Chapter Text
It was a very unusual sensation to be able to literally hold your girlfriend up by your hand, but Regina certainly managed admirably, her lips only twitching into an amused smirk a few times. It took some careful handling to make sure she didn’t accidentally squeeze too hard.
“C-careful with those f-fingers!” Emma squealed, and Regina resisted the urge to make a “that’s what she said” joke. Clearly, she’d been spending too much time around the blonde. Her sense of humor was disturbingly infectious it seemed.
In any case, Emma being rather ticklish was rather unfortunate, as was the way she tended to squirm once she did get ticklish. It all made it rather hard to hold her carefully. All in all, it was the sort of ridiculous comedy of errors that seemed rather characteristic of her life ever since Emma Swan entered it.
By the time, Regina poofed them to her vault and she let her tiny girlfriend go onto the table there, she was gasping with a mixture of tears and laughter, her face quite red. Standing quite gigantic over her, Regina was a mixture of exasperation and amusement, with a pinch of concern thrown in, at any possible injuries she might’ve caused by holding her too hard.
“I know you are currently tinier than a child at the moment, but there is no need to act like one.” Regina said pointedly.
Glaring from where she was currently in a heap on the table, Emma replied even more pointedly, “Just get the potion, please .”
Unfortunately, Regina didn’t have any more the potion she used still in stock, but she knew how to make more, so it was just a matter of gathering the ingredients, which were thankfully all easily found in stocks. After that, it was just a matter of brewing it.
The two of them were in Regina’s vault, where the brunette was the very picture of a stereotypical witch, mixing some strangely colored brew in a cauldron, except her cauldron was only the size of a golf ball, and her magical familiar of sorts was a tiny shrunken Emma, who was watching on, transfixed.
Eventually, they reached the final step of the potion, which involved waiting to let it stew. Somehow that was supposed to make it more powerful or something, Emma wasn’t entirely sure. It seemed not even the fate of having her return normal size could force her to listen to a magical lesson carefully.
Anyway, with a solution brewing and a plan in place, which was mostly just “use magic on him before he attacks”, there was little else for them to do. So, it seemed Regina now felt free to unleash all the teasing quips she’d clearly been holding back on. This part Emma wasn’t so pleased about.
“You know, you’re pretty cute like this,” Regina noted, a smirk on her face.
“Seriously?” Emma raised an incredulous brow, refusing to let the blush that wanted to rise out. She failed, and flushed a little pink despite her best efforts not to.
“Maybe we should just keep you all cute and pocket-sized like this.”
Emma pouted. “I know you’re just teasing, but please don’t joke about that. I just barely escaped very traumatic experience with some ants, you know.”
Regina merely laughed, clearly not appreciating the gravity of her experience. Alas, the glare she leveled at her was all too easy dismissed as being about as intimidating as a pussycat. “You know, I admit I thought it was distasteful before, but I think I’m beginning to understand the appeal in turning his family into this size, after all. You’re just so cute like this.”
“No, Regina! Not okay! Not cute!” Emma objected fiercely. “This is creepy! Don’t relate to the creepy dude!”
Alas, her objections barely seemed to register. The distracting adorable sight of her like this had Regina petting at her head with a finger, which was now large as her entire head, all while cooing at her as she would’ve with a baby, “You need to accept yourself, dear. You are just too cute like this.”
“Ugh, stop it!” Emma slapped the finger away, which was completely ineffective, but Regina at least did her the favor of pretending it worked and drew her hand away, even as she smirked in amusement. “If you’re just going to keep being like this, instead of helping , I’m going to leave!”
Regina was hardly threatened though. Rolling her eyes, she merely pointed out, with a laugh, “And who exactly would you go to? Your parents? Our son? Rumple?”
Each choice seemed worse than the last, which said something, considering all the choices involved members of their family. As usual, Regina was annoyingly right. Emma was simply going to have to suffer through the teasing, because she literally had no better options at this point.
Besides, to be honest, if this had happened to anyone else, Emma probably would’ve laughed. Hell, if their positions were reversed right now, she knew she’d be mercilessly teasing the fuck out of Regina.
So, maybe this was some kind of preemptive karma, then. Or maybe Fate just liked to screw with her, as per usual. Whatever the case, it wasn’t like she had a leg to stand on about it. Still, Emma was nothing if not stubborn, pouting even more as she asked annoyedly. “Whatever. Is the potion still not ready yet?”
“No.” Regina said simply, but there was a certain air about her that made Emma’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. After a beat, the other woman smirked. “Alright, you caught me. It was ready a few minutes ago.”
“Damnit, Regina!” The blonde swore. However, her girlfriend merely laughed. Before Emma could get too angry about the deception though, a bear claw suddenly appeared in a burst of purple mist.
“Now dear, tell me, would you prefer to eat this at your current size or at your normal one?” The smug look on her face said she clearly knew what the answer would be. Emma couldn’t even be annoyed at it. Not when there was a gigantic bear claw in front of her that she was all too eager to eat. Her stomach growled in agreement.
Without bothering to answer the obvious question, Emma all but literally jumped into the bear claw like it was a pool full of gold and she was Scrooge McDuck. This was even better and much more delicious than all the gold in the world.
An unknown amount of time later, Emma’s stomach was full to bursting and she was only maybe halfway through the gigantic pastry.
“My belly feels like it’s going to burst.” She groaned out. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
Regina looked somewhere between amusement and disgust. “I feel a little queasy myself after seeing that display.
-
Emma eagerly drank the potion, only to nearly spit it out when she discovered it somehow tasted like old shoes that had been sweetened with cherry liqueur. With a grimace, she forced herself to swallow the terrible concoction and thankfully managed not to puke after.
“Gods, why do potions taste so terrible?” She complained as she glanced at the half-eaten bear claw.
“Probably so people don’t mistakenly drink it.” Regina answered with a more sensible answer than she expected. Honestly, she was sort of expecting it had been just to torture her a litle more.
“Oh.” Emma said, for lack of a better reaction, before shrugging it off. “Good point, I guess.”
“Not that it stops certain idiots from doing so anyway.” Regina clearly couldn’t resist adding.
“That was one time! ” She immediately shot back, adding indignantly, “I learned my lesson after that!”
Regina nodded agreeably. “And they say idiots can’t learn.”
“Well, you’re the one who decided to shack up with this idiot, so what does it say about you?” Emma asked petulantly.
“That idiocy is unfortunately contagious.”
Before Emma could reply, with a devastating comeback that would make even the Evil Queen bow down, however, she found herself quite distracted by her suddenly expanding body.
It was slightly painful, though mostly just uncomfortable. Still, she was thankful when it stopped. She was less thankful once she realized she had only grown a little taller than before.
In hindsight, Emma should’ve been paying a bit more attention when Regina was explaining how the potion worked.
It turned out that it would not return her to her normal size, but would merely keep making her grow twice her current size every minute until she drank the potion a second time to stop it.
“Oh. So, like Alice in Wonderland?” Emma concluded.
With a furrow in her brow, Regina hummed thoughtfully. “I’m not entirely certain if my mother used it during her reign there, but the potion did come from her spellbooks.”
“...right. I somehow keep forgetting Cora was the Queen of Hearts from Wonderland.” Emma shook her head, wondering how her life had reached a point where such a sentence actually made sense to her. “We’ve really got to work on a chart at some point.”
“Please, do finish your paperwork for the Sheriff’s Office first.” The mayor reminded her with a raised brow. Much as her libido appreciated that look, she didn’t appreciate the reminder.
Emma grimaced, thinking of the paperwork that had been put off in favor of this latest villainous threat. “What’s the use of all this magic if it won’t do paperwork for you?”
-
“Hm, I take it back. You’re much cuter at this size, I think. Still cute but much more huggable.” Regina noted, after a few minutes had passed and Emma had reached about her waist height. “Just like Henry was a few years ago.” She added wistfully.
“Hey, maybe we can use the shrink ray on him,” Emma suggested, with an all too eager grin, considering what she was suggesting. Perhaps her stint as the Dark One had changed her irrevocably, after all. “We could even combine it with the potion so he can reach just the right size!”
Regina looked entirely too ready to agree, as her eyes lit up with some of the Evil Queen’s madness, as she praised. “Not a bad idea, Emma. We’ll have to test it a bit more to make sure it’s safe, but this way, you’ll finally get to see just how tiny Henry was at that age with your own eyes.”
“Aww, babe,” Emma felt a little teary-eyed at the thoughtfulness. The memories she’d received from the other woman years ago had been nice, but definitely not the same as seeing it herself. “I love you.”
“I love you too, dear.” Regina replied, hugging Emma, who was, for once, the (much) shorter one. It was nice, but she had to admit, that she did enjoy their regular hugs more.
-
Thankfully, after a few more minutes of accelerated growth, Emma soon managed to reach her normal height. Or, well, something close to it, anyay.
The blonde suspected she was perhaps an inch or two shorter than before—no doubt part of her girlfriend’s underhanded plot to make sure Emma was no longer the taller one in the relationship—but she had little choice at this point unless she wanted to be twice as tall in the next minute.
“Ugh, I’m starting to consider just growing infinitely if it means I wouldn’t have to drink this again.” She grumbled, eying the bottle in her hand dubiously. “Come on, can’t you magic it to taste better?”
“If you do, we’re breaking up.” Regina said with zero hesitation. “And using magic on that potion now would affect its properties adversely.”
“You could at least pretend to think about it a little.” Emma huffed, before deciding to just take the plunge and chugged the potion like a shot, wincing quite dramatically all the while.
Ugh, she wished she had something to drown out the taste of the potion. Then, she realized she did, eying the remains of her bear claw with new, hungry eyes.
“Really, dear? Didn’t you say your stomach was about to burst not ten minutes ago?”
“That was when the bear claw was bigger than me! Now there’s basically like one bite left.” Emma argued, before popping the entirety of the remaining pastry in her mouth like a chipmunk.
It was at this point, with the signature horrible timing of a true terrible fairy tale villain, that Walter Sellman showed up. He was brandishing his shrink ray like a prized trophy, and smirking arrogantly. It looked like he’d taken his cues from cartoon villainy and was about to twirl a non-existent moustache at some point. Needless to say, he was about as intimidating as a cartoon.
“The Evil Queen! I have finally found you!”
Regina looked completely unphased. With an ominous smirk on her lips that proved she was still a better villain even if she was technically reformed now, Regina asked him, “Don’t you mean ‘us’?”
“Wait, the Sheriff?! But I shrunk you!” His look of shock was comical.
“Yeah, and I got unshrunk. It’s called magic!” Emma told him, before sending a magical blast that sent him flying back. “That’s for the bear claw you made me drop! And the ants!”
Rolling her eyes at her girlfriend’s antics, Regina merely waved her hand, and the shrink ray was now in her hands. Another wave had him contained in chains.
Well, that was easy, Emma noted, feeling a little put out and embarrassed that she had not been able to do the same. She had magic too after all. But in her defense she had caught her off-guard! What kind of horrible monster attacked someone who was busy eating a delicious pastry?
Honestly, the guy had clearly just gotten lucky. Even Emma would’ve been able to handle him on her own normally. Though he initially seemed quite different from his portrayal in the movie, he was clearly the bumbling idiot type after all. Clearly unaware of this, however, he protested, “W-what?! But this is the Land Without Magic! My plan was perfect!”
Regina’s earlier assessment had hit the nail on the head, apparently.
“Dude, this is Storybrooke . The one place with magic. How did you not come across that in all your research?” Emma asked, as she magically poofed them to the Sheriff’s Station, where she cuffed him and left him in the holding cell.
In the end, it was all rather anticlimactic. Barely worth a mention in Henry’s big ol storybook, honestly. Though that was probably for the best, considering how badly the Saviour came off in this tale.
“Well, I see you’ve got this handled now. I’ll be returning to my office, then,” Regina concluded, distastefully eying Wayne Sellman’s increasingly hysterical protestations from within his cell. She turned to Emma, reminding her, “Don’t forget your paperwork. It’s still due tomorrow.”
“Oh, come on! Don’t I get an extension after everything that happened?” Emma pouted, voice coming dangerously close to a whine.
“Magical mishap clause, Sheriff.” Regina reminded her. “Tomorrow is already an extension. It was originally due today. Good luck, dear. I’ll see you tonight.”
With that, she disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke, leaving Emma to grumble about her paperwork, while The Inventor continued to rant in the background.
All in all, just another ordinary Thursday in Storybrooke.