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Target acquired. She's sitting down at a booth in Granny's, a pile of spell books spread out at the table and a coffee in one hand. She looks...as put-together as usual, cuts a striking figure even when she's dressed down, hair pulled back so they can see her dark eyes gleaming as they skim from page to page. Perfect. If this had been Emma's first sight of her, she'd probably already be in love. “Look at her. Are you looking?”
Will says, "I have a true love. I don't think this is going to–"
"You said she was a queen, right?" Emma cuts in. "So Regina's just your type."
They make it to Regina's table just as she starts nibbling at one bent finger in concentration, which is probably the closest she’s ever been to adorable. She glances at Will, squinting to see if his face is settling into appreciation for that, but he just looks glum and confused.
"Hey." Emma gives Will a shove. He slides into the booth opposite Regina.
Regina looks at him, then Emma. "What is the meaning of this, Miss Swan?" She isn't angry anymore as much as cautious, on edge around Emma in ways that Emma can't express. They've been enemies and rivals and friends but there have never been walls before, and they're stressful to contemplate to she just...doesn't.
Instead she takes a deep breath and says, "Have you met Will Scarlet? He's new in town."
Regina's eyes are communicating things to her like is this the person who poisoned Marian? and she cheerfully ignores that. "And he's single!"
"Not really," Will starts, but Regina is already staring up at her incredulously, and Emma licks her lips. It's going to be a challenge to convince Regina that this is for her own good.
"Have you been taking advice from your mother? Is this a setup?"
"She said she'd let me out of jail if I dated you," Will says helpfully, and Regina stares at him and then Emma and then covers her face with her hands.
"It was my mom's idea, okay," she says, feeling defensive about it. Mary Margaret might be a little overly focused on romance but she had had some valid points about Regina. "But she was right. Sort of. You're sitting around trying to save your ex's wife and..."
"And?" Regina's eyebrow is halfway to the ceiling by now.
"And rebounds are always a good idea! Just to...take your mind off things." She pushes Will's shoulder and he manages a smile. It's kind of droopy. "For a night. Or the rest of your life. Whatever. See how you like it."
Regina smiles, tight-lipped but with an odd kind of affection as she turns away from Emma. Emma holds her breath.
"Get out of my booth right now or I'll set you on fire," she says pleasantly, and Will scampers, brushing past Emma to run terrified out the door.
Regina's eyes flicker to Emma and then back to her book, and Emma sags, summarily dismissed.
"She's gorgeous, she's smart, she's funny, she's actually weirdly nice sometimes when she isn't killing people... I mean, she's not nice to me, but that's not how we communicate. It's more...snippy, I guess. But she can be nice even when she's snippy." Emma takes a deep breath. "She's a great mom. She has this cute little scrunchy face she makes sometimes when she's being sassy." She attempts to imitate it and notices that her audience is staring down instead, eyes drifting from her legs to her breasts then back again.
She sighs, rubs her hands against her pants. "But all you probably need to hear is that she's 'a hot piece of ass,' right? She’s a hot piece of ass."
"I'm familiar with her ass," Dr. Whale says, idly toying with his pen as he returns to his charts.
"Good." To be fair, pervy doctors aside, it is a nice ass. She's spent plenty of time staring after it lately and it's nice that she gets that view at least while Regina is running the other way. "So listen up. She's going to come here in a little while to consult with you about Marian." Henry is in on this with her. He says it's a part of an Operation she's never heard of and refuses to expand on that, but he's keeping her apprised of Regina's comings and goings.
She smiles at Whale, sharp and dangerous. "You're going to be a perfect gentleman. You're not going to check her out, you're not going to make lewd comments, you're not going to try to kill her." Whale scowls at that one. Maybe she'd miscalculated. There isn't much of a selection in Storybrooke, though, so she'll take what she can get. "You will be charming and engaging and then you will ask her out. Got it?"
Whale is unmoved. "What's in it for me?" His eyes are beady now, sharp as though he's already dreaming up some reward, and she glowers at him.
"Regina Mills. Dating you. Are you not getting this?" She hears a familiar clipping of shoes on linoleum and moves away with one last hard glare at Whale, ducking to the supply closet where she'd once thrown Regina when Henry had eaten the apple.
That had been the start of...something, she thinks, peeking past a tray on wheels to spot Regina looking terse as she gestures to Whale. Something good, too. She wants Regina to be happy but something also twists within her at the idea that Regina is so hurt by her when they've come so far. So maybe this is a little about her happiness, too.
Whale smiles at Regina and Emma's impressed at how little sleaze there is in the expression. He almost looks...handsome. Bearable, even. She hadn't thought he'd had it in him. “Why don’t you come right this way?” he says, gesturing smoothly toward his office.
She squints until she can see Regina’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why are you being so… Emma,” she concludes an instant later. “Emma’s been here.”
Whale smirks. Regina swivels around, stalking toward the supply closet.
Now would be a great time for her magic to kick in and teach her that vanishes-from-confrontation-in-a-cloud-of-smoke thing that Regina does, but instead she trips and her head bangs into an open tray of test tubes and for just a moment, she thinks it’s an unknown assailant and that’s how Regina finds her when the door flies open- plastic vials bouncing off her head and her gun pointed at a large container of cleaning fluid.
“Dammit,” she mutters, and Regina almost- almost- smiles.
Then Regina's lips go down and her eyebrows go up and she says, “Whale? Really?” Her nose wrinkles with disgust and it’s kind of like that scrunchy face and Emma is trapped in its orbit at once. “You’ll have to do better than that, Miss Swan,” Regina says haughtily, and turns on her heel and stalks away.
Archie keeps opening his mouth and then shutting it, like there’s something he wants to say and then thinks better of mentioning. Finally he says, “I don’t know if it would be ethical to date a former client.”
“Former client. She can just…go to Bangor if she needs a therapist now. And hey, maybe if she has you she won’t even need professional help ever again!” Emma tries brightly. Archie looks conflicted. “Come on,” she wheedles. “You like Regina, don’t you? She’s a friend.”
“Yes, but–“
“And she likes you! As much as she likes anyone who isn’t Henry, anyway. Or…him, I guess.” She frowns. “But you’d be good for her. She’s changed a lot over the past couple of years. I think she’d be good for you, too.”
Archie sighs, shoulders slumping. “There’s no arguing with you, is there?”
“Not in this.” She tucks her thumbs into her waistband. “I promised Regina I’d give her a happy ending.” She doesn’t know if that means a rebound or a forever love or any love at all, but she’s determined to give her something. This is the woman who’d given her an entire decade of good memories, and whoever she’d been in the past, that woman deserves happiness.
Even if Archie is looking a little more reluctant than she’d thought. “Regina walks down Main Street every morning with Henry at eight o’clock sharp,” she informs him. She’s started waking up early so she’d be at Granny’s at the same time as them. Some mornings Regina ignores her completely, but she’s gotten a couple of brief smiles from her over the past week or two, and that’s…progress. She’d tried to sit at their table yesterday and Regina had excused herself within minutes to disappear back into the crypt. “You go to her,” she tells Archie, wondering if he'll score a breakfast invite. That would be just unfair. “Uh…just be friendly. I think she’s on the lookout for my guys now.”
She follows Archie at a safe distance as he walks the path from his office to Granny’s, an anxious smile on his face. Regina has stopped to talk with him.
So far, so good.
She’s…smiling. Naturally. Like she hadn’t just lost a true love and holed herself up in each of her respective properties for days on end. Like Archie is actually endearing.
Emma’s fists are clenched and she barely realizes it, but suddenly it seems very clear that Archie is not good for Regina at all. He’s right, it isn’t ethical, and anyway, they’re such good friends. It would be a terrible disservice to both of them to make things awkward because she’d pushed a relationship.
Archie laughs and Henry grins at them both and Emma is speeding up before she can stop herself, hurrying to meet them down the street. “Morning,” she says through teeth that probably shouldn’t be gritted together like this.
To her relief, Regina turns her head from Archie to Emma, comprehension dawning in her eyes. “Archie,” she says dubiously. “You’re trying to set me up with Archie now.”
“I did try to tell her,” Archie says, apologetic. “Emma is very…focused on helping you.” They both smile at her and she doesn’t understand, and now she’s feeling cranky under Regina’s wrinkled brow and Archie’s uncomfortable smile, like there’s a joke and no one’s bothered to explain it to her.
It’s Henry who rescues her. “Mom, Archie doesn’t like women like that.” He rolls his eyes. “Everyone knows that.”
She blinks, the wave of relief so reassuring that it washes her embarrassment away. “Oh. I…didn’t. Wait. So you and Gepetto aren’t just friends?”
Archie adjusts his glasses. Regina touches her arm, and that smile is still on her face. It seems so much brighter when it’s directed at Emma. “You’re terrible at this,” she says.
“I’m not going to stop.” She’s going to find Regina love if she has to tear apart the whole town to find it. There has to be someone out there who’s Regina’s perfect match, better than Robin Hood and totally available. Isn’t this what fairytales are about? Someone tied to her story who’s meant to be with her in the end.
But the only one who fits that qualification is…David. And he would never. Unless…
She stops herself before she goes too far on that train, and Regina says, “At least give me some advance warning next time. I don’t want to be propositioned by Leroy just because you’ve decided that I need a drunk instead of a convict.”
“I’m not going to set you up with Leroy,” she says, rolling her eyes. She considers. “Though Sneezy runs a pretty good business and he’s a nice guy–“
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Very.” Regina still hasn’t let go of her arm. It feels warm in the spot where her fingers are stroking, gentle and oddly calming. “No dwarves.”
She smirks. “Deal.”
Regina eyes her. “How early did you wake up to force Archie into this? Have you eaten breakfast?” They’re walking toward Granny’s now, Henry still lagging behind to play with Pongo, and she doesn’t know how this is happening, how she’d finally done something right, but she doesn’t complain when Regina orders food for her and sits her down opposite her in her booth.
“No.”
“Mary Margaret says that you two worked together all the time in the Enchanted Forest! And he’s rich and kind of an asshole, but it’s not like you’re not a little bit of an–“
“Do not finish that sentence, Emma Swan.” They’re sitting on a bench in the cemetery, which is morbid but at least it’s in the sunshine. Henry had sent her a message to let her know that Regina had been out and about, and now they’re leafing through some books on elemental magic that Belle had sneaked out of Gold’s shop for Regina. So far, nothing that looks helpful for Marian.
Regina slams her book closed a tiny bit harder than necessary. “I’m not going to date King George. Or any king. Or anyone else you need to force to talk to me.” She looks suddenly angry, frustrated at something Emma isn’t privy to, and she stands and collects her books. “I’ll see you later, Emma.” She vanishes in a cloud of smoke and Emma is left uncertain of what she’d done.
When she realizes, she slaps herself on the thigh and nearly runs from the cemetery.
“Not another man, Emma,” Regina sighs when she opens the door and sees the flowers and chocolate in Emma's hands. She’d called Henry to find out her favorite chocolate and Mary Margaret had known about the flowers and she’d spent upward of a hundred bucks on both. Unsurprisingly, Regina has expensive tastes. She quickly revises her list to move Jefferson higher up.
“No man this time. Just me.”
Regina watches her with interest she can’t fathom, and Emma clarifies, “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t really think about…kings. And what happened to you with my…with Mary Margaret’s dad. And I don’t want you to feel like I’m forcing you into a relationship now, I just want you to have options. If you want them.”
“Ah.” Regina’s face shadows over with something like disappointment, but then she takes the flowers from her and her eyes are thoughtful. “I…appreciate your enthusiasm. But I don’t want you running around forcing men to date the Evil Queen. They don’t want that, and I don’t, either.” Emma follows her silently, chocolates still in hand as Regina finds a vase and fills it with water. “I’d rather move on from this at my own pace.”
She passes over the chocolates and Regina sees her eyeing them. She opens them with a small smile and Emma picks one out. “I’m not forcing anyone to date you.” Maybe the first few had been, but the others- the ones Regina had exercised her veto power on- had been more receptive. "Everyone’s seen how you’ve changed.”
“You’ve seen how I’ve changed. The town saw a power struggle that left Snow in control and me as her compliant ally.” Regina takes a chocolate for herself, and Emma is momentarily distracted by the way her tongue curls around it, her eyes drifting closed and a look of faint ecstasy on her face.
She needs to buy Regina chocolate more often.
She tears herself away from Regina’s tongue and back to the conversation. “That can’t be true. You’ve risked your life for them. They must know that it means more than some royal takeover.” Regina shrugs and Emma swallows. Regina brings out something protective in her, the bit of her that remembers her own past and sees Regina’s drive to change who she is. She’d never had any real support, but she’s determined that Regina gets it now.
“You know you have changed, right? You’ve spent pretty much all your time lately trying to save…you put hearts in now, you don’t take them out.” She doesn’t know how to say any of this without being patronizing and gentle encouragement isn’t really her thing, so her words are stilted and don’t make much sense.
But Regina says, “Thank you, Emma,” and her eyes glow like she gets it. So maybe she does.
“What if you told me what you’re looking for in a date and I worked from there?” Emma says when they’ve finished almost all the chocolates. (She’d promised to save the ones with the chocolate truffle inside for Henry, and he’s still at school. Should she be at the station now instead of sitting on Regina’s couch with a glass of apple cider? Eh.)
Regina sighs. “Emma–“
“One more try,” Emma says quickly. “Just one. And then I’ll stop.” She mentally runs through her list again, shifting some men down and others up as she considers who’s too much of a risk for this attempt.
“All right.” Regina takes a sip of her cider. A very long sip. “No idiots.” She hesitates. “Well, endearingly idiotic is all right, I suppose. But someone who can keep up with me.”
“That’s it?”
Regina looks flustered. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about dating at all.” Right. Regina had had some secret affair with her stable boy, then been thrust into a marriage, and by the time she came out of that she’d been someone else entirely. Robin Hood must have been the first one she’d ever been genuinely interested in as an adult.
“Rich? Good-looking? Funny?” Emma prompts.
Regina shrugs helplessly. “Someone who…accepts my past but doesn’t hate me for it?” she suggests. “Someone who challenges me.” She’s warming up to the game now, eyes fixed on Emma as Emma runs through possibilities. “An ally. Maybe even someone I could have been friends with, given time and a lot of patience. Someone Henry likes.” She’s smiling now and her gaze is soft as she watches Emma. “Someone brave and stubborn who loves too hard and is–“ She sighs. “All right, yes, an idiot.”
Regina’s list feels oddly familiar, like she knows there’s someone out there who fits it perfectly. And she can’t help but be touched at the thought of it, of all Regina wants being understanding and someone to love who loves her. In the end what she wants is so simple, and Emma thinks it’s all she wants, too.
And then it becomes clear to her in a moment of blinding clarity exactly who it is that Regina is longing for, and she knows what she has to do.
She has to break up with Hook.
“I don’t understand, Swan. We had that date! I’ve been on my best behavior!” Hook says, though he looks a little shifty about that last bit. “What did I do?”
“It’s not about what you did,” she says, attempting to be gentle again. It comes out more demanding and Hook stops complaining at once. “It’s about what you need to do.”
“What is it? I’ll do anything.” He sounds plaintive now, like he’s never going to give up. Loves too hard. Brave. Stubborn.
“You need to date Regina,” she informs him.
He blinks. Takes a step back. Blinks again. “Sorry, love?”
“You. And Regina. You’re just what she’s looking for in a guy. I promised to find her a happy ending,” she recites, and it sounds like a mantra by now. “So you’re going to be her happy ending.”
“Regina.” He shakes his head like he still doesn’t comprehend. “But…we’re each other’s happy endings, aren’t we? You opened up to me! We went on a quest together! I thought you wanted me!”
“I do.” She touches his hand. “I think you’re a good friend and have…developed…a lot of good qualities, which is why you’d be so good for Regina. And it’s important to me that she’s happy.”
“More important than your own happiness.” Hook is beginning to look irritated. As he often does about her mission to help Regina. Or whenever she mentions Regina at all.
“Regina’s happiness is a part of my happiness,” she tries to explain. “We have Henry, and it’s just…better when we’re all–“
“Save it, Swan.” Hook grumbles. “I understand. Your whole damned life revolves around Regina. You love Regina more than you’ll ever love me. You don’t need to make me jump through hoops to tell me so.”
She frowns, shaking her head and unsure if she’d heard him clearly. “What?” He’s an ass when he’s jealous, and this absurd jealousy of her friend is going too far now. He mopes around whenever she’s worried about Regina, acting neglected as though there’s a competition going. She hopes he doesn’t do the same to Regina with her if they ever get to the point where that’s an option again.
“Nothing.” He stomps out of the room. “I’ll go ask Her Majesty to date me. As you wish.”
Accepts her past, Emma checks off, satisfied, and bites back a sudden gnawing unease as Hook departs the station with a slam of the door.
She’s pacing back and forth an hour later, checking her phone and putting it back on her desk and checking her phone again. Henry is due back home already and he hadn’t texted her, which means that Hook isn’t there anymore. So maybe Regina said yes. Maybe they’re already out on a coffee date or something, bonding. Becoming friends. Becoming more.
The phone slips out of her grasp and crashes onto the floor, and she chokes back a sob and a stab of pain that makes no sense at all. She…she likes Hook, yeah. She isn’t in love with him, and this sensation of loss at the image of the two of them together is–
Her mind betrays her and she’s suddenly imagining the two of them in a tangle on Regina’s bed, in a room Emma has never seen. Regina’s eyes dilated and lustful, hungry like Emma’s only seen them when she manages to piss her off just the right amount between eye roll and set on fire. Regina hovering above her. Regina leaning down to kiss her as they flip positions, and Regina spread out in front of her, vulnerable and open as she presses her center to Emma’s.
No. Hook. Hook is the one in this scenario, Hook is the one she’s given away, and she’s pining for…
You love Regina more than you’ll ever love me.
All right, yes, an idiot.
Oh. Oh god.
She is an idiot.
She forgets to pick up her phone in her haste, doesn’t look outside or grab her keys or jacket before she starts running, and she only notices that it’s raining now once she’s totally soaked, hair matted against her cheek and jaw and neck and her shirt bordering on see-through. And then she’s at Regina’s house like this is some fucking romantic comedy and she’s supposed to be stopping the big wedding or kiss or…date-asking-outing and she’s banging and banging on the door.
When it opens, it’s Henry behind it, which puts a damper on the whole romantic declaration thing. “Uh.” She feels suddenly self-conscious, and Henry is staring at her with that cocked chin that always makes her wonder if he’s rethinking their genetic link. “Is your mom home?”
“You’d better not come inside dripping like that,” says a voice from behind him, and Regina strides into view, critical and looking vaguely annoyed at her. “Henry, do you mind stirring the soup?”
“Sure.” He vanishes and then they’re left staring at each other over the threshold, Regina with fingers in her blazer pocket and Emma soaked and shifting from side to side.
“I…did Hook come here?”
“He did.”
“He asked you…did he say anything? Did you…?”
Regina’s lips quirk. “He said that you'd ended things with him. Then he tried asking me on a date. Did I not include no cheap leather on my list?”
Emma’s face falls. “None?”
“Maybe some,” Regina allows. She moves closer now, over the threshold and still under the porch overhang. She’s glowing again, lit by the reflection of the emerging sun off the windows, and Emma stares in vague awe and has no idea how this could have taken her so long to realize.
“One more try,” Emma whispers. “Let me find one more person for you.”
“Too late,” Regina says, taking another step toward her. Her eyes linger on Emma’s wet clothes as though she’s reconsidering. “You said just one.”
Her brow furrows, suddenly uncertain of Regina’s motives here. “Seriously? Are you playing gam–“
Regina kisses her, soft and sweet, and she stops speaking abruptly. Her hands go to Regina’s hips and Regina melts into her, runs her thumbs along Emma's jaw and cheeks and ratty hair as she presses her hands to Emma’s face, and she’s probably soaking wet but she doesn’t stop kissing Emma, and Emma holds on for dear life, overcome.
She lets go of Emma’s face and takes a step back, and Emma doesn’t remember how to breathe without Regina kissing her. “Go home,” she orders. “Get changed.” Her eyes sparkle like they haven’t since Emma had returned from the past, and Emma can’t look away. “Then come back and maybe I’ll ask you out.”
“Yeah?” Emma asks, grinning so hard her mouth hurts a little and not caring at all.
Regina rolls her eyes upward, fails miserably at containing a beaming smile of her own, and retreats back into her house, and the sun gleams orange against the white door.