Chapter Text
“Regina,” Emma croaks.
Regina watches as Storybrooke’s Saviour bleeds all over the dirt of one of their more unsavoury caves.
“Did you kill it?” Emma looks terrible. Her skin is drained of colour, and her breath comes out out in long, drawn wheezes, like every inhale is a fight. Her wound in her side is still bleeding, bright red blood that Regina dimly remembers means an artery has probably been nicked.
“No,” she admits, and she folds her hands harder over the ugly wound on Emma’s side, feeling her gloves grow heavy with blood. Emma groans in pain and the reverberations travel up her arms. She swallows hard to keep the nausea away. “I got distracted after it hurt you. I don’t think it’s gone far.”
“One quiet month,” Emma breathes, eyes fluttering. “ That’s all I want from you people. One month...” she coughs, and her eyes close. Regina presses her hands harder against Emma, and she jerks awake.
“One month of bear claws and gossiping with your mother’s diminutive minions on our citizens’ dime, you mean,” Regina replies, and Emma smiles, but Regina can see, feel her life leaking out between her fingers. Her heart speeds up and her breath catches in her throat at the thought of Emma dying here, alone with Regina in a mouldy cave.
“Emma,” she says softly, and Emma’s eyes flicker from where they had been fixed sightlessly at the ceiling. She looks like Henry, Regina realises, her soul sinking, Henry with a fever or earache, Henry hurting and reaching for her for comfort. “Help is coming. I called your parents, and they are coming.” Her magic is depleted, her vision greying at the edges from spell exhaustion, and she wants to scream with frustration.
“I don’t think they’re gonna make it in time,” Emma says. Her voice is flat, weak, and Regina resists the urge to dig her fingers into her wound to keep her awake.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. “ Stay awake, and you’ll be fine.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Emma says. “I was gonna bring you something pretty, and you were gonna invite me in, and… did I ever tell you I like your garden?”
“Stop talking,” Regina says. “ You’re wasting your energy.”
“I had it all planned out,” Emma says, and Regina is utterly confused. Emma sees it, and laughs, a weak sound that rattles in her chest.
“I love you, Regina,” Emma breathes. “Didn’t you know?”
Shock keeps her rooted in place, her hands maintaining steady pressure as Emma’s eyes dim. She really is dying, Regina realises, with a cold certainty that seems to freeze her bones.
“No,” she says, staring down into Emma’s eyes. “No,” she says, quieter.
“It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” Emma says, voice at a whisper.
“Emma…” Regina has no idea what to say. Emma hasn’t thrown her off her guard this badly since she first showed up in town.
“Just tell me,” Emma says. “Please. Did you. Could you… was I completely off track?” Her eyes are wet, and more intense than Regina has ever seen them.
She could tell her the truth, and say yes. She could be truthful, like Henry wants her to be. Or she could be kind. She takes a breath, and lifts a hand from Emma’s stomach and presses it gently to the crown of her head, smearing blood in her hair.
“No,” she says. “ You weren’t completely off-track.” Emma’s eyes lock on hers and Regina braces herself for Emma to declare her a liar, but she only relaxes into the touch.
“Okay,” she breathes. Then: “don’t leave.”
“I won’t,” Regina promises. She watches Emma’s eyes close, and she stays in the same uncomfortable crouch over Emma as the Charmings rush in and and Blue places a stasis spell on Emma. She watches Charming cradle Emma’s body in his arms as they hurry out of the cave.
She follows Snow and Charming and their gaggle of dwarves out of the cave and onto the sand, feet stumbling as she tries to figure out what she’s going to tell Henry. She’s so wrapped up that she almost misses Snow’s muted gasp and she hurries ahead just in time to watch the blue sparks sweep out from under Emma’s skin and hover over the gaping wound, pulling the torn skin back together.
Emma’s spine bows, then overextends so sharply that Charming almost drops her and he carefully lowers her to the sand.
They all watch, mesmerised, as Emma’s magic pulls her back together, fading her bruises and causing several uncomfortable clicks as her broken bones realign themselves. Emma takes a shuddering breath, eyes popping open and surveying the group. She spares a small smile for Regina before her eyes roll back in her head and her body goes limp.
Snow sobs again, but they can all see that Emma is still breathing and the sound is more relief than anything else.
“How…” a dwarf, probably Grumpy, says quietly.
“Magic,” The Blue Fairy says, her face unreadable.
“Saviour magic,” Charming adds, face so proud Regina thinks it may crack under the strain.
Emma Swan. That idiotic, stubborn woman. She can’t even die right, Regina thinks viciously, and she digs her fingernails into her palms, hard enough to stop their shaking.
*
They take her to the hospital anyway, because she is barely breathing and her eyes haven’t opened since the beach. Regina walks behind the group, her heavy gloves bumping against her thighs as she walks.
Emma loved - loves her. Not in the way Regina is slowly beginning to love Snow, slowly and acridly. She will never be tender with Snow. But Emma’s eyes had been open and scared and wet, and Regina had felt her sincerity as clearly as if she was feeling it herself.
How could she have been so stupid? How could she have missed so much?
“Henry,” she says, stopping in her tracks. “I have to go and get him. He needs to know.”
The group doesn’t stop, all focused on the awkward bundle David is balancing in his arms, and Snow is the only person to acknowledge her, throwing a distracted wave over her shoulder before hurrying on.
She is a liar, again, and her son’s mother almost died. She stops to cry for a single, breathless minute before continuing on.
*
“Really, kid, I’m fine.” Henry glares and crosses his arms.
“Mom said you were hurt really bad.” His eyes narrow.
“Yeah, I was. But… magic. A magic thing happened and now I’m fine, see?” Emma sits up from her hospital bed and wiggles her arms. She looks ridiculous, and Regina looks away to try to dull the pulling in her chest. Henry looks at her hard, before taking a tentative step forward. Emma pulls him into a hug and he holds on like he is afraid she’ll disappear right here and then.
Regina stands at the doorway and watches them both, feels affection and jealousy tugging at her with equal strength. Emma gives her one of those looks, one of those look what we have glances that she had started to welcome. Now it feels weighted with something she never wanted and she turns away and busies herself looking for Dr. Whale.
*
She takes Henry home and throws her bloody gloves into the washing machine. She knows she should probably just throw them away, but instead she sits on the floor and watches them swirl around in the soapy water.
*
That thing they had encountered by the beach. It wasn't like anything she’s seen before. Monsters in the Enchanted Forest tended to be hair and muscle, but this one was sleek and fast, so thin it almost disappeared when it turned sideways. It had cold blue eyes, a worrying resistance to magic and razor-sharp claws that had ripped through Emma like she was made of paper. None of that sounds even vaguely familiar. And that thing is still roaming Storybrooke, probably. Wounded, but even more dangerous, prowling the streets. Maybe still hunting. And now it has Emma’s scent, her blood under its claws. Can it scent? She doesn’t know.
The paper in her hands gives way as she twists it, and she drops it like it’s on fire. That woman, she thinks, and she closes her eyes and wishes, hard, the way Rumpelstiltskin had taught her before she had enough knowledge and control fine-tune her magic use. Protect her. Not ideal, but her magic has been wavering since the caves and doubts she can do anything more precise. Protect her, Regina thinks harder, and maybe it is her guilt or her worry or her frustration but the magic tears out of her in a way that it rarely has before, layering under her skin and rushing away all at once.
*
“Mom!”
Her bed dips under the weight of an overexcited almost-teenager and she pulls she covers over her head. The bed shakes as Henry scrambles up and shakes her shoulders.
“I know you’re awake.”
“Henry, please,” she says into her pillow.
“Mom, come on,” he says,and she finally cracks her eyes open to his face a few inches from hers.
“Emma’s been alone in the hospital all night. Grandma and Gramps went home, remember? We should go and see her.”
“She’s probably very tired, sweetheart. She might not appreciate visitors.”
“Nah, I already texted her and said we were coming for breakfast. She said it’s cool. But I’m hungry, so can we go now?” He stares expectantly and waits until she nods before bouncing off the bed. “ Awesome. I’m gonna make her a get well soon basket.” He runs out of the room and she spends a quiet few seconds staring at her utterly remarkable ceiling before getting out of bed.
*
Emma is sitting up in bed and pretending not to watch the door when they arrive and Regina hangs back to watch Henry shyly hand her the get well soon basket he made her. It startles her sometimes, the way he can shift from bold and brash to shy and unsure in a second. He was like that as a baby too, holding his arms out to be held by Ruby and Granny and Archie before changing his mind and retreating back to her. He’s much too old for that now, but she can see flashes of that old instinct as Emma pulls out comic books and socks and the expensive chocolate she keeps hidden behind the coffee beans.
“Oh, kid. Thanks,” Emma says, and she looks so pleased, cheeks tinged pink and smile pulling at her mouth.
“Mom helped,” Henry says, glancing her way. Emma looks up at her, and God, Regina is an idiot because Emma is about as subtle as a firetruck, how had she missed this?
“Come in,” Emma says, and blushes. And Regina has done so many things to this woman, hurt her in so many different and horrible ways but this seems like the worst, somehow. She walks across the room like the floor liable to turn into quicksand at any moment and stops by Henry. He beams at her.
“Told you she would like it,” he says.
“You were right,” she agrees, and stifles the impulse to throw the windows open. “How are you feeling?” Emma shrugs, a lopsided action that makes her look even more dishevelled.
“Alive. That’s enough for now, I guess,” and Regina sees the exhaustion in her eyes, bottled up and put away for the duration of their visit. “Hey, kid. Can you do me a favour? I am really, really thirsty and these ice chips aren’t cutting it anymore. Could you get me a Coke from the vending machine?’
“But that’s all the way on the second floor,” Henry half whines as she shuffles towards the door.
“Stretch those young legs of yours,” Emma says and suddenly they are alone and Emma’s gaze is on her. She twitches irritably and runs a hand through her hair.
“So,” Emma says.
“Emma,” Regina says.
“I’ve always liked how you said my name,” Emma says. “You always make it sound so fancy.” Her eyes are honest to goodness twinkling, and Regina straightens her spine and smooths her hand across the front of her skirt.
“I care for you very deeply,” she starts. “More importantly, Henry cares for you.” She is settling into this, the words sliding out almost before she has a chance to catch them. “But not in the way you want me to. Not in the way I said I did.” She is expecting surprise, but Emma only looks resigned, like maybe she was half expecting this.
“So what you said in the cave…”
“You were dying, Emma. You were bleeding all over my hands. I would have said anything.” Half a second after she says the words she realises how cruel they must sound and wants to snatch them back.
“Well.” Emma’s voice is rusty. “I mean. It worked. I’m here.”
“And. Emma.” She reaches out to touch her for maybe only the second time in their lives, and places a hand on her arm. “I shouldn’t have lied, I know, and I am sorry, but you’re here.”.
“Yeah,” Emma says.
*
Henry takes an age bringing the drink back and Emma keeps her eyes firmly on the doorway.
“Maybe you could wait outside,” Emma says.
“If that’s what you want,” she replies.
“Please,” Emma says.
*
They release Emma the next day and Henry says she’s doing well. He doesn’t say much else and Regina contents herself with that. It’s better for everyone if they have some space from each other, and besides, she has more pressing matters to attend to.
“C’mon, Regina,” Ruby slurs from her couch.
“I wish you would leave,” she says, but Ruby ignores her as always, and hugs one of her couch pillows to her chest.
“Be a friend.”
“We’re not friends,” she reminds her, but she nudges the water glass toward her all the same.
“I was gonna go home. I was. But you’re so much closer.”
“I live ten minutes away from the town centre, and the diner’s right on main street,” she points out, and Ruby groans.
“Jesus, Regina.”
Regina gives up on any chance of getting to bed any time soon and sits on the far end of the couch, next to Ruby’s boot-clad feet.
“We are kind of friends though right?” Ruby’s voice is hoarse and muffled into the pillow that’s now clutched to her face, but Regina can hear the loneliness creeping underneath. She sighs.
“Yes, we are.”
*
Ruby stumbles down the next morning in a vest and tiny shorts that barely cover her ass, and Regina almost spits her coffee back into her cup.
“Morning. Coffee?” Ruby has always had an almost supernatural ability to drink without suffering hangovers, but today she looks a little ragged. Regina pours another cup and passes it over.
“Is there a reason you are prancing around half naked in a house my son lives in?
“Heard him leave when I was still upstairs. And I don’t prance. I sway.”
“Semantics,” she sniffs.
Ruby’s ability to be quiet at the right time one of Regina’s favourite things about her, and they sip their coffee in silence. That, and her overtures of friendship missing that edge of condescension that comes so naturally to Snow White makes it easy to sit in her kitchen and have breakfast with her, just like it was easy to have lunch and go out for drinks that one time
(and to be clear, they may be friends now, but Regina is never, ever drinking with Ruby again)
and it is so easy, even when Regina can sense the gloom starting to settle back on Ruby.
“You know, you were always the most interesting person in this town, after Henry. You were the only one who still did anything surprising.”
“I liked you too, even then,” Ruby says absently. She is glancing at the plate of waffles on the table and Regina pushes it closer.
“It’s for you,” she tells her. “I ate already.”
Ruby may be easy to spend time with, but she is very difficult to know, and that’s what friends do, isn’t it? They get to know each other. Regina has only had practice with one other person and Kathryn still won’t speak to her, so she’s not sure how much she should follow her instincts but she wants to try. And that’s what her life is these days, trying and-
“Do I have something on my face?”
-and this only comes naturally with Henry, but-
“You’ve been spending more time in my guest room than the diner lately,” she says, and Ruby’s face shutters closed.
“Look, I know I’ve kind of been in your space, but-”
“No,” she interrupts. “That’s not what I meant. Is there something going on?” Ruby shrugs.
“Everything’s the same. Exactly the same,” she says, a bitter twist to her mouth and Regina waits, and sips her coffee, and waits.
“Mary Margaret didn’t like me much,” Ruby says eventually. “I guess… I guess we’re all more like our alter egos than we like to think about.” She shrugs again carelessly. “And, she’s busy. Love of her life, and all.” She takes another sip out of what is definitely an empty cup by now.
“You’re her best friend,” Regina says tactlessly.
“Yeah. I guess. Things change, you know, people grow up and move on and your slutty wolf friend isn’t as much of a priority.”
“Snow White is an idiot,” she says. “With tragic fashion sense. I always thought you were too good for her. Anyone who can hold any kind of conversation with a woodland animal isn’t worth being friends with.”
Maybe Regina isn’t the nurturing, hand holding type of friend, but Ruby does smile, and the gloom in the kitchen lifts a little and that feels like enough for now.
Ruby leaves after breakfast and presses a kiss to Regina’s cheek as she leaves. It’s warm and comforting, and she starts in surprise.
“You’re a good person, Regina,” Ruby says, her eyes serious. “You deserve good things.” And she turns around and walks down the drive, loose limbed and graceful even now.
*
The diner is full for mid afternoon, and Regina steers Henry toward one of the quieter booths in the back. If he notices her manoeuvring he doesn’t say anything about it, and soon he is slurping at a double chocolate milkshake while she picks at her coffee cake.
The routine and familiarity of a trip to Granny’s with Henry, who still thinks it’s funny to smear whipped cream over his top lip, calms her and she reaches over and pulls at a lock of his hair.
“It’s nice to see you so happy,” she says, smiling.
“You too,” he says. “You’ve been kinda… I don’t know. But this is good, right?”
“Kind of what?”
“I don’t know.” He swirls his straw around the shake. “Things were so weird. With… your mom, and Pan. It was cool but so weird. And I missed home.” She ignores that twinge she gets in the palms of her hands every time someone mentions Cora, and reaches over to take his hand. It’s rougher than she remembers, and bigger too, and she squeezes once before letting go.
“You’re right, it is very weird. Nothing went the way I ever thought it would, not even in my wildest dreams.” Of course, all her Storybrooke dreams had been purposely vague, with only a happy Henry and a miserable Snow White the only clear parts. “I don’t really know what to do next. I think that’s part of the problem.” She hasn’t spoken candidly to Henry in so long, and it gives her a fierce ache of remembering, of whispering her secrets into a tiny, perfect ear, his baby self tucked small enough to fit into the crook of her arm.
“I think you’re doing okay,” he says. “No, really great. Grandma couldn’t run the council without you.”
Which is certainly true. Whatever supposed right to rule Snow inherited from her family doesn’t extend to the practical details and decision making of keeping a medium size town running more or less smoothly.
“I think I’m doing okay,” she agrees.
“We are,” he says. “We totally are.” He grins at her, then stares mournfully into his empty milkshake glass. She raises her hand to signal for another. She can worry about future dental bills another day.
*
She can see Emma out of the corner of her eye, fiddling with the napkin dispenser and talking to Michael Tillman with unnecessarily large gestures. She fixes her eyes outside the window and hopes they will continue to ignore each other’s existence. Henry hoovers up the last of his second milkshake and catches sight of Emma just as she reaches the door.
“Emma!” He calls. He waves, and Emma has no choice but to walk over to them.
“Hi!” He says. “Where were you going? Didn’t you see us? Sit down!” He moves over to the wall to Emma can sit beside him, and she does, slowly.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were working a shift at the station.” The question comes out a little more hostile than Regina intended, but Emma only raises an eyebrow.
“I am. I was trying to catch up with Whale. He’s promised to head a booth at the Fall Fair. Something to do with body snatching through the ages. Don’t know, don’t really want to.” Emma is still facing her, but her body is angled toward Henry, and for a moment it is two years ago and Regina is on the outside of their little bubble.
“Mom let me held her set that up,” Henry says. “But the stalls this year are really weird.”
“Weird? In this town? Doesn’t seem likely,” Emma says, and Henry wrinkles his nose.
“Emma, this is serious. It’s tradition. And I’m on the committee this year,” he reminds her. “It would look terrible if the first ever Storybrooke Fall Fair didn’t go well.” He looks so incredibly serious, and familiar in a way that she doesn’t recognise until she catches Emma sneaking a glance at her, and Henry is raising his chin the way she does, and the bubble is gone.
(He’s so much like you, Emma had told her on the way back from Neverland. You couldn’t let go if your lives depended on it.)
“Gotcha, kid,” Emma says. “Serious business. Speaking of serious business,” she turns to Regina. “We need to figure out what we’re gonna do about that thing.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” she says, as Henry stares at them with undisguised interest.
“Later, when,” Emma asks, and just like that the atmosphere in their booth goes from pleasant, if fragile to just fragile. Henry wraps his hands around the stem of his milkshake glass and watches them carefully. Emma backpedals quickly, takes a breath, and runs a hand through her hair. As she does Regina’s magic, usually humming and docile with Emma near, rears away from her and sends shocks of power down her arm. She locks eyes with Emma, who is clearly aware of what just happened.
“What the hell was that?” She snarls, forgetting Henry for a moment, and Emma looks away.
Her own magic is settled and too tightly controlled to escape her control unless something is very wrong, and Emma’s shifty behaviour only makes her more suspicious.
“You’re right. Later is probably a better idea. See ya, kid.” She is out of the booth before Regina can take a breath, and out of the door before she can march forward and pull her sleeve back and demand answers.
“Why are you guys fighting again?” Henry demands.
“Just a disagreement,” she says, and her smile stretches plastic across her face. “We’ll talk later, and I’m sure everything will be fine.” He gives her a disbelieving look, but leaves it be, for once in his life. She flexes her now-sore hands and looks across to the street to where Emma is walking into town hall, shoulders hunched and hands tucked in her pockets like the weight of the world is on her shoulders.