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Chapter Text

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. […] But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”

Henry David Thoreau

Preamble

In land far, far away, where happy endings had once bloomed like wild flowers with every story, war and famine, death and misery tolled like bells for every being, ignorant of rank or age, promise or failure.

A curse, born of despair, opened the doors to all that is evil. And evil didn’t just walk through: it barged in.

How ironic then, that it should be the Evil Queen, caster of the curse, nightmare of the Enchanted Forest, all that stood between evil and those that were its sustenance.

Chapter 1

The fog shrouded the land rolling in low, low waves, dissipating behind her worn duster leather jacket and closing again behind her. The warrior stood and smelled the musty air, studied the roll of the land, the absence of life and waited for her cue, for respite. And hunted.

The hills rolled rounded and barren at her feet, peaceful from a distance, stretching into the dark edges of the Endless Forest. The air smelled of battle and blood and defeat. The animals were silent in their burrows, waiting it out. If she could, the Evil Queen would have done the same, but she had no such luxury. She’d lost that right 28 years ago.

She planted her feet firmly on the ground, listening for the imp with her ears, with her whole body.

It wasn’t far. She’d gotten a dagger in. She could smell its blood, its fear. Alone and wounded, the imp was no great challenge and still it was taking her time to find it. She was tired. Exhausted. A weariness that went all the way to her unaged bones.

A change in the wind brought a new scent, a suggestion of noise. She took a deep breath and braced for the chase. The imp was wounded but imps don’t give up. She wiped her palms on her leather pants and unsheathed the daggers at her chest harness and moved towards the sound.

The village bloomed like a dead flower out of the grey morning fog and there was nothing welcoming about the darkened windows in the winter dawn or the empty chimneys or the unnatural silence where children should have been running and screaming after each other. This too was her doing.

The imp had left her a trail of black blood into the fallow fields and the rickety wooden silos that had stored nothing but air and fear for the last twenty-eight years. Starving peasants were easy prey for imps, trolls and ogres. A pig squealed as the wounded imp tried to stealthily feed off its blood in a bid to gather strength against her. The only option was to move fast towards the sty before it could fully regenerate and become unbeatable in her state of exhaustion.

The creature’s trail was hot and pungent, the blood and the brimstone smell an infallible beacon and she was on the imp in a short stride, her dagger aiming for its stocky torso. The small impfed off the emaciated pig still, even as it saw her approaching, and the stench of fear was ripe in the air, from the dying animal and the imp alike. The imp’s eyes were alight, red in the feeding frenzy and she made her first mistake of the night: she did not sever its head off immediately.

“Have they abandoned you, imp?” The Evil Queen taunted, “Left you wounded behind?”It was a weakness and she would pay for it.The creature was small, even for an imp, little more than the height of a 10 year old, weak, emaciated, afraid. She knew that underestimating an imp was a mistake. She knew, but she lost her focus momentarily. She knew alone. She knew wounded and alone and in all her impromptu training, she had never been able to eliminate all the empathy from where her blackened heart had once beaten. And fate saw it fit to punish her for it at that exact moment. The imp’s eyes glowed bright red, and it straightened its frame. Fortified by the meagre feeding, the span of its leathery wings dwarfed her and it was only when she lunged for it, daggers at the ready, that she knew she had been set upon.

She sliced through the skin and flesh of its neck but already behind her there was movement and she was out of time.

The imps were on her then and among them, Eketh, their current general. It rose to its full height, all five feet of it and its frame filled her vision. In the still air of dawn, she knew she was as good as dead if she couldn’t eliminate it. She had made the mistake of underestimating imps only once, in the beginning. Small they might be, but they were hardy, stocky and, more importantly, poisonous. Her one advantage was that imps didn’t fight without a leader. Killing their general- and fast- was her only chance. And also her greatest challenge, surrounded as he was by smaller yes, but equally vicious, equally deadly, imps. She turned, daggers ready, carefully controlling her breathing, wishing, as she always did, for her magic but wishes were no more hers than peace and in a moment, an imp’s claws were on her flesh, ripping, cutting, poisoning as she turned and whacked and sliced. She was all there was. She was the army and the general, the captain, the soldier.

She was all there was against ReulG’horm.

No one would come to her aid. No one ever did. It was up to her, now. Gritting her teeth against the fire already running in her veins, the queen griped the daggers in hands slick with her own blood and plunged forward. She struck blindly, on instinct and need alone, on sheer stubbornness and by order of the reigning Queen. She hit flesh, the sharp blade slicing easily though the leathery skin and coming out of it slick with black imp blood. She had long ago lost the urge to gag at the feel of flesh giving under blade and at the smell of brimstone. There was only the instinct to force her muscles to plunge the dagger again and again and again until the wall of bodies thinned out and she was crunching body parts under her feet, swaying as her own blood seeped out of her. The imp general laughed, a sardonic rictus in what passed for a face. There was victory there though the imp too was wounded. The sound slithered through the morning and the dead fields, something pervading, a cold, harsh sound that was not imp. Or not imp alone.

“Why do you bother, Queen Regina? There is one of you and I am as many as I need. You cannot defeat me. Kill this one and there will be more. Always more.”

Okay, so she’d been graced with ReulG’horm in the flesh. She should have been flattered that ReulG’horm chose to torment her personally. She wasn’t. It did nothing to her. This was her job. One she had to complete before she could rest at last.

It was pointless but she plunged her right hand dagger into the imp’s neck, gashing it swiftly into two lips of leathery skin from where black, thick, sulphurous blood ran.

ReulG’horm can’t be killed, can’t be defeated. Only his army can. Pointless, pointless, pointless.

ReulG’horm grabbed her wrist in Eketh’s gnarly, dying hands and turned it, vein up, animating the dying general. “Come to me, Queen… come, come, come…” The words slithered like snakes between them, no longer imp, just cold. “I won’t break you…” ReulG’horm brought her wrist to the imp’s face and inhaled deeply, as if it had been scenting an exquisite wine. “…much. You’re hardy…” The words uttered by the imp rattled her bones. “You wear well…” The imp’s dead forked tongue came out, animated by ReulG’horm’s magic and caressed her wrist like a lover or a snake.

No, the voice of what was still human in her screamed at the back her mind. Yes, a voice that promised relief replied. Yes. It would all be over soon, if she just gave in. Regina bit her lower lip between her teeth and the sharp pain of it revived her for a few precious seconds, enough to drag her dagger through the imp’s neck, this time severing it from the torso. “No!” Eketh was dead, finally silent but in its stead another would rise, another face, another name. ReulG’horm’s army was endless. “No, I won’t!”

The remaining imps, the ones still standing surrounded her, safe in their numbers and a gnarly but powerful hand shot against her body and punched her four feet backwards. The imps were gone before she had finished falling. Small wonder imps were ReulG’horm’s favourite weapon: small, compact but deadly.

The imps’ retreat left behind the wounded, useless ones to finish dying by her side, food for trolls or ogres, whichever scented death first.

Disorientated by the loss of blood, she admitted- as she always would- that ReulG’horm was right. She was fighting a losing battle. She was but one against an ever replenishing source. And yet she had no choice but to fight.

It was her punishment, after all.

Her body gave up the battleagainst the deadly poison coursing through her veins and she slumped into the mud of the pig sty wishing that this time, there would be no salvation, even for her. She wished with all her might never to wake up again.

She surrendered.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Stand up!

She tried because it’s impossible to not obey when your master whispers to your heart in their hands. It’s not possible to just let yourself fade if such is not their will.

Stand up!

The Evil Queen tried. Her arms unfurled from the heap she’d fallen into and she tried to push herself up. It burned. That was her first conscious thought. It burned as surely as if she had been lit aflame. It hurt all over: it was crippling and she wanted to go back to where she was before, where there was only nothing, where there wasn’t this never ending punishment of hers. But the Queen’s voice screeched in her empty chest. Stand up! So she tried again to obey her master. Failed again, too.

…   …   …

“Come along, dearie, do not postpone the inevitable.” Rumpelstiltskin sounded bored, none of his mirthful sing-a-song tone. “I. said. Move. Dearie.” He punctuated each word with a blast of magic to her body. Queen Snow, her master, must have called upon him. He usually toyed with her a little more before inflicting any real pain. He took her by the arm and lifted her off the mud, excrement and imp carcasses where she lay. Her body protested in agony.

“Please, just leave me here.” It was not like her to beg, but just this once she was just weak enough, tired enough. Desperate enough.

“What? To die in peace?” Her silence was acquiescent. “Not bloody likely! Aren’t you yet tired of failing, dearie?” She felt magic coursing through the muscles of her arm where his hand was latched onto her arm.

Rumpelstiltskin was cruel to make her only strong enough to trail after him. There were miles to walk to his palace and he made her walk every last one though would have been enough. Rumplestilskin was, after all the last holder of magic.

Once there, he let the spell fade and all that borrowed strength simply bled out of her. She collapsed again, this time on the stone floor, her bones rattling inside the sac of her skin, telling her that it was not over yet. And that was not what she wanted.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

There was a lullaby, mournful and sad and she knew the voice, she’d heard it before. Belle. The stone floor under her was cold, but Regina, the defeated Evil Queen, remained there. Nothing had changed. Neither the pain nor Belle. Twenty-eight years gone and she was still the same young girl that had come to serve Rumpelstiltskin in exchange for respite for her land. Except now her eyes were dead and her body rocked a child that would not come to pass any more than the years would. Her body was as desolate as the land.

As she opened her eyes, Belle stood, acold, vacant stare, and walked away, still lullabying a non-existent child. Regina took stock of her body. The worse of the injuries, the ones that she would not have been able to heal on her own were gone. The poison was gone, nothing but a memory of burning alive. Everything else was still there- to remind her of one more defeat.

“Lookie, lookie, who’s awake.”Rumpelstiltskin sang tiredly without the usual bounce in his step. “We have to stop meeting likethis,dearie. You have a land to protect and creatures to slay. Her Majesty can’t be expected to keep an eye out for you, you know?”

“I wish she wouldn’t. I wish she’d just let me―”

“Let you what? Die? That easy? Ah, dearie, if wishes were potatoes we’d all be fat. Have you ever heard the expression Death is too good for you? No? Pity! Tell you what… While we’re trapped here, you’ll be trapped here with us. Seems like a fair deal…”

“Fair?”

“Now, now, none of the haughty tone, please.” He smiled at his own little joke. “Though the time has come for you to do something useful for this land… Just for change of pace...” Again he giggled at his own joke.

“For the land or for you?”

“Dearie, we’ve had this conversation before: you can't harm this land. Not while Queen Snow White holds your heart in her precious little hands…” The wiggling of his talon like fingers added a dangerous undercurrent to the saccharine tone of his voice. “Not by your own design nor anyone else’s. Nothing to worry about. The fate of this land is still your fate. So, on that note… maybe we should come to some… arrangement…”

If the Evil Queen had still had a heart, it would have plummeted to her gut with Rumpelstiltskin’s calculating little snicker. “No arrangements. Not with you. Never again.”

“Oh, never is such an… impractical little word…” He seemed to ponder his own words and then, in less than a blink he had materialized looming over Regina, invading her personal space. “Well, then, consider it Royal Appointment… Find the Lost Princess. You know the one: the babe the Queen had so send to another world to keep safe from you. Find her and bring her to her land. Bring her to her mother.”

“Why?”

“That is none of your concern, dearie.”

“Why would I?”

Bring her to me!

The defeated queen’s chest squeezed impossibly tight and she heard the voice of Queen Snow White in the hollow of her chest where her heart used to be.

Bring her to me!

Regina slumped to her knees trying to catch her breath. Rumpelstiltskin loomed over her, studying her like a bug. “Now, now, Your Majesty, this requires lighter fingers. There is a fine line between… persuasion… and death.” He spoke to the absent Queen Snow.

Regina prayed briefly for Snow White to lose that fine control. The constriction in her chest subsided. Bring her to me!

On her hands and knees, The Evil Queen nodded in agreement. “Why?” She asked when she drew in air. If this Lost Princess had been her daughter, she would have wanted her far, far away from this land. She would keep her away from this dying, toxic land no matter the cost.

“Why not?” Rumpelstiltskin shrugged as if he didn’t care either way. And it was a lie.

“Why now? What do you want from her?”

“Because she’s ready now, dearie. Certain things take time.”

“No.”

“No?”

She could feel Snow White’s dark fury in her body. She revelled in it. She pushed at the edges of that fury, poked it, cajoled it. “This is where I am needed.” She tried for it, for the foregone conclusion of this little game of theirs: her death. If the queen finally passed that fine line, if her fingers squeezed, if her small hands tightened in anger around her heart, the Evil Queen would finally be free.

Besides, she couldn’t help herself: Rumpelstiltskin wanted the Princess bad enough, Snow White wanted her bad enough that they would release her from the eternal punishment that had promised her twenty-eight years ago and the Evil Queen was not defeated enough to not relish that little defiance. She was ready. She was ready to be gone from the world, but she would cherish doing so in her own terms. “I am bound to this land, to defend it, to suffer with it. This is where I must be.”

“Oooooh! Such dedication! Then, you’ll be happy to know that the Princess will come to save this land. She is the Saviour. The Saviour of the prophecy. You should like her to come… She will end ReulG’horm and, by virtue of your covenant with this Land, you as well.”

“No saviour is enough for this land…” The Evil Queen wanted to surrender. Why was it that after so many years of not belonging to herself, she had yet to learn how to keep her head low.

“Thank you kindly for that, dearie by the way, but no, you’re quite wrong.”

The Saviour will come and deliver the land from evil! Queen Snow screamed at her heart.

Rumpelstiltskin nodded his head mockingly because Queen Snow could not see him. “You should be happy,dearie. Bringing her home should be your heart’s fondest wish. When she comes, we will no longer require your… huh… assistance. You shall be free… in manner of speaking... Didn’t you just spend the whole way back moping and wishing for just that?”

“I have no heart to wish with.”

“Ah… so, so dramatic! It’s a figure of speech, is it not? Do you not wish it every day?”

Regina didn’t admit to it. She was weak, yes, but she would not show it. She would die standing. He moved closer and held her chin in his hand to look deep into her eyes. “I have heard your wish. You have no heart in you to keep it a secret but you wish, still.”

“No.”

“Oh yes!” The glee in Rumpelstiltskin seemed to unfold from some recondite place in him at the thought of bringing the Princess home. “The Queen will let you go. Bring the Princess home and the Queen will lose interest in keeping you alive. She’ll have... a new toy.”

“She won’t.” The words came out a whisper. For a moment, hope was more than Regina could fight, and with it the bone deep knowledge that it was a doomed hope. If she’d had a heart in her chest, it might hurt knowing that she had been, for the last twenty-eight years, nothing but a place holder for this princess. All the blood, all the pain had been hers and yet, even in her disgrace, she was, once again nothing but a place holder.

“Bwaaaaaah!”He mock cried. “Of course she won’t let go, let go, dearie. Don’t think for a moment you’re getting a manumission certificate for your efforts. I was thinking more of let go as you wished when that imp dug his claws in your arm- that kind of let go, yes. Yes, she will. Especially because I am tired of babysitting your failures. As far as I’m concerned, once you bring the Princess home, you will have outlived your- rather patchy- usefulness.”

“Die?” The words were dispassionate, unemotional. She wanted that outcome but, somehow, there was still something in her that feared it, that fought it.

“Well, you didn’t really expect a happy ever after in your castle with a prince of your choice, now, did you? Not after what your ineptitude brought upon this land.” His hand squeezed her chin painfully and brought her eyes back to his. “It’s not a trade I’m quite in the mood for. I had a schedule to meet and you failed me. For your pathetic excuse of a father,” He spat out the word, “who could not be arsed to defend you from your own mother or your husband... Tell me, dearie, was it worth it? I do not forgive easily. I would have you fight ReulG’horm’s army forever.”

“Why don’t you?”

He pushed her face away from him, his reptilian fingers squeezing, nails digging painfully into the soft flesh of her jaw. “Do not test me. Do not push at me. I have never discussed my intentions with anyone and will not start now.”

What was one princess to her? Snow White’s daughter might have a worse fate mapped out than Snow imagined. Rumpelstiltskin was too interested in the whelp. One Princess for her freedom. What did she care?

“Your word.”

“A contract, then.”

“No. Your word. If I bring you the princess, you and Snow White will let me die.”

“So dramatic! So be it: if you bring the princess home, Queen Snow and I will let you die. I’ll even throw in swift and painless as an incentive.”

Rumpelstiltskin wanted this princess too much. He was impatient and offering too much. And yes, she found that she didn’t have the will to play any longer. She was bone tired, defeated. “Your word.” Her one wish was not be no more.

“Cross my heart, hope to die.” He giggled. “Oh, wait… that’s you.” And he cackled in glee, sensing victory. “Now, now, no time for moping, dearie. Collect yourself and get going. There are trolls to catch and ogres to fight.Princesses to bring home.” He flapped his arms as if he was shooing chickens.

“Indeed.”

“There are worse fates than the one you have been given, never you forget about that. Now go, before I change my mind.”

Whatever Rumpelstiltskin had in mind it was important enough for him to let go of her to grab hold of the Princess. She crushed the pity for Snow’s whelp under her worn boot. This would be over and that was all she should care about. It would all be over soon.

“How will I find her?”

She heard his sardonic giggle, but with a flick of his wrist, the castle was gone. Or Regina was. Whichever. She was starting to forget what it felt like to have magic of her own, to feel magic course through her limbs. Of course Rumpelstiltskin would have been the one being to keep some of his magic.

She found herself back at the village, back in the same sty, with nothing but seconds having passed her by, as if time had rewinded itself just to ensure that every morsel of it was hers to live through. It was still just after dawn and the thin pig was still to finish dying from being fed upon by the imp. There was still the smell of brimstone rising from the decapitated imp and its black blood on the ground.

She walked in shame, knowing what she would find on her way out of the village- the dead, the tormented, the fed upon. Adults and children. She was the Evil Queen and yet she was all that stood between them and ReulG’horm’s army. Soldiers had long ago died out as a profession, a race, a vocation. Now there were only people, barely human, trying to survive out of the crumbs left behind by ReulG’horm’s army.

A child scurried ahead of her. She was feared as much as the imps, the trolls, the kelpies, the ogres. The fact that she was their last- their only- defender was an irony that did not escape her. She had no magic left but meagre spurts of what was needed to tend to her own wounds. She could do nothing for them. She could nothing for herself. But what mattered was that she was the one that had brought this upon them. What mattered was that she had once been the Evil Queen.

There was no one to offer solace, a drink of water, a caring hand when she fell wounded, a word of encouragement when she needed to keep going, a helping hand, a bowl of warm soup. As alone as she had been then, it was worse now. And she could not leave any of it behind. Not even her own body. Her life was the Queen’s whim.

Rumpelstiltskin’s offer was light at the end of the tunnel.A life for a life. When had she ever cared about anyone else?

A door opened and an old woman in an incongruent almost shimmering green dress beckoned her into her miserable hut.

She wanted to give it a pass. In each of the huts of the village there was someone that had died because she had failed to prevent the attack today. There was only so much she could pretend to not affect her. But her reluctance was more than that: it was a tingling at the back of her neck as if trouble was near, just hiding in wait. And yet, no matter how she tried to force her feet away from the village, she was still going to go into that hut because such was her punishment.

The old woman in the green dress moved aside franking her entrance. “Do not fear, Your Majesty. I am but an old woman.”

What was there to fear? A slip of a woman starved to an inch of death? And fear for what? For her own miserable life? “What would you have of me? Bury your dead?” “I have no dead left to bury.”

“Than what would you have of me?”

“I will have nothing of you, Your Majesty. But I do wish to give you something.” Regina wondered not what the old woman would have to offer her when she lived in such squalor, but why would she want to give her anything at all.

The woman studied her with hooded eyes. She moved with difficulty to the hearth and served a bowl of thin stew which she placed in front of Regina. “There is no bread, I’m afraid.”

Regina studied the old woman looking for signs of treachery. She was used to being refused at the market, she had long ago stopped even trying and now this woman gave her food, requesting nothing in return? There had to be a catch. The stew looked thoroughly unappealing, just a few bits of whatever it was floating about in a murky water. But it was much more than she could have done herself. Treachery or not, she took a spoon and ate, forgetting to question the woman’s motives as the warmth of the food spread through her. Why would someone feed the one that had brought all of this upon their land? The trolls, the hags, the imps, the giants, the wraiths, the goblins… all lose on the land, all preying on the bodies of the fallen and on those that still survived, the locusts that were never extinguished.

The stew warmed up her belly, gave her a semblance of comfort. It relaxed her muscles and made her sleepy, her mind hazy. “Thank you.”

“No need…” Regina’s eyes drooped closed. How long had it been since she had slept? The old woman touched her hand over the table top and there was nothing she wanted more than just to lean her head on her arms and close her eyes, to rest, to enjoy the forgotten sensation of a full belly, of warmth on her skin. “Just sleep.”

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

The mirror did not return her image. The genie was long gone, allegiancesworn to another master, so she was notreallyexpecting to see him there. But whatever it was she expected, this was not it: paths covered in black, forests of stone and glass, people climbing in and out of horseless carriages, gigantic gleaming birds crossing the skies and the rivers enclosed by walls of stone. It was a strange world she was having a glimpse of. A very strange one.

The general imp materialised in front of her, wings spanning the width of the alley. Its eyes gleamed with hunger and its cocky smile invited an attack. She felt around for her daggers and found none. She took in her surroundings. Surely there would be something she could use as a weapon. Imps could not kill her, her covenant with the land protected her, but it did nothing about the considerable torture when they actually wounded her. This strange world offered nothing she could use as a weapon. Fear reared its ugly head. The imp trotted to her, its hooves clanking on the black path and stopped in front of her. When it spoke, it was not the voice of an imp, but something bigger. ReulG’horm. “Will you follow me to this new world? I can kill you there. Don’t you wish for it? For the respite of it? Follow me, Queen. Let me help you find this Princess of yours. Let me offer you death.”

Its claws gleamed the light of the strange lamps and it made a swipe at her, at her face. Not really to kill, just to wound, just to inflict pain. Imps could not kill her. Nothing could kill her. Rumpelstiltskin had made sure of that. But the pain was real. The poison in its claws radiated through her flesh, spreading, spreading, spreading the agony through her body, seizing, spasming. And still not a dagger in sight.

The imp smiled, mocking her and to drive its point home, sharp claws again lunged at her. She braced for the feeling of flesh being ripped but in its stead, the imp fell to the floor, a hole the size of a pea in its red skinned chest from where black oily blood trickled out.

When it finished falling to the black ground, it revealed behind it a head of wild blonde hair. Regina couldn’t quite make out the features, her vision swam and swayed, but it was a Princess. The Princess. What was a princess doing in a dirty alley?

“What the hell was that?”

Hell was appropriate. My hell, she thought. That was my hell. And as the venom in the imp’s claws made its way through her blood, she slid to the floor in agony, unable to stand. The princess grabbed her arm and cushioned her fall. “A fainter. I had to get a damned fainter. Come on, lady, give me a break here.”

She came to and the first sensation was the foul smell of rotting food and urine. There were blackened walls and the ground was sticky. And the same princess sitting on the floor, propping her head on her pants clad legs, brushing hair from her face and rambling on about not being good with blood.

“Lady, we need to get you to a doctor. You’re hurt. And then maybe you can tell me what the hell was that thing, because I’m a little freaked out and I don’t like the feeling of being freaked out. Can you get up?” It might as well have been a foreign language. She was hearing the words but none of them made sense. Except for the final command. That was the one thing she understood. Yes. Yes, she could. She always did. She moved her legs and her feet and her arms and hands to get up. She did so with some measure of success, swaying, vision doubling, the venom spreading in her body, wave upon wave of fire and pain and nausea. “Princess... I was sent to get you.”

The woman held her, helped her stay on her feet. “I’m no princess, Lady, and I’m not going anywhere.”

And Regina believed her.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

She dragged herself from sleep, painstakingly, decisively waking up from whatever spell, whatever enchantment had been placed upon her.

Her mouth was swollen inside, tasted of bile and her body was sluggish. Poison or potion, but not natural sleep from exhaustion or loss of blood or injury caused by imps. She tried to get up but her body would not cooperate, not even to raise her head from her arms where she lay at the table in the miserable hut.

She bit down the panic, the helplessness. She was not helpless and fear was a commodity. She had to rescue herself because no one else would. She concentrated on each part of her body and found, as she did, that she could indeed move.

“You are awake.” The old woman spoke from her stool by the fire where she was calmly spinning green wool. Regina did not reply. She had to get out. She had to get out now. “You had a vision.”

“There was no vision. What did you put in the food?”

“You had a vision. A gift. You must follow your vision.”

“There was no―”

“Whether you want it or not, whether you believe it or not, Your Majesty, you saw. You saw. You must let it guide you. ReulG’horm is no longer satisfied by our world and moves on, like a locust, devastating everything in its path. Consuming, devouring, devastating. He knows the prophecy about the saviour Princess and he seeks to destroy her before she knows of it, before she is prepared for it.

“There is nothing left of our world. There is not much more you can do for the people you have cursed. But you have set ReulG’horm free with your curse. Your curse unleashed that which was contained. And as it goes into another world to destroy and feed, so it is your responsibility to protect them as much as it was to protect this world. What you have set free, Your Majesty, it is your burden to stop. No matter how many lifetimes it takes you to achieve. As long as it moves, so will you. Your curse has melded your destinies. Whatever it is of ReulG’horm, it is of you.”

“When it is defeated, so am I.” Regina inferred.

“Yes.” The woman agreed with a sadness Regina could not understand.

“So she comes to defeat it. And when she does I shall die.”

“Do you want to?” What an odd question. When had her wishes ever mattered?

The Evil Queen thought of her father, of Graham, both dead. She thought of a life that was not hers to live nor hers to die. “I want to be free.”

“Then find the Princess. Fight the monsters. Guide her home.” Thre was a momentary pause and then she continued, an afterthought. “Trust her. No matter what, trust her. And above all, trust yourself.”

The Evil Queen sighed. “How will I find her?”

“With your heart.”

“Snow White has my heart.”

The old woman stopped spinning and her smile was kind. “Quite the conundrum, dear.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

The world moves around like a merry go round. Round and round it goes, in a blur of darkness and glinting metal. Then, the sudden quiet. Then the loneliness.

The woman kneels on the ground and pulls the man to her, her hands shake as they touch his face.

The world is a mad, mad merry go round.

A dark, dark vulture looms over the woman, helpless on the floor. It asks for the child; it promises a horrible, horrible place, a horrible, horrible fate.

The merry go round spins and spins and the vulture laughs but there is no joy in it, only a terrible despair. The wind blows and howls, the walls and roof melt away, fall apart. The world is ending.

And then the wind falls silent and the merry go round stops its mad spinning. The vulture is a sad woman and the one on the floor is not helpless: she takes a sword from the floor and aims it at the vulture turned woman. The laughter stops as the wind stops, a hurricane that never came to be, and leaves in its place a scent of fear and sadness. The woman on the floor holds the sword steady and announces in anger and hate: You lost. She aims the sword, high and true and pierces the vulture’s heart.

Then there is only blood and hurt.

SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Not even bothering with being quiet, ten year old Henry Devereux slipped through the window to the fire escape, his feet quietly stepping on the metal on his way down. One floor down, he stopped and using a rudimentary lock picking tool, jimmied open the window then let himself in. If he was any judge- and he was- she’d be asleep so he helped himself to some juice and cookies and settled on the couch with the remote, the sound nearly muted.

He munched on the cookies and watched CNN feeling like the king of the castle. Then he heard noise in her bedroom. Sighing, he put the plate down, washed the cookies down with OJ and went to check on her. He worried about her. He really did.

She was all tangled up in her sheets, fighting against them, as if they had been attacking her. On her face, a bruise bloomed so dark that he could see it even in the darkness of the room.

He moved into the room and as he was about to call her name, to wake her up gently, she sat in bed as if pulled by invisible strings. Her eyes found his unerringly in the darkness.

It took her less than a second to get her bearings. “Hi, kid.” He nodded. “Whatchadoin’ here so early?”

“It’s noon. Did you work last night?”

“Yeah.” Her hand went to her cheek. It hurt like a bitch and she could feel the bones rattle under the skin where the bastard had clocked her. What was it with guys who always knew that the worst place to hit a girl was the cheekbone?

“Figures. You have a bruise the size of Texas on your face.” He pointed out helpfully, hands jammed in his pockets. “Did you put some ice already?”

Yeah, no, she hadn’t. She had dragged her sorry ass home after she had delivered the bastard safely to booking in the closest Boston PD precinct she could find. She had popped a funky cocktail of Advil, Aspirin and 7Up and made a minor concession to her bedtime routine: she brushed her teeth. There was a good lesson she had learnt early on: when you get hit on or around the mouth, you brush your teeth no matter how much it hurts because the day after is considerably easier all around than if you don’t. And that was about it. That and the birthday wish. She had given up on birthday wishes a long time ago but the night before, for some reason, she had made one: that there be more to life than getting home battered and bruised. She stood up and the kid gave her a studious look.

She looked at the flea market full length mirror and saw what he did: the hair mused (and not in a good way), the smudged heavy makeup, the bruise- bruises- because the bastard’s fingers were all but tattooed around her upper arm- and her red war dress stained with the wine he had tossed at her when she had told him why they were meeting just like fate.

Shit! Her heart sank as she saw herself through Henry’s eyes. There were days like this when she had a feeling she would never amount to anything, that her one plan in life was as likely as winning the lottery. She looked at Henry and pulled the dress down where it had ridden up her thighs. “I’m gonna get cleaned up… a little.”

“Okay. Do you want some coffee?”

“No… S’alright.” And she disappeared into the toilet because it was embarrassing standing next to the kid when she looked like this, like someone incapable of fending for herself, let alone a family.

…   …   …

When she emerged from the toilet, she felt marginally better: at least she did not smell like a bankrupt brewery and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She felt a little more human, a little less decadent. And it helped that she had recovered her $25000 investment with a small incentive on the side. It made her bank account look a little less pathetic. Hell, it made her feel a little less pathetic.

She passed Henry on the couch and moved into the kitchen. A mug of hot chocolate was steaming on the counter. The kid was an angel and god knew where he would have gotten that from. Certainly not from his bitch of a mother. “Thanks, kid.”

He spared her a look from the couch and stood. “You’re welcome.”

It was powdered stuff, but it was comforting in a way very few things in her life were. She took the first sip and the rest of the previous night melted away. Nearly. “Where’s your mom?”

“Out.” He shrugged and opened the freezer door. He took a bag of peas and stood in front of her. “Here.” And carefully, he pressed the frozen peas against her bruised cheek. “Tell me that you paid him back for this.”

“How do you know it was a him?”

“Isn’t it always?”

“Allegedly.” Henry snorted and pressed the peas harder. “Yeah, yeah. I think I cost him a cap. His smile won’t be as pretty on his mug shot.”

“Good. But Emma, you must take better care of yourself. Please. I like you better with less bruises.”

She would have liked that. If only she had completed high school at least. Office jobs were less likely to get you bruises. But they usually liked people with diplomas and skills she didn’t have for those neat office jobs. “I’ll try. I like myself better with less bruises too.”

“Okay.” Henry hummed while he held the peas to her face.

“So what about the babysitter?”

“On the phone to her boyfriend.” He did a little yuck sound. “I wish they would get a room. I know stuff about sex that I really shouldn’t.”

“Why don’t you tell your mom? I bet she’d be pis― upset, I mean, she’d be upset…If you told her.”

“And when would I tell her?” The kid asked mildly.

It always broke her heart. Every stinking time they had this conversation. She pulled the kid to her and hugged him. “How ‘bout some breakfast?”

“Rather have lunch. I’m all breakfasted out.”

“Lunch it is…” She looked at the peas in her hand and finished her drink. Then she stood and collected items from the fridge and set to work.

Henry sat on the stool she had vacated.

“I worry about you, Emma.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my friend. My only friend.”

“It’s my job, kid. I’m good at it.”

“Some days you’re better than others.”

And wasn’t that the truth. She gave Henry a rueful smile that had him cringing because the bruise looked far worse in contrast with the pretty smile. “Wanna veg out in front of the TV until your mom comes home?”

“Yeah. But don’t call it veg out.”

“Okay. Lemme call the office.” There was a moment where disappointment shadowed Henry’s face. Emma wanted to erase it. Erase his mom while she was at it, for leaving such a precious boy alone for most of his life. “I’m just gonna tell ‘em I’m, alive, kid. Don’t worry, I’m not going in.” Henry dived into a hug and then pulled back, suddenly shy of the affection.

“’Kay.”

SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ

“Hey, sugar plum!” The fake southern accent came through the line. It was part of Harry’s persona. It added weight to the Dirty Harry moniker he had cultivated over the years. It was certainly more in line with the trade than Joseph Dalensky, street rat hailing from the very non exotic Minneapolis.

“Hey Harry.”

“You still alive, baby girl? I heard the guy had a mean right hook.”

“Harry, I draw the line at the sugar plum crap. Don’t push it or you’ll find out, just as he did, that I too have a mean right hook and that I can follow it up with a nicely placed lefty.” “Aw… come on now, don’t get your panties in a twist!”

“Harry…” The tone was a stark warning.

“Kay, kay. Your fee has already been transferred to your account. Nice little bunch of zeros.”

“Anything for me today?”

“You want some?”

“Not particularly.”

“Lady trouble?” “Harry, how many times do I have to tell that I won’t discuss―”

“Maybe you just haven’t met the right one.” “Harry, private life. It’s called private life.” She bunched her fists in irritation.

“But we’re friends!” “No, we’re not!” But it lacked bite. Emma liked Harry and that wasn’t true. She liked him. She liked him a lot. He was the closest thing she’d ever had to a father.

“I gotta set you up with someun’ nice. You just need to meet the right person. And baby girl, you’re working too much for that.”

“Stay out of it, Harry.” The tone lacked the usual bite she put in it when DH tried to meddle. “Besides... I got just the guy to keep me company.” She said with a smile that tinged even her voice. It always did when it came to Henry.

“Sure, sure. Stay home. Get some steak on that shiner.”

“I don’t have one.”

“I didn’t mean the steak! Get some rest, you stubborn ass.”

“Take care of yourself, Harry.”

“Sure will.”

SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ

They vegged out. Which was to say that they curled up on Emma’s old as dirt couch and ate microwave popcorn and watched cartoons all afternoon.

Henry did his best to not curl all the way up to Emma’s lap. He was ten and ten was old enough to not need anyone. Ten was old enough to not wish every day that Emma could have been his mom instead of Hilary. Hilary was not a mom. She didn’t have a maternal gene, a maternal bone in her. He always called her Hilary in the privacy of his own thoughts ever since he’d met Emma on the fire escape for the first time when he was six and trying to run away from home. By the time he was seven, he had decided that Hilary had probably ordered him out of a Laura Ashley catalogue just because he would match the decoration. He didn’t feel lucky at all. One of the best schools in Boston, the best clothes, the best car, the best view out of the best building in the best neighbourhood meant very little. He went to bed every day wishing upon every star that Emma could have been his mom because he wasn’t even her kid and she spent a million times more time with him than his own mother, never mind that she taught him really cool stuff and actually talked to him, actually let him be a part of her life.

He was ten. He was old enough to find it odd that Emma lived in such an expensive neighbourhood and then sat in couches from the thrift shop and had a T.V. she had found on a random curb and carted in at four in the morning. But people had reasons for stuff, she had told him. And he trusted Emma’s reasons.

Besides, the couch may have been turd brown and old but it was the most comfortable thing he’d ever sat on. He was happy on this couch. And safe. When his mother and his babysitter both left him to his own devices for most of the day, he felt safe here. Emma was his safe place.

He leaned against her shoulder and she put her arm around him and he could almost fool himself that he had the perfect life. Which was when Kelly shouted from upstairs that his mom was on her way home and where was he, and to stop being a little shit. Even her shouting sounded bored.

Emma wanted to go up the fire escape and teach her a lesson or two in babysitting but Henry would prefer neither Kelly nor Hilary found out where he went when they didn’t even know he was going anywhere, so he just pushed the window open and climbed out with a cheery wave of his hand, the absolute opposite of the sadness at leaving that strange apartment.

…   …   …

Loneliness was heavy then. It always was when Henry left to go back home. Emma went back into the bathroom and topped up on painkillers and studied herself in the mirror. She was nearing thirty and she had more scars and bruises than prospects or money in her bank account. And if anything, the shiner on her face told her that it was too much. That all of this was too much and that she would not be able to do this for much longer.

“Happy birthday, Emma Swan!” She belatedly greeted herself in the mirror. “Congratulations on another banner year!”

She went to bed thinking of Henry and of a bank account that never quite bounced back.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

The sound of the spinning wheel was soothing, comforting. The Evil Queen sat at the old table and let the future sink in, made her peace with it. Where do I start? The warmth of the fire and the comfort of the stew in her belly made her body heavy and reluctant to move.

“Find the one from your vision.” The old woman answered her unvoiced question out loud. Her hands, Regina noticed, were too smooth for an old woman who had spun wool all her life, the dress too green to belong in this hut. The voice was hypnotic. Soothing, calming, like a lullaby, she imagined, though she’d never had one. For once she was not tired and hurting and hungry all at the same time. For once, her feet were warm and there was food in her and the threat was not imminent. Her bones didn’t hurt and the spinning of the wheel was peaceful. She couldn’t have moved even if she’d tried. She couldn’t even muster anger at her fate.

“If fate is written somewhere, it is in you.” The old woman again commented on her unvoiced thoughts. Regina kept her eyes closed. Her feet were warm from the fire and nothing hurt. She wanted to be suspicious and angry but this felt good. It felt too good to move. Like molasses running through her veins. “Open yourself to life, to love. Live, Regina.”

What’s love got to do with it, the Evil Queen wondered, her thoughts scattered like butterflies in the summer. And why were they all so interested in the Princess now? Snow White she could understand, maybe even the peasants, waiting for deliverance. A good princess is a better defender than a worn out, old Evil Queen. But Rumpelstiltskin? He never stitched a cloth without tying the knots first. He wanted something from Snow’s whelp and it wouldn’t be good. But what did she care? She’d have peace at last. Peace in death was better than this mockery of a life she’d been given as a punishment. Too bad for the princess.

The old woman moved from her spinning wheel and touched Regina’s back. The comfort of the act made Regina forget how unnaturally easy the old woman had moved. She closed her eyes. “You won’t be alone, Regina. You won’t be alone again. And I give this gift to you: whatever you touch, you will know. I’m not sending you to your fight alone this time, though I wish I could do more.” The voice was soothing and hypnotic and the hand rubbed soothing circles down Regina’s back. “In this land without magic, you will need to be more careful.” She hung a small pendant around Regina’s neck, “This will cloak you from the imps until it’s time you fight. Do not take it off. And when it is time to return, it will bring you both home.”

Her body was weary and sleep was a blessing. She felt the old woman’s comforting hand on her back. “Remember, dear, your fate is the one you make. Open your heart.” Then, there was only warmth and oblivion. She let herself fall.

SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Awareness was a gradual process: warmth enveloping her, softness under her face, softness over her. There was brief moment when it all felt like a dream, one where she was back in her childhood bed. A body rolled into hers and an arm snaked around her waist and pulled her into the warmth. The panic was immediate, visceral and utterly violent: she jumped up and backwards and reached for her daggers. Her eyes searched for Leopold first and the old woman next but everything was dark. Her heart pounded, far away from her chest, in another world, anticipating pain and betrayal. She breathed hard and fast and swiped blindly at intervals with both daggers, blinking hard to make her eyes work in the darkness.

It turned out she was not quite ready to die. Not without putting up a fight.

…   … …

The usual dream of the dark vulture looming over the woman and the man wounded on the ground subsided, melted into something quiet and calm which was so unusual it should have woken her up as much the dream itself always did. Except the warmth felt good and familiar and so she just rolled over onto the deep of the bed and draped her arm around the warmth. She sighed deeply in contentment and that was what effectively woke her up: the unusual solidity that went with the warmth. She brought no one here. No one. She rolled out of bed and fell backwards. The room was dark and she could not see what had been in her bed. She patted around the bed, trying to get some sense of direction, to find her Taser or her gun or a shoe, anything, anything at all. She was not helpless. She would never be helpless again.

She walked backwards from the bed to what she hoped was the window, her head spinning. She needed light. She needed to identify the threat and deal with it. A bail bonds person collects enemies like some people collect baseball cards. And most of those, extremely dangerous and motivated. But when her fingers snagged the cord of the blind and pulled, what she saw was not nearly what she had braced for.

…   …   …

The light from the rising sun filtered through the windows and it illuminated her threat: a woman. It was just a scared woman, The Evil Queen thought to herself when she identified the threat. A blonde woman in very, very reduced sleeping garments that left very little covered from the eye. Not an imp, not a troll, not a kelpie. Not Leopold. Just a woman. She raised her hands still holding the daggers trying to show she meant her no harm, but the woman she had though helpless raised a weapon of her own.

“Don’t you even blink!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

Thoughts raced through Emma’s head, wild and chaotic. Once the wild ones were out of the way- like her dream coming true or an alien abduction- it left only the more reasonable thoughts: there weren’t many women she had collared and she would certainly remember this one so she was not a former mark coming to carve her name on her face. That left a superior hangover, one so bad she did not remember drinking let alone going home and having sex... with a drop dead gorgeous woman with two hunting knives in her hands. The pain on her cheekbone told her that she was not missing any days or hours: she had spent the day with the kid and gone to bed alone and sober after he’d left.

That left Dirty Harry, the old son of a bitch.

“Did Harry send you?”

“I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe.”

“You better believe it I am. Who the hell sent you?” And he had taste, the old son of a bitch, she’d give him that. Not that she should be worrying about that now. She took in the woman: tight leather pants, tight leather vest that exposed a deep cleavage, a braid running down the back of her head all the way down to her waist and a floor length leather jacket. Okay, so she had a thing for deadly implements, but the clean face without a hint of makeup was beautiful and god, there was an awful lot of cleavage that Emma valiantly tried to ignore and then scolded herself because why was she even looking let alone evaluating. Women with knives in their hands were not her thing. And the woman had two and unless they were theatre daggers, could cause quite a lot of damage. “Answer the damned question!”

…   …   …

Regina wished the world would stop spinning. She was having trouble balancing with the floor swinging so wildly. And the half-naked woman did not seem helpless at all. It didn’t matter that she was in smaller garments than Regina’s intimate ones. The aggression coming off of her, the strength and the purpose were evident. And what was more, Regina herself would very much like to know who had sent her here and, more importantly, where here was because this was not the hut she had stupid, stupid, stupidly fallen asleep in nor what was left of her castle. Unconsciousness kept pulling at her. Her survival instinct kept her upright- relatively – her daggers at the ready.

“Who’s Harry?”

“The guy that paid your fee…” The nearly naked blonde insisted. Fee? “You can go back to where you came from and tell him that there were no services rendered. And keep the fee. You managed to get in and that’s taught me a lesson.” So the woman seemed to have decided that she had been brought here by the man named Harry and that her services were for hire. Suddenly, the way the blonde lowered her weapon and the look she gave her told Regina exactly what service the woman thought she was in the trade for. It would have made her laugh if the woman had not taken her by the arm- though carefully avoiding the daggers- and pushed her unceremoniously towards a door.

“I’m not a whore.”

“What is that you want to be called then?” And the blonde just kept on pushing her and Regina’s body just kept on trying to give in to the exhaustion and it made resistance futile. “You know what? Don’t care. Whatever your job title, just get the fuck out of here. I have never paid for sex and I’m sure as shit not going to start now, not even as a gift. There’s the door. Get out now before I show you out. Just do me a favour and tell Harry he wasted his dime.”

A whore. The blonde thought that she was a whore. And that her services had been gifted. What kind of place was this? Using the last of her energy, she turned on her heel and pushed the blonde back against the door frame. “I am not a whore. No one paid me to be here.”

“Emma?”

Both Regina and the woman turned towards the small voice coming behind them. A boy was standing in the middle of the strangest room Regina had ever seen and seeing him made the woman push her harder towards the door. “Stay right there, Henry!” The woman shouted in alarm at the child and whatever motion he had been about to perform halted.

“Emma, what’s going on?”

“Nothing, just… Henry, just close your eyes or something… You don’t need to…”

“What are you doing?” The boy insisted again, moving towards them. The blonde let go of Regina in alarm and stood between the child and her daggers, a stance as defensive as a mother bear standing between a hunter and her cubs. But why hadn’t the child called her mother or any endearment? Was this the custom in this land?

She lowered her daggers. “I am not going to hurt anyone.” Least of all because strength was rapidly seeping out of her.

“You better believe it, lady.” Regina had once encountered a mother bear and she had never forgotten it. She sheathed the daggers, one after the other, which was, experience told her, completely the wrong thing to do, to allow herself to become so defenceless.

“I would never hurt a child.”

That deflated the woman’s stance a little. “Just get out. I don’t know why you’d think it’s okay to come in here uninvited- or even how you got in- but just get out now the same way you came in.”

“I don’t know how I got in.” And that was the truth. Her vision swam again the floor moved under her feet. Suddenly, it was important that the woman knew that she hadn’t meant her and her child any arm. That if this was real, if this was not a dream or a vision, she was here to defend them despite herself. “I’m not here to hurt you or your son.”

“He’s not my son.” But she backed further towards the child keeping him behind her back and her words told a wildly different story from her body.

“I don’t…” It was so hard to breathe, to think. “I will protect you.”

“And that’s the gimmick he told you to go with? Do I look like a need protection? Get the hell out and tell Harry that I’m going to hunt him down like a dog. Tell him that I’m gonna hurt him for this.”

It was like trying to stand in a boat during a storm. She swerved and swung but her body had no intention of staying upright. “I don’t know… Harry. I’m here to protect you from ReulG’horm… I’m here because it’s my covenant.” She wanted to get her daggers out again because she could not protect anyone if her daggers were sheathed but her hands just missed them. Over and again.

“He could at least have gotten me a clean one.” She heard but could not understand the meaning. The words were coming from very far away.

…   …   …

Emma pushed Henry into the kitchen area and made him duck behind the kitchen island then moved back to the woman. The whole warrior gimmick was cool, she had to admit. But to have Harry think that she needed to pay for… this… she wanted to kill him. And the woman was closer and, therefore, handier. In three long strides, she was next to the woman and was pushing her out again, one hand opening the door, the other pushing out the supple body. When the woman had passed the threshold, she released her hold to close the door and the woman collapsed and fell in a heap on the floor.

“Fuck!” Not her responsibility. Not her problem. She closed the door doing her best to ignore the punishing squeeze of her heart.

“You can’t leave her outside.” Henry told her in a small voice standing behind the kitchen island.

“Watch me.” But her fingers closed convulsively around the lock and refused to obey the command of her brain to move.

“Shit, fuck, shit.” Emma cursed loud and soundly, forehead against the heavy wood. “A fainter. He had to get me a damned fainter.” She jerked the door open again and shouted at the woman on the floor, resisting the pull to crouch and pick her up. “Come on, lady, give me a break here.” Henry was looking at her, his eyes wide as saucers.

“You can’t leave her out there.”

Emma banged her head against the solid, expensive door she could not bring herself to close. “Why not?” This was stupid, so, so stupid. “She’s on something, Henry. People hurt others when they’re on stuff.”

“How do you know?”

“Jesus, Henry! I do, alright?” “She needs help.” He moved to her side. “And good people help people that need help.” “Yeah? Well, whoever told you that I’m good people anyway?”

Henry gave her a sideways look that included a raised eyebrow, then moved past her. “Okay, then if you don’t want to help her, I’ll take her to my place.”

“Your mom will kill you. And her while she’s at it.”

“I’ll take her to my room. My mom hasn’t been to my room in five years.” He leaned on the floor by the heaped body and considered how to best move her.

“She’s is not a puppy, Henry… Okay, fine. Just stay away from her. Don’t touch her. God knows where she’s been.”

“Emma, I don’t think she has cooties or anything.” Emma crouched and slid her hands under the woman’s armpits and started dragging her inside.

“What the hell do you know about cooties?” She spoke through gritted teeth.

“I know about the clap too.”

Emma nearly dropped her cargo. “What?”

“Kelly. She talks a lot. A lot. On the phone.” “I’m gonna kill your babysitter. And then I’m gonna kill your mother for hiring her.”

“Cool! Can I come and live with you after?”

“You, me and crack head here. Big happy family.” Emma spoke through gritted teeth.

Henry smiled. “She’s pretty.”

“For an addict.” Emma looked at the body on the floor and then at the couch. Shit, this was going to hurt. She slid her hands under the woman’s torso and knees and hoisted her up to the couch.

It was surprisingly easy, though, with all the adrenaline coursing through her veins and the slight weight of the woman. She hoisted the body up and her first action was to remove the knives from their holsters. Then she took a second to study the woman and consider if maybe she should tie her down. She didn’t know what the woman was on but anything like crack and when the woman woke up she’d had a case of the rage in her hands. Not something she wanted to do with Henry in the room.

“She looks a little sick.” Henry pointed out.

“Drugs will do that...” But the assessment didn’t ring true and she usually didn’t get things wrong. It was one of her best professional assets, that knack for the instinctive truth. She took a hand that hung limp and did a quick study of the arm, looking closely at the veins. No needle marks.

And, she liked to think, Harry wouldn’t use someone like that. He was more likely to give them fifty bucks to get a room for the night or a sandwich if he was strapped for cash. He wouldn’t let someone sell themselves to feed an addiction.

Emma was not used to not understanding what someone was about and this woman… well… If it weren’t drugs, then why the scars and the near malnourishment? She sure could use a few calories on her, because the bones were jutting out of the thin skin at sharp angles.

And then she almost beat herself up for thinking about feeding the woman.

Maybe the woman was simply crazy. An escapee from some hospital or asylum and the scars had perfectly reasonable explanations.

She looked at the knives- correction- daggers- because these were not something a street rat could get her hands on, these were crafted and inscribed with weird symbols and they looked like antiques. She leaned closer to examine the sheaths and pulled back immediately because that was way too close to the chest for her comfort and no, this was not something you get from riding with a gang or even from your local thrift shop. This was serious business. And definitely, these were not prop knives. She stuffed them in the safe after making sure that Henry couldn’t see the combination.

Emma turned around when she heard the first gasp. The woman was like a jack-in-the-box: she jumped up from the sofa and landed on her feet, her face a mask of confusion and fear. The loony bin theory was starting to gain weight in Emma’s mind. “Alright, easy, no one is going to hurt you.”

“My daggers. Where are my daggers?”

“I took them. You can hurt yourself with those!” “No, I need them back. Now! I need them back now!”

Emma steeled herself for the woman having a breakdown. “What do you think is gonna happen if you don’t have them?” Great, now you’re talking like a shrink, Emma, well done. She tried to get between the woman and Henry but the kid seemed hell-bent on getting closer to her.

“I won’t be able to defend myself without them, what do you think I use them for?”

“Defend yourself from what?”

“From them.” At Emma’s questioning look, the woman elaborated. “The imps. The trolls. The kelpies. The ogres. The wraiths. ReulG’horm’s army.” The panic in her voice escalated.

And this was it, Emma felt she was losing her cool and maybe the tried and tested slap to the face method could work a miracle here. She sighed. “Right, I don’t know what this rogue worm is but here’s the thing: trolls are about as real as giants and fairies. And I don’t even know what a kelpie is. So, how about you lay off the hysterics and calm the hell down before I knock some sense into you?”

…   …   …

Regina wanted to scream. What on earth was this place, who was this woman, and how could she be so thick as to leave her helpless when they were out there and it would be only a matter of time before they attacked? She was out of options. Her head was spinning still and she couldn’t defeat a lap dog in battle if it came to it but at least she had to try. Time was ticking and she had to get moving. She had to get the lay of land and find them before they could propagate. And she had Snow White’s spawn to find.

She took a deep breath and tried to steady her breathing and her hands. She had long ago learnt from her mother that the more agitated, the more nervous she was, the less she was going to be heard.

“You don’t understand: I need my weapons. I am here to defend you and your world from ReulG’horm. Its army has travelled here to eliminate the princess of the prophecy. It is my mission.”

“You mission?” The woman snorted.

“My punishment… my responsibility. And when they find me…”

“They’ll what? Kill you?”

If only. “They can’t kill me. But they can make sure I am unable to fulfil my obligation. They can and they will destroy the princess I seek.”

Well, hello, Dolly! “Lady… you’re crazy.”

Keep calm, Regina told herself. Keep calm because otherwise the woman will not listen to you. She stood and tried to steady herself against a wall. “No. I am not. You must believe me. If you don’t believe me now, when people start dying, you will.” “People die every day.” “Do they die every day of exsanguination?”

“So is this Rogue Worm like the king of vampires or something? Are you Buffy?”

The woman was mocking her and Regina wanted to smack some respect into her. She made the first move. She might not be able to cause any real damage- her punishment had seen to it- but she could least have a fairly good go of it. But when she moved, the boy was standing next to her and touched her hand. “Are you an alien?” In asked in awe. What got to her was his skin: warm and soft. His hand in hers as if he had nothing to fear from her. She hadn’t had that in all the years of the curse, in all the years since she’d become the Evil Queen. It paralysed her.

Suddenly she couldn’t speak because all the words were tied in a knot at the entrance of her throat. She shook her head. No. She took a deep breath and spoke looking at Henry. “I am not a vampire and I don’t know what an alien is but I’m not one. And I have a job to do. I have a job to do.”

“What’s your name?”

It was a question she had not expected. She was used to being her, the Evil Queen, Your Majesty¸ or something nameless, just feared. She did not need an introduction. What she was always preceded her. For a moment she almost didn’t want to tell the child. “Regina. My name is Regina.”

“My name’s Henry. Nice to meet you.” Regina choked on the name for a while, a wave of longing and regret, of all the things she refused to feel every day. “And this is Emma Swan.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Henry.”

“Why don’t you sit down? Emma, I’m really hungry. Kelly was on the phone again and I left before I had to hear something disgusting and I skipped breakfast…. Please…” Henry launched his weapon of mass destruction: the saddest puppy eyes Emma had ever seen.

…   …   …

Emma considered her options and clearly, tossing the woman out of the window was not going to fly with Henry. Cooking breakfast as if they were best friends or something was, strangely enough, the only reasonable one. Just as soon as she put on some clothes. Except that even that presented with difficulties because she was not about to leave Henry alone with a basket case who was clearly peaking on the insanity scale and clearly in need of meds. She also wanted to get a hold of Dirty Harry and give him a piece of her mind.

She grabbed the phone and dialled Harry first because if he knew the woman he could at least tell her where the off switch was and that might help. “Stay there.” She commanded the woman. To her surprise, the woman sat down- slumped down, actually- and kept on holding Henry’s hand which was freaking her out. But someone had to be the sane one, so when Harry answered the phone she gave up on the idea of not breaking the contact. “DH, you better move to another country ‘cause when I find you, I promise you’re going to hurt!” “Aw, Sugar Plum, what I have done now?”

“Funny you should ask! DH, did I ever complain to you that I wasn’t getting any? Why would you feel that you had to pay a …” She stole a glance at the woman. “…whatever for me?” She completed, observing the micro Amazon, eyes glued to Henry, all worry about weapons forgotten. “Where did you even find this one?” Dirty Harry forgot his Southern accent then and the Midwestern come through loud and clear. “What the fuck are you actually talking about, Swan?”

“The present you sent to my bed. Woke me up with a dagger in each hand and some crazy talk about trolls. What the actual fuck, DH! Did you have to go to the bargain basement?”

“Now, you hold it right there!” Emma could hear the anger in his voice seeping through the line. It mollified her marginally. “Explain.”

“There’s no way I’ll believe you didn’t have something to do with this. I know there’s money in this for you, a bet of some sort, cause that’s you, DH. This has your name all over it. I just thought you’d respect my home.”

“Swan, so help me God! How much did you drink?” “Not a drop, DH. And right now? I’m wishing I had.”

“It was your birthday. You’re allowed, you know? Did you at least make a wish?”

“Yeah, I wished, alright, lemme tell ya what I wished―”

“No! Don’t say it, it won’t come true.” God! Sometimes DH was such a dumbass. Emma bit her tongue and held on to her very private wish that she didn’t have to be alone. That she could take Henry and run, just run to somewhere no one would ever find them.

“Lucky me. The chick you sent, DH…Crazy. Completely off her rocker. She got in in the middle of the night and woke me up with a dagger in each hand and is talking crazy about all sorts of shit. I didn’t think you’d use someone who needs a doctor and a straitjacket.”

“Swan, I swear on the holy cross and my kids’ happiness: I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Are you sure you didn’t go out yesterday, got hammered and brought home a little candy? ‘Cause I sure didn’t send you anything. I talk the talk, you know I do, but I don’t usually walk the walk. Not the crazy walk, any way…”

“Harry…”

“Think about it. Maybe you just can’t remember. You drink like a sailor on leave. Maybe you wanted to fuck like one too.”

“Harry, for fuck’s sake!”

“Look… Take a day off. You need it. Just kick the skank out if you’re not going to have your wicked way with her.”

“DH!”

“What? You must at least swing both ways!”

“I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“Okay… True thing, though: you never even looked at me like you’d do me.”

“You’re like a father to me. That’s sick.”

“I am? Really?” There was sincere emotion in Harry’s voice that made Emma’s throat tighten.

“Well, not anymore.”

“Aw, kid… sorry. Listen, forget I said anything. Just don’t go to sleep next to her. For all we know, she could be an axe murderer…”

“Harry?”

“Yeah, kid?” “What do I do?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“’Cause… You’re a good guy. One of the few I know. What do I do?”

“Aw, Sugar Plum…” Harry’s fake southern accent reappeared miraculously. “Have a cup of coffee with her... Though, maybe tea for her. Have some breakfast. Talk to her nice. People like nice. And I’ve seen you doing it… occasionally… Ask her what her deal is.”

“What if she’s crazy? For real, bat shit crazy?”

“Then she might need a little more that you’re willing right now… You’re a good girl, Swan. Do what comes naturally to you.”

“Harry? I’m gonna take you up on that day off offer.”

“Sure. Happy birthday, kid.”

“Thanks, Harry.”

“Bye, Sugar Plum.”

Emma eyed the woman sitting on her couch, completely out of place in her skin tight worn leather pants and leather jacket and the general appearance of a warrior from another century, and took a deep steadying breath. She put the phone down, breaking the eye contact between the woman and Henry. She sat on the old coffee table she’d salvaged from a Dumpster and looked at the woman straight in the eye. “I think you could use some calories in you. Henry could use some breakfast too. So… how would you like some of the best pancakes you’ve ever tasted?”

…   …   …

Regina studied the woman in front of her. The last time she’d accepted food, she ended up here - wherever here was- with a nearly naked woman who thought she was crazy. She felt lost, adrift. It was one thing to do this back home where the defeat was a daily fact. But here? Without knowing where or what here was? She needed time more than she needed food. It seemed to her that the place they were in was relatively sheltered because there were no imps, no trolls. Nothing had given her chase yet. She couldn’t feel their presence, smell them in the air. Her eyes set on the woman’s creamy flesh, not the softness she’d expected, but a subtle hardness, an underlying power. She needed time and she needed an ally. Maybe she could find the Princess of her vision but she had no clue how to even start. And, with all the things she needed to do, she found that the most pressing one was to touch the woman’s arms, to feel that firmness, that power. She felt herself blush and lowered her eyes to her hands.

Maybe this woman was some sort of warrior of this world. She had a bruise on her face and for some reason, Regina doubted that it would be by the hand of a husband or a parent.

She wanted to ask for help but why would anyone?

The woman seemed to hear her silent plea. “What do you want me to do?” Her throat closed painfully. “Help me.” She found she didn’t have it in her to repeat the request. She closed her eyes and her mind echoed her words. Please help me.

…   …   …

Emma’s inner moron helpfully pointed out that this was a terrible idea. A horrible, horrible idea. “Okay.” She grunted quietly. When, oh when, had she ever been swayed by a sad pair of eyes? When had she ever agreed to help someone without fully understanding what it was she was getting herself into? Without there being a fee at the end of the stupid rainbow? For some reason, she had a sudden premonition that helping this woman would not be by driving her to the nearest psychiatric ward. And maybe that was not a bad thing.

Still, it was hard to trust a feeling she didn’t understand. “Okay.” She repeated more to herself. “Okay. Stay here. I need to get some clothes on. Don’t move.”

…   …   …

Regina felt, more than saw, the woman standing up. She had her eyes closed in shame and worry but it was as if the woman’s body warmth had left a trail or a mark in air when she stood. She pressed her eyes closed harder but there was a faint scent of something like lavender perhaps and her body reacted strongly to that scent. She told herself that it was because it had been so long since she had touched or been touched by anyone but she was having trouble believing herself.

The child touched her hand and that brought her back to the here and now. “Emma makes the best pancakes. Do you like pancakes?”

“I…”

“Do you have pancakes where you come from?”

“Yes… we used to…”

“Not anymore?”

No, Regina thought, not anymore. There was not much of anything now. Not enough cows for milk, not enough chickens for eggs. Not enough cereal for bread. She shook her head but did not reply. Maybe now that the imps and trolls and their brethren were moving here, the Enchanted Forest might actually begin to recover. Maybe in a year they wouldn’t all be so hungry. They seemed to have plenty here, with their pancakes, maybe they had enough that could feed ReulG’horm’s greed and still be enough.

The Emma Swan woman came back from the bedchamber she had woken up in an odd outfit of pants and a man’s shirt and Regina found herself enjoying that nearly as much as the nearly naked version. She closed her eyes because it wouldn’t do to be this distracted. No. Not at all.

“Right.” Emma set a cup of coffee on the table in front of Regina. “From the beginning, if you please.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 4

Regina stared at her hands on her lap.

“What do you want to know?”

“Why don’t you tell me what I need to know instead, huh? ‘Cause what I want to know and what I need to know may not be the same thing.” Emma set a plate with pancakes and a bottle of maple syrup on the table and sat facing Regina squarely in the eye. “Start by telling me how the hell you got into my bed without me noticing.”

Henry reacted fast. “In your bed?”

“Yeah.” Emma answered him, nostrils still flaring with indignation though she deflated a little by the time she turned to Regina again and her eyes dropped to the cleavage the leather vest did nothing to disguise. “Tell me how you did it.” Emma decided to worry about her own reaction of grabbing on and snuggling into that body latter. Yeah, latter would do just fine.

“I can’t.” Regina answered.

Emma slapped the table with a violence that made Henry jump in his seat and the coffee slosh in the cups. Regina didn’t flinch.

“If you want my help, start talking, lady. My patience is wearing thin already.” To give herself something to do, she served Henry’s plate and dumped an excessive amount of syrup on the pancakes. Henry was fascinated by the woman across from him. Figures, she thought a little bitterly. She stabbed two pancakes and put them on a second plate, liberally squirted syrup on top and placed them in front of Regina.

“Eat. Talk. At the same time if you have to.”

Regina looked at her plate in quiet desperation. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” The scent of the food was enticing. More than that, actually. It smelled like some god had made it, and made her mouth water and her cheeks hurt, her fingers itch, but the last time she’d accept food, she’d ended up here. There was no telling what kind of poisons or potions they had in this land. And she had a job to do.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake just eat. I can hear your stomach rumbling from here.”

Embarrassment tinged her cheeks but Regina held strong. She was nothing if not disciplined. She had learned to leave all her desires, all her appetites locked inside her where she dealt with them privately.

But then the child took his fork and cut a piece of her pancake and stuffed it in his mouth. “It’s good, you see? Emma is a good cook. And she’s a good person. She won’t hurt you.”

Emma had been about to lose her temper with the woman. She could see how hungry the woman was, how unhealthily thin and it was bothering her that she would refuse to eat. But then Henry did the taste test and for some reason she couldn’t quite account for, Emma allowed herself to believe this was not some attempt at being cover model for Vogue but genuine suspicion. When Henry finished chewing, the woman finally took her fork and cut a piece of the pancake and stuffed it in her mouth. She closed her eyes in delight but stopped short of moaning in a moment of quiet pleasure.

“Good?” Henry asked her. She nodded when she opened her eyes. “How ‘bout some coffee?”

Regina stared at the cup but didn’t drink.

Emma did not appreciate the suspicion. She took the cup in her hand and was about to pull it away in a fit of temper when Henry came to the rescue again. “It’s coffee. I’m a kid. Kids don’t have coffee.”

Despite herself, Emma took a sip of the coffee and handed the cup back to Regina. “There, I’m not trying to poison you.”

Regina sipped the coffee and made a face. “Really?”

Emma handed her the sugar. Regina looked at her unsure of what to do. All she saw was white sand. The moment, however, that her hand touched it, she knew what this was. She took the spoon and dropped two spoonfuls in her coffee and stirred. When she tried it again, it was delicious. Hot, sweet, strong. She sighed in pleasure this time. And then composed herself in a fit of guilt. Here she was, sitting comfortably, having pancakes and coffee. Back home, children were sleeping hungry because of her curse and her ineptitude.

She finished the food struggling against the pleasure it brought her. “Thank you. That was… I don’t remember having anything this good.”

Emma sipped her coffee and pushed more pancakes towards Regina, feeling a compulsion to feed the woman. Next thing, she’d be giving her fifty bucks for a room. Or offering her a pillow and a blanket. If she’d had the coordination, she would have kicked her own ass just for the sheer dumbitude of that thought.

“What is exactly that you do, huh, Regina?” Henry gave Emma an angry look that said that she should tone down the aggression.

“I fight ReulG’horm.”

“So you’re a soldier?” Emma interrupted. “Not exactly.”

“Well, excuse me if I got the rank wrong. Should I call you General or Colonel?” “Neither. There is no army. There’s just me.” “Okay, hold your horses for a sec: so there is this great evil army of trolls and kelpies and fairies―” “Not the fairies. Fairies are not evil. Though that’s debatable. Ogres. Imps. They’re the cruellest, the most dangerous.”

“And they fight for a country called ReulG’horm”

“It’s not a country.” Emma gave her a venomous look aggravated by Regina’s imperious tone. “It’s an entity…”

“Okay. So there’s all of those and no army to fight them back. There’s you…” Regina was taken aback by the appraising look Emma Swan gave her but only nodded. “One woman against an army… How did you come by that job? Did you fill out an application?”

“Are you mocking me?”

“No…” Emma shook her head. “I mean… I’m trying not to. The thing is…”

“It’s a lot for Emma to take in…” Henry offered with a mouth full of pancakes.

“Actually, yeah, it is.” Emma ran her hand through her hair in a tired gesture. This was not how she’d imagined her day would go. “How come you’re the only one fighting these things then? It seems that there isn’t much you can do on your own.”

“Unless you have like super powers…” Henry suggested hopefully.

“No. No powers. I stand against then. I fight them. Kill them when I can. All those I can. I hold them at bay as much as I can.”

“Is that enough?”

“Holding them back? No. I’m not enough for that either. It seems that I was defeated at the beginning but the loss has been coming in increments, with each child, with each old man, each pig that they take.”

The sadness in her tone gave Emma pause and pulled at her heart. “Is this like uh… why did you choose to do this?” Regina nodded sadly, her eyes resting on the window letting in the sun. “Did someone make you? Did this ReulG’horm choose you?” Emma found that it bothered her that someone might have forced the woman into a life that left her like this.

“I don’t need your pity.” Regina remarked acerbically.

“Fine. No pity. Just answer the question then.”

“No.” “Well? Why, then?”

There was a moment of hesitation. “I brought this upon myself.”

Emma had yet another second of pause to think that that expression sounded like one of those things repeated at you until you learnt it like a times table, by heart. And then believed it.

“You’re right. You don’t need my pity. You seem to have it in spades already.” She pushed at her hair messing up her pony tail slightly. “Tell you what: I want to go back to that particular topic, so I’ll be asking that again. Those things that you’re so scared of…” “I am not. I am not scared of them.”

No. Emma could see she wasn’t. “You’re not afraid of dying?”

“Sometimes death is a welcome release.”

Emma looked at Henry because this conversation was so not appropriate to his age bracket. For his part, Henry just put his hand over Regina’s as if he did understand, as if he empathised.

Emma found that she had to look away from the woman and Henry’s soothing hand on her. “It’s like I’m watching Cyborg or some sh― something like that.” Henry gave her a withering look and Emma’s already half-hearted rant became a mumbled string of words with the sole purpose of feeling like she wasn’t giving into insanity. Or jealousy. “You against an army? Can’t be killed? Really?” If she looked at the woman for one more second, she might believe even Santa if Regina told her to. She needed a little snark just to feel like herself.

“It’s my job to stop them. No one else’s.” It seemed that the woman had excellent hearing. “It is my weight to carry, no one else’s.”

“So those things…” Henry got them all back on track. “Are they demons?”

“Demons? No. They are… beings. Flesh and bone, like everything else. But they are attracted to destruction and fear and pain. They thrive on it.”

“So what are they here to do?” Henry put down his fork and leaned loser to Regina.

“Eliminate the Princess. Feed.”

“What princess?” Emma butted in.

“The Lost Princess of the prophecy. The one I must find, the one I must bring home with me. They will destroy her if they find her before I do.”

“That’s not good.” Henry quipped. Regina assented with her head, silently. Emma’s gut clenched painfully too, for some reason she didn’t care to examine. “What about where you come from? How about… their food… there?”

“Not enough. They have fed. They have decimated entire kingdoms. Fed on them and on their crops, their cattle. Now they are moving on. Like locusts.”

“And they’re going to feed on us?” Regina nodded. “And just what can you do to stop them? Assuming they exist, that is…” Regina stifled the scream bubbling in her throat. This woman was infuriating. And went straight to the point.

“The same I have done so far. I’ll keep on killing them.”

“Are you good at it?” Henry asked with glee and excitement in his eyes. “I am.”

“But that’s not enough, isn’t it?”

“No…”

Emma snorted. Good thing she was still on the fence on whether to take this woman to the closest psychiatric ward or to the closest Boston PD precinct or she’d be running for the hills. Though GI Jane slash Xena at her table looked like she could cause some serious damage when she was not fainting.

“Okay. And who’s the rogue worm?” Emma miss-pronounced the name on purpose.

“ReulG’horm! The greatest power there is.”

“A mobster?” Finally a concept she could work with. Emma latched on to it like a drowning man would a plank of wood. “Are you like a mobster’s wife or something? Did you just drag us into a bloodbath?” Okay, so this was a thread she could pull at, a sane thread that did not involve things that could not be mentioned in a police report. “Lady, you need to get out. You need to get out now.” She looked at Henry and panicked. She was used to the blows and the hurt but she was not willing to let anyone drag Henry into it. Not Henry. Not Henry!

“ReulG’horm is evil.” “Yeah, mobsters usually are evil! ” Emma spoke at the same time and was already standing up and grabbing Regina by the arm, pulling her up. God, it was such a relief to have a tangible concept to latch onto. Even if it didn’t ring true in the slightest.

“I’m not its wife. I’m all that stands between ReulG’horm and your world. I am its defeat.” Regina answered while being dragged up. Though she could not be sure of that particular statement.

“I’m afraid my offer does not extend to helping out with the mob. I don’t have much, but what I have, I aim to keep. How could you drag a kid into this? You need to get out now.”

Henry stood and walked to Emma and put his hand on her free arm. He pulled her back, but Emma’s strength was all adrenaline and was unstoppable. “Emma, stop it. Stop this. It’s not the mob.”

“Kid!”

“It’s not the mob, Emma.” He was just about to scream and his fingers clutched at Emma’s arm. “Is it? Is ReulG’horm a mobster?” He enquired of Regina with urgency.

“I don’t know what a mobster is.” Regina stood and freed herself from Emma’s hold with a simple spin on her heels that had Emma at her mercy in a heartbeat, positions reversed. That told Emma that at least a part of the whole story had to be true. “Please, give me my daggers back.” Regina released her. It was resignation that Emma heard in the woman’s tone. And then she wasn’t sure what angered her the most, the resignation or the disappointed sadness. Either way, she decided, Regina had to go. The woman did not complain, did not fight her back, she just asked her again for the daggers. As if her life depended on them. Fuck!

“What is he then?”Said the blonde co-ed before being gutted in a horror flick. Emma, you idiot. You’ve seen the film why buy the merchandise?

“It. ReulG’horm is it. All your nightmares, all your fears, all your worries in one entity. Evil in pure form. Worse than me.”

“Evil?” Emma asked, her hand again firmly holding Regina’s arm and pushing her to the door.

Regina assented with a minute head movement. She could have dropped Emma, rendered her helpless in a swift movement without so much as a thought but that skin on skin contact had the most peculiar effect on her: she wanted more of it. She wanted more touch, more skin. She’d missed it, the warmth of human skin even if it came through barely contained violence. “Do you believe in evil?”

“Yeah. I do. In the kind that stares you right in the face and smiles. The murderers, the rapists, the thieves. The liars and the cheaters.”

“ReulG’horm is their begetter, their inspiration, their master, their enabler.”

Regina stood perfectly still not even making a token effort to free herself from Emma’s hand still in her arm. And Emma knew the strength she was putting in her hold. She stole a glance at her fingers and saw her knuckles white and Regina’s skin purpling under her fingers. “That’s bullshit.” Emma said because she knew evil in the flesh. She had the scars to prove it, but she wasn’t quite ready to buy into the head fuck that was Regina’s story. Not while she could help it. She wasn’t ready to send Regina on her way either, it seemed, because she just couldn’t let go. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”There you go, Emma Swan, lacking the courage of your convictions.

“ReulG’horm’s army feeds. They have bodies and they can be seen. They can kill and steal and maim. They leave a trail of bodies behind them.”

“Are they here already?” Henry asked and their attention focused on him rather than each other. His voice was small and scared. Emma released Regina then and went to him, pulled him into her arms. Regina observed the easy affection and her heart ached for them. For herself.

“Yes.” She said, lowering her chin.

“She’s lying.” Emma raged.

“What about your super power, Emma?” Emma was going to answer, something reassuring, but she had a deal with the kid: no lying. Ever. “You believe her. You don’t want to, but you believe her, don’t you?”

Emma just pressed him into her as an answer. When Henry remained still without returning the hug, she rubbed at her face and flinched when her palms hit the sore spot on her cheek. She went to the TV, switched it on.

Regina’s eyes bulged momentarily until she moved to what she presumed to be a magic mirror. You have but to touch it. The understanding came to her when she touched it: TV. Television. She studied it under her eyelashes. It was odd to know these things, just know them but not understand them; know how they worked but not really, like reciting a poem that you understand the rhythm but not the meaning.

The images flipped through the screen in rapid succession at each of Emma’s touch on the tiny buttons on the remote, dizzying like riding a spooked horse, out of control. And then she saw it, ReulG’horm’s mark: a woman reciting name and ages of children with a grave face, cataloguing the facts and assumptions. What a strange world was this to look at loss like that and not understand what was afoot. “There!” She told Emma. “There.”

Emma finally stopped her channel flipping on a local news network where the reporter stood outside a house surrounded by police tape and police officers people looking agitated and angry.

“It has begun.” Regina stated, arms tensing and muscles bunching under the skin. It mesmerised Emma until she caught herself and made a conscious effort to look elsewhere, to concentrate on the news.

This was crazy. The woman had to be crazy, because if she was right, well, then they were all screwed. The reporter plodded on with her sedated account of how two children had gone missing from their rooms and how there being no indications of anyone else’s involvement, the parents had been taken for questioning at the local PD station. Regina was transfixed, staring at the image, mumbling something to herself. The neighbours were interviewed and their comments ranged from the yeah there were always suspicious to the more subdued it wasn’t them.

“Why would they take a child?” Emma asked. Regina stepped away from the TV and turned to Henry. Then to Emma.

“When you were a child…. Were you ever scared of the darkness in your room? Of the shadows and the things that lurked under your bed? Did you ever fear monsters that no one else could ever see?”

Emma hesitated. “No.”

Regina gazed at her and the expression was loud and clear: Liar. “Children know ReulG’horm for it what it is. Evil.”

“That’s very poetic but it doesn’t answer my question.”

“Does evil need a reason?” Regina turned her attention to the television mostly because she didn’t expect an answer but also because of the strangeness of having someone with her, next to her. It was making her lightheaded and that was not good. It was better not to crave anything, anyone. It was better to remain alone.

“Actually, yeah. Pretty much.” Regina’s shock was visible. She turned to Emma before she could school her features. “It doesn’t change the facts, but there is usually a reason.”

It took her a few precious seconds to find a suitable reply. “They take children because they’re weak.”

It was absolutely the wrong thing to say because Emma’s eyes darted to the child still sitting at the breakfast table watching them silently.

“The kids could have run away, you know?”

“But they didn’t.” Regina stepped closer to Emma. “You know they didn’t.” Emma was unable to move, bound to Regina as if by force of gravity.

“No, I don’t.” Emma pressed, invading Regina’s personal space.

“I’m not weak.” Henry spoke and broke the spell. “Or helpless. How do you defeat them?”

“My daggers.” Regina answered gaining control over her senses and her hands moved to the empty sheaths. “I must have my daggers.”

“You can’t fight them, Henry.”

“Remember Home Alone, Emma?”

“If she’s telling the truth, this isn’t a Christmas movie, Henry.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Henry!”

Regina turned back to the news on the television and fiddled with the medallion hanging between her breasts absentmindedly. There had to be more. The imps had been here probably little longer than her. There had to be more death. They had come to this world hungrier than her. Two small children would not be enough. She took the object Emma had dropped and pointed at the TV as she’d seen Emma doing. The understanding of it came from holding it. She pressed arrows up and down until the scene on another news channel caught her attention. Her arms fell to her sides. This was more like the imps’ work: they had decimated half of the animals behind the strange enclosures the woman on the TV was calling a Zoo. The images showed bodies prone on the ground, animals that Regina had never seen but that looked so human in shape and in the horror etched on their faces. She hoped they would show the fang marks, just so that she could make sure, but the camera rotated away as if it too was sickened by the spectacle. She turned to a shocked Emma.

“There.” She pointed at the screen with urgency. ”How do I get there?”

“The zoo?”

“Yes. Teach me how to get there. I’ll go away. They won’t find their way to you.” She encompassed Henry in the direction of her gaze. She would never understand that bond between the woman Emma and the boy Henry, but why question it? It didn’t matter. They were not hers to look after. They were hers only to defend, to get them out of harm’s way.

“Yeah, okay… the zoo…”

For some reason, Emma could not muster the directions in her head. She was looking at the images of the animals that had been found dead in the morning, hundreds, just dead. Big, all of them, enclosed. Exposed. She didn’t need the reporter to tell her that it was strange and unexplained. Unlike the reporter, she could not quite believe the handy explanation of food poisoning or gas leaks. She regarded Regina in a new light. Or, she told herself, she was at least, willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, that would work...

“Yeah… okay, lady.”

Her first instinct of locking herself and Henry in the apartment and only coming out when it was safe died swiftly. She would not die- she would not let Henry die- like the animals in the zoo, without a fight.

She would rather go out and find them in whatever hole they were hiding. Colour her motivated, but she would not leave any stone unturned until she was sure they were all wiped out.

As any boy, Henry was anticipating the fight, looking forward to it, if the light of battle in his eyes was any indication. She just didn’t know how to keep him safe while she went out. His mother was a useless bitch and the babysitter little more than a child herself. One that saw little beyond her own underpants.

Henry’s phone rang. It seemed that the problem had just been made greater. She knew from the tone in his voice that the babysitter was calling him back. For once he had been missed before it was time for Hilary to come home and it had to be today of all days.

She had a moment where she thought she might take him with her because it had to be safer than leaving him with an absent parent or an incompetent babysitter.

Her heart was pulling her in two opposite directions: Stay with the kid and defend on her own if she could or go out, leaving him behind and attack. She liked the odds of the second best. She went to him and pulled him into her arms and squeezed him tight, unable to let him go.

Regina’s hand cupped the medallion between her breasts and pulled it out from under her leather clothes. She approached Henry and Emma.

“If you’ll allow me.” She asked Emma’s permission because no matter how much Emma denied it, she was the child’s mother, more so than the woman that called herself so. She held the medallion to the light and made quick work of fastening it around Henry’s neck. “Whatever happens, do not take it off. It will protect you. It will make you invisible to them. Whatever you do, don’t take it off.”

“Is it magic?” Henry asked mesmerised by the medallion turning the stone in his fingers.

Emma noticed the size of the gemstone at the centre of the medallion, its size and shine. Not a crackhead then. That would have been the first thing to hit the pawnbroker. Though crazy, she hoped fervently, might still a viable option. A stone making you invisible was way too close to Harry Potter’s invisibility to cloak. But she was out of options. As usual. She buttoned Henry’s flannel shirt over the pendant. “Be careful, kid. Take care of yourself. I need the company, okay?”

“You do the same, Emma. I really don’t want any other neighbours.”

“Deal.”

“And cut her some slack. I don’t think she’s crazy.” He whispered.

“Promise?”

“Yeah. Be good, Emma. Look...” He bit his bottom lip. “She’s like Batman, fighting the bad guys. She needs Robin.”

Regina looked confused. Kelly’s voice reverberated again through the walls of the building. “Every hero has a sidekick that helps out. That saves the hero when it all seems lost. You have to be her Robin, Emma.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Henry gave her a smile and climbed out of the window. Regina moved to close it, lock it.

“You know, for someone from a different world, you know a lot about the stuff from this one.” And she pointed at the window with her chin.

“Oh… you mean this mythical object of great power?” Emma had the grace to blush. “It’s just a window. We have those where I come from.”

“Right. Of course.” Emma mocked for lack of better option. “How good is that medallion?”

“It’s real. The protection it gives it’s quite real.”

“Not just a psychological thing?”

“Psychological?”

“What? No issue with the TV but when I talk about psychology you don’t know what it is?”

“Can I touch it?”

Emma’s frustration increased exponentially. She wanted back on safer ground. “So you gave it to him. What about you?” Except it was just not going to happen, was it?

“I’ll be okay when you return my daggers.”

“Do they make you invisible too?”

“They’re weapons. They slice and tear and kill. That’s all the magic I need from them.”

Emma moved to the safe and keyed in the code. “Thank you. For the medallion… Even if it’s just crazy from your head, thank you.”

“You love that child very much.”

“I do. Why did you do it?”

“He’s precious to you.” “You did it for me?”

“No.” The answer was serene. “I was merely observing. I did it for him. He’s not afraid of me.”

“Are you used to having people fear you?”

“Where I come from, yes.”

“Why? What have you done?”

“I’m the Evil Queen.” Regina replied as if it were a complete explanation.

Emma studied the woman and felt a surge of protective instinct that baffled her because Evil Queen shit apart, sheathing those very real daggers, Regina didn’t look helpless at all. She looked like… like Xena, all power and determination. The TV was going on about children missing and unexplained tragedy at the zoo and all she could think of was to protect a woman that clearly needed no protection almost as much as she wanted to protect Henry. If she looked carefully, she could see scars- on the chest, on the arms. She knew scars like that. She had them too, the scars she got from her job, the ones where she was too tired to go to the emergency room, the ones she’d nursed on her own and the one thing she was sure of was that those scars were not from playing with kittens and puppies but from violence. Extreme violence.

Despite herself, and without even noticing the decision gelling in her mind, she decided that she was going to keep an eye on the woman. Maybe it would turn out that she was just a very persuasive delusional. Someone so traumatised that she believed her own press. Maybe.

But something told her different.

She left Regina studying the TV and fired up her laptop, her one possession that was not from the thrift shop or a curb salvage. She accessed the Boston PD mainframe- strictly illegal, of course- and did a search on missing persons and persons of interest. She entered what coordinates she had- build, name, race. She would rather have come empty handed. The results were too many, the photos too many, the stories too. The women, just too many. It was like looking for a needle in a hay stack. She saved the results of the search. She needed time for this and Regina was ready to go places and do things despite the exhaustion Emma had seen. It rattled her and she couldn’t come up with any combination of words that would settle her, that would convey a meaning she wasn’t sure she wanted in her mind. She too had things to do, a job that paid not nearly enough to cover her bills and Henry to think of. She was embarking on a quest on the word of a woman that could well be, at best, a figment of her imagination, or, at worst, a convicted criminal or someone who needed professional mental help. And here she was, unable to stop herself.

In the end, she opted for the basic. “What do you need me to do?”

Regina seemed surprised at the offer: she was checking the second dagger as she had the first and her hand trembled mid motion. Oh.

“How can I help?” Emma tacked just because Regina might have misunderstood her.

“Are you the one from my vision?”

“Whoa! Your what now?”

“My vision. Are you the one from my vision?”

“Oh man!” Emma, for her part, wished the woman would go back to safer words, saner words, like imp and troll and great evil. “How am I supposed to know? Your vision, lady.”

“Help me. Please” The Hunter had died because he had helped her, out of misguided sense of nobility towards a woman that had done nothing but degrade him at every opportunity simply for daring to defy her. And she had let him die without a word of apology. That was one more regret she had to live with. And here she was again, dragging someone to a fight that was not theirs. She hated herself for it.

It seemed to Emma that the plea was probably quite difficult for the woman to pronounce, as if she wasn’t quite used to it.

“That must have been really hard for you to say…” The commentary was more to herself than Regina but it still hit home because the woman retracted back into some shell that Emma could not quite see. She took a Taser from the safe- it too strictly illegal- and a Glock 9mm that she did not much like to carry. She fitted a silencer, her nimble fingers doing quick work of screwing of it into place. “And then what?” She asked checking the balance of the gun.

Regina studied her weapons avidly. “Then I go back to where I came from and your world will be safe.” She took a step forward. “Can I touch your weapon?”

Emma fought an involuntary tug at the centre of her at those words and handed over the Glock. She saw Regina close her eyes when her fingers touched the barrel and there was a second of consideration. Emma was reminded of a computer’s little spinning circle of wait while it processed information. Regina took the gun from her hand and lifted her arms together at eye level as if she’d been about to shoot, no tremor of the muscles, no hesitation, no wrong movements. It pulled at Emma’s core and she moved uncomfortably. Regina lowered the gun and offered it back.

“Thank you. It is quite powerful.” Emma simply nodded. “Where do we start?”

“By you getting some sleep, though for some reason I don’t think you think of it as an option...”

“It’s not. There’s no time. We must go.”

“Are we going to find the missing children?”

Regina lowered her chin to her chest and sighed. “It’s too late for them.”

“How do you know? Kids are smart and in this world they come with a nice little bag of tricks those things might not be prepared for. If you’re as good as you say, we’ll find them and―”

“Miss Swan.” There was an undercurrent of desperation to Emma’s voice, and Regina could see the woman thinking about her Henry and the need to believe that if something happened, there was a chance for him. There wasn’t and going looking for the children now would be a waste for time. “Their remains will be found in trolls nests. They are long dead. They did not leave their rooms alive. Children are easy food for imps. The trolls polish off the rest.”

Emma’s chest constricted painfully and she paced away and then back to Regina. “No point then in going unprepared, then.”

“Unprepared?”

“Ask me what I do for a living.”

Regina simply cocked an eyebrow. This woman had the strange effect of making her feel alive such as she hadn’t felt since the day she had cast the curse and Snow had taken her heart.

“What do you do for a living?” “I’m a bounty hunter. There are fancier names and uglier names, too, but that’s what I do.” “You’re a hunter.” “I am. A damned good one. And do you know what makes me good? ‘Cause look at me, it’s not like I’m brawny or muscled enough to have a physical advantage over the scumbags I hunt. I’m good because I prepare. I act, I don’t react. Do you know the difference?”

Regina considered that for a second. She knew the difference, though she couldn’t say that she had the advantage of it. She had been reacting since the first time Snow White had put the daggers in her hands and set her free outside the charred castle walls.

“Right. So we prepare. You tell me what I need to know about these things. You told me you kill them. So you’re going to teach me how to kill them, how to hunt them. I want to know how to find them and exterminate them. You’re going to teach me how to keep Henry safe.”

There was something ruthlessly effective, a steely determination about the blonde at that moment that was a sharp contrast with the softer version that had served her pancakes and coffee even if with a side of temper. Regina found it profoundly interesting because for all her kills, for all she had fought all those years, she had never managed to be in that… objective frame of mind. She reacted. She had been reacting all these years. Emma was acting. It stirred something in her that she didn’t recognize, not immediately: hope.

“Why do you tell me that you’re not his mother?”

Emma froze. “Now, that’s a change of subject.” She turned on her heel and faced off with Regina. She walked forward and physically pushed the woman against the nearest wall. “Because I’m not.”

“It’s not a change of subject. You are willing to do this. For him.”

“It’s none of your business.” Emma’s hand closed around Regina’s neck and even though the woman had her daggers handy, her hands free and therefore could have had a blade in Emma’s heart with little more than a thought, she didn’t move; she didn’t fight her.

“I’m about to take you into battle. I need to know if anything will cloud your judgement.” That was a lie. A one-eyed horse could see the focus in Emma, but Regina found herself curious. For the first time, something was baffling to her. “I ask again, Miss Swan: why do you tell me you are not the boy’s mother?”

“Because I’m not. He’s not...” She dropped her hand from the woman’s throat and walked away. “Since we’re going into battle, call me Emma.”

Regina stood perfectly still while Emma checked her weapons and holstered them. She saw grief in Emma’s eyes, something old and deep and she wanted to apologise. What she said was more important. “Emma… Imps are the most dangerous. They are ReulG’horm’s advanced guard, its attack dogs. This is their work. They do not fight without a general. That’s their weakest point. So, identify the general and take it out. It’s the biggest one. They will not defend it or salute it but they will defer to it in battle, allow it the kill, the first feed. It won’t last but it will give you time while they duke it out for the position. Avoid their claws. There is lethal poison in those claws. Otherwise, just kill them anyway you can. Sever their heads swiftly. Show no mercy. They are flesh and blood.”

Emma was good at what she did because she spoke body English fluently. She saw the way Regina had rubbed at her upper arm while she spoke of the claws, blink and you miss it but it was enough for Emma to know that the woman had been on the sharp end of those claws.

“Look, Boston is a big place. A lot of weirdos, a lot of crazy, so you tell me how I know what to look for. Do they look like us?”

Regina struggled with impatience. This was help, she reminded herself. She hadn’t had this since Graham. And he’d known what he’d been dealing with and what the risks were. “No. They don’t look like us. Imps are almost as tall as humans but their face is that of a dragon. Their skin is red when they’re fed, pale like yours when they’re starved. They are winged creatures, so they won’t dress from the waist up.”

“Not like they would go unnoticed.”

“They don’t want to. They like the fear… Maybe going unnoticed would suit them until they’ve fed. Until they understand your world.”

“Do they have your touch thingy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Great…” Emma sighed. “And the others?”

“Trolls are usually close by. They are scavengers, feed on the carcasses the imps leave behind.”

“Bodies. Not carcasses. Bodies.” Emma corrected acerbically. “We’re not animals.”

“Bodies.” Regina conceded though words were all she had to help her not to dwell on the value of each person. It helped not to think of each one as a person, because when she lowered that final defence, it was just too much. “They move fast in the darkness. They’re attracted to shinny things. They like gold, they like a bargain. They think they’re good at it. They won’t attack unless they feel threatened which is often. They’re jumpy creatures. Don’t underestimate them. Attack first if you can.”

“Right… no underestimating. How do I kill them?”

Regina pointed silently at Emma’s Glock. Then, she turned to the TV. “I want to go there.” She asked trying to disguise the anxiety in her voice and body. “Now.”

“Later.” Emma replied while Regina swayed on her feet. Preparation was key.

“They will find more.”

“More?”

“More animals. More children.”

Not Henry! Emma’s only reply was to grab her car keys. “Let’s go.” They could prepare on the way.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5

“That,” Regina pointed at the screen Emma had just switched off, “is the work of imps. They’re the most dangerous. Whatever you do, stay away from their claws. They have a poison that is fatal.” Regina adjusted the long leather jacket around the harness and the daggers, carefully disguising the weapons.

“Somehow I find it hard to believe they have never touched you.”

“They have.”

“Not to point out the obvious, but you’re still alive. And kicking, it seems.”

“I cannot die until I defeat them.”

“No shit?”

Regina was not sure she understood the expression but she understood the mocking tone. “Yes, no shit.” She volleyed back in anger.

Emma measured Regina while she opened the door on their way out. “Is that like fate?”

“Comeuppance.”

“What have you done?” Regina did not reply. It was in Emma’s nature to keep pressing. “Does it piss you off? I mean… whatever you’ve done… Can’t be this bad.” She locked the door and pounded down the stairs, too jazzed up to wait for the elevator.

“It doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t change the facts.” Regina followed after Emma, her steps light and graceful in her kidskin boots.

There was a moment of silence, only Emma’s heavy boots pounding the expensive marble of the staircase. Okay, Emma thought. Okay. “Claws, huh?”

Regina took the olive branch. “Yes. Aim for the head if you can, then leave the rest to me. Show no mercy. If you hesitate, you’ll pay with your life.”

“Okay. No mercy. Gotcha.” She wondered – for the umpteenth time that morning if she was going to wake up soon. She opened the door to the garage where her ancient car– and that not in a good way- stood nestled between all the top range, next year’s Mercedes, Volvos and BMWs. It wasn’t like she had been dreaming of pressing a remote and having a car that responded with bells and whistles to it, but something she didn’t have to pray would start at the first try would have been nice.

Regina made no comment about the car. She simply put her hand on the yellow banged up metal and closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, she said “I’m driving.” As if that would have been a logical sequitur to coming out into the garage space.

“No.” Emma stated simply and opened the driver’s door.

“I can drive.”

“I’m not even gonna argue why you can’t. But this is my car. You wanna drive, you get your own.” For once the old Bug started on cue which was nothing but a minor miracle. Boston’s winter was brutal on the little car. A few taps to the gas pedal made it move almost smoothly.

“I can drive.”

They were moving and the only sure thing was that there was going to be traffic on the way to the zoo. “How?”

“I touched it.”

“Try again, lady.”

“I want to drive.”

Emma concentrated on the road because her face was smiling- despite herself- and that was against what her brain wanted to do which was to throttle the woman. “Maybe you need to touch it again to understand this: no one drives the Bug. No one drives it but me, lady.”

“Why don’t you call me by my name?”

She did. Didn’t she? “I do. Regina. There…” God, even the name gave her that tight squeeze between her legs and man was that uncomfortable on all sorts of levels- especially the physical, what with her tight jeans and all. “Now, explain about the touch thingy, please. Regina.”

Regina shot her a disparaging look that Emma withstood only barely flinching. “Magic.”

“Oh, man! Don’t say shit that will make me wanna drive you to the loony bin instead of the zoo…”

“Where I come from…” she took a deep breath and tried to start again. She had- decades ago- given up on trying to make people understand her and this was incredibly frustrating. “All these things, the television, the car, these buildings… We don’t have these. But knowing about these things makes me efficient at what I’m here to do. The one that sent me… it’s an enchantment. What I can touch, I can understand, I can use. So that I am not at a disadvantage.”

“Handy…” “Indeed. Are we there yet?”

“You really need to go and touch the road, Regina. That will make you understand traffic in big cities.”

Regina looked outside the car and closed her eyes. She didn’t need to see any more of this world. She needed to concentrate and gather her strength. It was unlikely ReulG’horm knew where she was, but Emma was… She had a mission but she couldn’t let anything happen to Emma. She had to take her home to the child. Letting her be one of the innocents left in the path of her curse was not an option. She couldn’t quite bring herself to question that decision. She was never one to worry about others, their happiness, their health. The two persons she had cared about were dead and buried because of her. All the others? Well, when you don’t have a heart, nothing weighs on it.

For some reason, Emma and Henry were different. And she liked the feeling. She liked feeling even if, for the most part, it was more like an ache.

“What? Are you sulking because you were relegated to the passenger seat?” Regina’s eyes remained resolutely closed. “You should be happy you are riding shotgun. I should have you in the back seat if you’re going to sulk like a child.”

“This is my job, my mission. I should be conducting the carriage.” Regina kept her eyes closed trying to concentrate. “Now hush!”

“Did you just shush me? Hell, lady, no one shushes me―”

“Hush!” She had to hear with her body, not only with her ears, but it was impossible. The car vibrated and Emma was talking. Emma was there. Anything she might have heard was drowned by noise, by a thrumming coming from Emma. A crackling energy. The only point of concentrating was the hope that she would be able to do so. Going into a fray unprepared was remarkably stupid and dim-witted. And she had but her wits when it came to dealing with ReulG’horm.

“Hush? Listen, you’re crossing the―”

“Hush!” The forceful tone had Emma giving up on a riposte for lack of capability to organize her words into sentences. Regina crossed her arms defensively across her chest which had an unsettling effect on the leather constrained breasts. It perturbed Emma and had her squeezing her hands around the steering wheel. “When we get there, when I find them, I want you to stay back. I will handle this.”

“Why?” Sure, add fuel to the fire, Regina.

“Because this is my job.”

“And this is my world!” Emma emulated the tone.

Regina spared her a look that was nothing but condescending. “Hide. If they are still around, you’ll be dead in a heartbeat. Because you don’t listen. You are incapable of listening. So you will hide.”

“Hey! I’m a big girl, I can take care―”

The silver lining of this argument, Regina thought, was that she could eliminate Emma as a possible princess. She did not look like one, she did not speak like one and she definitely did not act like one. That was somewhat a relief. Okay, maybe she looked like one. A little bit. “Keep your back against a wall. Do not leave your back exposed. The only way for you to get out of this alive is to not be seen. Imps are fast and don’t need weapons. If they see you, if they sense your vulnerability, you will be dead within a breath. If you’re lucky.”

“If I’m not?” Emma almost retracted her question but damned if she was going to chicken out with this woman.

Regina turned her eyes slowly from the road to watch Emma: it was like a shot from horror film, the one where the next thing you see is the possessed eyes of a child or Chucky doll. It froze Emma in place. “If you’re not, you need but one scratch from their claws. The poison will spread like fire through your veins and it will be like burning alive from the inside and you will never have experienced pain as overwhelming as that, as if your bones were melting and breaking and exploding all at the same time. You will beg to have your flesh cut off from your body. You will beg for death.”

There was a second of silence where Regina actually thought she had silenced the woman. “Jesus, you do sell it, huh?”

The Evil Queen was not dead on moments like this: Regina put her hand on the steering wheel and turned it violently sending the car careening into the pedestrians’ path. Emma had no time to react. Regina got into her face, not even an inch apart, so close that Emma could feel Regina’s breath on her tongue: “Do you think this a joke? Do you think you can kill these things with your witty comments and sharp tongue? They are old, they are very old. They have hunted and fed on those like you for millennia. You may not value your life, dear, but I have a mission and my life is not mine until that mission is accomplished.”

Emma’s heart was beating violently and her mouth went desert dry. When she finally got her breathing under control, it felt like she had run 20 miles on a sprint. Regina released the wheel and sat back down on her seat, cool, calm and collected. “Now drive.”

With a jolt, Emma realised that she was obeying, restarting the stalled car, indicating and then slowly joining the line of slow traffic. “How do you know? About the poison…”

“I was told.” Regina replied coldly. Her hands told a different story, however. Her right hand cupped her left forearm and even if she wasn’t rubbing, Emma saw the protective nature of the gesture. For the sake of her only now returning to normal heartbeat, she refrained from the yeah, right that was tickling her tongue.

“So… huh… which one do you think you’re gonna find?”

Regina was, at the very least surprised that she was being talked to. As a game plan to groom an ally, screaming at and threatening them was hardly an imaginative one. “Imps.” The sound cracked like the first lick of flame to dry wood. “Imps,” she repeated and this time her voice was a little steadier. “They feed on blood. They’re the most dangerous and ReulG’horm’s favourites. Beware of the claws.”

“Wonderful!” Emma quipped “So that scar on your arm…”

Regina stiffened on her seat, her shoulders set and her chin pointed up. It was body English for leave it alone and whilst Emma was fluent in the language, she did not accept the meaning. “You battle these things every day, right?” No reply. For a moment, Emma had feeling that Regina might jump out of the moving car if she’d had been fully conversant with the mechanics of it. “So how come you’re still alive?”

Emma asked because a part of her, a fairly large part of her, in fact, was still having trouble believing something as ridiculous as forces of evil, hell, imps, trolls, giants, and all sorts of shitty creatures to be loose in Boston and kept on hoping that it would all be bullshit. Regina might have well been talking about Darth Vader, the Evil Queen or Voldemort in the flesh wreaking havoc. Actually, if Regina told her one of those was in Boston, she would thank her for it because then she could write all this day off as some sort of alcohol induced hallucination. But Regina did not play ball. Her hand went to the vale between her breasts as if it had been looking for something that wasn’t there and Emma had the sudden realisation that it was the necklace that Regina had given Henry.

“I told you already. I cannot be killed until they are finished.”

Emma’s fingers tightened convulsively around the wheel as she slid the car gently into the parking bay by the main entrance. Right. Can’t be killed. Get with the programme, Emma. Just a few feet away, the entrance was cordoned off with police tape. She opened the door and Regina was already on her way out, the coat billowing behind her as she walked towards the cluster of uniformed officers by the gates. Emma rushed and pulled her by the arm.

“They won’t let you in there just like that, dammit. We need a plan of action.”

“No. You can formulate a plan of action. I’m going in.” Emma was about to argue. Her lips pursed into an angry line and she was about to let it rip but she changed her mind at the very last second. “Fine! You asked for my help. Let’s see you get in there.”

It seemed to Emma she was the only one that could see the challenge: Regina was a little thing facing off to three officers built like wardrobes that simply gave her a once over- lingering on the cleavage- and then dismissed her, returning to their conversation and ignoring the woman. Emma smiled inwardly. I told you so. And yet, whatever thought she’d indulged about leaving Regina to her own devices quickly died down as Regina pushed into the wall of bodies- and was summarily pushed back. Emma’s first instinct was to help. Which was a pisser. A damned pisser that kept on happening.

She walked forward and pulled Regina by the arm. Better this way, she thought, because if Regina flipped one of them on their ass, they’d probably both get arrested. The officers observed Regina like you do a fly you have just swatted. Emma pulled her without more than a whispered I know a different way.

Regina swatted Emma, freed her arm to weigh her options only to follow Emma. Emma’s heart was pounding in her ears as violently as Emma’s boots on the tarmac of the parking lot. Regina was following behind nearly at a run to keep up with Emma’s long stride.

“So, huh… Regina… Is this what you want to do with your life? I mean…” Shut up, Emma Swan. Just shut it. “Like… don’t you want to have a family, the husband and the kids deal?”

“No.”

Emma hesitated for a second and Regina bumped into her back. “Do you have those already?” And what is it to you, moron?

Regina’s reply was to the point: “How do we get in?”

Emma shook her head. She wanted to ask why this was a sore spot but thought better of it as she approached the service entrance for the zoo staff and recognised a pal in uniform. Okay, at least something had to go well today. “Hey Jamie!”

“Hey, Emma Swan… How you doin’?” Great, Joey Tribianni was still his life coach and okay, pal was a bit of a stretch. A lot of a stretch, come to think of it. This was one of those professional dickheads that thought that just because they were wearing a uniform- a security guard uniform- that made them worthy of your time. Could be worse, she supposed and shrugged off the measuring, assessing look. It had stopped bothering her a long time ago, when she realised that people – and by people she meant men- usually dismissed her as non-important because she had breasts. Life was not so far away from the old playground in elementary school. It pissed her off far more when he fixed his eyes on Regina and stopped the wandering gaze by the time he got to the cleavage. She put her harm through his and spoke in his hear. All she wanted was to turn him away from Regina and if that required putting on a coquettish tone that made her want to through up, so be it. The gag reflex subsided when she managed to persuade herself that a mark was mark and right now the mark was Jamie McCreep.

“Listen, Jamie…” She gave him a winning smile she hoped was still such a thing with the shiner on her face and rubbed his arm suggestively up and down. “I need a favour…”

Regina lagged behind. Okay, so they’d do this Emma Swan’s way. She crossed her arms and tried to wait patiently as the lump and Emma seemed to canoodle in the cold sunshine. Regina grinded her teeth. ReulG’horm had made itself right at home and here she was, playing nice. She hopped to all that was holy that Emma knew what she was doing, that she hadn’t lost sight of what was really important because… wait, was that the lump’s hand on Emma’s posterior? Was this how people talked business, life and death business in this world? She heard Emma giggle lightly but missed the slight swerving Emma did to avoid the wandering hand because she’d had enough. There were demons to kill and people to save and this was just a phenomenal waste of time. Accepting Emma’s help had been a mistake of colossal dimensions. Her temper snapped. She pushed forward, hands between Emma and the lump and pushed them apart, rough emphasis on the lump’s pudgy form.

“Do you think I have all day? These things are fed now. They are hiding, basking in the warmth of fresh, well fed blood in their veins. Right now, they are multiplying, they are rejoicing in the feed. Get out of my way so that I can find them and kill them before the haze stops. Get out, get out of my way or, so help me, I will leave you to your death without a second thought.”

It was actually funny. And cute. Regina was practically hanging from the lapels of Jamie McCreep’s uniform, threatening him, her small frame against the sheer volume that was Jamie. Emma had a moment where she thought she might let Regina make him piss himself just for the bruise she was sure to have where he’d pinched her ass, but then it occurred to her that he might just sit there between them and the door like the boulder that he was and then all of the pinching would have been in vain. She grabbed Regina by the shoulders and pulled her back. “Hey, just chill, alright? Jamie here is going to let us in, no need to hurt him…”

“Hurt me? Swan, you pull her back or I swear, I’ll swat her away and she won’t be more than a spot on my tarmac.” Jamie screeched, shaky and the effect of the threat was lost. “Your tarmac?” Regina hissed.

“Yeah, his. Come on, Regina. Let it go.” She leaned closer to Regina and whispered in her ear. “Trust me, I’ve got this. Let it go.” Trust was the issue, though. For someone who had never trusted anyone without consequence, Regina had no reason to.

“Let it go? Just because you’re comfortable with this pathetic excuse of a man, doesn’t mean that I should bow down to―” Emma put her hand over Regina’s mouth to stop a barrage of insults Jamie would only get the gist of but be insulted by nonetheless.

“Let it go, Xena.”

She would regret this. She would most certainly regret this, but Regina let go of the lump.

Free, Jamie adjusted his sloppily pressed uniform and gave both Emma and Regina a thoroughly unimpressed look. “You’re lucky I like you, Swan. But this one?” He pointed at Regina with his chin? “Careful ‘cause this one’s a bunny boiler.” He took his key fob from his pocket and unlocked a narrow door. “I mean… I get it. She’s hot. Crazy, but hot. Bunny boiler. Look it up.”

If he hadn’t unlocked the door, Emma might have thought about burning that bridge by dotting Jamie’s two iis and crossing his tee, but he had unlocked it and she was not in the business of burning bridges.

“I’ll… uh… keep that in mind.” She said pushing past him.

“Hey Swan?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m off duty tonight. Any chance of a small party for three?”

Of course Regina would have understood that. Luckily, Emma reached behind herself just in time to grab Regina and stop whatever she was going to do. “Leave it. Nasty mythical creatures inside, remember?”

Regina mumbled something about frying testicles with onions and then focused back on the zoo compound. It was actually kind of amazing to see, that focus, that intensity of the stare and of the attention. Creepy and scary, but amazing.

…   …   …

Surrounded as she was by walls of stone, Regina couldn’t hear or see what was going on and it made her anxious and edgy. She told herself that the battles in this world were not fought in the same way they were back in the Enchanted Forest but that did little to assuage her need to shield Emma with her own body. If this woman was going to be her helper, her… facilitator (the woman had been fully clothed in her vision), then she had to take care of her and not cause her to get into trouble. Because that disgusting spawn of a mangled frog was trouble. His hand snaking its way around Emma’s waist as they spoke was a true indication of his intentions. Her fingers itched for her daggers. She concentrated instead on listening. And what she heard was worrying. There were all sorts of noises she couldn’t quite identify- machines – on the ground and in the sky, close by and very distant. But other than that, there were no animal sounds as if nature had gone mute. She reached further out hoping for any sign of life. It startled her when a hand- Emma’s hand- as it turned out touched her shoulder. “Come on.”

“Please stay outside. Wait for me here.” “Yeah, right. ‘Cause that’s really gonna happen.” And Emma pushed forward, past Regina, through the narrow metal door and her eyes were pure challenge. Regina fisted her hands by her sides. She was not used to people challenging her. Even now, when she was all but defeated, she remained unchallenged. She was just quietly hated.

“Is he… a friend?” And she couldn’t even understand why that relationship of Emma’s was important to her. This would end one of two ways and none of them involved Regina staying around and becoming the concerned next door neighbour.

“He’s a dick. Useful, but still a dick. And a pain in the ass.”

“I don’t understand the expression.” Regina hurried after Emma through the staff quarters.

“You wanna touch my ass to understand it?” Emma tossed over her shoulder.

Regina’s breath caught. Emma too hesitated. Oops. Think, Emma. Please! By tacit agreement, they let the subject drop before it got even more awkward.

“The necklace…” Emma started with a spurt, much like the engine in her yellow carriage- car- and fizzled out.

Regina pushed past her. It wouldn’t do to be the one walking behind. She had the weapons. The weapons went in first. Emma talked. Emma talked too much. She asked things Regina didn’t know how to answer. Didn’t want to answer.

“It will protect him.”

“How the hell will it―” But even Emma had to stop and be quiet. The first enclosure was littered with the bodies of dead tigers, big, majestic, frozen in the horror of death. Further into the enclosure, two cubs. All dead, all with the same fear-stricken glazed eyes, like dull buttons. She perceived the horror of the scene through Emma’s eyes. To her, this was home, sweet home. The horror had long faded into a dull acceptance of fate, into resignation. But the waves of sorrow and horror and, yes, fear coming from Emma brought it back to her, gave it a new life and dimension. She fought the sadness. This was unfortunate only. She had seen the same done to humans. And that would forever be in her heart wherever Snow White kept it. She moved forward and when Emma didn’t follow her, she went back, took the woman’s arm and pulled her forward.

Regina walked through the manicured gardens and paths, flower beddings and enclosures and everywhere the story it told was the same: the lions and other great cats dead on the floor, eyes wide. She could feel what Emma was feeling, the disgust and the sorrow. It rolled off of her in waves though she was fiercely silent. It made Regina miss the traffic noise.

And then something changed.

By the time they made it to the enclosures with the primates, Regina heard something alive, afraid. Hidden.

She pushed Emma against a wall and told her Stay in a tone that brokered no argument but the woman simply followed her. She gnashed her teeth but said nothing. She moved swiftly, silently, around the enclosure. Big bodies so similar to humans were prone on the floor, dead. But there was something still in there, something alive. She found her ingress point into the enclosure. Dispassionately, she observed the space around her, the dark, dense foliage. There was something alive there and it was remarkably stupid to go in but she had no choice in such matters. Crouching, she studied the marks on the floor, the hoof prints in an enclosure where there should have been only paw prints. She unsheathed the daggers and moved forward towards the scent of life. She could hear a heart- hearts- pounding and she tried to slow her own breathing to make the sound clearer, listening for the tell-tale rustle of leathery wings and hard hooves on the floor. She heard nothing but soft breathing, scared, terrified. She moved towards the sound knowing that she had no choice but to face whatever was hiding under the foliage. She moved in a crouching position towards the sound. Either the imps had left some poor soul alive having had their fill- a banquet to be sure- or one of them had stayed behind.

She took a step closer and another. The breathing stopped and there was a rustling of movement that reverberated through the silence that dominated the scene as if all life had been suspended for those few seconds. And then she saw it, the movement, the shine of a pair of black eyes. She raised her right hand dagger in attack position and kept the left across her chest, blade pointing out. She took the final step towards the sound. A plaintive wail, so much like a child, soft, so soft she could have missed it had she not been in hunting mode. Though she knew better, she dropped her left hand dagger to move the foliage that covered the creature. And there it was: a small primate, black, a miniature of the ones dead on the floor. Regina touched the black fur and the tiny creature shrunk further into itself. She touched the small head never letting go of the dagger and tried to offer whatever comfort was still left in her after almost 30 years. It was clear to her, having seen it so often before in her own world, that the mother had hidden her young before being slaughtered herself.

There were no animals like this in the Enchanted Forest, so much like humans. It broke her a little more knowing that she had unleashed this in this world too. She bit the inside of her cheek. Tears were not hers to cry. They never were her right. She should bury the dead and move on. No survivors ever wanted her comfort. But this creature regarded her and there was no condemnation in its pit black eyes, only devastation. And that was her first mistake: she lowered her guard.

The second breathing she’d heard came at her then, when her left hand was bare of daggers and the right hand was distracted by the tiny primate. The imp moved swiftly towards her and she realised her mistake and vulnerability. She had allowed herself to get distracted and she was going to pay for it now. Survival instinct and experience kicked in and she rotated on the spot facing the imp, daggers ready, bracing for the attack. The impact from the solid body of the imp didn’t come, though. The claws that should have hit her on her back and the fangs that should have plunged into her neck- they always favoured the softness of the neck- didn’t come.

In its stead, a whoosh and a dull thump.

“R’gina, this would be a good time to channel your inner Xena.” Emma was still getting up from where she’d been crouching by one of the dead, Glock in her hand like a glorious avenging angel though her hand was shaking slightly.

The imp moved towards Emma, swift, unaffected by the shot to the stocky torso.

Regina wanted to scream for her to run but she was too late.

The imp was strong, too strong from the ample feeding and a small hole in its chest was nothing. It had simply sprung back onto its hooves like a jack-in-the-box. Regina moved forward, offering a target, but the imp moved like the wind, fast, so fast and pulled Emma by the hair until it had her in its hold, claws gleaming in the soft light of the enclosure.

The world ground to a screeching halt.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6

Regina knew better than to move.

“Good girl, queen.” For such a clown-like voice, the sound was absolutely terrifying and it was the one fear she hadn’t been able to conquer over the years. “You know how strong we are now, don’t you? How strong I am.” Suddenly, it was not the imp. Or not just the imp. It was ReulG’horm again, speaking through it. It licked its thin lips and she saw the small forked tongue, snake-like swiping at Emma’s skin, tasting her. There was a moment where Regina hoped that it had its fill – there were certainly enough carcasses on the ground that it would not feed on Emma. But the tongue darted out and swiped at the blonde’s skin again, as if relishing the taste of it.

She avoided Emma’s eyes, Emma’s face altogether. She could not deal with the fear she was sure to find.

The imp rolled its eyes in delight and Regina knew that it was for show and threat. The imp would kill Emma just because it could. “There is plenty here. This is the land of plenty.” The sounds sibilated from its mouth, dropping like promises at Regina’s paralysed feet.

She felt the urge to beg. God knew that Emma had shown her enough kindness in mere hours that she would do it, but begging would only make her more vulnerable to the imp. It swiped its forked tongue down Emma’s neck again. “Plenty, plenty. Come, little queen, join us. ReulG’horm promised a toy. You will be a good little toy. Toys here break so easy.” The imp stretched a sharp claw and softly ran it down Emma’s throat. Regina could see Emma swallowing nervously. “We’ll give you good sport. Our touch doesn’t break you… what do you say?” His claw was millimetres away from Emma’s skin but Regina refused to look in her eyes. She had to concentrate. She needed all her strength, all her attention. She couldn’t afford to look at Emma, to feel for Emma. Emotion was her greatest weakness, always had been. “We could use something like that, resilient, tasty. Pleasant to look at. I wager you’re tasty…” The forked tongue caressed Emma’s neck again, the gesture intimate as a lover’s. “Like this one.”

The red eyes were solely on Regina as if Emma were nothing but a bargaining chip. The imp’s claw encircled Emma’s breast, and dipped lower until it stopped between her legs. Regina wanted to believe that she was willing to sacrifice Emma if she had too. She had to believe it. A war is a war. And wars had casualties. “Join us, queenie…” The leathery hand cupped Emma’s sex. Regina made her second mistake then: she looked into Emma’s eyes. She was prepared to see terror, but she saw defiance and derision. Casualties, she tried to persuade herself. Wars had casualties. “I can always take her. I bet we would still get an hour from her before she is useless.” The imp assessed her and Regina didn’t like what she saw in the red eyes. “You can have her if you let me taste you before the others.”

…   …   …

It was the leering tone in the thing’s voice that Emma didn’t like, even more so than the hand cupping her sex. She reacted just like she would in a bar fight: her elbow plunged into the thing’s midsection with enough force to push it backwards. The hand on her sex disappeared but the one on her shoulder just clutched tighter until it went through her jacket and then her skin. Motherfucker, she cursed, as the thing tore a hole in the leather of her beloved red jacket all the way to her skin.

For a glorious second she thought that all the things Regina had said about the poison were just stories. And then there was a burn that started where the claw had punctured her skin and radiated through her in ever wider reaching ripples of fire and pain. Suddenly, she couldn’t fill her lungs with air and Regina was the only thing she could see through the haze.

“Yeah, I believe you, lady… I believe you.” She knew she was falling but could not stop it any more than she could feel the impact on her knees.

…   …   …

Fighting for someone that was hers was different. The effort, the skill, the instinct, everything was more aggressive, sharper, bigger, better, faster, more. She was not fighting for the life she had forfeited so long ago. She was fighting for the arms that had picked her up when she had fallen and the hand that had fed her when she was hungry and the heart that loved a child so fiercely it hurt. She was fighting for a life worth living and that made all the difference: her daggers were faster, the blows swifter, harder. The kicks stronger. Her vision tunnelled and the imp that had hurt her Emma was all there was. Her daggers plunged, the one in the right hand and then the one in the left, extensions of her anger, of her hate, in and out of the leathery skin, no concern for defence, focused solely in tearing, shredding, ripping the thing limb for limb until there was nothing but the pulp. Until she could erase from her memory the look of shock and pain on Emma’s face. And she was doomed to remember every single face that had ever looked at her like that.

The imp fell to the ground but she struggled to stop. Without the resistance of the fed enemy, She was a spooked horse careening into an abyss.

“I think it’s dead now…” Someone whispered and it was like taking a first breath when the water has pulled you under and kept you there, caught in the undercurrent. Regina looked at herself, at what was left of the imp on the ground, at the forest-like enclosure and saw what Emma must have a seen: evil shaped like a woman, a murderer without control, black blood and demon skin dripping from her hands.

She heard the plaintive sound from the primate again and it angered her. It had been a while since she’d felt anything but resignation, not having a heart to feel anything with. “No, not yet.” She acted out the anger. There was absolutely no way she could get any information from this one about the location of their nest. Not a sound would come out. Not a one. But if she left it, it would still be alive. And all the creatures strewn across the floor at her feet would still be dead. Anger was all there was. She pulled on the head like a mad child would pull on a doll’s head to test the breaking point. Except she had no intention of stopping. And she kept on pulling. So she just pulled until the bones in the neck became lose and disconnected. “Now it is.”

…   …   …

There was a sickening pop and then the thing was dead. The eyes had gone a filmy black that wasn’t there before Regina pulled at the head like at a cork. Through the fire spreading in her body, Emma had hoped that it could all go Buffyesque and the thing would vanish into a cloud of dust after the stab to the chest. But the body remained firmly solid and Emma remained firmly shocked. She had seen Regina grab her dagger and stab it through leathery skin. She had seen as the dagger went into the flesh and down, down the unmoving chest and come out black, oily. She had seen the creature’s neck elongate that deadly inch and become limp.

Regina was a killer, a stone cold killer.

Regina was a killer and she had helped in that killing. She took a deep breath and the smell of blood and brimstone hit her like a ton of bricks. “I believe you, lady. Fuck…. I believe you.” She just couldn’t muster remorse. And then her body gave up the pretence of consciousness and she collapsed on a heap on the floor for a second time.

…   …   …

It took Regina a second to release the body of the imp. She wanted to do things, really bad things to it for hurting Emma, for the little motherless primate still under the cover of the foliage, but the creature was dead and Emma was hurting on the floor. She got up and applied a careful kick of her boot to the imp’s loosened skull. She would not have wasted the energy in the Enchanted Forest but here she couldn’t help herself. She crouched next to Emma and put an arm around her waist. “We need to get you home.”

“It hurts.”

“I know.” She wiped a drop of sweat pearling Emma’s forehead but the only result was to smear black oily blood on the ashen forehead. “But there might be more. We’re exposed here.”

Regina heard the whimpering of the small primate and she wanted to do something for the little creature but she had a choice to make now- either get Emma to safer ground or help the creature. Yes, there were always casualties in war. This time, she chose to save Emma. She pulled the limp arm over her shoulders and pulled her up. The effort was herculean and if she’d had a heart, it would have broken then, with each step as the poison spread further and further in Emma’s body bringing pain to the last recondite places of her body. And yet, Emma stood and gritted her teeth. “I’m alright.” She said. Regina’s chest constricted. “I’m alright.”

Clearly not, but Regina was well versed in the fake it till you make it art so she allowed Emma that. “I know this is going to hurt, Emma. It’s going to hurt a lot and I wish I could let you sleep away the pain, but I must get you away from here. We need your car. We need to take you home.”

There was a shallow, so very shallow breath and then Emma surprised her again. “So you do get to drive my Bug, huh?”

“It was only a matter of time, dear.”

“Dear?” Regina was not so long without company of humans that she could not read the longing in the Emma’s question.

“Only a manner of speaking.”

“S’a shame.”

Regina would have asked her to elaborate if they hadn’t come to the closed gate with the dickhead guard on the other side. She didn’t know what to say or how to explain Emma’s state when they had mocked her before for saying the truth, but Emma was on it. “Just follow my lead.”

Emma stood a little straighter and they pushed through the wrought iron gate and sure enough, the dickhead guard immediately focused on them. “Hey girlie. Did things get a little rough on the tumble in the hay?”

The next she met dickhead, she would make sure to make him pay for the comment. Right there and then she had no strength to do it. “I twisted my ankle. Running. Don’t worry, no risk of that for you. You’re about as mobile as a potato.”

“Why mess with perfection?” The trouble with the dickhead’s assessment was that he actually believed it. It was not self-deprecating in the least. Emma sighed and leaned her weight further into Regina who could see the sweat pearling her brow. “Hey! At least she’s helping…Told you: bunny boiler!”

Emma sneered at him. Regina could see time slipping through their fingers and soon Emma would be creaming in agony. She pushed forward when the guard moved out of the way. Come on, Emma, come on.

“Hey Jamie!” Emma tossed as they haltingly moved towards the car. “One of the little chimps is still alive. Get someone in there, will you?”

By the time Regina had dragged Emma to the yellow car, Emma was barely conscious. “I still need your help, Emma. I’m so sorry.” She opened the car and helped Emma into the passenger seat. They were both bathed in sweat and breathless. “I don’t know the way home.” Regina slid the key into the ignition and turned it. The rumble of the engine startled her a little but she got with the programme. It was like a memory. The moment she got her hand on the gear stick like she had seen Emma doing, she knew what to do. She set the car in motion, taking a moment to be amazed by the simplicity of it, the economy of effort it represented. She usually had to drag herself home after battle tired and wounded.

“Talk to me, Emma.”

Emma opened her eyes momentarily. “You’re doing fine.”

“I know how to drive. I’m sure I’m an excellent driver.”

“Sure, Rain Man.”

Keep her talking, Regina reminded herself. The time would come shortly when Emma would succumb to the poison. Maybe this land was different from home, but if it wasn’t… “And you didn’t believe me.”

Emma’s head lolled to the side and it had Regina reaching sideways to pull Emma to her. “Take the next road on the right.” Emma gritted through tightly clenched teeth, her body tight in a ball of pain. “R’gina… Is this thing going to kill me?”

Regina couldn’t muster the words. Wars had casualties. Just casualties. “No…” “You know, I think that’s the first lie you told me...”

“I…”

“Don’t sweat it. I appreciate the effort… Does this happen to you often?”

She had learnt to dodge the blows. No, not so often anymore. It used to. In the early years. Made absolutely worse for all the loneliness after Graham had died. “Yes.”

Emma nodded though Regina was not a fool to believe that Emma had been comforted by her words.

“Don’t you want to get married? You know, raise yourself a family…” Emma gasped for a second before she mustered the strength to go on speaking. “… get the house with the white picket fence deal…” There was more but Emma’s body seized in pain. Regina put her right hand on Emma’s leg, and the gesture was as foreign to her as it was instinctive. “Next right...”

Regina didn’t answer. She took a right as Emma had indicated. Yes, of course she did. She used to want it. That was the only thing she had ever wanted until Snow White had brought her world down and turned everything to rubble. No one else would ever love her, not after Daniel. And then she had lost that right with every step into darkness, with every innocent she had wronged to get to Snow White. But thinking about it only ever succeeded in getting her hurt. Having a home, a family could no more be achieved than defeating ReulG’horm.

The best she could hope for was peace. She would have that when she found the princess that would take over from her.

Emma was studying her intently even through semi closed eyes. “So how are you going to defeat them?”

Regina was grateful for the change of subject. “I don’t really know.”

“Are you thinking total wipe out? Extermination?

“You’d think. Be grateful ogres are not here yet.”

“Fee Fi Fo Fum ogres?”

Emma was funny. Regina liked her expressions, her turns of phrase- even when mostly, she didn’t understand them. She thought of Henry. She would ask him and hope it was not rude. Emma had a tendency to run foul at the mouth. She liked that. It was a freedom she’d never had.

She berated herself for keeping her eyes closed when they had left Emma’s home. She couldn’t find it on her own and the small mercy of letting Emma pass out was out of the question if she wanted to get them both to Emma’s home.

They did make it eventually, with Emma going from sweating profusely to being ice cold and unmoving. Regina got out at a run, wrenched open Emma’s door and pulled her out. She succeeded on the strength of the nerve wreck she was at that moment. Emma did her part too: she kept upright, a strange and difficult balancing act, and said “elevator” through gritted teeth, a sound so raspy and soft that it had Regina leaning further into her to hear. Without the benefit of touch, Regina wouldn’t have known what that meant. But then Henry had been standing inside a metal box, looking annoyed and pressing buttons on a wall. He smiled when he spotted them but taking a good look at Emma, the boy simply moved to her free side to support her. The moment she stepped inside, Regina understood the concept of elevator and sagged in relief. She held Emma tighter when she felt the balancing act dwindle and put all her residual strength into it. When the doors opened, she dragged Emma the last few feet to the door of the apartment and then to the bed. No one should die out of a misguided sense of nobility, otherwise known as stupidity.

“What happened?” Henry clambered on the bed to adjust a pillow under Emma’s head and then to take off her boots. “What happened?” He screamed at Regina. “What happened?”

For a second, Regina saw everything from somewhere above the room: Emma pale grey, skin pearled with old sweat and lips pursed in a grim line of pain, Henry draped over her, frantically trying to understand, and herself looking on, arms hanging by her side, helpless, completely helpless, covered in black imp blood, all killer when they needed a healer. A million spoons when they needed a knife.

She wanted to sit in a corner where she couldn’t do any further damage. She wanted to disappear, to be tucked into the ground. “Help her. Please!” Henry pleaded with her, his voice breaking around the edges of panic. “Please.”

Regina looked at her hands, covered in black blood. She’d had magic once. A very long time ago. But even then, it had never been the healing kind. “A hero doesn’t let her sidekick die without trying. They just don’t.” Henry stood from the bed and shook Regina by the arm. “She’s your sidekick. You must save her.”

“I don’t know what a sidekick is.”

“A sidekick is… the one that’s always there for the hero. When the hero needs help, the sidekick is always there. You’re the hero and she’s your sidekick.”

“I’m not…”

“Yeah, you are! Like Batman. Batman and Robin. Emma is your Robin. Batman wouldn’t let anything happen to Robin. Never!”

There was nothing to be done. Henry didn’t understand that there was nothing… Just like there had been nothing when Graham had died. There was nothing she could do. Even when she’d had magic, she’d never been taught to heal. Only to hurt. “I… I don’t…”

Henry stood there, looking at her, the please still not dry in his mouth. “But you’re Batman…”

Regina looked at her hands. The child’s faith in her made her want to try. “I must to wash.” She looked around herself for a basin, for water. Henry silently showed her to the bathroom and opened a tap. Regina discarded her leather duster jacket and rubbed at her hands, with more and more fury as the seconds ticked by because they were hands that were good for nothing; they were hands that could and would kill but could not, had not healed.

She unsheathed her daggers and washed them under the running water until the water ran clear. Then she walked back into to the room. With one swift motion, she sliced Emma’s red leather jacket shoulder to cuff and pulled it off. Emma groaned in pain and she couldn’t quite be sure whether that was a good or a bad thing. She was still with the living and yet she might be wishing she weren’t. The puncture wound on Emma’s shoulder was small, so small, hardly any tearing but it was already black, swollen. She removed the rest of the jacket in the same fashion. She sliced it off.

“I don’t think she’s going to like what you did to her jacket.” Henry murmured. And there was nothing he wouldn’t give to see Emma throwing a tantrum when she figured it out. Because he was ten, but he knew what the alternative was.

Regina wanted to smile, to say something encouraging but she was short of words. She sliced through the white cotton shirt. Henry averted his eyes at Emma’s near naked form. “I’ll get you disinfectant…bandages… Emma has a lot of those…”

As he fetched the items from the bathroom, Regina pleaded with Emma. “Please… Emma… Anything, dear. I’ll do anything. I think you are a very good sidekick. Please. It’s my first time as a hero. I need your help to be a good one. And the child… I think he needs you more than his mother. Be reasonable, Emma Swan... Be reasonable.”

Emma moaned and her hand grabbed Regina’s dagger hand and there was still strength in that grip, too hot, too feverish. Something stirred in her, a wisp of something so long gone, a spark, an agitation of molecules that she had nearly forgotten, a crackling of magic. Regina dropped the dagger, half fear, half recognition and a whole lot of disbelief.

Henry came back into the room and put all the items on the bed, next to Regina. “You have to do something. You have to. She’s the best part of my life. If it wasn’t for her, I… Just help her, okay? I know you can. I believe you! You can.” Henry hiccupped, a dry sob caught in his throat. “I believe you…”

There was a moment where she did too. She believed because Henry did. Because Emma had. She climbed on the bed to get closer to Emma’s shoulder and placed her hands over the wound, cupped it carefully, lightly so as not to cause any further pain and closed her eyes. She opened herself to Emma, concentrating on her heartbeat until it became a song in her ears, until there was nothing, no Henry, no room, no world outside… nothing but the steady sound of that beat.

She felt the wound throbbing, the flesh fighting the imp poison and losing. She felt each cell as it died an agonizing death, the blackness of the poison winning each one, slowly, surely. She reached deeper. She reached for the healthy flesh, but there was only a winning blackness taking over. She saw the imp that had done this, she saw ReulG’horm, grinning at her, staking its claim, watching calmly as she comprehended that she had nothing to fight it with. That this too was a battle lost, like all the others before.

And then she felt a tendril of something pure, something clear and bright and brash reaching out for her, like a hand. I believe in you. She reached out. The darkness in her reached out for the brightness in Emma and, like two hands in a crowd, they fought to hold, to keep that tenuous bond.

Regina opened herself, let the light come to her, let the darkness flow out of her and twine with the light, dance and hold on to it. She opened herself to Emma: she felt the pain of the wound on her own shoulder, crippling, defeating her. She held tighter. She felt the jolts of the little yellow car on the drive home and the hot piercing of a monster’s claw on the skin as if it had been on her. Emma fought her, fought the renewed pain and tried to push her away, moaned pitifully. “Shhh, shhh, I know…” Regina whispered and as she did, Emma slowly surrendered to her hold, to the tenfold pain it brought.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She wanted to let go just to spare Emma the pain but the imp’s smirk became open laughter, gleeful winning. She held on tighter. “I’m so sorry.” She whispered again and again and moved over Emma, blindly straddled her hips and pressed her hands harder against the wound on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I know it hurts.”

She fought to keep that tenuous grip on the light. Deeper. She fought for a deeper connection, for a stronger grip on Emma. She let herself wander through Emma’s life force, her heart, her kindness. The laughter, the happiness every time Henry climbed in through the window, the pain on her own knuckles when she punched a man. She breathed with the same difficulty Emma had felt when she’d chased someone through dark streets, felt her temper rise with Emma’s as she apprehended a man who had abandoned his family. She felt the burn of the sun in her eyes as if she hadn’t seen it for far too long. She felt her heart breaking with a silent goodbye to a small squirming bundle and felt the pain in her body as clear and strong as if it had been her giving birth not just an interloper in Emma’s memories.

Emma’s heart beat under her, faster, faster, louder and louder until it was all she could hear. Until it was all she could feel. She had no right to those memories, to that heart. She tried to pull back. Too much. Too much. She had no right. She tried to pull back but something held her, held on to her. She felt the light that was Emma clinging to darkness that was her, wrap itself around her darkness, not mixing, no, not mixing, just wrapping it itself around her darkness like lovers do.

Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing calmed and then it was clear to her that she was sharing her life force with Emma, much in the same way she was taking in Emma’s death. Thus distributed, there was balance at last. There was life for Emma.

Emma was a robin, singing in the darkness.

Take it, Emma, take it from me. Take as much as you need. She opened herself more and more, letting go of all that was in her to give until Emma’s light was so bright she had to close her eyes and surrender.

For once in her life, it was her choice. Her deliberate choice. And I tasted like freedom.

…   …   …

Pain is the loneliest of places. The world had closed in on her. The only thing Emma knew was the liquid fire running through her veins, consuming her, charring her flesh, her will, her breath. She was certain it would all be over soon. She fought, she thrashed, she resisted. She was not done. She had… she had... the kid and she had not come this far to give up, she had not taken so many punches from life just to let it all end here. She fought it with every ounce of strength she had left, but she just couldn’t find the way out. How would it feel to die? Shhh, shhh, I know…

And then there was darkness, dancing, inviting, asking for her hand. She reached out. She took that hand and held tight as it swirled and twisted itself around her, edges and dips intertwined as if they had simply been two faces of the same coin. The darkness that held onto her was cool, soothing and it wrapped itself around her like a balm. Okay. Okay…

There was a moment of relief where everything stilled, and there was air and it was cool and it offered quiet relief.

Then she was plunged into the whirlwind of anger and fear as the world ripped itself out and there was nothing but scorched earth and a sword at her breast. She raised her hand to protect her heart. No, not her heart, not hers. She felt the impulse to plunge her chest into the sword a dishevelled woman pointed at her but that impulse was not hers either. Not hers. Not her. She felt daggers wrapping themselves around her fists like vines, an overwhelming binding that remained even when she put them down. She felt the burn of the poison and the pain of a knife stabbing through her. She saw Daddy dead on the stone floor. She felt her hand in his chest and the scared beat, the sad, desolated, weak beat of his poor, poor heart in her palm and then his face twisted in agony. She felt her own heart break, she felt the hate for that hand of hers that was still warm from Daddy’s poor heart and the scorching heat of the tears of regret. She saw a man, ripped apart, limb by limb, dying on the ground and felt the cold spread in her. She saw her heart away from her chest – no, not hers, not hers- felt the squeeze of hands on it. She felt the bond to the land and the people and how only death would release her.

She screamed in agony, as if it had been her pain to feel.

She felt life entering her body and the poison receding and she reached for the woman giving her life force knowing that there wouldn’t be enough left when she was done taking.

No! Together. And the light and the dark danced together on equal footing.

…   …   …

Henry stood there, unmoving. There was nothing to see and yet, everything was happening and he couldn’t be sure how he knew it, he just did and there was life and death passing between Emma and the strange woman that had materialised that morning in Emma’s apartment. Emma screamed, he could hear it in his heart, though there was really no sound and then Regina just collapsed on top of her. He shook off his paralysis and moved to the bed where two bodies now lay instead of just Emma.

He pulled Regina off and rolled her to the empty side of the bed and then jumped over her to check on Emma because though he liked this strange woman and her strange stories, Emma was the one he truly cared about. He shook her and called her name and shook her again but nothing happened. He put his hand over her mouth and felt a shallow breath and when he put his hand over her heart, he could feel it beating, slow and steady, slow, steady, slow, steady. He sunk into his heels and pushed his hair back and though he wanted to cry, what was the point because the one person that comforted him was not aware of his tears and couldn’t do anything. He pushed the hair away from her sweaty forehead and whispered nonsense in her ear and begged her not to die. When nothing happened, when she didn’t move, he stood very still for a moment (maybe his whole childhood) and then pushed himself up off the bed. He moved to Regina and took off her boots and wiped her hands clean of Emma’s blood.

She stirred, her eyes cracked open and Henry quickly moved to hover over her. But where he had expected a gentle awakening, Regina jumped up and reached for her daggers and even though she found only one, she was in immediate attack position, crouching, arms outreaching, eyes searching and body swaying as if she couldn’t quite remain upright. Standing between him and Emma, ready to kill, swiping the dagger blindly, viciously.

Henry plastered himself to the wall in fear. “It’s just me. Just me. Regina… It’s just me…”

Chapter Text

Chapter 7

The world was a swaying blur and she didn’t know where she was. The ground didn’t stop moving and her body was numb and it didn’t obey her. Her movements were slow and clumsy and all she knew was that to stop was to die. She plunged her dagger forward, towards where she imagined the enemy might be.

She was not ready to die yet.

Not yet.

Not now.

She heard her name and it was coming from very far, filtered through many layers of rock and iron, faint and distorted. She attacked again, swayed again and found that it wasn’t balance she lacked, but the strength to remain upright. She went down hard on her knees but the impact was cushioned by the soft bed. Maybe this time it was real. Maybe this time she had truly died.

It’s only me. Regina, it’s only me, Henry.

She shook her head, trying to make sense of those distorted sounds, trying to shake them into words.

Henry.

The fog cleared, the sound became sharper. Henry.

She could make out a shape, a small shape against a wall and terrified eyes, wide and full to the brim with tears. Oh Henry! She crawled to him, out of instinct, blindly, love moving her. Emma’s love for the boy inside her, inside her empty chest. She crawled to him, like a mother would, like Emma would. Except Emma was not his mother, she’d said.

She’d lied.

Regina reached out with both hands for the boy and he recoiled in fear, as if he could melt into the wall, a small sound strangled in his throat. She touched his skin and felt him pull away from her and, at the same time, a memory of a hole in a heart that would never be filled, an emptiness such as her own and yes, Emma was Henry’s mother, she remembered it. And she hadn’t failed. She could feel Emma’s heart and breath and life right there as it had been her own.

“No, no, it’s okay, Henry, it’s okay.” She said thought the thoughts in her head were a merry-go-round, blurred, so confused. But the boy’s eyes were wide with fear fear fear and she didn’t understand because Emma was going to be okay and then she realized that she had a dagger in her hand, pressed against Henry and that she was covered in blood, human and imp, and she was a fighter, not a mother. Never a mother.

She pushed back. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Henry, I wasn’t going to hurt you, I wasn’t. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…” She rubbed at her eyes, trying to clear her mind. She rubbed and rubbed with the heel of her dagger hand but it just didn’t, it didn’t clear anything up, it didn’t get any better. Which was just as it had always been. She had to get out. She had to get out of that room and stop frightening the child and hurting people that had no business in this war of hers.

…   …   …

Henry peeled himself from the wall and moved to Regina, carefully, weary of the dagger. He didn’t believe she’d hurt him, at least not on purpose. Then again, the dagger might. The dagger was sharp and she didn’t seem like she was controlling it all that well, it was more like a lizard’s tail that kept on moving after you’d cut it off, wriggling like it still had a purpose. Tentatively, he reached out for her arm but thought the better of it and touched her knee instead and when she didn’t wave the dagger any further, he touched her arm. She froze when he touched her bare skin so, emboldened by a fractal success, he slid his hand up hers and gently closed his fingers over the flat of the blade.

This was stupid, very stupid. Emma had told him never to hold knives by the blade, but he gingerly placed his fingers on it, hoping Regina wouldn’t move. She didn’t. Her eyes were fixed on him, squinting, like she hoped it was him but couldn’t quite be sure. He slid the dagger gently from her hand still pressed in a fist against her eye and when it slid free, he took it with a sigh and tossed it under Emma’s bed as if it had burnt him.

“I’m sorry.” She told him. “I’m sorry”, she said it again and again, “I didn’t mean to.”

Henry wasn’t quite sure about what because it was like she wasn’t quite there, not quite with it. She looked at his hand on her arm and Henry didn’t pull away though that was in fact his first instinct. Instead, he rubbed her arm, top to bottom, gently, lightly as he could and she just stood there, looking at it, looking at the motion as if she had never seen it before.

“What happened?”

“I don’t… I thought… I’m so stupid… I thought I could…” “Keep her safe?”

Regina nodded. Yes. She’d thought she could. “I thought I could kill it before it got to her. I thought… I’m so sorry.”

“How did you do that?” Regina looked confused at him. “How did you heal her?” Regina shook her head as if trying to clear her mind of a fog. “Was it with magic?”

Regina nodded. It all sounded so stupid, so naïve. She had no magic now, she hadn’t had any for twenty-eight long years and even when she’d been at the height of her powers, she never had any healing. So, so naïve.

And yet, Emma lived when she should have been dead by now.

Carefully, Henry moved closer and pulled her hand from her face where she was still rubbing her eye. Carefully, he moved into her and laced his arms around her neck, pulled her into him and just closed the embrace. He hid his face in her sweaty neck and the tears rolled. “She’s okay. She’s okay. She’s okay.” He pulled himself closer still, as if he could remove all the space in between them and sobbed into her neck. “She’s okay. She’s okay. She’s okay.”

…   …   …

Regina’s arms hung limp by her side. She had a boy holding on to her. A child, such a small child crawling into her lap and telling her that Emma was okay. That it was okay. And she didn’t know what to do. She looked at Emma on the bed. Her arms moved and then they were no longer limp by her side but strong and encircling Henry in their protection, tentatively at first, and then stronger and stronger until she was quite sure that she’d do whatever it took to keep this little boy safe from the harm she’d brought upon them. No matter what.

…   …   …

Regina woke up warm in a soft bed with an arm draped loosely over her waist and a soft breath on her neck. Her body tensed and then relaxed when Emma murmured right behind her “Just a little longer.” Okay. She could do that. More importantly, yes, she wanted that too. Just a little longer. Just a moment more when there was warmth and no fear, when there was no loneliness. She fell into unconsciousness again, this time something soothing and pleasant like innocent sleep, not like the usual cocktail of pain and exhaustion.

…   …   …

She woke up again what had to be hours later, the room plunged in darkness, only a vague orange hue filtering through the blinds. This time there was no arm around her. Emma was on her side, shivering with cold and sweating profusely. Regina touched her forehead and felt the fever raging through her. She tried to get up, to get some water and cloths to help lower the fever but when she put her feet on the floor, she had no strength to accomplish that. In its stead, Regina wiped the sweat from Emma’s face with her hand and then lay behind her, covered them both with a comforter and offered what body heat she could until Emma’s body went lax and the shaking stopped.

…   …   …

Hours later, a small sound coming from the next room woke her up again. This time, survival instinct kicked in and she jumped onto the balls of her feet, fist ready having to do without the daggers. She stumbled to the other room ready to face off with ReulG’horm’s army but was greeted with the sight of Henry carefully opening the sash window and slipping into the room like a little thief.

When he saw her, he came to her and hugged her, arms around her midsection, head against her chest. She pushed him back gently because she was not the kind of person that should be hugged like that. Not her. “How’s Emma?” He tagged valiantly when she broke the hug. She told herself that she was the lowest of the low for not offering a child comfort but what comfort could anyone have from her?

“A little better.” It wasn’t entirely true. She had high fever still and the puncture wound was purple and angry, but she was alive and Regina had never seen anyone last this long. She cupped Henry’s cheek with her hand. It wouldn’t do to get attached to Henry. It wouldn’t do to borrow that love from Emma, to let that love for him Emma felt in her body, course though her own veins. It wasn’t hers to feel. It was just an echo of what Emma felt. Nothing more. And it wouldn’t do to get attached to Emma, either. If she got lucky, finishing this would release her. If she wasn’t, she’d be back there doing this forever.

Neither Emma nor Henry were hers to keep.

…   …   …

“She has a fever.” Regina apologised and stood by as Henry touched Emma’s forehead gingerly.

Satisfied that it was just that, Henry smiled at Regina and walked into the bathroom and came back with two aspire and a glass of water. “Help me get her up, okay?”

Regina propped Emma up sitting behind her and waited while Henry called out for her softly. “Hey, Emma, it’s me, Henry. You need an aspirin, okay? Emma?”

The woman mumbled but opened her eyes and gave him a smile, small though it was. “Open up, Emma.”

Emma reached out her hand instead. “I can do it, kid.”

“Okay, good, that’s really good, Emma.” Henry cooed and gave her the two pills which she put in her mouth and then handed her the glass of water.

Behind her, Regina wiped a small dribble of water running down Emma’s chin.

“Thanks, kid.” Emma slurred and sagged back against Regina. “Hey, don’t worry, it’s just a cold.”

“Emma, it’s not just a cold. But you’re going to be fine. Regina saved you.”

“She did?”

“Yeah. With magic.”

“Oh man… I thought it had been just a bad dream…”

…   …   …

“What was that?” Regina asked as Henry closed the door to Emma’s room behind them.

“Aspirin.”

“Is it magic?”

“I guess, in a way. It’s medicine. It will make the fever go down and the pain go away.”

Maybe, Regina thought, magic came in different guises in this world. Making the pain go away sounded a lot like magic to her but to Henry, she simply nodded. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah… Kelly was on the phone again and I just slipped out…”

“Shall we eat then?”

“Are you hungry too?”

“No.” Not today anyway. She’d had a good meal of pancakes thanks to Emma the previous day and that was far more than she usually managed to produce for herself. Hunger was a constant and she paid it no mind. Her stomach, though, the traitor, rumbled and Henry gave her a confused look.

“Emma usually makes me lunch.” Regina looked around the kitchen which was an unknown place to her, especially one where there was no fireplace with an iron pot. “Do you cook?” Henry asked.

“Rabbits or birds on the fire…”

“Cool…” Regina shrugged. She remembered banquets and food aplenty when the king had taken her to his castle and though those were times she didn’t like to remember, the ghost of those foods were reminder enough, contrast enough to the meagre meals she managed to produce. “Don’t you know how to cook pasta?”

“What’s pasta?”

Henry suddenly got a bright spark in his eyes. “This,” He opened a cupboard and waved a pack of spaghetti triumphantly in the air when he found it.

“I don’t think so. Do you?”

“Can’t be that hard.” Henry said optimistically. “We’ll Google it.”

“Google?”

“Yeah. Google is your friend.”

“My friend?”

“It’s an expression.” He opened Emma’s laptop and fired it up. Regina sat next to him on the couch and read as he went along. She touched the computer waiting for that now familiar sense of memory to hit her. The computer asked for a password. “Do you know her password?”

“Oh yeah,” Henry smiled brightly. “It’s my birthday. I figured it out on my own.”

“You’re a very smart boy.” Against her better judgement, Regina’s hand went to his arm. She pulled away almost immediately but the damage was done. She wanted to do more of it; she wanted to feel more that warmth, of that not-aloneness.

Henry’s fingers worked the keyboard and he wrote pasta recipe and a list came up. He opened the first few windows and went back to add easy before pasta.

“See? Google is your friend!” He smiled. “Shall we cook?”

“Does it teach you how to cook?”

“Yeah!” He said as if it were self-evident. “You just follow the instructions and everything is going to be alright.” He handed her an apron, slid it over her head and made her turn to tie a knot at her back. It was an odd thing, the worn and blood-stained leather partially covered with a white apron that proclaimed in bold red letters Kiss the cook. “You have to work the stove. Emma doesn’t let me use fire, matches, or hot water. We’re going to need all three.” He told her as he looked at the screen of the laptop resting on the kitchen island.

Regina looked at her reflection in the window. She’d had fantasies, when she was a young girl, of having a home and children and of the domesticity of it all. In none of them she’d been wearing pants still stained from blood and battle and a total incapacity to look after a child.

She reminded herself to speak. Conversations inside her head were not sufficient now that she had more than the ghosts of her father and Graham to keep her company. “What does my friend Google want me to do?”

“Boil water.” Okay, that was within her capabilities. She filled a pot and put it on the stove. Henry pointed at the matches with his chin. “The stove used to have a lighter but Emma broke it once when she was trying to fix it.”

With the water on the boil, they turned to the computer again.

Henry read through the list of ingredients and opened the fridge to assemble the required list. Regina wondered how many people and for how long the contents of that cold emanating box would feed back home. Quite a lot. The old familiar feeling of guilt settled heavily on her stomach.

They worked together in companionable silence. Henry seemed to understand instinctively that she was not a comfortable conversationalist and spoke only to give her directions.

When they assembled the finished product, Regina was simultaneously surprised that it was edible given her non-existent cooking skills and completely comfortable with the result. Google was a friend in need and, though her experience with friends was meagre, friends in need, she believed, were friends indeed. The pasta was a little mushy and the sauce a little salty but she’d happily have this pasta with cheese sauce forever.

“Told you,” Henry beamed. “Google is your friend!”

“We should feed Emma too…”

“She’ll like this.” Henry pondered.

“Maybe something simpler?”

“Chicken soup.” Henry’s eyes lit up. “She feeds me chicken soup when I’m feeling ill.”

“What about your mother?”

“My mother is evil. She hates me.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, Henry…”

“It is…” Henry spoke with a jarring calm acceptance. “When I’m sick she’s never home. When I’m okay she’s never home. She doesn’t love me. She only pretends for the pictures. But Emma… When I’m sick she stays home with me, she cooks chicken soup…”

Deliberately, this time, she touched Henry’s hand over the table. She too wished she’d had an Emma back when she was a child and then berated herself because that was a disservice to the memory of her father who had always come to her.

“Can we ask Google how to make chicken soup?”

“You don’t know how make chicken soup?”

Regina remained silent because no, she didn’t and even the taste of it was now a distant memory, almost as vague as any fantasy of her mother caring for her when she was unwell.

“So what do you have when you’re sick?”

She looked at her hands expecting them to clench in the old familiar pain. Nothing happened. Her hands remained flat, calm on the table. Nothing. She had nothing. When she managed to drag herself home she curled up on the stone floor behind the door to make sure it didn’t open. No one came to carry her to bed, to light the fire, to hand her a glass of water. Not since Graham. They had done that for each other for some time. And when Rumpelstiltskin came for her, when she fell in the middle of a field or a mountain, it was not with chicken soup but with the bitter dregs of his magic that hurt like a punch.

…   …   …

Henry regarded Regina, her hands perfectly still on the table and her eyes unmoving, wide open but unseeing. He saw the things she wasn’t telling him, things he understood all too well.

He pulled the computer closer and Googled chicken soup and then checked the cupboards. Maybe they could heat up a can of soup. Chicken soup sounded complicated, but Emma had always cooked it from scratch, chicken and all. “We need to go to the store.”

Regina was lost somewhere and he desperately wanted her back because he had been to that place of loneliness too and it if it hadn’t been for Emma, he’d still be going there. He put his hand in her arm, offered comfort like children do, easily.

“Store?” Regina asked as the glaze over her dark eyes cleared.

Henry looked for a synonym. “Market.”

…   … …

Regina checked her daggers: the balance, the tip, the blade. She checked the sheaths and their position under her arms and slid into her coat. Ready. She was ready. They were going to a market, the outdoors in a place too crowded for her to see the danger before it was upon them. But Emma needed chicken soup and Henry needed to make it for her. She would make sure to bring Henry home, unscathed, untouched by the violence. Her first instinct was to lock them in the house and emerge only to fight but one thing she had learnt back home was that life doesn’t stop until the battle begins.

She stood still in the middle of that cosy room and stretched her senses outside, letting the sounds, the smells, the colours come to her, eyes closed.

Nothing. She couldn’t sense anything at all. Outside, the cacophony of sound, colours, smells – of a life to which she did not belong- drowned out the sounds of the enemy. It made her want to belong here, to let herself soar and flutter in the wind, anonymous, not a care in the world, a leaf in the wind. To be free of her curse, of her burden, of all her bad choices, of all her hurt and the grief and the loss.

It made her want to make chicken soup forever.

“Shall we?”

“Wow! You’re like Xena.” Henry almost whispered, measuring her.

“Who’s that?”

Henry smiled. “I’ll show you later.”

How long had it been since someone had made a promise to her with such lightness?

…   …   …

The market was the most extraordinary thing Regina had ever seen. Sure, cars and elevators were grand and her friend Google always with a ready answer, but the store was unbelievable: there were no vendors by the stalls and really there were no eyes on them checking if they stole anything. Everything seemed magic, the lights, the packets, the colours. There was no smell of humanity, no smell of horse excrement, no heat of bodies…The sheer quantity of food stuffs… Regina wished she could take this store back with her because it would feed her world for generations. Maybe it would go some way to forgiveness if she found way to carry it with her. She wondered how easy it would be to fight ReulG’horm if, at the end of the day, she could just pop into a store and pick up a can of soup (how ingenious was that) and recoup her strength. How easy to just pick up an apple from a box rather than from a tree she had to tend to while keeping an eye out for attacks.

And no one, no one was looking at her denying her a loaf of bread because if they lived in misery she was to blame for it. She could choose whatever she wanted and no one would think twice of it. No one would tell her no. She understood the no. Of course she did. She was the expert in revenge after all: when there wasn’t enough food, why would you sell it to the Evil Queen that had brought hunger upon you?

Only hunger was aplenty in the Enchanted Forest. And where there is only hunger, there is very little space for forgiveness.

They collected the items on Henry’s list including pieces of chicken, plucked, de-skinned, de-boned, de everything. And when it came time to pay, there was no bartering, no trading, just a bored cashier and a credit card and it was all very, very strange and promising and scary. Had the curse worked, would she have brought her world here?

They left the store and walked home. It was a short walk, after all. People came out of offices and stores and Regina wondered what it would be like to live such a life, commanded by opening doors and buses and stores and not by the constant threat, the constant loss, the constant hunger.

People in the streets looked at her. She wondered if what she was- a killer, a hunter, rotten to the core- was as obvious to them as it was to those in the Enchanted Forest. They walked through the darkened streets chasing pools of light. Again Regina opened herself to the sounds and smells of the city. There was hurt and misery here too and yet, nothing was as bleak, as oppressing as home. And still, nothing. Evil didn’t lurk in the dark, it didn’t prickle the back of her neck. There was no threat.

She kept her senses sharp, as ready as her daggers.

Henry stuffed his hands in his pockets. Regina could feel him vibrate in need. Perhaps if he’d been walking with Emma he’d have been holding her hand. She would have liked that so she strengthened her resolve not to get roped in. Because of her, ReulG’horm had crossed over to this world. And she would not let it claim any more lives. She filled her lungs with air, fortified by her reasoning.

And then all hell broke loose: a man, a shadow, really, slinked from the dark wall and was upon her, a sharp blade in his shaky hand pressed against her stomach. “Give it, bitch, give it to me.” And his voice trembled as much as his hand and she knew this was simple. There were no claws coated in poison, no sharp teeth, just human frailty. She could just push him to the ground and walk away. The shadow was but a small threat and she didn’t have to be a war-worn thing that jumps to the kill just because she can.

She tried. It was just a man, looming over her and whispering in her ear, jittery, Gimme! Gimme! Gimmegimmegimme! until it was a song she didn’t understand. Still, she could wait him out.

But the shadow noticed Henry and Henry was wearing things that the man wanted. “I’m gonna get it from him, bitch!” and he let go of her and grabbed Henry and that was a fatal mistake: nothing would ever touch or pollute Henry and this shadow with its grubby, dirty, dangerous hands touched the child, touched him in anger and greed. Threatened him.

It was all a blur, even to her, the way her arms crisscrossed in front of her chest and unsheathing her daggers. Just a blur how she whirled between the shadow-man and the child and how her daggers were plunging in and out of soft, squelchy flesh not rough leathery skin and hard flesh. It was just a blur how there was no fight in the shadow-man and how it was only the viciousness of her blows that kept him upright.

There was no time for anything but that kneejerk reaction to kill the threat. No time to just think that this was not home, that handing over a few things, things that could easily be replaced would have made the threat go away.

There was only anger and instinct and the memory of dead peasants, fed upon and of Graham dying at her feet because he had the kindest of hearts back in his chest. The memory of all that remained of the children she had to bury. Nothing would touch Henry. Her Henry. Hers.

When it was all over, when the killing frenzy was over, the body of the man slipped from her daggers to the floor. She recoiled, too numb but already feeling the horror creeping into her. Back home this would not have happened: her covenant with the land stopped her from harming humans. How could it have failed here? How could she have not seen it, stopped it, walked away from it?

Blood, dark, red, thick coated her hands. The copper smell made her dizzy.

How could this have happened?

Frozen, rooted to the spot, Henry looked at her and at the man on the ground, shaking, shaking, tears streaming down his cheeks. What had she done?

She was too distressed to notice the pungent smell or the way the air subtly moved and charged until the shadows took form, and the body of the man was pulled right from where she loomed over it into the protective, greedy clutches of a troll to disappear into the unrelieved darkness of the alley.

Henry screamed and that was enough. Her body snapped like an elastic band, tense for battle, between the troll and the child and she was back on familiar ground, back on the everyday.

She walked backwards slowly, keeping Henry behind her and the daggers aiming forward, a fluid, threatening movement but the troll was not interested. Trolls didn’t worry about the living. They preferred the dead. And this one was as hungry as everything else in the Enchanted Forest.

“Run” She commanded. Run, run, run she told herself. On her left hand, she clutched the bag with the shopping, clutched it like her life depended on it because suddenly she was still in her old world where a crumb was a meal and she couldn’t let go. Her pace was punishing but Henry kept running, his backpack bouncing on his back with the rhythm of his feet pounding on the pavement. Run!

She stopped when Henry pulled her back and huffed “Here”. He would have gone straight in, but Regina stopped and again, she let her mind see and smell and hear what she couldn’t with her eyes, her nose, her ears. But the only thing she could hear was the thrumming of the blood in her veins and Henry’s laboured breathing.

Henry waited by the grand glass door.

She backed into the building keeping her eyes on the peaceful dark street dotted by pools of yellow light. Henry punched in a code on a keypad and let them in. She stood by the glass door looking outside, waiting for something to move, for something to reveal itself. The lights went off around her leaving her in the dark. She remained still for a few minutes further but nothing moved except for the stream of expensive cars in an expensive part of town.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8

The woman in green waved her hand over the waters of the pond in that in between place where there was still magic to be had and dismissed the vision. Her hands shook and she folded then in her lap but her companion had seen it in her own distress. She hoped for silence but her companion, as always, did not hold her own counsel.

“What happened?” Her voice shook, just like her hands. The woman in green remained silent. She had nothing of worth to improve silence with. “It’s not possible. Her covenant with the land… she can’t. She shouldn’t be able to… We have made a mistake.”

That was not a possibility that the woman in green was willing to accept and she shook her head vigorously. She had to hope that they hadn’t but it was too horrible, the way those daggers plunged in and out of the chest of that unfortunate man, the horror in his face, the distortion of his features, the sheer terror. His last breath. It was not possible. The Evil Queen could not hurt humans, she could not.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against her hands.

“And the child. That poor child, how he was shaken at the horror of the killing.” Her companion murmured. “Children should not bear witness to such violence…”

It was one thing to know that the Evil Queen killed to defend them but to see it, oh to see it… “The child…” The pieces fell silently into place.

“Yes, that poor child…” “No…” The woman in green stood and paced, her soft steps disappearing in the sand as if she had not stepped at all. “You don’t understand. It’s the child. For the child…”

“It’s not possible. Her will is not hers.”

The woman in green stared at the pond though there was nothing left to see. But she knew what she knew. “The Queen killed to defend the boy.”

“It’s not possible. She is bound by the Dark One’s magic.”

That might be true, she thought, and yet, Regina had killed when – and only when – the child had been threatened. She didn’t know how it was possible, but of this she was absolutely sure. For the child, she had overcome that paralysing bond.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Henry worked the key into the lock and switched on the lights inside, as familiar with the space as he would be, she imagined, with his own home. Maybe this was, indeed, as much his space as it was Emma’s.

He was avoiding her. He kept his back to her, walking ahead of her into the apartment, dropping his bag neatly on the sofa and picking up Emma’s laptop, starting it up all without looking at her. She could see the dull pallor of his skin and feel the trembling of his hands.

She had brought this to the child and was overwhelmed by regret. She tried to swat it away. What good did caring ever bring her. She couldn’t. “Henry?”

Henry sat on the couch completely focused on the computer. She sat next to him, careful not to touch him, her hands still bloodied though unlikely to transfer now that the blood was dry under her nails and cracking with each movement of her skin.

“I know Emma’s password. She uses my birthday. Isn’t that funny? I don’t think she minds me using her computer. Why use my birthday if she did, right?”

Henry’s voice was agitated and stilted, an octave higher, a whole compass faster. She looked at the blood on her skin. “Henry” she tried again. “I…”

“It’s your job. I know. And you defended us. You saved me.” There was a minute pause and then his voice lost that horrid pinch. “I know.” He said and Regina could barely hear it.

“I’m sorry you saw that.”

“Me too.” Henry sighed and said in a small voice but made no move to come closer to her. It was a loss and one that she was ill prepared to suffer no matter her wealth of experience with that. She regarded the blood on her hands, the one that was there and the one you couldn’t see. It was grotesque to think of chicken soup when you had so much blood on your hands. Absolutely grotesque.

Henry put the computer down and stood. “I never saw anyone dying before. I’m sorry.” She was surprised when he touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to do that.” She could feel the warmth of his skin on her shoulder through the leather of her duster jacket and that of the vest she wore. “Come” He said with a gentle finality that surprised her, his hand steadier now that he was surrounded with what was familiar to him. What felt safe.

In the bathroom, he helped her out of her jacket and opened the warm water tap. Gently, he pulled her hands under the water and held them there in his. It took a while but the dried blood softened and diluted and ran down the drain in small red rivulets. His fingers rubbed at her skin and the blood was just going, going and then it was if it had not been there. At all.

Except for the old blood. Her father’s. The Hunter’s. All the dead she had buried in her world.

She would never be clean of that.

He started water running in the shower. “You need to clean up a little. Please.” And he went out, closing the door gently.

She let her clothes drop on the floor and stepped under the shower. She scanned the shower box and found soap. She squirted some into her hand and rubbed at her arms and then her face, her neck. She rubbed and scrubbed more and more violently, the more she thought about Henry’s hands in the water with hers, cleaning her of the blood of that man. Just a man. Henry’s hands so gentle on her skin, delicate, light, making it go away. She put her nails to good use too, she scratched and picked at her skin until it was red and sore and broken at places. And nothing she ever did would be enough to clean all that blood away from her.

When the water ran cold, it woke her from her desperation. What was the point? Her life was steeped in blood. Showering, using sweet scented soaps would not clean her. She would never be clean. She grabbed a towel Henry had left ready for her and dried her body, her hair and contemplated her blood soaked, war worn clothes. She had nothing else to wear.

She had nothing else to be but a defeated warrior.

There was a knock on the door. “I’ve got you fresh clothes, Regina.”

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Google, it seemed, had an answer and a picture for everything. While her clothes dried in the bathroom, out of sight, they cooked chicken soup and the scent wafted through the kitchen and it was appetizing, delicious. She imagined it smelled like home.

Henry produced a tray from the top of a kitchen unit. “My mom will be home soon.”

She didn’t want to let him go. She didn’t want him to be alone with a careless family, unmoved by how beautiful a child he was.

She served a bowl of soup and set in front of Henry. Emma, she reasoned, could do well with a few more minutes of painless sleep and the child would do well with some chicken soup. Henry accepted the soup but stood and fixed a second one that he put in front of her. “Eat.”

She was going to miss Google, with its ready answers. Mostly, though, she was going to miss Henry and his kindness and his shinny acceptance of her. When they finished, Henry put the bowls in the sink and retrieved a plastic container from the bathroom. He put it in Regina’s hand. “This is the aspirin we gave her before.”

Just then, his phone rang, the shrill babysitter’s voice enough to make Regina want to find her and hurt her, whether or not it was possible. Henry had spent most of the day out and that creature worried about him only when it got dark and his mother was due to make an appearance. Henry nodded sadly at her and opened the window. “Coming!” He said into the phone. “Give her two of these with the soup.” Regina nodded numbly. Henry was going. She had no claim to the child but half a day in his presence and everything in her wanted to stake a claim. This was not smart, not at all.

She barely held in check the need to touch him. She wanted to pull him to her like Emma did. She felt jealous of what Emma did. She nodded goodnight in a way she knew was cold and detached but she didn’t know how to do it any better and not be weak for it.

Henry did, though. He held onto her, his arms around her and his head against her midsection. “Good night, Regina.” Her arms closed around him and held tight. From deep in her, a sigh of longing escaped free.

She stood on the fire escape watching Henry climb up and disappear through his own window. She went back in and slid the window closed, locking it for all the good it would do. Locks had never deterred ReulG’horm. Then, she filled another bowl with soup, placed it in the tray and looked around herself, at herself. She was wearing clean smelling clothes, soft fabrics and was overwhelmed for a few seconds. The clothes were Emma’s, of course and the thought made her blush. It was funny though, because there was a moment where the thought occurred to her that she would be perfectly content making chicken soup, talking to Henry and wearing soft clothes for the rest of her life.

She swatted the thought resolutely and picked up the tray. It was time to face Emma.

…   …   …

Emma woke up when Regina moved into the room, wincing and looking for something to defend herself with.

“It’s only me.” Regina whispered softly because she didn’t trust her throat just yet.

“Forgive me, but that’s not too comforting either.” Emma replied groggily but put down the boot she had picked up from the floor.

It didn’t hurt, Regina told herself. It didn’t. She’d heard far worse. It didn’t hurt.

She put the tray on the bed and switched on a small light, helped Emma to sit because the woman’s body was still weak and uncoordinated and she knew in the flesh that it took a long time to feel human again after the imp poison, to feel anything but the hurt and the fear. Even with magic.

By the time Emma managed to lean back on the pillow, her forehead was pearled with sweat. Regina felt a now familiar tug towards the woman, something that asked her to take care of her, to make sure- really sure- that no harm would come to her. She carved her nails into her palms, eight half-moons of pain but still, she brought the tray closer to Emma and handed her a glass of water and the pills.

When their fingers touched, she didn’t linger. She didn’t let the jolt get to her. She just folded her hands in her lap as if she were still in one of her mother’s tea times and not in the middle of a faithless war.

The glass shook on its way down to the tray and Regina took the spoon, quite in spite of herself, and fed Emma. Spoon after silent spoon. And when it was over, she put the tray in the kitchen and grabbed a wet cloth from the bathroom and wiped Emma’s sweaty brow. And when that was finished, she sat on the bed because the day was one of the longest she’d ever had and she leaned into the pillows next to Emma because she had every intention of just resting her legs and catching her breath.

Just a little rest.

But her eyes closed and her head lolled to the side and then she was asleep, her head leaned on Emma’s good shoulder.

Just a little rest.

…   …   …

Her heart was pounding, pounding madly in fear and victory and fear again. Fear because she was defying her teacher, her master and victory because she was getting away with it. Because she was finally going to win, she was finally going to defeat Snow White and her band of happy, happy people and finally, she was going to take that happiness from them and bathe herself in it. And in fear because she had never defied anyone that she hadn’t paid dearly for it. In fear because she didn’t know how to be happy. She didn’t know what to expect. It had been so very long, it had been so brief.

But the carriage ate away the miles on the road to Snow’s castle, the horses on a wild stampede, the curse eating ground behind them, doing her bidding and nothing, nothing could stop her now. Except the fear.

She bit the inside of her cheek and pushed away at the fear. She reminded herself that she had the power now, that no one would ever again hold her at their will. Not Rumpelstiltskin, not Snow, not the King. Not her mother. She was free now. She laughed, louder and louder, persuading herself. Yes, be happy, Regina, no more masters, no more hurt, no more pain.

Her laughter echoed ahead of her, harking to those in her path to move aside or be destroyed.

…

In the castle, the mewling cries of a newborn greeted the world. The child was bundled in a blanket and in the hopes of her parents. The Evil Queen knew, she could feel it, that child coming into the world, the promise, the hope. And she wanted it. She wanted that child for herself. She spurred the horses, too agitated to simply materialise within the castle and grab what she wanted, to start her happy ending.

When she pushed through the door, it was too late. The child was gone. No matter, no matter, she told herself, she would… there would be… it didn’t matter. What mattered was that it ended today. What mattered was her happy ending.

The Evil Queen loomed over Snow and her prince and told them how she had won. She promised the dying prince and the wretched princess some place horrible and then the curse hit the castle with the fury of a thousand storms. The roof of that pretty nursery was ripped apart tile by tile; the walls cracked and broke off leaving only the night sky. The prince was dead and Snow would soon spend millennia regretting, pinning, hurting. Yes, somewhere horrible. No matter where, it would be horrible, because Snow would carry the hell of loss inside her.

Just like the Evil Queen did.

She laughed something terrible that scared even herself, hating Snow because she was not defeated, because there was still hope and defiance in her. There shouldn’t have been any.

The whirlwind of storm and fury subsided, like a horse too tired to go on. The dust and debris of the castle rained on her and she couldn’t understand, not at first, not in the beginning, not until Snow had the prince’s sword in her hand and had pushed it through her chest.

Looming over the princess like a vulture, Regina understood that, once again, she had lost.

Rumpelstiltskin materialised over her, all the decrepitude of his jail time gone, livid, furious. “You failed me!” His slap, viciously delivered, had her flying back, away from Snow’s sword. And, ridiculously, it was that what saved her life.

The world didn’t stop spinning. The storm had subsided, the curse had fallen to the ground like a rotten apple but the spinning didn’t stop. It was the details that she remembered, the little things she would never ever forget: Snow’s sweaty brow when she stood and aimed Charming’s sword again; the flurry of blue wings, ruffled and scrunched standing behind Snow, making her look like an avenging angel. But above all, the sing-a-song voice, the high pitch of Rumpelstiltskin’s voice that always proffered hell. The voices went quiet and the roar of destruction was a very far away sound. Flat on the ground, all there was for the defeated Evil Queen was the shine of a white unicorn hanging over the white lace of an abandoned crib, swinging gently in the midst of all their shattered hopes.

…

The defeated queen was pulled from the floor of the cell and dragged up darkened marble steps. The wound in her chest had festered and healed. The world had become a narrow gap close to the ceiling of her cell, grey and cold. And then a hue of red had tinged the sky and a smell of death pervaded.

She was taken to the throne room where Snow ruled alone, her prince deep in an enchanted sleep.

The guard tossed the Evil Queen at Queen Snow’s feet but sheer habit had Regina wobbling, stubbornly not falling to her knees. Snow stood, a slow and deliberate movement. She loomed over the Evil Queen much like the ruin of her castle still loomed over the kingdom. Snow was a ruin of what she had once been. Her body had recovered from the pregnancy but her skin was grey and dull, the eyes sunken and wild with grief. The happy light Regina had so hated was gone. It surprised Regina to realise that it didn’t make her one ounce happier.

Queen Snow pulled a dagger from the folds of her dress and had it under the Evil Queen’s chin with barely a thought. “You brought this upon us.” The tip of the blade pressed into the soft throat. “You cost me my child.” The blade pressed a little harder.“My husband.” Harder.“My father.” Harder still.“ And now you cost me my kingdom.” Yes, the Evil Queen silently beseeched woman and blade alike Yes, deeper, because this was one defeat too many. She pushed her throat further into the blade of the dagger until the thin welt on the soft skin became a thin line of blood.

“Your Majesty!” The Blue Fairy beseeched from behind Queen Snow, stepping up from the line of fairies. The Evil Queen recognised Tinkerbelle in that line up. She had thought the fairy a friend but she had been nothing but a rebellion or a last resort. She greeted the the fairy with eyes wide open in defiance and offered her neck to the kiss of the blade.

“She deserves to die.” Snow croaked.

“But you don’t deserve to carry that guilt.”

“Don’t let that trouble you, Blue!” Queen Snow spat without ever breaking eye contact with the Evil Queen. “I will happily take that burden.” Queen Snow admired the small trickle of blood that tinged the blade now.

The Blue fairy moved towards the two queens. “Your Majesty… the guilt will weigh forever in your heart. Believe me, I should know.” She touched Queen Snow’s arm, her intention to placate, to defuse but Queen Snow simply swatted her away, her grip on the dagger steely.

“You carry your sins, Blue, I will carry mine and we’ll leave at that. Now step aside.”

“Your Majesty, I―”

“Step aside!” Queen Snow roared and whirled on the fairy. Behind her, the guards moved to restrain the Evil Queen though she had made no movement. “I did not ask for your opinion.”

“It’s the grief, Snow, dear. It’s the grief in you.”

“I have lost everything!” Queen Snow wailed. “Everything. I will grieve as I see fit. I will punish as I see fit. And if it bothers you, you are welcome to leave. Use that time to find to my daughter. To heal my True Love.”

She did not wait for a reply. She turned to the Evil Queen again. “You set this loose on my land. I should have handed you over to those monsters a long time ago.” Again the dagger was at the Evil Queen’s throat and again the Blue Fairy was moving towards Queen Snow when a rumble of thunder echoed through the space of the throne chamber effectively drawing attention to the spot where Rumpelstiltskin had just appeared in a cloud of smoke, and commanding the attention of all of those in the room.

“What?” Rumpelstiltskin demurred sweetly. “Something had to get your attention… Interrupting cat fights is not really in my purveyance. “This is much better…”

“What are you doing here?” The Blue Fairy stood between him and Queen Snow.

“Now, now, don’t get all bothered, dearie!” Casually, he paralysed the Blue Fairy, walked to Snow and stood next to her, carefully studying the Evil Queen. “You are not old enough to remember this, Your Majesty, but this is a war we fought before… hum… perhaps you’ll remember from your history lessons… the Ogre Wars and what have you… No? Pity…”

“Your point?”

Rumpelstiltskin sighed exaggeratedly. “Why should you fight a war she brought to your kingdom?”

From her spot, unable to move, the Blue Fairy understood what Rumpelstiltskin wanted all too clearly. She fought a losing battle with the bonds that restrained her and her scream was but a muffled sound that the Evil Queen could see clearly even if they couldn’t hear it.

“I can’t have my kingdom in her hands.” Queen Snow riposted but the Evil Queen could see a glimmer of invitation in her eyes.

“Well… It’s not much of a kingdom anyhow… Oh…” He shrugged. “Alright, if you’re that attached to it, you don’t have to… Your Majesty.” He put his hand on Queen Snow’s shoulder. “You know what to do…” He gave her a second to register his meaning.

The Evil Queen, too, understood what he meant.

“I… don’t know how…” There was just curiosity in Queen Snow’s voice. Behind her, the Blue Fairy fought the bonds viciously, but nothing happened. Tinkerbelle look on, horrified.

“Oh, magic is about emotion, dearie. You have only to feel strongly enough. Summon up that moment that made you so angry, you would’ve killed if you could.” He snickered at his own little private joke but the words were still sweet and enticing.

Queen Snow sheathed the dagger without breaking eye contact with her prisoner and reached her hand for the Evil Queen’s chest. It hovered there, uncertain until Rumpelstiltskin whispered “Think of what you lost. Think of what you are trying to protect… Of how you will control her every moment, her life and her death.”

Hesitation drained from Queen Snow’s eyes. She plunged her hand into the Evil Queen’s chest and grabbed the heart that lived there, wrapped her fingers around it and squeezed. The Evil Queen doubled over in pain but the hand remained firmly around the heart and when it came off, Queen Snow had a grim smile on her face and a blackened heart in her hand. The Evil Queen dropped to the floor like a rag.

“Well done! Now,” Rumpelstiltskin addressed Queen Snow but his words were for the Evil Queen. “ It belongs to you. You see, when you take a heart, it becomes enchanted. Stronger than a normal heart. You’re not hurting the beast – you’re controlling it. Now, show me you know what to do with that power. ”

Regina remembered. She remembered well how that lesson had ended. She closed her eyes in relief. Yes.

There was a moment of understanding between Queen Snow and Rumpelstiltskin and when the Queen squeezed her heart, Regina found that freedom would not come that easy. Something cracked and shattered in Snow’s gaze. The last flicker of the girl Regina had known vanished. In its stead, a gleam of the madness Regina knew from the mirror. And Rumpelstiltskin looked just that little bit more powerful.

“Stand up.” Queen Snow whispered to the blackened heart in her hand. Rumpelstiltskin watched eagerly and Regina found that she had to obey. It was not a question whether she wanted to die, but of not having a choice. She was puppet yet again.

Rumpelstiltskin summoned two daggers into his hand. “If you agree, Your Majesty, her job should start now.” Snow’s eyes glimmered unnaturally and she nodded in assent though she didn’t really look away from the heart in her hands.

“What happens if I drop it?” But she didn’t wait for the answer. She opened her hands and dropped the heart onto the flagstone floor. The Evil Queen fell to her knees and the Blue Fairy cried. Rumpelstiltskin released her from her bonds and mumbled to himself “Go ahead, I do so like a challenge.”

The fairies moved forward as one. Tinkerbelle picked up the heart from the floor while Blue entreated the queen. “Please, Snow. This is beneath you. You are better than this. You are what is good about this kingdom―”

Tinkerbelle saw the Queen Snow’s eyes locking in on the heart and knew she was out of time and options. “You will not die at the hands of ReulG’horm. Evil will not stain you further.” The fairy channelled the very rest of her magic, the whispers and spurts that lived still in her, part of her blood and bones. “And freedom will find you.”

Queen Snow took the heart from the fairy’s hands with a push, carelessly dusted it and walked away from the fairy. “Indeed, it should start now.”

Rumpelstiltskin materialized two daggers in his opened hands and offered them to the Evil Queen. “Take them.” Though Snow had whispered, the sound boomed in Regina’s ears. She was a puppet on strings. And though her head was spinning and she couldn’t find her balance, she took the daggers.

No… the daggers took her. As if they had grown roots or tethers to her hands, roots that spread to her arms, her neck, her chest, became part of her, sucked the air out of her lungs.

“Your life is not yours until you defeat this evil you have unleashed on my kingdom. Find them, kill them, one by one if you must. You belong to this land, to this earth, to this people. You belong to me. You belong to me until you bring back everything you cost me. Until I am tired of revenge.”

…   …   …

Emma woke up with the soft whimpering of the woman next to her and the screaming pain in her shoulder. She overlooked her shoulder in favour of offering some comfort to the woman next to her though why that would be the case she had no idea.

She turned gingerly on her side to better look at Regina. In the soft yellow light filtering from the street lamps outside, the features were a stark relief of anguish and pain. For a second Emma thought of the monster that had held her in its claws, of the pain in her shoulder, of the dead animals on the floor of the enclosures where they should have been safe.

And knew whatever it was tormenting Regina in her dreams had to be something worse, because she had seen the way the woman faced off to those things. It was magnificent both in efficiency and blood thirst.

The monsters plaguing Regina’s dream were not the same, of that Emma was sure.

Of its own accord, her hand went to Regina’s stock still form and brushed hair out of her sweaty forehead. The gesture made the woman recoil into her pillow and Emma gave up on the pretence of comfort. There were things for which there was no comfort possible. There were a few of those things she carried around with her. She couldn’t avert her eyes, though. In the almost darkness, she saw the wounds on the woman’s body exposed in what had to be Emma’s own clothes. The muscle shirt showed the scars on the arms and shoulders, the flannel pants riding up the smooth legs showed what looked like a bite of some sort. Some of the wounds were old, faded, as if they had been as old as Emma herself. Others were more recent, healed, and then there were the fresh ones, the still red and angry ones that tugged at Emma’s heart painfully and made her want to protect the woman in her bed, to take care of her and, quite possibly, never let her out of her sight again. It was stupid anyway. Regina was like the T-1000 and ruthless in battle she didn’t need protection by Emma Swan, the one with the shiner on her face.

Well, fuckity, fuck, fuck, what the hell was that?

Scared shitless of her own thoughts, Emma turned in the opposite direction to get out of bed. She swung her legs off the mattress and tested for balance and resistance to gravity and, moderately satisfied that her legs would hold her, heeded the call of her screaming shoulder. She went to the toilet where there was plenty of aspirin and, digging deep into the bottom of the medicine cabinet, a, probably expired, bottle of Demerol but, hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

She dry swallowed the last Demerol and tossed the empty bottle (security cap victim of a previous violent assault with a kitchen knife when the child lock had resisted her fingers) before padding back to the bedroom where Regina was still whimpering, something about her heart, fighting something on her hands.

Emma sat on the bed and lay down. She should probably let the nightmare wear off on its own. Just in case Regina clocked her with a fist or something. Honestly, she didn’t need one more reason to avoid the mirror. She was dead sure that her face still had more than traces of the punch that bastard had managed to get in last… wait, not last night and not the night before that either… shit… how long had it been since her last job?

When she turned on her side to sooth Regina’s sleep, she told herself it was just because whimpering noise does not make for good lullabies. “Hey, lady…”

There was, obviously, no reply. She tried again, and then “Hey, Regina!” and when that didn’t work, she touched her fingers to Regina’s arm and shit, it was soft, despite the scars. “Hey… wake up, okay?” and then, softer still “Regina, hey, it’s alright, it’s me, wake up, okay?” She smoothed over the dark hair and what, oh what was she doing and then, as if free from bindings at last, Regina sat straight up like a Jack-in-the-box, reaching blindingly, Emma knew, for the daggers.

Stupidly, Emma reached for her hands. Panic flared up as did the instinctive defensive reaction: Regina jerked her hands and, had Emma not been fast on her feet too, she would have ended up with that other shiner on her good eye.

Shit on stick!

“Hey, it’s me, remember, side kick, good guy… Pancakes?”

Regina’s tension eased as each word sank in, the sounds, the meaning, the feelings, reaching her from a very great distance. And then she could breathe again and took greedy gulps of air.

“That was a nasty one, huh?”

“What?” Regina asked, breathing laboured.

“The nightmare.”

Regina ignored her and stood with a fluid movement, daggers seemingly materialising in her hands, and walked to the window. Carefully, she approached the window, pawed at the curtain, the only sign of how much the dream always rattled her and studied the street, all her senses focused on scouring for shadows and threat.

It was difficult. In this world, things moved in the night like they did in the day. There was always movement, always life and agitation. It made her job more difficult, but she found she was fond of that agitation.

“I know you’re ignoring the question.”

“Good for you.”

“Hey! That’s not very nice.”

Regina stared stubbornly through the window, mostly because she did not want to face Emma, not after the imp, not after such a blatant display of weakness… had she been whimpering in her sleep?

Why did she feel compelled to confide in this woman, Regina wondered. Why did she feel the need share anything? The help she needed was not with the past. The past was immutable, unchangeable. The only help she needed was with the present. And still the words blurted out. “It’s a memory. Not a nightmare.”

“Of what?” Emma slouched starting to enjoy the Demerol. Good stuff. Which was probably why she quite calmly waited for Regina to talk when she was clearly chewing on the matter.

“None of your concern.”

“Look, if you’re gonna tell me something about magic and shit, now’s the time. Cause, you know, Demerol…” Emma stacked the two pillows- the one she’d been using and the one Regina had been sleeping on and leaned back gingerly. Good boy, Demerol, good boy. Then she looked at Regina. No, she didn’t look like she knew Demerol. She patted the bed next to her, eyes closed. Yep, Demerol. Don’t drive or operate heavy machinery. “I already saw those things. I can’t unsee them… whatever it is… can’t be any worse.”

“Emma…”

“Sit.” Emma patted the bed again, emboldened by the feel good of the Demerol. Funny, it had never affected her like this before. “Just… look, just… I won’t tell, alright…” Great! Junior High all over again.

Regina remained stubbornly by the window, eyes trained on the quiet street, illuminated by the yellow glow of the lamps.

When enough time had passed that Emma was softly breathing again, Regina moved and sat on the spot Emma had patted. On a whim, Regina spoke, softly, so softly she could barely hear herself. “The Queen put the daggers in my hands. She bound me to them and to the land. Now and forever, I belong to her, to the land. I belong to her so fully I can’t even choose my day to die.” Emma turned on her side and pulled her knees up but Regina saw no sign she was awake. Softly, so softly, she leaned over Emma to push hair away from her forehead and to cover her with a comforter but succeeded only in losing her balance and falling against Emma. As the woman whimpered, Regina tried to pull back but she was already caught: Emma held her hand and pulled her closer. To minimize damage, Regina sat with her back sharing Emma’s stack of pillows.

A knot tightened in Regina’s throat and made it impossible to swallow, to breathe. Emma’s fingers danced lightly in her palm. Wasn’t she asleep?

“Did you ever want to?”

“Die?” Regina found that only the truth was acceptable. “Yes.”

“She hurt you.”

“She took my heart.”

Emma’s fingers stilled in her hand and then the small palm flattened against Regina’s empty chest. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it back.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 9

The image in the water faded and left only the two women staring at it. The woman in green wanted to see more, was frustrated by the brevity of the image but wheezed, drained. It had cost them dearly to see this much. They both struggled to breathe. Accessing these lasts wisps of magic was becoming more difficult with each time they saw into that other world.

“She said she’d get it back.” Her companion whispered, winded.

The woman in green nodded only but there was a smile, wan and watery. “About time someone did.”

There was no reply to that. They’d had their differences in the past and some things still smarted between them, even through this unlikely alliance.

“Do you think…”

“I do. I have hope. For the first time I have hope.” The woman in green silenced her companion.

“All of this would have been for naught.”

“Even if it doesn’t… It’s about time she had someone on her side.”

“The princess has to be brought home.”

The one in green stood and dusted herself. No more images would be coming from the pond. They had exhausted it. They were exhausted, emptied to the bone. “No more. It’s up to them. We lead them to each other. Now it’s their choice. You know where we stand.”

Her companion sighed and took in their surroundings, committed them to memory. There was a time their world was this vibrant, this beautiful. This full of meaning.

But magic was long gone and it had left a void in the fabric of the world, an emptiness, an incomprehension on how to go about life without the most basic laws. Good no longer generated good. Evil still begot evil. But for beings born out of the magic of the flowers and the wind and the earth and the water, there was still something ancient, an instinct only at first, but then a hope, frail and delicate, but alive.

And hope is a magic all of its own.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

A soft light filtered through, pale and cold but the skin next to her was warm and the puffs of breath on her neck were gentle and comforting. There was an arm around her torso and a warm hand on her thigh. She closed her eyes harder, unwilling to let the light in, to awake fully. She hadn’t had one of these dreams of Daniel since Snow had taken her heart, as if all her good memories had gone with the beating of it, that tiny sliver of all that was good about her gone with the beating of her heart and closed off somewhere she had no access to.

For a glorious moment, the last forty years could have been a nightmare, a fabrication and she would wake up in Daniel’s arms by the river where they used to sit and hold hands as if the world had all the time for their love to bloom.

It took but only a slight whimper to realize there was no dream, no Daniel. There was Emma and it had all been real. She was not prepared for the loss of that fractional hope. It hurt like a steel knife to her gut. She opened her eyes because what was the point of keeping them closed. Emma was holding her and the day light was coming in through the window and outside there were things that wanted her dead. That wanted everything dead.

But there were arms around her and if she closed her eyes she could pretend that the soft touch of those hands was a lover’s touch and that nothing could ever be broken or wrong. She didn’t move, only her eyes fluttered shut. She let the warmth and the comfort seep in and create a memory to keep her warm when she returned to her world.

This was the last time she’d have human contact on her skin. She swallowed the sob of self pity because there was absolutely no point in it and committed everything to memory: the safety and the comfort, the warmth and the joy, the humanity and the naturalness of it.

She had kept Graham around because in that war, he had been the one to remind her that heartless, evil, monstrous queens are still human and need warmth like this.

Her breath evened and she slept once more.

…  

The Evil Queen heard the Hunter inhale sharply and fall to his knees when Queen Snow pushed his luminescent heart into his chest. The dark throne room held its collective breath as the man took sharp gasps of air, while he stood on wobbly legs and straightened to his full height.

The Evil Queen took in his comely form and couldn’t muster the remorse or the pity. She couldn’t muster the self preservation either. Her breath was steady, her hands free. Queen Snow’s curse complete, she could do nothing but stand there and accept whatever was to be her fate, bound as she was to the land and to its people. She had been spared to fight the enemy, not to survive those she served.

But the Huntsman, he just looked at her like he would at a lame horse or one of his dying wolves: with pity. And that she didn’t want. She knew she had been summoned here for this, for the return of the Huntsman. But he bowed to Queen Snow, no longer the girl he had saved in the forest but someone embittered by time and loss, her skin dull, her eyes downturned under the weight of hate and grief.

The Queen’s command was simple: take your revenge.

The Huntsman’ heart ached for what was lost on both sides of that room. His sword fist thumped over his beating heart in salute. He bowed gently to the reigning Queen.

“I am forever in your debt, Your Majesty.”

“What would you have of her?”

“Not of her, Your Majesty, of you.” Queen Snow raised a bitter eyebrow and waited. “That you will allow me to go with her.”

Queen Snow’s eyes flickered in surprise. She would have wished the Huntsman to claim his prize. To repay the Evil Queen in kind, for all the things she was rumoured to have done to him. But this was not her concern. Her beloveds were well beyond her help: her True Love in an enchanted sleep, her daughter beyond her reach in a world she could not access. Anyone else was welcome to die as they pleased. Even the Huntsman.

“And why would you do that for her?”

“For our land, Your Majesty. For the ones that still live.”

“That is her job.”

“She might as well be emptying a water source with a thimble, Your Majesty.”

It angered Queen Snow that someone, anyone, would choose that woman. She didn’t bother hiding it. “So be it, Huntsman. Go then, go be a hero.” And disinterested of his fate, she stood and walked away, shoulders hunched to go and be with her sleeping beloved.

Rumpelstiltskin made a show of studying the Huntsman, a finger poised against his mouth in a coquettish pose. “Well, well, well… them wolves are brave these days… You know, dearie,” He circled now around the Huntsman, “She’s not worth the trouble… she doesn’t do what she’s told, when she’s told.” The Huntsman stood there and The Evil Queen wondered if he was reconsidering. “Unless of course, you’re looking for payback… I heard of the happy, happy times in her chambers… In which case… be my guest.” He giggled and the sound bounced off the empty, cold walls of the throne room.

…

Regina sighed and let the memories go. What was the point of holding on to any of it? It had done neither she nor Snow any good. They were still both where they were and that was all there was to it.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

The eyes were red, red, red, something in-between fire and blood and promised pain. Emma whimpered and the sound brought her back, slowly, from a world of hurt to soft skin pressed against her. On instinct alone, her arms flexed a little tighter around Regina’s body she was rewarded by a scent of humanity- a smell of sweat and sun and hay and a warmth that pushed away at the horror of the red red eyes.

It was good, it was so good. Emma relaxed, disinclined to let go of the body against her. It had been so long, so very long since she’d shared a bed. Since she’d had someone to cuddle up to.

As of late, her life had a been a collection of scratched itches in dark alleys or seedy motel rooms, where things go bump in the dark and no one looks back.

She held on to this warmth because it had been forever since she’d had this and it would be forever until it happened again because she was no longer seventeen year old Emma Swan clinging to scarps of affection from someone with no more loyalty than a feral cat.

Maybe this morning could last her lifetime.

…   …   …

It didn’t. Painkillers wear off and bladders fill up and the world outside takes no pity on memory building moments.

Out of the realm of sleep, she discovered that there was no reason her arms should remain around Crazy McPretty, that there was no reason she should enjoy this. She disentangled her legs from Regina’s and set her feet firmly on the ground telling herself to wake up and get going because the tide waited for no sailor.

It surprised her that she could stand and walk on her own two feet without a wobble or a tumble to the bathroom. Without difficulty, she showered and brushed her teeth and when she looked in the mirror, the source of all the pain was nothing but a faint spot on her shoulder. She ran her fingers through it. Funny… she’d expected something horrible that would make her forever remember that pair of eyes and all the dead animals on the floor. A scar to match the pain it had come with. And then she remembered that most scars, the worst scars, are the ones that fester inside.

When she walked out of the bathroom, Regina was no longer in bed. She refused to acknowledge the tug of sadness at that empty space, all the more obvious as the pillows still kept the indentations of two bodies.

She slipped on some jeans and a soft sweater and decided to get some breakfast.

.

.

She found Regina in the living room by the window.

“Hey.” The sound clung to her throat and was a hoarse whisper as if it had been refusing to come out and the one way to dislodge it was to harrumph and try again, this time louder.

Regina jolted and her hands went straight to where Emma now knew she kept her daggers. But then Regina’s features settled into serenity, she folded her hands in her lap and it was like watching a fierce ocean change into a placid lake. And it felt just as fake.

“It’s a little early for Henry.” She offered and Regina digested the information but did not move away from the window. Did not look away. “Are we expecting visitors?” She challenged because she didn’t really expect Regina’s attention to the window to be anything but a ruse.

Regina spared her a look then returned her gaze to the window. “We were attacked yesterday.”

Emma was on her, pulling her away from the window and against a wall in a hair’s breadth. “What?” Her forearm pressed under Regina’s chin, against her throat, closing the air flow.

“Henry and I went to a store and when we came back, a man attacked us. He had a knife. I…”

“A man?”

Regina closed her eyes because she could not nod. She could not breathe either. “I…”

“You what.” It was not a question, it was a demand, filled with fury and anger.

“I stopped him.” She touched her daggers. “I stopped him.” She could have dislodged Emma but did not offer so much as token resistance.

“So Henry’s okay.”

“I killed the man.”

“Is Henry okay? Did the man hurt him?” She pressed her forearm harder against Regina’s throat and saw the light starting to go out of the woman’s eyes but she was in no mood to care.

Regina made no movement to free herself though she could easily swat Emma away. “He saw it.”

“Is Henry okay?” Emma demanded pressing harder on Regina’s neck.

“He saw it.”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“It didn’t stop me. Not here, it didn’t. He saw it.”

“You stopped the man.”

“I killed him.”

“What were you doing out?”

“We went to the store. Henry wanted to make you chicken soup.”

“Chicken soup.” Emma’s arm relaxed her choke hold.

“Yes.”

“Was it one of them?”

“A man. Just a man.”

“A crackhead?”

“Crackhead? Henry saw it.”

“The body?” Emma lowered her hands to her sides, deliberately relaxing her posture and Regina could not understand how she was not mad, furious, murderous about Regina exposing the child to such unspeakable violence. Had Henry been her son, had Emma been in her position and Regina would have removed her skin layer by layer while feeding her her own internal organs.

“The trolls.”

“Regina, that might mean something where you come from. Here, you need to use English.”

“Scavengers. They feed on the remains of what the imps leave behind. Just scavengers.”

“Is that bad?” Emma felt her stomach fold into itself and churn out bile that she could barely keep down. Regina’s expression meant nothing good. She had a moment to tell herself she would feel very stupid in a few days when Regina was taken to the loony bin and imps turned out to be figments of her imagination but then the scar on her shoulder tugged and pulled. She slumped on the sofa.

“It means that the imps have settled in.”

“And that they are expanding.” Emma surmised. Regina only nodded. “You saved Henry.”

“I killed in front of him. I left blood on him.”

Emma stood and made her way to the kitchen. “Yeah. But not his blood.” Her hands shook uncontrollably. She opened the fridge and took eggs and cracked them with more violence than she wanted, debris of shell going into the bowl with the yolk and the whites. “For chicken soup.”

It irritated her, but her hands just wouldn’t stop shaking, just wouldn’t stop messing everything up.

To give herself time, she switched on the TV under Regina’s gaze and immediately regretted it. The level of weirdness on the news was Stephen King high, with people looking dazed at the camera and telling of how their animals had been taken or vampirised, of the expressions of horror on their dead pets’ faces.

They told of how the howling of the urban foxes had muted and how the swans and the ducks in the public parks had been decimated. It made for the most bleak television Emma had ever seen, as if some weird B movie had come to pass in the past eight hours of darkness. She went to the window. If only she could just hear the damned birds that woke her up at six in the morning with their irritatingly cheerful songs she could maybe just believe that everything was going to be okay.

Two mornings ago everything was okay.

“Why are there no birds? Do they feed on birds too?”

“Only the large ones. The swans, the ducks, the crows in a pinch.”

“What about the little ones?” She scanned the trees that shaded the pretty, expensive street of her building. “What about those? Those are gone.” “Those sensed it and fled.”

“Shit.” Regina emitted a hum that was her agreement.

Emma’s phone rang. Henry’s smiling picture popped up in the screen, an easy going smile. Regina committed it to memory. Maybe this could be hers to hold onto without much damage.

Emma spoke to the boy, her eyes glued to the TV, the affection something easy and palpable in her voice, the way it softened her expression and her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Yeah,” She told him over and over again. “Weird, I know.” And “Please be careful.” And then “Henry, about yesterday…” Her throat worked tightly but she smiled as Henry reassured her softly. “We should talk about―” And she smiled as Henry interrupted. “Yeah, okay…”

Regina waited and studied. There was something between Emma and Henry, a bond stronger than blood. Who would dedicate themselves to a child that was not theirs in that way, so complete, so overwhelming?

“Driver’s taking him to Lacross practise.” Emma muttered to herself as she placed the phone on the coffee table. “Can’t even do that herself. Makes you wonder why she’d want a kid, huh? It’s like she thought he’d be good decoration.”

Regina could see the agitation in Emma increasing with every word. The way her feet stomped the ground and way the slender fingers shook as Emma again picked up the bowl with the eggs and the whisk. “She barely sees him. I don’t think she could pick him up in a police line-up if it came down to it.” Emma punched the work surface and tossed the bowl and the eggs into the skink. “Fuck the eggs.” Regina looked at the thousand tiny fragments of the bowl and the eggs dripping down the tap and the sink. “I’m not hungry anyway.”

…   …   …

Emma had cooled down enough after a thirty minute drive. Regina silently observed the knuckles, white at first then purpling slightly from the pressure Emma was putting on her hold on the steering wheel. The movements of the gear stick were jerky and not the smooth, fluid ones Regina had seen through the corner of her eye on their way to the zoo. Leafy, clean streets soon became more concrete and less beauty, dirtier and uglier. You didn’t have to know Boston or indeed this world to know that you were moving away from the money and into want and despair. She did her best to relax into the seat. To let Emma work through what was in her mind and in her heart. It was the least she could do.

To Emma, there was no point in going back home. By the time she looked around herself, she was in Southie territory and hell, something in the air was off. Really off. And it wasn’t even the damp sea breeze or the low tide of the Charles River that reached this place only when it was foul, but something that cloyed the air and made her look over her shoulder.

She parked the Bug knowing that it was so old it was not worth the effort to steal it. Now that they were here, they might as well start looking. The army of the darkness would have started where the disenfranchised dwelled, where the poorest lived, where the vulnerable were even more vulnerable. And where the authorities were less likely to care. Which was no big news, the rope always snaps at its weakest point. But how would they even know it? Was there a particular scent to underprivilege that attracted misfortune?

Next to her, Regina was picture perfect a hunter. She stopped and smelled the air, her senses were alert and her stance was of readiness. Against her better instincts, Emma had a sudden feeling that no matter what came at them, she’d be okay as long as Regina was on her side. Huh. No, Emma Swan, no, no, this is not how we rock.

So when she picked up on that danger vibe again, she thought maybe it was all the being close to Crazy McPretty. Whatever and why ever, it was not usual in this dilapidated part of town. She picked up her pace and Regina followed suit. It was unnerving. Where was everyone? Where were the builders and the janitors, the hookers and the housewives that animated the area?

She spared a look at Regina. Crazy McPretty needed breakfast. No, she corrected herself, Emma Swan needed breakfast. McPretty could tag along. And Emma Swan would stop addressing her like that. It was demeaning. It was sexist. It was… Damn it! It was not Emma Swan. Emma Swan was not like that and Emma Swan was not in the business of charity. Except Crazy McPretty was not so crazy, now was she? Because those red eyes had not been a hallucination, that excruciating pain in her arm, that foul stench of brimstone was not a hallucination. Because this was past the time to believe that she’d been slipped a dose of rooffies.

They needed breakfast.

Okay, fine.

Regina needed breakfast. She still had her stomach in knots. She turned into yet another empty street. “C’mon. You need breakfast if you’re going to fight these things.”

“I’m fine. Let’s just keep moving. Standing still makes us a target.”

“We will. We’ll go anywhere you want. But first, food.” Next, fifty bucks for a room. Or a pillow and the couch.

When Emma pushed the door to the diner, the usual morning crowd had thinned out and the ones that remained were nervous and kept looking over their shoulders.

Just two mornings ago, this place was crowded. How could everything go to hell in a hand basket in two mornings?

She sat at the counter and motioned Regina to sit next to her. There was a noticeable silence in the hum of the diner when Regina sat in her battle worn leathers though, Emma thought for a second, that might have been because there was an awful lot of cleavage on show that was probably more in your face than the distressed dark leather of the vest and coat. Maybe. She fought a sudden urge to cover McPretty with her own jacket just to stop all the ogling.

Regina seemed unfazed as if people had looked at her like that all her life.

Maybe they had.

She considered the state of her bank account and though it was not spectacular, it could well afford a full breakfast and a change of clothes for Regina. Crazy always looks less threatening in clean clothes. Emma passed her the menu and signalled the waitress for coffee.

“Hi Rosie. The usual, please.” The waitress nodded and slammed a mug on the counter, hands shaky.

“Have you seen the news?” She pointed with her chin at the big screen TV that was the centre of rapt attention of most clients.

“Yeah… Rosie… be careful, will you?”

“Yeah… with what, though? What’s doing this?”

Regina looked down her hands propped primly in her lap. She didn’t seem inclined to offer explanations for which Emma was not sure whether to be grateful or not. “Did you choose?”

“I…” Regina touched the menu as if it were all too overwhelming.

“Same as me?”

“Yes… Please.”

Rosie placed a second mug on the counter, filled it up with steaming coffee and walked away, eyes captive of the TV. “Shouldn’t we tell people? I mean… tell them to stay home and what these things are?”

“Emma… You didn’t believe me until you were attacked… You thought I was crazy. I think you might still be hoping that I am and that you have just dreamed it all up.”

“A little…”

“Indeed.”

Emma looked around herself, at the distressed faces sitting in the diner. “If we tell them, maybe one or two will believe… go home, stay safe…” Rosie came back with two plates that she set down in front of them wordlessly. She hesitated for a second, as if she’d been about to ask something then shook her head and walked away.

“Home is not a safe place, Emma. No matter how well you lock it. It’s just a place to die like any other.”

Emma stared at the grilled cheese on her plate. Fuck. “What do we do?”

“We?”

“I thought you needed my help.”

“I do. To find the Princess.”

“Okay, sure. What about fighting these bastards?”

“That’s my job.”

“I thought we’d established I get to be the plucky side kick.”

“Emma… This is not your war.”

“The hell it isn’t. They brought it here. They brought it to me…”

“It’s not… you shouldn’t want to be a part of this… It’s not…”

“Are you always this inarticulate?” Emma leaned forward. She found that it usually worked by way of intimidation. There was something about this woman that made her go on the defensive every stinking time. She made a conscious effort to change that. “Lady, this is early, I know, but you’ll soon understand that I pay not to get into a fight. But when I’m in it, I’ll pay twice as much not to get out of it.”

“That’s…” “Noble?” Emma grinned behind her coffee cup.

“Asinine. Obtuse. Ridiculous. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

McPretty was over the line with the refined insults. Obtuse! Right… Though Regina surprised her. Again.

“Apologies. I find that I am out of practise at having conversations.” And then her hands went to her lap, clasped primly and her back went ramrod straight. Emma felt her foot so far down her mouth that it was whisking the contents of her stomach. Damn it. Back up. Back up gently, Emma Swan.

“You said you needed my help.” Emma strained to keep her voice down.

“Not in a fight. Never in a fight…”

If only Regina would help her good intentions instead of boycotting them with her misplaced protectiveness. “Why? Do you think I’m fragile or something? Would you take my help if I was a guy?”

“No. Emma, I… You nearly died and… well…”

“You’re stuttering again.”

Regina took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “I don’t know how else to convey this to you in a way you’ll understand, but―”

“Why don’t you try tiny little words, huh?” Emma rebated, miffed.

“You are agitated. I understand that.”

“Then get to the point!”

Another deep breath, as if Regina had been trying to gather strength for a marathon. “I did terrible things. Terrible, terrible things. And all those things I’ve done, they make me the one that unleashed this evil on my land. So it is fitting – so it has been ordained- that I should be the one to fight it, the one to end it. That is my punishment. My covenant with the land.”

“I know a big word too, you know? How about megalomaniac?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because I’ve seen them. I don’t know what delusion you’re working under but lemme tell you, Regina, there’s no way in hell this is a one man job. And the sooner you get that, the sooner you and the ones that hired you or whatever get that through your thick skulls, the faster they’ll go down. And right now I have the right- damn it- I have the obligation to put my two cents in because they’re here, in my world. And they are a danger to me and to the people I care about.”

“Why do you let your son call another woman mother?”

“What?” Emma’s coffee sloshed in her cup. Carefully she put it down and whipped the table surface with her palm. Where the fuck had Regina even…

“I’m sorry, it’s none of my concern.”

“Damned right it’s not. What the hell, lady!”

“I apologize.”

“Henry… he’s… it’s complicated.”

Regina looked down at her plate and pushed the grilled cheese around. “I’m sure it is.”

Emma leaned back. “Why would you say that?” Regina looked up waiting for clarification. “That he’s my son?”

“You love him very much.”

“I do.” Emma let the words hang in the air because the one thing she knew was that Regina was keeping something from her. “Now spill. Explain.” Emma tacked when Regina looked confused for a beat. And because the silence lingered on and there was a compromised look in Regina’s face, Emma surmised that she was not going to enjoy this. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“I didn’t mean to pry.”

“You went through my stuff? What the hell? Is that acceptable where you come from?”

“It’s not, no. I didn’t go through your things. But…” Emma tucked her hands in her pockets and waited it out. But was always a bad word in her experience. Nothing good ever came after a but.

“You were dying. I think.”

“Did I say something while I was… you know… dying?”

Regina shook her head. “Do you remember anything? How you got better?”

Well, there was that. Not about getting better, Emma though, but she remembered things that weren’t her memories to have. Sort of like a fantasy, or better yet, a memory. So she just said “No.”

“I’m not sure how… I don’t have any magic anymore but…”

“You healed me.”

“Yes.”

“Damn it.”

“Would you rather I’d let you die?”

“I wish this day, hell, this week started speaking words that I know instead of shit like ogres and magic and heal. I really do. I feel like I’m losing my ever loving mind, you know? No, of course you don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah… you’re sorry, I’m sorry… So how did you do… what you did?”

“I gave you my life force. I took in the death in you.”

“Jesus!” Emma mumbled.

“But during that… exchange… well, death was not the only thing that came to me. I saw… I felt… things that are in you. I saw- I felt when your son was born.” Definitely she couldn’t take a bite of that food on her plate, not with the knot tight around her neck. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Look… It’s complicated.”

“So you said. But it’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Emma picked at the corners of her grilled cheese. There were many days like those that Emma tried to bury deep in her soul. Having those moments out in the air, known by others broke something in her.

“I’m not weak, Regina. I can fight. I do fight. That’s all there is to it.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Yeah, you did. In a way you did. You’re assuming that I can’t take care of myself. And yeah, okay, I got myself hurt, but believe me, it won’t happen again. And you can’t tell me that it never happened to you. I saw the scars on you. They got to you too.”

Regina’s shoulders slumped only a fraction but it was enough for Emma to see, to understand and to press her advantage. “I guess it makes you weak. According to your logic.”

“I’m not weak.” Emma scented victory and for some silly reason that restored her appetite. She grabbed her grilled cheese and took a hearty bite. “Then eat. And I’m still doing this with you. Whether or not you like it.” “I don’t. It’s risky. It’s dangerous.”

“I was there. That thing carved its claws into me. So yeah, I know what I’m getting myself into.”

“It’s not that simple. It’s not life and death only.”

“Only? What else is there?”

“Power. Your world, my world? Us? We are nothing more than pawns in a game.”

“Wonderful.” Emma commented mid bite. “What’s at stake then… what will they win?”

Regina shrugged. “I ceased being the one moving the pawns a long time ago.”

Emma stopped breathing and concentrated entirely on Regina. What the hell did that even mean? The sounds of the diner snapped her attention back. She lifted the top of the grilled cheese and drizzled Tabasco liberally. She cleaned her hands on her jeans. “So you did… once.”

“I thought I did.”

“Huh…” She took a bite of her grilled cheese, considered, and added more Tabasco. “I have a lot of questions.”

“I’m not sure I want to answer them.”

“And I don’t even know where to start. But I told you before. Forewarned is forearmed. Get used to the idea.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Regina studied her untouched food, unable to eat even though she craved it.

“Eat the stupid thing, lady. They’ll just chuck in the garbage. Look: I am hungry and I am going to take my time and eat this beauty of a grilled cheese. So, you know, eat or wait, up to you.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Eat it. I’m signing up for the plucky sidekick gig not for pallbearer. What did you want my help for? You know, the one that was not with the fight but with something perfectly safe… I’m guessing it wasn’t for the food.”

“No.”

“Care to elaborate?”

Regina took a bite then. She chewed the food and the thoughts. “There’s a princess…”

“Ah, there’s a princess...” And twinge of… what was that- jealousy? No, it couldn’t be.

“She… uh… she belongs in our land. But she was sent here. I must find her.”

“Oh man… you just had to make it more difficult, huh?”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Ogres, imps, fairies… why would a princess be out of the ordinary? Actually, we have those here. I mean… not here, here but yeah, we have those. I’ve seen those. So no, I’m not going to freak out. No. No freaking out.”

“That’s helpful. I think.”

“I can actually help you with that. I find people. That’s kind of my thing. Why was she sent here?”

“Why?”

“Yeah... Why did they- and who’s they, by the way- send you to get her? Does she want to go back? And why now?”

“She’s important.”

“How important?”

“She’s the saviour.”

“Right. Jesus in a tiara…”

It was funny but the more Emma felt out of sorts with the information, the more at ease Regina felt and the hungrier too. She took her sandwich and ate it as Emma quietly freaked out. She had her coffee – and well, that was really, quite an extraordinary beverage- and polished off her food and felt stronger for it. “Who’s this Jesus?” It was really quite remarkable that things didn’t look quite as bleak, her task quite so insurmountable. Yes, ReulG’horm was still out there and there was a princess to find but somehow, but suddenly, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been only that morning.

Emma dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. “Forget it. A saviour… Jesus! Why is she here?”

“Because of me.”

The sandwich that Emma had raised to her mouth for a bite was put back down on the plate. Emma cleaned her fingers and put the napkin deliberately on the counter. “Well, you do have your fingers in an awful lot of this, don’t you?” Regina nodded, eyes on her plate. “Just how bad were you?”

“Evil. I was… I am… Evil. I’m not innocent, Emma. I deserve everything that happened to me. Whatever lie you’re telling yourself to help you justify the help you will give, just don’t lie to yourself. I’m not an innocent. I am evil.”

What do you say to that? God… “Well… good for you.”

…   …   …  

Under Regina’s curious gaze, Emma bought a newspaper and studied it intently. It wasn’t the front page or the big fat letters that had her worried. It was the small pieces at the bottom of the even pages that drew her attention: the homeless that disappeared, the lonely, the ones with no family. The ones that no one missed until by some miracle someone did. The newspaper was full of those: the lonely old man in the basement apartment that never bothered anyone, the old woman that used to walk an arthritic dog down a family street. Those were the ones that had all but three liners in the newspaper. And it seemed that no one had made the connection yet. But Regina did. They read the newspaper together and Regina pointed at each of the small articles. “This.” She said. “And this.” And the picture formed in Emma’s mind: they were going for the unwanted, the unmissed, the invisible. Gathering their strength. Building their numbers and populating a city with dark threat. Emma handed Regina the newspaper and pulled her hair into a pony tail so tight it pulled at the sides of her face. “This is them, yes? All these people, this is them?”

Regina nodded. “The ones that don’t put up a fight. The ones that are alone are easy targets. Yes. This is them.”

“How many?”

“What?”

“Cases, Regina. Articles. How many disappearances did you count since we opened that paper?”

Regina flipped through the pages. “About ten.” “Ten that were noticed. How many more that no one did?” Regina shrugged. “I’ll tell you: no way of knowing. It’s not like people keep an eye out for their neighbours here. Shit, lady, most people in Boston don’t know the neighbour across the hall from them… Can we find them? Can we find these people alive?”

Regina just looked at Emma sadly. Emma’s hand went to her shoulder. “Yes, I get it.” She rubbed the memory off her healed shoulder. “What do we do?”

This we was odd for Regina. She hadn’t been a we since the Huntsman had died. And it was also hopeful. For the first time it was hopeful. “We find them and exterminate them. One by one. We―” She stopped herself. She would recognize that smell of fresh death and old sweat anywhere. She opened her mind, her senses to it. “Are you armed?” When Emma didn’t immediately respond, Regina unsheathed her daggers, a symmetric motion of power and confidence, and repeated. “Are you armed?”

“Yes.” Shit. “Yes. I am.” But Regina’s focus was no longer on her. Her attention was on the small playground behind them where joy of children’s laughter had been switched off leaving only deafening silence.

Emma unholstered her Glock and followed Regina’s light steps with her heavy ones. It seemed the time for preparation was over. The shit had hit the fan.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10

There were no expensive swings and child friendly pavement in this playground. There were no carefully landscaped gardens or exotic trees or artfully carved benches with inscriptions to dead sponsors and sappy declarations of love. There was graffiti, there were broken, abused swings and slides that no one cared enough to fix. And, against the background of the still moving swings and broken toys on the ground, the emptiness that was starker for the smell, that mixture of brimstone and sweat and blood.

Shocked, Emma saw Regina working. She saw her calm stance, ready for an attack and the way she moved without a sound. She was the sidekick. That was all. And it was a good thing she was not expected to do anything because this was home, as much as she could call anything home and seeing it devastated she could only mourn.

And then rage.

She moved erratically through the empty playground until she could get her focus again. Then, her movements became less jerky, less agitated. The anger gave her the anchor to be more herself, to be more of the bounty hunter Emma Swan she defaulted into when she needed the strength to carry on. She scoured the ground, the sand box, the overgrown weeds that thrived by the broken fences and saw nothing but a still wet pacifier and a ratty baby blanket that would have been a child’s safe place. She clenched her fists by her side before she could find the coordination to jump the fence and continue her search.

Eventually, she turned back.

Regina was crouching on the ground, her hands touching something much like Emma had touched the baby blanket- with care and sorrow. She seemed lost in thought but when Emma approached her, she simply held her hand up demanding – and obtaining- silence with a simple gesture. It was an oddly regal gesture of command for someone that looked like little more than a starved foot soldier.

Emma refrained from interrupting and allowed Regina to do her thing. Clearly, the woman was getting something out of the silence- the way her eyes moved purposefully from object to object, from pavement to fence- as if she was carrying out some mental calculation. She probably was.

Distracted, Emma looked up and beyond the playground, towards the tired and old buildings, the windows, the curtains. Surely, someone had to be behind those curtains, behind those closed windows. Someone had to have seen anything.

She saw a curtain on the second floor dropping gently into place. She touched Regina’s shoulder to get her attention and when Regina didn’t immediately acknowledge, she walked away towards the window. The curtain remained down. Emma’s eyes searched from the service entrance at the back of the building that overlooked the playground and not wanting to leave Regina behind just whistled and called out a soft hey.

Frustrated, Regina walked towards her. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to… back home, it’s easy to follow the tracks. Here… I can barely…sense it. Everything is too loud, the smells are too intense. It masks their tracks.”

Emma pulled Regina by the arm and continued walking towards the building. “Listen, I know it’s your job and all but this is home, sweet home for me. Things are bound to be different here. So if you want to get them in this new world, you adapt. And maybe in your world you have your spidey senses and whatever to help you but here we ask, see?”

“Ask?”

“Uh huh. We ask.”

“Who? There’s no one left.”

“Regina, these buildings are apartment blocks. People live here. Someone saw something. Someone always sees something.” “So we ask?”

“Yeah. We ask nicely.” Emma replied calmly though her hands were shaking and all she wanted to do was scream.

Together, they climbed the stairs to the first floor. “Are we just going to knock on doors?” Regina asked aghast. This was not how she hunted. This was not her way. Mostly because no one would ever indicate sunset to her to save their lives but because she had always struggled to interact with people.

“I saw someone.” Emma looked at the first floor corridor and counted doors. “I know someone saw.” She started walking again down the long, damp smelling corridor. “And I think they should be right behind… this door.”

Regina looked at both ends of the corridor and stayed perfectly still. She heard the soft rustle of movement inside the apartment, a sound faint as the opening of a bloom, as if the person inside was afraid their breathing would give them away. “There’s someone inside.”

“Yeah. Let’s knock.”

Regina moved to the door and pushed Emma behind her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m armed. I go in first.”

“I’m armed too.”

“Don’t argue, Emma. I don’t know much about sidekicks but I’m fairly sure they should stay back. So stay back.” And she knocked, an arm outstretched to prevent Emma from reaching the door.

“You and I are going to have to agree on how to approach doors from now on.” Emma quipped

“Do you think we’re going to be knocking on doors often?” Regina asked as she leaned closer to the door, genuine interest because this was the oddest way of hunting for enemies. There was no movement on the other side of the door. As there was no scent of death, Regina decided to wait a beat.

“It’s a metaphor. What I meant is that you shouldn’t bank on making me stay behind you. I thought that was understood and agreed.”

Regina made a non-committal sound and still the door wouldn’t open. “There is someone in there. Why aren’t they opening?”

“Because, people that open doors without checking first, especially in this part of town, usually end up having to replace all their stuff.”

“We’re not here to rob you.” Regina spoke loud and clearly at the door. “But we do need your help.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Right, Sunshine.” She muttered to Regina. Then, she turned to the door. “You know we’re not cops. We’re here about what happened outside. I know you saw and I’m not gonna go away until you open. And if it takes too long, I’m likely to get really loud and believe me, those things are attracted to noise. So open up.”

There was a moment more of silence during which Emma knew she was being studied through the peephole. She stood, hands visible and Glock safely tucked away under her jacket.

When the door opened, it revealed an old man, tall and dried up to the bone, skin tanned from, Emma thought, working at the docks. He breathed with the difficulty of untreated asthma. Yep, home sweet medically uninsured home.

The man took a careful look down both ways of the corridor before he let them in. Behind him, a small child slept wrapped in a pink comforter. He didn’t motion them in, but Emma simply took that as protocol: around this part of town, you don’t invite someone into your home without inviting trouble in as well.

“What do you want?”

“What did you see?”

“I didn’t see anything.”

Regina was ready to take her leave. The old man was lucky he lived on the second floor when there was more readily available pray. Back home, he would not still be alive. But Emma pressed further.

“This is not the docks, Grandpa. I know you saw what happened and the only thing we’re asking is that you tell us where they came from. What direction they left towards. Next time, they might find the playground empty and think that the trek up here is worth it.” The man remained tight lipped. “Listen, this isn’t your old life. Silence is not how you protect her. ‘Cause I promise you, they don’t give a flying fuck about who talks and who keeps quiet. My friend here,” She pulled Regina to the forefront, “Is the one that’s going to take them down, so you tell her, and you tell her the truth. Where did they come from?”

“She looks like one of them.”

“Really?” Emma uttered in disbelief. “That’s what you’re going with?”

But Regina took a step forward and pulled the sleeve of her duster jacket up as if she had been about to tear it apart and showed the man the many scars in her arms. “I am not. I am their destruction; I bring the end to them.”

The man looked unimpressed. “Unless there’s a hundred more like you―”

Emma took it personally, for some reason. “No. There’s her. It may not look like much, but she’s all you’ve got. She’s good at it. And hiding here and keeping real quiet is not going to save you any more than running will.”

The man sat next to the sleeping child and took a wheezing, pained breath. “We’re here because she’s sick. I was upset I missed my game with O’Leary. He goes with his grandkid while his daughter works. A little punk that got on my last nerve every day. And now, they’re both gone. They’re gone, aren’t they?”

While Emma’s first instinct was to lie and say they’d be okay, Regina lowered her head. “Yes, they are. I’m sorry for your loss.” It came out easy as if she’d been saying it forever.

“Where do I take them? Where do I take my family?”

“I don’t know.” Regina replied simply and it was the truth. And not just because she didn’t know the land but because anywhere, everywhere was good place for ReulG’horm’s army.

“Can you really win?” The man asked, running his gnarly hand up and down the child’s back.

“Maybe not. But it is my fate to die trying.”

There was a moment of undisturbed silence while the man considered his options. “They had the smell of the low tide on them. You know the smell: when all the rotting in the river comes up floating.” Emma nodded. Yes, she knew the smell. She had felt it when she had rolled down her window. “I didn’t see them coming. But it was like the movies, you know, when a bomb explodes and everything goes quiet, not loud? Yeah.” The man’s breath wheezed. “I heard a kid cry and then silence. Not one scream. Why didn’t they scream? Those things, they just grabbed them, every single one, from the youngest to the oldest and…” The old man nodded, overwhelmed. “It was like they were kissing them, you know, except…”

Regina stood, expression stony. To Emma, Regina looked unmoved so she reached out to the man and touched his arm, a tentative offer of sympathy, of understanding because at least one of them had to be capable of it. There was no point hoping for words of wisdom and comfort. She’d never had any, she didn’t know how to offer them. And even if she did.

When the old man didn’t react, she stood and prepared to leave. As she got to the door, the man spoke in a rush, as if this was the last chance to understand. “Why us?”

Emma turned around, Regina lifted her head. The man cleared his throat in an effort to speak. “Why start here, with us? We don’t have anything. Why didn’t they start uptown?”

Regina nodded as if she had been agreeing, as if it hadn’t been really a question but a statement of affairs.

“I don’t know.” Emma formulated a reply. “But isn’t it where shit always rains first?” And she walked into the corridor, Glock ready, steady in her hand. She did a quick sweep of the visible extension of the corridor and, before she walked out, she spared a look at the man and his grandchild and saw Regina just standing perfectly still, the storms in her eyes the only movement in the room.

“I’m sorry.” She murmured to the man who didn’t show any signs of hearing her.

When she joined Emma, she was again composed and the daggers were out, gleaming. “He saw where they went. I’m sure he did.” Emma pressed.

“It doesn’t matter, Emma. They don’t move in a straight line to their nest waiting patiently for me to exterminate them. They are predators, yes, but they defend well.”

“So all of this was for nothing?”

She fervently hoped Regina would tell her differently but there was only silence. Once outside, Emma took a moment to collect herself.

“Okay. Listen. We can’t just sit and wait to be in the right place at the right time for their next meal time. So let’s do something about this. How would you go about this at home?”

“This is very different from where I come from. As you have already pointed out.”

Emma pulled at her hair when no further information was forthcoming. “Listen,” She pulled Regina by the arm and turned them both in a complete circle. “I’m not sure how different your place is, but here, they did this, they took a busload of people. So, whatever is different, I don’t care right now. Tell me what’s the same. Let’s start from what you know. Tell me what the hell we do now because I’m not gonna sit on my pretty ass while you have your existential crisis and your polite little breakdown and go wherever the fuck you go to when you just disappear while you’re in the same room as us mere mortals. You want help, I’ll help, you wanna lead, you lead, but fuck it, do something or I’ll kill you myself, do you understand me?”

In the back of her mind, Emma knew the point of no return was a blurry line in the distance. So she was not surprised when Regina simply broke Emma’s hold on her before pushing her against the useless rusty fence of the playground. “Never forget, Miss Swan, that I saved your pathetic life. That had I not been there, you would be dead, fed upon, just like the ones that were taken today are. Food. You and your entire world are but food to be consumed and moved on from. Your righteous anger won’t make a dent in what they are. In what you are to them.”

For a moment, Emma understood what Regina meant when she had described herself as evil. She had seen it in the dangerous gleam of the dark eyes.

And it wasn’t fear that she felt.

“I can’t just sit on my ass, Regina.” No. What she felt was profound surprise, a little excitement. Wonder. Respect. She liked this dangerous Regina far more than the defeated, helpless one.

Regina hesitated, released her and took a step back. “I shouldn’t have snapped. I apologise.”

Emma stuffed her hands as deep in her pockets as they would go. “Yeah.” Me too, her inner Jiminy Cricket whispered. “How do you do it at home?” She rubbed her arm where Regina had grabbed her with surprising force. “Do you have like cameras and surveillance or, you know, something like that?”

“I… Back there I can feel them. I hear them, smell them.”

“Okay, that’s good. Why don’t you do it here? I mean, just go to one of these swings and sniff or whatever. When you get a scent, we can follow. Doesn’t matter how much they turn and run, right?”

“Emma… I’m not a dog. You can’t just put a leash on me and take me to sniff a track.”

“Fine, no leash. But can’t you?”

“It’s too… crowded here. There are too many things, too many people.”

“So… no…” When Regina agreed, Emma dropped her shoulders. “Fine. Then we think. We think and we take a look around. Come on, let’s take a walk. Let’s see what we see.”

Before moving, Regina took a good look around herself. These odd constructions, these apartment blocks, they were industrious but not what he imps would go for would go for in a home. Not what she would go for either. Too many windows, too many entrances, too many variables. “If you were in a strange place, what would you do, Emma?”

“Are we talking about me or about me as example?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“You mean if I were an ugly bastard with poisonous claws and nefarious world domination intents?” Emma halted for a second to study Regina then resumed her walking. “I do better with direct questions.”

“Okay. If you were one of them, what would you do in a strange place?”

“Find something familiar. Everybody does. No matter what, you always take a little something familiar. Or you look for it. Do you think they’re looking for something familiar or that they brought something familiar?”

“There wasn’t much of anything to bring.”

“Okay… What were you looking for when you fell from the sky on my head?”

“Them.” Regina answered too fast.

“Right.” What does it matter anyway, Emma? “So the uglies, I don’t think they’d be looking for curtains or silverware.”

“Actually, something along those lines.”

“I’m afraid to ask…”

“Home, the smell of home, the feel of home… I think.”

Emma stopped again. That was good, that was good thinking. “Okay, that I can work with. So what is their home like? Castles? Forests? Cliffs?”

“Underground burrows. They like the cosy, dark earth. They need it to multiply, to recover. That’s where they take their kills.”

“Underground, huh?”

“I believe so, yes. “

“That’s not good.”

“Indeed.”

…   …   …

They walked around until Emma had to acknowledge that sniffing them out was not the way forward. Regina found no scent, no echo, no glimpse of them. And all Emma could see was the world pushing forward as it always did in this part of the world because to stop was to die.

“Let’s go home, Regina.”

“There is still daylight. We can continue searching for about an hour longer.”

Emma removed the keys to the beaten up little car from her pocket and leaned against the car that somehow they had circled back to without Regina noticing. “No offense, Regina, but how long have you been doing this?”

“A lifetime.”

“And you haven’t, how did you say it… brought defeat to them?”

“I find that that no offense expression is misleading.”

“Yeah, sorry, it’s very passive aggressive. But what I meant is that you keep spinning your wheels and you are no closer to defeating them than you were in the beginning or thereabouts, right?”

Regina fisted her hands tightly at her sides and that was reply enough for Emma, fluent as she was in body English.

“Look,” Emma got closer to Regina and took the woman’s hands in hers. “All I’m saying is that sometimes, people need a break so that they can see the wood for the trees. You need to rest. To eat something. Get some sleep. You can’t just keep on pushing forward blindly.”

“My covenant with the land―”

“I know, your covenant with the lands makes it so. But guess what, you’re in my land now. Here we take a rest at the end of the day. You will take a rest. Shit, your sidekick needs a rest.”

“ReulG’horm runs free…”

“I know. And I know that more people will go missing tonight. But…”

“Doesn’t that weigh on you?”

“Yeah, it does. Heavily. But we need a strategy. And we need energy. Pushing onwards blindly will not help anyone. And I was kicking about an idea.”

“How much danger will you be in?” Regina sighed and Emma knew she had won.

“Okay, we’ll discuss the implications of your statement later, when my feet hurt less and I’ve had something to eat but you’ll be happy to know that it’s danger free. Completely danger free.”

“I’m willing to listen.”

“Good. Get in the car and I will tell you all about it.”

“Can I drive?”

“No. You wanna drive, you get your own car.”

Regina harrumphed but got in. “Spill.” She volleyed back, happy to use the expression Emma had used in the morning. It seemed to fit in context and because Emma made no comment, Regina assumed it was aptly applied.

“Okay.” Emma set the car in motion. “See, Boston is a city, right? We don’t really have burrows lying around for them to get in. At least not in the numbers we are talking about.” She stole a glance at Regina and saw the interested look, no derision so she assumed she was on the right track. “What kind of numbers are we talking about here anyway?”

“Difficult to say for sure. They usually keep their numbers tight as they can multiply seemingly at will. Small armies are easy to control. But…”

“Oh. There’s a but.”

“This is more than imps we are talking about. This is ReulG’horm. And…”

“Don’t tell me this is one more of those world domination plots.” Regina only nodded, pleased that Emma would catch up quickly and without snide quips. “So there are probably more than usual…”

“Possibly.”

“Okay, so hear me out: it’s not like a rabbit hole will be stellar accommodation for them, right? So I was thinking, they gotta settle for what’s already here that reminds them of home.”

“Do you have such a place here?”

“Yeah. And therein lies the problem: we have too many of those places. But it’s an idea to start. ”

“So how are you going to find them without risk for yourself?”

“With stuff from this world. But you really have to tone down on the overprotective streak there, Batman. I’m not the kind of girl that stays home and knits while the hero goes out to kill bad guys, got it?”

“Oh, I’m sorry I assumed that you wanted to get out of this alive so that you can keep on pretending not to be Henry’s mother.”

“Don’t open your mouth to talk about shit that you know nothing about, got it?”

“I’m not blind Emma.”

“Maybe. But ignorance is blindness too and it is a great advantage to keep quiet when people tell you to.”

“I’ll press any advantage to keep you out of this, Emma. You may be very brave but it’s coming across as quite stupid at times. I’m asking you to stay safe. It’s not a character fault to take care of yourself.”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

“I’m none of your concern.”

“You asked for my help. You wouldn’t shut up about it and how I was in your dream, so make up your damned mind, huh?”

“You are making me regret it.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the first...” Emma spat, spiteful.

Emma would have turned her back if it wasn’t so childish and if she wasn’t driving. That had come out totally wrong, it was stupid and, damn it, it was the first time someone worried about her, put her first and here she was smarming all over it. Idiot. Unapologetic idiot because she just couldn’t muster the word sorry.

… …   …

The little yellow car sputtered into the garage of the building and it was a miracle the sensitive alarms of the latest models in European motors parked didn’t all scream in protest. Sometimes, it made her smile because Emma from the wrong side of the social strata had encroached herself into the privileged and made them swallow her every day, battered old car and all. There were probably cheaper cars out there that swallowed up less money in repairs but the Bug, well, the Bug was her talisman, her I’m still standing and she owed it shelter and loyalty.

She removed the keys from the ignition and didn’t immediately get out of the car, having behaved like a brat and not knowing how to apologise even though it felt like the right thing to do. “Let’s have dinner. I think better with a full stomach.” That and Regina clearly could do with a warm meal too, a whole bunch of them, actually. And Henry would be coming in soon if he wasn’t there already.

“Go home and lock yourself in. I’ll look for a little longer.”

“There we go again. Look, it’s dark outside, you don’t know the area and they are all tucked in nice and cosy. We’ll have something to eat and then I’m gonna show you that we have other ways to find them than to just pound the pavement. Or, you know, skulk the pavement, ‘cause you really don’t make a sound when you move, do you?”

“You are under no obligation to feed me, Emma. I’m not some charity case or a stray dog that you take home to―”

“Listen, okay, and listen well because I don’t do repetition: I know it, alright? I know what it’s like to not know when the next meal is coming. And I get it: it comes a point you don’t really think you need, much less expect it.” Regina remained silent, stony, probably in that place she went when things got too real to deal, so Emma just opened the creaking door and got out. She looked up when Regina got out and headed towards the service stairs. The elevator would be too crowded with just her, Regina and her confession in it.

They went up the three floors to the apartment still in silence, broken only by the keys dropping on the entrance table and Emma’s boots thumping on the floor.

Henry was notably absent so Emma fished her phone out of her tight as skin jeans and before she could even dial, there was tap on the window and Henry’s smiling face against the window pane, pulling faces as if nothing in the world had shifted towards the stinky end.

Emma’s expression opened like the sky after the storm and she unlocked the sash window to let him in. “Hilary is out again.” They exchanged high fives and then a hug that looked too much like an afterthought to actually be such. “Did you find them?”

“No.” Was Emma’s laconic answer.

“You’re lying.”

“Hey! You’re too cocky for someone who’s coming for free spaghetti and meatballs.”

“Really? Marinara sauce?” Henry’s eyes lit up. He waited for Emma’s confirmation before shrugging and adding “You are. I always know when you’re lying.”

“I think I might just skip dinner today.”

Henry laughed. “Yeah, right.” And then his expression sobered up again. “Seriously, Emma. What did you find?”

“Kid…” She nodded sadly but Henry’s look brokered no arguments. “Okay. They move fast. That I found out. And we may be onto something. But we’re going to need this world’s tech. So we, Regina and I, decided that it was a good time to regroup, you know, eat something and shower, maybe and then we crack on with it.”

“Can I help?”

“Sure. You and your mad hacking skills.”

“You’re gonna do something illegal?”

“I can’t confirm or deny. Now. Let’s get this show on the road, huh? Wash your hands, set the table, I’ll get started on the chow. Regina can go and have a shower and then we swap, huh?”

Regina looked up surprised at the inclusion. She simply nodded and looked around herself trying to get the world back under her feet, some semblance of control.

“You know where the bathroom is. Get started and I’ll get you something to wear in a minute. Right people, move along, time’s wasting.” She added when Regina didn’t immediately move and Henry simply stood there looking at the woman with an ineffable expression in his eyes.

...   … …

Emma had taken over the bathroom and Regina, hair wet trailing lose down her back, was draining the pasta and serving plates. She was out of her depth and, at the same time, where she had always wanted to be. Henry fluttered around her, grabbing dishes and glasses and cutlery and smelling the food, tasting the sauce. Regina gave up on trying not to enjoy the moment, the smells, the tastes, the warmth of it all. She gave up on trying not committing it to memory.

When Emma came in, hair perfectly dried and piled on her head with a simple stick, it was, for Regina, as the last piece of puzzle falling into place to complete the picture. Emma placed the plate in front of her and that brought Regina back to the moment and the conversation.

If she allowed herself to believe, this could be her family for a stolen moment. If this moment was all that she was allowed to have, well then she’d take it and make it last her lifetime.

“It’s wonderful, Emma. Thank you.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 11

Henry forlornly left the apartment and went home when his phone rang and a cartoon image of Cruella DeVill lit up on the screen. Emma kissed and hugged him goodnight and, to Regina’s immense surprise, he went to her and put his arms around her, just like he had done to Emma. She took the hug into her heart beating a whole world away, learned the child’s scent and warmth by heart. When he waved a cheeky goodbye and left through the window, she promised herself that the chill was only the cold air of the night.

She went to the window to do the only thing she could think of: make sure that Henry was safe on the short way up, that no shadows waited in the dark.

When she turned around, Emma was looking at her with a knowing look but made no comment.

“You said you had tech…” Regina cleared her throat and her fingers fidgeted though she tried her best to keep her stance in check.

Emma’s face bloomed in a smile. “Yeah.”

“What’s a tech?”

“Tech? A bunch of things, actually. Lemme show you.” And she pulled her laptop from where it rested under the ugly brown couch.

“Can I try?”

“Jesus, Regina, first my car, then my computer. What next? My underwear?” Emma ran her hands possessively over the sleek frame of the laptop. “What do you even know about computers?”

“I know your password…” Regina needled. Okay, so she didn’t know much. Yet. But she would if Emma allowed her.

“Bullshit.”

“Allow me.” She motioned to get the computer from Emma and was surprised when it was entrusted to her with but a look of disbelief. She switched it on, getting more confident as she held it in her hands. She entered the password and passed it back to Emma.

“Nah huh, you can’t know that. You can’t possibly know that just because you touched it.”

Regina shrugged. “Henry told me.”

“Henry knows my password?”

“He was fairly confident that you were okay with that. Which is why, he thinks, that you use his date of birth. We asked Google how to make chicken soup. And pasta. Is Google your friend too?” Stumped, Emma stuttered. “Yeah… sure. Google is friendly all around.”

Regina nodded. “So, is your plan to ask Google where they are?”

“Regina, I don’t think that even if we ask nicely, Google will say where those things are.”

“Doesn’t Google know?”

“Probably not. But there are other things we can do.”

“Hacking?”

“What do you know about hacking?”

“Henry mentioned something about that.”

“What?”

“He said you’re good.”

“Yeah… comes with the job.”

“What’s hacking?”

At that, Emma smiled. “Well, it’s when you get through the walls people use to protect themselves. When you’re on the inside, you can use whatever you find there. Me? I don’t hack the FBI or anything, and sure as hell don’t use it to steal. But it is a good way to find the people I’m looking for.”

“How?” Regina leaned into Emma to see what was happening on the screen. Emma’s fingers were flying over the keyboard and it was a beautiful thing to see, Emma engaged in battle with an invisible enemy.

“When I was little, I used to watch this show, Beauty and the Beast where the beast lived in the subway tunnels. I know, that was fiction, but Boston has a subway system. It has sewers and bomb shelters all over. So I was thinking that it might be worth to check that angle out. ‘Cause they have to be somewhere, true?” Regina nodded and waited for Emma to continue. “So the plan is to find those tunnels, sewers and bomb shelters and check them out. And―” Emma turned to Regina, hand raised to silence the protest but was distracted by the proximity of the woman, close, close enough to look at the computer. She cleared her throat to gather her thoughts. “Before you say anything else about how risky it is to go looking for them, the plan is to find the cameras nearby and have a look.”

Regina felt it too, the moment of hesitation, understood that the cause of it was the proximity of their two bodies and pulled back, only slightly.

“Cameras?”

“Yeah.” Emma returned to what she was doing on the screen. She fumbled her first attempt at typing but then successfully managed to access the site of the Boston Public Library. “First, we compile a list of those sites. They’re not going to be just about anywhere. We haven’t seen anything on the media yet about sightings, so they must be hunkering down, somewhere out of the way, right?”

Regina nodded, the moment successfully pressed down on her. “They don’t like to be among the crowds. They don’t want to live close to their food.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You eat beef and chicken, don’t you? And yet, you wouldn’t want to live in a bull pen or a coop with them.”

“That is… vaguely offensive.” Emma scrunched her face.

“Get used to it. None of it is in good taste.”

“Yeah, I get that... but…”

“Then sooner you get over your delicate sensibilities the better, Emma. “

“No delicate sensibilities. Check that. Though, it’s the first time someone has ever accused me of that one.”

“You don’t sound particularly uncouth to me.” Regina said before she could think better of it. Emma rewarded her with a smile and again the night came to a halt where there seemed to be so much in the balance.

“Okay, I can work with this. If we eliminate active sites, such as stations and the sites that are open to the public, we probably cut the list by about half, maybe less. There are still too many, though.”

“Eliminate anything wet. They don’t like water and will seek to avoid it if they can.”

Emma called up a map of Boston and studied it. “Alright: intuitive leap here. We eliminate anything that has been flooded lately. We’re looking probably at lower level areas, the docks and, more importantly, the sewers.”

“Why would they want to live in the sewers?”

“Weren’t you listening? Beauty and the Beast. They lived in sewers and they weren’t wet. But yeah, okay, fiction, right? I get that there’s a difference. Swears are out.”

“What’s left?”

“Abandoned subways. Bomb shelters. Let’s see what I can do with this.” She went back to the library website and called up the plans for the subways and, on a separate search, bomb shelters. She worked through the information keenly aware that Regina was incredibly close and studying her every motion and was occasionally touching the computer and frowning.

“What?” She asked without looking up from the screen.

“I should know what you’re doing. I should know how to do it.”

“Because of the touchy feely thing?”

“Yes.”

“Regina, just because you know how something works doesn’t mean you know exactly what to do with it. Or how to work it to the best result. I mean, if that were the case, sex would always be great, right?” Hold it right there! What? “I mean…” Where the hell did your just mind go and why, why, why would you even say something like that, dolt, dolt, dolt, Emma’s inner moron pointed out helpfully.

“That actually makes sense.”

Oh dear God. “It does?”

“Is this hacking?”

“No. This is strictly legal. For the time being.”

“Is that about to change?”

“In a while. Do you want me to tell you so that you can look away?”

“The laws of this land mean very little to me and even less to them. So I am not in that way offended.”

“Good. I have this mapping program… I don’t think it was intended for this, but hell with it, it will do nicely.” A few more deft key strokes and a second map was on screen. “I’m going to input the coordinates from our library search and it should… yep, there we go…”

“What?”

“We’re mapping the sites identified by the library search minus the other areas not fit for them. This might take a few minutes. Emma had hoped Regina would pull back then, but she remained in her position, semi leaning over Emma to have a good view of the screen. The proximity was making Emma nervous. “You should dry your hair.”

“Huh?”

“Hair. Hair dryer.” She got up, put the laptop on the coffee table and hunted for the hair dryer in the bathroom. “Here, touch it.”

Regina did but was more impressed with the map the computer was busy populating on its own.

“This is very impressive.”

“Say awesome.”

“Why? Something wrong with what I said?”

No, nothing at all. She just wanted Regina to be a little less impressive, because she was getting in trouble here, and walking into it unable to stop. “Here, hair dryer. Do your thing.”

“It’s going to dry on its own. I’d rather you explained what this computer is doing.”

Emma sighed, plugged the hair dryer and stood behind Regina. “The computer is using the information I uploaded from what we found out on the library website. It’s going to correlate that to the known landmarks I’ve selected and then it’s going to give us a list of possible locations.” She switched on the hair dryer and started drying Regina’s hair, without touching it, at first, but as Regina relaxed after an initial jolt, she used her fingers, combing down the long lengths of soft brown hair. She got caught up in her task, the long hair sliding between her fingers and the smell of the peach shampoo intensifying with the heat, assaulting her senses relentlessly. The program had finished its task sometime during that spell but neither she nor Regina noticed.

When not one more strand needed heat, Emma unplugged the hair dryer with a mixture of disappointment and relief and a thundering heart.

She sat next to Regina and brought the computer to her lap because it helped her back into familiar territory.

She had to clear her throat before the sound actually came out. “Right. Now is where the hacking part comes in.”

Regina heard Emma clear her throat but she just couldn’t think past the sensation of Emma’s fingers massaging her scalp delicately, combing through her hair, a touch light as air. She wanted to understand the feeling, to enjoy it while it lasted but the surprise of the touch, the surprise and shock of someone touching her with care and softness was so overwhelming she had just remained quiet, afraid she was just imagining it, daydreaming it. She hugged herself when Emma switched off the hairdryer and remained perfectly still on the couch, unaware of the sigh she released when Emma sat next to her.

There was going to come a time when she would have to leave and go back to the life she knew or, having found a princess for Snow White and for a kingdom in dire need of saving, finally die for her crimes but this memory, she would take with her and it would warm her, no matter what came.

She trained her eyes on the laptop but saw nothing but the blur of it until Emma’s voice broke through the humming in her ears. What had been a conversation she had struggled to follow became little more than a collection of words that only had value in as much as they were Emma’s voice, softly trickling down her limbs, looking for her heart and occupying the empty space of it, beating in its stead.

She bit her lip and closed her eyes against long forgotten tears. “Thank you.” And when she spoke, she realised that she had interrupted Emma. Emma’s words fizzled out, whatever she had been saying to Regina’s shame. “I’m sorry… for interrupting.”

Emma hummed as if that answer was more than enough. “Where were you? Just now, where did you go, in your mind?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Yeah, you do.” And she adjusted the laptop on her legs to turn to Regina fully, give her her attention as if Regina had anything of value to say. She draped her arm over the back of the couch and tugged a lock of Regina’s long hair.

Like the kitchen cats in her mother’s home, Regina leaned into the touch, soaking it up for the rarity of it. “You wandered off, just now.”

“I’m sorry_”

“And sometimes, you do that deliberately, like when we were talking to that guy in Southie. Where do you go?” Regina was frozen in her body. She couldn’t move under Emma’s intense stare. “But this was different. Looked like…” Emma seemed to reconsider her word. “It was a different place.”

All Regina could see was her brown hair wrapped around Emma’s finger like a ring. There was no good answer for that. It was not in her nature to commiserate. What she had, she had brought upon herself, and she didn’t want Emma to know that, to know the full extent of it so she remained quiet, lost in Emma’s clear, honest gaze.

Emma straightened her back and reset the laptop on her knees but her finger was still toying with Regina’s long hair as if there was no reason good enough to let go of it. “It’s okay. No explanations owed.” Emma didn’t know how nice it felt, Regina thought, but she did. She knew how good this touch, this acceptance felt. She did.

Then, she broke the moment, carefully and rather deliberately because this was not what her life was about. “Are we going to hack now?”

“We? Batman, this is what you need Robin for.” And she showed Regina a small drive with a glint in her eye. “When I started on this business, I was told that most of the work was pavement pounding and door knocking. Trouble is, I’m not ever so patient, you know? So I figured that some of that pavement pounding, door knocking is for old timers who don’t know their way around a computer. I do. So this little thing here? Saves me a lot of pavement pounding and door knocking.”

“What does it do?” Regina didn’t know what to expect but clearly, magic in this world looked a lot like mundane things and, none of what she’d seen so far involved big swirls of purple magic.

“Think of it as a key...” Emma typed away and her finger moved the mouse around and it was all so fascinating for Regina.

“What does it open?”

“We’re in!” Emma clapped her hands in excitement. “It opens the doors to the Boston PD CCTV surveillance system. So now, we select the locations that we mapped out before and we start watching TV. Get it?”

“I’m not stupid, Emma.”

“No, of course not.”

“We’ll see those locations on the CCTV cameras and we wait for them to get in and out.” Regina explained just to prove she could.

“Hey, look at that! Not just a pretty face…” Emma’s voice trailed as she realized her slip of the tongue.

“You think I’m pretty?” Regina felt a flurry of butterflies and they were not just in her stomach, they were all over her, touching her with gentle wings.

Emma waited a beat because it was entirely possible she was making a fool of herself because a tiny part of her was still clinging to the hope that this was all a very elaborate prank from DH. “Don’t you have mirrors where you come from?”

“I…” Regina tried but couldn’t think of any possible answer. Were they flirting? She had flirted before. She had flirted very aggressively when she had learned to use her body to get what she wanted, but this? This was so different she wasn’t sure it was it. She wasn’t sure at all.

“Can we see those cameras now?”

Emma carved her nails into eight perfect crescent moons into her palms until she had some control over her tongue. This was turning out completely ridiculous. Because no, this was absolutely not possible. This was not Emma Swan. Emma Swan didn’t flirt. Emma Swan, especially, didn’t flirt like a school girl. Emma Swan got what she wanted in grown up places like seedy bars where everyone knew what they were there for and wasted no time with flirts.

“Uh… yeah.” The screen came alive partitioned into several small tiles all showing darkened streets with nothing but cars going on. She settled in for some channel surfing, crossing her arms over her chest. Absolutely no touching.

…   …   …

Emma’s eyes were burning and her head was pounding with the effort of concentrating on the multiple screens. Next to her, Regina was breathing softly, her chin tucked to her chest, her whole body cocooning into a protective ball. Enough of this, Emma though. She set the recording of the many video frames and switched everything off.

She wondered if she should offer Regina to share the bed with her but somehow she was terrified of the thought. It was simple, much simpler to let her have the couch. It was less… well, whatever. It was better, that’s what it was. She thought of coaxing Regina to lay down but the woman was like a motion detector and would surely wake up and man, did she look like she needed the rest, so Emma dropped a comforter over her and then just dragged her sorry ass to bed.

…   …   …

Emma saw the hand disappear into her chest. Only it wasn’t her chest. She felt it grabbing hold of her heart, felt the pain of the squeeze, the pain of a fist being pulled out of her chest. Only it was not her chest. She felt the emptiness in her chest. Only it was not her chest. Felt herself falling to the ground and thumping onto old flagstones, but the knees that hit the stone were not hers.

It wasn’t so much a dream but more vivid like a memory. And though it was not hers, Emma woke up rubbing her chest where it was empty of a heart that was not hers and gasping for air, for comfort, for anything that would let her feel, just feel something, something good for once.

She jacked up in the bed and for the longest moment, she had to tell herself that it was okay. It was okay.

When she felt steadier, no amount of pillow punching, deep breathing, tossing or turning could ever give her peace. These were memories and they were not hers.

Well, fuck.

Regina was still in a tight ball on the couch but she had grabbed the comforter to her like the drowning hold a plank of driftwood. Emma hesitated for a second and then moved onto the fridge. Maybe a glass of milk. Milk was good, right? God, it had been forever since she’d had insomnia. Usually, she was just so tired, she passed out. She opened the fridge door and though she grabbed the milk, she didn’t drink. She just stood there in the cold light of the fridge. What was it about that light that promised solutions to every problem under the sun? What was it about that light against the dark of the room that gave her the clarity to believe that those images were not dreams but memories and that those memories were Regina’s? How could someone live without a heart?

She put the milk back without having a single drop. She looked over her shoulder and Regina was a spectre, standing behind her.

“Are you okay? Are you in pain?”

“No… I..”

“Emma, where does it hurt?” Regina fretted.

It didn’t. Nothing hurt. Except the empty chest that wasn’t hers. Emma rubbed at the spot.

“Nothing. I just…” Emma turned back to the fridge, because what she was about to ask was just too ridiculous to contemplate without something familiar to hold on to.

“Your heart… “ She saw Regina shrug into the armour that was becoming familiar, she saw her eyes glazing over, felt her going into that place that was just Regina’s to hide. “No, don’t! Regina, don’t pull away.” Emma nearly begged in the darkness of the room.

Something held onto Regina, held her there, pulled her to the bright light of the fridge away from the absolute darkness. Emma’s hand was on hers, and there was nowhere to hide. She turned to the light. “Yes.”

“Is that an answer or a question?”

“Both.”

“You don’t know what―”

“I do. I have your memories. When I healed you, I got a part of you. So yes. You have part of me… of mine.”

“How can someone live without a heart? I can’t… It’s too much to believe… I…” But Regina took Emma’s hand and pressed it against her chest, against the place here her heart had once been.

Emma felt the warmth of the skin under her palm. And then nothing. Not even the faintest murmur. “Oh, Jesus.” Emma tried to swallow the lump in her throat, to dislodge it so that she could breathe. “How?”

Regina’s hand was pressed above hers above Regina’s chest. “Magic. Dark, dark magic.”

“Why?”

“Because…” How could she tell Emma that it was a fair and just payment? She wanted to hold on to the warmth over her chest for a just a little longer and it was terrible because she owed this woman the truth but she couldn’t, she just wanted not be the Evil Queen for a little longer. Just a little longer. “If you control a heart, you control the thing. They own me.”

“You’re not a thing, Regina. You can’t be owned.”

Regina just smiled sadly.

“Can’t you just… this is not fair… You have to fight this. You have to get it back. You have to get your heart back.”

“Some things are just the way they are, Emma. I spent a very long time fighting against those that wanted to own me. In the end, all I could have done was save some time, because I ended up what I was destined to be all along: a princess’ chattel.”

“There has to be a way. You said that you’d be free if you succeeded here, so we just have to find these things and exterminate the very last one and then you can go home and get it back, you walk right in there and tell them that you kept your end of the bargain and that they can just give it back… I’ll… I’ll go with you if you want and we’ll get it back.”

“Emma… It’s not… Even if we can exterminate them here, they are still in my world. They are still feeding there. But the bargain is simpler than that: If I find them their princess, she will take my place. That princess, she’s the product of true love. She is powerful beyond the telling of it.”

“So let’s find this princess. Let’s get her ass where it belongs so that you can get your heart back. So that you can be free. Straight swap, right? Where is she? Where do we find her? I’m good at finding people, Regina. This is what you need my help for, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know who or where she is. But even if I find her―” “We. When we find her, you mean. Sidekick, remember?”

Regina smiled, touched. “When we find her, why would she want to go back? There is nothing left. The privilege she was born to have is gone. Even the Queen lives in squalor.”

“So? Why would you even care about this chick? You’ve never even met her, she had it easy so far. Time to go back and do… whatever.”

Regina lowered her arms until they were hanging by her sides. “I hope she wants to go, Emma, because I can’t force her. I won’t.”

“Jesus, you’re a warrior. Course you can.”

“Who is this Jesus you talk about so much?” Regina interrupted desperate to change the course of the conversation.

“Jesus?” Emma finally remembered to retrieve her hand from Regina’s chest and take a step back. “A saviour too, I guess.”

“What did he save you from?”

“Ah, shit… Look, I don’t really remember much Sunday school, mostly because I don’t want to but, from evil and eternal death and what have you.”

“How? Was there a curse too?”

Emma thought for a wild moment that this kind of shit would have to happen to her, discussing religion with a stunning warrior from a different world by the fridge light in the middle of the night. Then she sighed because Regina was actually, honestly waiting for a reply. “Jesus died for us. To save us all from sin.” She replied dutifully what she remembered from one of the religious orphanages she’d done a stint in. “And then he came back alive at the third day.”

“Oh…” Regina’s mouth was a little moue of surprise.

“What?” Emma what sure she was missing some of the story, that somehow she had left out the detail that made it all make sense but the mental pockets she pated looking for such detail came up empty.

“Did this Jesus of yours change his mind?”

“I…” What? “You’re changing the subject. Princess. You take back the princess, they’ll give your heart back. End of story.”

“I can’t force her, Emma. I won’t. It’s her choice.”

Emma felt the air leave her lungs. Why was she even worried about this? Regina was nothing to her. She was just a slip of a woman that was crashing in her sofa until Emma figured what to do with her or, better yet, woke up from a nightmare that was very, very real so far.

“’Kay. Have it your way. See if I care.” And she walked to her bedroom and closed the door with a thud trying to leave the shame and the anger on the other side of it.

Chapter Text

Chapter 12

When Emma woke up from a string of twisted, terrible dreams about hearts and warm chests under her hand and mustered the face to leave her room, Regina was gone.

Which was just as well. She looked at her hands and made a fist and opened it and still she could feel the beating of a heart in it, a scared heart full of sorrow and cowardice beating faster and faster until it stopped, turning cold in her hand. It had been a terrible, terrible dream where she had felt love and sorrow and, above all, regret and still she had plunged her hand- except now she knew it was Regina’s- through daddy’s chest and plucked out his heart, leaving him to die on the floor at her feet. Who did that? How had Regina done that? How had she killed someone she loved? Because the one thing she knew was that Regina loved that man even though he was pathetic and weak and a coward. But she had loved him. What for? She looked and looked at her hand and wondered why and if she would have done the same and why, why, why. It was better if she didn’t see Regina at that moment. It felt too raw in her.

Unnoticed, her hand went to the now nearly non-existent scar on her shoulder, trying to reassure herself that it had not been a nightmare within another nightmare. No, it was there, that small indent in the otherwise smooth skin of her shoulder. It was hers. So Regina was not a figment of her imagination.

And where the hell was that woman? She slumped onto the sofa. Henry was noticeably absent which just made it all worse, so much worse. She picked up the phone and called the kid but while she waited for the answer, her hands smoothed over the pillow and she smelled her shampoo and something else that was not hers. Something that was entirely― “Hi Emma. How’s Regina?”

Excuse me? “Hey kid. G’morning to you too. No, I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

“I was going to.” Emma could practically see the shrug of his little shoulders. “But you’ve already answered.”

“Yeah. She’s fine. We’re both fine. Where are you?”

“Must be my lucky day. Jackson dropped me off.”

“Jujitsu?”

“It’s Friday.”

“Right, Friday. So riddle me this: if you’re supposed to be in French class, what are you doing calling me at this time?”

“You called me, Sherlock…” Ah, yeah, that. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she’s not here. She skedaddled in the middle of the night. Didn’t leave a note.”

“She probably didn’t think you’d miss her.”

“I don’t. What are you talking about kid?” Ah, but she did. That traitorous little twist in the pit of her stomach announced it to the rest of her. You miss Crazy McPretty, sucker.

“Yeah, okay… Listen I need to go back to class. Why don’t you make some breakfast? Make sure she eats, okay?”

“Haven’t you heard? She’s not in.”

“She probably just went out on patrol…”

“Kid, I’m not in the business of taking in strays.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “Oh, come on, kid, that came out wrong. All wrong.”

Henry sighed. “You don’t mean that.”

“I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re my favourite mutt.” The weight on her chest cleared a little when Henry giggled.

“Besides,” He needled, “You’ve already taken her in. You’re worried about her. So make breakfast and be nice.”

“Yeah, I’ll be nice, alright.”

“Okay. I might skip something later and come and check on you guys. Hilary won’t be home until after my bed time.”

“I wish you’d call them mom and dad, you know?”

Henry sighed but did not reply and simply hung up with a grumble.

…   ….   …

Emma could lie to herself all she wanted but a breakfast of eggs, bacon, pancakes and freshly ground coffee was, not only too much for one person only, but it was also a far cry from the cereal she usually ate over the sink.

Nonetheless, she was finishing plating the pancakes when Regina came appeared at Henry’s window.

Regina had no choice but to knock as the window was locked. It wasn’t as simple as jabbing something between the window and the sill as she’d imagined. And Emma just stood there watching her struggle, arms crossed over her chest and a murderous look on her face. When Emma finally decided to open the window, Regina almost wished she hadn’t. “Where the hell have you been?”

Regina hesitated through the window, unsure of her welcome. “And what the hell are you using the window for? Isn’t the door good enough for you? In or out, lady, just move.” Regina opted for moving in and she wasn’t even sure why since her kneejerk reaction was the out but Emma grabbed her by the arm and just pulled her in and it wasn’t, after all, much of a choice. “Jesus, Regina, why? I mean, with all the shit outside, and you just go out and you don’t even bother leaving a note? I mean, fuck, what if something happened? What if… what if…” Emma stuttered because she wasn’t sure what terrible scenario she wanted to illustrate first and then she didn’t want to sound like this needy mother hen – or worse- and all the words got jumbled in her throat and the only possible solution to get rid of the stutter was to kick the closest thing – the sofa.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you should be.”

“I didn’t know… I mean… I’m not used to anyone worrying about me.”

And that was sobering for Emma. She moved to the kitchen area and poured coffee, sipped it hastily and burned her tongue. Probably third degree burn, she cursed Regina.

“You are upset.” Regina noted, still unable to move, rooted to the spot.

“You think?”

“Yes. But I don’t understand why. I have a mission. A job to do. While I sleep, people from your world are being taken, fed upon, disposed of as garbage for the trolls to finish off. You of all people should want me to be out there, to finish this of.”

“Me?” Emma snorted into her coffee trying- and failing - to cool her head.

“Yes, you. You have been attacked by them, wounded, nearly killed. And now that you know what they can do, and that they can take you or your son or any of the people you love and there shall be no retribution. You. You should want me to finish this off.”

And damn if the coffee didn’t get thick as mud in her throat.

“Success, then? Have you rid the world of them?”

“You know it’s not that simple.”

“So would it have killed you to tell me where you were going? Would it have killed you if I had tagged along?”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Too late for that. I’m absolutely pissed, Regina. You inform your sidekick, you take said sidekick with you. You do not hide shit and you do not go out on your own.”

“I must protect you, not expose you! I will not endanger you any further than I already have.”

“Fuck you, Regina.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you don’t tell me what to do, you don’t make decisions on your own, not about me, you don’t. We’re in this together. We’re a team. We do this together.” Emma was, coffee forgotten, all over Regina’s personal space, towering over her.

“You’re a warrior too...” Regina whisper-blurted.

The answer formed in Emma’s mind and it would have been something like aren’t all women but it never came out because it was like being pushed forward by something outside herself, straight into Regina. Her arms came around the woman as if to gain balance as she tipped forward.

Regina thought she was going to get hit. That was, after all, home sweet home. But as Emma fell into her, she couldn’t pull away, she just stood there, unable to defend or attack. And then the world stopped, animation suspended, no air, no breath, no blink. A voice whispered at the back of Regina’s mind yes.

No breath.

No air.

They stood there, bodies pressed, the smell of coffee in the air and Emma’s shampoo in both blond and brown hair, the winter sun streaming in through the window.

Emma thought what the hell as her fingers dived into the long brown hair and then her mouth touched Regina’s softly, as her tongue sought out –and found it willing- Regina’s. What the hell she thought as the kiss became heat and energy, so hot, so bright. Oh shit. And then it didn’t matter. All that was important was that it was Regina.

Regina felt the frantic beat of her heart a world away. Everything went breathless, frantic, sharp with need like a thousand needles under her skin. She lost track of everything beyond the taste of coffee in Emma’s mouth and movement of her tongue against hers, the demand of it.

She balanced on her toes, and pulled Emma to her, caught in a vise while the thrill of wonder of the kiss erupted in her skin. And then reality won. What on earth. And Oh no because what was she doing, Emma was hers to protect not for this, never for this.

Emma felt Regina pull apart before the kiss was over, before she was satisfied and the wave that had been pulling her under spat her out onto the shore, gasping for hair and disorientated.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t, oh god, Regina, I’m so sorry, I don’t… I don’t even… I shouldn’t have. I’m so sorry.”

Regina struggled with the excuses tumbling from Emma’s lips. Why, she wanted to ask, because she was the problem here. She was the one that got every person that had ever cared about her killed. Daniel, Daddy. Even Graham, for whom she’d had little more than the warm affection one has for a long standing habit. They had been two solitudes keeping each other company through the deep dark winter. Even Graham was dead.

“I can’t…” She wanted to say that she couldn’t risk Emma, she couldn’t, but Emma interrupted, cheeks flushed a deep crimson

“No, of course you can’t. Look I’m so sorry, I’ve never...I won’t… not again, I’m sorry, it won’t ever happen again…” And she took her long forgotten coffee and sought refuge in the kitchen overwhelmed by shame and guilt.

Behind her, Regina touched her lips with the tips of her fingers and lamented the loss and marvelled at the warmth. Better this way. It was better for Emma, even for her. It was best all around not to get tangled up like this. “Thank you.”

She stood there, watching Emma’s back move softly with each breath, the white t-shirt she had on reflecting the oblique light from the kitchen window. There was nothing she could say.

“So, did you find anything?”

“No.” She cleared her throat. “I caught a scent. This land of yours is confusing. It should have been easy, at night, with people sleep.”

“Not in Boston.”

Regina simply hummed. She had wandered, unable to sleep, through the streets where lamps cast white pools of light and then onto the streets illuminated by yellow lights, that smelled of rot and misery, that reminded her of home. She’d made her way to the docks not because she knew where she was going but because she had felt the damp of the water call out to her. She had stood at the pier and looked at the dark, dark water until the cold had seeped into her bones through the kidskin of her boots. There were no stars in Emma’s world. Not a one. And then, as the sky had brightened to a gentle purple, she had caught the scent of death and that moment of unexpected peace had been over.

“Indeed… There are too many scents, too many people. I followed it from the pier and then lost it in a market. Too much of everything…”

“And?”

“And then there was a commotion and then the smell was that of blood and pain and…”

“They attacked again?”

Regina nodded. “In the middle of a market, one, maybe two of them only.”

Emma found the remote and switched the TV on. She channel surfed and the scene was the same in every once: police line, the shocked faces, the fast, garbled speech of fear and confusion.

“We have to do something.” Emma spoke, standing in front of the TV, eyes glued to the screen, arms crossed over her chest.

“Emma…”

Emma pointed her finger silently at Regina. “Don’t even think about it.”

Then she stomped around the couch and found her laptop, fired it up. “I could really do with a face recognition system here…” She opened the files of the CCTV recordings and then the live feed. “We need to find them. The sniffer doggie thing is clearly not working so we need to try this my way, you get me?”

No, Regina definitely did not get her. She didn’t get the need to go into battle of one’s own free will and, more to the point at that very minute, she did not get what Emma was talking about. It was intangible at the moment so Regina thought that she might as well trust this warrior and go about war as they did in this world as Emma seemed so adept at it. Enticed by the smells of food, she took two plates and ladled them with eggs and bacon, pancakes, doused them liberally with syrup and brought them to the sofa. She was getting used to readily available food and damnation, it was as attractive as everything else about this world. About Emma. She sat next to her and handed Emma a plate. “You made all this food.”

“I was upset.”

“Do you cook when you’re upset?”

“I never cook when I’m upset. I usually punch someone when I’m upset.”

“Thank you for not punching me.”

“Yeah…” Emma thought about the kiss.

“I might have punched you back. I don’t know them, but I’m fairly sure that’s not Batman and Robin’s way.”

Emma thought again of that kiss. “Yeah, it’s really not how they roll.”

“Eat.” Emma couldn’t help one undisguised look at Regina’s face before she forked eggs into her mouth. “What are we doing?” Regina queried stumbling only lightly over the we.

“We are going to check the video feed. I’ve compiled the feed into a multi-part screen and we can see several images at the same time, see?” When Regina nodded and filled her mouth with pancake, Emma continued. “I’m going to put this on fast forward. Say four times the sped. You look carefully at the screens, all of them. Don’t focus on any single one. If you see anything strange, out of place or if you identify something that might be them, gimme a shout and we will go over it, slower, to make sure.”

Indeed, this was the strangest way of conducting a war, form a nice warm room, with ample food in her belly, a tingling on her kiss-bruised lips and a sensation of contentment that had no place in a war. And this Emma was a warrior too though they had very different ways of going about war: Emma so sleek and savvy, she herself, just reacting and playing catch-up. For once, she thought, she might be gaining some advantage over ReulG’horm and she tried not to get carried way.

She kept her eyes on the screen and did her best to concentrate on it, though the distractions were many: the taste of the pancakes, the softness of Emma’s thigh pressed against hers, the warmth of the room, even the bright light streaming through the window. The Enchanted Forest had had a red hue to the sky and grey air that might have been the left overs of her curse or simply the blood of those killed by ReulG’horm’s army and the despair of the ones still living.

And then, it was there, the bulk of a shadow moving in the night, the slight stature, the distinctive lazy, arrogant walk only in very high speed. She gasped and Emma simply stopped the playback.

“Did you see something?” “Yes. There!” Regina pointed. “There, there.”

“Yeah, ‘kay.” Emma rewinded the image and enlarged the screen to full size. There it was, the dark silhouette becoming the distinct shape of an imp, small, Emma thought, for all the pain it caused, about four feet and change. She had a moment of hope that it might be just a human going about their business because, suddenly she wasn’t prepared to see it, not up close like this.

But it approached the camera position and looked directly into it, the lipless mouth and the eyes, god, the eyes, so unlike anything human. Emma’s throat was dry and her tongue seemed to swell up in her mouth, as everything came back to her, the pain and the fear, the horror and the smell of death of that day at the zoo. Her hands perspired and her breathing was a shallow, painful thing.

Regina felt the pungent smell of fear and turned to Emma. The imps and all other creatures of the darkness, were her bread and butter. She had long lost the fear and the capacity to be moved by horror and these creatures were but a shade of evil darker than herself but feeling Emma’s lungs seizing next to her was a stark reminder that not all lives were about fighting ReulG’horm or surviving it. “It’s not the same one, Emma. The one that attacked you is dead.”

“I know.” Emma wiped her palms on her legs. “You killed it.”

“I did.”

Emma nodded in thanks. “Promise me you’re not going to stand in front of me when we find them. I’m not fragile, Regina. I need to do this. I need to get in there and kill them. I need to do that myself. I don’t need saving. I just need retribution.” When Regina didn’t immediately reply, Emma pushed. “I need to protect the ones I love.” She breathed shallow breath. “Together, remember?”

“Yes.”

Emma nodded, more to herself and retuned her attention to the screen. Her fingers were, Regina noted, just a fraction less steady, just a fraction slower.

“Let’s get the camera ID, get the location and go.”

“Emma… Do you… well… do you do this often, going after evil, confronting them physically?”

Emma’s fingers stilled. “Evil is relative. But yes. This is what I do. I trace skips. They are, a fair part of them anyway, really bad people. So I find them. I prepare. And then I go for it.”

“Do you ever get hurt?”

“More often than not... I mean… I prepare, so not as much as I would otherwise. But I’m… bouncy. I bounce back. Don’t worry. I’m not going to freeze. I’m not going to let you down. I can hold my own, Batman.”

“Why would you choose to do this?” Emma’s eyebrow shot up and Regina explained. “Why be a warrior when you could…”

“What? Marry some guy and darn his socks?”

“Or something like that.”

Emma slid down on the sofa making the laptop slide with her, an undulating, fluid movement and sighed, unsure of whether this was something she should- could- would share. And then the light caught on the scar on Regina’s arm. “There is nothing else I’m good at.” Regina was surely going to say something that was going to hit home and Emma dreaded it, but it seemed she couldn’t find the words, so Emma found her mouth moving and truths she’d thought she’d keep to herself spilling out. “I was in jail. For grand larceny. It means theft. No one wants me near their stuff. Not for minding a child or driving a car, much less work as a cashier in some convenience store.” She shrugged. “The first time, it was an accident. There was this guy running down the street and an old guy chasing after him, wheezing a little, sweating and cursing. I thought the guy was running with the old man’s purse or something and I had a can of soup in my hand and I just… I aimed and threw the can. Hit him on his back. Guy stumbles, trips and the old man chasing him got his second wind and caught him. Slapped the cuffs on him and looked at me, standing there… He had the guy by the cuffs on his wrists and he walked back to where I was standing. He handed back the can of soup and asked if I could do it again, the thing with the can. I said yes and he got this look on him… he told me ‘Listen, kid, I can either give you ten bucks for a sandwich or I can give you my business card.’ I took the card.”

Regina waited a beat but, it seemed, Emma was done talking. “Why would he think you needed a sandwich?”

“Because I did. I was living in a car that had no fuel to go anywhere, trying to make the one hundred bucks they gave me when I got out of jail last enough until my parole officer managed to get me into a work programme or something.”

Emma knew hungry and alone. Emma knew it. And for once, Regina felt not as alone. Her hands itched to touch Emma, to offer some comfort, to make sure she was really there and that she was not just dreaming this only to wake up in that pigsty with a pig that was yet to finish dying. Instead, she gripped both hands together securely in her lap and squeezed until the urge faded.

“I’m good at it. I don’t have the brawn of Dog the Bounty Hunter but I’ve got this.” She touched her forehead with her finger. “I never did well in school but this? I’m good at it. I needed that. I needed to be good at something, you know?”

…   …   …               

Emma parked the Bug with a jolt forward. She would need to get the brakes checked again. Her credit card ached a little in her pocket at the thought. “There.” She pointed at a camera fitted to a small ledge on a building, covered with metal spikes that were supposed to stop pigeons from taking over. It almost worked. The pavement was still covered in pigeon droppings.

Regina stepped out of the car and Emma was, for a moment, fascinated with the stealth she moved with, the predator in the woman moving to the surface. When she got her breath back, she stepped out of the car feeling not nearly as graceful. Together they stood under the camera following its angle and looking for whatever point of ingress the imp had used. All Emma could see were the old buildings of a middle class neighbourhood, the small shops, a little café.

She locked the Bug and stood under the camera and then walked, her gaze trained on the walls and doors on that side of the street. Behind her, Regina was perfectly still. When Emma looked back, she had a momentary vision of a panther, all hunter and sleek grace. Focus, Emma, for heaven’s sake, focus.

As she passed an alley, Regina caught the scent of what she was hunting, disguised in the thousand other scents, but there. Emma was ahead of her and her first instinct was to keep quiet, to dive into the alley and leave Emma behind, looking elsewhere. It would be safer. And she was ready, pushing down on the guilt when Emma appeared behind her. “Now, you’re not really thinking of leaving me behind, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not, because that would be ridiculous and not the Batman slash Robin thing we discussed.”

“Correct.”

“Lead the way.” Emma said, but Regina remained at the mouth of the alley, looking carefully at every Dumpster, at every garbage sack lying on the pavement.

Behind her, Emma reached inside her jacket for the Glock in the harness at her chest, her finger itching on the trigger.

The movement came out of nowhere; it was nothing but a shadow or a rustle of the wind. There was nothing there and then there was, running, from their right to their left hand side leaving only a pungent smell that even Emma could track. In that fluid movement Emma had already been witness to, Regina unsheathed the daggers and went in pursuit, not a word, not a shallow breath, just concentrated energy, a streak of lightening into the belly of the alley, dark even in the morning light.

Emma followed Regina. Whatever she had seen, she had lost track off, there was only that smell. Regina, though, seemed to know, to see and there was nothing to do but to follow, through a door and then a dingy corridor and down stairs and another door and long gone was the possibility of the light of day, nothing but a damp darkness that seemed like home to Regina.

The scent was now overwhelming and Emma prayed that Regina knew what she was doing because if the smell was anything to go by, they were walking right into imp headquarters and there was no army, no backup with them, just a gun and two daggers.

Emma came to a skidding halt behind Regina, a shape huddled against a dead end wall. Emma aimed her gun. “Where’s the rest of them. The imps, where’s your nest?” Emma demanded.

Regina ignored her. All her focus was on the thing huddled against the wall, a vicious expression on her face. “You heard the lady. Where are they?” Regina approached the creature and the darkness was so overwhelming that it made Emma want to scream. How was it possible they were doing this in the dark, but Regina was in her element, in charge, threatening, dagger ready and nerve wreckingly silent steps closer and closer to the thing against the wall. Emma fished for an emergency torch and pierced the darkness.

The sound that came from the creature was a grunt, a growl, but not a voice. It was nothing like that voice that had sibilated at her ear, that sound akin to a hissing snake she could still hear. This was pitiful and entreating. “Tell me, troll, and I will make it quick.” The creature grunted again and Regina just hissed “Suit yourself” and charged. She was on the thing in less than a heartbeat, a dagger at the throat, another deep in its belly. “Make me change my mind.” She demanded of the troll.

He doesn’t know. Emma thought wildly. And it wasn’t an imp and that Regina was going to kill him. She could smell the blood, the metallic stench of it overpowering the smell of filth on the creature. It whimpered and her heart ached. “He doesn’t know, Regina.” She croaked, her voice barely audible.

She saw the movement. She saw Regina twisting the dagger and heard the thump of the thing falling to its knees and moved forward though with what intent she didn’t know. “Where?” Regina demanded. The only sound was a soft moan.

“Regina, please.” Emma begged but it was as if Regina had been too far to hear her. Maybe in another place. The dagger at the throat of the troll swiftly slid through the layers of clothes and skin and drew out a gurgling noise and that was all. The troll was dead and Emma was still aiming her gun, her hands slightly shaking and her breathing shallow and painful. “He didn’t know.”

Regina pulled her daggers free and wiped them on the rags that were the troll’s garments. “No, it didn’t.”

“Why, then?”

Regina moved away from the fallen body and studied the subterranean room they were in running her fingers through the gaps between the bricks, perhaps looking for secret passages or doors their eyes couldn’t pick up on. “Why?” Emma moved into her path. “Why?”

“It’s my job.” Regina replied dispassionately.

This was it. Emma had seen the killer. Not the person that had saved her from death, not the woman she had fed that morning but the cold blooded killer that she was. And she wished she could have kept it from Emma even if for just an hour longer.

“No.” Emma moved to stand in Regina’s way again. “You didn’t have to. It didn’t know.” Regina tried to push out of Emma’s way but like the strangest of dances, Emma simply moved into her path again, demanding a reply.

“What do you suggest we do with it, Emma?” She saw the light of battle in Emma’s eyes. And it nearly illuminated the dark room. “Take it in as a pet? Convert it to the army of good?”

“I…”

“It feeds, Emma. Trolls feed. They are not the hunters that imps are, but they need to feed. And if the imps are not leaving them their scraps, they will hunt. Bad hunters choose smaller prey.” She stood in front of Emma, stopped avoiding her and took a fortifying breath in, waiting to see the disgust in Emma’s eyes, ready for it. “Do you understand now, Emma? I am a killer. I’m sorry it offends your sensibilities. I’m sorry this is not the noble war you thought it would be. There is nothing noble about it. There is nothing here. Let’s go back.”

To Emma, it had felt like a punch in the gut, it had sucked all the air, all the fight out of her.

They made their way up the dark stairs, Emma’s torch illuminating a narrow path ahead of them. In the silence, their steps reverberated.

“I’m sorry.” She grabbed Regina’s wrist as they were coming up into the dingy corridor they had gained ingress into the basement through. Emma put the torch away. “I didn’t realize.” And it had taken her a very long walk back to the surface to muster the courage to apologise.

“It’s okay, Emma.”

But the hurt in her eyes told Emma differently.

“No, it’s not. But I am sorry.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 13

“You said that trolls are sort of like parasites of the imps, right?” Emma cleared her throat and fell into pace with Regina, not knowing how to make peace with the woman and, more so, with what she had seen in that dark basement.

Regina hummed in agreement but offered nothing further. It was baffling to her why it should be so important what Emma thought of her. It wasn’t like there would be a future friendship or, indeed any type of relationship. Her days here were numbered and, if she was lucky enough, that would be the case in the Enchanted Forest as well. But it burned in her eyes and it tightened in her throat knowing what Emma saw when she looked at her. And yet, a war was a war and the mission remained as did the covenant that bound her to killing ReulG’horm’s foot soldiers.

“So… huh… he seemed like he was on his own.”

“It.”

“Is that how you justify it?” Way to apologise, Swan.

“Listen, Emma Swan: they are things. They are not the same as you and me. We are food for them. Just like a cow or a pig are to you. They do not hesitate, they show no mercy. They will kill you and feed on your corpse and leave what they don’t like or what they don’t need to rot.”

“I think I just might become a vegetarian.”

“You have plenty to choose from in this land.” Regina sighed because she could feel herself going too far and waited a beat. They were never going to see eye to eye on this but Emma had not yet seen the trail of destruction left by these creatures. She had seen the absence but she hadn’t had to bury the remains of the victims. Regina had been burying the dead for as long as she had been fighting ReulG’horm. It changed you and it changed your perspective.

“It was just trying to survive…”

“Tell me, Emma Swan, if it came across Henry, do you think he would have spared him because Henry is a child?”

Emma had no reply to that. Only a shiver. And suddenly, she had a need to go and make sure, just to make that everything was okay. There was nothing more for them here. They had been walking around for hours- or what felt like hours and that sniffer routine of Regina’s had gotten them nowhere fast. Regina was antsy and frustrated and her answers were getting shorter and more aggressive and Emma’s need to make sure, to just make sure, was overwhelming her.

“Come on, there’s nothing here, nothing that you can detect in the middle of a neighbourhood full of people and cars and shit in the middle of the day. Come on.”

“What do you suggest we do? Sit and wait for the next attack?”

“I’m sure there are other, more useful things we can do that don’t involve us walking around for hours.”

Regina resisted getting into the car much like a two year old. She just stood there and said “No!” with all the finality of a toddler. Emma opened the door and just replied “Fine. I’m going on my own. If I get attacked by one of those things, promise me you’ll look after Henry.” And she sat, banged the door closed and started the car.

Sullenly, Regina got in. “Buckle up, Batman.” Emma needled.

“You are manipulating me.”

“I prefer to think of it as engineering a result but yeah. Thanks for noticing.”

…   …   …

It was a pretty neighbourhood, where kids usually played outside and parents watched from the windows just to make sure, but when the Bug came to a stop with a screech of metal, the streets were empty except for cars driving by and the occasional pedestrian rushing, looking over their shoulder. As well they should, Emma thought. She turned the key in the ignition and settled back in her seat.

Next to her, Regina remained perfectly still, perfectly alert, her eyes scanning the street. Emma could still smell the troll blood, a rank smell that could be described as a mix of rotten fish and bad cologne, but she pushed down on the gagging reflect. Grow up, Emma, for pity’s sake. You know she’s right.

Emma’s attention focused on the street immediately as a dark haired woman with a blond boy passed by, the child’s back pack bouncing wildly as he trotted alongside the woman, keeping up with her harried pace. She looked around her surroundings before she put the key to the lock and checked the door carefully, always keeping the boy between her and the door. Emma approved silently. The light in the apartment on the second floor came up and Emma relaxed. Okay. They’re okay.

“Come on, let’s get a hot dog.”

Regina interrupted her scanning of the street. “Aren’t we going to verify this location?” She didn’t understand why Emma had wanted to come here but she wasn’t about to ask.

“You wouldn’t be this chilled if you had felt anything.”

“I don’t know the meaning of that.”

“But it sounds about right, doesn’t it? Do you think there’s anything here?”

“No.” No, Emma didn’t think so either. She was willing to put her trust on Regina’s expertise. And on her own gut instinct: this neighbourhood was not dirty enough or poor enough. At least for the time being.

“Let’s go. Lemme buy you a hot dog.”

“I’m not going to be here long enough to keep a pet.” “It’s food, Regina, not a pet.”

Regina looked mildly disgusted and Emma struggled with the gear stick. “If you’re still making that face when you eat it, I’ll make it up to you.” “No need.”

“Better, then.”

…   … …

It was easy to forget what was out there when you have a fully loaded dog in your hands and the smell of it is all you feel. What would it be like to live a life like this, where you don’t have to hunt your food or kill it or cook it? Emma was right. A hot dog was probably the best thing in the whole world. In both their worlds. Walking like this, in a mild winter day with clear skies and a balmy breeze was something she was going to commit to memory, to cherish and think back to when she had to go back. Though it was odd the part of the dog they used for this particular food. At least they were not wasting.

Next to her, Emma stopped and contemplated her hot dog as if it had answers to big problems. “I don’t…” She sighed when the words didn’t come together in her mind. “What I mean is… Thank you. I guess. What do you… I probably would have balked. And he― it would have walked away. I don’t see you as a killer. I mean… yeah, you did. I never saw anything like that, you know. But it’s not who you are.”

“Yes, Emma, it is. Don’t let a hot dog fool you. That’s exactly what I am. A killer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your doing.”

“I mean, I’m sorry for the way I reacted. It was stupid. Short sighted. I’m sorry.”

“You said that. There’s no point in labouring the point.”

“I wished you’d believe it.”

“Is that that why you got me the hot dog? Are you mollifying me?”

“Maybe…”

“Emma, it’s alright.” Regina gave up on her hot dog and focused on Emma. “Things are what they are. We can pretend we don’t see them or that the justifications or the reasons make it less what it is, but… I know what I am. Let’s leave it at that.”

“I feel guilty.”

“Is this a way to alleviate your conscience?” Suddenly, it all tasted like ash in her mouth which was really, really stupid and disingenuous.

“It’s food, okay? If I wanted to alleviate my conscience, I’d buy you flowers or something.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s getting cold. Eat it.” And she stuffed her own mouth full of hot dog as if to demonstrate. After a moment of consideration, Regina did the same.

“It tastes very nice… for a dog penis…” Regina considered, cleaning her cheeks of the mustard and slaw.

Emma chocked on her food. “Yeah,” She managed when she recovered. “Waste not want not, right?”

Regina nodded sagely. “What’s the story with Henry?”

Emma chocked a little on her food. “Excuse me?”

“Emma, I’m from a different world, but don’t think I am stupid for it. Clearly, you live above your means.”

“How would you know?”

“You live in a very expensive accommodation but you drive probably the worst car in that garage.”

“I’m attached to that car, that’s all.”

“You have a thrift shop sofa in your expensive living room.”

“It’s comfortable. And how would you know it’s a thrift shop sofa?”

“Henry said so.”

“He knows?”

Regina nodded. “So tell me, Emma Swan, why do you live so above your means when you could live comfortably in a neighbourhood more like this one?”

“I like the building.”

“Or, you live there because Henry lives there.”

“He’s a wonderful child. But that’s not enough of a reason.” Emma bit the lie hard around the edges in order to swallow it. “Is this interrogation payback?”

“A little.”

“Look… I… there are things that… it’s not just that they’re private. It’s just that… Did you ever do something that you regret but couldn’t take back, something that you had to live with the consequences of for the rest of your life?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand the expression ‘paying dues’?” Regina nodded. “The rent on that apartment, that’s a part of my payment plan. I can’t not do it.” She wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. “I know, it doesn’t answer your question.” “I told you before, Emma: I’m from a different world, not stupid. I can read well enough between the lines.”

Emma stuffed her hands in her pockets. As long as Regina didn’t read aloud, she could cope.

“We should go back. Home. We should go through the CCTV feed again and see what we see. Killing a troll won’t win us a war.”

“Is Henry going to be visiting?”

Emma’s face bloomed in a smile. “It’s Friday. His babysitter will be shitting nails because she won’t be going out with her squeeze and Hilary and Jackson will be on paparazzi duty.”

“Do you realize that I don’t understand any of what you just said?”

Emma smiled sheepishly. “But you get the gist.”

“If the gist is that Henry will come to us because all his family will be too busy to worry about him, then yes.”

“Atta girl. You’ll be speaking American very soon.”

“I’d rather not, thank you very much.”

“Spoil sport.”

…   …   …

Emma dropped the shopping bags on the floor and set up the laptop on the kitchen counter. They’d have to multitask because it was Friday and lasagne was Henry’s favourite. And she needed a little pick me up after the way the day had nearly gone to hell in a hand basket. So she’d damned well make them some lasagne and she’d crack open a bottle of the shitty wine Dirty Harry had given her for her birthday and they’d pretend there was nothing wrong outside her four walls.

“Can I help?”

“Can you cook?”

“Pasta with cheese sauce.”

“That’s very… specific.”

“And chicken soup.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Henry and I asked Google.”

Emma stopped mid motion. “Yes, so you said.”

“Google is your friend.” Regina parroted.

“I see.” Emma retorted suppressing a chuckle and stuffed the meat in the fridge. “How about lasagne? Did Google teach you lasagne already?”

“No.”

“Okay, tell you what. Let’s have a shower, get the day off of us and then we’ll get started. I mean… not shower together. Don’t worry. Not together.” Emma tacked when she realised what she’d proposed. “You can go first. I’m going to have a look at the video feed.”

Regina didn’t know what possessed her. “I’m not worried.” Emma dropped the pack of cheese with a thud on the floor and Regina walked away, her head spinning because it had been forty years since she’d felt like this. She walked into the bathroom trying hard not to define what the this was because I was so, so complicated.

…   …   …

The video feed showed no interesting results. Emma sat and watched while Regina was in the shower, concentrating hard on paying attention to the images. The few stragglers visible on the camera disappeared as soon as it became dark. Which meant that people actually had a sense of preservation, not exposing themselves any more than was needed but that made the task at hand even more gruelling. Seconds became minutes and centuries of nothing happening, the sameness of the images overwhelming Emma with the need to move and do something else.

When Regina reappeared, dark hair again wet and trailing down her back, Emma nearly jumped off her skin. “Your turn.” She nearly shouted as she left the kitchen area. “And dry your hair.”

It wasn’t guilt, Regina thought, it was just a little frisson of excitement and a little shame and healthy dose of self preservation and she’d do well to remember that. So she focused on the screen. Or tried to. Her hair smelled like Emma’s and her skin too. And what was this? She was hungry again. She’d eaten mere hours ago and she was hungry, starved really. And she missed Henry.

The video feed was giving her nothing. What if she started with the lasagne before Emma came back? She minimized the image and accessed the internet. She opened Google and searched “how do you make lasagne” and true enough her friend Google came through.

How difficult could it be?

…   …   …

Emma came out of the shower to the scent of food wafting from the kitchen area. Her stomach rumbled loudly and her mouth salivated. She was hungrier than she’d thought. When she walked into the kitchen, she realised she was hungry for things other than food too. Regina was in one of Emma’s flannel pants and t-shirt, only slightly too big, slightly too loose on her and her hair was tied into her customary braid running down her back, still wet. She had a wooden spoon in her hand while she read something on the screen. Emma waited a beat, her heart beating madly in her chest. Crazy McPretty looked comfortable and cosy and like someone Emma would like to sit on a sofa and watch silly comedies about dogs with. And that made her uncomfortable. Emma Swan was not the kind that forms attachments. And going by the daggers Regina had agreed to put in the safe every night, she was not one of those creatures either. It was confusing to feel that kind of pull. Emma had admitted to herself in the shower, in a moment of honesty, that she did feel, what she conceded to be, a certain attraction. How could she not? Everything about McPretty was… well, pretty. But the clincher was that power in her, the conviction, the strength. The fierceness. That made her breathtaking.

But this? It was too much in too little time.

It made her tongue swell up in her mouth and her legs floppy and uncoordinated.

When Regina saw her come in, she straightened her back and tried to hand over the wooden spoon to Emma, as if she had been surrendering a weapon. As if she felt guilt about what she had been doing. Emma used the last of her coordination to bypass her, pretend to loom over the pot on the stove and grab the wine bottle. With a sigh of relief, she sat down and caressed the wine bottle as a security blanket. Regina was still holding the spoon like a peace offering. “It smells so good already. I thought you didn’t know how to cook.”

“I asked Google.” Regina clarified pointing at the computer with the proffered spoon.

“Do you enjoy it? The cooking, I mean.”

“It’s nerve wrecking.”

“Then why―”

“I love it.” Regina interrupted with the smallest of smiles.

Emma expertly opened the bottle of wine and poured two generous glasses. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises.” She handed Regina the wine glass. “Come on. We deserve this one. “

Regina smelled the wine and scrunched her nose. “It’s not a very good wine, Emma”

“And a wine buff to boot. Don’t worry, after the first glass you won’t notice it anymore.”

Maybe even less than a glass, Regina thought. It had been a lifetime since there had been any wine to be had so probably it was a good idea to be careful.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. With her back to Emma, Regina felt a little more comfortable to break it. “Where did you learn to cook?”

“I asked Google.” Emma said as her face pinched at the taste of the wine.

“You’re mocking me.”

“Actually, no. God’s honest truth. I Googled pancakes and pasta recipes. I’m good at pasta recipes. Chicken soup.”

“Things that Henry likes.”

Emma had another sip of her wine before she could reply. “Yeah.” It was a god awful wine. It would probably take more than a glass to make it acceptable.

“You didn’t know how to cook?”

“No. No one ever taught me anything beyond opening a pack of potato chips or, at best, opening the freezer and sticking something in the microwave.”

“Emma… when I… I mean, when you were wounded… When I healed you…”

“You saw something.”

“I didn’t see a family. You have no memories of a family.”

“’Cause I didn’t have one.”

“Are you an orphan?”

“It sounds bad when you say it like that…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. I played the cards life dealt me and I think I did okay.”

Regina didn’t know how to reply to that so she turned back to the sauce bubbling in the pot and gave it a half-hearted stir.

“How about you?” Emma asked.

“I don’t think I played mine all that well.”

“I can see why would say that.” Emma nodded to herself and Regina turned around just in time to catch the movement through the corner of her eye. “Though, sometimes, free will is just bullshit you get fed, you know? Like chess. You can only move if you move within the rules. Front or back. Or sideways, or what have you depending on your position. That’s it.”

“Bullshit...” Regina repeated, her eyes suddenly full to the brim. She turned back to the laptop and studied the recipe she already knew by heart just so that she could have a moment to compose herself. Bullshit was a very apt word.

Emma was looking morosely into her glass of wine and let Regina have it without comment or imposition. “What about your family?” Emma asked when enough time had gone by and Regina seemed more collected.

“Mine? I had a mother, a father and a husband.”

“Had?”

“Dead. All of them.”

“I’m sorry. Jesus, Regina, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. I mourn only one.”

“Seriously?” Regina assented. “Which one?”

“Daddy.” Regina’s voice cracked a little around the edges of the word, but Emma made no comment. Some people were like that: underneath all the tough, was the soft that bruised easily.

“I saw him.”

“I beg our pardon?”

“You know… same way you did… I saw him. He looked nice.” Regina’s smile was watery, dim. Emma found herself wanting to protect that softness of Regina’s but the dream of that morning weighed heavily in her heart, like a guilt or a remorse. “But… you sort of…” Lost for words, Emma mimicked the movement of Regina’s hand in her dream as she plunged her hand through Daddy’s chest and plucked out his heart.

Regina put the spoon down and her walls up. “I killed my father, Emma.”

“It broke my heart as he died. I mean… your heart.” Regina assented. “You loved him very much.” Again, Regina nodded. “Then… why?”

“Because I’m a murderer, Emma.”

Suddenly, it all got too real for Emma. “Was he the first person you killed?”

“No.” Regina answered simply. “And he was not the last either.”

Emma nodded softly as she wondered how big that list would be. How many was too many. “Why him?”

“He was the one I loved the most. I needed his heart to cast the Dark Curse.”

“And what happened with that?”

“It failed. I failed.

“At curse casting?”

“Yes.”

“Did you regret it?” Emma asked as if that would have made everything okay.

“Every single moment thereafter.”

“Didn’t it occur to you before you did it?” When Regina simply nodded, Emma tagged “Then why?”

“Because I’m evil. Rotten to the core.” Emma pondered that for a moment and the more she did, the more it sounded to her like one of those things that people say to you and repeat it until you learn it by heart, until you believe it as a the honest truth.

“I’m not sure I believe that.” As her sole reply, Regina turned to the sauce bubbling softly behind her. “Can I say something?” Emma continued.

“Can I stop you?” Regina asked, her shoulders raising in defence.

“No, so listen up. People will spend a lot of time putting you down. For sport or because it’s more convenient for them to have you down there. And after a while you start believing it… Regina, people are going to tell you who you are your whole life. You just got to punch back and say: ‘No, this is who I am.’ Make people look at you differently. Change things, change yourself.”

“He was my father, Emma. I killed him. That makes me evil.”

Emma gave it a rest. Mostly because she could still feel the blood on her hands, caking them, as vividly as if the memory had been her own.

“Who was the other guy?” She asked after a while.

“Guy?”

“You know, tall, dark and handsome behind door number three.”

“Sometimes it is very disconcerting the way you express yourself.” She turned to the sauce and stirred, her back to Emma. “The Hunter.”

“The Hunter… Mr Hunter?”

“The Hunter.”

“Okay, gotcha. Not important enough to have a name. You didn’t love him, though… I mean. You got used to him but it wasn’t love, was it?”

And for some reason, it was very, very important that it wasn’t love. Which was stupid because… well, because she didn’t know this woman from anywhere and three or four days did not make for an entitlement to anything.

“We were two solitudes keeping each other company.”

“Wow. That’s… yeah, I guess. Loneliness is as good a bond as any, right? But you didn’t mention him. In fact, you said that you were doing this on your own.” “The Hunter died.”

“Shit.”

“Hmm…” Regina hummed as she brought the spoon to her lips and tasted, and whether it was in agreement or just the sauce, Emma could not be sure. “Because of me. He died because he was fighting with me something that he should have stayed out of. I cost him so much and, in the end, his life too.”

“What happened?”

Regina shrugged. “Same thing that happened to you. Only… I couldn’t help him.”

The wine was shit and that was why, Emma told herself, she got up from her seat where it was safe and walked to Regina and petted her hand. Which was not.

“You judge yourself too hard.”

“I’ve told you before, Emma: do not romanticize what I do, what I have done. Pretty words don’t change anything.”

“Yeah, alright. But blaming yourself is like trying to get clean by rolling in the mud. Not the best idea. Now, do you think this is ready for the next phase? I’m kind of starving right now.”

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Emma bet with herself that she would lose her shit before the day was over but stuck to her decision that it was best to scrupulously follow Regina’s instructions, stay behind her and behave. That meant no sudden moves, no talking and generally trying to be invisible. As an incentive, she promised herself that when they got home, they’d have a jolly little conversation again about how Emma could take care of herself, had done so for all her life and how this kind of protective shit had to end. For the sake of her mental stability.

Emma caught a glimpse in the window of a bodega. They looked like two idiots, both their forms skulking towards a discrete door she hoped was the entrance to a service tunnel of the sewers of Boston. If this turned out to be where the Uglies had their nest, at least they could just drown them. But if their luck held, if their bad luck held, then it would be just one, troll or imp, who the hell cared, starved and intent on making them a meal. It was good training, Regina had said the previous day. Good training your perky little ass Emma privately moaned. She was good and ready for a final battle, she had even chosen the musical score and was more than ready to finish this business of going out in the stinky hours of the morning, chasing shadows she couldn’t be sure were there and engaging one of those things in battle before lunch, always in a dingy, smelly alley.

The best part of all the exercise were the hot dogs, burgers, pretzels and pizza slices by mid afternoon, when she would have to sulk and demand food. Cyborg Regina was ready to go go go and she didn’t seem to need rest or water of food so Emma had had to resort to sulking and moaning. Not her finest hour, but it worked. Maybe they could go for ice cream today. Maybe― Well, son of a bitch! She saw the eyes looking back at her, reflected in the bodega’s less than clean window. She grabbed Regina’s arm and pulled. “Bad guy on our left, hiding behind the Dumpster.”

“Quiet. Stay behind me.”

“Stay behind me.” Emma echoed, testy. But she was going to… honest she was. But then it wasn’t just one, there were two imps, maybe more, Emma couldn’t really see. All her good intentions slipped through her fingers. She drew her Glock and saw how Regina silently approved of the gesture, but still, moved to stay between Emma and the imps.

Emma considered her options: they were in broad daylight, out in open where anything could go wrong. As battles in public often do. She pushed open the dingy door to a basement and walked through it. The imps had their eyes on them, and Emma could feel their hunger as much as the pungent smell from the Dumpster. One look was all it took for Regina to understand the plan. She plunged into the darkness of the basement and let the door close behind her.

Emma was plastered against the wall and Regina did the same. The darkness inside was in vivid contrast to the winter sun shining outside and that would give them the advantage of a couple of seconds while the imps’ eyes adjusted to the difference. Regina took a deep breath and signed again for Emma to remain quiet and behind her to which Emma mentally snorted yeah right and then the imps were in through the door, all bull like strength, a solidity that did not hinder the agility.

Regina confronted the first one, head on, daggers out. It was like watching a grotesque dance, especially because Emma knew how this was going to end: with the prima ballerina decapitating the grotesque beast- and there was nothing poetic about it.

The imp swiped at Regina and she swiped back, a fluidity of movement that Emma had rarely seen before- especially because she didn’t like ballet and, it seemed to her, this was exactly what it would have looked like: Regina on her toes, plunging her daggers and swirling out of the way, swooping in again for the kill.

Then the courtesies were over. This time there was a second imp that was not going to stay put waiting its turn to be killed. For the second or so that Emma lost concentration, admiring Regina in battle, the second imp phased out of line of sight and was now almost behind Regina, the intent clear before it even swiped at the air with his claws. Emma took aim and fired. The sound, muffled though it was by the silencer- or maybe exactly because of that- made the air vibrate with threat. Regina’s opponent simply side stepped her and when she moved with it, she stood between Emma’s gun and the imp. The thing smiled and it was cruel and awful, smarmy and cocky, knowing that Emma had lost the chance for a clear shot.

“You are not getting out of here, imp.” Regina tossed at the thing.

“It matters not.”

You fucker, Emma cursed and joined the dance, her aim on target- safe for the fact that Regina’s head was between her and the imp. Shit, shit, shit. It was going to remain that way as long as Regina was hell bent on protecting her. The imp sensed it, the need to protect.

“Well, well, well, queenie, have you got a new toy?” The words had little emotion trickling between the sibilating sounds of the imp’s voice but the point was hammered home. In a move so fast even Emma didn’t see it coming, Regina plunged forward, sidestepped, turned and had the knife swiping through the imp’s throat, leathery skin sliced open and black blood pouring out of it through the gaping edges.

When the imp fell to the ground, Regina remained upright, daggers in her hands, her breath untouched by the surge of activity. The one sign of agitation were the narrowed eyes, trained on the imp and then Emma.

A lesser woman would have cowered. Emma didn’t. She was just stupidly in awe. “You are gorgeous in battle.” Emma mumbled. “Fucking beautiful.”

…   …   …

Sagely, Emma kept her counsel once they left the basement. She was shaky, when, as soon as she was hit by daylight, it dawned on her what she had said. As for Regina, she hadn’t said a word. Maybe she hadn’t heard. There was hope.

The Bug started at first attempt and Emma, instead of taking it as a blessing, was instead, struck by the absurdity of driving an old Volkswagen into battle every morning and returning home like you’d do from a 9 to 5 job. And it wasn’t too far off from their realty. Winter meant shorter days and being out hunting in the darkness when you can barely see and the monsters you’re hunting see you better than in daylight is a work of stupidity. So they were downing tools, as it were, and calling it a day by the time twilight came around. And then having a very late street lunch. And then cooking dinner and sitting down with Henry. And it was all so domestic it scared her. Exhilarated her. They were a family. They are a strange family unit, lovers that did not kiss, with a son that was not truly theirs but it was as close to a family as Emma had ever had.

…   …   …

Regina had heard. She had heard Emma saying she was beautiful in battle. She tried not to let it get to her. She tried not to feel. But it felt like when someone kisses a scar or the stump of an absent limb and you see nothing but beauty shinning back in that person’s eyes. Naturally, it terrified her. And made her want more of that.

As they had been doing every day they had been going out to do battle with ReulG’horm in this strange Boston of Emma’s, Emma predictably drove them to the pretty neighbourhood and parked outside the same modest building. She relaxed knowing she would feel ReulG’horm’s presence in this quiet street and knew it was time to go the minute the dark haired woman and the blond child switched on the light on their second floor apartment.

Despite her best efforts to the contrary, she looked forward to whatever treat Emma would get them today. She hoped it would be ice cream. Emma had said something about it and she had a secret sweet tooth that ached for something that indulgent and inconsequential.

Whether she wanted to or not, she was gathering memories and holding on to them like wood for the winter. She found unreasonable hope: if she found Snow’s whelp... If she found Snow her Princess, maybe, just maybe she could find a way. Though delivering a princess and walking way with her life had never been presented to her as an option. At the time, she had thought that death was her only way out. Maybe it still was. But back then, there hadn’t been… reasons to hold on. As it was now, she could go back without a princess and do this forever, alone or she could find Snow a daughter and be shown royal mercy by way of a public execution.

Emma was right. Free will was such bullshit.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14

The two women huddled together where the last wisps of magic endured to see through the water of the pond into this other world of stone, metal and glass. The woman in green stuck her chin and watched as the Evil Queen slaughtered the imps. She knew, the rational part of her knew what it meant to have the Evil Queen defend them, at what cost it came but she had never been privy to the act itself. It had been an abstract. But seeing it… it hurt in ways she had not imagined. Her companion bit her closed fist and disgust was obvious in her expression.

“We did this to her.” Her companion whispered as she rocked gently.

The woman in green knew it to be right. Each of them in different ways, each of them for different reasons but they both had a hand in what had become of Regina, The Evil Queen. And they both lamented it.

They closed the connection, unable to see more, wishing to unsee it.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Henry climbed in through the window and closed it behind him. Regina was in the kitchen, wearing Emma’s flannel pants and sweater and something smelled funny. She looked disgruntled, upset.

“Hey.” He called out and then hugged her by the midsection. She gave good hugs, as good as Emma’s, unhurried, warm, gentle. “What did Emma do?”

“Emma?”

“You’re upset. I thought―”

“Emma didn’t do anything.”

Henry sighed and his smile opened in relief. “Are you cooking?”

“Yes… Emma and I asked Google. I thought it would be nice to make pot roast.”

“Why?” Henry asked slightly horrified.

“Well, Emma said she liked it. So we asked Google.”

“So what’s wrong?”

“Well, it seems that Google did not provide us with very good instructions. Or I missed something.” Henry approached the pot gingerly as if something might attack him. It looked terrible. That might, of course, be all the carrots and celery in it, but he was not looking forward to the meal. And he doubted that Emma would as well. She was not keen on vegetables. Vegetables were sick people’s food. What on earth had possessed Emma? “I think it looks great. Can’t wait to try it.”

“Really?”

Oh, he would eat it. If Regina smiled like that again, he would eat the pot too. But Emma would have to explain why the hell they couldn’t stick to their staple of pasta. Pasta with tomato sauce had vegetables too and looked better by a mile than any pot roast. He nodded eagerly. “I’m gonna find Emma.”

“She’s in the shower.” Regina mumbled after him, eyes fixed on the blackened pot.

Henry heard the door to Emma’s bedroom close which had to mean that she was presentable, so he knocked on her door and called out her name.

“Yeah, kid. You okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Question is, are you?”

“Why?”

“You asked for pot roast!”

“So?”

“Are you sick?”

“No… it’s just that she was telling me that they have something similar where they come from and I said, yeah, we have that here too and then she said it made her think of when she was a child and how it was comforting and familiar and how she hadn’t had in a life time… What could I say?”

Henry sat on the bed while Emma stuffed her feet in thick socks and sighed. “Yeah. I guess we’re eating pot roast.”

“And we’re going to like it very much.”

“That might be a stretch.”

“That bad?” Henry shrugged then got up. “Come on. No point delaying the inevitable.”

When they walked into the kitchen area, Regina was setting a table at the breakfast bar, complete with kitchen paper towels folded like swans. Emma’s mouth opened and closed, mirrored closely by Henry.

“It’s like when we have guests.” Henry was the first to react.

Emma had nothing to add. She picked up one of the paper structures and turned it carefully in her fingers. “Jesus… this is… Wow!”

Regina smiled broadly and it did funny things to Emma’s stomach. “The tables were always set like this in court.”

“Court? What do you mean court? Like kings, queens and knights kind of court?” Emma swallowed thickly. Yeah, Regina had an air about her, of someone who floats just slightly above everyone else, but royalty?

“Is there any other?” Regina asked, confused.

“Yeah!” Emma and Henry replied at the same time.

“The court of justice. Like the one that sent me to prison.” Emma added. There was a moment of mortified silence between the two women and it was up to Henry to break it.

“So, what were you there? A princess?”

Regina hesitated but the truth came out anyway. “A queen. I was a queen.” By now, she was used to there being no recognition of what, of who she was. It was like breathing clean air.

“A real one?” Emma’s mouth was hanging slightly open, her face pinched. A queen. Whoever had sent Regina here had sent her a queen. Well, Christ on a cracker. “Figures…”

Regina stared at Emma. “Why do you say that?”

“I mean… can see it… You have this… I don’t know. It’s intimidating, sometimes... you know… for a commoner like me…” Emma smiled.

Henry put his arms around Emma and squeezed tight. “Well, to me you’re a princess. The best princess ever.”

Emma closed her arms around Henry’s shoulders and kissed the crown of his head. “Thanks kid. You’re a real prince yourself.” She prepared to face the pot roast. “We’re all a bunch of royals. Now move it or lose it.”

…   …   …

Regina felt a shiver down her back and her skin prickled, something akin to recognition. And it scared her. She pressed the feeling down and did her best to forget about it.

…   …   …

Emma stuffed one more bite in her mouth and fought the pot roast tooth and nail. It was dry, under salted and there was a pervading smell of burning. This tasted nothing like what she had imagined pot roast would. And yet, it felt a lot like what pot roast had always meant to her- a family meal, the kind she’d never really had. “It’s delicious, Regina. Thank you.” She took a sip of coke to help push it down. “Isn’t it, Kid?” “Oh yeah, yummy.” He commented and Emma could see the piece of meat he had been working on for the last ten minutes. “What was it like, Regina?” He asked. When she raised her eyes to him, he completed the sentence around the mouthful tucked into his check. “Being a queen?”

Henry took advantage of the moment Regina looked down into her plate, looking for words, and spat the piece of meat into the napkin in his hand.

Smart kid, Emma thought.

“It was… Lonely, I think.”

“But you were a queen. You could order everybody around. You could order someone to keep you company…”

“I think, Henry, that ordering someone to be with you is not the same as having someone choose to be with you.” Henry looked to Emma for support, knowing that he had put his foot all the way into his mouth, but Emma was as paralyzed as he was. Here Regina was, so tough, so brutal and yet, Emma saw soft in her. And that soft bruised easily. She reached across the table and touched Regina’s hand briefly. All she wanted was to take care of that soft, kindle it, protect it. Even from Regina herself.

For his part, Henry jumped off his seat and stood next to Regina. “Well, we choose you. We choose to be with you.”

“It may not be a choice I can make, Henry.” Her voice hitched and it broke Emma’s heart a little. Which was oh so stupid.

“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, okay?” Emma asked lacing their fingers together.

Regina took a deep breath, the kind aimed at levelling emotions and stopping you from making a pathetic fool of yourself, but Emma was quick on the uptake and secured Regina’s fingers in hers a little tighter. “You know, it’s okay to cry if you want. It doesn’t make you any better or worse. Just… let go…”

One tear. One single, perfectly crystalline tear slid down Regina’s cheek. She wiped it clean with quick fingers.

“You know, Queen Regina, Your Majesty, maybe this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Emma did her best imitation of Humphrey Bogart trying to lighten the mood.

“You don’t trust me.”

“I had my doubts.”

“And now you trust me?”

“You saved my ass.”

“All she needed was to get used to you.” Henry pointed out, still standing at Regina’s side. “Emma can be a little suspicious of things and people. But when she comes around, you can’t hope for a better friend.”

“Aw, kid…” Emma exaggerated only so that Regina could have a moment to swallow that lump in her throat Emma could see her working on. They highfived and quietly waited for Regina to compose herself.

“Thank you for eating the pot roast.” Regina commented when she felt her voice a little less wobbly.

“What are you talking about?” Emma asked. “It was great.”

“It wasn’t.” Regina’s smile was watery and beautiful. “It was burnt and dry and… really terrible.”

Emma tried to keep a straight face but Henry cracked up. “It was,” He giggled.

Emma lost it. “Terrible.” Her laughter bloomed and surprised Henry. Emma smiled and laughed very little as if she didn’t have much to laugh or smile about. Maybe if Regina stayed around she could make Emma smile more often. That was a good thing and he wanted to have more of it. Even if he had to eat Regina’s truly terrible pot roast for the rest of his days.

…   …   …

Emma stuffed the pot in the oven and the dishes in the sink. No way was she going to do the dishes now. Her one concession was to clean the breakfast bar and leave out the ice cream bowls. Regina had taken fondly to Ben & Jerry’s so Emma dug out a pint of cookie dough and set it to soften while Regina took Henry home, which was to say, she had climbed out into the fire scape behind him, daggers in hand. Slight but deadly, was Regina, which was why she just kicked back and waited. Henry was as safe with Regina as he was with her.

When Regina climbed back in through the window, Emma was waiting with ice cream, feet crossed over the coffee table. “If you’re not too tired, maybe we could get your computer and check the video feed. They have to be somewhere, Emma.”

“I’m sure. But we’ve been at this for a week now and, even if just for tonight, I want to not think about it. Can we just… eat ice cream?”

“They are out there.”

“Yes, they are. And if we don’t take a break, we will be too tired to see the wood for the trees. Here, have some ice cream.” Regina placed the daggers carefully on the coffee table and settled back. Emma handed her a generous bowl.

“Those look like powerful stuff.” Emma pointed at the daggers with her spoon, the dark metal of the hilt glinting as if I had a light of its own.

“They are.”

“When we…. I mean… you know, when we were… sort of like….

“Connected.”

“Yeah…” Emma blushed. “That. It felt like they grabbed my hands. I mean… your hands. Not the other way around.”

Regina nodded and opened her free hand. The palm bore the impression of the hilt of the dagger- the same bare tree branches were as clear on her skin as they were on the daggers. “Does it go away?”

“No.” Emma was close. Too close. She reached out with her finger and nothing was more important at that moment than to touch the lines etched on Regina’s palm.

“Did it hurt?” Regina shook her head in rebuttal, her hand securely in Emma’s. “But it scared you.”

“It was like being pulled under water. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. Then it was over.”

“You thought you were going to die.”

“Yes.”

Emma’s finger was tracing the lines of each of the branches on her palm and something in Regina’s body tightened. She leaned forward. There was a pull, stronger than that of the daggers, calling out to her, to her blood.

Emma could feel the pull of the daggers as if the lines had been etched into her own palms. She could feel the demand, the bond between the daggers and her hands, not something she could fight. And then the pull was something different, stronger still. “But you’re alive.”

“Yes.” Regina’s voice cracked, hoarse.

Emma felt herself falling forward and she could see herself kissing Regina. She could. It was possible. Would be possible. She wanted – no, damn it, there was a demand that she do it. She had to kiss Regina. Just like the daggers had to be in her hands- no, not hers, Regina’s. There was a finality to it as if it had been pre-ordained. And then a glob of ice cream plopped into her crotch.

The contact broke under the shock of the sudden sensation- though for the life of her Emma couldn’t figure out if it was hot or cold.

And the moment was gone.

Regina was frantically cleaning it, from Emma’s crotch and Emma was too worried about what she had been about to do- about why she had been about to do it- and then she just pulled back. “It’s okay.” She stopped Regina. “It okay, alright.” Because one more touch and the world would not have ice cream enough to put situation on ice. She had to do her best not to run into the toilet with her flannel pants heavy with ice cream.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, the mirror tossing at her the reflection of her pants wet right between her legs, stickiness running down her legs. She banged her head against the door and removed her clothes. From the other side, Regina called out. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Emma wanted to scream. What on earth had she been thinking, what on earth had she been about to do? This was fifty shades of complicated, with Regina living with her. And why, oh why, did it feel like a loss instead of a saved by the bell?

…   … …

Regina couldn’t get comfortable and that had nothing to do with the probably cosiest couch in any world. It was something in her, inside her that just couldn’t settle. She was keenly aware of the clothes on her body- that belonged to Emma, of Emma’s smell on the couch, of the residual sensation on her fingers where Emma had held her fingers. It was probably because it had been almost thirty years since anyone had touched her with anything remotely like kindness. And it was most definitely because even though she had been on her own for nearly three decades, she could still see, she could still identify desire. Emma had wanted her. It had confused her. It had thrilled her. And scared her a little because she had no idea how to respond. Rather- how to respond favourably. She had known how to manipulate men. Not how to engage women. And she wanted to do it well. And good gracious, what was she even entertaining? This was Emma Swan, the one person who had shown her kindness. The one person that had ever helped her. Her heart thumped painfully in her chest and again she tried to make herself comfortable, tried to analyse the situation. If she had been the person she was before the curse, she would have welcomed the moment, used it to her advantage and then moved forward, leaving behind what could not be taken with her. And that would have been the end of it.

But now, now with Emma? How could she? Of course, Emma would forget all about her when she left. Whether it took a day or a week, she would be inconsequential to Emma. But it would not be true the other way around. She would go and she would go with memories that would not make it easier to go through the motions but more difficult. This would be back to when Daniel had loved her and she had been so tender and easy to hurt. And of course, there was the small problem that she would be vulnerable here because of Emma. Not that she thought Emma would hurt her on purpose or explore her weakness. But this was a war and of course it would come into play. The next time she met ReulG’horm, it would know, it would know for sure that she would anything to protect Emma and that would be the end of it. She had survived this long partly because she’d had no attachments, nothing left to lose. The moment ReulG’horm figured it out, her one advantage would be gone, turned against her.

And yet...

All she wanted was to have the courage to meet Emma half way in that kiss that would have happened had it not been for the ice cream.

If only, Regina thought.

If only.

If only she found a princess that would willingly go to a terrible fate.

If only Snow would take her Princess and forget all about her.

If only she could defeat ReulG’horm, exterminate it.

If only. And pigs had sprouted wings and were flying free in the Boston sky.

She had now. She had this couch and the touch of Emma’s fingers still warm in her hands. And that would have to be enough. If she repeated it to herself long enough, one of these days it wouldn’t sound so impossible.

...   ...   ...

All things considered, Regina would prefer any other memory over this. The moment she plunged her fingers through Daddy’s chest and plucked out his heart hurt her deeply, more than any of her mother’s lessons or any of Leopold’s forays into their marital bed. More than Daniel’s death. As fractured as her mind already had already been. That was when the last thread holding her together broke.

She had run from his body, prone on the floor, tears running down her cheeks in rivulets of mascara and shame for the power she had felt coursing in her veins the moment the heart was in her hands and her Daddy had drawn his last breath against her shoulder. She materialised from room to room in her banishment castle but no matter where she went, the regret, the shame, the loss chased her like rabid dogs.

The numbers of her guard dwindled that day. Each one she came across, the pulled their heart out, trying to drown the rush of power she could still feel, trying to dilute it.

When she had a hold of herself, she materialised by the sacrificial pit in the Endless Forest. She summoned other forces of evil for support. The bargain had been easy: they would run free in their world when she had moved Snow White and her ilk to this new land of unhappiness.

She raised the flames, raised them high, high, high until everything was black with smoke and hate. She hated the thought of letting Daddy’s kind heart be sullied by that hate. But she could hear, in her heart she could hear, Snow White in the throes of labour, working on her happy ending when all she had was the loss and the anger. Filled with regret, she dropped the heart into the pit and the flames roared, black, powerful. The scent of hate wafted into the air and Regina summoned her carriage and spurred her horses to Snow’s castle. She would be free. When she got rid of Snow and her happiness, she would be free. And alone. The carriage hurtled down roads and pathways, nearly flying with her fury propelling it.

She could taste it, she could taste victory and freedom. Mother was gone, Snow soon would be too. And she would be free and Daniel would be avenged. If only she had could have had Daddy by her side.

Too volatile to materialise in Snow’s chamber, she spirited herself up the stairs, materialising every few flights up to the tower until she reached the door of what had to be a nursery. She took a moment to settle, to make an impression when she got in. It wouldn’t do to be harried and distressed. She was the Evil Queen and she was in control.

She walked in through the door, the curse working around her, coiling itself around each brick, each tile of that happy, happy castle and destroying it, pulling it apart. Triumphant, she walked into the nursery where her guards had Snow White on the floor and her ridiculous prince gasping his last breaths.

Remembering her part like a well-rehearsed play, she laughed at the misery on the floor. She laughed because it was better than to acknowledge that it hadn’t- that it wouldn’t- bring back Daniel or the years spent under Leopold’s iron fist.

She laughed so that the sound would drown out the glee in her mother’s voice that whispered in her ear “Well done, darling girl.” If only she could drown out the remorse and the guilt. If only she could unsee her father dead on the floor and unfeel his last breath against her shoulder and unbreak her heart.

Like a leaf suddenly abandoned by the wind, the speed of the wind and the destruction of the castle slowed down and then gently stopped.

As if the curse had run out of fuel.

She could hear the fury: her mother’s, Rumpelstiltskin’s. She could feel their hate. And her father’s disappointment.

And then she felt the metal of the sword in her heart.

“You will never win.” Snow grunted, her prince’s head in her lap and her arms empty of her child. “Never.”

...   ...   ...

From the door, Emma could see the sweat pearling Regina’s forehead and the shallow breathing. All she wanted was to go there and wake her up and offer comfort. Instead, she walked away.

...   ...   ...

It was Emma going back to her room that brought Regina back to this world of cosy couches. She felt the woman leaving and was thankful for it. If Emma had come any closer, she would have forfeited any good intention she’d ever had. There were times when she’d found herself wishing she could take Emma and Henry with her to her world. If she could have a family there if only she didn’t have to be so alone. She could have something to live for. She fought those thoughts, those ridiculous, selfish thoughts.

Emma would help her because she was noble and good. She would help defeat ReulG’horm in this world and she would help find this elusive princess of Snow’s. But even if it turned out she had anything to offer Emma, she couldn’t offer anything of substance- not her heart because she didn’t have one and not her life because it wasn’t hers to dispose of. Truly, the only thing she could offer was her absence. And Henry’s safety.

The problem was, she was falling. She was falling for Emma and for Henry and for this life they had forged here and she had never been strong enough to protect the ones she loved, not even from herself. The only safe place for them was here. The only decent thing for her was to leave them here.

She got water from the tap and returned to couch where she wrapped herself up in that sinfully soft throw that Emma kept there all the time wishing, wishing. She was an idiot. Even this Jesus of Emma’s probably knew that. Hope didn’t just sprint eternal. It damned well drowned out common sense.

…   …   …

This time, when she walked to the mirror she had no clue that she was dreaming. It all seemed so real when she looked into the square mirror and her mother’s face was there, stern, impatient.

“Mother!” Regina doubled over as if she had been punched.

Her mother’s mouth pinched at the corners, that smirk that conveyed how much trouble she was in even without the benefit of a single syllable. The word held for a second in the air, the dream becoming solid and vivid in the cold emanating from the mirror.

“You tried to kill me, Regina, dear.”

“I did. I killed you.” A hum was her mother’s only response. “You’re not real. You’re not here. Go away. You are not here.”

“I forgive you, you silly, obtuse little girl.”

“I don’t want your forgiveness.” Except that was not true. She wanted anything, any scarp at all from her mother she could get.

“You shall have it nonetheless.” Regina tried to walk way, to turn her back to the mirror though a wealth of experience told her that you just don’t do that to Cora if you value your life. Not until she is finished with you. She turned her body but her feet were rooted to the spot, making it impossible to move.

“You’re not real”

Cora’s mouth pinched once again at the corners. “Aren’t you tired of being a doormat yet, Regina, dear.”

“I am not a doormat!”

“But you are. Look at you.” Regina looked at herself. She was naked before the mirror, her body showing every single nick, scrape, bruise, wound of the last twenty-eight years, fresh, in vivid colour. She tried covering herself but her arms wouldn’t move. “Don’t be silly. Mother is here to help you. Get that princess and take her back. Turn the tide around. Take her home and get your throne back. Snow White will give anything to have her cub back, even the throne that is rightfully yours, your freedom.”

“No.”

“No?” The tone was too sweet to be real, to be anything but a threat.

“I’m sorry, Mother.” The light of triumph shone in Cora’s eyes. “You are dead.”

“And you are stupid if you thought that would stop me. You are a disappointment, Regina. Just when I thought you were becoming the child I deserve.”

It was the implied promise of affection more than anything that caused the kneejerk reaction. “I’m so sorry mother. I don’t know where the princess is.”

“Don’t be so stupid, Regina. She’s right under your nose and you know it. Just grab her and change your destiny. Crush Snow White and this princess of hers under your boot and rise again. Be the best you can be. Be the daughter I deserve.”

“Emma is not the Lost Princess!” Her mother gave her a knowing smirk. “She isn’t. She can’t be.” The pursing of her mother’s lips was reply enough. Air whooshed out of her lungs as acceptance sunk in. “She isn’t…”

Cora waited her out then delivered the coup de grace. “You have known. Always too weak to do what’s needed.”

“I’m not weak.”

“Why do you think your miserable little curse failed, Regina, dear? Love makes you weak. You love for your father and now your… affection for this…” She spat the word viciously. “Princess”

Regina’s shoulders slumped. “What do you get from this, mother?”

“I want to see my daughter triumph.”

“You’re dead.”

“Do I look dead to you, Regina? There is so much at stake, my dear girl. The players are always the same. But only you can change the result. Take this princess home. She belongs to you already. She gave you her heart. Use it. Just like you used your father’s.”

“No.” Regina murmured sadly.

“No?” Cora’s eyebrow raised dangerously.

“I don’t know where she is.” Her mother remained unmoved. “I don’t know who she is.” There was no reaction from Cora and that in itself was more accusation than any words she might have hurtled at Regina. “I can’t.”

“Can’t? It seems to me that you won’t.”

Fine. She wouldn’t. “She doesn’t deserve that. No one does.”

“I thought you were better than this. What a shame that given the choice between freedom and servitude, you’d choose such a life. Do you think you will have another chance? Any other choice? Do you think Snow and Rumpelstiltskin will just hand it over to you and let you come back here to be what? This woman’s whore? What else could you be in this world of hers, Regina?” It hurt to breathe as if the air was made of knives. “Here too you’d be nothing.” The words cut through her. “Absolutely nothing.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 15

The morning was bright and cold and Regina went through the paces with Emma: check the video feed, have coffee, eggs, toast. Everything was bitter on her tongue, lumpy in her throat and stony in her stomach. She studied Emma. It wasn’t real. Emma could not be the princess just like her mother could not have visited. Her mother was dead. That was all there was. Cora was dead and Emma was not the princess.

They found one more alley, fought one more straggling imp and Regina tried to force down a pretzel that Emma offered her in the street. Her cheeks hurt and her jaw ached from the pressure of keeping quiet. For once she wanted to go to someone and tell of what worried her, of what hurt her and that person was Emma. But she couldn’t and she wouldn’t go to Emma. Emma had enough to worry about. Emma had to think of keeping food on the table and the rent of the apartment paid and keeping her boss sweet and Henry protected.

Emma had so much to worry about and there was nothing Regina could do except put more pressure on her. She kept her mother’s visit- if that’s what it had been- quiet.

She kept herself quiet. She ate, she fought, but anything else was beyond her. And if Emma truly was the Princess, if it was not product of her mind then it had all just taken a turn for the very worst: it was literally either Emma or her. One life for another. How could she have forgotten that she was on borrowed time here? How could she have forgotten this life was not hers to have? That for her there was no companion, no dinner, no warm bed, no words of comfort, no one to talk to at the end of the day? She had forgotten how her life looked like and she’d do well to remember. She’d do well to thank her mother- dead or alive- for reminding her of that.

...   ...   ...

Emma studied Regina from the kitchen. It was odd. Just the night before she’d had ice cream down her pants because they had almost – almost- kissed. They had been close and they had been talking- like they had every night for the past... what? Five? Six nights?- and today it was like they were strangers, even more than Regina had been when she had first dropped into Emma’s bed and life unannounced. Now Emma wanted nothing but to hear what was wrong- because something definitely was. Something was very wrong. Regina had opened up, told her stories about her world, about her life. Regina had talked and listened and this was not the same person. For all she knew, Henry was right and aliens had come in and taken the real Regina back to the mother ship leaving them with a clone or something.

She put the clean dishes away that she had been washing simply out of a need to give herself some time and head space. Regina took Henry home and when she came back in through his window, Emma dried her hands on the dish towel: it was time to face the music the dance.

“We need to talk.” She stopped Regina from retreating into the bathroom. Regina tried to walk around her as if she had been a piece of furniture.

“What about?”

“About whatever’s bugging you.”

“Bugging? What does that mean?”

“Don’t play games with me, Regina.”

“I’m not. But I do need to use the bathroom. I believe that it is the socially accepted norm in this world of yours as much as mine.”

Defeated, Emma moved to the side, allowing Regina to escape into the bathroom. For a moment, Emma promised herself. She couldn’t hide in there forever.

Regina succeeded in hiding for the better part of half an hour. Then Emma lost her patience and whined that she needed to use the toilet. It was underhanded but it got Regina out. “Now let’s talk.”

“You lied. You said you had to go.”

“Yes, I did. Let’s talk.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know. How about we talk about whatever crawled up your ass between yesterday’s ice cream and today?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Is this because we didn’t... I mean... or is it because we almost did...”

Regina blushed furiously and then some thought must have occurred to her because Emma clearly saw all blood draining form her face. “There is nothing to talk about, Emma. Everything is fine. Now let me go. I need to go out. I think I heard something.”

“Heard?”

“Smelled.”

“Maybe it’s the distinct smell of bullshit.” Emma spoke as she stood between Regina and the widow, physically blocking Regina’s exit.

“Stop. Let me through.”

“Stop lying. You’re not going out.” Well, Emma could hope. She was quite sure she couldn’t stop Regina doing just that or anything else she wanted. She was going to have a god go at it, though.

“Yes, I am.” Regina said with finality.

“No.” Emma grabbed Regina by the wrists and twisted herself so that she was standing behind Regina, the woman’s wrists across her chest. This was, potentially, one of the stupidest moves ever. “No, you’re not.” She grunted while she dragged Regina to the only place away from the front door and Henry’s window- her bedroom. She was probably going to end up with another bruise in her face but this was important. This was… vital.

“How do you do it without magic?” Regina spat out between her teeth as she realised she had to struggle for freedom. She could free herself from Emma’s hold if she wanted. She was almost sure.

“Training. I’m a bail bondsman. Person.” Emma grunted while fighting Regina digging her heels, fighting her for every inch. “I can carry dead weight deadbeats to collect my money.”

“Everything is about money.” Regina pushed. It wasn’t true and she knew it but she was willing to fight dirty.

“No.” She regretted the tone as soon as she heard the chip in Emma’s voice. “Everything is about Henry. This is what I know can do that can keep food on the table and a base close to him. I’m good at it. I’m using it on you. Shut up now, I’m out of breath.”

“When you put me down I’ll… kick your ass.”

“I may need to hold on to you then.” For a second, she thought she would laugh. The curse words, her liberally used curse words sounded out of place in Regina’s mouth and utterly kissable. Shit.

“You won’t. No one ever does. I’m warning you.”

The breath she missed could have been because of the effort of struggling with Regina or the effect of the off the wall confession. Fuck! Emma just held on tighter because Regina was squirming and her bid for freedom was closer to succeeding than Emma had hoped for. She put all she had into getting Regina into her bedroom. She shoved the door open with her foot. She had the advantage of a couple of inches but it didn’t seem to be doing much in her favour. Regina was like an eel, squirming her way to freedom and that didn’t require height advantage. Emma was also dead sure that Regina was not using even half of her arsenal or she’d be dead on the floor by now, even with the daggers tucked away in the safe.

“Don’t you dare!” Regina hissed when she saw the bed so close now, but Emma, relieved, simply dumped her onto the bed, falling on top of Regina. There was no way she was going to start the uphill struggle again. She either held onto her catch or she let it go. No two ways about it.

“Calm down.” Emma gritted through her teeth, only just managing to clamp Regina’s arms by her head. “Just calm the fuck down.”

“Fuck you!” Regina spat.

“Very American. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Emma could see the snake in Regina, the subterfuge, the survival instinct. She was not above biting. She was a warrior but she could fight like a little girl so Emma would do well to get all her body parts out of the reach of those teeth. “Please calm down so we can speak. I’m not letting you out of the house until we do. Hell, I’m not letting you up until you promise not to bite, scratch, gouge, kick, hit, throw anything at me or even move.”

The light of battle escalated in Regina’s eyes. “What gives you the right?”

“You didn’t give me much choice!”

“Oh, I’ll give you choice! Get off of me now or else!”

“Or what?” Emma pushed, stupidly even in her own opinion. “I can stay like this all night. Or you can calm down and can speak. We’ve done that before. It went alright. Let’s try that crazy concept again.”

“You don’t want me here. I don’t want to stay. Just a week ago this was the only thing you wanted.”

“Well, it isn’t now. Please talk to me.” The thrashing subsided for a second though Emma knew better than to lower her guard.

Regina panicked. Too close, too fresh, too much. She went back to basics. “You’re hurting me. My arm...”

All it took was the slight whimper. Instinctively, Emma loosened her hold. It was all Regina needed. Emma you sucker. Quick as a snake, sneaky as one too, she sank her teeth in the back of Emma’s hand.

“Jesus, Regina, you drew blood.” Emma stared at her hand, teeth marks in stark relief.

“You thank that Jesus of yours that I didn’t rip your hand off. Now let go of me. Or I will do it.”

“Fine. Knock yourself out. I’m not going to bite you. It’s effective, I’ll give you that. My hands hurts like a bitch, but I’m just gonna hold on until you tell me what the hell is wrong with you. Then you can go wherever you want.”

“With me? You shove and push me and manhandle me and there is something wrong with me?”

“I didn’t shove you... Yet. Bite me again and that may change. And I mean wrong before now. You’ve been wrong all day. I want to know why!”

“Why?” What? Regina tried to understand the question.

“Yeah, why.”

Fight or flight instinct kicked in and she chose flight. “I’m not talking to you.”

“Exactly. You haven’t talked to me all day.” Emma’s tone softened. “You didn’t talk to me all night. I want to know why.”

“Why...”

“Jesus, Regina, stop repeating what I say. I want to know why. I want to know what I did. So that I can maybe apologise or some crazy concept like that. Why.”

The fight left Regina. Why? Because she was sick of herself, sick of the way her life had turned out. Sick of being the harbinger of destruction and pain. She saw her teeth etched on Emma’s hand. She was always causing pain. There was nothing else she was good at doing except causing pain. She was sick of it, of what she dragged with her everywhere she went. Emma could not be the princess. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t need it. She didn’t need what was waiting for her back home. Emma’s life was here. It was difficult but it was a good life. And she didn’t deserve having what was waiting for the Princess. No one did. And most of all, Regina couldn’t help but let the feeling flood through her, it was not fair that she could not, yet again, protect the ones she loved.

“Talk to me, Regina.” Emma slid off to the side but kept Regina’s hand in hers.

“My mother visited.”

...   ...   ...

Okay, that Emma did not expect. “But you said she was dead.”

She didn’t let go, Regina noticed. Emma’s hands were still on hers and she hadn’t let go. And now she wanted to cry. As Emma so eloquently put it, fuck.

Emma pulled her up to a sitting position and waited, hands still linked together.

And waited some more.

“She is. I killed her.”

“And this is not like a... what’s the word... euphemism...”

“No. I had her killed. I had her heart brought to me.” Emma swallowed a dry knot in her throat.

She was going to wake up soon. Real soon. She had to Or maybe she needed the loony bin for herself because- and there was no honest way to explain this even to herself- she actually believed Regina. “Maybe it’s your subconscious trying to tell you something… What did she tell you? Or you know… What was the message, the bottom line?” Regina blanched and her eyes widened. Emma amended wildly, trying to find something positive to focus on. “But... I mean... it would be good news, right? If she were alive?”

“You are thinking like a good person, Emma. I am not a good person. And my mother... well...”

“Gotcha.” Emma sat at the edge of the bed, Regina’s hand still in hers. “Alright, so your mom was a bitch.” She nodded contemplatively. “Screw her, right? We do what we need to do and then we’ll see what see.”

For an empty sentence, it was strangely comforting. If Emma was the princess- and that was a big if- then screw her mother. Screw the memory of her or the ghost of her or whatever had come to her in that pretty bathroom. “Would you go to the Enchanted Forest? I mean… if you were in the princess’ shoes?” She smoothed the mark of her teeth on herm’s hand with her thumb.

“Huh?” Emma’s eyebrow raised questioningly.

What on earth was she thinking, Regina berated herself. And yet, she wanted to, she needed to know. “If you were... I mean... if you were the princess, would you go back?”

“Me? A princess? Regina, I was left at the side of a road, hours old, with a blanket that I don’t even know if it was made for me. I’m no princess.”

“But what if?”

“If? Look… I really hope you find her and that she wants to go there and be the princess and saviour and whatnot. But me? I hold a grudge. So if it were me, I would say fuck you mom, fuck you dad. I have Henry, Regina. I know you don’t get it, but I have Henry here. I would never leave him behind in the hands of that mother.”

“I know you think I don’t. But I do. He’s your son. I don’t understand why you let him go in the first place but you want him back. And you would do anything for him. Including living above your means so that you can be close. Protect him.”

“Look, here’s the thing,” Emma sighed. “You don’t get it... Henry isn’t...” Emma pushed her hair back nervously. It was late and a bad idea to go out. “Screw this… come with me. I’ll show you.”

Hastily, she put on her jacket and boots and grabbed her car keys. They loaded up their weapons and left the cosy apartment building.

...   ...   ...

They parked outside the modest building in Forest Hills Emma had taken them every afternoon. Emma’s Bug did not stand out like a sore thumb here; it melted into the background of nothing much cars and slightly rundown buildings. She leaned against the seat and waited for courage. On the second floor, a small blond head illuminated by the ceiling lamp came to the window, scanned the street. Regina looked up, then at Emma. Oh. She had found Emma’s daily pilgrimage to this street odd, but she hadn’t thought much of it. She certainly had not asked.

“Henry is not my son, Regina. Not like you imagine.” Regina looked from the window to Emma and back again. “I gave my baby up. I couldn’t keep him. I was eighteen and in prison. They don’t let you keep babies in prison and I had no one I could ask to take care of him. I thought it would be best like this, you know. Who would want a mother with a criminal record, right? But I started having these dreams, that he needed me. That I had abandoned him. So I started looking. I found him. It took me six years but I found him. Or I thought I did. I found Henry. And then Scott. They were born on the same day. And I thought.... I hacked into the wrong file and I thought Henry was mine. I moved to Boston, and when I got some money together, I moved to that building so that I could stay closer. But my son… the one that came from me… his name is Scott.” She pointed at the illuminated window. “Scott.”

Silent tears ran down Emma’s cheeks. “It’s a nice name, isn’t it? Scott’s happy, see? He has a good mom, a good dad. The kind that make him chocolate chip cookies and take him to little league games and kiss him in front of all his friends and embarrass the hell out of him. I have no right to him. And he doesn’t need me. Never did. But Henry... he does. He needs anyone who will give him the time of day. Hilary and Jackson leave him with all those nannies and waltz off. They have good jobs, good bank accounts, good reputations and the same blood running in their veins. But I swear, it’s like Henry is an accessory that they discard when the occasion does not call for it. And I... I can’t leave him there with her, Regina. Not on his own. He needs someone on his side.”

Regina deflated into her seat. She had it all wrong. Except… she hadn’t. She knew nothing about family. Hers was no example to live by, but she understood, as Emma wiped her face furiously, that families come in all shapes and sizes. “You’re wrong. You are Henry’s mother.” Emma and Henry were a family, no matter the bond between them. “And he is your son. Blood is only blood.” Emma snorted, a strange sound between a laugh and a cry, tempered by tears that fell anew. For a precious few days, she had been a part of that. She’d had that. No one could take that from her. It didn’t matter if Emma was the princess or not, if she could reverse her fortune by selling her off or even just finally earn the right to end her miserable life. Emma and Henry had taken her in, made her part of their family. If she left now, if she left them without breaking everything as was her habit, maybe they would, in some small measure, be her family still, no matter what.

She would have this week, these few days of being a family. And she would rather have a week of something this wonderful than any other prize.

This war would end with her. She’d go back empty handed and face Snow and Rumpelstiltskin. There was nothing they could do that they hadn’t done before, but Emma did not deserve to be their princess. She deserved so much better.

Fortified by her resolve, she faced Emma and touched her hand gingerly. “Please let me drive.” She just needed to stop wanting things that were not hers to have.

Emma’s laugh was jittery. “Fine, okay.”

“Just like that?”

“Yeah, why the hell not? You asked nicely.” She wiped her face again and opened the door. “You asked so nicely.” She commented when Regina just opened her mouth in disbelief. She quickly got out of her side of the car. “That means I trust you, if you hadn’t figured it out.”

“You do?”

“Yeah…”

Something in her chest grew and slowly occupied all the spaces inhabited only by her sadness. “I promise you Emma, I will keep you all safe.”

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

They looked into the water of the pond and saw the heart of the Princess, shining, shining and its light coiling itself around the darkness. It was blinding and it felt like something they had no right to see, something so achingly private. They saw as the Regina chose to protect that light. Knew at what cost she would do so.

They had wanted to watch more but all magic comes with a price and theirs was too much to pay. Around them, flowered and trees withered, their life force, their inherent magic drained by the unnatural use of it to power the women’s visions.

The woman in green was the first to notice that something was not quite right. She could feel it in herself, in her soul, in the fabric of her body that had magic still: it was too much. They were overdoing it, exhausting what nature so generously gave to them. The glamour they used to go unnoticed started to fade, the green of her dress vivid now, the lines of her face smoothing over, the blond of her hair shinning.

Swiftly, she stopped her companion, dissipated the vision. “We are running out.” She showed her her hands, smooth, young. And then, far away, in another world, a part of herself withered away, its magic consumed by her carelessness, by her curiosity, by her never-ending capacity for selfishness. She had had wanted so badly to see what was happening, if their plan was working that she had just betrayed the Evil Queen again.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Emma had given Regina driving privileges. She didn’t dwell on it but it was probably a de facto apology. Regina enjoyed driving nearly as much as she had loved ridding. There was something rather freeing about a car at her command as if nothing could ever hold her back.

That morning, however, as they were approaching the financial district to check on one of the camera locations, instinct took over. Regina parked the Bug when they were coming into the affluent neighbourhood. It was a half done job and she was sure she could have done a lot better but her senses were in overdrive. Emma jumped out of the car, propelled by the same feeling. They ran down the pretty tree lined street and it was as if a bomb had gone off. People were running in their well cut suits, holding onto their precious briefcases, horror in their faces. Emma stopped a woman running barefoot in a business dress. “What happened? What the hell happened?” But the woman was beyond words and shook herself free of Emma and walked and then ran again down the street.

Regina had not stopped to ask. She could feel it, smell it, hear it. Anyone could. She unsheathed her daggers and swam against the current of a river of people. She looked back, searching for Emma. She sheathed her left dagger and went back, this time swimming the crowd in the current’s favour. She reached Emma and grabbed her hand.

Everything around them was chaotic and loud, loud noises of screams and police vehicles and that god awful smell of death. Without letting go of Regina’s hand, Emma found her Glock and pulled it free. And then there was no more crowd, only an empty space between them and the epicentre of destruction: bodies on the floor, some dead, others almost so and the imps. Smaller than Emma remembered. The one in the zoo had seemed so big, so powerful.

There were police uniforms surrounding them, there were guns and a barrier of eerie silence that was expanding from the imps to Emma and Regina as the crowd retreated taking all sounds with them.

A strange calm descended over Emma, feeling Regina’s hand in hers, not the slightest tremble, not the smallest hesitation. That calm fortified her. That was a warrior, standing right there, anchoring her.

“What do we do?”

From somewhere, a shout reverberated through the historic buildings. Emma saw the blue of the uniform moving towards the imps. Stay back she prayed, just stay back. But the blue simply moved forward, his eyes on something at the centre of the cluster of imps, gun outstretching. Stay back, she thought again, because he didn’t know, not like she did. But he moved forward and there was movement at the centre of the imps, a small ripple that had Regina tensing and gasping by her side.

The officer shot.

An imp fell, another was on the officer in less than a blink .

Regina tightened her hold on Emma’s hand,

The world came to a stop: the imps opened ranks, their general standing between them, eyes trained on Regina, a wicked smile on its face, and a small boy was pushed forward, held by a hand with claws extended over the chequered pattern of his shirt.

“Henry!” All air left Emma’s lungs with that one word.

“Ah, there you are!” The imp leaned down to Henry and ostentatiously smelled the child, his eyes on Regina and the message clear. “The little one has your scent, queenie.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 16

Regina’s head spun and the ground slipped from under her feet. Her stomach tightened into a solid ball of anger and fear.

“What do we do? Regina, what do we do?” Emma tugged on their joint hands to move forward. Regina pulled her back, a command that brokered no dissent.

“It’s me he wants.”

“No.” It was not a difference of opinion. It was begging.

“It’s not a choice, Emma. It’s me or your son. So tell me: what do you want me to do?”

It felt like a goodbye. “Bring me my son.” And it hurt in way that few things in her life ever had.

“When Henry gets to you, don’t look back. Run, Emma. Just run.” Regina gave her a bright smile and then let go of her hand. She walked forward in the eerie silence, her kidskin boots making no sound. Only then did Emma notice that her hand was white around the knuckles from holding Regina’s hand so tight. That there were white finger marks on her hand where Regina had held just as tight. She bit down the scream suffocating her.

…   …   …

Regina discarded her daggers when the imp signalled her to do so, tossed them to floor and approached with her hands empty, palms up. She didn’t spare Emma another look.

The imp general cocked his head to the side and with a smile in what passed for a face, he demurred “I knew you would see it my way… Queenie.”

“You can let him go now.” Regina spoke, her voice steady, firm. Inside she was trembling.

“Hum…” The imp hummed as if it had been about the taste the finest of foods.

…   …   …

Emma watched Regina move, saw her daggers on the ground and it all hurt in her.

…   …   …

The imp general watched as the Queen walked towards it and he relished the victory. Such fun he would have. Unlike the others, the Queen endured. She didn’t break easily like all others and it was… fascinating. Oh such fun. He almost ordered her to go back and pick up her daggers. He liked a little bit of danger. He liked playing with fire. And as she stood by him, he found himself enjoying the scent of her, clean, full of promise, of war. Oh, he would enjoy this victory more than any other. ReulG’horm was a good master.

…   …   …

Henry saw Emma falling to her knees and Regina walking to him. He’d had no doubt that she would defeat them all until the moment she dropped her daggers to the ground. Was she surrendering? That could not be right. He tried to shake free of the claw holding him down, he saw Regina’s panic stricken face and stopped moving. He remembered what she’d told him about the poison on the claws. So he stood still. He grabbed the stone of the necklace tight in hand, clutched it like a drowning person. Why hadn’t it worked? He had always felt safe, the stone giving him a kind of physical comfort until last night. What had gone wrong?

He’d seen this before in films. Regina was going to give herself in so that they would let him go. But without her daggers, she was vulnerable, she was so vulnerable. He wanted to save her. He wanted to go to Emma and Regina and have ice cream and pizza, possibly even at the same time, but he wanted to go home with both of them. He clasped the necklace tighter. What had Regina said about it? It made her invisible to them. So how come the imps had seen him? She’d said something else. She’d said about being her way home. He didn’t want her to go home. He’d had one Emma for half his life and now he had one Emma and one Regina and he wasn’t going to home without one of them. He wasn’t. How had they seen him? What did the stone do? It was magic. He was sure it was.

It had to be.

“Go now, Henry. Emma is waiting for you.”

“No.”

“I’m not asking, Henry. Go.”

“But I―”

“Go, Henry. Now.”

The claw around his shoulder opened but the imp came closer to his face and spoke, its eyes red, its breath foul: “You are welcome to stay. I prefer… full bodied nourishment, but I can be…so… accommodating…”

Henry kicked. He was just an instinct reaction, but he kicked. His foot was as fast as his impulse and he kicked the imp. Regina’s hand pushed him away. “Run, Henry. Now.” He did. He ran, his backpack jingling against his back and his heart pounding. He saw Emma standing in front of him, her gun coming out of the harness under her jacket and then he looked back and Regina had her back to him, standing between him and the imp. Emma raised her gun and aimed.

“Regina!” She shouted and it echoed through the silent street. There was fear in Regina’s eyes when she stole a final look at Emma and the imp grabbed her by the arm. There was sorrow in that gaze. “Let her go!” Henry screamed, standing half way between Emma and Regina, his voice cracking around the words. “Let her go!” And his throat hurt, raw from the loss he knew unavoidable.

Devoid of any other weapon, Henry tossed the useless necklace as he would a rock or an arrow.

…   …   …

The imp laughed an ugly sound that reverberated from the steal and stone of the buildings.

“Batman!” Regina turned to the sound of Emma’s voice. “Duck!” And she squeezed the trigger on her Glock. It hit the imp, a silent whoosh and thump. Right between the eyes. Regina hadn’t ducked. She hadn’t moved. She was just standing there with an imp falling in slow motion to the floor, her blood pumping in her veins, the hairs in her arms standing.

Then the world picked up speed, fast, furious. A hole opened on the ground, growing, growing in dimension and the imps were pushing back and outwards, trying to stay out of its reach. Henry kicked the daggers in Regina’s direction and they were pulled towards the vortex of energy and sound. Regina dived to them and rescued them from the vortex. In a single movement, she sliced through the leathery skin of the imp’s throat, a gash from side to side.

The imp was dying next to her, his eyes, dulled by the approaching death, wide open in horror. So the imp was afraid. Emma had her gun. And she was beautiful, her hair billowing and swirling around her features like a halo and her gun was discharging round after round, each bullet hitting its imp target. Regina counted seven pops of the weapon. Seven thump thump thumps. Seven thud thud thuds of solid bodies hitting the ground. Over the madness, the swirling, devouring madness, they stopped and stared. And it was like suspended animation where everything slowed down and stopped except Emma’s heart and Regina’s blood.

Regina thought she had seen Emma reaching for her but then the moment was over, gone in the wind blowing and she looked at imp at her feet and she pushed the body towards the portal, rolled it, kicked it until it fell through. Emma copied the movement, pushing imps, some dead, others alive. Her necklace was a portal and Henry had opened it and Emma too was beautiful in battle and she had a family.

She should go. She should jump in and go back, kill them all while they were week from Emma’s weapon. The portal was her way back.

But here was home.

In the end, it was not her choice. A clawed hand grabbed her foot, pulled her down. She realized she was not ready to go. She didn’t want to go and there was no power so great in this realm or hers that could change her mind. She didn’t want to go and her body rebelled. She dropped the daggers and grabbed, clutched, clawed at the black of the tarmac where the portal had opened and she fought the imp’s pull. She kicked at its hand, at its claws, at everything pulling her away from home.

…   …   …

Emma saw Henry being pulled by the vortex, by the wind too strong for his small body, pulling him in and she grabbed him by the backpack and held him to her, his back against her front wrapping herself around him. The thought was not entirely formed in its panic but wherever Henry went, she’d go. She dropped to the ground, Henry snug under her. From that advantage point, she saw four fingers desperately clutching at the tarmac and she crawled, still keeping Henry under her body and dipped her hand into the void, grabbed Regina’s wrist and pulled up, fighting against the force pulling Regina down with strength fuelled purely by adrenaline. She grunted in surprise when Henry reached out as well and grabbed at the same wrist. They didn’t let go.

…   …   …

One hand then a smaller one grabbed her wrist and pulled. If she ended up back in the Enchanted Forest she’d never forget this moment when someone had fought for her. No one ever had. Unconsciousness pulled at the edges of her vision. “C’mon, Batman stay with us.” She heard Emma scream through the whirlwind and the screams of the imps falling – some running into the vortex- to remain with their leader.

“Queenie!” The imp called her from bellow, a voice that was not its own, but ReulG’horm, holding onto her ankle and pulling her down. The sound was plaintive, soothing, entreating and Regina closed her eyes as if that way she couldn’t hear the appeal of self-destruction.

“C’mon, Regina.” Emma shouted again.

“C’mon.” Henry echoed. “Hold on tight.”

No. She told herself. No. Her tired fingers clutched harder to the tarmac and she kicked the imp. She kicked at its hand, at its face, its arms, whatever her foot could find. She kicked herself free. The imp lost its grip on her and she was propelled upwards by the vortex closing in and then she was free, lying face down on tarmac so pristine it was as if nothing had ever happened.

Her wrist was in the tight grip of two hands. Air whooshed out of her lungs in shock and relief and then she was pulled under Emma’s arm, as secured to her as Henry was. She fought to breathe, painful, burning gasps of air. Every single one of them filled with Henry and Emma’s scent.

She closed her eyes and passed out.

…   …   …

Blue uniforms spilled out of speeding police cars and the world exploded into a cacophony of wailing sounds and screaming voices. Emma raised her head from Henry’s hair.

“What the hell happed?” And “What the fuck was that?” She heard but she had no words.

“We’re okay.” She told herself. “We’re okay.” The uniforms were rushing towards them and there were hands on them, lifting them up and carrying them away to the safety of the blue line of uniforms. There were imps still, four or five of them and they looked frightened and terrified. Alone.

“Keep them separated.” Regina mumbled. Emma pulled her and Henry once more to the safety of her arms and mouthed shhh and don’t say a word and Regina nodded once and fell silent against Emma’s shoulder. Around them, a blur of uniforms hustled and bustled. They did what they knew and didn’t understand what they were looking at: beings from a different world, with poison in their claws and hunger for their blood.

…   …   …

As the uniformed officers scattered to survey the scene Regina separated from Emma and Henry. Her daggers were missing. She walked through the debris of bodies and activity to find them. Without her daggers, she didn’t know what to do, what she was. They had always been as much anchor as jail. And she couldn’t find them.

…   …   …

Reluctantly, Emma let her go. She held Henry to her, tight, so very tight. “What were you doing in this part of town, kid?” Emma asked, her fingers raking through his hair, feeling for bumps and cuts.

“Hilary.” Henry answered. It was a complete sentence. Hilary did as Hilary thought better. Never mind that it was a school day. Never mind that she would probably leave the kid to the next bored PA she came across. Never mind the threat that been ripe in the air, in every news outlet. “I can’t see her.”

There was a coldness to the tone that frightened Emma. “Where did you see her last?”

“When she left me with Miss Gardiner.”

“Let’s go find your mom, kid.”

“She’s not my mom.” Henry stated matter of factly. “I’m more worried about Miss Gardiner. She was nice to me.”

“Oh, Henry!” Emma surveyed the street, the buildings. There were people staring out of windows, mouth agape, cell phones capturing video images that would never make sense. Regina walked to her, still looking at the floor as if she had lost something. “What happened?”

“My daggers.”

“What?”

“They’re gone.”

“Do you think they went through the portal?” Henry asked.

“It’s possible.” Emma replied when Regina just looked at her hands. The lines etched by the daggers seemed fainter somehow. “C’mon, Regina, we need to find Hilary.”

…   …   …

A makeshift medical aid tent was raised in the middle of the financial district and it looked as out of place as Regina felt. They were probed and prodded and cleared by the medics and then interrogated by the police. No, they didn’t know anything. No, they had no idea who or what those things were, where they’d come from what were they dealing with. They had no participation in the event. They were simply two women and a child terrified by what had happened. That was all. Hilary could not be found. Emma volunteered to take the kid home. She was a neighbour, knew the couple and probably Hilary had gone home. The police officer raised an eyebrow at that, but there were too many odd things to be concerned about. Two women taking a kid home was not one of them. Not when the kid was clinging to them like gum to a shoe.

Emma drove them home, Henry and Regina huddled together in the back seat.

…   …   …

Emma took the steps to the Henry’s apartment, Regina closing the rear, Henry in the middle. None of them was willing to risk anything. They rang the bell when all Emma wanted to do was to knock it down. If she found Hilary lounging on a couch, she would probably murder her. Though she had a gut feeling that that was not going to be the case.

The babysitter opened the door, cell phone in hand and pissed off expression in her face. “What?”

“Is Mrs Devereux home?” Emma asked, trying to keep her voice level. But the babysitter just raised her hand in a who knows type of motion and walked away from the door still speaking on the phone. Emma walked in behind her, Henry making his way in, followed by Regina. Softly he padded through the apartment that had to be at least three times the size of Emma’s one bedroom and called out “mom” softly.

Not that the babysitter would give a flying fuck about it, seemingly glued to the phone, speaking nervously. Regina pushed past Emma and grabbed the girl and took the phone from her, hung up and handed it back to the sitter. “Emma asked you a question. Please, kindly, answer.”

“Huh?”

“Mrs Devereux. Where is she?” Regina repeated slowly, enunciating each of the words carefully.

“I don’t know, alright! She didn’t call to cancel me and when I got here there was no one and there’s a terrorist attack downtown, I just wanna know if Jake is okay. I wanna know if my parents are okay and no one is answering the damned phones and I have to wait here and she can’t be bothered to tell me if I can go home. Fuck it, fuck her! I want my mom. I want to go home.”

“Has Mr Devereux called?”

“No. But he wouldn’t call even if the building had been on fire.”

“Were you off the phone long enough for them to call?” Emma intervened, standing between Regina and the girl because she could see the way Regina’s fists were tight with anger.

“I can park a call! Duh!” Maybe she would let Regina have her. Stupid, stupid kid. “Look: I saw what happened on TV. I just want to go home. Can’t you take Henry? I know he practically lives in your apartment. Please! I want my mom!”

“Henry,” Emma called. “Grab some stuff. And you,” She faced the babysitter again, “should probably stay here. It might not be safe tonight. Public transport is dead anyway.”

…   …   …

Emma couldn’t find it in her to care whether the babysitter tried to go home or stayed put. She was tired and angry. And scared. She was very scared. And relieved. She got her people in her apartment and closed the door. Checked the windows, behind the doors, under the bed. It was stupid but she had to make sure. She had to keep her people safe.

Then, she sent Henry to a shower. “Don’t use up all the hot water.”

Henry made his way to the bathroom but not without first hugging Emma and Regina, long powerful hugs.

“I could kill for a pizza.” Emma commented as she turned to Regina. Regina nodded slowly. Yes, that sounded perfect. It looked perfect. They were all alive and well, not a scratch on them. That was some sort of miracle as close as they had been to disaster.

“Pizza sounds nice.” Regina spoke and she was lost, looking into Emma’s forest eyes. Emma held on to her and seemed unable let her go. She reached out to a lock of hair and felt it in her fingers, soft, smooth. She shifted her eyes from their intense study of Emma’s face to the hair between her fingers. She couldn’t let go.

For her part, Emma lost all pretence: She pulled Regina to her and closed her arms around her body and held tight, so tight. It was a hug full of all that could have been lost, all that was, even of all the people she didn’t know that had been lost that day. There was fear and anxiety and relief and then, peace.

She felt Regina’s arms closing around her waist, a slow movement, and once they locked closed, Emma knew, she would not be let go of.

And wasn’t that a first in her life.

Surreptitious little tears wet her cheeks. A quiet sob chocked her. It was all the adrenaline, she told herself. It was making her do things and feel things she usually didn’t, that she usually had under control. But Regina tightened her hold and Emma burrowed her face into the mess of wispy hair that had escaped the plait running down Regina’s back.

“I was so scared.” She muttered into the soft skin of Regina’s neck.

“Henry is very precious to you.”

“No.” Emma pulled back, held Regina at arms’ length so that she could see into her face. “I mean… yes. He is. But I wasn’t scared when the imp had him. Because you were there. I knew you would get him back. I was scared when you tossed your daggers and gave yourself up in exchange. I didn’t know what to. And I thought it was the last time I would see you.”

Regina was paralysed. She had been fully prepared for not coming back. And it had not been her life that had flashed through her eyes- or the fact that I was not hers to handover- but Emma’s and how she deserved better, so much better, that her lot in life. And but for Henry tossing that necklace at the imp, opening that portal, then it would have been the last time Emma saw her. That anyone saw her. And it would have been fine because Emma deserved to know that someone had been on her side. She reached to touch Emma’s face, cupped the wet cheek and committed it to memory. In all the many years of her life no one had ever shed a tear for her. Only because of her. That was the most precious drop of her entire life.

“What happens now?” Emma asked when Regina couldn’t find a reply.

“To the imps?”

“You said that they don’t fight without a leader. The leader is dead. They’re defeated. You could stay. You could stay here.”

“Oh, Emma.” “No, hear me out, okay? You don’t have to go back. Why would you? They can’t reach you here. They have their victory. They have to leave you alone, now.”

“I also told you that only buys us some time. The ones that were left in this world, if they keep them apart, will soon be dead. Their weakness is that they need each other to survive. Alone, they are dead. But the ones that went through the portal alive will soon have themselves a new leader. Even if they were defeated... ReulG’horm is not.”

“But it’s not your problem anymore!”

“It is. But even if it wasn’t, Emma. What would I do here in this world of yours? I am not qualified for any job. All I know is war. All I know is death. All I know is how to kill, not how to make a life. Should I just wash myself clean of all the blood in my hands?”

“I… I hadn’t…”

“Thank you for thinking of it. It’s a lovely thought.” Regina touched Emma’s face again because she had no better comfort to give.

Henry came in and Emma turned her back on him to give her face a good scrub. “I don’t think anyone is delivering pizza tonight, kid. We’ll have to make do.”

“We could make some!” Henry ventured, a small but hopeful smile in his tired face.”

“I don’t know how to make pizza, Henry.”

“We can ask Google.” Henry offered

“Yes,” Regina quipped. “Google is your friend.”

Emma laughed. “Yeah, sure. Tell you what: we’re all going to have a quick shower and when we’re done, we can sort something out, alright?”

…   …   …

So they Googled pizza recipes and got started. Regina made the dough and for some reason, all Emma wanted to do was get behind her and help knead the dough. She shook her head free of such dangerous thoughts and concentrated on the sauce and on Henry, on why he had been in the financial district on a school day. She wished the answer had shocked her. It didn’t. Hilary had dragged the kid to the madness because she hadn’t had the time to drive him to school, what with the breakfast meetings and whatnot. And now she hadn’t found it in her to go back home, to call her son’s cell that remained stubbornly silent. Henry might have been used to the carelessness but she was angry on his behalf.

Regina exchanged a look with her. She too was thinking the same, probably. On an impulse, she tossed a little dough at Henry and made him smile. It quickly devolved into a little battle of dough balls but Regina quickly brought it to halt when she realised they’d have no pizza if it continued. But it had put a rosy shine to Henry’s face and Emma’s eyes had lost that sad downturn and if this was going to be the last she had with them, this is how she was taking them with her, even if she didn’t have a heart to carry them in.

…   …   …

Regina sat on the coffee table and looked at Henry, fast asleep on the couch. In the kitchen, Emma was doing the dishes, her gaze sad again now that she was done with keeping a front for Henry. Regina sighed. There was nothing she wanted more at that particular moment, than to believe this was a choice that was hers to make, to heed Emma’s call and hide in this little apartment and make pizza for the rest of her life. If she never saw an imp, if she never felt a dagger in her hand again in her life, it would still be too soon. Staying here was as close as it got to what she had dreamed at seventeen and Daniel had loved the girl she was.

Emma had a romanticised notion of what she was, of what she did. She expected the best of her, believed in her. And she hadn’t had that since… ever. Daniel had been good to her, believed in her but back then, she’d been innocent of everything. She had valued his sentiment, but it had been a value as short sighted as she was. Having someone do that, feel that, now that she had been the defeated, punished Evil Queen for a lifetime tasted far sweeter, deeper, more that it could have ever been at seventeen.

Was it wrong to want, to crave a little of it before she had to go, she thought as she covered Henry with a comforter. It was probably selfish, she thought as she caressed the hair on his forehead and delighted at the warmth of his skin and his child’s breath with each exhale. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t take Henry and Emma with her. They had a life here, a good life. That was something the Evil Queen would do. And she was done being her title. They didn’t need her. But she could and she did wonder how it would feel to have a life such as this, where your most important job is to cover a child with a blanket to ward off the cold of the night.

Henry’s hand closed around her finger as she caressed his hand by his face and suddenly it was all too much. She kissed Henry’s forehead and hastily retreated to the bathroom to get her wits about her. She would need that, she would need to be collected and stitched together if by any reason Emma asked her again to stay. Because she might just say yes.

…   …   …

She sat on the floor against the edge of the tub and hugged her knees to her chest, tight, tight. If she didn’t have her heart, if it wasn’t hers to feel with, why did it feel like it was breaking into a thousand pieces? She looked at the markings on her hands. There had been a time when she was angry. Angry about everything. She had spent such a long time being angry: at Snow White, at her mother, her fate. At herself. And then Rumpelstiltskin had taken her heart and anything she had ever felt, anything she would still feel was nothing but an echo coming from so far away.

And here she was, feeling, feeling as if she had a heart to feel with, wanting, wishing. Hurting. She rocked herself, unaware she was doing so. And then she heard a sour little giggle and she knew her time in this world was over. She jumped to her feet because the one thing she wouldn’t do was give Rumpelstiltskin the satisfaction of seeing like that.

She found him in the mirror, head cocked to the side, mirth in his expression. “What? Are you missing home already?”

She didn’t tell him that this world felt more like home to her than everything in the Enchanted Forest ever had, why give him ammunition he didn’t need? Her time with him would be long and arduous. Without a princess to hand over to Snow White, she would never be free.

“Her Majesty Queen Snow White was kind enough to have thought of giving you a taste of home. To help you in your journey back, if you will.” Behind him, a dishevelled Snow held a heart in her cupped hands.

“Where is my baby?” She asked and Regina knew, just by the sunken eyes and the shrill dead tone in her voice that it was a bad day for the Queen. “Where?” The Queen insisted when the reply was not swift. Her hands squeezed the heart and Regina knew that the distance meant nothing: she doubled over in pain.

Beside the Queen, Rumpelstiltskin looked bored. “Easy, Your Majesty. Dead bodies bring no babies home.” He studied Regina intently.

Through the fog of the pain, Regina looked up, right into Snow’s eyes and knew it was more than grief. That it was madness taking hold. And maybe it was madness on her part too, but she mourned the child Snow she had met, little older than Henry was now. What had happened to this woman?

As the Queen eased the hold in her heart, Regina straightened and gasped for air. She knew, deep in her bones, that Rumpelstiltskin had a hand in it, as surely as he’d had one in her descent into madness and evil. But she and Snow would never be kindred spirits and Snow would never listen to her.

As the Queen lost interest in her, Rumpelstiltskin occupied the mirror. “If I didn’t know any better, dearie, I’d say love is in the air!” He giggled.

Regina carved her nails into her palms. She would not say a word. She would not rise to the bait.

“You know, dearie, there is more than one way to skin a cat.”

“What do you want from me?”

“What I’ve always wanted, but that’s neither here nor there. There are things I want…” The threat hung in the air as he looked beyond her. Regina heard the things he didn’t say. She was tired, sick and tired of being a barren battle field for Rumpelstiltskin. She would not let that happen to Emma. It ended with her.

“You may hide from me, Regina dearie, but your heart can’t. I know your heart. I know what’s in your heart.” The air whooshed out of her as if she had been punched. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic, dearie! I feel a certain… tenderness in my heart…” He put his gnarly hand over his heart and waited a beat for the joke to sink in, “for you. Have you ever heard that love conquers all? No? Pity! Worth the thought, though… Love conquers all!” And he walked away from the mirror letting her see the dais and the White throne with Snow slumped morosely on it. Rumpelstiltskin’s sardonic giggle was like a bad joke. “It breaks even the limpest of curses.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 17

“It’s time. We failed. The Dark One knows.”

The woman in the green nodded. Of course he did. How had he banked magic when they had all but lost it? Of course he would know. And he would be tormenting Regina now. Not that she could see. Not that she could anything about it now that whatever precious little they had was exhausted. And with the imps back by way of the necklace she had imbued with whatever magic they had left, she knew her companion was right. She nodded.

“I had hoped the Princess would have wanted to come back.” Her companion nodded sadly. They both knew they could not exercise force, the Princess would have to choose to come. And with the child, that was unlikely to happen. They had both seen into that heart and knew where it lived.

“The Evil Queen won’t―”

“Regina.”

“Apologies… Regina won’t ask her.”

The woman in green smiled. “No, she won’t. She will protect the Princess even if costs her a lifetime of servitude.”

“We have failed, then.”

The woman in green nodded. Maybe not. Maybe not completely. “It’s time, then.”

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

The image in the mirror faded and all that was left was her face. Where some had seen beauty and others evil, Regina now saw only lines, neither good nor bad, just lines. And behind those lines, always waiting, the ghosts of her past, the ghosts of her victims. She lowered her face towards sink and washed it, scrubbed it clean until it burned.

Rumpelstiltskin was playing her, just like he always had. He wanted her happy as much as he wanted a forked tongue. He wanted something, he stood to win something if she… what? Allowed herself to love? Would her curse break if she loved? Whatever he stood to win, someone else would lose. And whether it was her or Emma, she would not let him win. No matter the cost.

She’d go back, Emma and Henry would stay. End of narrative. It would be prize enough to know that she had kept them safe from him.

She switched off the lights, closed the door and hoped that Emma had gone to bed. She was not in a good place and one look from Emma and she would know. Emma was like that. She saw her. All of her.

But Emma was just taking off Henry’s shoes and softly commented without looking, “I thought the toilet had taken you hostage.”

“No, I’m fine. No rescue needed.”

…   …   …

Emma heard the tiny break in Regina’s voice and when she was done making Henry comfortable, she turned to Regina and held her at arm’s length, studied her face like she would a map.

“Come on, the kid’s got the sofa.” And pulled her by the hand. “Don’t worry, you’re safe from me.” She told Regina as she gave her yet one more pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt. “But, for the record, I’m not stupid and I sure as hell am not blind. And you may not want to talk to me, but I know that something’s not right.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. She knew there would be none. So she just went into the bathroom to change and to allow Regina time to do the same.

…   …   …

Regina felt the tug at the edges of conscience, a call of sorts and opened her eyes. She sat up in bed and the old woman from the village was there, sitting on the bed at her feet, her green dress old and ragged but, somehow, shimmering in the darkness of the room.

Softly, the woman reached out for the bedside lamp, switched it on and smiled warmly. Regina looked at Emma, serenely asleep, her hand flat in the space between them, as if she had entertained the idea of reaching for Regina but had known she’d be out of bounds. Not the slightest agitation in her sleep indicated that she had felt the presence of the woman or the light on. And she knew Emma was as light a sleeper as she was. She studied the old woman in the green dress, ready to stand between her and Emma. Something was off with that face.

“Worry not, dear, she will not wake up. We are in between. She can’t see us or feel us.”

“In between?”

“In between worlds. Hers and ours.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Your mission here is done. It’s time to go back home. ReulG’horm’s army has returned, weakened. This is the time to defeat them, while they are weak and disorientated, without leader.”

She had known her time was short. She had known she’d go back at any moment. But somehow, she had also believed that she had time. Time to say goodbye, to fill herself with memories. Tentatively, she touched Emma’s hand, the one lying between them. Emma held on to her hand and sighed burrowing further into her pillow.

“I’m ready.”

The woman gave her a soft smile, the wrinkles in her face momentarily losing definition and then solidifying again. She touched Regina’s hand over Emma’s. “I know you are not.”

A lump grew in Regina’s throat and made it so difficult to breathe.

The old woman observed silently, the way the Queen’s voice hitched, how her hand fluttered over the one on the bed next to her. How that hand held the Queen’s and sought refuge and solace in it even in sleep. It was unsurprising and it gave her hope. The Queen loved deeply. Somewhere along the line, she had lost her way, but she did love. She had seen her heart, held it, weighed it. The weight of it was love: hurt, crushed, trampled on, but love nonetheless. And she knew that right at that moment, the Queen was fighting it, not out of fear, but out of nobility.

She sighed sadly. So much was beyond her control. She had hoped that, by coming to this world, the Queen would find the one that was lost. She had hoped against reason that she would defeat the enemies that were decimating them. She had hoped the Queen would have found her way to freedom. Yet, she had found the lost Princess and she would not return her out of love.

For herself, she was done meddling. It had brought her nothing but regret. The Queen had decided not to take the Princess home. She would do nothing to sway a decision taken in love.

All she could do was give a broken soul solace and succour for a few hours.

Love, it seemed, conquered everything except reality.

“Say your goodbye, Your Majesty. I cannot give you your freedom. It is not in my hands. But I can give you what is: a little time. I will come back tomorrow at this time.”

“I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye is the hardest word, Your Majesty. But if only you have the courage and the fortitude, you can have a whole day of something wonderful. You can take away those memories with you, make yourself strong in them. Wouldn’t you rather have a single day of something wonderful and mourn its loss than to live a whole life of nothing at all?

Regina turned her gaze to the bed, to Emma, peacefully asleep. “I am not brave enough.” She touched the skin above where her heart should be.

“Regina…” The old woman entreated. “Love will give you the courage. Loving deeply give the most cowardly heart the courage of a lion.”

“Then I am not strong enough.”

“Find that strength in her. She loves you and you know that. Being loved gives you strength.”

“How do you know? How do you know that it’s true?”

“Because I know hearts. I feel their weight. And hers is ripe with love and heavy with impending loss.”

It was so easy. It was all she wanted to hear. And because it was easy, she fought it. “What’s in it for you? What do you want of me?”

The old woman cupped her hands and opened them for Regina to see. “Nothing. I know Rumpelstiltskin came to you. And I know the games he plays and how you have been a pawn and are weary of them. Don’t let him take this from you, Regina. Don’t let him. Live this one day like there is nothing stopping you from being happy.”

Regina paused, surprised by the notion of being happy. Her eyes went from Emma’s sleeping form on the bed to the old woman sitting next to her. “Happy?” The old woman touched her hand gently in reply. “Who are you?” Regina asked but there was no malice, no bitterness in her voice. Only genuine bewilderment. “Why did you send me here?”

“One day, I will ask you for forgiveness, for I let you down before, blinded by pride as I was. For now, let me give you this day for happiness. It was foreseen that the Princess would return. That she would deliver us from evil. We had hoped she would want to return. But the Dark One wants her and seeks actively to have her back. Nothing good can come from it. If he gets to her―”

“He won’t.” Regina gritted her teeth. “Not while I draw breath.”

There was a soft movement, the soft falling of when you are falling sleep except she was still awake. Next to her, Emma sat up on the bed and Regina knew she had felt it.

“Who was that?” Emma asked alert, despite the sleep in her voice.

Regina looked and found nothing but a trembling of the light where the old woman was disappearing. “My world, calling me back.”

“No. Just stay here. If you want to stay, no one can make you go.”

Regina allowed her body to fall softly against Emma and that warmth seeped into her very bones. She had been so cold for so many years- she desperately wanted- needed- this warmth to be able to go on fighting. She nodded and, for Emma, that was reply enough.  

“How long?” Emma asked, her hands softly running up and down on Regina’s back, her face burrowed into Regina’s neck and long hair. “How long do we have?”

“We?” The old woman was right. A day was more than she’d had in over thirty years. She wanted that day now. She wanted it, craved it, anticipated it viciously. She let herself be wrapped in Emma’s arms and let Emma bring her down to the mattress and hold her face to gaze deep, deep, so deep in to her eyes she might just figure out all her secrets, all her dirty deeds. She closed her eyes in defence. Emma ran her fingers down her hair, twirled a lock of thick brown hair between her fingers and took it to her lips. Regina opened her eyes to watch in fascination all the small movements, all the little tendernesses. She reached to touch Emma’s face, her lips, her fingers growing bolder, wanting more and more of that face. She ran her finger over Emma’s bottom lip. Suddenly she was hyper aware of where she was, of what she wanted from Emma, from herself, of what she wanted to feel. “Please.” She muttered and her voice was raspy even to her own years. “Give me this memory to take with me, Emma.” There was an unaccustomed urgency in her voice, in the way she reached out to touch Emma.

Emma sighed and Regina felt the morning breath caressing her mouth, her cheeks, her eye lashes. Her body arched up seeking more contact. This memory, she wanted the memory of these things, of these feelings, of this warmth, of the smell of Emma, of her breath and body lotion, the clean smell of her sheets. She wanted it viciously, violently, more that she had ever wanted anything else. Even revenge.

“How long, Regina?”

…   …   …

To Emma, it was simple: this was a free country and no one- no one- would take Regina from this apartment, from this bed. From her arms, she realised with a shiver. She was done losing people she cared about, she was done being left behind. She was going to wait until whoever came to collect Regina to show up at Fucked Up Interworld Airport and then she would reason with them. Or if reason could not be had, then she’d just fight her way through this. Am punch in the face could be very persuasive.

…   …   …

“It doesn’t matter.” It would never be enough time. Regna touched Emma’s cheek. “Please Emma. I want good memories. I need them. Please… Fill me with warm memories to last me the rest of my life.”

The long brown lock of hair wrapped around her fingers anchored Emma, held her in place. It gave the moment a solidity at odds with the dreamlike feel of the woman’s body matching hers, curve for curve, hard spot for hard spot. “What do you want to do?” Emma waited because if Regina only wanted to go to the park and feed the ducks, she was going to get up and do it.

“I…” God, it had been so long since she had wanted anything, since she had been able to want “You.” Her voice broke just a fraction. “Do you… I mean―”

“Yeah! I do. Regina, you have no idea how much.”

The air left Regina’s lungs in a sudden whoosh of surprise, of need. Desperate need. Except she had no idea. No idea how. Despite herself, her body jerked up to meet Emma’s, seeking contact, as if it had ideas of its own. “Emma, I’ve never… I mean… I don’t know how to… I want you… like this… so much and I don’t know how…”

Emma blushed and thought about dark alleys and things that go bump in the night never to be seen again. “We’ll figure it out.” She said and she let her hand wander through that warrior’s hard body covered only in her soft flannels.

“Maybe we should Google it.” Regina offered. God, Emma’s hand on her hip, on her waist was pulling her apart, undoing all the careful stitches that held together. Her hand ran up Emma’s arm and she placed a small, hesitant kiss on that warm skin. She wanted to leave her mark on Emma. She wanted to be so good at loving her that Emma would never forget her. “Google is your friend.” It was selfish yes, but she needed, with an overwhelming desperation, to have someone remember her, know her before she once again became nothing but a shadow. She needed to be real, if only for a moment.

Emma smiled and moulded her body against Regina’s, lying softly on the bed by her side. She thought of all the porn they would get if Regina Googled something along the lines of pleasuring a girl. “We’ll figure it out.” She promised. “What do you want me to do?”

“Kiss me.” Regina answered and took Emma’s face in her hands. “Please kiss me.” She asked as she brought Emma’s mouth to hers.

Emma ran her hand through strands of Regina’s hair, through the curves of her hip and of her waist, her muscled back. Regina kissed her, slow, inviting, tempting. Then, as she felt Regina’s nipples harden against her, something crackled between them like a banked fire suddenly hit by a gust of wind. It was flame and it raged between them until Emma pulled back, afraid they might both be consumed by it.

“Are you sure?”

Regina almost sobbed at the tenderness in Emma’s voice despite the clawing need. Her reply stunned her: she brought her hands from Emma’s hips where she had been holding on for dear life and pressed her thumbs gently against Emma’s pebbled nipples, worked them in small circular movements. She nodded yes and Emma bit her bottom lip, anchoring herself. Emma was holding back, controlling her reactions as if she wanted to protect her and Regina wanted to see that control gone. They had so little time. She wanted to experience everything and she had but one night. She raised her head from her pillow and captured Emma’s mouth. She cradled Emma’s face in her hands, and deepened the kiss, her tongue wandered into Emma’s mouth, caressed, coaxed, promised. Emma’s muscled arms strained to keep her weight off Regina. She could have cried for how different it was from her marriage bed. How different from Graham where they merely celebrated the fact that they were still alive. Her stomach had butterflies and her pulse raced.

“Emma…” Regina whispered and the sound made Emma’s hair stand, as if she had been staring at a precipice and the precipice had called back to her. Emma’s fingers touched skin that was soft, peppered with scars that were hard and Regina moaned and arched into her. She pulled Regina up to sitting and her fingers skirted the hem of the top. She followed Emma’s eyes to her lap. That one final moment of hesitation undid Regina. She pulled at the top herself, over her head and took Emma’s hands, brought them to the mounds of her breasts, offering.

Emma cupped the offered flesh and bent to place a gentle kiss on the curve of it. And then another. And another.

Regina revelled in the sensations, in the sheer desire she felt coming in waves from Emma. She pulled at Emma’s t-shirt, a twin of her own. Emma raised her arms and let Regina unwrap her like a present. She was soft and pliant, hard muscles and jutting bones and Regina ran her finger on the underside of Emma’s breast, each in turn. She wanted nothing more than to feel Emma’s skin against hers. She pulled Emma to her and lay down, bringing the woman to her. There was a sudden frisson at the movement as their legs entwined as they moved together to lay down and everything in her body cried out for more of that touch.

Desperate for more, Regina pressed Emma to her, opened her legs and welcomed the contact through the flannel of their clothing. Her arms encircled Emma and she raked her nails softly down her back drawing a moan of need. Her body rocked and Emma responded, her breathing quickening, her skin heating up. Regina did it again, gratified by the sounds that Emma made at each of her movements. It was a rush, an agitation of her molecules. She arched up and moved towards Emma, again and again.

Emma rocked against Regina like a wave coming to the shore and retreating, she dipped her head in to Regina’s exposed neck and sucked softly on the pulse point there and her fingers dug hard into Regina’s bottom, pushing her up, offering them both more friction, more contact, more heat.

Regina could hear – and feel- Emma’s increasingly ragged breath. “Emma…” the name became song in her mouth. Emma moved lower and again took her nipple into her mouth making Regina whimper, her body already contracting to the beat of her need. “Please.”

Emma lifted her head from where she had been at Regina’s breasts and smiled. “Tell me what you want, Regina.”

“I want…” Her breath hitched.

“Yes…”

“I want you to touch me.”

“Where?”

Regina protested quietly pushing against Emma’s shoulders in an attempt to move Emma further down her body. Emma would have happily stayed where she was for the rest of her life but Regina’s hips were rolling under her, searching for more contact, more friction and that demand was more powerful than anything she had ever felt in her life. It was a compulsion to give Regina anything, everything that she wanted.

Emma could scent Regina’s arousal as she moved down, inch by tortuous inch, eyes fixed on Regina’s, wide open and glassy. She kissed every inch of skin she exposed as she pulled the flannel pants down and took delight in burying her face in the dip between the hip and the thigh, kissing and biting, liking and smoothing the soft supple skin there while she pulled the pants off Regina’s muscled legs.

Regina cried out and Emma placed her fingers lightly over her lips. “Shh, Henry…” She blushed and bit the back of her hand as Emma’s fingers continued tracing wicked paths between her bellybutton and her hip.

“You’re beautiful.” Emma whispered as she contemplated the woman laid bare before her, all her softness, all her hardness, all her scars- and there were so many- exposed to her eyes. Regina buried her face in the pillow and crossed her arms over her naked form. “No, no, don’t.” Emma entreated. “Look at me while I make love to you.”

“Make love?” Regina gasped.

Emma looked directly into Regina’s eyes. “Yes. Look at me. Beautiful. I have never seen anyone as beautiful.” And she positioned herself between Regina’s thighs. With her hand, she caressed the soft skin of the thigh, the soft black hairs of Regina’s mound. “Beautiful.” She croaked as she touched the swollen lips of Regina’s sex, the glistening coat of desire on them. She saw Regina’s muscles tense, anticipating her touch. She linked their fingers together as she placed the very first feather-light kiss to Regina’s clit.

Regina squeezed Emma’s fingers between her own as she felt that very first touch and their eyes remained on each other, as Emma softly bathed her clit with her tongue, light, gentle touches. Spurred by that unwavering eye contact, by the smile in Emma’s eyes, Regina let her body seek out pleasure. Her hips rocked, slowly at first and then harder and faster against Emma’s mouth and something tightened inside her. Sweat pearled her forehead and chest and her hand squeezed Emma’s harder, a bone crushing hold that neither broke.

Emma saw Regina’s body gathering and her tongue gave the wet labia a slow languorous swipe that made Regina moan against the hand still in her mouth. Emma’s own body surged at the sound, her inner muscles tightening convulsively in response to Regina’s taste and the noises coming out of her at every swipe, every dip of her tongue. The more Regina bucked under her touch, the tighter Emma’s body became was, announcing her own release. Emma focused on Regina’s body, on her pleasure through the fog of her own need. She pressed the flat of her tongue to Regina’s clit and her reward was sudden and unforgettable: a scream that Regina suffocated biting her hand, the thighs that trembled around Emma’s head and the gush of wetness that Emma drank greedily.

When Regina’s body finally went lax, Emma placed one final tender kiss on the wet labia and moved up the sweaty body. Regina pulled her up for a kiss and savoured her own pleasure. She wrapped her free hand around Emma’s neck, unwilling to stop kissing her, hungry, demanding until Emma’s eyes rolled to the back of her head.

“I want to do this to you.” Regina demanded. “I want to taste you.” She blushed but ploughed on, more will than finesse. “I want to do that with my tongue to you.” In a manoeuvre that would not be out of place in battle, she flipped Emma onto the mattress and stood over her, a wicked grin in her face that made her look dangerous for the first time since Emma had met her. “ I want you to feel like I do now, so look at me, Emma. Look at me while I do this to you.”

…   …   …

She opened her eyes to see Regina hovering over her, that little wicked smile illuminating the impossibly beautiful face. “I think I did well.”

Emma laughed even if she didn’t quite have the strength for it and pulled Regina into her arms. “I think you can teach Goggle one or two things.” She settled Regina on top of her, anxious to feel the weight over her, to reassure herself that she hadn’t been dreaming this up.

Regina settled on Emma’s chest, her ear directly above that still wildly beating heart. All she was aware was Emma’s flavour in her mouth, the soft whooshes of breath ghosting her skin and the thumping of Emma’s heart right under her ear, reverberating through her own body. It had been years- no, decades- since she’s heard a heart beating, since she’d felt it. She slid her hand to Emma’s side just so that she could feel that beating heart.

She settled comfortably over that chest, lulled into safety by that steady beating.

“I love the beating of your heart.” She wasn’t even aware that she had spoken until Emma replied, running her hand down the length of her hair.

“It’s yours.”

…   …   …

The morning found them only too soon, Regina’s ear still over Emma’s beating heart. There was the faint noise of the world outside their window and the muted sound of the TV in the living room. Regina thought she smelled food and her stomach grumbled noisily. Emma nuzzled her hair and her hand ghosted over Regina’s naked skin. “Henry is probably making himself breakfast. Are you hungry?”

Huh? If Emma kept on doing those things to her skin, she wasn’t. Not hungry at all. Or at least, not for food. But there was a soft childish curse and a thud and some clattering and the hand on her skin stopped doing those things that made her forget her name. “Maybe we should check on his breakfast…”

Emma groaned. “He knows where the fire extinguisher and the first aid kit are… We shouldn’t underestimate the kid…” But she still placed one final kiss on Regina’s naked shoulder and got up.

Regina grabbed the comforter to her and wrapped herself in it. The morning was a new world and only the first bird flying after a storm knows how it felt: wide, bright, clean. A new life. She was mesmerised by Emma walking away from her, naked, glorious in her scars and marks of the love they had made. She buried her smiling face in the comforter. She wanted to scream and announce to the word that today she was happy. So happy. Instead, she clutched feeling to her chest and danced with it, privately. Saved it in the hollow place of her heart and let it fill her, warm her.

When Emma turned around to her, she got up dragging the comforter with her and stood face to face with Emma. She wrapped her arms around the slender waist and travelled up until she closed her arms around Emma’s back and brought her close. There were so many things that she wanted to say, so many things she wanted to confess and they all boiled down to something so close to I love you that it hurt. “Thank you.” She whispered in Emma’s ear and rubbed her cheek against Emma’s. “So much.”

…   …   …

Emma heard what Regina didn’t say. She heard the echo of the words and of saw the shadows of the feeling. She, of all people understood why not all the words belonged to the world, why some were only the things you know and not the things you shout out loud. Yes, she of all people knew it.

“Let’s get in there before he burns something.”

…   …   …

Hastily, they pulled on clothes and made their way to the kitchen. The scene was of total devastation: Emma’s laptop was open on the kitchen counter but that was the only thing immediately recognizable. The rest was a mess of egg shells, fruit peel, flour, the scent of coffee and a lingering smell of burnt toast.

Emma smiled broadly. “Jesus, kid.”

Henry came from behind the kitchen counter with a plate of scrambled eggs, still in his pyjamas and an apron Emma had bought for him that proclaimed KISS THE COOK. He handed over the plate to Emma who looked around herself. “I know I had a breakfast bar somewhere…”

“Oh, that…” Henry smiled. God, Emma was a sucker for that devious little grin. He walked to Emma and pointed at his apron. Dutifully, Emma placed a kiss on the tip of his nose. “I cooked, you can clean after breakfast. You slept late.” He commented studying Regina. “You both did.”

Regina blushed but met Henry’s eyes and nodded, mostly because she didn’t trust her voice. Henry pointed at his KISS THE COOK apron again and Regina kissed his cheek.

“Did you guys have s-e-x?”

“What?” Emma, who had been surveying the mess in the kitchen, turned on her heels and squealed.

“It spells sex, Emma. Well, did you?”

Emma looked at Regina, lost for words. Regina’s blush deepened to a dangerous red. “What do you…”

“Oh, come on! I have probably the most informative babysitter ever. And you have that lovey dovey look about you…”

“Still… You’re ten. You…. I mean…”

“Emma,” Henry sighed as if he had all the patience in the world. “I know about sex. That ship has sailed. Okay, so you don’t want to talk about sex with me. Fine. Just tell me: are you happy?”

Emma looked at Regina across the room from her and their eyes met. “Yeah, Henry, I am.”

Regina’s eyes lit up and whether or not she was going to say the same, Emma knew it for the truth. Regina was happy.

And that meant that she was not going to give her up, let her be dragged to that hell hole she had come from if she didn’t want to. And it didn’t look like she did.

For his part, Henry studied Regina’s smile and nodded to himself. In the words of his French teacher, c’est formidable. He hugged her by the waist, tight as he could because this was great. His two favourite people in the world were happy together. Wasn’t that something?

“Right, I guess we eat at the coffee table.” Emma muttered as she saw how Regina returned the hug, and the intensity of her expression gave her hope. So much hope. She carted plates and cutlery, napkins and coffee to the table. On a whim, she dug out a box of fancy chocolates she had bought on an impulse in a French chocolate shop one morning as she had dragged herself home, bruised and battered from an encounter with a combative skip with more brawn than brains. She was going to live this time with Regina as if nothing else mattered. And if it turned out that this was all they had, then at least they would have a blast. And fancy French chocolates for breakfast.

Chapter Text

Chapter 18

Henry slumped into the sofa and switched on the TV to one of the many cartoon channels Emma paid a premium for. “I’m so full.” He proclaimed. “And my eggs were awesome.”

“They were.” Regina agreed licking the remnants of chocolate from her finger.

“Told you: Google is your friend.” He leaned against her side and curled up into a ball. “What are we going to do today?”

“What would you like to do, Henry?” Regina asked him, running her fingers through his hair. The simple gesture filled her with peace and contentment.

“Oh, well, I would be okay with just watching cartoons all day, but I’m guessing you and Emma want to do something romantic…”

“Romantic?”

“Yeah, like walking in the park and holding hands and all that…”

Some choices were not a choice, really. At last this one was a happy one. “I’d rather sit here and watch cartoons all day.”

“Really?” Henry preened. Clearly, he was surprised by her choice. In a way, she was too. She had a day left and in all her years no one had ever taken to a park and held hands with her. But Henry was not just a part of Emma that she loved. He was a wonderful child, funny, sweet and his mere presence soothed her, filled her with something fierce, fierce, akin to hope and she found herself wanting to hold him to her just to feel the warmth of his skin and the steady beat of his heart. She wanted time with him too. She wanted so much and it was right here, in this little apartment.

“Do you think Emma will make pancakes?”

“If we ask nicely…” Henry was practically in her lap, his arms around her waist, hers bringing him closer.

“Henry?”

“Yeah?”

“If I forget to tell you later, this was the best day of my life.”

…   …   …

Emma was tearing her hair out. She had tried both Hilary and Jackson’s number from Henry’s phone. What kind of parents doesn’t answer their kid’s phone? She had tried their home number. The babysitter had actually answered if only to tell her to fuck off and then, thinking the better of it, ask her for a ride home. How would she even begin to explain this to the kid? He hadn’t mentioned his parents at all, but she had seen the anxious looks he had been sneaking at his phone all morning. The only thing left to do was to go upstairs and knock the damned door down and demand answers. But for that she would have to go through the living room and past Henry and explain what she was going to his place for.

She switched on the laptop to hack into their phones. Both were off. And that was off. They seemed to have their phones surgically implanted in their bodies. Cold realization began to creep in. Both worked in the financial district. The kid had been with Hilary at the epicentre of the attack. She could do the math well enough.

She changed tack. She called one of her guys at the Boston PD. Her fingers nervously scrolled through her contacts. Sergeant Tomasik was a genuine article: nearing retirement, passed on for promotion more times than it was decent to count simply because he asked questions. Emma had a soft spot for the old hound dog face, the wrinkly bad suit and the bristle way he had about him. He picked up the phone at his desk and Emma could hear the stress in the first hello. No point beating around the bush then.

“Tomasik. Morning. It’s Swan.”

“Emma.” He acknowledged, the tone a far cry from the usually cheeriness. “Morning.”

“That bad, huh?”

“You saw the news.”

“I was there, Tomasik. That was no terrorist attack.”

“Fuck! Alright, you have to talk to me―”

“Tomasik, my neighbours were there too. With their kid. I can’t find them.”

“Shit on stick. Look, Emma―”

“Look, I know the party line. You are not at liberty; the PD is investigating; yadda, yadda, yadda. I found the kid. I brought him home. But he doesn’t have anyone else.”

“For real, Emma, we’ve got about four hundred bodies in the morgue. Not all of them are in one piece. We have pieces no one knows where they fit. I know it’s a kid. But we don’t have any names. Not confirmed.”

“Tomasik, I―”

“I know you love that kid, Emma. And I know where you come from. And I’d like to think that we’ve had enough cold ones together to know that you will take in that kid and not let social services toss him around.”

“You know I won’t… But the kid needs to know.”

“So do we. We don’t even know what in the fuck’s name were those things. All we have are fuzzy, shaky videos of things that don’t look like anything I know…”

Emma sighed and scrubbed her face. “Here’s the thing and you’re not gonna like it… those things… they’re not from this world.”

“Say what?”

“Get you fairy tale books out and brush up on the stories you read your kids.”

“The brass will come down on my ass for that.”

“You’re used to it.”

“Yeah. But aliens? That’s a bit much. Even for me, huh?”

“What, aren’t the Feds crawling up your ass on this yet?” There was a moment of silence, some rustling of papers, a soft curse.

“Well,” The sergeant conceded. “They are now.” And he hung up.

Emma cradled the phone in her hand. Soon enough there would be enough government agencies to repeat the whole alphabet thrice. And with each new acronym, the more difficult it would be to get to where Hilary and Jackson Devereux might be. If the kid were that lucky, they’d be in the hands of one of the agencies, telling everything they knew. Hell, for all she knew, she and Regina might be next on their shit list. Might as well not get ahead of herself. Cross that bridge when she got to it and whatnot.

Right now, there was someone else she could call: Dirty Harry. He tended to know a guy for every occasion.

She hit speed dial two. “DH.”

“No!” Sarcasm dripped from Dirty Harry’s voice. “She returns.”

“Hi, Harry.”

“Tell me, Sugar Plum, is it true?”

“Is what true?” Emma sensed the trap but Harry had a joke he needed to get it out of the way before he could take anything seriously.

“Are crazy girls better in the sack than―”

“Don’t call her that, Harry!” Emma interrupted. There was a moment of silence when Emma had time to regret interrupting him and to hear his old rickety swivel chair creak and groan. He had the same love for that chair that she had for her yellow trusty rusty.

“Okay. So now I know two things: one, you did it with her. And two: you like her. Hail Mary, mother of mercy, Swan, you like her!”

“Harry...”

“Yeah, you do. Aw, Sugar Plum!” He sounded like a proud father which was why Emma didn’t chew his head off. “So what’s her name? Is she on any meds?”

“She’s not on any meds. Did you switch on the TV?”

“Yeah… Oh, shit.” As always, the Southern accent swiftly gave way to the Midwestern. “You said she had some crazy talk about trolls and shit… please tell me this is not it. Please tell me.”

“Can’t. Got the mark on my shoulder to prove it.”

“Sweet baby Jesus!”

“Harry, you need to cool it now. It’s sorted. Sort of. Nearly. Look. I need a favour.” It took a few more attempts until Dirty Harry focused. “My neighbours. They’re missing. Since yesterday.”

“So? You never liked them anyway.”

“They’re Henry’s parents. He loves them.”

“God knows why… Lemme guess. Your friends at the PD came up dry.”

“Pretty much.”

“What makes you think I can help?”

“Because people owe you, DH, the kind of people down in the good chain that know things and that no one ever looks at. Please.”

“Alright!” DH’s Southern accent made a swift come back. “But you better tell me that dream girl was one heck of a shag because you were missing for over a week Swan. That’s one mighty… pyjama party!”

“Get your nose out of my love life.”

“So it is a love life, huh?”

“Harry!”

“Yeah, yeah… I’m on it.”

…   …   …

It was simple enough in the end: Henry went to the toilet and Emma went up the stairs to knock on Henry’s door. She let herself in with her handy dandy lock picking tool and found the apartment just as it had been before. Empty, show-home perfect and not one message for the kid or the babysitter.

…   …   …

Henry was waiting for her, arms stiff by his side, Regina standing right behind him.

“Are they home yet?”

“No, kid, they’re not.”

“They didn’t call me.” Regina got closer to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“I know, Henry.” Maybe they couldn’t.

“I watched the news. Before you woke up.” Emma stared dumbly. Of course he would. He was a bright boy and he would do exactly that. “A lot of people died.”

What was the point of lying? She nodded. “But you don’t know if that’s the case. There are a lot of people in hospital too.”

“I don’t want them to be dead.” Henry’s bottom lip trembled and his eyes filled with tears. Regina instinctively moved closer to him and he turned and buried his face in her midsection. She wrapped her arms around him, pulled him to the sofa and let him cry himself dry. Emma sat by his side and rubbed soothing circles in his back. “It’s going to be okay, Henry. We’ll find them. I promise. Did I ever break any of my promises to you?”

Henry nodded. “No.”

“I have people on it, Henry. We’re going to find them and everything is going to be okay.”

“Can I stay here?”

“Like I would let you go anywhere else.”

…   …   …

They had pancakes for lunch, swimming in syrup, and great big glasses of milk. The kid needed a little pick me up and they all needed some comfort. Pancakes were good for the soul. And seeing Regina and Henry tuck into them made her heart light and ever more determined to keep them both. No matter the price.

By mid-afternoon, Henry fell asleep, his head in Regina’s lap, the feet in Emma’s. Emma muted the TV and turned to Regina. “When?”

“When what?” Emma knew that tone. It was the tone of someone who knew the question well enough but hated the answer. She raised her eyebrow in a really sort of look. Regina lowered her eyes to Henry’s form, to her hand on his hair.

“Tonight.”

“Do you want to go?”

“It’s my duty.”

“Not what I asked. I asked: do you want to go.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Not nearly, Regina. If you want to stay there is nothing I won’t do to keep you here.”

“You shouldn’t want me to, Emma. You shouldn’t want me near Henry or―”

“Look… Here’s the thing: I know I’m sort of like a package deal. We both know that it’s unlikely those two idiots are alive. Quite frankly, if they weren’t, I’d kill them myself. So Henry… I’m his person, you know? I’m going to do whatever I need to do for him. And I get it. It’s not for everybody. And I’m not presuming that just because we… I mean… Just because…”

“We had sex?”

“Sex?” Emma’s blood ran cold. Sex? Only sex?

“Emma…”

“It’s fine.” Emma slumped against the sofa and closed her eyes defensively.

“No. It’s not. I expressed myself inadequately. I don’t know what kind of wording you use.”

“How about making love?”

It was Regina’s turn to be speechless. And then, it was so simple. “I like that.”

“Well, then…” Emma recovered, “Just because we made love… I’m not expecting for you to move in or want to stay around and play house with me. I know that’s not how it works. And it is scary as shit but―”

“Emma…. I can honestly say that there is nothing else – in this world or any other - I would love more than to be here. To be your person. Both of you. But it’s complicated. I’m not free to decide…”

Emma’s expression brightened. “Then it’s settled. You want to stay, you stay. This is a free country and if you don’t want to go, I promise you, Regina, no one is going to take you away.”

“Emma… I will have this forever. This moment here, with you and Henry. I will have last night. I will take you both in me, in everything that I am. Last night… I will never be cold or hungry again. But it’s not a choice that’s mine to make.”

“I don’t get it. You said that you wanted to stay. Isn’t that what your heart is telling you? That you belong here with us? Listen to your heart, Regina. It’s begging you to stay!”

Softly, Regina took Emma’s hand and pressed it to her chest right where her heart should have been. “Emma. I don’t have a heart to tell me these things.”

“What are you talking about?” Emma tried to pull her hand away, to look away like you do when you know you’re heading for a fall but Regina simply pressed her hand harder into her chest.

“You know it’s true, Emma. You saw it in my memories. How can you doubt what you saw? My heart is not mine. The Queen holds it. Do you know what happens when you have someone’s heart? When you hold it in your hands, Emma? You control that person, that thing. You control them for better or for worse. In life and for death. I would be a danger to you, to Henry.”

“You are not a thing!” Just like Henry, Emma lost the ability to hold her tears. “So if you don’t go home like the good little slave that you are, she can kill you.” It stopped being a question half way through the sentence.

“Or worse.”

“Worse?”

Regina looked at her hands, at the marks of the daggers in her palms, extending like branches or roots up her arms. “Yes.” There was a moment of silence while Emma took in the meaning of those words.

“But what about the princess? Maybe we can negotiate. A little more time to find the brat and take her home with you. We’ll swap. A princess for a heart.”

Regina smiled like she was going to cry. There would be no negotiating. Emma would never know. She would not give her the chance to be noble or brave. Not on this. “If it were you, Emma, would you go? Would you go to save the life of a woman you owe nothing to but being taken away from your loving parents? Would go to a ruined, devastated place and leave everything you know? Maybe she has a life here. Maybe a child of her own. Why would she go for a stranger? For a kingdom she knows nothing of?”

“I―”

“It was not to fight ReulG’horm they sent me here for. The game is another and I am tired of being their pawn. I have a choice now, a chance to decide and I have. This is my move, Emma, and I am proud of it. For once, I am proud of my choice. Leave the Princess where she is. I don’t want to hand her over for whatever it is Rumpelstiltskin wants from her. This is my choice.”

“But what if she wanted to go back?” But it sounded weak even to her ears.

Regina’s fingers combed softly through Emma’s hair and Emma relaxed into it just like magic. “And what if they let me stay, Emma? If they’re tired of my failures and decide I’m not worth the hassle and let me stay… What then? I’m an alien here. I don’t exist in your world. I have no job, no education in this world of yours. What would I do? What would I be? A wife to you? A submissive wife that waits for you to come to my bed? You deserve better than that. And I? I had that before. And I promised myself never, ever again. Not even for you, Emma, my heart.”

Saying those words hurt. There had been a time, when she had been so young and naïve, when she had thought that it was all she needed out of life. She knew different now. She knew the resentment that built from the helplessness. The anger. How it left nothing but scorched ground behind. Because despite what people thought of her, she was not without remorse. And it was bitter.

For some reason, Emma understood Regina’s reasoning, it instilled respect for the person that Regina was, the warrior in her. She just wished she’d had more time to get to know her. And it didn’t mean that papers could not be forged and people bribed and jobs off the books weren’t available. For now, she wanted to enjoy the moment. She didn’t want to waste any of the short time they had with snivelling, moping or arguing. So she straightened and rubbed her face viciously and put on her big girl pants.

“Okay.” She held Regina’s hand and kissed her palm. “I get it.” Regina was surprised. She was ready to have to explain herself, to defend her decision. But Emma slid Henry’s feet off her legs and helped Regina do the same with his head and covered the kid with a blanket. “If this is goodbye, then I want memories too. I want to do all the things we would do together. I want to cook dinner and feed the kid and do the dishes and have a shower with you. I want to kiss you. I really want to kiss you right now. And then I want to go to bed with you and make love to you and pretend that this is what we are going to do every day for the next fifty years until we are both old and toothless. Okay?”

Regina saw the life that Emma had described to her and it broke something in her soul and then mended it. “Yes, dear.”

Emma smiled and pulled her into a kiss, soft, gentle, the kind of kiss you kiss when you have a whole life ahead of you, unrushed, languorous, gentle.

…   …   …

They had a shower together. Regina hadn’t imagined that getting clean would not be their priority. She hadn’t imagined how sensual soap could be or how difficult it was to stand while your body trembled through an orgasm. She hadn’t imagined that the mere sight of Emma kneeling before her, hair sleek with water, doing unspeakable things to her could be, in itself, a vicious wave of pleasure.

And then they cooked together. Maybe cooking was not the term. They made grilled cheese sandwiches. And Regina dipped her hands into Emma’s flannel pants while her fingers learned Emma’s secrets until all she could do was cover Emma’s mouth while she moaned as an orgasm shook her violently.

Henry came from the living room area and joined them in the kitchen. Emma nearly crawled into the oven to try and catch her breath while Regina calmly washed her hands and then sat next to Henry, bumping his shoulder companionably.

A while later, Emma’s phone rang and she ran to answer it in the bedroom having seen Dirty Harry’s number.

“Emma.” DH called out, the tone dark, the greeting ominous. He never called by her first name. He called her all sorts of silly endearments, but not her first name.

“Yeah.”

“It’s not good, kid.” No Southern accent either. DH was rattled to the core. “No one is confirming anything, so don’t go running to the kid yet, but the woman is dead. There’s no sign of the man. But they have more body parts in the ME than ideas on what to do with them. They’re getting people from way up the food chain to deal with it.” Emma slumped into the mattress. “They have aliens too. They got some dead ones and they got some live ones but the FBI and the NSA are having some pissing contest to see who gets them.”

“Harry…”

“I know, kid. Take the time. That boy is going to need you. Your job isn’t going anywhere.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Harry, there’s one more thing… say I needed some papers…”

“What kind of papers?”

“The kind that get you legal.” There was a beat of silence on DH’s side.

“I know a guy. Damned artist about it too. I’ll give him a call. It’s by appointment only.”

“Thanks. Harry.”

“Don’t go tellin’ anyone, but I’m a sucker for a happy ending.”

Emma hung up and stared at the phone until Henry came and found her. “Is it about my parents?” What could she tell him? What could she tell him that was not a lie and wouldn’t break his heart? “It’s bad Henry. Too many people.”

“Do you think…?” Henry choked back a sob and Emma pulled him to her.

“All I know kid, is that whatever happened, whatever happens, you are not alone. You have me.”

“And Regina.”

It was Emma’s turn to choke. “Yeah. And Regina.” She said and prayed that it would not be a lie.

…   … …

Regina was waiting in the kitchen, worried sick. She’d seen Emma running out, phone in hand, all colour drained from her face. It had been as obvious to her as to Henry what that call would be about. She tried holding onto Henry but the distraction had never really worked. He had humoured her, probably knowing Emma would need time on the phone but then he just ran and she slumped into a stool. Waiting. What else was she good for?

But when they came back, Henry launched himself into her arms and stayed there, rocking softly, softly. Regina closed her arms around him and if it had been in her power to make such a promise, she would, that nothing and no one would ever hurt him and that she would fight for him and be a mother to him as much as Emma was. With Henry in her arms, she rebelled against her fate.

Emma came behind him, looking worn out. With one arm closed around Henry, Regina opened the other on for her. Emma closed the circle, Henry between them. Them against the world.

“Let’s have some food, Henry. We made grilled cheese.”

Henry cleaned his nose on his sleeve and nodded. Regina saw the boy pull himself together and felt her chest swelling with pride. Wasn’t she lucky to have known him.

…   …   …

Emma paced the room thinking about packing something for Regina. Some clothes, a gun, ammunition… some food. How did this world jumping work? Regina sat on the bed and called out for her softly. “Just lay down with me, Emma.” For a moment, Emma was panic stricken. Doing that was like accepting that Regina was going to be taken from her arms and she was not quite ready for that but Regina held out her hand and everything soothed, every edge, very sharp nerve smoothed out and the only thing that mattered was the woman sitting there. Not asking her for a single thing.

She sat at the edge of the bed and held Regina’s face in her hands. “Please, don’t be upset.” Regina pleaded.

“Can’t help it. There is something you’re not telling me. And I have this feeling it could be a game changer and you’re keeping it to yourself.”

Regina steeled her resolve. She was not dragging Emma into this. Not when Henry needed her so much. “Why would you say that?”

“Because you’re too calm.”

“I’m not lying.”

“That’s an interesting leap… I know you’re not. But you’re hiding something. Not sure which one is worse.”

Regina’s gut clenched. “Help me be strong, Emma. Help me be good.”

Maybe it was the plaintive tone. Maybe it was the urgency of the impending loss, but Emma deflated. Regina took the moment. She kissed Emma’s cheek, her nose, her forehead, her chin. Her lips. Her breath hitched. She held Emma’s face more firmly and kissed her, memorised her, slow kiss by slow kiss, light caress by light caress. She pulled her down into the mattress and lay down next to her. This was what she was taking with her: her memories, her feelings, her heart.

“Are you memorising me?” Emma asked, her voice gruff and cracking at the edges.

“I already know you by heart.”

“You said you didn’t have one.”

“And you said I had yours.”

Emma swallowed thickly. “What do we do now?”

“We say goodbye. We go to sleep. Just like any other day in that life we made believe.”

Emma pulled Regina into her, wrapped her arms around her slight body and settled into the pillows. “DH knows a guy.” She tried, telling herself she was entitled to on final attempt at persuading Regina. “He can get you papers. Make you legal. You don’t have to be a wife only. You don’t even have to stay with me if you don’t want to. It’s a lot, I know that. But you can stay. If that’s the only reason, you can stay.”

Regina had her ear against Emma’s chest and she could hear her heart thumping, thumping madly. “You are a good person, Emma Swan. The best person I have ever known.” She whispered as she ran her fingers lazily down Emma’s side. “You and Henry? You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. And even without a heart of my own, I will carry you with me. In my blood, in my bones, in my soul… in all of me. Do you understand me, Emma Swan? What you’re offering me, I would take in a heartbeat.”

“If only.” Emma said sadly.

“If only.” Regina echoed.

“Well,” A shrill voice from Regina’s nightmares sing-a-songed as it moved and materialised in the room. “What if this and what if that… You know there’s a chance, dearie. Why would you not let young Emma decided for herself?”

“Rumpelstiltskin!” Regina gasped and jacked up in bed, away from Emma’s arms and suddenly frozen to the bone. “What are you doing here?”

“The same thing I always have to do, dearie. Correct your silly, silly mistakes.”

“Who the hell are you and what,” Emma jumped from the bed with her Glock firmly in her hand and aiming at Rumpelstiltskin, “the fuck”, she removed the safety, “are you doing in my home?”

“Well, now, that’s no way to welcome the one that can release your beloved from the claws of Queen of the Enchanted Forest, is it?” Rumpelstiltskin announced with a grandiose flourish and a wave of the hand.

Chapter Text

Chapter 19

They saw it in the air, in the flowers, in the murmurations of the birds: magic, cruel, unnatural magic, moving through the fabric of the word.

“The Dark One!” The woman in blue whispered as the air was sucked out of her lungs as magic crossed realms and the border between the worlds thinned.

“Hurry!” The woman in green shouted as she slumped to her knees seeking the water of the pond to see into the other world. But she as she knelt, the crystalline water was murky as if it had been sullied by the Dark One. The air had rarefied around them.

The woman in blue put her hand on the shoulder of her companion. “You must go.”

“Together.”

“Not enough...” She fell to her knees on the carpet of grass that was slowly withering and planting her hand firmly on the ground called forth the power of the natural world. Slowly magic gathered around her fingertips. “Go. Before it’s too late.”

The woman in green gathered to her the magic of the earth and plants and animals that lived in it, conjured to her, let it inhabit the place in her where the wisps of her own magic still lived. She held Blue’s hand, received the magic that her companion channelled to her. If they were too late, if they were too weak, if the Dark One won once again, then the end had come on swift wings or them all.

She hurtled through the fabric of magic and prayed that Regina was strong enough, that the Dark One’s magic was as weak as their own.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

“You are not real! You are not here!” Regina cried. “You cannot be here!”

“Oh, but I am. There is nothing those insects can do that I can’t do better, dearie. And you know who I’m here for.”

“No!” Regina, begged. “I have made my choice.”

“Not yours to make. Not when you lie to me.” Rumpelstiltskin riposted and, ignoring Regina and her objections completely, turned to Emma and the Glock firm in her hand. “There is a way she can stay here, Miss… uh…” Rumpelstiltskin twirled his finger in the air as if he had been trying to remember the name. “Swan. Miss Swan.” He repeated appreciatively. “Yes… Ironic… But as I was saying…”

“I’ll go now. I’m ready.” Regina moved forward to shield Emma from Rumpelstiltskin. He was there for Emma, she knew it, a certainty as deep as the ocean. And if she was any judge- and she was- it would not be for Snow or Emma’s benefit. Only his own. One minute movement of his hand and Regina was paralysed, unable to voice her pleas, unable to move towards Emma, fall at her knees if necessary and beg.

Emma saw Regina become a statue, unmoving except for the eyes, wild with fear. Fear for Emma not herself, Emma knew. “What the hell have you done to her?” The Glock shook then in her hand.

“Oh, nothing dearie!” Rumpelstiltskin replied as if baffled. “It’s just a little thing. I don’t very much like to be interrupted when I talk.”

“Let her go, you bastard.”

“Oh, that hurts my feelings and puts me in my place.” He mocked. “Did she tell you who you are?”

Emma looked at Regina and registered the terror in her eyes. She touched her face with her fingertips only, afraid of what it might feel like. “Let her go. Please let her go, you are hurting her.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Emma Swan. It doesn’t hurt one bit.”

Emma hugged Regina’s unmoving form and whispered in her ear Trust me. Her hand squeezed Regina’s but there was no response. And then she felt the disturbance in the air when an old woman in green materialised in the room, the presence harried and agitated, so different from the clown with the green skin. She turned towards the new arrival and old or not, she had her in the sight of her gun, ready to shoot. “And who the hell are you, huh? This isn’t an open house, you can’t just invite yourselves over.”

“You are out of bounds, Rumpelstiltskin.” The old woman moved with impossible speed, almost as if she had flown instead of walking.

“Rumpel-who now?” Emma asked, her gun alive in her hand, unsure whether she was addressing the unmoving Regina or the old woman. There was something incongruent about that old body that moved as if the years hadn’t touched it, about that old dress that seemed to glimmer despite its sorry state. There was something off and that was a power that Emma could only guess but offer no evidence of.

“That depends on the perspective, you insect. You brought her here without authority from the Queen.”

She moved to stand between the funny looking little man and the old woman, and Regina. They seemed to have locked horns on a power match and she could feel Regina’s anxiety, rolling off of her in waves despite the strange paralysis.

“The Queen’s authority is nothing but your voice in her head. You are nothing but a self-serving, squirt of a man. If you’re here it’s because you stand to gain something.” The old woman accused.

“Well, whatever gave you that idea? Now, Emma Swan,” He addressed Emma directly. “The Evil Queen you were just so lovingly saying your goodbyes to can indeed stay here, in this world.” And got her attention. She would trade her own soul for this. He walked to Emma disarming her with a simple flick of his wrist. The Glock went flying across the room but Emma remained defiant in front of Regina’s unmoving form, her best poker face on.

“The Queen has made her choice.” The woman in green countered.

“Oh, but do be quiet.” Rumpelstiltskin threw a tantrum. “She didn’t give you all the facts, did she, dearie?”

“What facts?” Emma asked even though something inside her told her it was entirely the wrong thing to say, entirely the wrong question to ask.

“See, when two people love each other very, very much―” He started in a soft, almost girlish voice then interrupted himself. “Oh, wrong story. Don’t mind me. Where was I? Ah, yes. The Evil Queen was sent here to retrieve a princess.”

It was at that moment that Regina knew that, no matter who had sent her here an why, Rumpelstiltskin had known all along and used it. Used her again. The son of a bitch.

“She has made her choice!” The old woman countered and did something with her hand that had Rumpelstiltskin swatting at the air as if a fly had been buzzing around his head.

“You really must try harder, Insect.” He rebutted.

“Yes, I know. We didn’t find her.” Emma had the distinct feeling they were talking at cross purposes and this lizard guy had the upper hand. “Not enough time, too much shit happening.”

“You didn’t, no. But she did. She found the Princess. And as she would tell you if she could,” He made a show of stealing a peek behind Emma’s back, “That really is all we need. She’ll be free. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes! You can’t take her back. She doesn’t want to go back. Give her back her heart!”

“Ah, look at that, she told you half the story!” He sang. “A deal, then, Emma Swan? The Princess for her?” The old woman was fighting against some invisible hold and Regina remained immobile. Emma looked at her before answering Rumpelstiltskin.

Regina was crying. She couldn’t move one eyelash but tears were streaming silently down her face. “Respect her choice!” The old woman gritted out, her face contorted. But Emma could see only the chance that they might be happy. What was one princess she had never met to her? He had said so, he would swap Regina for the Princess.

“Well, deal or no deal, Emma Swan?” Rumpelstiltskin seemed too happy for this to be good, but the temptation was too strong. “Yes.” She said at the same time that the old woman broke free from whatever spell Rumpelstiltskin had her under. She pulled Emma to her at the same time that Rumpelstiltskin shook her hand to seal the deal. Whilst both Rumpelstiltskin and the woman tugged at her arms as if she had been a doll in a children’s game, the old woman freed Regina from her paralysis.

Emma couldn’t tell what happened first, what sequence of events led to it, but Regina grabbed her arm as if she had been pulling her from a building on fire and a vortex opened on the floor of her bedroom in her apartment and then it was like drowning in a sea of sound and colour and wind that seemed to all be happing inside her. She screamed, genuinely afraid.

All she knew was that Henry was a sleep in her couch and had no one left.

…   …   …

When Emma came to, Regina was standing over her, running her fingers through her hair and calling her name. It took a few seconds for her head to stop spinning, for the buzzing in her ears to die down, to understand that the grey walls around her were not her bedroom. “Henry!” She cried out and Regina held her by her shoulders and then pulled her into a tight hug. Suddenly she was very aware that wherever she was, it was no longer Boston. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, are we Toto?” Emma rasped.

“We’re in my world, Emma. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Regina, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me that I’m the Princess you were looking for?”

“You know…”

“Yeah. But here’s the thing: you’re wrong. All of you. I’m not royalty. I’m no one’s princess. But yes. I knew the moment Lizard-Dude wanted to shake on it. I knew it.”

“And still you took his hand? Emma!” Emma dismissed it with a shrug.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because for all your kindness, you are a very stubborn woman, Emma. Because you would have done something stupid to help me.”

“Pot, meet kettle.”

“You have Henry to think about. Henry needs you, more so than any kingdom, than any queen… more than me… You know what they want a princess for…”

“I could have negotiated. If I had known, I would have prepared. I would have negotiated.”

“Emma, listen to me: Rumpelstiltskin wants something from this. He was never going to let me go. There was no negotiating,”

“He said so. He would let you go if the princess…”

“Came here, yes. I’m well aware. But he never told you he would give my heart back.”

“He said you would go free.”

“I’ll be free in death, Emma. The moment you came here, you bought me some time, but not a free life.”

“Did he lie to me?” Emma tried to get up but her legs failed under her. “I know when people are lying…”

“No. He just did not clarify the terms and you didn’t ask. He is dangerous, Emma. The only master he serves is himself. And he wants you here.”

“Why?”

“Of course, I do.” Rumpelstiltskin answered from behind Regina, startling both women. “You know? I just had an epiphany…” He smiled at Emma as she tried to get up again to settle the score with him. “There is a way. Unexpected, that not even I saw coming, but a delightful one…” He rubbed his hands together to drive his point across. “The Evil Queen’s curse can be broken. This half ass job of yours, dearie,” he leaned forward and looked Regina directly in the eye, nose to nose, challenging her, “this pathetic excuse for a curse that should never have taken can be broken.”

“How?” Emma asked. She didn’t like the invasion of Regina’s space any more than if it had been hers.

“Ah… what was it you taught little Snow White when she was a wee thing?” Rumpelstiltskin seemed to ponder. “Ah, yes… true love, blah, blah, blah, is the most powerful magic of all, blah, blah, di-blah. It can break any curse.” Mockingly, he sniffled and wiped away an imaginary tear. “This pathetic little curse should be no problem, then. How about you prove it for us non-believers?”

“What is he talking about?” Emma pulled on Regina’s arm.

Regina’s arms dropped to her sides. “I have no idea.”

“Ah, don’t be so modest, dear. You were willing to swap your life for hers. How hard can an itsy, bitsy kiss be?”

Well, fuckity fuck. For some reason, Emma was willing to concede that there were such things as curses and that said curses could be broken with true love’s kiss. Barf! What she was not willing to concede was the advantage. She called the bluff.

“What’s in it for you?”

“The welfare of my people.” A tired voice answered from behind him. Rumpelstiltskin moved aside for Queen Snow with an annoyed expression that the Queen didn’t see.

Regina was distracted from her own worries by Snow’s dishevelled form. Queen Snow was but a distorted reflection of the force of nature her Snow White had been, the gown rumpled, too loose around her, shoulders slumped as if nothing could ever matter again. But it was her face that hurt Regina: the matted, lanky hair, the gray, sunken pallor of the skin and the madness in the deemed, hooded eyes. A shiver ran down Regina’s spine when she saw Snow carrying her heart cradled in her hands. Behind her, a cortege of fairies running all the colours of the rainbow though their once vibrant gowns were now nothing but a pale, faded reminder of what they had once been.

The Blue Fairy still commanded them but was little more than a shadow of the impertinent know-it-all she had once been.

For a fairy godmother, she had managed to fail even Snow White’s pure, pure heart, letting Rumpelstiltskin take over and manipulate the puppet show the whole kingdom had become. It was clear that Snow was not well and, in a moment of clarity Regina understood that Snow, too, had been a victim of Rumpelstiltskin’s manipulation. The only difference between them was that Snow was the one holding Regina’s darkened heart in her hands.

Queen Snow looked over Regina, unseeing of everything, everyone else and gave the heart in her hands a violent squeeze.

Regina fell to her knees, her vision blurred, the world disappearing into darkness. Queen Snow walked away to sit on the throne as if nothing had disturbed the day.

Next to Regina, Emma frantically tried to hold her up. “What the fuck did she do?” Emma tried to understand. “What the hell was that?”

“Nothing!” Regina gritted out through tightly clenched teeth.

Emma looked at the woman sitting on the throne and saw what looked like a stone- was it a stone?- in her hands. She regarded Regina and then the thing in woman’s hands once more. “What the fuck is that?” She asked, her head spinning and she knew, as certain as day. “Is that yours? Is that your heart?” It was crazy. All of this had to be some sort of nightmare, some hallucination. But it was Regina’s heart, darkened- not black, not like she had assumed at first- but purplish, so badly bruised the colour of it was nearly indistinct from black. It was calling out to her, begging. Regina was laying prone in her arms and she believed.

Behind her, Rumpelstiltskin was the embodiment of glee.

Emma’s rage was palpable, something blinding, overwhelming. Carefully, she deposited Regina on the ground and walked the few steps that separated them from the throne in a heartbeat. “You fucking psycho!” And she tried to grab the heart that the Queen had cradled still in her hands. “You fuckin’ bitch. Hand it over! Who the fuck do you think you are?” The Queen remained unperturbed but squeezed the heart again, slowly but unrelenting.

Behind Emma, Regina gasped in pain. Emma looked back. The Queen alleviated the pressure somewhat, allowing Regina to raise her head and plead with Emma. Then she squeezed again. Emma understood the correlation. She raised her hands and stepped back as if she had been walking away from a wolf ready to attack. “Don’t. Please don’t hurt her.”

Rumpelstiltskin materialized by the Queen. “Light touch! Light touch, Your Majesty. We don’t want to cause any permanent damage now, do we?”

The look on the Queen’s eyes was far from anyone who can be persuaded to care. Behind her, the Blue Fairy slumped her shoulders in defeat but still moved forward. “Your majesty,” The soothing tone was close to what one would use with a child throwing a tantrum. “Hasn’t it been enough?” Queen Snow caressed her empty belly where she could still feel the life that had stirred inside her so long ago.

“My husband lies in an enchanted sleep. True Love cannot wake him up. My child is lost a world away.” She squeezed the heart again, pressure building up, up until a scream was ripped from Regina’s unwilling throat. “It will never be enough.”

“Well,” Rumpelstiltskin interrupted. “Far be it from me to lecture, Your Majesty, but it should interest you to know that the Evil Queen loves.” He giggled, a high pitched sound that reverberated through the empty walls of the barren room and lingered in the air. He was gratified when Regina cried out “No!” from the bottom of her soul. Oh this was most excellent. Most excellent indeed when the blonde woman shivered at the sound of the denial. Ah, love, that most rare currency of magic.

The Queen looked with only mild interest. “Maybe she should learn the cost of loss, then.” She mumbled and her fingers caressed the heart now in her lap as if she had been caressing a pet.

Rumpelstiltskin had a moment of anger. He was growing tired of having to deal with idiots and manage childish tantrums in a grown woman every cursed day. “That’s rather short sighted, Your Majesty.” He got his temper under control and tried again. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t she the one who told you that True Love is magic, that it can break any curse?”

“She lied to me. My husband―”

“Yes, yes, yes… your husband…” He could almost taste the victory now and, like a dog, he would not let it slip through his teeth. “Let me try this in shorter words: your husband is cursed just as we are. Time does not move. If the curse breaks, your precious husband can heal and wake up.”

“She doesn’t love.” The Queen showed him the heart in her hand and gave it a careless shake.“She can’t. And who would love her?” Her fingernail scrapped lazily over Regina’s heart and it caused her to fall to the ground again. Emma went with her, supporting her, cushioning her fall.

With a bored expression, Rumpelstiltskin silently pointed at the bundle that were Emma and Regina on the floor as if it were self-evident.

“Who is she?” Queen Snow asked as if she was seeing Emma for the first time. In her chest, her own heart beat faster but she lacked the energy, the focus. All she wanted was to hurt Regina, to cause her pain like she felt every day with her empty belly and her empty arms and her sleeping husband.

“Ah, theories abound…” Rumpelstiltskin deflected, being a firm believer in the economy of information and perfect timing.

“And she loves her?” The Queen intoned as a question.

“It would appear so.”

“And if they kiss, the curse will break?”

“Yes.” Rumpelstiltskin was not even conservatively optimistic. He wanted this. Believed this. Had waited far too long for this, unable to see into the future as easily as he once had with magic gone from the land.

Possessively, Queen Snow clutched the heart to her chest. “Do it.” She ordered Emma. “Kiss her.”

“I’m not your pet monkey, you psycho! Giver her heart back!”

“Kiss her!”

“No!” Emma shouted.

The Green Fairy moved forward and pleaded with the Queen but to no avail. Snow squeezed the heart, slow and steady until the pain was so intense Regina clutched at her chest, unable to breathe. The Blue fairy moved forward, pleading silently, not daring to reach out to the Queen.

“Kiss her.” The Queen demanded again, the pressure on the heart unrelenting. Emma felt Regina’s body go listless and then all resistance, all sign of life disappear. Regina went limp in her arms. Emma screamed and the fairies moved forward at the same time as Rumpelstiltskin did.

“Well,” He said calmly, “If you have in faith in love, this is the time to try it, because she is dead otherwise.”

Emma’s body went lax. She had seen a whole new world because Regina had one day woken up in her bed out of nowhere. In her arms, Regina felt dead already, her chest unmoving and her eyes closed. Gently, Emma leaned and placed the slightest of kisses on warm lips and caressed the soft cheek, pulled the wayward wisps of hair out of her face. Regina opened her eyes. Emma cradled her and allowed herself a heavy sob of relief. “Hey.”

Regina blinked but only smiled sadly.

Rumpelstiltskin growled, enraged beyond anything Emma had ever seen. “Kiss her again or get out of my way.”

Carefully, Emma pulled Regina back to her again as if in doing so she could more effectively protect her. “What kind of fucked up place is this?”

“Break this curse. Break it now.” Rumpelstiltskin lost the tenuous grip on his temper.

“Go to hell!”

From her throne, Queen Snow laughed, something sad, desperate and ugly. “She can’t love. She’s a heartless witch.”

Behind Queen Snow, the Blue Fairy tried to sooth the demented Queen. Emma could hear a litany of pacifying words that bore no effect on the Queen.

“Let’s get out of here Regina. Let’s get the hell out and go back. Henry is waiting for us. Henry needs us. Come on.”

“She can’t.” Rumpelstiltskin insisted and reining in his temper, again addressed the Queen. “She was dead and the whelp brought her back. True Love! True Love! True Love!” He paced the dais manically as if he had been doing some complicated math in his head. “True Love. She was dead. She was dead. The kiss brought her back.”

Regina pushed up from Emma’s arms. “I was not dead. The kiss didn’t bring me back. Let her go. I was not dead. Dead is dead, remember?” She waited a beat until he turned to her and bore her eyes into his. “I can’t die, remember? Nothing can kill me until I complete my mission.”

“Said who?” Rumpelstiltskin whirled, furious, and out of his bony hand shot a dark stream of magic that he aimed, like an arrow, at Regina. “I can!”

Emma wrapped her body around Regina as she again slumped in Emma’s arms. From behind Queen Snow and Rumpelstiltskin, a twin flash of green and blue agitated the air and materialised forming some sort of shield between Regina and Emma on one side and Rumpelstiltskin and Snow on the other. A look of relief passed between the two fairies on the dais.

Queen Snow cackled in her throne.

And it all went whirlwind again for Emma.

…   …   …

This time, when she opened her eyes, Regina’s face was not anxiously hovering over her. It took her a while to get her bearings: she was dizzy, hungry, irritated and nothing made sense, not even the smell in the air, something like warm spices and sugar and flowers not like anything she had ever experienced. When she got the therewithal to move, she realised that she was in a bed, surrounded by a dream. She blinked.

Not a dream. Curtains. Curtains billowing in an oblique light and gentle breeze. She looked away from the mesmerising curtains. She was alone and she’d been alone for most of her life but that was, for the first time since she had been a small child, a terrifying thought. Where was Regina?

She attempted to sit up and it went better than she had expected. In fact, it seemed that nothing was wrong with her at all. She took stock and, satisfied that the spinning in her head would soon stop, she moved gingerly to get out of what now revealed itself to be a massive bed.

She pushed past the curtains and had to stop and stare. Before her stood paradise. Or it came pretty damned close. She wondered if she was dead. If there was a heaven after all and this was it. Except she would not make the cut, would she?

Her feet touched soft, warm sand and then past the barrier of the curtains, the breeze kissed her skin. Maybe it was a vivid dream. “Regina!”

The old woman that had visited her room in Boston materialised behind her as if they had been walking side by side all along. “You have magic.” She said and seemed surprised and delighted at the same time.”

“I’ve got what, now?”

“You would not have woken up if you didn’t.”

“You mean I’d be dead. Sure… whatever rocks your boat.”

“No. I mean that you’d be asleep. Waiting this moment away. You are awake here. You have magic.” Emma dismissed with a shrug and it caused the old woman to smile knowingly. “You don’t believe in magic.”

“Tell you what: we’ll revisit the concept once you’ve told me where Regina is.”

“I will take you to her.”

“Where is she?”

“Ahead.”

“Look, I appreciate this whole Morpheus thing you’ve got going on but I never liked the Matrix. Cut the bull and show me where she is.”

“Walk with me, then.”

“Where are we?”

“In between.”

“Christ. Is it too much to hope for a straight answer?”

“Maybe our directions are a little different, Emma Swan, but that was a straight answer. We are in between. In between worlds. Where the last of magic still lives.”

“Regina said there was none left. I like her version best.”

“Wisps, pockets of magic here and there.”

Emma looked around herself. She knew nothing about magic but this place with its scented air and balmy breeze felt heavy with it. “And you got yourself a nice little pocket here, huh?”

The old woman studied Emma calmly. “It’s as if you were accusing me of something…” Emma was silent and it was answer enough for the old woman. “She needed this magic. Without this, I fear, she would have died…” The tone was apologetic. “Have you never saved anything for a rainy day, Emma Swan?” The old woman asked as they arrived at a pond, maybe a lake, god knew, where Regina seemed to float. Emma fell to her knees on the soft grass. Regina’s body seemed sustained by thin vines and the trees provided a protective canopy over her.

“Uh… that egg nest you’re talking about… do you mean the magic or her?” Emma asked.

The woman gave her a mystified look. “I do believe you think we have been using her.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“I…” The woman stopped and something flickered through the architecture of her face. “I meant magic. Saving that little magic for a rainy day.”

“That was not rain. That was a bitch of a storm.”

The old woman offered a small smile and waded into the water without disturbing it and motioned for Emma to follow. It was like moving through syrup rather than water.

“You have surprised me.”

“Me? Why?” Emma whispered, unwilling to startle Regina from her sleep- if that’s what this was.

“Both of you.” At a motion of her hand, Regina’s body was brought to her, probably by the plants sustaining her. Maybe an invisible water creature, Emma thought. Everything was dreamlike. Except the water on her skin was very real. “I remember a time when she was capable of love. But I had thought that it was lost to her. And yet…” She hovered her hands over Regina and then cupped water and dropped it softly over her arms and torso. “And you? She is loved.” She interrupted her ministrations long enough to look at Emma. “You love the Queen. That is, perhaps unjustly, the most surprising of it all.”

“So… she really is a Queen.”

“She has not lied to you, Emma Swan. She was a Queen.”

Emma pondered on that, on all that Regina had told her about herself. It bothered her less than she would have imagined. Unintentionally, her fingers clasped Regina’s, held her hand tightly in hers.

“Listen, lady… Here’s thing: this is all very pretty but… I have…”

“A son.” The woman completed.

“It’s complicated. But yes,” Emma’s heart trembled a little when she uttered the words. “I have a son. And I want to get back to the kid. He’s there and he’s all alone. And I made a promise to him. You have all this magic. Send us back. Send us back to him.”

“You and the Queen?”

“I was kinda hoping she’d want to share him with me.”

The old woman continued with the odd bathing ritual. “The magic here is that of the plants and of the flowers, Emma. The magic of the land, of what lives in it and makes a home in it is not the magic that jumps worlds. That one is exhausted.”

“You don’t get it! He’s ten and if we leave he’s alone in the world. We need to get back to him.”

“This is in between Emma. Rest your heart. There is no time here. This is a stolen moment.”

And she walked away, her footprints on the golden sand disappearing as she walked.

Emma sank into the clear water and lifted her feet off the smooth surface and floated, side by side next to Regina. “I’m sorry to do this but you need to wake up, Crazy McPretty. This thing about time not moving… is it real? She’s too weird to trust, right?”

Regina’s fingers tightened around Emma’s would and she could have sworn that Regina was actually smiling though everything in her told her that she was still asleep.

…   … …

The woman in green watched the Evil Queen and the Saviour Princess side by side and was entirely surprised by the connection between them. The Princess of the prophecy, fated to deliver the land from evil, loved. And she loved the one that had unleashed evil on the land. And it filled her ancient heart with hope. She let the glamour drop and her wings unfurl.

The time to make amends had come.

Chapter Text

Chapter 20

Emma’s presence called out to her. Gradually, her awareness extended to Emma and then to her body and finally to the environment surrounding her. There was magic in the air. She hadn’t felt magic for twenty-eight long years and this place was something so elemental she didn’t quite understand it. She kept her eyes closed for a moment longer, just absorbing the peace and well-being.

“I know you’re awake.” Emma spoke softly.

The vines that had sustained Regina receded into the bottom of the pond and to the rocks that lined its shores. She moved her arms and her legs and finding no fault with them, stood.

“Where are we?”

“Do you want the crazy version or mine?”

“Yours.” Regina replied without hesitation.

“Mine is fuck if I know.”

“And the crazy one?”

“In-between. You know, where magic still exist or whatever...”

“Can’t you feel it? The magic?”

“Man, I was missing the crazy talk.” Emma said with a smile. “Look, I know nothing about magic… but yeah, fine. It’s like something tickling my skin.”

“So you have magic, then?”

“Did you not hear the part where I told you that I know nothing about magic?”

Regina took Emma’s hand in hers and linked their palms together, fingers entwined and closed her eyes. Something akin to an electric current flowed between them. When Regina opened her eyes, something purple was swirling in them. “I think magic knows about you.”

“So, what’s the verdict, doctor?”

Regina brought their linked hands to rest on the surface of the water and opened them slightly, like a shell. As she did so, a water lily bloomed. Emma gasped and the delicate flower floated off.

Regina looked up from the bloom to Emma’s stunned expression. For all her magic before the curse, she had never- ever- created anything, anything at all, let alone something so beautiful. “That was amazing.” Emma whispered. “Is it true that time does not go by here?”

“I would imagine that it is only temporary.”

“But for now… Right now… is time ticking away in Boston?”

“No.”

“So it’s like Henry is asleep and we have a moment to ourselves?” Regina only smiled. She liked that idea so much it hurt. “Listen… I want to go back home. You’re right. Henry comes first. So we both go back.” Regina smiled sadly. “But for now… let’s make more flowers…” And she sank into the water taking Regina with her for an underwater kiss.

In the crystalline pond, water lilies bloomed in a riot of colour.

… …   …

“How are you feeling?”

At peace? Devastated at the oncoming loss? Happy? Worried? “You must go back, Emma. We need to find a way to send you home to Henry.”

“Us. We need to find a way to return us to Boston to Henry, agreed? Besides. I asked how you feel. I felt you nearly die in my arms. “

“I can’t die until my mission is completed. That was never the case.”

“Well, the old woman thought it would be the case because she used her rainy day fund to save your ass. So do me a solid and tell me how you’re feeling because I know you are flesh and blood just like everyone else.”

Regina stuttered. Of all the ways that Emma Swan still surprised her, this concern was the most touching. It had been nearly thirty years since anyone had been concerned about her aches and pains, her sores and her wounds. “I’…” She sighed and looked for whatever it was she felt. “Rested. Stronger.”

“In that case… I think it’s about time I ask you a very simple question.”

“Yes?”

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play games, Regina. You know what I mean. You provoked Lizard guy. You tried to get a reaction out of him. And out of that bat-shit crazy Queen. She was holding your heart in her hands and still you pushed and prodded at them.”

“How do you―”

“Know it was your heart? Don’t know. Don’t even want to think about it.” But she did and she had. That blackened lump in the Queen’s hands, dirty and macerated by the maniac hands had played with it for so long had called out to her, to her heart, to her very soul. Oh, she had thought about it and what it meant. “She could have killed you. Tell me what you will about not dying from imp poison or what have you but she wouldn’t be playing with it if she couldn’t kill you with a harder squeeze. So I’ll ask you again: what the hell were you thinking?”

Regina sighed. “Nothing much beyond removing all his bargaining chips from the table.”

“Lizard dude’s?”

“Rumpelstiltskin.”

“By letting them kill you…”

“If that’s what it took. Go home, Emma Swan. Go back to your Henry. Go home. There is nothing more to be done for this world. I’ve known the ending to this story for a very long time.”

“You’re an idiot, Regina.”

“I beg your pardon?” A spark of temper, the heat of insult rose in her cheeks, in her blood in a way she hadn’t felt since Snow White had her heart removed.

“You are an idiot.” Emma reiterated hotly. “We are going to get out of this, we are going to do this together and if you ever try something like this again I swear I will kill you myself, got it?”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do!” Regina almost shouted.

“Actually,” Emma shouted back, matching Regina’s tone and pitch, “I do. You woke up in my bed, roped me –and the kid- into this mess and you nearly got me killed in the process. You got into my head and know things I’ve never told anyone and I know things about you I’m dead sure you never told anyone either. So I am entitled to tell you what to do and I damned well expect you to listen.”

“That’s not playing fair.” Regina remarked, the tone softer, almost pleading.

“I know… Is it working?”

“Emma… You have this idea about me… that I am this romantic hero from the movies in your world, but I promise you I am not someone who has been hurt through no fault of her own. Everything that has happened to me, I brought it upon myself. Believe me, I am not who you think I am.”

“Well, apparently, you really are the Queen.”

“I had told you so.”

“So… what does that make the other one, the crazy Queen?”

“Snow White.”

“Well, shit!”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah… Sure. I mean… Disney really is branching out.” Emma laughed but there was a brittleness to it.

“Is this one of those moments when it is too much for you?”

“Well, sort of…” Emma’s face pinched. “I mean… why would it not? I’m in love with the Evil Queen and Snow White is a demented rag that looks like Bellatrix Lestrange.”

“What?”

“Bellatrix Lestrange. I know you watched at least one Harry Potter with Henry.”

“No… Before that…”

“What? The I’m in love with the Evil Queen part? It’s true. Deal with it.” Emma dismissed with a wave of her hand.

“You can’t. Emma you can’t.” Regina nearly begged. She practically jumped onto her feet and started pacing the sand, her footprints disappearing as soon as she left them.

“Says who?” Emma asked from where she was sitting watching Regina freaking out.

“I do!” She turned to face Emma. “Emma, you can’t. I… I can’t love you.”

“Can’t? Won’t?”

“If I could love, it would be you, Emma. But I have no heart. I have no heart to give you… I have no heart and no love to give you.”

Emma moved closer to Regina, touched her long, long hair lose down her back and cupped her face in her hands. Her thumbs caressed Regina’s bottom lip lazily. “That, Regina, was the second lie you’ve told me.”

Regina nodded sadly. “If I could love, if I had a heart, it would be you. I would give it to you.”

“Ah, Regina… The heart is just a muscle. Like your calf or your bicep, hell, like your stomach. Use your stomach. Hell, use your sphincter if you have to.”

Regina pulled back. “They call me Evil Queen because that’s what I am.”

Emma’s hands slid slowly to her sides. “Okay. Your really want to get this off your chest don’t you? Go on, then. Tell me all about how evil you are.”

“This curse this land lives under, it was me. I cast it. This evil that plagues the land, it was me. I set it free. When I cast the curse, I assembled practitioners of dark magic, creatures of ReulG’horm. I used their strength, their elements to cast the curse. The people starve because of me. They die because of me. Me.”

“Okay, so now that we’ve established that you’re actually Wonder Woman and not just some random evil queen, do you mind if I ask why?”

“Why?” Regina opened her mouth but the sound was muted, choked in her throat. “Are you not listening?”

“I am,” Emma assured her. “The thing is that for me it probably does not mean the same thing as it does around here because all I’ve seen so far was you fighting tooth and nail for this shithole- no offense- and nearly dying. I know- because I saw it in you when we… communed, or whatever you call it- that you have lost more than your fair share too. So, yeah, I’d really like to know why.”

Regina was baffled, confused to the point of distraction. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m capable of, Emma. You can’t… and if you knew me, you wouldn’t.”

“Okay. Show me.” Something in Emma tightened, a sense of foreboding deep on her gut.

“Show you?”

“Yes.” She said with finality, even if something told her it was a bad idea.

“I…”

“Well?”

“Now?”

“No time like the present, Regina. Show me.”

Regina looked around her and Emma could see her, grasping at straws, desperate to drive her point home. “We’re here. Here…”

Emma scrunched her nose as if deep in thought. “Sure. So you want to show it back at your place…”

“But I have no magic. I don’t know how to get us out of here.”

“Ah, and I’m the non-believer… Right. Close your eyes, Dorothy and click your ruby red heels.” Emma told her as she took Regina’s hands in hers. Regina had no idea what Emma was talking about except that she had felt an incipient power in Emma, something that called out to hers and she knew it, deep in her soul, that they were going back to the Enchanted Forest. So she wouldn’t, she couldn’t close her eyes. She wanted to see Emma, to see her clear gaze just for a few more moments before she had to see disgust in it.

For her part, Emma let her take her time. To her mind, the longer Regina took to make her decision, the better. It told her- and god, did she need the reassurance- that something in Regina was fighting. But eventually, Regina squeezed her hands back and prepared to be hurtled back into her world.

Regina thought of Emma’s small home, so clustered in things that said love and lived in by people that loved each other. And then she thought of her palace, once grandiose, now a charred ruin at the edge of the Endless Forest, where she crawled, when she had the strength to, to sleep and lick her own wounds. She was the Evil Queen. And that would never change.

So be it. It was time for Emma to go home to Henry.

…   …   …

Emma had a moment to mourn the loss of the warm golden sand and the warm breeze of that in-between place as she woke up with her ears ringing, the cold smell of damp sharp in the air and a hard flagstone floor under her.

The one part of her that retained some warmth was the hand clutched tightly in Regina’s unresponsive hand.

She broke the contact to stand and get a better sense of where she was. Whatever it was, it was a big, darkened space that could welcome no life. She paced softly through the cold, musty space. What the hell? She found a bed pushed against a fire place that had probably not been lit for a century and a fancy but downtrodden table by it. That was the extent of the living accommodations. The windows were heavily draped in something dark and dank and, Emma thought, probably more a defence than an attempt at home making.

“Not much, it is, dear?” A voice whispered behind her and though she might have recognized it as Regina’s, it wasn’t. It was something a little too cruel, a little too vicious. Dangerous.

It gave Emma a frisson of excitement that ran down her spine- half desire, half fear. But behind her, it was Regina. Not the ghost of some Evil Queen, not some reanimation of that person, but the Regina that had saved her life, saved Henry, that had made love to her. She cupped her cheek. “There you are, Regina.”

Regina’s shoulders slumped. Emma made everything more difficult than she could take. For a brief second, her head dipped into the warmth of that hand but then she got her wits about her. She pulled away sharply. It would shatter her, to break that lens through which Emma saw her but it was necessary. Emma loved someone she was not, could not be and she couldn’t help but be jealous of that person Emma saw. She wanted her out. If Emma couldn’t love what she was then she was justified in sending Emma and that impostor away.

She walked out of the gelid hall of the castle and didn’t wait for Emma to follow. Emma would catch up. She had since the day they had met.

Regina trekked in silence to the nearest village.

They walked side by side as Regina bee-lined to the centre of the village. Emma slowed down as they passed the first few hovels, the few children left scurrying away as they saw Regina- as they saw the Evil Queen- their bodies emaciated, much like Regina had been when Emma first saw her. Hunger, death were the great equalisers. She saw the fear and the apprehension as faces appeared at the door, scrutinising, worrying.

Regina gave her time to understand the look in the eyes of the people. Gave her time to take in the dirty poverty and the despair stale in the air. Then, she rounded it off: “I did this to them.”

Emma didn’t say a word but she swallowed hard.

Regina knew that it would take more than this to sway Emma. She paced around the pillory and, conversationally, pointed at the ground. “Maybe you can’t see it now, but the ground beneath your feet is soaked in the blood and the urine of those that died here at my command. Their bodies,” She pulled Emma roughly by her arm, “lie by the edge of the Endless Forest.” She dragged Emma to where the huts became trees and brambles. “Here, right where you stand, lie the corpses of those that defied me.” She took a deep breath and said goodbye to the light in Emma’s eyes. “I am the Evil Queen, Emma, because I did evil things. I hurt innocents, had them imprisoned, tortured, massacred because they said no to me.”

“Why?” Emma gritted out through the bile rising in her stomach, burning in her throat, in her mouth. In her heart.

“Because they knew where Snow White was hiding. Because they gave her safe haven. Because I am evil. Because I am spiteful, cruel… a murderer.”

“How many?”

“What?”

“You heard me. How many. How many people, how many villages… How many people?”

Regina dry swallowed. So be it. “Every single one of them in this village. Left them to rot in a ditch. Then I did the same to every single village that dared defy me. And when Snow still managed to find the happy ending she stole from me, I cursed the whole land. I cursed it to live unhappily ever after. Just because I could.”

Regina wiped an unexpected tear for what she had become. For what she had lost of herself.

Emma could smell death and rot in the air and lost control of her body. She lurched forward and emptied the contents of her stomach until it was nothing but dry heaves that would not cease.

Regina clasped her hands firmly together, the need to touch Emma, to just have one final loving look almost overwhelming. Almost.

She waited until Emma fell into a sitting position on the ground and took deep, gasping breaths of air.

“Shall I show you each of those villages? Do you want to walk the soil that they died upon? Do you want to make sure for yourself?”

Emma refused silently and wiped her mouth and forehead. “What the hell happened to you? What made you this way?” She looked at Regina, her eyes glassy.

Regina lowered her eyes. What could she possibly answer?

Emma, her Emma, the one the one who had made to love to her was gone. Had to, by all that was right, be gone. She had a child to care for. “Do you understand now why this is my place? Why this is my duty?” There was no reply. But, then again, most replies needed no words. “I’ll take you to the palace. There must be a way to send you home.”

Emma stood and walked behind Regina, her eyes never settling on her form, focusing, instead on what was left of the village, of the people and considering Regina in all of this.

…   …   …

The trek to Queen Snow White’s palace was the most gruelling of Emma’s life. And she had had more than a few of those where everything hung in the balance. Her stomach revolted again and again. She mourned the loss of the Regina she had believed in. Mourned the things she had imagined they could build together. Felt disgust rise in her at the woman that walked ahead of her without sparing her so much as a look.

What on earth could drive someone to this? To do things so violent, so despicable, so unimaginably cruel?

She halted her march for a second.

What did drive someone to this? “Regina.” She croaked through her sore, aching throat. “Regina, wait.”

But Regina refused to turn, even though she stopped at Emma’s behest. “Do you need some water?”

The voice was weary and strangled and it was the voice of the woman that had looked up at her from between her legs. There was no monster here, no dragon, no villain. Just the woman she had made love to.

The woman she still desired. Still loved.

“No.” Because the woman she desired, the woman she loved was the one that had spent the last however many years trying to make amends, trying to repay a debt that was ever replenishing. How long was that? Because if she was the lost princess, then the curse had been cast twenty-eight years ago. “Tell me something… How long have you been doing this?”

“What?”

“This whole warrior slash defender thing. How long have you been dragging yourself to fight those imps and whatever other creatures you have unleashed?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Indulge me. I can guilt trip you into doing it but I’d prefer if you just told me the truth. Don’t look at me like that. You set the precedent when you gave me the tour of that village.”

Regina remained stubbornly still, looking at the path ahead of her. Soon the tower of Snow White’s castle would be visible in the reddened horizon. “Shy of twenty-eight years.”

“And time has stood still here?” Regina nodded. “Sort of like Groundhog day.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Emma shook her head. Suddenly, there was no time to explain intricacies. There was only her heart beating so hard in her chest it was making her short of breath. “Never mind. Bottom line: you have gotten up in that castle of yours every day knowing that the one thing that would change would be that more people would be dead, at the claws of those things. That you would starve another day. Fight and lose another day.” She saw Regina’s head nod and still the woman would not turn to her. Everything in her tingled. “And even if I’m the lost princess, the one that you could swap for your freedom, you prefer to send me home to a kid that means nothing to you.”

Bingo, Emma thought when Regina whirled on her. “Don’t say that. Henry is precious to me. He believed in me. He was the first person to ever believe in me. Even before you did. If it hadn’t been for him you would have dumped me somewhere out of your way. Don’t say that. Don’t… Emma, please.”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“You’re sending me home. You could, I don’t know… negotiate a sale. A princess for your freedom. I wouldn’t hold it against you. You could go back and take care of Henry. You’d have him for yourself.”

“This no life Emma. I wish for you better than this. I would give it to you on a platter if it were mine to give.”

“You’re putting me first.”

Regina didn’t acknowledge. “If you’re feeling better, we should get going. I’m not sure what’s happening with ReulG’horm’s army, but it is not a good idea to be out in dark. Evil has more forms. We need to get to the Queen’s palace before night falls.”

Emma watched Regina walk away, her kidskin boots making no sound, her movements cautious, suspicious and, Emma knew now, ready to defend should there be an attack. She prayed that there wouldn’t be one. They were completely unarmed, Regina having lost her daggers and Emma not having her gun. They were good as dead should an attack happen. And yet, every time there was a rustle of the wind in the trees or an animal moved in the forest, Regina’s stance was all about protecting Emma, offering her body as shield and maybe even weapon. Emma’s heart was beating painfully in her chest, her breathing hard and burning. She had to take a breath. She felt feverish and dizzy. No, desire and love, she realised as Regina once again pulled her behind her back, are not lessened by disgust. Love is not lessened by shock. She loved Regina. She loved her to the last bit of her, to her last cell, the last hair on her head. Down to the last murder. She had a plan, before Regina. She had a plan and some savings and she was going to take Henry and skip town with the kid and they were going to disappear somewhere where his parents wouldn’t find them and would finally stop hurting the kid. This had never been part of the plan, this looking at someone and knowing the worst, the absolute worst of them and still love them, still feel that not one day would go by when that would be anything less than the whole truth.

It was a horrible feeling, to be in love. Horrible, horrible, your heart wide open, vulnerable, with a bull’s eye pinned right smack in the centre of it. Absolutely horrible.

Adjust, she told herself. Adjust, Emma.

She let it simmer for a little. Angry at herself, at Regina. At the world. Then, the tallest tower of the castle appeared, first a small dot in the distance, then an imposing shadow.

“Regina.” Emma called out.

“Nearly there. It won’t take long now.”

“Stop. Regina, just stop. Hold on a second.”

“It’s getting dark, Emma. Soon there will be no light and it will be too dangerous.”

“I know. But I need a minute, alright?”

“A minute?”

“Just listen, okay?” Regina fidgeted but said nothing. Emma grabbed both her wrists and brought them to her. “The thing is…”

“What is?”

“I think I’ve figured something out.” She took a deep breath, gathering her courage. “I don’t know what happened to you. What made you do the things you did. I think there is a reason. Generally, people don’t wake up one day and decide to join the dark side of the Force, you know? I can dig around in those memories I got from you when you heeled but I want to know from you. I want you to tell me. I hope one day you’re going to trust me enough to tell me. But I love you. Even not knowing. Even if you had been born like this.”

“You can’t.”

“Yes, I can. Because what you were when you did this, what you are now, the things you do now… they are not the same thing. You have spent so long trying to make up for this mess, so long letting them beat this out of you and still you would not sell me off to them. Still you wouldn’t do the easy thing. You and I… we’re so much alike, you know? We both took on the world and are still standing. I think I like that the most about you. So the thing is… Stay with me. Choose me. Please. Let’s find a way and kiss this shithole goodbye. Let’s go home to Henry and have a life. I don’t care what the cost is. I’ll sell them my heart for them to send us home if I have to.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. You can’t live without your heart!” Regina closed the distance between them and placed her hand over Emma’s heart. “Not your heart.”

“Why not? You’re doing very well without yours.”

“All the love in you will be gone, Emma. Don’t do that. Please.”

“Regina… I know something about you.” Regina stood perfectly still in the darkness of the fields, unable to move. “I know that you love so deeply you don’t need a heart to love me. Don’t.” She interrupted Regina’s protest. “Don’t you want to have that life, us, the kid, maybe a dog or a cat. Hell, a tarantula sounds pretty romantic right now. Don’t you want that?”

“I want to. I want to so very much. Emma, you gave me peace and hope. Love. God, you gave me love. But be reasonable. What can I give you? What do I have to give you?” Regina looked around herself and pointed to her dark, devastated world.

“Exactly the same!”

“Emma…” There was an attempt at patience but Emma heard the desperation. “You don’t want me. All I am is this. All I know is war. Do you know what that does to a person? Do you know what’s left?” Regina pointed at herself, “I’m not worth it, not good enough.”

“You’re right. I can’t even begin to imagine what it does to a person. But you’re wrong Regina. You’re not less the woman you could be because of all this shit that happened to you or because of you. You are twice the person you imagine because you survived, whichever way you did that, because you still found it in you to love Henry… and me. Besides… I’ve had you back in Boston. Are you telling me that it was not real? Are you telling me that you faked it all?”

Regina saw an opportunity and took it clumsily. “Yes.”

“And that was your third lie. “ Emma pointed out. She hooked her finger under Regina’s chin and forced her to look into her eyes. “You’d break my heart.”

The soft caress of Emma’s finger under her chin broke her nerve. “To save you? Yes, Emma, I would.” The jaw she wanted to set as she had done her whole life trembled along with the rest inside of her.

“Why would you hurt me that way? You’re not cold. You think you are, sometimes you even believe it. You showed me all these things you’ve done and all the while you thought I didn’t see the hurt and the remorse in your eyes. But I know you better. Do you hear me? I know you better.” She smiled and it was a smile so full of promise it hurt in places Regina had forgotten could be bruised. “I know you by heart.”

“Stop it. Stop it Emma. I say stupid things sometimes. You know me well enough to know that.”

“I do. I really do Regina. You’re loyal and generous. Tough and strong. But you judge yourself too hard. You question what you are, what you feel. What you were, what you’ve been and what you’re becoming. I don’t know anyone with more backbone than you. Look what you’ve survived. Look at you still standing. You’re amazing.”

“Please stop giving me reasons to―” Regina very nearly pleaded

“Come back with me. Stay with me.”

“Oh Emma! You’re so frustrating.” This beautiful, stubborn woman was going to be her downfall because she had to be strong and ruthless – for both of them- but when Emma begged, Regina wanted to give her anything and everything in her power.

“Even if it’s just to spare my feelings. I’m not above grovelling. Not for you, I’m not.” Emma pleaded.

Regina let herself be enveloped in an embrace, savoured it, treasured it. She was done arguing with Emma. She was not strong enough to fight to stay away from the ones she wanted- loved- the most.

She placed a tender kiss on Emma’s nose, a kiss that aimed at giving Emma a sense of hope that Regina was sure she could not deliver.

Chapter Text

Chapter 21

In this palace, Rumpelstiltskin raged, seethed, cursed the pathetic excuse for an evil queen he had chosen and this weak saviour princess he had been brought from this other world. His Belle stood by the window and lullabied the child she hadn’t conceived, rocked it softly in her arms. This curse had devastated him, had robbed him of his immense power, of his independence, of his strength. It was a fate worse than death. He would welcome death before he could make his peace with this bleeding of his powers. But it had also robbed him of his Belle, robbed him of her joy, of her happiness, of her mind that had seeped out of her with the years that went by without any changes.

The Evil Queen he’d created had been a disappointment, a miscalculated gamble. He had rubbed his hands in glee when she had finally snapped and embraced the darkness in her, the one he had so carefully nurtured throughout the years. He had rejoiced when she’d grabbed the heart from her father’s warm chest to toss into the sacrificial pyre where she cast the curse.

His one miscalculation had been her one weakness: her heart. Her love. Her remorse. The price of the Dark Curse- that last precious trace of her humanity- she had been unable to pay. And his curse, his life’s work, his conduit to that world that was hiding Bae had slipped through her fingers with each bitter tear she had cried over that pathetic, weak excuse for a father Cora had procured for her offspring.

The foolish Queen had cost him everything with those absurd tears of hers.

As he had sat watching the clouds of purple smoke rolling in, harbingers of the curse, he had refused to see that upon him was a prison, not the freedom he had hungered for.

He had been reduced to small bursts of magic, to this nothingness, to whispering words in the ear of a demented queen, dark enough herself now after so many years of solitude. He hated the Evil Queen for her weakness. He hated her enough to wait. He hated her enough to have her heart removed from her chest. If he had done that himself from the beginning he would not had to wait twenty-eight years.

And again she had failed him. He had been so sure that her passions would have been enough this time around. He settled in to wait again. He had nothing but time. One way or another, he would be out of the Enchanted Forrest where Evil was but a caricature. That he promised on the gone mind of his Belle: a tooth for tooth, an eye for eye.

…   … …

Emma had imagined that when she walked into a palace or a castle it would be lined with guards in pristine uniforms, but walking into Queen Snow White’s castle was shockingly easy. Small wonder the imps had been decimating them. The door was ajar and anyone was welcome- even the enemies.

When she walked into the throne room, Regina’s hand tightly held in hers, she realised that there was probably nothing left that the imps might want. Just devastation. When the Queen saw them walking into the great hall, she stood from her throne, the same achingly lose and ragged gown and Regina’s heart in her hands.

“Don’t even think about it!” Emma admonished harshly when she saw Queen Snow’s fingers begin to clutch at the heart.

“Why are you back?” The Queen asked as she slumped tiredly into her throne.

“Because I want that heart back.”

Queen Snow aimed for mocking but the tone fell just a little short of it. “And go back where you came from?”

Emma smiled sardonically. “Oh, I intend to. You and your enabling cronies can keep it all. This place is hell already. Saves me the trouble of sending you there. But I’m taking Regina with me. I’m taking all of her, heart and all. So hand it over and send us back.”

“Never. Not while my True Love is asleep, not while my child is gone. I can’t wake him and I can’t bring her back. She comes to my presence, smelling of you, cheeks flushed from the love you’ve made. Thank her. She taught me all about revenge… Did she tell you what she is? What she’s done?”

“Yes.” Emma replied at the same time Regina said “No!”

“Send this woman home, Snow. I can’t break the curse. I can’t love her. I don’t love her. Send her home to her son. Save her… from me.”

For the mere aggravation of having Regina telling her what to do, Snow gave her heart a vicious squeeze that brought Regina to her knees. Not in front of Emma. Just not in front of her. Please, Regina thought wildly as she tried to stand up again.

“What’s her name?” Regina paled further and sweat broke in her forehead. “You avoided her name. There is power in the name. In naming a thing. Tell me step-mother, what is her name?” Queen Snow enunciated slowly, a precise delivery.

Rumpelstiltskin had schooled Snow White well. There was power in a name. More so in this one. And Regina would never hand it over. But Emma was quicker. As soon as she saw Regina hitting the ground again, she stood between the Queen and Regina. “Emma. My name is Emma Swan.”

The Queen paled violently. “Is this a joke? Where did you hear that name?” She slumped helplessly into the throne.

“It was the one thing my parents ever gave me.” She stared at the Queen in challenge. “Why? Got it copyrighted?”

The Queen stood and walked to Regina towering over her still trying to stand up and suddenly it was as if all her sadness had melted away leaving only an angry predator, looming over the woman on the floor. “How did you know?” She growled out and grabbed Regina’s shoulder with her bony fingers digging into what Emma knew to be soft skin and hard muscle.

“Know what?” Regina gasped softly but before she could understand what Snow had meant, the Queen’s rage was again subdued by an ineffable sadness. Softly, she ran her index finger down Emma’s cheek.

“You could be. You could be her. My Emma.” It was the way the Queen whispered her name that mollified Emma, the tenderness of the sound. “Come with me, Emma Swan. Please.”

Regina saw it then, the resemblance, the… familiarity of the traits, the chin, the eyes. She had known, of course she had. But Emma had been the lost princess, title enough, sufficient in its threat but now she was Snow’s daughter. And it hurt in more ways than she could name. As Emma dug her heals unwilling to indulge the crony, Regina whispered softly. “You are a Princess because you came from a Queen, Emma. She is your mother…”

Emma’s bottom lip trembled and her voice was a sad croak when she spoke. “That’s not what a mother is, Regina, someone who’d abandon me at the side of a road. Someone I don’t know.”

”Because of me. Get to know her.”

“If she figures that out, she won’t let me out of here.” Emma pleaded. “What about Henry? What about you?”

“Will you leave her behind, Emma?”

“Without a second thought, Regina.”

“Not for me, Emma. Not like this. All your life you’ve wondered what she was like. This is your chance.”

“Yeah, alright. But that doesn’t mean that I…”

Regina smiled sadly and Emma followed the Queen. She had to force herself to let go, to do the right thing. It was so hard sharing this love with Snow White.

… … …

Emma walked behind Queen Snow. There was something there, something about the sadness- even about the anger hat called out to her, made her want to help, to do something about it, to give it some respite. In a way, this Queen was a lot like Regina, in all their losses, in the things they did.

The Queen stopped at a bed chamber and took a fortifying breath. The only guard Emma had seen in the whole kingdom stood inside, in full armour and a sword at the ready. He relaxed his stance when the Queen approached the bed and nodded sadly at her questioning look.

Emma looked at the bed and her skin crawled. The Queen approached the bed and sat on the worn chair that stood close to it. She took the man’s hand in her hers and spoke softly to him, so softly Emma could not make up what she was saying. Silently, she motioned Emma to sit on the bed by the sleeping man. He was handsome, Emma thought, a slight smile on his sleeping face as if he had been dreaming of good things. Emma sat because she didn’t really know what else to do. The Queen lovingly deposited the man’s hand in Emma’s and smiled, a fragile, terribly brittle smile. Emma held the large beefy hand in hers, not knowing what the Queen was hoping would happen but wishing that if it was for this man to wake up that it would work, because you could not wish this on anyone.

Form the doorjamb, Regina mourned the Snow she had loved, as devastated and alone as she was. Just as desperate. She hoped that her prince would wake up. She hoped Emma would be able to perform that miracle. Emma, who would end up having to chose between them unless she sent her home to her Boston.

“I suppose it was too good to be true.” The Queen wiped a tear and stood. “You look a little like him. You could be mine…” Emma wondered if this Princess madness was really true, if there was any chance she might have a mother at all, and her heart gave a jolt between hope and horror. She looked at the sad woman in front of her. The madness was absent now, maybe just lurking around the corner.

She followed the Queen out of the room. Regina followed after stealing a glance at the door closing in on Snow’s prince. They were somewhere horrible. All their happy endings had disappeared in the purple cloud of a curse. And the only thing she felt was remorse, something bone deep and disconcerting because she had thought that she would have enjoyed seeing Snow like this, half demented and absolutely crushed.

Her throat burned and her eyes filled. She took a moment to collect herself and stick out her chin, square her shoulders. The one good thing that she could do was to send Emma back. All of this? Well, it was well beyond her capabilities and she would die for it or with it. Whichever came first.

…   …   …

“I understand your pain Emma. No mother should have to lose her child.” Queen Snow spoke softly but either because the lucidity was wearing out or because the mere voicing of that particular loss brought back her own, her eyes clouded over again. Her hand went to her flat belly and rubbed as if there had been life inside still. “I wish I could help you. There is no magic left.” She slumped on the throne again and Emma saw her go into the fog of her mind. Her throat tightened.

“I think there is still some, here and there.” She spoke tentatively. She wanted to touch the woman and offer comfort because no one deserved to be this desperate, this alone even if that person was the bitch standing between her and Regina’s freedom and Henry’s safety. “Maybe there’s a way to use those little pockets of magic for this.”

“For you to take her home with you?” Queen Snow screeched. “Not if we had abundant magic. Not after what she did to us. To me. No.” The hand that Emma was reaching out to touch the Queen with retracted into the pocket of her jeans. She was such an idiot. “Do you love her?” The Queen asked. “How can you love someone who did all these things?”

“Because,” Emma spoke without even looking at Regina. She could feel her presence, the anxiety, the worry, the fear. “We’re not all pretty and perfect. My shit matches her shit. My darkness calls out to hers. She is so strong… I’m stronger with her. Where I jut out, she dips in. Where I’m soft, she’s hard… Whatever fucked up analogy you want. I love her. All of it. She has shown me what she’s done. In fucking vivid detail. With the intent of making me leave her behind. Maybe it’s like a landscape: you got used to it, so you don’t see it anymore. I see what you don’t: the hurt, the regret. How the things she did cost her what she was. How those things left her as much of a ghost as you are. I see the beauty of the landscape you got so used to.”

Queen Snow looked startled, confused. Angry.

“Leave it, Your Majesty. You wouldn’t understand. Have you always been good? Do you even know what that means? Do you know how much it cost her to be bad? How much it’s costing her to be good? No? I do. I love her for all that it cost her in the past, in the present, and I’m pretty sure, in the future.”

Regina shrunk into the wall she was leaning against as tears run down her face. How was it possible to love with no heart in her? And yet, she did. And the part of her that wanted Emma safe, away from her own hell was, at that moment, dwarfed by the part that needed Emma more than the next breath.

“Do you think she can ever be good?”

“Jesus, you put a lot of stock in that good and evil crap. Even if she isn’t good. You talk about being good like it’s something you are born with or born as. Lemme tell you, though… good isn’t born. It’s made. With every kind word you give, with every hand you reach out when someone falls. I like what she is now. She made me something good. And I like this person she is. I like the person I am when I’m with her. Not the promise of something pretty. I love what’s ugly about her.”

“You’re brave. You could be mine. Maybe you’re mine.” The Queen studied Emma’s face as if she was picking apart very line, every shape, every shade of colour. “Huh… I think you have my chin…”

Emma smiled a little because she didn’t know how else to respond. “Look, it’s nice. It’s a nice thought. God knows that all I’ve ever wanted was a family of my own. And Jesus, you’d fit the bill sweet as pie. But…”

“But?” Queen Snow pressed.

“But I need to get home. Henry. This is not the place for him. I let go of a son once. I will not let Henry go.”

“Your son… Bring him here.” Was the mild suggestion though Emma had to wonder. She could see the shadows of the madness fleeting in and out of the Queen’s eyes and she was having trouble keeping up with the changes.

“Here? I can’t bring him here.” She felt Regina tensing, preparing for the fight. And she loved her a little bit more for it.

“This is not the place for him, I know. No place for any child.” The shadows rolled into the Queen’s blue, blue eyes. “That’s why you can’t have her, you see? Because she took you from me…”

“You can’t be sure of that. That I’m your kid.” And yet, a little corner of her wanted it fiercely.

But the Queen wasn’t really hearing. “She is all that stands between us and them. She damned us to them. It’s only fitting that she stays to stand between us and them.” The tone was so reasonable that Emma was confused until Snow slumped onto her throne and caressed her empty belly. For all the time that had gone by, she still remembered, every day, carrying her child.

And Emma knew how it felt. Acutely.

The Queen remained quiet after that. Time, Emma realised, was of no consequence to her. But Emma felt each second tick by in her skin like deep gouges, each moment that Henry was alone in their world.

That indifference to Henry shredded any sympathy Emma might have felt for the woman who could, perhaps, be her mother. She wanted to go there and slap her back to the here and now, but her agitation seemed to make the Queen retreat further into her own mind. Emma walked to Regina and pulled her into her arms, to settle down to wait. Regina fought it for a second until she gave into the warmth and comfort it offered.

“I can find Rumpelstiltskin and ask.” Regina offered with trepidation. It was a last resort after every other option had been exhausted.

“But you said…”Emma didn’t complete the sentence as Regina was already nodding in agreement. It was a bad idea, the worst in the history of bad ideas but Regina had determined that it was a price she was willing to pay. Henry was all that mattered and a boy of ten cannot be alone the in the world. She would pay whatever price.

“I know what you’re thinking, Regina.” A soft voice sounded behind them. Emma felt Regina tense in her arms and closed them tighter around the woman but Regina needed no protection. She, again, put Emma behind her as if she could shield her. “You have nothing to fear from me, Your Majesty.”

Regina did not utter a word, but her muscles were vibrating like the strings in a violin, tense, ready for the attack, Emma knew and braced herself for it, to be the plucky side kick again. It turned out, the voice and the shimmer of green in the darkness of the throne room was a fairy. A bona fide fairy, complete with wings and all. Emma bit her tongue and told herself this was completely within the expected for a world populated by Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, an Evil Queen and imps and trolls. “What do you want from us?” She couldn’t help the aggression. Distrust and fear were rolling off Regina and she responded to it.

The shapely fairy morphed into the old woman that had guided Regina from this world to Emma’s and had healed her when Snow had nearly killed her. Still, trust didn’t come easy to her. It never would. She pushed Emma firmly behind her, just to make sure. “You tricked me… Tinkerbelle.” She ventured as the old woman once again became a fairy.

“No… I didn’t tell you the whole truth. Forgive me. I wanted… we needed… the princess. Rumpelstiltskin is too interested in her and we both know he cannot be trusted. The time had come for the Saviour to be returned home. The princess of the prophecy was supposed to save us. We just didn’t know how. We thought she would be the one to defeat ReulG’horm.”

“And now you don’t?” Emma asked.

“Now we believe that the prophecy leaves a lot to guess work.”

“No kidding.”

“No… no kidding.” The fairy answered a little baffled by the language. “We believe now that it might not be in battle, but something altogether different.”

“Right.” Emma softly draped her arm over Regina and stood by her side in a move so smooth Regina didn’t wrestle Emma back to safety. “Who’s this we?”

“The fairies.” The fairy in the blue dress that had stood behind Queen Snow spoke softly from behind the one in the green costume.

Regina tensed again but made no move to stand before Emma. “Why?”

“Because we failed.”

“You think?” Emma snarked.

“Yes.” The Blue Fairy spoke softly. “Because of me, of my pride we failed. I failed. The kingdom, Regina, Snow White… even you, Emma Swan. And when Green came to me and told me there might be a way. If I was willing to risk everything.”

“And who are you?”

“Blue. I’m Blue.”

Emma shifted her weight between her right and her left foot and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “Of course you are…” Regina rubbed her back, a little soothing gesture. “Okay, listen up, I’m not saying I believe you, but if I did… did you know where I was this whole time?”

By her side, Regina squeezed her hand. She hoped fervently that it was not the case. That they hadn’t known where Emma was because she would pluck their wings inch by inch if they had left her alone in that world to go through the life Emma had.

“No!” Tinkerbelle spoke forcefully. She seemed brasher than the blue one, and therefore, at least to Emma, easier to trust. “I wouldn’t care about the prophecy if I had known. I was already banished with nothing to lose.” Emma gave her an appreciative look a mix of distrust still, and respect.

“How old are you again?”

“Fairies were born in the first dew of the world, Emma.” Blue schooled. Emma was fairly sure she’d make a great teacher or a nun. She already had the disapproving tone down pat.

That was neither here nor there for Emma so she changed the subject. “So where is the Saviour? Seems to me this is just the guy to send us home.”

Blue smiled as if she had it all figured out. “You are the saviour. The lost Princess. You.”

Emma snorted. “Yeah sure. How high do pigs fly in this world of yours?”

“What does she mean by that?” The green fairy asked Regina.

“She doesn’t believe it.” Regina clarified. “it’s a little too much for Emma.”

“But you do, don’t you? You have felt her magic. You know who she is. Isn’t that why you’re trying to send her home? To protect her?” The green fairy pressed.

Regina, however, was beyond anything. The nerves were catching up with her and she couldn’t work down the knot in her throat.

“Yeah, sounds just like her.” Emma poked Regina who looked on the verge of tears, fighting them tooth and nail.

But to Regina, it was clear as day: if the fairies knew who Emma was, Emma’s chances of going back home to her son were dwindling by the second.

Emma pulled her tighter into her side and Regina lost her grip on her tight control. Tears slid down her cheeks, big, heavy and she was powerless to stop them. “I’m sorry, Emma… I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” Emma asked slightly horrified by the tears, so unexpected.

“All of it. For hiding it from you. For roping you into this. For putting you in danger. For bringing you here. For not finding a way home for you.”

Emma closed her arms around Regina and let her cry until there was nothing left.

The Blue Fairy approached once again. She raised her hand to soothe Regina but pulled back at Emma’s almost snarl.

“There may be a way.” The green fairy ventured softly.

“What? More enchanted wardrobes?” Regina queried acerbically wiping her face.

“No…” The fairy waited a beat and Emma knew trouble was coming. “A curse…”

“No.” Regina shouted. Again she stood before Emma. “I couldn’t do it the first time around. I will not do it now. Not for anything, Tinkerbelle.”

“Let us explain better, Regina. “ The fairy begged.

Emma was sure some of the meaning of the conversation was escaping her but she took Regina’s arm and stood side by side with her. She was done with Regina shielding her from everything. They would do this together and that was it. “Then why did you mention the curse, Tinkerbelle?” Emma spoke the name with enough sass to unnerve the fairy. It figured, Emma thought. Pretty soon, Peter Pan himself would fly about the place.

“Same general principle.”

“Then, in general principle, we say no.” Emma replied and Regina’s hand in hers squeezed in gratitude. Emma gave her a smile and then hardened her expression for the face-off with the fairies.

Tinkerbelle gave them a studious look and then there was some sort of non-verbal communication with Blue. Tinkerbelle had a smile on her face that could have been just a little too victorious. “I know it will work. Now I know it will… It is not the curse. And it requires but one sacrifice.”

“No. No more sacrifices.” Regina refused flatly. There was only one sacrifice for her and she was standing there holding her hand through all of this.

“No, Your Majesty, not like that. The sacrifice required is that of the prophecy: no one is left behind.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Can’t you people get to the point ever?” Emma advanced over both fairies.

“I mean, Emma Swan, that no matter how much we would like to, we leave no one behind. No matter how much they have wronged us, no matter how life would be better without them. This magic is white magic. It needs balance. Balance such as you two are- the light and the dark, the product of love and the product of hate. You are a match- in every way. Balance… No one stays behind.”

“Yeah, okay.” Emma pondered with a sideways glance at Regina, seeking her approval. “Seems a little too convenient for the two of you but alright… I’m game.”

Regina, by her side, paled. “Yes,” Tinkerbelle confirmed reading Regina’s expression easily. “Him too.”

“Okay… what do we have to do?”

“We speak to the Queen.” Blue answered and she stole a glance at her Queen, still lost in her own darkness.

“I don’t think she’s with it at the moment.” Emma commented.

“She is a part of it. Must be.” And walked to the throne where Snow was gently caressing her empty belly, Regina’s heart momentarily forgotten in her lap. “Your Majesty.”

“They are still here.”

“Because there is a way. You must try.”

“The Evil Queen is not going anywhere.”

“What if we all did?”

“And take our misery with us? Here or there, what difference would it make?”

“Misery is in your heart, dear Snow. Unless you let go of it, it will follow you wherever you go. But I was speaking of your people. You haven’t forgotten about your people, have you? Your grief hasn’t made you totally blind, dear Snow. I know it. Your suffering is not theirs. Theirs can be lessened. There is away. We go away and leave this land to ReulG’horm.”

“But then it will win.”

“And what are we winning, Snow? We were decimated, starved, fed upon. We have lived in misery for twenty-eight years. Now there is a chance of leaving the pain behind and starting again.”

“Because of her!” Snow pointed at Regina and grabbed the heart in her lap, started squeezing.

Blue put her hand over the Queen’s in a soothing motion just as Tinkerbelle and Emma both held Regina up. “And we will remain here because of you. It will be your guilt to carry, Snow. For your pride. For your bitterness.”

Snow’s fingers unclenched from the heart and Regina straightened. “How? There is no magic.”

“You are holding it, Snow. Give it back to her. With your hearts beating together, there will be.”

“Our hearts are not made alike. It will not work. I don’t believe it.”

“I do.” Emma said surprising even herself.

“Oh, let’s try. Let’s try. Let’s try.” Rumpelstiltskin materialised by the small group, giggling, giggling. “Yes… yes, yes, yes.”

The fairies tensed visibly, both of them, Tinkerbelle by Regina and Emma, Blue by Queen Snow. “This guy again?” Emma asked drawing attention to herself. “I don’t think I like you much!” Emma commented. “Maybe we can leave this one here…” She suggested but both fairies shook their heads in refusal. Rumpelstiltskin smiled, smarmy, and it gave Emma the creeps.

Snow looked morosely at the heart in her hands. Her own heart thumped violently in her chest and everything in her screamed No. Emma moved forward and placed her hand on the emaciated one of the woman that was, unlikely as it seemed, her mother.

“Please.”

The moment Emma touched her hand, Snow felt a jolt in the whole of her body and as her eyes closed, she saw herself, flushed, sweaty and smiling through the eyes of her newborn daughter, felt their hearts beating together and a joy unparalleled. Emma felt a charge in her whole body as if she was just coming home to a table set and a warm embrace. It rattled her and she pulled her hand back as if she had been burnt.

“I will have it back when this is done, step-mother.” She whispered to Regina as the vision cleared and Emma’s hand retracted from hers. “I will have it back.”

“Like hell you will.” Emma nearly screamed. “You will use her again for this, like you did for everything else so far. Whether this works or not, she goes free, with her heart. You do not get to keep her.”

“I lost my daughter.” Snow retorted firmly.

“I can be it if you want. But Regina goes free. With her heart. To do whatever she wants.”

Snow could only see her herself with a daughter and the chance of catching up. What if? This Emma was an orphan, was she not? And she was tired of the fight. “Maybe you could let me be your mother. In this new land… maybe let me be a mother for a little while. There is a mother in me and that mother is childless. Nothing hurts more than the empty arms of a mother.”

That was a truth that Emma knew in her own flesh, branded there by hot irons. “Yeah, okay. Maybe we can start as friends, though… ease us both into it…”

Snow’s face brightened and a spark of the madness was there again. “Let her go then. Come to me now.”

Emma was momentarily confused. She had through they had managed to the leave the crazy on the side long enough to make whatever this was work and just when she thought everything was going well, the queen spaced out again.

Blue touched Snow’s hand again. “My dearest Snow… You must focus. Stop trying to hold on to the past and the future at the same time. Your arms are not long to hold both. You must choose one: either the past filled with pain or the future where there is a daughter, a friend, someone so full of love that she brought herself here for the sake of it.”

“For her. Love for her.” She pointed accusingly at Regina.

“Love is love, Snow. If one can feel it for a tree he will soon fell it for a stone. Love knows no measure.”

“What if she is not mine? Are you sure she is mine?”

“You have been a mother without a child for twenty-eight years. Will you tell me now, Snow, that if there is a daughter to love, you will want to know what blood runs in her veins?”

Snow caressed her empty belly again. She was a mother. And for the first time there was a daughter that might let her be that. “What if I can’t forgive Regina?”

“What if she can’t forgive you?” Snow’s eyes lit up with anger. It had always been so easy to blame the Evil Queen for everything. “What has been done, it was done because of what you cost her. You are not the only one who lost her true love to tragedy.”

“But she’s getting hers back.”

“Snow… She’s getting her second chance because she is risking it all for that chance. Do you think she is not terrified? Her fear is pungent in the air.”

“I don’t like it.”

“It’s not up to you, Snow.”

“If this Emma is really my child, she is not free to live her life. She has obligations. She has… She has… She’s mine. She’s not free. I will not let her go.” The spark of hope in Blue’s eyes faded.

Tinkerbelle moved forward and spoke to the Queen herself. “In one way or another, we are all puppets, Your Majesty. But make no mistake. There is no forcing love. Emma was not forced to love the Evil Queen. There is a choice. We all have our choices. Emma’s was to love deeply. To love the Evil Queen above and beyond all that was done. And if you give her a chance, if you give yourself the chance, if you open your hands and your heart, you may be so lucky that she will choose to love you too. Concentrate on the future, Your Majesty. The possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing.”

“Regina told me that… once.”

“And she was right. Belief is magic. Do you believe, You Majesty? Do you believe that, together, we can all heal?”

“I want to…”

“And that will do for now.”

…   …   …

In a corner, Rumpelstiltskin bided his time. He had no patience for moping and tears and fainting spells. He knew what he wanted out of this and that the way to get it was to let it play out. In the end, it would all happen the way he wanted. Whether they knew it or not.

…   …   …

“Blue?”

“Yes, Snow, dear?”

“I don’t want to remember.” Snow leaned into the hands of the fairy, crushed by the weight of her own anger. “In this new land we are going to, I don’t want to remember. I want to forget.”

“I don’t think I understand, Snow.” Blue asked. In the privacy of the Queen’s chambers, away from Rumpelstiltskin, the fairy could ask freely.

Snow looked at her prince, asleep in his bed. “If he is not awake, I don’t want to remember. I don’t want… I want to be someone else. No past. Let me have no past.”

“Are you quite sure, Snow?”

“I am. I know I am not well. I know of the darkness in me. I don’t want it… It weighs in my chest.” She looked at the heart in her gnarled hands.

“Ever since Rumpelstiltskin has been whispering in your ear, Snow, you have not been yourself.”

“I forgot who that is, Blue. But these hands,” She looked at the them, at the heart in them, clutched so tightly still. “They are mine. I let him do this to me. So let me forget.”

…   …   …

When Snow returned to the great hall, it was as if the room had been in suspended animation: Regina and Emma were huddled together with Tinkerbelle standing by; Rumpelstiltskin was studying one of his mirrors and the air was thick with apprehension.

Emma noticed the difference in the Queen. She seemed smaller, somehow, as if she had shrunk, as if something had been removed from her and that made her easier, more accessible.

She waited, breath baited, for whatever was going to happen next. And it was surprising: the Queen held out her hand cupping the dark, dark heart in it, offering it to Regina, silently, no proffered words of any kind, let alone apology. But it seemed genuine. Regina looked at the heart in her hand and gasped softly. For some reason, she couldn’t reach out for it. She just couldn’t.

“Well, come along, dearie, let’s do this, the time’s a-wasting.”

“You better do it. Or he will.” Snow commented, the note of concern not complete in her voice, a hint of threat too.

Regina’s hand in Emma’s squeezed a little. “Don’t let him do it. I don’t trust him.” Emma beseeched, but Regina just wouldn’t move. Rumpelstiltskin reached out and was about to grab the heart with his grubby, clawed hands when Emma, in the spur of the moment, reached out and grabbed it first despite the fact that it made her slightly nauseous to know she was holding a heart in her hand. Carefully, she brought it to her, cradled in her hands. “Is it supposed to be black?” She asked no one in particular, focused on the feel of it in her hand, warm and lightly pulsating.

“She darkened her heart with the things she’s done.” Snow whispered, relieved of the burden of that heart. She felt oddly free, lighter.

“You know that heart, Emma, you know how beautiful it is.” Tinkerbelle whispered in Emma’s ear. Curious, Emma brought the heart closer to her face. It seemed covered in ash or dust. She rubbed her thumb gently over it and the heart responded with a faint dark red glow. Tinkerbelle smiled.

“Ah…” Regina gasped at the sensation and rubbed at her chest where the heart should have lived.

Emma, fascinated, brought to heart close to her mouth and blew away the dust, gently. Regina felt it like a caress all over her body and soul. It felt warm and inviting. And the heart glowed, the top layer flying away in a flurry of dust, leaving behind a bruised but beautifully crimson heart. Emma smiled. “It wasn’t handled carefully, that’s all.”

Impatiently, Rumpelstiltskin closed in on them. “Time and tide, Miss Swan. Time and tide.”

Emma pulled Regina closer. “Ready.”

“Yes.”

…   …   …

Rumpelstiltskin was practically breaking apart at the seams, a giggly, nervous energy that seemed to have him bouncing on his feet, tasting victory in his tongue like a rich nectar.

…   …   …

On instinct more than knowledge, Emma pushed through the fabric of Regina’s body until she felt the empty cavity that should house her heart. Gently, she rotated her fist and placed it delicately where it belonged. She pulled her hand back slowly enough to feel the tissues and muscles and tendons knitting themselves together. She kissed Regina’s lips before her hand was completely out and the kiss she received back was all she had ever wanted: heart and soul hers.

Regina blinked and swayed for a second and Emma held her up to her.

“I got you. You’re safe.”

“I really am, Emma, my heart.”

…   … …

Around them, the traditional wave of magic of such events did not disappoint. Tinkerbelle and the Blue Fairy felt it. Rumpelstiltskin welcomed it and flexed his fingers savouring the moment. Queen Snow listened for movement in the heart of her beloved though nothing stirred.

Regina and Emma didn’t. The kiss was magic, yes, but in its charm and emotion, in the warmth of lips against their own and in the way it made their legs tremble. The only magic they were aware of was of their hearts beating in tandem. And that was magic enough for them.

…   …   …

Blue cleared her throat. When Emma’s forehead fell against Regina’s, Tinkerbelle took it as her cue to explain, though a smile still played on her lips. The world was, at times, most disconcerting- even for someone who had lived so many lifetimes and seen so many love affairs.

“Emma has magic.” She began softly until she got the women’s attention. “It is your direct opposite, Regina. You have dark magic, Emma has white. Where yours was cultivated, hers is born. You are each other’s direct opposites.”

“Yeah. Opposites attract.” Emma mumbled.

Tinkerbelle nodded in agreement. “Therefore, as everything in life and magic, you complete each other. You are the balance. Like the sunset and the sunrise. Or the summer and the winter. One without the other is incomplete. Thus united, you are whole.”

“Cool. So how do we go about the spell? I’m in a hurry. Regina and I have a kid to get back to.”

Tinkerbelle smiled briefly at that. It had been so long since she had been around nervous energy she was finding it a challenge to resist it.

“Oh, for the love of all that is holy in the world” Rumpelstiltskin interrupted. “Just cast it. You know the incantation, you have not forgotten it. Just do it.”

Regina’s nerve faltered at his voice but the Blue Fairy interrupted him. “Has your vision not spoken to you, Rumpelstiltskin? Magic will not come from incantations and it will not come from them alone.” Rumpelstiltskin wanted to unleash his rage, take matters into his own hands but he knew even his magic was insufficient for this. Emma stood between him and the other women and by her simple presence pushed him back. It turned out that he was a coward still.

When the volatility in the air simmered down, the Tinkerbelle proceeded. “The magic that will carry us over is that of love. The love of soul mates, of one lover for the other. The love of a mother for a child, of a child for a mother, no matter the blood bond.” As she spoke, she linked Regina’s right hand to Emma’s left. Then, she brought Snow to form a circle. She placed Snow’s left hand in Emma’s right. Already she could hear the beating of the heart of the land. The beating of three hearts, coming together in a common purpose. “But that magic is not complete, not without understanding and, in understanding, forgiving.” She closed Snow’s right hand in Regina’s left and cupped them with her own. “It is with our hearts beating as one that we call on the heart of the land, that we invoke the magic locked in us, the magic that was never gone, just prisoner of our hate and our resentment.”

Around then, a line of fairies closed ranks, holdings hands.

The room came alive with the beating of their hearts, together, in unison. “With our hearts beating together, we find the way between our world and one that will welcome us. With love and understanding, we remember that the true measure of goodness is to carry all within our hearts so that no one, no one at all is left behind. Because love is our salvation.”

The sound reverberated through the walls that seemed to them to beat, alive.

Regina put all her faith in this beating heart. She thought she would die if the magic failed. And she would die willingly because she could not imagine letting Emma and Henry down. And still she could not utter the words I love you. If they succeeded, she would not bind Emma to her with those words. Enough with the chains for her and for everyone else.

Emma looked at her with hope. If she could just pull this off her ass, then she could, potentially, have Regina. Whatever part of herself the warrior decided she could. And she would be fine with that. And if not, she would, at least, free Regina who had never told her she loved her.

The air thrummed around them, in their skin, in their ears.

The thump, thumthump, thump, thumpthump of the beating hearts became the only sound in the world. It generated an energy of its own, a soft cloud of magic filling the spaces of the room, cutting the fairies and Rumpelstiltskin off from them, leaving the three of them alone in the swirling mist.

Slowly, the heartbeat slowed, the vibration of it in their bodies, on the wall, in the world around them subsided, faded. “It’s not working” Emma stated.

Behind them, Rumpelstiltskin screeched in anger. Tinkerbelle became visible again. “You must believe.” The fairy sadly pointed out. “You must.”

Snow’s hands lost their grip on the other two. Her eyes lost the brief moment of lucidity. Emma grabbed hold of the hand slipping from hers. “I never had a mother before. Do you want the job?” But the Snow there was neither the broken woman she had seen slumped on the throne nor the brief visions of what she must have been before the curse. It was something new, milder, softer at the edges.

“I hope that we can be better to each other in this new life.” Regina looked from their joint hands to Snow. There was a brief moment when she saw the little girl she had saved from a spooked horse, so many lifetimes ago.

“I miss the girl that saved me.” Snow smiled, something small and watery. “I miss the Regina that rode that horse like the wind. I wanted to be like that girl.” Regina clutched Snow’s hand a little more fiercely. The clouding in her eyes shifted again. Around them, the spell began to gain pace again. With every beat of their hearts, it became just a fraction stronger. Snow’s eyes glazed over. “I want to start again. To forget about the things we have done.”

Regina squeezed Snow’s hand. No, she would not let go of her, she would not leave her behind. “True love is the most powerful magic of all. You must believe, Snow. Don’t be afraid. You must believe again.” Regina stared at Snow, saw the haze dissipating, felt their hands together. And then Emma’s presence by her side, so strong, so vital. “I do, Snow. I do.” Without letting go of Snow’s hand, she leaned into Emma, closed the distance between them and placed a delicate kiss on her lips. “I do.” The spell picked up pace, the heartbeat became overwhelmingly loud but Regina’s words, they could be heard, loud and clear. “I love you, Emma.”

And then it all went blinding white until it faded.

Chapter Text

Chapter 22

Regina felt herself awaken and crawled the rest of the way to consciousness. Under her was a soft bed and the blankets over her were warm. She was wrapped in soft silk, she noted, not her usual leather or Emma’s flannels. She reached out on the bed next to her for Emma but her hands found nothing but cold space. She sat in bed and everything around her was unfamiliar, strange. Terrifying. She got up and out of habit, pushed her long hair out of the way. Her hands came up empty. Her hair was gone, nothing but a short length remained. As she stepped out of the bed, she found herself clad in a man’s pyjamas. Where had the spell brought her? She felt her heart thrum in panic and then a faint echo replying to her own heart.

Emma, she was sure. Emma’s heart. She knew the sounds, the rhythms, the weight of that heart better than her own. She had to find Emma. They had probably been thrown into different parts of whatever place this was and she had to find her, had to make sure she was okay. She ran to the first door she found, hoping it would be the door to the rest of the world but it was simply a bathroom, which she recognised for all the similarities with the one in Emma’s home though this one seemed to be at least thrice the size.

She saw someone looking at her from the mirror but before she could jump to conclusions she realised the reflection was hers: the short hair, the gray silk pyjamas. The scared, wild look in her eyes. It gave her pause. This was not the way she wanted Emma to see her. Then, in a flurry of activity, she washed, brushed, dressed, put on shoes all from the remarkably well stocked wardrobe in the room she had woken up in. She was going to find Emma and she was going to fight for her. She was going to show her that yes, she could live in this world- wherever this world was- she could be all that Emma had believed she could. Legal or illegally. Maybe Emma’s offer for Dirty Harry’s papers was still on the table.

Fortified, she ran out of her room to find that she was in a house of considerable size, full of beautiful furnishings. She tried some doors on her way and found mostly, a simple, elegant décor full of striking elements that, she decided, appealed to her. And then she stumbled upon a room, a child’s room. She paused there, her hand going to her newly returned heart. Whoever owned this house had a child. Or was the house hers? The clothes in the closet were hers, she was sure. Yes, it was her home. Hers. Maybe this was Henry’s room. But the house was empty and even her breathing echoed off the empty walls.

She closed the door to the child’s room softly and went downstairs. She found the front door almost immediately. She looked around herself, memorising her surroundings in case she needed to find her way back.

She walked around the deserted streets calling Emma’s name for hours.

She went back to the beautifully appointed white house only to find out that neither Emma nor Henry had found their way to her.

She sat behind the door, much as it was her habit in the old world and wept, disconsolate, frightened and alone.

…   …   …

Emma jerked awake in her own bed that still smelled like Regina. She reached out for the woman but, despite the scent on her pillow and sheets, she found that was alone.

She sat up in bed. It was still dark outside and Emma felt her heart swell in the hope that Tinkerbelle had been right and that time had stood still for Henry. And where on earth was Regina? She stumbled out of bed in her haste. The scent on her bed linen was strong enough that Emma convinced herself that the woman was just in the bathroom. But when she got up- in her usual sleep attire of underwear and t-shirt- and made her way there, it was empty. Emma’s heart beat furiously in her chest. She called out softly for the woman at first, then a little louder. She pulled on the first item of clothing she could find- one of the flannel pants that Regina had favoured and she left the room, calling out for her and Henry.

Henry was sleeping on the sofa when Emma came into the living room. She bee lined to the kid and pulled him into her arms even though he was soundly asleep.

Henry woke up disorientated and fighting Emma’s hold. “Hey kid, it’s me. Shh, it’s Emma. Henry, it’s me.”

Soothed by her voice, Henry stopped the thrashing and, recognising her, threw his arms around her so tight she could hardly breathe. She let him hug her until he let her go on his own. “You left.” The teary tone was accusatory and sad. “You left me here on my own.”

“I know, Henry. I’m sorry…”

“Where did you go?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure. I wanna say that I went to Regina’s world, but I’m back here and I don’t know where she is and I’m so scared this was all an hallucination or a really long dream. How long was I gone?”

“What? You don’t know?” Henry’s eyes popped out of his small face.

“The stupid fairy said that time didn’t move but that was in the paradise place… I don’t have a clue… How long was I gone, kid?”

“Two days. Emma you were gone for two days. You left me alone...” Tears ran copious down his cheeks

“Oh, kid… I’m sorry.” She pulled the child to her and cried in relief. “I’m so sorry, Henry. I didn’t mean to but they all barged in and then the portal opened… God, I’m so sorry…”

“Yeah, I know…” Henry wiped his face on his sleeve and took a deep breath. “How was it like? Where’s Regina? Did you come back for me? Are we going back there?” Henry didn’t seem to need to breathe.

“I don’t know… The idea was to come here. Everybody. But I don’t know where Regina is and I don’t know where everybody else is and it was awful, kid. It was…” Emma shook her head. Words failed her. Even the choice ones that she usually had plenty of for such moments. “I don’t know where Regina is…” She ran her fingers through his hair and pulled him to her again. “What happened? These two days? Why are you here? Where’s your dad?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s coming back. The police came. They went upstairs and they knocked and I was here and I heard them talking about the social worker and where was she and where they would take me so I hid here. I didn’t know if you’d find me if they took me away so I just hid here. I was really quiet and didn’t move until they left. I didn’t think you’d find me if they took me.” Henry ended and he was short of breath, tears brimming his eyes again.

“Henry, I will always find you, you hear me?”

“You were gone for two days.” The accusatory tone was still there but it was more a whimper, a plaintive, small whimper.

“What did you eat? Henry, did anyone knock on the door? What did you do?”

“There was pasta. And canned soup. And pop tarts. And OJ. I tried to order pizza but no one delivers.”

“How were you gonna pay?”

“I have a credit card.”

“Your parents gave you a credit card?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not supposed to use it. I had yours, though.”

Emma pulled him tight to her, let his presence fill her heart. “You know where I keep my credit card?”

“Yeah.”

Emma snorted. “Of course you do… God I missed you… What are they saying on the news?”

“Terrorists. They are saying it was a terrorist attack.”

“Figures….”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re gonna find Regina, that’s what we’re gonna do. And we’re gonna find your dad.”

“What if he’s… you know… dead or something?” The emotion that Emma had often hoped to see in Henry’s eyes when he spoke about his parents was there but for entirely wrong reason. It broke her heart. She ruffled the kid’s hair. “Then, we’re gonna get papers done and file them and then we’re gonna get in the car and we’re going to turn Boston upside down and inside out and we’re going to find her.”

“Are you sure she came back?”

Emma’s whole hope crumbled with the question she had been trying to avoid since she had woken up. “Yeah. Because we had a deal. We had a deal.”

“Okay.” Henry acquiesced. “But I’m hungry. Can we eat first?”

Emma didn’t think she could take so much as a bite but if Jackson Devereux didn’t show up, Henry was hers to keep. Might as well start with breakfast.

“Sure. Anything left in the kitchen?”

“Pop tarts…”

“Breakfast of champions!”

…   …   …

Regina removed the beautiful, dainty shoes and held them in her hand. Her generous wardrobe was beautiful. She had often admired the style in Emma’s Boston and was briefly delighted to find her wardrobe stocked with such beautiful items. But she was walking up and down the streets, calling Emma’s name and such high heels were not even remotely appropriate for the exercise. So she held them by the heels and went on barefoot. There was a black car parked outside the house and now that she thought about it, it probably belonged to the house- to her- but she had been too panicked to think clearly. The only thing she was worried about was to find Emma.

As the houses became sparser, Regina realised that she was heading out of town. She had been walking for nearly the whole day, and though she was not familiar with the town, she was pretty sure she had walked up every street- every deserted street. She was beginning to fret for the others too, because no one was supposed to have been left behind and she couldn’t find a single person that could tell her what had happened.

The unwelcome thought that she was, perhaps the one left behind was growing in her mind when she saw a lump on the road that looked very much human. She ran, dropping her shoes by the road and stopped only when she reached a man lying prone on the ground. She turned the man around until he was face up and was shocked and a little horrified to see Snow White’s prince, the same wounds she had seen on him as the curse had began enveloping the castle.

It was both welcome and distressing. She touched his face as gently as she could and though the skin was cold as ice, he was still alive. She had to get him out of the cold, out of the ground and somewhere safe but she wasn’t quite sure how to achieve that given his bulk. For a moment she sat dejectedly on the ground.

He was Emma’s father.

She rose back to her feet and tried to raise him from the cold ground, but if she’d had any hope of moving him, the hope soon died when she could move nothing but his arms or his legs. Dragging him back to town was out of the question. So she removed the woollen coat her wardrobe had offered her and covered him with it. “Don’t go anywhere.” She half prayed, half snarked as she found there was nothing else she could do but to run back to the house for something she could use.

By the time she got home, she was sweaty and her feet were bloody from the sharp sand and stones on the roads. She tried to think of what she could use as a stretcher and looked around herself, feeling slightly dizzy at the array of things she had never paid much attention to in Emma’s home. She saw something familiar as her eyes scanned the office: a phone. She knew that you had to dial a number but she was not sure what number to dial. However, as she picked up the receiver, her fingers instinctively dialled 911.

On the other side of the line, someone picked up. “911. What’s your emergency?”

She nearly cried in relief. “There’s a man on the road out of town. He’s hurt and won’t wake up.” And then she tacked the most difficult part: “Can you help me?”

“We’re on our way.”

Regina put down the phone, and spotted a set of keys on the table next to the phone. She stared at the car parked on the driveway. With trepidation, she unlocked the car and sat in the driver’s seat. It started without complain and the steering wheel was light, unlike Emma’s Bug. Proud of herself, she reversed into the road and drove on the way to where Charming lay under her coat. This time, there were faces, familiar faces some of them, coming out of the houses. The most striking, however, was Snow White’s. Regina hit the brake and stepped out of the car in front of her, the old fear, the old loathing and something entirely new flowing from her. “Snow White.” Snow looked at her confused and Regina tried again. “Your Majesty.” But the woman in a hair cut shorter than her own simply looked scared out of her mind.

“Mayor Mills, I’m sorry...”

“Are you gone in the head, Snow? Your prince is lying on the road. Come, you need to get to him.”

But Snow White simply shrunk as if she had been terrified. “Mayor Mills… please don’t mock me…”

“Snow…”

“No, not for a while yet. Maybe later in the year. Are you okay?”

Regina shook her head in confusion. “What’s your name?”

“Mary Margaret and I am not married. That’s a cruel thing to say.” The woman that had been a Queen- and a cruel one at that- mumbled getting out of Regina’s way.

Regina processed her confusion on her drive to where she had found the fallen prince. She managed to get there before whatever assistance they were going to send. A quick check told her that he was still alive, the heart beat faint but there. “You mustn’t die, shepherd. Not when we made it here.”

When help finally arrived, it in was in the shape of a rather large car with a stretcher in the back and uniformed men. Not police officers. Did this town have those? Boston had been teaming with them. “What’s this?” She asked before she could stop herself.

The man that stood before her cowered a little before he found enough courage to reply. “She needs an overhaul, Mayor Mills. That’s all. We were going to do it when your call came in.”

And that was the second time someone called her Mayor Mills and she was still as much at a loss to what it meant as when she had first heard it. She decided there would be a better time to think about and that the first thing to do was to load the prince into to the car that had the word AMBULANCE in reverse printed on it. Gingerly, she touched it and just as the knowledge of it sank in, a voice from her past stepped out from it. Victor Frankenstein, in a white coat and an arrogant attitude stood before her.

It was fortunate that she held in check her many emotions about the man, especially the blood curdling fear and the abject hate that boiled in her.

“I’m sorry for the delay, Mayor.” Even in an apology he was arrogant. “I was with a patient at the time the call came through.”

It seemed, hate was the emotion at the forefront because instead of cowering, she rounded on him and pointed at the fallen prince. “Apologise later if you feel you can correct the oversight. For now, see to the man lying on the floor.” Even Victor Frankenstein.

So this was what the Fairy had meant with the no one is left behind.

She prepared to leave the men to the task of taking the prince into the car and prepared to go in search of Emma. It was getting dark as the winter days were short but as she made to leave, Victor Frankenstein asked: “Are you not riding with this man to the hospital? For all we know, he has no one.”

She considered her options. She had less than an hour of day light and Emma was still missing. No. She definitely was not going with Snow’s prince to the hospital.

“Dr. Frankenstein, I have errands to run and―”

“Mayor, I know I’m not your favourite person, but Frankenstein is a bit harsh.”

“What would you have me call you, then?” Attack was the best defence. What the hell did he mean by that?

“By my name, if you please. Dr Whale will do just fine.”

“Well, Dr Whale, I suggest you take this man to the hospital. I’ll be along once I have run my errands.”

“Will you be doing so with no shoes on?”

Regina looked at her feet, sore and bloodied. “Mind your own business.” And she ran into the car.

.

Night fell and she was horrendously tired and her feet could not carry her one more step. “Where are you, Emma?” She pleaded. “Where are you?”

In her chest, her heart thumped, thumped, thumped in tandem with another heart. She rubbed at the spot, rubbed at the soreness of the absence, at the quietness of the desperation. “Please.” She pleaded though she was not sure to whom.

…   …   …

Emma got onto her laptop and prayed, a small, clumsy prayer of someone who was never taught any better, that she could find Jackson Devereux so that the kid could, at least, have one of his parents. She knew of guilt and though she could – and would, damn, she wanted to, as she had been doing since she’d met him, to have Henry to herself and away from careless, heartless parents, it was the guilt Henry was already feeling at having wanted them gone that was pushing Emma forward in her search.

The fact was, no matter how many doors she knocked at, how many data bases she hacked, she could find no trace of the man, of his dead body, or a part of it… anything to go on. She wondered if the imps could have swallowed him whole. If perhaps he had been dragged with them when the portal had opened up under their feet. Regina would have known, she thought. Regina could have told her if it was a crazy idea.

Her palms sweated and her heart thumped. God, she missed her, she missed her so much it hurt and the mere thought that she had been spewed back to some random city or that no one else had found their way here was horrifying, a paralysing thought in that she had no way of going back there to check, or making a phone call to ask or write an email or anything at all of the kind. The panic rose in her chest and it squeezed so badly she couldn’t breathe. She ran to the bathroom and emptied the contents of her stomach.

It figured. Just as she had learned to believe, reality hits back. Because, hey, love will conquer everything except reality which will win every fucking time. Henry chose the worst possible time to be his usual perceptive self: he came into the bathroom not even bothering to knock.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She mumbled and got up to rinse her mouth.

“No, you’re not. Clearly.”

“Clearly…” Emma repeated.

“You miss her.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“And you’re scared we won’t find her again.” Emma simply nodded because she didn’t trust her throat not to croak and not to make a fool of herself in front of a kid who had already lost everything that had ever meant anything to him. “You’ve got to trust your heart, Emma. We’ll find her. I promise you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you find people. That’s what you do, right?”

“Yeah, but… these are special circumstances. It’s a whole world away…”

“Potentially. You said that the plan was to bring everyone to our world. I think that if a whole world suddenly materialised in Boston people would notice.”

“That actually makes sense.”

“Of course it does. So if they came here, people will talk about it and if they didn’t, they went elsewhere and we just need to find them.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

Henry gave her a million watt smile. “Well, I think that you just need to follow your heart.”

.

Emma went back to the laptop. If she was going to get her life back on track, then she had to stop letting the huge mess she was in scare her and focus on the smaller issues, one at a time. It kind of gave her perspective and the perspective was that each of the smaller issues had a solution. Hacking into the FBI’s computers was a stretch. By a mile. So she called an old friend, someone like her, a foster child that had been in trouble with the law precisely because of her preferred activities on the computers. An hour or so after she had placed the phone call, Frankie called back. Her tone was somewhat amused. “Swan, you could at least have given me a challenge, girlie.”

“What, FBI is below your pay grade?”

“Yeah…” Frankie’s deep laughter had a way to relax her. “They’re losing qualities.”

“They still have enough for me.” Emma moaned.

“Do you want a refresher course? Anyway… Listen, the name you gave me… It’s a weird thing, you know? The name’s there alright. ‘Cept…”

“Frankie, come on…”

“Look… I’ve seen a bit of weird shit, yes? You know I used to be very interested in all their alien files and stuff.”

“Yeah, Mulder, I remember.”

“You would have been a great Scully but… bygones, bygones, turned a new leaf and whatnot…”

“I’m not your parole officer, Frankie.”

Frankie snorted. She could never be sure her lines were not tapped, she wouldn’t put it past those government goons, but yeah, Emma was right, no point going there, she was still very much knee deep into that. Which was how she knew she had found something. “Look, you have to tell me now: there was this freak event in the Financial District a couple days ago. They’ve been crying terrorism all over the news but… Did you hear about it?”

“Yeah…” Emma reluctantly admitted.

“Well, see, they have all these codes for alien life forms and bogus reports and unconfirmed reports and what have you. But none of those codes shows up here, so I’m thinking something very different.”

“Frankie… can we get to the point? The name I gave you…”

“Ah, yeah, okay. Spoil sport…. So this guy was brought in. Barely alive. There are medical files on this guy that I’m not too sure I understand completely but they kept him segregated and studied the shit out of him. And then the guy goes and dies, like his heart just stopped because of the stress of pain or something that gruesome. I mean, the guy lasted about a day and then… dead. My point is, whatever those things were, he was attacked by them and he had marks on him they were very interested in. But yeah, your guy’s dead. And his corpse is floating in some test tube somewhere, probably in Area Fifty-one.”

Emma sighed. “Okay.”

“Hey… I don’t mean to pry but… what’s the rub here? I was fairly sure you played for our team… I never saw you marrying a guy…”

“I didn’t. Marry him, I mean.”

“But?” Frankie encouraged.”

“But this guy is the father of my kid.”

“Kid? Well, that’s news…” Frankie choked out.

“No, Frankie, listen… Not like that, alright? But I love this kid and I need to take care of him. And if he wants to be mine and this guy’s gone…”

“That’s nice…”

“Yeah…” Emma wiped her palms on her legs.

“Listen, if you need anything, you give me a call, alright? I know a guy that can get you papers and stuff.”

…   …   …

Regina found herself driving to the hospital. She had really no intention of visiting Prince Charming of all people, but she had a sudden fear that something might have happened to Emma and that they might have brought her to such a place. Before she could be stopped by the morning shift, Regina was in and walking each corridor, peeking into each room, lifting every bed cover hoping that the next one would not be Emma seriously injured.

When she was sure she’d seen every room, she tried to leave but Victor- Dr Whale, she reminded herself- found her on her way out and greeted her as if they’d been friends. Regina’s skin crawled: his manners were still impeccable and the friendliness of the voice was the same except now she knew how fake it all was and it made the bile rise in her stomach.

She forced herself to remain calm, collected.

“How nice of you to come and see the patient, Mayor Mills. How did you find him?”

“Well, I haven’t really been to seen him…” she admitted.

“Oh, so you’ve been to see the other patients?”

Her tongue was paralysed, thick in her mouth. “I was actually looking for someone.”

“Oh? Have you been saving a lot of people lately?”

Regina thought briefly that if Victor Frankenstein ever needed saving he would die reaching out for her hand. “I was wondering, doctor, if a young woman came in… blonde…” She stopped herself when she saw the interest shining out of his eyes. “Never mind.” And she prepared to leave.

“But what about John Doe?”

“John who?”

“Doe. The man you found yesterday.”

“Is that his name?” She was Mayor Mills, Snow White was Mary Margaret and Victor was Dr Whale. It seemed this land had changed their names.

“No, it’s just that we don’t really know his name…” He gave her a thoroughly suspicious look. “I’m sure a friendly face would be helpful in his recovery.”

That, Regina doubted but it seemed the easiest option to just follow Whale and get this over with. “Very well, let’s go and see Mr Doe.”

.

Regina spent the day looking for Emma. She walked into every shop, into every public establishment and even the school. She found Snow there, teaching children looking a lot like a young version of herself, the confused look and the anger gone from her eyes. But no Emma. She looked inside every parked car, behind every tree and, eventually, found herself heading towards the docks.

In the loneliness of the place, she cried softly.

.

On the third day, Regina padded her sore, blistered feet before leaving the magnificent house. If there was one thing she missed from the old world were her broken in, comfortable kidskin boots. She ignored the black car parked outside in favour of walking because she did not want to miss a single glimpse of what could be Emma. As she walked off Main Street, she saw a shop that had managed to slip unchecked during her initial search. She pushed the door in and a bell over head rang sombre and ominous.

The shop was dark and there was a smell in the air she couldn’t quite place, filled with knick knacks of doubtful value. The hair at the back of her neck stood when Rumpelstiltskin limped into the store from the back of it. His lizard-like appearance had softened to an aquiline nose. The rest of the persona was faded, camouflaged by the suit of good cut he wore.

“Mayor Mills… What can I do for you?”

“That’s not my name.” She would not believe he was like the others, bleating about in their new life, having forgotten about home.

“No?” The tone he dressed the simple negative in was heavy with sarcasm, but nothing further came. “Well, whoever you are, welcome to my humble establishment. I’m sure you will find something you like. Is it, perhaps a gift? For a loved one?”

Regina faltered. She was sure he knew who she was, who she was looking for and that the question was loaded with barbs.

“There is nothing of interest to me here.” She managed and walked away.

“Well, dearie, good luck with your… search…” She wasn’t sure if it was the tone or the terrifying endearment that rattled her the most, but at that moment, nothing would ever persuade her that he was like all others that seemed to have lost their memories of themselves.

Again she walked. Maybe Emma had been feeling unwell for the past two days and had needed a rest. Maybe they had missed each other. Or maybe, she had been shown happiness only to be pulled away from it. She walked aimlessly, murmuring softly Emma. Emma, please come back to me. And that echo in her chest beat again with her own heart.

As she sat on the bench by the docks, a figure in a blue dress approached, decisive steps, towards her. Regina didn’t immediately recognise her, not until she heard the voice.

“Are you quite alright, Mayor Mills?” Regina hoped to see some acknowledgement in the fairy’s eyes.

“Why does everyone keep on calling me that?”

“Because that’s what you are.” The fairy replied. Regina wondered what had happened to the wings.

“What are you?” She asked the fairy.

“A nun. I’m the Mother Superior of our convent, Madam Mayor.”

“Well, I’m not Mayor Mills. My name is Regina. I’m Regina.”

This time, she was going to be more than her station, more than a title. She was going to be more than what people expected of her. She was going to punch back and tell the world who she was. She was Regina, in love with Emma Swan and mother to Henry. Emma had asked her to.

“Why are you so sad?” The nun asked.

“She promised…” Regina pushed through the knot in her throat. “She promised.”

The nun was silent for a little while then asked. “Do you trust her?”

“Yes.”

“With all your heart?”

“I have no other way.”

“Then believe, Regina. Believe with all your heart.”

.

The nun walked away, small steps that still made her look like she was floating, carried by wings. Regina stuffed her hands in the deep pockets of her warm coat and wondered how she had been given all that was in the house she had woken up in only to find it missing the thing she needed the most. It was like a bad joke. She pushed away at the tears. It was hard to believe when life had given her nothing but reasons not to.

“Patience, Regina. Patience is a tree with bitter roots but sweet fruit.”

The voice startled Regina out of her moroseness. “You know my name.”

“I always did. Regina. You are Regina. You were quite adamant on that just now. With Blue?”

“Blue?”

“Hmm… You sounded a lot like Emma.”

“You know?”

“I do. About you, about your Emma and the child left behind.”

“Where is she?”

“Not here. Not in this Storybrooke. But she is right, Regina. You must believe. With all your heart. She will return. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel it in your bones, in your soul? Stop looking now. She will come for you.”

“What if she doesn’t remember me? Us? No one remembers…”

Tinkerbelle smiled. Regina remembered that smile from when Tinkerbelle had had wings and she had still had hope, when she had still had innocence left in her. She couldn’t help but to smile back, watery though it was.

“I do…”

“How? Everybody else…”

“Queen Snow White wanted a new beginning. She wanted to be someone else. So that was what happened. To everyone.”

“But the other fairies… Blue doesn’t…”

Tinkerbelle shrugged and gave her a sheepish smile that could mean a lot of things. “Ah, but we both know I am not a very common fairy, don’t we?”

Well, there was that: She wasn’t. “Will they remember?”

“Your Emma is coming for you, Regina.”

“Will she make them remember?”

“Is that a deal breaker?”

“No.” Regina murmured sadly. “Emma deserves a family.”

Tinkerbelle leaned companionably against Regina. “I thought so. Love looks good on you. Suits you well.”

Regina looked at her hands, the marking of the daggers all but gone, ghosts only. …   …   …

Emma stared at the paperwork and had a sudden urge to run to the toilet and empty the contents of her stomach. The social worker, tired, overworked but still hopeful in her youth stared back at her as if with the power of her will she could make Emma fill it in more efficiently and sign faster.

Next to her, Henry tried to coach her through it, but to Emma it was like being tossed again into group homes or being returned by another foster family. Paperwork had always had that effect on her. Henry touched her hand and she derived strength from it. She hoped to all that was holy the kid wouldn’t offer further help because that would amount to her signing her own affidavit of stupidity and incompetence for the task of raising a kid. Or, at the very least, foster a kid until a permanent solution could be found. The social worked looked around herself, at her incongruent apartment in a well-endowed apartment block furnished with rejects from thrift shops. There was no malice in the gaze but a curiosity that she could not satisfy.

She forced her hands to stop shaking. It was just the nerves of the paperwork she had never been good at, combined with the scrutiny of her life. It had taken them a week of plodding through paperwork and social workers and home visits. She should have had thicker skin for this, having been forged in the system herself, but all her insecurities rose to the surface like turds in the murky waters of bureaucracy of trying to foster a kid she had taken care of for nearly half his life.

She put pen to the paper and filled it in, careful handwriting, neat numbers, all in the square boxes provided. Then she signed it.

The social worker looked at the signed paper with and odd mix of relief and pride. “You are doing a good thing, Miss Swan.”

Emma mumbled something to the effect of thanks that she didn’t quite make out. “And believe me, you will do great.”

Henry grabbed her hand. “Yes, she will. “ He gave her his vote of confidence. When the social worker left, after the usual advertences about the system she was again a part of, she waved a tired but still cheery goodbye. Emma wondered briefly how many cases it would take until she lost the light and the cheer. Then, as the door closed, she high-fived the kid.

“Now, we find Regina!” Henry announced.

.

They ordered pizza now that Boston seemed to back to its old rhythms. Henry had a never ending appetite for it and she was happy to indulge if slightly guilty. Okay, very guilty. Now that she had sole charge of Henry, it had dawned on her how ill equipped she was to raise a child, to know all the things to do, all the things to not do. She needed help. She wanted help… Cooking chicken soup as a celebratory dinner would have taken her about two hours of what was precious time. Searching for Regina was something she had to do on her own. Calling on Frankie again was a better left untouched possibility. Of course Frankie had all the bells and whistles: she could access satellites and download data and run nationwide searches... Emma could well do with that information- if she knew how to read it or even what she was looking for. And in the meantime, Frankie would be shouting government conspiracy and hordes of aliens at the top of her lungs and slapping it all over her blog and Emma was fairly sure this had to be kept on the down low. She skimmed the news for anything weird, the odd sock, just like when she had first met Regina and nothing. She went out with Henry and drove up and down street after street looking for something looking out of place. And found nothing. She picked up the telephone directory and looked up Snow White and Prince Charming and Evil Queen and found only short ads for costume rental and cosplay.

As she was pouring over a Google Earth map Henry came to sit next to her, holding onto to massive bottle of juice that she was beginning to regret having bought. She had done a better job of feeding him before he was hers. Now, they were living on pizza, dogs and fries and Henry seemed to be in a permanent sugar haze. She might have been a cool option for Henry but damn, he needed structure. They both did.

She promised herself that things would go back to normal as soon as they found Regina. They’d have good healthy meals and bed time and, for sure, no more sugary drinks or candy.

But she was at her wit’s end. She was tired of the fruitless search and of the longing and of running out of ideas. Desperate might actually be accurate.

Henry too, she could see. The kid was doing what he thought was his part, looking at world maps and fairy tale books, looking for clues. He had asked her repeatedly to make him a business partner in her bails bond gig. And okay, he had more enthusiasm than results and it was driving her slightly crazy, but she loved him all the more for it. But maybe, after a day on his tablet and phone he should go to bed and actually sleep. Like kids are supposed to do.

“You know, we should probably get going.”

“Going where?”

“Home. I want you to come home with me.” Henry jumped onto the couch where Emma was sitting with the laptop.

“Henry…”

“Please, Emma…” He begged, complete with a pathetic manipulative little look that he had been using since the day they met. She was so proud of him.

“Henry, it’s bedtime” Emma stated, full of resolve, putting the laptop on the coffee table but Henry turned on the charm again.

“Trust me, Emma!”

“Alright…” What was the harm in indulging him? “I’ll bite. Where’s home?”

“Storybrooke, Maine.” He said waving his phone wildly in her face like a victory flag.

“Storybrooke… Seriously? Is that even a name?”

“Huh, huh.” Henry smiled. God, she was a sucker for that smile. He handed her the phone. “See, Google is your friend.”

“Storybrooke?” Emma repeated and Henry nodded emphatically. “Is that a real thing?”

“Google, Emma. Google!”

“It’s a stupid name.”

“It’s a perfect name, Emma. Story and Book. Storybrooke.” He sang in victory and pulled by the hand trying to make her get up and go.

“Henry… there’s nothing there. There are no pictures, nothing. It’s just a name in the middle of nowhere.”

“Exactly!” Henry bounced on the balls of his feet.

“Henry… it’s late. You should go to bed. We need to establish a bedtime for you and mealtimes and a routine. Cut down on the sugar…” She pulled on her hair. She really didn’t need this now. And yet, the name of the town was nagging her, it kept pulling at her. “Where’s Storybrooke?”

“Maine.” Henry supplied, tasting victory. “Just around the corner.”

“Henry… that’s two states away.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“No...”

“Don’t you miss her?”

“Yeah…”

“There you have it.”

“Tomorrow, Henry, I promise.”

“Please, Emma. I miss Regina. I miss her so much it hurts…” Henry slumped on the coffee table in front of her.

Emma looked at her notes on the screen. She was drawing blanks after banks, nothing but dead ends and was just desperate enough. How much time would they waste? How bad could it be?

“So what, you just Googled Regina?”

“No. I Googled fairytale towns.”

“And what? Storybrooke came up?”

“Yeah…” He looked at his phone again. “It says here with its fairytale coastline and quiet pebbled beach, Storybrooke is just what you’ve been looking for.” But when you click on the link… see?” He handed the phone to Emma where a blank page announced URL not found. “Google says that it’s just what we’re looking for.”

“Google says…” Emma sucked in a deep breath of air and again felt that tug at her heart. “You know what? Never mind. Let’s go.” They had nothing to lose. “Storybrooke, Maine, here we come.”

“Seriously?”

“Hmm.” Emma nodded. “Pack the rest of the pizza and some clothes. We’re going to Storybrooke.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 23

Regina saw the sun getting up in the horizon and got ready. She had gone into a shop to buy herself some comfortable shoes. That, in itself, had taken some working up the courage to since all she could imagine would happen was for the shoe seller to refuse to sell her anything all, just like he had when he was the shoe maker in the market in the old world, but the man had brought out the boxes and helped her try on the most outrageous models until she had figured out that she needed running shoes. She had paid for it using the plastic money Henry had shown her, signed for it in a flourish handwriting that no longer felt like hers for the lack of use and thus armed, she had walked the streets every day calling Emma’s name. It wasn’t, after all, like she could rust a fairy. Any fairy.

She came to the conclusion that, though everything had changed, some things still remained the same. Jefferson still existed in the fringes of their world and the dwarves were still rude and obnoxious as a collective and drunk in the specific case of the bearded one, Grumpy, whom she remembered from his frequent visits when she had been in Snow’s prison. Rumpelstiltskin was still in the business of favours and crushing people in his debt. One thing had changed, though: his Belle was nowhere to be found. And he could be as cool as he wanted and keep his hand close to his chest but Regina was sure he knew who he was, he knew who he had been- because they had one thing in common: they were both missing someone vital to them, someone that made them whole. They were both looking, desperately. And she couldn’t muster the empathy.

And there were other things had changed and she was not sure if she liked it: Snow White was a scared rabbit teaching school children and she found herself missing the feisty girl that had been combative and alert. This Snow, devoted though she was to the children, was someone steeped in sorrow, quiet and that rattled her every time she walked by. The little wolf was an angry young woman, tethered to a grandmother hell-bent on keeping her in line and Regina found that she missed the soulful eyes of the young woman that had so viciously defended Snow from her.

It was a world where she was free but where there was a dilution of the people around her. And the exhilaration she should be feeling at that hard won freedom was as faded as their characters. She was looking a gift horse in the mouth, surely, but she had, in some deep corner of her, wished that her freedom would be one in life. This was a half death. People deferred to her but didn’t acknowledge her, as if they saw through her, like an invisible thing.

It was a freedom that tasted as bitter her servitude. And just as lonely.

…   …   …

Emma had expected Henry to pass out in the car a long time ago. The kid had been up since the early hours of the morning and they had been on the road for nearly four hours. She, herself, was sore, her back, her legs, everything. Henry had refused to stop, arguing that he preferred to get home sooner rather than later.

It was an odd formulation for the kid. He had been miserable, weighed down by guilt since Emma had told him a severely edited version of his father’s whereabouts and even when he smiled or joked, she could see the sadness lurking underneath. This, however, was different. This was a genuine happiness, blooming in him and it was all connected to Regina, to the possibility of finding her. To the fact that she had become home to him. That alone strengthened her resolve to find this mysterious Storybrooke that did not show on her road atlas.

The kid had fallen in love with Regina as much as she had.

“Kid?”

“Yeah?” He looked at the map again, perusing it with the aid of his little flashlight.

“If this works out…”

“What?”

“Us finding Regina…”

“It will. We will find her.”

“Well… if it does… When it does…”

“Are you going to ask her to marry you?”

Emma’s foot hit the brake pedal abruptly. “What?”

Henry looked up from the map and studied her like a bug under a microscope. “Emma, she has to marry you. If you let someone else beat you to it, I swear, I’ll never forgive you.”

Emma’s face scrunched, then relaxed. “I’ll kick my own ass if that happens. But…” She minced her words because they weighed on her.

“Yeah…” Henry encouraged.

“She might not want to, Henry.”

“She does.” Henry replied with absolute, unshakeable certainty.

Emma sighed. She wished she was half as confident as the kid. “What’s the worst that can happen, right?”

Henry nodded but his smile faded and he looked down at the map again and remained silent for a second. Emma waited to give the kid time for whatever he was working up the courage to say.

“Emma…”

“Yeah, Henry…”

“Do you think… I mean… You are my foster mother now… because you signed the papers and all…”

“Henry, listen up, kid: I’m your mother now!” No, she would not wait him out and she would not give him his space because she knew that look on his face- she knew it from the mirror. “Those papers that I signed? I’m never going to give you back, Henry. I might not be the best mother you could have had, but I’m sure as hell going to try, alright?” She knew how much it hurt to ask. If she hadn’t had her head so far up her ass with this find Regina business, she would have sat the kid down and explained which way was north right from the beginning. She was an idiot and this was a bad beginning to her parenting. But she could fix it. “You’re never getting rid of me. You’re gonna have to deal with it, kid. I’m gonna kiss you in front of your friends and embarrass the hell out of you. And I’m gonna make sure you eat your breakfast and brush your teeth and if it’s a bad day, you might even have to put up with a lullaby. I’m never letting go. You’re mine. For keeps.”

“Yeah?” Henry croaked, fighting tears. Emma pulled him against her and held him tight. Damned right, she was never going to let go of him. “Emma… Do you think I can call you Mom?”

Emma broke at the seams. She was getting a second chance; she was getting a son. She pulled him tighter to her and let the tears fall down. Then, when she was done, she pulled him back and stared him square in the eye. “Yeah, Henry. I’d really like that.”

Henry rested his head against her shoulder and sighed. He was so damned lucky! And then he saw it, right there, by the side of the road. “I think there’s a fairly good chance we’re going to make it… Mom. Look.” He pointed at the dark road around them, forest from both sides and an ominous mist rising from the ground up. And right there, was a Welcome to Storybrooke road sign.

Emma looked at the map with Henry and, sure enough, there was nothing there, only an empty space indicating a forest. She took a deep breath and restarted the engine. With the cold of the night, it took two attempts, some curse words and a punch to the steering wheel but the Bug restarted and slowly moved down the slippery road towards town.

…   … …

Regina felt a jolt in her heart. She put away the lone dish she had used for dinner and moved towards the front door as if something had been calling out to her. Her skin crawled and the hair at the back of her neck stood. She hugged herself tight as if that alone could push away at the heartache and the loneliness. She wanted to think those things, those shivers, those twinges in her heart, were her connection to Emma but, so far, that connection had been tenuous at best.

She slid to a sitting position behind the door as was usual to her. She had started sleeping in the bed upstairs but the self-protection instinct was still there, rearing its ugly head when she was the most disheartened. She wondered if she would ever find her way back to Emma.

…   …   …

It felt a little like driving under pouring rain or heavy fog with each inch of the road only revealing itself as she drove and it was nerve wrecking. But under that, there was an agitation as if something was waiting on the flipside and her heart was pounding harder and harder with each inch of road to a point where it was ready to jump out of her chest.

The trees thinned and the houses became closer together. She reached the town centre indicated only by the discrete sign that announced MAIN STREET. She was at a cross roads and the street lights blinked ominously as she opened the door of the Bug and got out closely followed by Henry. “Okay, kid, what now?”

“We get directions, I guess.” He opened the door and stepped out into the damp cold night. “There is something wrong with that clock though.” He pointed at the tower where a clock showed 8.15.

Emma shivered in her red leather jacket and looked around the deserted streets. Maine was butt cold. The tarmac was shiny from the wet fog and the lighting was sparse at best, a few pools of light here and there, swinging gently in the Atlantic wind. It was an eerie place and it made Emma a little uneasy. “Sure. From whom, though?”

Henry came to stand next to Emma and leaned into her, seeking comfort and warmth. “Maybe we should look for a coffee shop or something.”

Emma looked at her watch. It was probably about 2am. “Or find a room for the night. This place must have a Bed & Breakfast somewhere. We’ll start again in the morning. I shouldn’t have brought you out this late. You should be in bed, asleep and warm, not in this ass of the world…”

“But―” Henry started to interject.

“Isn’t it a nice evening?” A hesitant man’s voice spoke behind her.

“Sure…” She replied after she got over the surprise of someone appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Henry was immediately all over the guy’s Dalmatian and was petting the small horse sized dog into bliss. “Sorry if this comes out of left field but, do you, by any chance, know Regina?” Okay, so it was worth the try. God knows how many Reginas there would be in a town of whatever size this was, but it was worth asking.

“Oh, sure. There is our Mayor. Mayor Mills. In fact, I’m fairly sure she’s the only Regina in our numbers.”

“Do you know a lot of people, then?”

“Well, we’re a small community, Miss…”

“Swan. Emma Swan.” Emma reached out to shake his hand. “Any idea where Mayor Mills lives, Mr…”

“Oh,” The man smiled. It was a nice, welcoming smile and Emma decided that she liked him and his dog. “Archibald. But feel free to call me Archie. Everybody does. And this here is Pongo. Mayor Mills lives in Mifflin Street. You’ll recognise it easily: it’s the largest house in town.”

“Thanks, Archie.”

“Most welcome, Miss Swan. And welcome to Storybrooke. I hope to see you again.”

Emma acknowledged and smiled but whether or not she would see Archie and Pongo again, that would depend on whether or not this Mayor Mills and her Regina were the same person because it didn’t sound quite right that Regina, former war slave to her kingdom would be living in the largest house in town. “See ya, Archie.”

“Pleasure.” And he walked away, Pongo offering Henry one hearty lick in goodbye before bounding off after his human. Henry got into the car and looked at her expectantly. “Well, shall we go to Mifflin Street or not?”

“We’ll be probably waking up someone with a god complex that’ll throw us in jail… We may be making fools of ourselves, kid.”

“We have time to outlive it. Besides, I think we’re heading in the right direction.”

“How can you tell?” Emma grunted as the Bug again struggled to start.

“Come on, Mom, a little faith.” He smiled encouragingly.

Emma would never get tired of hearing that word. She smiled warmly at Henry and restarted the car with a clumsy, silent prayer that this was right, that it was Regina she and her son were going to wake up in the middle of the night because she wasn’t sure the kid could live with the heartache if it wasn’t. Hell, she wasn’t sure she would be able to live with the disappointment either.

She turned the key in the ignition and, for once, the Bug started without a complaint.

…   …   …

Regina heard the rumble of a car in the street and jumped to her feet, heart thrumming in her chest. The sensation was still a novelty, so many years without a heart beating ion her chest, but she didn’t need the experience of it to know that this was it. This was it. Quickly she slipped into the first pair of shoes that came to hand, a high heeled pair under the credenza table in the foyer. In a moment of panic, she looked at herself in the small mirror. She was a fright: deep bags under her eyes, a wrinkled dress. A broken heart. She rubbed some colour into her face and smoothed her dress and her hair with her hands. There was nothing she could do about her heart. By the time she opened the door, the sound of the engine was one she was sure she would recognise anywhere in this world or any other. A bright shade of yellow stopped at the front entrance of the house and she was rooted to the spot for a second, afraid to believe that it was Emma, that it could possibly be her.

And then, there were no more doubts: Henry was walking ahead of Emma, a small backpack over his shoulder. Emma hesitated a second when she saw her but Henry ran to her and there was a smile, hesitant, lopsided, lovely in Emma’s face, and Henry just launched himself into her arms and hid his face in her waist, wrapped around her so tight she gently swayed on her feet, overwhelmed by emotion.

“We found you! I knew we would. We found you!”

Regina closed her eyes and lost herself in Henry’s embrace, in his warmth and his smell, in the softness of his hair and the steady beating of his heart. When she gathered her courage, she raised her eyes to Emma. Suddenly it wasn’t easy, not as it had been before, facing her, her past hanging between them and knowing about Snow White and her prince, about the way things had turned out in this new chance of theirs. She closed her arms around Henry and pulled him into her so tight she had to make a deliberate effort to let him go, not to hurt him.

“We found you.” Henry repeated, looking up to her adoringly and then at the house behind them, door ajar, completely dark inside.

“You really did.” She touched his face tenderly as he pulled slightly away.

“Wow! Is this your house?”

Regina didn’t know what to say to that. Yes, she wanted to tell him, it is, it’s mine. Ours. After nearly three weeks, she knew that the house was in the name of Regina Mills and that she was Regina Mills which was darkly ironic, given all the things her mother had done to overcome her origin. But Emma had not made a move yet, was just standing there and there was so much that had gone wrong with the coming here, her father was comatose and would not wake up and her mother had no idea who she was and, therefore, would know nothing of Emma. And Emma had lost so much already in her life, how on earth was she going to forgive her for this?

Henry didn’t wait for confirmation. “I’m going to see the house, okay, Mom?” He informed Emma as he moved away from them, his backpack bouncing up and down on his back as he ran towards the house. The lights came on in the foyer and then, upstairs. She heard an exclamation of joy and then Is this my room and all the house was illuminated and it looked lived in, like a place where a life could be made together.

Regina got some fortitude from that brightness shining through the windows and turned on her heel to face Emma. Perhaps to lose her again. Hopefully, to have a second chance.

“Henry called you Mom...” Emma smiled, feeling like a dolt, unable to utter the right words, do the right thing. Like hugging the woman standing before her in that honest-to-god fuck-me dress.

“Yeah…” She smiled though she was not sure whether it was the word Mom or the warmth of Regina’s skin in the damp, dark night.

“And you found me…”

…   …   …

“Hi.” Emma said, trying and failing to say something coherent. She was feeling completely dumbstruck. Dumb, period. There was that dress that Regina was wearing that showed beautiful curves and her hair was short now and it framed that remarkable face, softening it, but it also revealed exhaustion, the deep bags under her brown eyes and a sadness that broke Emma’s heart. Together with the killer heels that made them just about the same height, it was like standing before a brand new woman, someone entirely new.

Except that Emma knew her. She knew the sorrow behind the lines of that face and loneliness and the sadness. She knew the smell of her, the sound of her voice, the sounds of her breathing. She knew Regina by heart.

Regina fidgeted lightly, straightened her dress and stood straighter, offering herself to Emma’s scrutiny.

It broke Emma’s heart. Emma reached for a lock of the short hair and twirled it between her fingers. She smiled. “God, I missed you…”

A wave of warmth invaded Regina. “I missed you too, Emma. With all my heart.”

Emma’s smile bloomed like a flower in the rain. She took a tentative step forward until she could hold Regina’s hand in hers, feel the hardness left there by the daggers, a reminder of all that she was and of what they’d been through. She was fascinated by this woman, still hard around the edges, with a softness in her that bruised still so easily. She looked at the house. Regina looked right at home here, in her pretty dress and high heels. She had imagined they might share something like this, though smaller, maybe, had kept it in mind as the spell had begun to envelop them, the house with the white picket fence, full of them, of the family and the life they would make together… She just had not imagined the sheer magnitude of the reality of it. “Seems like you’ve done well for yourself.” She voiced her thoughts out loud, undiluted pride spilling into the cold night air and warming it. She’d imagined that Regina was powerful but this… well, this was not just a house, was it? It was the house, the town, the people, all of it, right here in Maine, USA, in her plane of existence.

Regina shook her head.

“We. We’ve done this. We’ve done well for ourselves… Yes?” There was fear in that question.

“Yes. We’ve done well.” Emma corrected herself with a smile and looked back at Regina. “We’ve done so well.” And then she wasn’t talking about the house or the town or even the shoes. She was talking about having found love and held onto it. Emma closed the distance between them and slowly, enjoying the moment, touched her lips to Regina’s. Slowly, carefully, gently. She cupped Regina’s cheek and the brief kiss became caress. Her nose, her cheek, her lips touching all of Regina’s face, smoothing it as if it were with her hands,

Regina melted into her, a sigh of relief and hope and finally letting go of the hurt and the pain.

“I looked for you everywhere.” She snuggled her nose into Emma’s neck, having her fill of that perfect scent. “I was so scared.”

“I was scared too.” Emma’s hand hovered over Regina’s back, heat radiating from her against the chill of the night.

“How did you find me?”

“You were calling out to me, Regina.” Emma looked deep into Regina’s eyes so that she could see the truth of it. “I felt you in my heart.”

Regina swallowed audibly. “How would you like some of the best apple cider you have ever tried?”

Emma’s hand slid into Regina’s, like an invitation accepted. “Got anything stronger?”

…   …   …

From the window in his room, Henry saw the two loves of his life tentatively come closer together, in small steps first as if they were afraid to walk and then, as if they were done walking, run into each other’s arms. He heard the front door close on the world outside and he heard their whispered voices and Regina’s shoes in the marbled foyer. He was home.

They were home.

Chapter Text

Epilogue

They walked into the illuminated house, holding hands. They could hear Henry running on the upper floor, his feet thundering and his occasional laughter of delight. “You have Harry Potter!” The delighted laughter came from above them.

Emma squeezed Regina’s hand. “Harry Potter, huh?”

“It was here when I woke up. Henry started reading it with me, back in your Boston because he wanted to know if that magic was real…”

“So you just wanted to have it for when you… woke up?”

“I wanted to have everything that would make Henry happy when we woke up.” Regina’s voice cracked around the last few words. “But you weren’t here…” She poured two generous glasses out of the decanter of cider, her hands trembling slightly.

“I know. I’m sorry. I wanted to be with you from the beginning, but―”

“I think you had no choice, Emma.”

“You don’t think we had a choice in where we ended up? On how things turned up?” Emma asked and there was a sadness to her voice. “I think you’re wrong. I think we had a choice. All I wanted was to be with you in Boston. But Henry must come first. So I woke up next to him. And I had to find you. That’s on me. No one chose for me. But it hurt. It hurt like a bitch.”

“Henry must always come first. You made the right choice. And I had to be here. My bond to the land...”

Okay. So some choices were not really a choice, they just were. But that was done. Over. From now on they would choose everything, from their curtain patterns to the life they would lead. That was a promise. Emma took a sip of the cider and was pleasantly surprised by the burning intensity and the delicate flavour of it. “Regina,” She croaked around the burning of the alcohol, “You don’t have to anything anymore. You get to choose everything from now on.” She put the glass down to take Regina’s hands in hers. “Things happen, we make our choices and then we live with them, but the thing is, your bond to them? Done. No more. From now on, you choose what you want to do. You’re done paying dues... Damn, this thing is strong, Regina. Where did you get this from?” Emma picked up the tumbler ad swirled it appreciatively.

“I think I make it myself… I mean… I have this memory of making cider from my apples, but I’ve never... Back… there… I never made cider. And my tree is outside, Emma. It was gone. It was gone during the attacks on the castle… ogres aren’t particularly careful with where they step. But it’s here now, look…”

Emma followed Regina’s gaze through the window. In the darkness of the night, there was only a silhouette but it clearly meant the world to Regina to have that tree back. Emma rubbed her thumb over the pad of Regina’s fingers eliciting a shiver. “I’ll make it my priority to defend that tree if that’s where you get your apples from.”

Regina smiled because Emma had meant it that way, but the smile waned. “Emma…” Regina hesitated. “Your parents…”

“I don’t care…”

“I know that’s not true.” She took a deep breath. Emma didn’t fight her on this, just lowered her chin to her chest and Regina knew it hurt to talk about that subject. “Snow White… she doesn’t remember.”

“What?”

“Where we come from.”

“So what, she’s got amnesia?” There was no condemnation in Emma’s question, just curiosity, but to Regina, it sounded fake. It sounded like disappointment.

“Here, in this Storybrooke, my name is Regina Mills. I’m the Mayor. I think that’s something like a Queen... Everyone else has a different name, different from where we come from. No one remembers where we come from. No one remembers what I did, who I was. Your mother… She doesn’t remember being Queen Snow. She is a school teacher. All her memories are from being Mary Margaret, the school teacher.”

Emma didn’t really understand what she was feeling about her once again lost family. She had no emotional attachment to that woman, not a hint of a feeling. She had not been a mother. She probably wasn’t, anyway, she tried to console herself. She had just been a sad, crazed person that had threatened the ones she loved the most. But there was a feeling of disappointment there, of loss. “She chose not to remember. She said so. We were both focusing on what was important to us, and we had each other but she just wanted to forget. She wanted a clean slate. Even though I was there. Handy for her…”

“I’m sorry, Emma.”

Emma shrugged. “Yeah… Ever since Boston you’ve been putting me first. That’s enough for me. I’ve never really had that, you know? Feels good.”

Regina gave her a watery smile but continued. Emma deserved to know. All of it. “Your father is in hospital. He is still in an enchanted sleep. Emma… he may never wake up. There is no magic in this world. So even if your mother remembered him, True Love’s kiss would not wake him up.”

“Okay... Look, I can’t miss what I never had. So, whatever… I’ve got you and Henry. That’s more than I’ve ever had. That’s all I care about.”

“You can’t mean that. I saw it in you, Emma. Back in Boston, I felt the hurt and the longing.”

“Well,” Emma put the tumbler gently down on the fancy mahogany coffee table. “Look, okay. Fine. It hurts. For some stupid reason I thought that… I don’t know… the second chance would be all around… That this time she would choose to keep me. But what can’t be helped is already helped, right? All I want… All I’ve wanted in these last three weeks was to come home to you, to hold you and not let you go. So…” She faced Regina “Unless you want me to leave, there is nothing, absolutely nothing that I want to talk about or think about.”

Despair coloured Regina’s immediate reply. “No!” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to leave. Please… Don’t…”

Emma took Regina’s glass and placed it deliberately on the solid table as if they had all the time in the world. “Listen… the basics are simple: we’re together.” She hesitated at her own assumption, but when Regina didn’t protest, she ploughed on. “No one is leaving. Henry is upstairs, probably going through every drawer in that bedroom he found. And we… we’re here. Right now, I don’t care who made it to this world and who didn’t. All I care about is right here, inside this snazzy house. Everything else can wait.” She took Regina’s hand in hers and kissed the knuckles on that hand. “I think we deserve to be a little selfish now, don’t you think?”

No, Regina couldn’t think. At all. Emma’s kisses on her knuckles, on her fingers were the only reality, little jolts to her body, each of them, each trickling, speeding to that spot between her legs that made her woozy and malleable in a way that only Emma could. Her worries melted away, one by one with each touch from Emma’s mouth. The one thing she knew was that she needed more. More contact, more heat, more… more. So she rose onto her feet and moved from the couch to straddle Emma’s legs, animated by a will she had never felt before. She wanted to kiss Emma’s mouth, she wanted to feel Emma’s body against hers, hear her, reassure herself. She wanted Emma to make good on the promises of those rain-like kisses.

Emma grabbed hold of Regina’s hips as the woman sat on her lap, and then slid her hands to her back, to bring her closer, to satiate the absolute hunger for her, to satisfy the need and quench the longing. With a sigh, Regina sank into her, held her face in her hands and captured Emma’s lips on hers. “I missed you, Emma Swan. So much it hurt.” She whispered when the kiss slowed down, her mouth not really apart from Emma’s.

For a second, Emma seemed to freeze, her face hidden on Regina’s neck. “I love you, you know?” She spoke with her mouth against Regina’s skin, against her scent and her warmth. “So much it hurts.”

Regina sagged in Emma’s lap under the weight of the emotion. She cupped Emma’s face and raised it to hers and there it was, that wonderful smile that Emma imparted with so very rarely. Deliberately, eyes wide open, she took Emma’s mouth again and kissed her, soft, slow, sweet. Wet. So wet and so bold, fearless and it said I love you with every movement, with every sigh, with every breath.

Emma’s hands were on her thighs, light, hesitant. Regina took them, kissed the pads of her fingers, her palms, her wrists and in a surge of courage, brought Emma’s hands to cup her breasts. “Make love to me, Emma. Make love to me.”

…   …   …

Rumpelstiltskin felt it, the disturbance in the air. Subtle, tenuous, but he felt it. He grabbed his cane and stepped out into the wet street. Something had changed and he could feel it, he could feel the magic in the air, gathering. He collected his will, his thoughts, his power. And nothing happened. No matter. It would take time, but his magic would return. He had banked on it, he had ensured it.

A giggle echoed through the empty streets. And though decades had passed since he had heard it last, he knew it, it knew it like an old song. He closed the door behind him and walked towards that giggle. He had waited patiently for his Belle. He had known she’d be revealed to him soon enough, so he had waited while he gathered what he needed, while he understood the situation. And he took it as a sign that here she was now. He took it as a sign that things were beginning to work out exactly as he wanted them to. Her shadow became visible on the wall opposite.

It hit him square in the chest and robbed him of strength in his legs. He leaned heavily into his cane as his Belle giggled as some man went down on one knee and handed her flower.

It was not her fault, he reminded himself as his anger squeezed around his heart as if it might suffocate him. She didn’t remember. That Queen Snow had decided to have her pretty little clean break, not to remember and in the process, she had ensured that no one did. She was the one at fault here, not his Belle. She was innocent. She had always been.

He stumbled across the street and when he got to her he grabbed her shoulder, then her arm and pulled her into him, into his kiss. It could break this curse over the town but it would break it for her and she would remember and be as horrified by her actions and the man at her feet as he was. He held her head in his hand and pulled her closer still.

But his Belle did not kiss back. She just stood there, impassive and the disgust, the grief in her eyes was all directed at him. The clown on the floor stood, the flower still in his hand. “Belle… do you know him? Do you want me to get rid of him?”

“It’s alright.” Her voice was soft and sad and he knew it immediately that this would break what was left of him. “I know him, yes. Can you give us a moment, please?”

As the man pulled away, he told himself that she knew Gold, that she knew the man from the shop, not him. “I know that right now I am just a stranger to you, a man that owns the shop around the corner but I promise you, my Belle, my dear, that it will all make sense, in a few hours it will all come back to you… And then―”

“Rumple… it all makes sense now. I didn’t forget. I am not like the others. I didn’t forget a single moment. I think you had a part in that. You always have your fail safe, don’t you?” She smiled a little sadly at him.

“Well, yes… But you didn’t come to me. Didn’t you know where I was? Didn’t you look for me?”

“Rumple, I have known where you were since the first day I walked outside in this world.”

“Then why, Belle?”

“Because, Rumple, I could finally see clearly. Finally the fog and the confusion cleared. All those years lost, all those years where nothing changed, where we all hurt so much… they were you. They were your doing. You left me in your castle- your castle, never my home- to go and keep an eye on your prize. You knew what would happen, that we would come here but you never spared a moment to what would happen when I woke up here, alone.”

“Belle… my wee one… I was only ensuring that―”

“I know, Rumple.” She agreed and it was the saddest he had ever seen his Belle. “But I saw it. I saw thorough your mirror.”

“And what did you see, Belle?”

“I saw as the enchantment began. I saw the Queen and the Saviour Princess. I saw how they held each other through it all. How they were all that mattered to each other. How they thought of each other first. You were there. And you never spared me a thought.”

He shook his head and he tried to make it all make sense, but it didn’t. “Belle, I…”

“I was never all you wanted. I loved me, yes, but like chattel. I could have broken your curse. We could have been happy. We could have been spared living like that, feeling like that if you had accepted my kiss, my True Love’s kiss all those years ago. We could have been just a man and a woman. But you never wanted that because that would not have been enough for you. I would not have been enough for you. That’s what I saw through your mirror, Rumple. That’s why I did not come to find you. That’s why you didn’t come to find me.” She looked for the man that had been walking down the street with her, with silly little flower still in his hand and smiled at him.

“Is that what he is to you? All you ever wanted?”

“No. You are. But it doesn’t matter, does it? What matters, Mr Gold, is that he is not you.” She pulled away and walked towards the man who stepped away from the wall he had been leaning against with a smile that Rumple wanted to break into small pieces.

“Belle!” He wanted to beg. Don’t leave me. But nothing came out.

“I hope you do get what it is that you engineered all of this for.”

And then she was off, as if she hadn’t just turned his heart to stone.

…   …   …

Mary Margaret Blanchard turned in bed, tangled in her flowery cotton sheets. The woman in the dream scared her with her glazed eyes, her hands clutching a heart that had no business beating outside a chest. Her own heart ached, throbbed and nothing could ever, ever, make it better or hurt less or feel less. But what hurt the most was the horrible feeling that the hands that held the heart were hers, that the eyes that were crazed were hers. That the hate that seemed to pervade the room was hers.

She woke up abruptly, scared, unsure of what she was so afraid off. But the morning would bring another school day, with children that needed her, that loved her and she dutifully endeavoured to get back to sleep. She counted sheep and drank a glass of warm milk and counted backwards from six hundred.

When sleep finally came upon her, the woman was there again, pointing a finger at her, accusing silently. I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to. She refused.

So, she didn’t. When the morning came, as she dressed for school and had her cup of tea, she knew only that she’d had a bad dream but had no idea of what it was. That and that there was something different in the air.

…   …   …

Alone in a specially designed life support room, surrounded by all the best equipment, a blond man in a deep coma wiggled his fingers as if he had been touching his wife’s breathtaking face. In the sunlight carefully advancing into the room, the man opened his eyes, looking for his newborn baby daughter. But he was alone in the room, alone in the world and there being nothing but loneliness in that room, he closed his eyes and returned to sleep, slipping, once again, into his enchanted oblivion that no medicine, no machine could wake him from.

None of the sophisticated instruments registered his moment of wakefulness. None felt hope that he might finally return to the living.

…   …   …

Henry woke up in his new bedroom and took a minute to decide that this was not one of the dreams he’d had ever since Hilary and Jackson- since mom and dad, he corrected himself- had disappeared. He had often dreamed of being in rooms that were not his own, in homes that did not smell like his and being given to people that were not his own.

Henry, I know they would have never won awards for parent of the year, but they were your parents. Don’t be a little shit and tell me again you’re happy they’re gone. One, because I know it’s not true and two, because there are worse things, there are worse people and there are worse situations. You’d know this if you had spent your life on the system like I did. So, do us both a favour, will you, kid? Think about the good things, even if you have to squint hard to see them. Hold on to those things.

Emma had never been particularly forthcoming about the system but he had dragged enough out of her to make him aware that he was particularly lucky. That some people had it so bad they either didn’t make it or they were like Emma, always looking over or their shoulder, struggling every time something good happened to them.

But this was his bedroom, he was home and he was safe. He had been half awake when Emma and Regina had come to tuck him in. They had both lingered a little, holding onto each other, and he had simply slid deeper into sleep knowing, in the deepest part of him, that he was loved.

He went to the window and sat there enjoying the view over Storybrooke. There hadn’t been much to see when they’d arrived, the unrelieved blackness of the night sky allowing for no view of the town. But now he could see everything in sharp detail: the clock tower, the short skyline, no high rises, no office buildings, nothing but electricity towers and cables running between them, lined with birds chirping away. Everything was brighter, clearer, sharper. He opened the window and felt the sea breeze, heard the gulls and, at a distance, a fog horn.

He had a feeling he was going to like this little town.

His stomach rumbled and he closed the window and went to the kitchen. He wondered if Regina had done the shopping, how she’d managed with the credit card on her own - if she even had one. How would that work anyway? As he made it to the kitchen, he found bread and milk, some cupboard staples, butter in the fridge but nothing that would indicate Regina had been shopping. The milk was well past its sell by date but the packs remained untouched, as if Regina hadn’t even been aware they were there. He wondered again how that had worked, if she had woken up in this house, if she had stumbled into it and laid her claim like in the old west movies or she simply hadn’t been interested in food. She had looked so much better those last few days in Boston, more colour in her cheeks, more to her, really. When they arrived, he hadn’t really paid much attention to that: he had been too worried to make sure she was there, really there, that it was her, smelled like her, felt like her. For some reason he couldn’t quite understand, it was as if his happiness was as deeply tied around her as it was around Emma. Now he thought about it, though, she had seemed… worn out.

He cut some bread, toasted it and slathered it with butter and grabbed a lone carton of juice he had found in the fridge. When he switched on the TV, there was cable, there were the news channels and the cartoon channels. He decided that he could wait for them to wake up. That he was all set up until they’d had the time they needed.

Smiling, he settled in with his breakfast to watch Adventure Time. He was lucky. Stupid lucky. He had lost his parents and instead of being thrown to the dogs, he had landed in the lap of two of the most amazing women he had ever known. And they actually loved him.

He pulled a blanket over his legs and thought to himself that Finn and Jake could have as awesome adventures as they wanted but none, not a one, was as strange or impressive as his own.

…   …   …

Rumpelstiltskin pushed at the barrier again, as he had done every morning since he had woken up in this accursed land. This was not it, this was not what he had designed, not what he had engineered for. But the ridiculous insects had double-crossed him. How had he lost his magic? How had he lost his Belle? This was supposed to be the land he would have everything he desired: his magic, his Bae and his Belle. His power. And yet, here he was, alone and limp. He was the Dark One and he had no magic, only sleepless nights which was how he knew that the would-be-saviour was in town with the whelp she had harped on about. He was livid. As he saw her waltzing into Storybrooke as if nothing stood in her way, he had hoped that her arrival would open the barrier to him.

It hadn’t.

The frustration, the anger, the heartache brought out the bad and the petty in him. He grabbed a little black and brown mutt that had come sniffing his feet hoping for scraps of food or affection and tried to punch his fist into the animal’s chest and remove its beating heart. He wanted that power rushing through his body again, craved it with a desperation that he couldn’t control, but all that happened was the animal yelping in pain, something low and plaintive. He tossed the dog away and the mutt scampered way limply, tail between its legs.

He pushed at the barrier again. But every time he pushed at it, it pushed back. Even with the amulet he had secured, filled with the hair from the spell casters- Snow-the-puppet, Regina-the-failure and Emma-the-would-be-saviour, he was still making no headway.

How had the saviour and the brat, without a hiccup, crossed over the barrier that sat at the town line just to stop him?

Perhaps if he just grabbed this Emma Swan he could make her. He should make her burst the barrier. He should make her open that door for him. He had never been this close to Bae and, at the same time, never so distant, with magic being nothing but a memory.

He kicked a substantial rock that lay by the side of the road but the pain of, possibly, a broken toe, did nothing to numb the pain in his blackened heart. He picked up the rock and heaved it at the barrier.

The barrier returned the favour: it bounced the rock back at him, dropping it at his feet.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Regina woke up because she was too comfortable. There was an arm around her naked waist and silky soft skin against her back, a warm body behind hers. She was cocooned in arms and hair and breath and heartbeat and, above all, as palpable as every inch of skin, love.

She smiled and surprised herself that she still had it in her to feel giddy and happy. Joyous. She had thought for so long that those were well out of her reach. And yet, here she was, smiling like a fool and she didn’t want to ever feel any other way.

Her well used body was lax and sore in all the best ways and she smelled Emma on her skin when she moved a fraction just so that she could look at the woman sleeping next to her. She smelled of sex and the peach of Emma’s shampoo they had both used in Boston. She inhaled deeply and her smile widened.

It was perhaps a flight of fancy but it was the smell of a good morning.

She managed to turn without disturbing Emma who only mumbled something like go back to sleep but relaxed her hold to accommodate Regina’s movement. Regina couldn’t go back to sleep. Not when Emma’s skin was shining in the warm light of the late winter morning and her lashes were shadowing her cheeks. She settled in to watch Emma sleep.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Tinkerbelle was thinking that she might change her name. She slumped into the bench on the docks, the winter sun warming her face and the hands crossed on her lap. Tinkerbelle was a ridiculous name. She wanted something with more… pizzazz. Something that would go well with the dark studded boots and the torn jeans she was wearing. She liked the peculiar attire they had in this Storybrooke. If she never wore green again it would still be too soon. Anything but green. And these boots were sturdy and comfortable and she could almost disappear in them if she wanted to. Maybe Matilda… Or – and she smiled - Morticia. It had a ring to it. Definitely no names after flowers or colours. It was nice of the spell to not saddle her with something. She’d spent her very long life trying to conform to what had been her lot in life – and failing. She liked this idea that she had a choice; that she could be whatever, however she wanted to be.

She stuffed her hands in her soft leather gloves and smiled at the touch of the material on her skin. Freedom was hard won but it felt good and it warmed her up even in the cold of the winter.

She felt Blue approach and sighed. Might as well. She had been avoiding her for the past three weeks.

“Good morning, Blue.”

The oldest fairy of them all sat primly with her hands in her lap and just to mark the difference, Tinkerbelle slumped a little further. She inhaled the clean, crisp air and the sharp wind of the Atlantic. “It was worth it, wouldn’t you say, Green, just for the blue of the sky and of the ocean.”

“Is that a pun, Blue?” Tinkerbelle couldn’t resist needling though, she knew, Blue too had learnt her lessons.

“No,” Blue nodded. “Honest truth. Twenty-eight years is too long to miss the fresh air, the sky… to miss colours.” Tinkerbelle nodded. Yes, it was a very long time. “You chose a different path, Green.”

“I did.” She pressed down on the irritation of having Blue call her by tribe name as if she were nothing but what she had been with the group. “We both know I was not very good at it.”

“But this is a second chance for all.” Blue pointed out sweetly. She had the power to irritate Tinkerbelle without even trying. “Even for us.”

“And it is. But my choice was to not bleat after you for the rest of time. I’m different, Blue. I like that. I decided to use my second chance to find what I’m good at. To be happy with what I am. To be more than a colour.”

Blue stared at the ocean and let the weak sun warm her. “I’ll miss you… Tinkerbelle.”

Tinkerbelle smiled. “I’ll miss you too. And the girls. Are you happy, Blue?”

“I am. Right now, I am.” Which did not really answer but Tinkerbelle just nodded. “Rumpelstiltskin has been trying again.”

“I felt it too, that irritating pushing at the barrier…”

“Eventually, he might…”

“Of course he might… One of the conditions was the freedom to try, wasn’t it? But Emma has arrived…” She paused and then finished her thought with a delighted giggle. “She spent the night at Regina’s.”

Blue smiled demurely. “Yes… I could feel the difference in the air, the lightness, the…”

“They call it sex, Blue. So much energy between them they could power the town’s generator on their own. Think about it Blue, electricity for the light bulbs in your convent.”

“I know what the generator is, Tinkerbelle.” She blushed. “It was worth it, wasn’t it?”

“The secrecy, the hiding, the cloak and dagger?” There was a moment of silence.

“Snow is unhappy.” Blue commented with a small voice. “I failed her.”

“Yeah, well, we both failed people entrusted to us. She’ll have to choose to be happy, Blue. Happiness is a choice and hard work. Regina has chosen wisely. That makes me happy.”

“I shall have to find a way to―”

“No, actually! You have to find a way to stay out of it. Haven’t we meddled enough?”

“She is unhappy…”

“Yes, she is. But Emma is here. And you’ve seen her heart as I have. Let them work it out.”

Knowing that Tinkerbelle was right, Blue nodded as if she was trying to convince herself. “Do you miss it? Magic?”

“It was our choice, Blue, the price to pay. And magic always comes with a price, doesn’t it? Besides. Emma is back. And she has magic in her.”

“You keep saying that. As if that child is the answer to every question.”

“Not a child, and yes, she might be. You never know.” Then she got up and prepared to go. “What do you think of Antonia?” She asked over her shoulder but walked away without waiting for Blue’s answer.

Antonia was a good name. Maybe not the right one, but a good name.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Henry pushed the supermarket trolley and climbed on as it sped through the aisles. He grabbed a box of Lucky Charms and tossed it in, speeding onwards. Behind him, Regina called with the alarmed tone that always made him stop. Her tone was very much motherly. In some ways, though Emma was the greatest mom he could ever imagine, always teaching him something cool, always ready to feed him and play with him, Regina was the ultimate mother, the kind that has rules, that worries and frets and makes sure and worries a bit more. He liked that. He liked it a lot, perhaps because he’d never had that.

If Emma hurried up and married Regina already, maybe he could call both of them Mom. But they had been in town for four days, four whole days, and Emma had not yet asked. Huh. He stopped for a moment. Maybe he should do something about it. Maybe he could grab Emma’s phone and text Regina asking. Or type a letter and forge Emma’s signature.

He was busy with the wheels turning in his head, planning, plotting and Emma had Regina caught up with him. Regina took a look at the trolley and spotted the Lucky Charms.

“Henry, aren’t these the ones full of sugar? Sugar is unhealthy. Sugar is very unhealthy.”

Emma took Regina by the shoulders and touched their foreheads. “Relax, Max. Just a month ago you didn’t even know about sugar. It’s just Lucky Charms.”

“Emma, I might not have known a lot of things a month ago, but I’m learning. And I really think that Henry should select a variety of cereal with less sugar in it. You should choose a variety of cereal with less sugar in it.”

“But…” Emma started but Regina’s eyes brokered no argument.

“It’s alright, I’ll put it back, okay?” Henry offered and walked back to change the box. Emma said a quick goodbye to the sugary goodness.

“You’re a cereal killer, Regina.”

“I am.” Regina smiled. “I’ll make it up to you.”

Emma sighed dramatically as Henry came back with something far less exciting than Lucky Charms.

“How about you lay off the health and lifestyle channels?”

“I’m learning a lot.”

“Yeah… tell me about it…” She smiled and took Regina’s hand in hers. As they moved onto the next aisle, Regina froze. Ahead of them, Snow White in her school teacher incarnation carried a lonely basket with a few single serve items. Emma saw her too and her hand in Regina’s turned cold and clammy. “Let’s go.”

Henry, too, stopped and stared. “Who’s that?”

“Snow White.” Regina spoke softly, visibly shocked.

“Really?” Henry enthused. “Your mom?” He pulled on Emma’s sleeve. “Come on, let’s go talk to her.”

“No. Henry, come on…”

“Henry’s right, Emma.”

“I am?” Henry asked surprised.

“What’s the point, Regina? She doesn’t remember.” Emma hadn’t intended for it to come out as such a pathetic sound.

“Yes, Henry, you are.” Regina took the boy by the hand and walked towards Mary Margaret Blanchard who seemed to be considering running for her life. Fortified by Henry’s hand in hers, Regina gave him a conspiratorial smile just as Emma turned to a shelf looking for a hiding hole.

“Miss Blanchard.” She called out effectively stopping Snow White in her tracks.

“Mayor Mills.” Mary Margaret greeted. “What a surprise seeing you here.”

“This is the only supermarket in town, Miss Blanchard. We eat too.” She reigned in the fear because fear made her a little mean. “This,” She cleared her throat, “is Henry. Henry is Emma’s son.” She introduced the reluctant blonde and waited a beat, hoping for a spark of something, a memory perhaps, just so that Emma didn’t have to go through this.

“Hi, Miss Blanchard. Nice to meet you.” Henry offered his hand that Mary Margaret took with a smile.

“How nice to meet you, Henry.” She shook his hand, happy to focus on a child rather than face the Emma woman who seemed to be expecting something from her or the Mayor who scared her out of her wits.

Henry gave her a silly smile, fascinated as he was by the fact that this was Emma’s mother. She was pretty and she looked a little like Emma, if you squinted.

“They have just moved to Storybrooke. Henry will need to go back to school as soon as possible and I was wondering if you could possibly assist us with enrolling him.”

Mary Margaret gave Henry an appraising look. He looked- no, that was not it – he felt familiar, as if she should know him. She shook her head to clear her thoughts and gave him a bright smile. “Of course. I’d be happy to. Why doesn’t your friend bring Henry by the school tomorrow and we can fill in all the paperwork?”

“Absolutely.” Regina offered congenially though inside her heart was hammering a hole in her chest.

As Mary Margaret walked away with her single pot of yogurt and lone banana, Henry grabbed a red, red apple from the pile next to them. “So… she was Snow White and you were the Evil Queen… An apple for the teacher might not be such a good idea…” He smiled at his own little joke.

“This is not a cartoon, Henry.” Emma admonished, rattled to the bones.

“Well, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, Henry.” Regina offered quietly but there was a glint of humour in her eyes.

Henry was the first one to laugh. After that, both Emma and Regina laughed as well, until they were out of breath.

….   …   …

“You know… I need to go back to work.” Emma pondered, about three weeks later, as they watched a documentary about the solar system. Regina was an insatiable student and wanted to learn everything about this world they had come to.

“You want to go back to your Boston?” She asked absolutely terrified. Everybody ended up leaving her, one way or another.

“No, of course not! I just… Look, I love this permanent holiday we have going but I’ve been here for three weeks. If I want to make a permanent home here…”

“Do you?”

“Well, yeah… But I have to work. I have to find a job… And you, Madame Mayor, should start doing some mayoring.”

“Aren’t you happy?”

Emma studied Regina, the panic and the grief in her features. “I’ve never been so happy, Regina. I love waking up with you and taking our time in the shower. I love cooking together and watching all those films and fuck knows you deserved this holiday more than anyone I’ve ever met. But… It feels like we’re… I don’t know… postponing life. I want to have the humdrum with you. The school run, the schedules, the work… I want to come home to you at night and bitch about work…”

“I see.”

“Please don’t be upset.”

“I’m not. I was just thinking… I didn’t do any mayoring. Yet. I think it can’t be that different from being a queen. I don’t know much about the kingdom… I mean, the town. At all. Presumably, if I go in and do that mayoring job, I will know if there are positions available.”

“Presumably...” Emma repeated with a smile, watching the wheels turning in Regina’s brain, the plans forming.

“If I go in tomorrow…I could find you a job. What would you like to do?”

“Friends in high places! I’m living the life now!” She pulled Regina to her lap and planted a solid kiss on the plump lips. “I shouldn’t like it.” Kiss. “But I do.” Kiss. “Let me know if the town needs any bails bond girl.” Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. “If it doesn’t, I’ll figure something out.” Kiss.

“We.”

Kiss. “Uh?”

“We. We will figure something out. Together.” Regina explained between kisses. That stopped Emma.

“We will sort it out.” Emma conceded with a silly smile.

“We should finally take Henry to school.” Regina continued between kisses. It took time to keep a conversation going between kisses but they had that. Now she knew Emma was staying, they had time.

“You keep kissing me like that, I’ll enrol myself too.”

Regina’s lipstick was smudged, she was flushed and her short hair mussed. It made Emma wet.

“Tomorrow, then.”

“And now?”

“Now, you may take me to our bedroom.”

…   …   …

Regina sat down that night with Emma’s laptop and asked her good friend Google how mayors dressed for work. She found the images entertaining but none that suited her taste. Most were men anyway, but the worst was that there didn’t seem to be a consensus. It ranged from the jeans and cowboy hat to the formal suits. She liked the dresses and the high heels in her closet. They were as far removed as it could be from her worn leather pants and vest attire she had been fighting in for the last twenty-eight years. She looked at her hands. The markings left there by the daggers were fading and were barely even visible. She no longer felt the pull of the land, the obligation, the compulsion to do its bidding. But it was difficult to forget.

She sighed deeply. What if she started this mayor job and people kicked her out? What if they revolted again against her? What then? This time there would be no hunting down rebels, no executing them. She was Regina now. She wanted to be Regina, the one that had a job and went home at the end of the day and cooked with Emma. She wanted to be a mother to Henry. She didn’t want to be the terror of the land, the nightmare, the murderer. What would she do if they revolted? What was she suitable to do in this world?

Decisively, she stood and walked to the closet, found a skirt and jacket set and separated it for the next morning. She would be the best mayor she could be. The rest was up to the stars.

From the door, Emma watched Regina, observed her fighting her fears and winning. She knew well the thoughts in Regina’s head. It didn’t take a genius.

She was so proud of her.

…   …   …

Regina was up before the sun. She was nervous, equal parts anticipating the new day and dreading it. From the bed, Emma observed the woman she loved fret. She had never seen Regina fret, not about the little things, in any case. So she got up and handed her the clothes she had chosen the night before and then the shoes. As Regina did her makeup and bit her lip unsure of the result, Emma stood behind her and kissed the crown of her head. “You look wonderful, very mayoral. Go knock them dead, tiger.”

“I’m hoping to do that… figuratively.”

“Good choice!” Emma smiled. “Now, stop fretting. You’re perfect.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, let’s have some breakfast.”

“Pancakes?” Regina asked hopefully.

“You got it.”

…   …   …

“But I’m an excellent driver!” Regina objected, pointing at her Mercedes sitting in the driveway.

Emma weighed her options: walking everywhere she needed to go for the rest of the day or strike a blow to Regina’s fledgling confidence.

“Alright, Rain Man.” She got into the car with Henry and relaxed in her seat. Regina was a good driver, no doubt. “Woah… this is an awesome car.” And had excellent taste in cars. The Mercedes was a sweet ride and Emma found herself envying the smooth start and the light steering. The Bug was anything but.

Regina parked with a triumphant smile in the space marked MAYOR in bold white letters outside the Town Hall. Emma stepped out and to the right was the Sheriff Station. Now that would be the place to work, she fantasised. She could literally look out of the window and see Regina working. They could have all sorts of crazy lunch breaks. She could introduce Regina to phone sex... Now there was a thought.

“Where’s your office?” She asked, indulging the fantasy. Fantasies were not taxable so she might as well.

“I don’t know.” Regina panicked for a moment. Then she took a deep breath. “It will have my name on it, won’t it? Just like in that film…”

“Yeah!” Henry quipped as he stepped out of the war car into the cold and hugged her. “After school, Mom and I will come to visit, won’t we, Mom?”

Emma pulled him by the shoulders into a hug when he released his hold on Regina. “Yeah, we will.” It didn’t get old. She loved the way Henry said the word, the way it sounded in his voice, the way it felt like a warm embrace.

Regina opened a black purse and pulled out two blood red apples and handed one to each of them. “No more sugar, okay?” Both Emma and Henry rolled their eyes but agreed with a kiss before walking way.

Alone, Regina took a deep breath. And then she went in to go and do her job the best she could.

…  …   …

It was the ass crack of morning as evidenced by the frost and the empty streets. Which was why Emma and Henry easily spotted Mary Margaret Blanchard, bundled in a powder pink coat and white accessories. She looked a little like a cloud of cotton candy and it made Emma slightly nauseous, some of it because of the pink, most of it because she wanted to approach a mother that didn’t know about her.

Henry weaved his arm through hers. “I guess it would be easier if she at least didn’t look as old as you, huh?”

“Yeah, kid, I guess it would.” Emma pondered. “You know, she might not be. I mean… what if these people made a mistake? They are basing all of this on the assumption that I’ve got magic.”

“Well, you do…”

“Kid, that was a strange place. What if everyone has magic there? I mean… all I’m saying if that maybe we should get a DNA test or something.” Emma replied as they continued to walk after Mary Margaret.

“Mom,” Henry started full of patience, “I know that I’m not yours, not really.” He put a hand to her mouth as she began to object. “But you chose me. You’ve been choosing me since I was six and we met in the fire escape of our building back in Boston.” When Emma deflated, he continued. “That’s bigger than DNA. That makes you my Mom. So… maybe, even if she isn’t, maybe you could give her a chance. You need a mom and she looks like she needs a daughter too…. I mean… you could adopt each other.”

“Henry, the difference is that I like you. Very much. Her? Not so much.”

“Why? What did she do?”

“She hurt Regina. She hurt her a lot.”

“Yeah… But you’d still like it if she remembered you.” Henry reply after some consideration. When they reached the diner, Emma considered just walking on, forgetting all about Mary Margaret’s sad eyes but Henry had different ideas.

“Okay, look, so Storybrooke is supposed to be a new beginning, right? Like a second chance.” Emma shrugged by way of reply. “So… maybe we should give her second chance too.”

“I can’t just walk to her and say, hey, Mom, remember me? I’m the kid you stuffed into a magic wardrobe twenty-eight years ago. She doesn’t remember that life.”Emma stuffed her hands in her pockets and pouted.

Henry just waited her out. “Yeah, maybe. But it would be just like being undercover while you get to know her.” Henry shrugged but in his heart, he knew he had already won.

…   …   …

Mary Margaret sat at a table as if she felt she would be imposing by taking a booth. Emma and Henry sat at the counter where they could observe her through the reflective surfaces of the serving area.

The impression was striking: the long, matted hair was gone and in its stead a funky little boyish cut that accented youth and innocence. Which was new as well: an innocence that had not been there before now replaced the madness of her gaze.

A waitress approached, all long legs and wide smile, and Emma ordered the first thing on the menu: two hot chocolates. She had expected the Bostonian approach to bar tending and to be left alone to her thoughts but the waitress was not going anywhere fast. She brewed the drinks in a machine uncomfortably close to them all the while craning her neck towards her and Henry to keep the conversation going.

“So… what brings you guys to town?”

“Well, you know… this and that…” Emma evaded out of habit.

“Ah… so… are you staying somewhere, then?”

“Yeah.” Henry smiled, “We are. We’re staying with Regina.”

Emma smiled despite the frayed nerves. Yes, they were. There was, however, no need to announce it to the world because sod’s law was alive and well and a bird that chirps happily from the nest usually falls off into the cold, hard shit below.

The waitress’ smile faltered a little but she recovered. “My name’s Ruby. What’s yours?” Emma interrupted her close study of Snow White to reply.

“Swan. Emma Swan.”

“And I’m Henry. I’m her son.” Henry offered, his attention split between his potential grandmother and Ruby.

“Nice to meet you, Emma Swan and Henry.” The waitress finally surrendered the hot chocolate and brought a can of whipped cream. When Emma nodded, she sprayed it generously over both cups “So… huh… do you swing that way, then?” She asked and swiftly turned on her heels to retrieve something from behind her as if she couldn’t care less about the answer. Through the reflection, she too studied Emma studying Mary Margaret which made the casual disinterest a lie.

Emma snapped to attention. “What?”

“What does she mean?” Henry was confused too.

“Nothing.” Ruby amended quickly and stuffed a cinnamon stick in each cup with a flourish.

“Good, ‘cause it sounded like you had asked me if I was into her.”

“But…” Henry started objecting when Emma just shook her head, effectively silencing him. Into her own mother! She corrected herself- Potentially her own mother.

Ruby cleaned the counter to gain time and then shrugged her shoulders. “You were looking at her really hard.”

Emma sighed. Yep, that she was. “She looks like someone I know.”

“Ah… Well…” Ruby demurred, “You know, if you do…” And looked at Emma suggestively.

“But what about-“ Henry interjected fiercely.

Emma smiled and interrupted him. “Thanks Ruby… I’m… with someone…” Ruby gave her an understanding smile but Emma ploughed on, and having opened the gates, she decided to march right through them. “I’m in love with someone. Really crazy in love with someone.”

“With Regina?”

Henry nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah.”

“Regina, the Mayor?” Ruby insisted, incredulous.

Again it was Henry that replied. “Yeah.”

“You should put a ring on it, then.” Ruby sighed but gave her pretty, rueful smile. “Sort of like advanced warning…”

“Gee, thanks Beyonce!”

“And what about our Mary Margaret? Does she look like an ex?”

“She looks like my mother, actually… You know… old pictures and stuff.” The word mother tasted foreign in her tongue and she blushed. Henry for his part disguised a knowing smile in the cup of hot chocolate.

“Oh… Sorry… What happened to your mom?”

Emma was uncomfortable with the surreal conversation and the lie. She only shrugged in reply. And Ruby opted for not pressing. She was a clever girl in the bar tending business for longer than she remembered.

“Is she always this sad?” Henry asked, his attention back to Mary Margaret.

“You know? I don’t remember ever knowing her any other way.” Ruby leaned in and whispered. “Like she lost something and hasn’t found it yet.”

“Have you known her long?” Emma couldn’t help it. She wanted to know about her- potentially – mother. She couldn’t help herself.

“Seems like forever…” Ruby thought about it. “I guess… let’s see…” Then, her eyes fogged up and she shook her head and then she had forgotten about what she had been thinking about and gave up on the answer.

Just like Emma, Henry noticed it but reserved his comments for later. “She seems nice, though.” Was his only comment for Emma’s ears alone.

“Yeah…” Emma agreed.

…   … …

They left the diner ten minutes after Mary Margaret and walked to school, each deep in thought. Emma was going to enrol Henry and, in the process, speak to, potentially, her mother. Who didn’t look a year older than Emma herself, if not younger. It was all nerve wrecking. She clutched at the fostering papers in her pocket for comfort. She was doing this for Henry. That was all. If she happened to speak to her mother then… well, they’d see how it’d go. Baby steps.

“You haven’t asked her yet.” Henry broke the silence finally.

“What?” Emma asked. “Asked who what?”

“Whom. Regina. You haven’t asked her to marry you yet.”

Emma stopped abruptly. “No…”

“What are you waiting for?” Henry stared her down.

Emma juggled her apple from one hand to the other. “I… I have to do it right, Henry.” When Henry did not reply, Emma felt the need to elaborate. “The time… I mean, I haven’t found the right time yet. I need to do it right.”

“No, Emma. You just have to do it. We’ve been here for three weeks now. You haven’t asked yet. Ruby’s right. You haven’t put a ring on it yet.”

“And what are you? Baby Beyonce?”

“What are you scared of?”

“I’m not scared.”

“Yeah, you are. Are you scared she’ll say no?” Emma’s hand became all thumbs pointing outwards and she dropped her apple. When it rolled off, she chased after it. “Back when we met her, you were scared of believing her. You were scared that she was saying the truth. And now you’re scared again. Are you scared she’ll say yes?”

Emma polished her apple to a high shine as she searched for the right words. “She’s got a good thing going on here, Henry. The more I see it, the more I wonder why she would want a street rat like me. She’s… I mean… look at her: she’s the Mayor which- she’s right- is a lot like a Queen where they all come from and she’s got the house and car and she’s drop dead gorgeous and brave and smart. What can I give her? What can I add to that? She doesn’t need me for anything.”

Henry sighed and took the apple from her hand, interrupting the polishing. “Is this how you’re going to raise me, Emma? Being afraid? You’re going to give her the same thing you give to me: love. Why are you so worried?”

Emma had no good reply for that, so Henry pushed further. “I really like Regina, Mom. You have to marry her so that she’ll keep us.”

“Kid… Regina loves you. She’s never going to let you out of her life.”

“Not if you mess it up. What if she meets someone else and gets a family of her own and we’re not it?”

“Look… Here’s the thing: all this time, she never saw anyone else. She never had anything else. Maybe she needs to… so that she can have a choice…” Oh, but the thought of Regina with someone else hurt in ways she couldn’t even begin to count. “You know?”

“Mom?” Henry gave Emma her apple back. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I really like her.”

“You said that.”

“Yes… Look. You’re my mom now, alright? But I’d like Regina to be my mom too. You two together… Everybody knows that kids do better with a stable family, two parents, you know? I could call her Mom too… if you don’t mind. But you have to marry her, because I’m ten and I have already lost one full set of parents. I need stability... She has already chosen you. When you know you know, right? All you need is the ring. Please mom… I still have my credit card if that’s the problem. We can go and buy a ring now.”

Emma snorted between laughter and tears. “Oh Henry…” She pulled him to her and hugged him. “Okay. Okay…”

“Are you mad?”

“No, Henry, I’m not. I know that feeling. I know that feeling so well…”

…   …   …

Mary Margaret looked as far removed from Queen Snow as possible. There was a peace in the sadness in her eyes. She looked at the children in her classroom with an ineffable affection. In the cupped hand she had held Regina’s bruised heart in, she now had a bird of the deepest cobalt blue Emma had ever seen and the children were in rapt attention, following her movements through the classroom. Something tugged at Emma’s heart and Henry pulled on her arm affirming that he too felt something special there.

When she spotted them, Mary Margaret gave them an inviting smile but continued in the same soothing tone. It was as if this woman and the demented queen were not the same person. This was someone, Emma thought, she might actually be friends with, if it never came to pass that they could be mother and daughter.

When Mary Margaret set the blue bird free, it stayed on the sill of her window as if it too was transfixed by her. The class broke for recess and both Henry and Emma took a seat at the small desks. Neither was perfectly at home, Henry unused to a public school classroom and Emma still weary of classrooms in general.

This Mary Margaret was sad, yes but there was a light about her that seemed to be looking for a dark room to illuminate. Henry was invited to stay, a desk assigned for the rest of the day. Emma had a moment of panic, of not wanting him out of her sight, in Queen Snow’s hands but Regina chose that moment to walk into the classroom, heels clicking on the hardwood floor, unsure smile in her face. The instinct became reaction as Emma prepared to take both of them out of there, out of danger but Regina sat calmly by Henry’s side and after the first few questions she asked even Mary Margaret relaxed her stance. Henry begged them to stay. Emma took a moment to study this teacher, this Mary Margaret Blanchard of the sad, sad eyes.

“Henry will be safe here, Emma.” Mary Margaret said and the tone was so absolutely maternal that Emma had to fight unexpected tears to be able to acquiesce.

Regina opened her bag and withdrew a lunchbox and two paper bags. “Maybe we could have some lunch before, Henry. What do you think?”

Henry gave her a brilliant smile and then leaned into Emma and whispered “See? Just like a mom.”

…   …   …

It had been easier than she’d thought in the morning to find her office. Her secretary had fluttered around her in a mix of fear and excitement and Regina had simply followed the flurry of movement to her office. It was the same as being a Queen, really, just with different names. And computers. She liked computers. They reminded her of Emma. And, she had decided, she liked being a Mayor. Her first decision had been whether or not to increase the budget for roads. Oh yes. She liked driving her car. She wanted more roads. Many more roads.

And she liked her office. It was beautiful in a very sober way: decorated in sharp black and whites and it appealed to her tidy nature. She had approached the window and surveyed her kingdom. Well, her town. It was the same as a kingdom and if Emma and Henry stayed, it would be the richest of realms. She had pulled up the plans of the town that were on a folder on her computer. It seemed to have everything she needed, as if someone had left her detailed instructions on the who’s who and what’s what. Again, very tidy. The building across the street from her was the Sheriff station. That was, probably, something like the royal guard. She hadn’t found any indication of who the captain of the guard was. Surely there would be a need for one. She had stood by the window and waited for someone to show up, to claim the position and had kept her eye on it for the whole morning and no one had shown up. The Sheriff’s station had remained as abandoned as when she had arrived.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Emma worked from there? They could do their jobs and still see each other. And she was thinking like a lovesick teenager.

Emma would be good at that, she had thought in a flash of inspiration. Unable to wait, she picked up her handbag and car keys- oh she loved that- and had met Emma and Henry at the school.

But when she had told them, over sandwiches in the school playground, Emma had only seemed mildly interested, as if she had been making an effort to pay attention, as if her mind had been on something else and now she couldn’t help but wonder if this was Emma starting to pull away. Because that’s what happened to people in her life. And the thought broke her.       

She had done nothing but hold on too tight all her life and still she had lost all those she loved.

Staring at her hands, she opened them. Emma and Henry were free to go no matter how much it would cost her.

…   …   …

After lunch, Emma made her way into the Sheriff station and found no one inside. It gave her chill down her spine to be in police property, roaming around free. Stuff like this didn’t happen to her and if it did, she would be caught with her hand pawing the inside of the damned cookie jar. She sat on a bench in the corridor and waited around to see if someone would show up. Regina had no experience in casing a joint and might have missed that the town already had a sheriff or something. But twenty minutes went by and then twenty more without a living soul passing through the door so eventually, Emma relaxed somewhat- enough to go to the desk marked as SHERIFF and help herself to the stack of papers Regina had told her to look out for. Then, as if she’d had fire on her tail, she moved out of the station, holding onto the papers as if they had been, in fact, stolen.

Then, she had more serious business to attend to.

…   …   …

As four o’clock chimed on the clock on the mantel, Regina grabbed her bag and made her way to the school. She hadn’t seen Emma go in or out of the police station and she had kept an eye out for her. Her heart was thrumming in her chest, apprehension hindering her breathing. But Henry had asked her to pick him up from school and she was looking forward to that. She liked what she had seen in movies: mothers waiting by school gates and their children running into their arms. It brought a smile to her face. She had been smiling a lot since she had been dropped into Emma’s life.

When they arrived home, Emma was in the kitchen, pots bubbling away, and a distinct burning smell pervaded. She looked frazzled as Regina had never seen her. She was usually confident in the kitchen but this was a disaster area.

Regina approached her, unsure of what ailed her or how to offer support but Emma pulled away. Regina tried – and failed- not to be disappointed by it.

“What happened?” Henry asked in the middle of the chaos. “You don’t usually make such a mess.”

But Emma’s nerves were clearly wrecked and she just tossed a spoon she had been holding into the sink.

“I can’t do this.” She huffed. “I can’t get anything right. Shit… I can’t… do this.”

Regina’s hand dropped to her side instead of holding on. It was happening.

She offered Henry a watery smile and picked up the leather jacket Emma had dropped on a chair and unsure of what to do, climbed the stairs to put it way, seeking refuge in the order of their joint closet. She ran her hand through the garments hanging there and, focusing hard on imagining the feel of them on Emma’s skin, felt the shiver of desire as she saw herself getting Emma out of those garments. And then felt the loss again, biting, hard. Familiar.

A lone tear slid down her cheek.

…   …   …

Henry watched Regina walking out of the kitchen, heard her careful steps on the stairs. “What are you talking about? Mom, what can’t you do?”

Emma looked up from the horrible mess she had created. “Anything.” She said desolated.

“Can you be a little more specific?” Henry asked patiently though he was torn between staying with Emma and following after Regina.

Emma slumped into chair. “I always mess everything up. I thought I could make us dinner and then I could ask her, you know? And I had this picture in my head that I would serve her a beautiful dinner and then over desert I would go down on one knee and ask her… But…”

“But?” Henry asked wincing as Emma snorted and wiped her face in her shirt sleeves.

“But I fu― I mean… I messed it all up. The recipe for beef Wellington is a wash and it all looks like crap and the apple pie burned.”

Henry walked towards her slowly, trying not to spook her and then hugged her carefully. Emma slumped around his shoulders and sniffled long and hard. “So… Google is not your friend after all…”

Emma snorted and hugged him closer. “It really isn’t. It fu―” She sighed. “Sorry, kid. I’ll mind my language, I promise. Google messed with me. And now it’s all ruined and I can’t. I can’t ask her today. Look at this.”

“Mom, look, we’ll clean it up, okay. And then you can ask.”

“No, I can’t. I’ll just ruin it again. I’m too nervous now. Another day. I’ll ask another day. I’ll try again. Maybe take her out on a date, somewhere fancy. Do they have somewhere fancy in this town?”

Henry didn’t reply. He simply rolled his sleeves and opened the windows to ventilate the kitchen and handed Emma a tissue. “Let’s clean this mess up, okay? It’s dinner time soon.”

“I can’t serve this…”

“Okay. We’ll try again. Let’s make mac & cheese. That’s quick enough.”

Emma surveyed the disaster area that was the kitchen. “We gotta eat, right?”

“Yeah!” Henry agreed with a wide smile. “We gotta.” And, clearly, this was now up to him.

…   …   …

Regina had a shower and went to bed. If Emma was leaving, she would not make it difficult. She would not stand in the way. She would not beg. But she didn’t have the strength to watch them go. She pulled the comforter over her head and tried to not feel. If only her heart wasn’t so loud in her chest.

There was a knock on the door and then Henry made his way in without waiting. He stopped in the middle of the darkened room looking at the small lump in the middle of the huge bed. “Regina?”

Regina cowered. He was here to tell her they were leaving and she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t hear those words. She pretended to be asleep. The bed dipped and she felt Henry’s hand on her back. “Are you okay?” Knowing it was inevitable, she wiped her face with her pyjama sleeves and by the time he pulled down the covers, she was more or less ready to face him. “Mom and I made dinner.”

Her smile was watery. “I have a headache, Henry. I’m not very hungry.”

Henry studied her for a second. He hoped that things between them wouldn’t be always this complicated. It made him nervous. “Emma always makes me eat when I’ve got a headache. She says it doesn’t make it go away but it makes it less scary.”

Regina thought about insisting but Henry held her hand and pulled her up. “I’ve got an idea.” He pilled some pillows behind her and motioned her for her to lean back. “I’ll be right back.”

…   …   …

“We’re eating in your room.” Henry announced as he directed Emma to reach for a tray on an upper shelf.

“Why?” Because you messed up, that’s why, Henry thought a little angry. “Because Regina has a headache and is not feeling well.” “What? Why? Did something happen? Did someone do anything to her?” Emma dropped the tray on the counter and was already marching up the stairs when Henry called her back.

“She’s upset with you, Mom.” That stopped Emma, all colour drained from her face. “You have to ask her. Don’t you get it? She must be thinking something awful because you didn’t even kiss us when we got home...”

Emma slumped into the closest chair. “I always mess things up. I wanted it to be perfect. For once, I want things to be perfect, Henry. I can’t mess this up.”

“Emma.” Henry stood in front of her and held her ashen face in his hands. “I’m no expert, but it’s just a question. The important thing is the answer. And what happens afterwards. Right?”

“Easier said than done, kid. Talk to me when you’ve asked someone to marry you. Then we can compare notes.” Emma took a fortifying breath, loaded the tray and then made their way upstairs.

…   …   …

Henry had hoped that things would pick up pace but ever since they had walked into the room, Regina had been as uncomfortable and out of place as when he first met her in Boston and Emma, solicitous though she was, passing food and forks and napkins to Regina, was as nervous as cat surrounded by water. To her credit, she had begun the sentence several times. “Regina, I was wondering―” and “Regina, will you―” and “Regina, I wanted to ask―” but on all those times, she hesitated and Regina just tightened further into a little ball of nerves as if she had been expecting to be hit by something heavy.

In desperation, Emma turned to Henry, a mix of apology and cry for help. She was useless and she would never get this right and all she wanted was for this night to be over and then she could think about it in the morning and do it better. Or at least try. But Henry had had enough.

“What Mom wants to know is if you’ll marry us, Regina.”

…   …   …

Regina dropped the glass of water in her hand and Emma was torn between relief and embarrassment and disappointment that she hadn’t managed something that now looked so simple. Both remained utterly silent.

“Well?” Henry pressed. “Regina? Will you marry us? Mom is making a mess of everything because she’s too nervous. She’s scared that you might say no, but we really want you to marry us…” Regina had water dripping down her silk pyjama, staining it, but she was just starring, from Emma to Henry and back. “I mean… I know that this did not go as well as she wanted it to and that she doesn’t have a ring or anything but we really want you to marry us. So that you can be her wife and my mom, too. What do you think?”

“I do. I mean… I have a ring…” Emma interrupted and jumped off the bed trying to reach within her front pocket.

“You’re not leaving?” Regina asked at the same time, tears falling from her eyes, copious.

Emma stopped her jerky movements in search of the slim box she had in her pocket and tumbled onto the bed. She took Regina’s face in her hands, with everything suddenly making sense, from puffiness in Regina’s eyes to the withdrawal.

“I told you you’d messed up…” Henry quipped. “Of course we’re not leaving. Why would we leave? You’re here. But you didn’t say yes yet.”

“I didn’t?”

Henry nodded and Emma again struggled with her pocket for the box. When she finally got it, she presented it to Regina, open.

Regina stared at Emma’s face. “You’re not leaving.”

Emma mouthed No.

“Ask her again, Mom. Just say will you marry me, Regina. It’s easy. I did it for you already.”

Emma took the ring from the box. “Will you, Regina? Will you marry me? Us?”

Regina bounced onto her knees and fell into Emma’s arms. “Yes. I will. Both of you.” She completed pulling Henry into them. “So much.”

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Henry considered himself an engineer of outcomes, and a damned good one too. He had already managed to get both his moms engaged though that had been by the skin of his teeth. He had also been working on getting himself a grandmother. That was a little more difficult, what with Emma so reticent about approaching Miss Blanchard. Regina had told him a little about his teacher back in the Enchanted Forest and about how Emma was entitled to feel abandoned by her parents. He got that. He seriously did since he couldn’t seem to forgive Hillary and Jackson though that was because they had abandoned him while they were still living with him. But having lost everything, he thought he might was well give it a try.

Storybrooke was remarkably small so it was easy to keep on bumping into Miss Blanchard. It was also very easy to have new ideas about school activities that involved parents and teachers. As the months rolled into the summer, Miss Blanchard and Emma became easier conversationalists. Regina seemed invested in the idea too. Eventually, they even met for coffee without him as a buffer. He watched from outside the diner with Regina, both congratulating each other on a job well done.

His current operation, which he had called Snow Falls was all about Miss Blanchard’s sad eyes.

Since Emma had taken over as Sheriff, he had taken to spending the afternoons with his other mom. He hopped off the school bus by the Town Hall and spent the afternoons in her office, doing his homework as she did her own work. During some of those afternoons, he opened her laptop. Her password was only Emma’s and his name put together so he quickly found he had free access. In a folder on the desktop, he found a list of names, similar to a phone book but instead of phone numbers, it indexed the residents’ identities from the Enchanted Forest. There was a notation next to one of the John Does: “Charming, Prince.” He wasn’t quite sure if he should ask his mom or not, but in the end she was nothing but forthcoming: it was Emma’s dad.

The rest was easy. With Regina’s help, the Mayor’s Office had suggested the children be given opportunities to help those in need. And those in need seemed to be the long term residents of the wards of the hospital waiting for visits from friendly faces.

He had seen Miss Blanchard’s eyes cloud over when she saw John Doe laying comatose on a lonely ward surrounded by glass and machinery. Henry had only to suggest she talk to him.

That night, the man in a comma, quite unexpectedly, awoke and, remembering nothing of the twenty-eight years that had gone by, rose to find his wife and baby daughter.

…   …   …

It turned out that Antonia was not the best name. Tinkerbelle was still looking for the right one, but one thing she was sure of: something had just happened. Cuddling the cutest stray mutt that now followed her everywhere, she picked up the phone and called Blue in her bed in the convent. Who said this world had no magic? “Did you feel it?”

Blue’s voice was alert, telling Tinkerbelle that she had been awake for some time. “I did. Now what?”

“Now we go back to sleep. We will know tomorrow what transpired.” Tinkerbelle spoke as she rubbed the dog’s black and brown ear softly.

“How can you be so… relaxed about this?”

“I got a dog, Blue… How can you not? Have you not learned yet to let events follow their course?”

“I don’t know how.”

Tinkerbelle laughed. “Then, I’d say you’re in the right place. Patience, Blue. Patience. Now go back to sleep. You know it will turn out as it should be in the end.”

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Emma was having the day from hell. All she wanted was to get home to her family but a John Doe in the hospital had gone missing, the nurses and doctors were all clamouring kidnapping and when she arrived at the hospital, sheriff’s star shining bright in her belt, it turned out it was Prince Charming, who, Regina had told her in no uncertain terms, was her father. She had been to his room a couple to times, had wondered if it could be true. She had liked the possibility but was unwilling to risk further loss, further heartache. Alright, she told herself, this is what you do. You find people. Find him.

The maintenance and security staff had a funny understanding of their duties, either drinking or sleeping on the job and then she had to deal with a tearful Mary Margaret Blanchard when she had come in to see John Doe and found him missing.

It didn’t take long for her to be holding the school teacher to her, giving her a friendly shoulder to cry on. She liked Mary Margaret and was working towards being her friend. Just as long as she didn’t think very hard about the fact that she was potentially her mother who had chosen not to remember her in exchange for a clean conscience.

They- the whole town, Henry and Regina- searched the whole day. Her feet were freezing, her hope dwindling and there was a punishing squeeze in her heart. She liked the potential. She liked his smiling face and if she squinted, she saw that she looked a little like him and that was easy to believe and it hurt to lose that even if it had never really been hers.

They found him when the horizon was already turning dark and there were noises about calling off the search. She heard Mary Margaret gasp and then run sprightly over a brook. Then she saw it too: the flash of blond hair, matted with blood, the duck egg blue of the hospital gown and the bare feet of a man.

Mary Margaret seemed to have wings for how fast she reached the man. Together they turned him face up. The school teacher was frantically feeling for a pulse and cleaning his face and hair off the water and trying to warm up his hands. Emma thought, in a wild moment of panic, that it would be horrible to find him just to lose him. That she did want to meet her father because she had been given a chance that she had been squandering. Regina and Henry approached having seen them moving with such purpose. Henry was the first to react.

“You have to kiss him, Miss Blanchard. You have to.” He said, desperation in his voice.

Regina pulled him to her, comforting, while Mary Margaret lowered her lips to his and kissed John Doe sweetly.

It’s going to work, Emma thought. It is. She could feel it, a bone deep certainty she had no idea where it came from.

But it didn’t. John Doe didn’t magically wake up. He didn’t start breathing.

Emma figured out at that moment that she had been wrong all along. That Henry and Regina had been right and that she should have been more open to the possibilities. Now it was gone: the chance, the potential, the possibility of what could have been. It was gone and she had done nothing to hold on to it while it still had been possible. And it broke her heart.

She pulled a sobbing Mary Margaret into her arms and held her tight, not questioning why a woman that couldn’t even be said knew the man in a comma was so desolated. They cried together.

Henry and Regina closed their arms around them, offering the comfort they could.

And the dead man on the floor smiled and opened his eyes.

He had finally found them.

…   …   …

Emma’s head whiplashed and she would have fallen backwards if Regina had not been holding her. She saw, with equal clarity to when she had seen into Regina’s life, the moment she had first stared into her mother’s face, right after she had been born. A memory that could not possibly be there and yet, she saw it, felt it. She saw Mary Margaret Blanchard, sweaty, dishevelled, long, beautiful hair, wide smile, staring at her from the distance of a mother holding a baby. She saw the clash of swords and felt the jerky movements of the man fighting to take her to safety and the smile he gave her when he placed her where there was only loneliness.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

“How about Davina?” Tinkerbelle elbowed Blue as she knelt to rub the back of her dog.

“What?” The nun wiped her tears and looked down.

“I think it has pizzazz…”

“How can you think about names at such a time as this?” Blue chastised but there was no burn in it. Only a blubbering happiness.

“Because I’m trying to avoid saying I told you so.”

Blue smiled and daintily wiped her tears. “So you did.” She looked at the Snow White of old, the girl she had failed so terribly, clutching the hand of her beloved, staring into the eyes of her long lost daughter and smiling. She hadn’t seen that smile in over twenty-eight years. “Do you think it’s going to be alright?”

“I think we fixed our mistakes. Now let’s avoid making any more and let them work it out on their own.”

Blue nodded. Tinkerbelle was right, of course, which was not something she had been prepared to admit before the Dark Curse. “I like Davina. But it’s not the one yet.”

Tinkerbelle smiled and waved her goodbye. Blue was right about that one.

The dog followed her, unconcerned about her name.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Regina had carried an exhausted Henry home, coaxing him with promises of hot chocolate and fries. In truth, her nerves were shattered. The moment that Charming had woken up, remembering exactly who he was, the moment she had held Emma in her arms and saw the memories flashing through her face, she had thought that her life was over. Emma would hate her. Her parents would oppose.

But as the search party around them had stopped in their tracks, old memories revealed as if they had simply been dusted off, Emma had put her arm around her and told her parents This is my future wife.

The rest was a blur. Charming had been taken back to hospital and Storybrooke had all followed, a sort of procession, a welcome back of sorts, an awed appreciation of their new situation. No one had tried to kill her; no one had accused her of anything. They hadn’t smiled or embraced her either, but that would have been, possibly, a bit much. Even for her.

Regina had found herself in the hospital, surrounded by nurses and doctors, a bustle of activity around the prince and Snow. Snow had come to her and stared her in the eye. “I owe you for saving his life… for bringing us here. For bringing my daughter to me.” Her feet had frozen, stuck to the ground, unable to deal with this Snow, but Emma had walked down the corridor, a smile on her face and Henry holding onto her hand and her mere presence had made Regina relax and release a breath she had not been aware of holding. Snow rubbed Emma’s arm and smiled something difficult and almost painful. “I can’t say that this is a match that I approve of but, as I’ve been told, it is not wise for me to try to interfere. That I should be grateful for what I have now, all of which had been lost to me before. So I am. And so I will do my best to...” Snow had been unable to continue and Regina unable to offer comfort even though the gesture had come to her, even the need to do so. But Emma had. She had touched Snow’s shoulder and patted it softly and that had been enough.

After that, she had wanted to give Emma time with her family. Henry was practically asleep once the rush had passed and the hours in the hospital had dripped by, tiring the child. So she had kissed Emma and walked him to the car and when he had fallen asleep, she had carried him to the sofa, unable to manage the stairs.

Now, he lay asleep, a smile in his face, his head on her lap.

She touched the warm skin and placed a careful kiss on his forehead, feeling his childish breath, letting the peace of the moment fill her. In every way, Henry was her son, too, in skin and bone and hair and heart and soul as much as if he had been born of her. He was theirs.

Emma had given her a life, something whole and complete even if she hadn’t had a claim or a right to it.

And she would be home soon.