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Emma watches the Snow Queen through the two-way mirror. She had decided a few nights ago that it was time, past time really, to stop letting these situations dictate her reactions. It was knocking her off her game. Everything had come at her so fast and so hard, that she had the chance to properly process it all. Now, she is glad that she’d taken the time to start on that, and to restart her tai chi exercises. Those had helped calm the emotions that were throwing her magic out of whack.
Taking a deep, calming breath, she steps into the interrogation room. Ingrid, Sarah, whatever her name actually was, looks up at her with a gentle, affectionate smile, as if pleased by her presence despite the situation.
“You wanted to talk,” Emma says, dropping into the chair on the other side of the table, “so talk.”
“Whatever do you mean, Emma?” The Snow Queen replies.
“You’ve been haunting the town, successfully evading us or slipping through our fingers for weeks, and suddenly you just happened to be spotted in the clock tower, and you surrender without so much as an icicle? I might not be on the up and up on villainous plots, but criminal behavior, I know. You set it up to be caught, which means you want to talk. So talk.”
Ingrid’s smile widen proudly even as the ‘enchanted’ cuffs on her wrists freeze and shatter. Then her expression turned serious. “Do you really believe that the people you call family can truly love you when they don’t, they can’t, understand you?” Her lips curl into a sneer. “They will say that they love you, but the instant your magic does something that they don’t like, they will label you a monster and lock you away like a shame. You deserve a family who can love all that you are, and that can only be a family that is like you.”
“You forget, though,” Emma interrupts, “my family has already experienced the worst that magic can do.”
Ingrid blinks. She hadn’t considered that. But before she can respond, Emma continues.
“You say that you’re doing this for love, to get a family who loves you, but if you hurt my family, if your crazy hurts my son, it won’t be love you see in my eyes. Even if you managed to make me forget them, anything positive that I feel for you will be tainted by a hatred that will fester because I don’t know where it comes from or why I feel it.”
By now, the Snow Queen’s eyes are wide and her confidence in her plan truly shaken by the utter certainty in Emma’s words. There is absolutely no doubt in the blonde’s voice. She realizes that she is going to have to revise her plan to somehow spare the boy.
“You said that like you spoke from experience. No one knows about you or your sister, so I’m assuming that something bad happened to your other sister, something with your magic, and Elsa’s mother freaked. It happens that way sometimes, and doesn’t necessarily have to be about magic. Your magic killed your other sister, didn’t it? Froze her like you’re doing to Marian.”
Ingrid closes her eyes in heartache, seeing Helga’s face behind her lids, her expression filled with love and laughter, then pain and forgiveness.
“I lost control of my magic when Helga’s fiance threatened to expose me after I rebuffed him and Helga did not believe his lies. She stepped in front of him when my magic lashed out, and was killed in his place. Gerda came soon after. She called me a monster and locked me away in that accursed urn.”
“I’m sorry.” Emma says softly. “I can’t even begin to imagine how that hurt. My mother wouldn’t let me touch my little brother because my magic was boiling the milk in the bottle I was holding. She shielded him with her body as if I intended to hurt him. While not as drastic as what happened to you, it still hurt.
“But, and you should think carefully about this, if your sister turned on you over a mistake, an accident, how do you think Elsa and I are going to feel when intentionally destroy everyone that we love and care for?”
The temperature in the room plummets as Emma’s words destroy Ingrid. The delusion that Emma and Elsa would love her if only the others were out of the way, shatters like frozen glass. She can’t stop the tears that well in her eyes or the sob that rips from the depth of her soul. “No! He promised! He said that you would be my sisters, that I would have my happy ending.”
“I’m not saying that you won’t, just that you’re trying to get it the wrong way. You say that we loved you, Elsa and me, and on some level, I can feel that that’s true. Give us our memories back. Let us see what we’re missing. Nothing that you’ve done so far is irreversible or unforgivable, and if I can be bestie’s with Regina, who tried to kill my parents, me and actually did accidentally kill our son, then I can have you as a sister.”
Emma pushes herself out of the chair and heads for the door. She needs to get somewhere warmer since her fingertips have gone numb from the cold. “Think about it. It might be nice to have someone who loves me because I’m Emma, not the Savior or Henry’s other mother.”
Then she's gone, leaving the door open, and the Snow Queen to her thoughts.