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It happens in an instant. “Oh, Emma,” Snow says, voice heavy with disappointment and sadness, as she looks Emma up and down. It’s their first encounter with Emma post-sacrifice, two weeks after the darkness coiled tight like a snake around Regina’s body, two weeks after “You’ve worked too hard to have your happiness destroyed” and silence, but for dagger clattering onto asphalt.
At Snow’s words, dark magic whirs and clashes. She lashes out with a cloud of ashy smoke and Snow is thrown against a wall. The pirate is the next to fall victim to the dark one’s powers. He tries to grab her arm, to pull her back, and Regina could have told him it was a bad idea, would have thought he’d learned enough about his supposed love to know Emma can’t stand being constrained. “Don’t. Touch. Me.” Emma’s voice is a low, dissonant hiss, and he is thrown back, his head cracking against a table in the diner. Regina thinks she spots blood stain the sharp corner of the table.
“Regina!” David cries, pleading almost. But Regina stands frozen. She doesn’t have the dagger. Henry has the dagger, because Emma, no matter what she has become, will not harm Henry. She has to believe that. They all have to believe that. And Henry is at the vault, reading through every book in Regina’s arsenal, determined to find Merlin and the destruction of the dark curse.
“Emma,” Regina says and there is a desperate quality to her voice that she hates. She stands her ground, staring at Emma, who is clad rather melodramatically in black leather and high boots, and seems almost colourless, her hair more white that blonde, her eyebrows all but disappeared. She is fading and Regina wonders how long it will be until she disappears entirely, until the darkness is all that remains. How long did it take with Gold? “You’re better than this. Fight it.”
She sees grey cloud Emma’s eyes for a moment, sees her skin glint with sparkling scales. She looks desperately left to right, taking in the whole horrifying scene. Diner patrons hiding behind tables. Snow pulling herself upright by a table leg. Hook, unconscious. And in that moment, Regina knows what Emma is going to do. She knows Emma’s primal instincts, which are to run. As the smoke clouds around her, Regina grabs hold, not of Emma, but of the trail of magic, and when Emma disappears, Regina follows her.
Her head aches, like it is about to split apart. Her heart aches. Emma’s magic – the dark one’s magic – attempts to throw her off.
And then her head hits something very hard and very sharp and everything goes black.
*
She wakes to a splitting pain in her skull and Emma’s face only inches from hers. She looks exhausted and frantic but somehow more like Emma than Regina has seen in what feels like a very long time. “Hey,” Regina says, voice dry and croaky.
“Hey,” Emma says and her hand reaches out to smooth Regina’s hair back from her forehead. She’s lying on something soft, her head cradled by what feels like a pillow, and a blanket covering her. Emma has removed her shoes and she wriggles her toes, reassured by the easy movement. She’s not paralysed, just weakened.
“If you didn’t want me to visit your lair you could have just said,” Regina says, and when she tries to laugh, her breath stutters, and Emma’s there, holding a cup of water to her lips.
“Drink,” she says. Regina does. The water eases her throat and she looks around. It’s dimly lit, the room, but familiar, and then Regina realises she’s not in any sort of dingy hideaway, but in her own bedroom.
“What happened?” she asks.
“You hit your head on the bannister,” Emma says. “Idiot.” Her tone is almost fond.
“Much damage?” Regina asks. She tries to sit up but it’s too much effort and her head falls back against her pillow.
“I felt the bones of your skull break, splinter. I melded them back together.” Emma looks at her hands. “I didn’t know that dark magic could heal.”
“You’re not all darkness,” Regina says and reaches out a hand, groping for Emma’s. She finds her thigh instead and is glad of the dim light, which hides her blush.
“I am,” Emma says and then abruptly, “you should go.”
“Come with me,” Regina says. “Henry is researching. We all are. We think perhaps Merlin…”
“No,” Emma says. “I’m staying here. I can’t hurt anyone locked away.”
Perhaps not physically, Regina thinks, because she’s thinking of Henry, those dark circles under his eyes, the broken pen he carries everywhere with him, the nightmares that he tries to hide from her. She’s taken to making cocoa at two, ready for when he inevitably stumbles downstairs, pretending he needs a drink of water, as though Regina cannot hear his cries in the night, as though she is not awake herself, staring at the ceiling. “I’m fine, Mom,” he keeps saying, and Regina just runs her fingers through his hair and sighs and pretends she is fine as well. She smiles and speaks of hope and happy endings and the future because Emma sacrificed herself for Regina’s happiness and Regina would be happy, damn it.
Emma doesn’t need to hear this though. Instead, she says, “Henry misses you.”
“He misses her,” Emma says. “I’m not–I can’t see him like this. You should go too. I’ve sealed the entrances but you should be able to get through if you use your magic. No one’s going to bother me here.” She shifts away from the bedside, her movements shadowy, as though she’s feigning humanity and not quite getting it right.
“This is my house,” Regina says, to which Emma scoffs.
“As if you wouldn’t give it up to me,” she says and Regina just shrugs. It’s true; her house has long since ceased to be important to her beyond the few irreplaceable things – pictures of Henry, recipes, a box of hand-made cards for birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Day…
“I’m not leaving you alone.” Emma’s crude efforts at healing did enough to stop a brain bleed, but her own magic is occupied with making her truly well. She doesn’t think she could break a magical barrier even if she wanted to.
“Well,” Emma says. She turns back towards Regina and Regina is struck by the exhaustion. Emma doesn’t seem dark, or evil, just very, very tired. “I guess we’re trapped together then.”
“I guess so,” Regina says and her mothering instincts kick in. “I’ll make us something to eat when I’ve rested.”
Emma just shrugs and that in and of itself is terrifying enough. Emma Swan is someone who has never really escaped that childish survival mode – knowing where her next meal is coming from, where she will be sleeping at night – and her not caring speaks to how far she has gone. “I have magic,” she says. “Isn’t that enough?”
Regina struggles to sit up, constricted by the blankets tucked around her and her own weakness. “Sit with me,” she says.
“No,” Emma says. “Call out if you need anything.” And she disappears, closing the door to Regina’s bedroom behind her, and leaving her quite alone. She falls into a fitful sleep.
When she wakes again it is three in the morning and her cell phone is digging into her side. She pulls it from the pocket of her trousers and checks it. The battery is close to dying but she reads the texts from Henry. Staying with Grandma & Grandpa, he writes. Pls tell me you and Ma ok.
She decides it’s a reflection of how weak she feels that her eyes begin to well. Emma has turned my home into fortress, she replies. I am looking after her. I love you.
Her body is still healing but she feels strong enough to stand now and so she gets up and pads downstairs. She tries the front door but the barrier Emma has put up stops her from leaving and when she tries to call her magic to her, she feels faint. The last thing she wants is to collapse in the hallway – and she doesn’t want to leave Emma anyway, not like this – so she moves into the kitchen, switching on the stovetop and boiling water.
The scent of cocoa and cinnamon pervades the air and soon she feels Emma’s presence, her magic cloying, the scent of wood burning and tar mingling with the cocoa. “What are you doing?” she asks.
“Making cocoa,” Regina says. “I make it for Henry whenever he has nightmares.”
“That happen a lot?” Emma asks, hoisting herself up onto a stool. Her legs, still encased in the high leather boots, swing, child-like. Henry used to sit on the stools like that while she cooked dinner and ask her a million questions.
“More often recently,” Regina says and feels her body tense.
“Because of me,” Emma says, voice flat.
Regina dollops cream and sprinkles cinnamon on top of Emma’s cocoa. She slides it across to her. “Drink,” she says. “You’ll feel better.”
Emma laughs. “Yeah,” she says. “Cocoa. It’s a cure-all.”
Regina adds a sprinkle of chilli to her own cocoa and sits on another stool, the minor exertion of preparing drinks having exhausted her. “I don’t know about that,” she says. “It’s hard for the world not to feel moderately brighter with chocolate in it.”
She looks across at Emma who takes a hesitant sip of cocoa, before guzzling it. She ends up with a smear of cream on the tip of her nose and Regina can’t help but laugh. “What?” Emma asks and so Regina reaches across and swipes the cream off her nose.
Next thing she knows, Emma’s lips are wrapped around her finger, licking the cream off, and Regina feels her cheeks heat up. She snatches her hand away and curls her hands around her own cocoa. Emma seems to be fighting the urge to flee again, squirming in her chair, so Regina seeks out something to break the silence. “Where did you get the new wardrobe?”
This doesn’t settle Emma who, instead, looks deeply embarrassed and mumbles something into her cocoa. When Regina asks her to repeat herself, she says more loudly, “stole some of it from your vault.”
She looks more closely. Emma has removed the black trench, which Regina suspects was more likely an offshoot of Hook’s wardrobe that anything she has ever owned and, while the tank top beneath is clearly Emma Swan’s, the leather trousers could definitely be a set of hers and her feet seem to have memory of the boots, given the way her toes curl up at the memory of the pain of wearing them. “Well,” she says, shrugging. “It’s not like I ever plan on wearing it again.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Would it matter if I was?” Regina asks. “You’re the dark one.” She looks over at Emma. “I only wish you’d consulted me about your look.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Emma asks, defensive now.
“It’s fairly clichéd, for a start,” Regina says. “Dark One? Dressed in black? The fact that it looks like you don’t have any eyebrows is most disconcerting, however.”
“The dark curse has tethered itself to me and you’re worried about my eyebrows?” Emma asks, and for a moment Regina thinks she’s angry. But then she laughs. “I love you, Regina Mills.”
Regina feels her throat dry up and the room is plunged into silence. “I think I’m tired again,” she says and Emma is beside her, holding her arm as she slides down from the stool. “You know, for the dark one you’re awfully concerned about my safety,” she says.
Emma rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” she says. “I’m a little ray of sunshine.” She supports Regina to her room, helping her out of her slacks and into a pair of pyjama pants. There’s none of that discomfort Regina might have expected changing in front of Emma because Emma is brisk and wonderfully unembarrassed. She clucks over the bruising on Regina’s shoulder, and when Regina has pulled on the satin nightshirt, she helps her into bed, fussing with the covers.
“Emma,” Regina says. “Henry’s not the only one who has nightmares.”
Emma stops and turns. “How can I help?”
“Sleep beside me.” She’s testing a theory. Emma needs rest. The dark magic will only become more and more erratic as her exhaustion grows. With a clear head and a full stomach, perhaps they can make some headway. Perhaps Emma will take down the barriers around 108 Mifflin Street and try again. Emma pauses. “There are spare pyjamas,” Regina says, and her eyes slide shut.
She hears rustling noises, a zipper snicking open, tentative footsteps. She forces herself to breathe slowly, to keep her eyes closed, to feign sleep. Emma slips under the covers beside her, her body radiating warmth. She doesn’t seem relaxed exactly and Regina is careful not to touch her, or acknowledge her. Emma will flee.
Her mind clouds and she drifts to sleep. She doesn’t dream.
She wakes to Emma’s hand clenched around her wrist so hard it hurts. She’s whimpering, tears leaving sticky trails down her cheeks, body tense and twitching. “Emma,” she whispers, and then louder. “Emma.”
Emma wakes, her magic lashing out and Regina is pinned to the bed, Emma looming above her, a feral snarl on her lips. It’s only for a moment and then Emma darts back, curling up into a hedgehog-like ball at the edge of the bed. Regina notes that she has chosen her most comfortable pyjamas, the plaid flannel ones worn soft with washing, and she looks impossibly young. “Sorry,” she says.
“It’s all right, Emma,” Regina says. “I’m fine. You were only dreaming.”
“I dream every night,” she whispers. “I’m trapped, in that cell. The one Rumpelstiltskin was kept in, before the curse. Killian trapped us in there once, did you know? I’m left alone with the darkness, with the voices in my head. The darkness doesn’t forget the former dark ones.”
Regina shakes her head.
“They speak to me, taunt me. Sometimes someone comes, gives me food, and I tear out their heart and crush it into dust. You know what that feels like, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Regina says. She remembers the heady rush of power from holding someone’s life quite literally in your hands all too well. “It feels powerful.”
“I just…” Emma pauses and then looks up and Regina shivers. “What if I do it? What if I succumb?”
“You won’t,” Regina says firmly.
“You can’t know that,” Emma says.
“Take mine,” she says. “Go on. I’m offering freely. Take my heart.” Emma’s hand snakes out, her fingertips touching Regina’s collar bone, ghosting lower, and Regina can hear the blood pounding and Emma’s erratic breathing and she forces herself not to move. Emma’s fingertips sink through skin but she draws back. “See,” Regina says, and she smiles. “You know right from wrong. Keep hold of that.”
“That’s not the same and you know it,” Emma grumbles, but she loosens hold of her limbs and the tension in her shoulders eases.
“Come on,” Regina says. “You’ll feel better with some breakfast.” She holds out a hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, Emma takes it, her palms cool and dry. Her thumb strokes the back of Emma’s hand, and she is struck by the silkiness of her skin. Different from the coarse, sandpaper-like texture of Rumpelstiltskin’s skin in the Enchanted Forest.
They eat pancakes, hot from the pan, at the kitchen counter and Regina brews coffee. “Still take a ludicrous amount of sugar?” she asks. “Or is it all about coffee being black like your soul now?”
“Hah hah,” Emma says, mouth full of pancake. She’s on her third, wolfing them down desperately as though she hadn’t realised quite how hungry she was until right now, and Regina has never been more pleased to see Emma’s appalling table manners. “Cream, two sugars.”
“I know,” she replies and slides a mug across. She contemplates asking Emma if she feels up to leaving but she doesn’t want to disturb the tentative peace that has spread over Emma. Instead, she says, “Bring your coffee. I have something you might like to see.”
Emma leaves the syrup-coated plate behind her and trails Regina to her study, where she sits cross-legged on the leather couch, hands wrapped around her mug. “Please tell me you’re not going to make me fill out my incident reports properly,” she says.
She has her back to Emma, straining on tiptoes to reach the top of her bookshelf. Normally she’d be wearing heels but, like Emma, she is still in her pyjamas. Still, she manages to lace a finger around the box and pull it free. “Here,” she says, settling down beside Emma, close enough that their shoulders touch. “I’ve been meaning to show you these for a while now.”
When Emma opens the box, she lets out a gasping sob. “Henry.”
It’s the photos Regina has accumulated of Henry over the years. Of course, she has albums, organised by year with captions written in painstakingly beautiful script. She thinks Emma will appreciate the box of spares and imperfect shots – blurred, Henry pulling faces, her thumb covering part of the lens – better though.
She picks one up and laughs. “Is he doing ballet?”
“Three year old Henry’s dream career was ballet dancer by night, tractor driver by day,” Regina informs her and Emma smiles.
“You know, I think I remember that,” she says. Emma’s finger traces the picture, Henry’s beaming face, pausing on the lick of hair that wouldn’t sit flat no matter what Regina did. “In the memories you gave me… I couldn’t afford classes but I bought him a tutu and ballet slippers and we’d listen to Swan Lake and leap around our living room.”
“I took him to Mommy and Me ballet classes,” Regina says, sifting through the photos. She finds one that she’s always been fond of, her in tights and a loose shirt, spinning Henry around in the community hall cum ballet studio. Both their grins so wide their faces might split.
The classes had been run by one of the nuns – Lina, or Thumbelina as she had been known in the Enchanted Forest – and Henry had been in love with the tiny woman. “So beautiful, Momma,” he’d say every class. When Lina had called for mat time, Henry would scoot to the front and, more often than not, would end up on her lap, staring adoringly at her. She had tried not to let jealousy overwhelm her in these moments.
“God, you loved – love – him so much,” Emma says. “I’m glad.” She continues looking, pausing on photos of Henry in the bath to snort with laughter, and spends a long time clutching the picture of Henry on his first day of school, dressed in his Storybrooke Elementary uniform and his missing front tooth all too apparently from his excited grin.
“You can keep them,” she says and Emma’s eyes dart to her, wide with hope, and she looks even more like Emma than when she was scarfing down pancakes, and Regina’s gaze is drawn irresistibly to red lips. Her tongue darts out, mouth suddenly dry. “I have to shower. You can use the guest bathroom if you wish.”
She leaves before she can say something she might regret, or offer something that will send Emma spiralling out of control. She has a soulmate – a man who loves her (though not enough to put her first, her traitorous mind whispers). She has to be a friend. The hot water eases the ache of her back and her fingers tangle in her hair when she shampoos, feeling the re-formed skull beneath their tips. Her head it still tender to the touch.
Emma is still in the flannel pyjamas when she returns downstairs, though she has placed the box of photographs carefully by the couch, lid on. Regina feels rather like she is wearing a suit of armour in her own stiff shirt and slacks combo. A ball of fire sits in the palm of Emma’s hand and it pulses as she moves her fingers, the flames diving and flickering. Regina watches Emma for a moment, enjoying her intent gaze on the fire, remembering a time when Emma found magic fascinating, not something of which she should be terrified.
“I’ll want my pyjamas back at some point,” Regina says and Emma looks up, extinguishing the flame with a clench of her fist.
“I feel more like myself in them,” she says.
“You know, you don’t have to dress up,” she replies. “Be Emma Swan.”
“I’m not her anymore,” Emma says dully. “I’m a monster. Might as well dress the part.”
Regina chooses her words carefully. “Even when I was at the height of being the Evil Queen, there was still some small part of me that remembered Regina. You’re still my Emma, even if you have darkness inside of you.”
“Your Emma?”
“The Emma I know,” Regina says, rolling her eyes, though her heart pounds.
Emma is silent for a long moment and Regina leans against the door frame, watching her. She’s probably imagining things but Emma’s hair seems whiter this morning; she wouldn’t have thought it possible for more colour to be leeched from it. Then, Emma looks up and she knows she isn’t going to like what comes next, knows by the downturned lips and stiff jaw, the way Emma’s hands twist in her lap. “Regina, are you happy?”
For a moment, Regina considers lying. Of course she’s happy. She has to be happy. Emma’s sacrifice cannot be rendered pointless. But she can’t (“with you, Regina, I always know when you’re lying”). “How could I be?” she asks and the exhaustion she feels is sewn into every syllable. She moves forward, resuming her place by Emma on the couch, and fusses with a cushion.
“But you have everything you need now.” She sounds so honestly puzzled that Regina could scream.
“Idiot,” she says. “I can’t be happy when you’re not.”
Emma turns towards her and for a moment there is such naked want and longing in her eyes and Regina cannot help but respond. She leans forward and kisses her, on the cheek, but Emma shifts her head and she catches the side of her mouth. The soft press of lips sets of something of an inferno in Emma, who pulls Regina to her, kissing her soundly, lips hard and teeth sharp, and Regina can feel Emma’s heart beating too fast and erratically where she is pressed against her. Emma’s hands pull her tighter still, grasping and clawing at her back, fabric scratching against her skin as it shifts.
Regina whimpers, this low, needy sound of want, and Emma flies back in a gasp of magic, pushing Regina to the ground as she does so. “I’m sorry!” she sobs. “I didn’t mean–”
“It’s okay, Emma,” Regina says but Emma’s not listening, her whole body a whirl of magic, glittering tendrils flickering from her, and her eyes flash silver, her skin shimmers.
And then she’s gone and the barriers are down and Regina is alone on the floor of her study and it would be so very foolish to cry, so she doesn’t.
*
It’s evening. They have returned from Camelot. Emma is free.
Henry has long since ascended to bed, exhausted. “She’ll come round, Mom,” he whispers, squeezing her arm as he goes. “I know it.”
She doesn’t know it herself. She’s alone once more, Robin having stayed in Camelot, at home in a world of knights and chivalry to which she never wants to return. It was mutual, in the end. “Your heart is elsewhere,” he’d told her, mouth twisted into a rueful smile, and her silence had spoken volumes.
She places the kettle on the stovetop, boiling water for tea. She wonders if there are cookies in the pantry. Emma likes Oreos, and she has kept a steady supply of them since their friendship blossomed, but Henry tends to sneak them when she buys them so she is often surprised to discover empty packets. She wonders if she’ll come. She thought – well, there had been a glance, their eyes meeting as they hugged Henry. Her heart aches.
There is a knock at the door and it’s so soft she almost misses it.
It’s Emma. She’s wearing those jeans and that jacket and she’s balancing her weight on one booted foot, as if she’s nervous. Regina’s lips twitch. “I was just making tea,” she says. “Would you like?”
She doesn’t wait for Emma to follow her, but hears her steps behind her, is attuned to her quiet breathing. “I brought back your pyjamas,” Emma says, placing them, neatly folded, on the counter and Regina feels her smile broaden.
“Thank you,” she says. “Peppermint?”
Emma nods, her fingers playing with the sleeves of her jacket. “Regina,” she says as the kettle whistles. “Are you happy?”
And Regina smiles again. “Yes,” she says and she ignores the kettle, reaching out across the counter, and threading her fingers through Emma’s. “Yes, I am.”