was, it had led her to drive her bug over the town line, her breath held tight in her chest as she felt the magic ripple around her before she was off towards Boston. The road was familiar, and in more than a few ways, it felt like driving home.

It hadn’t taken long to find Ruby, the other woman somehow managing to stand out in a crowd as only someone who had never been to a big city could. Finding her had been the easy part. Now Emma had to figure out how to get her back to Storybrooke without any of her memories. If it turned out the wolf even wanted to come back. Now that she was just Ruby, not Little Red Riding Hood anymore, she wasn’t actually sure what would happen.

Still, she promised herself she’d keep an eye out for her, just in case. For either however long it took to figure out how to get back to Storybrooke, or at least until Ruby settled into Boston, if that’s what she chose.

Taking advantage of the fact that she had gotten to know this city like the back of her hand during her time living here, Emma had suggested meeting Ruby for drinks at one of the few bars that had become one of her favorites during her time there, one that was conveniently located right around the corner from her old apartment building. She arrived before Ruby, and ordered a beer for herself, green eyes scanning the crowd until she spotted the familiar mass of dark hair, the red streak making it so Emma could pick her out almost immediately. Waving the woman over, she pushed the open bar stool next to her out, inviting the woman to join her. She waited until she had ordered her own drink, nursing a couple sips of her own before turning so she could glance at Ruby out of her corner of her eye. So far, it seemed Boston agreed with her, if the wide eyes and excitement on her face was anything to go by.