Chapter Text
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Robin breaks up with Regina in front of Zelena’s cell, while Zelena sits on her bed and watches through the narrow window on the door, trying to ignore the permanent ache that seems to have settled in her lower back no matter what position she takes.
His voice is low, but not so low it doesn’t carry. “I never see you anymore, Regina, unless it’s…this.” He waves a hand towards Zelena’s door. “You spend all your time researching how to help Emma, and I—I need to put Roland first.”
Regina’s spine is stiff, straight, her back to Zelena, but Zelena can still see her nod once. “I understand,” she says.
“I can send support for…” Robin trails off, and Zelena rests a hand on her stomach, the past week finally revealing the first hint of a swell. “But I don’t think I can otherwise be involved,” he continues. “At least not now. It’s too much.”
“Of course,” Regina says. There’s a bit more then, this time quiet enough that Zelena can’t make it out, before she hears Robin’s: “Take care, Regina,” and the heavy clomp of footsteps heading away down the hall.
It’s several more minutes after that before Zelena hears the click and scrape of her door opening, sees Regina come into the room. Regina is unusually quiet in her entrance—no sly comments about how Zelena is enjoying her accommodations, about how lovely the weather is outside—just busies herself with the tray of food in her hands and says nothing.
“You picked a winner in that one, sis.”
For a moment Zelena sees a flash of something in Regina’s eyes, anger, maybe, or grief, but it’s smoothed away before Zelena can really analyze it, hidden behind a hard smile as Regina places the tray at the foot of Zelena’s cot.
“I’ll be back for that later,” Regina says. “This time please eat it. And remember you have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, highlight of my week.” Zelena offers Regina her best mocking smile.
Regina leaves, and Zelena is alone.
*
Zelena sleeps fitfully that night—always seems to these days, a combination of a thin mattress on a squeaky frame, of too much quiet, missing magic, and a body that’s starting to feel alien in ways she can’t even quite identify. So she’s not surprised to find herself blinking awake at some point in the middle of the night, room dark and still around her.
She is surprised to see Emma Swan lounging on the opposite wall, arms folded across her chest and face drawn.
But this is not the Emma Swan Zelena remembers from New York, or from her last time in Storybrooke. This Emma Swan is very much the Dark One she has heard so many whispers about, is snarling and seething with cold cold eyes and skin that almost glitters in the moonlight.
“What did you do,” Emma growls when she sees Zelena is awake, and Zelena bites back a yelp of surprise and pain as she is flung up and back, slamming into the wall by the head of the bed. “She was supposed to be happy,” and there is another slam, is the tightening of phantom fingers around her neck, and Zelena is starting to sees spots, stars. “But you ruined it. You ruined it, and now I am going to make you pay, no matter what it—”
“Emma!”
There’s a level of horror in Regina’s voice that Zelena doesn’t think she’s heard before, a level of answering relief in her own body that she doesn’t want to analyze. Emma’s magic falters, and Zelena flops over on the bed, gasping.
“She has to pay,” Emma says again. Raises her hands once more, and Zelena screams as the magic flows and flows.
“Emma no—!”
The last thing Zelena sees is Regina throwing herself at Emma, and then everything fades out.
*
Zelena wakes to white sheets and a steady beep near her head, a pinch in her elbow and someone’s fingers scrabbling at the cuff on her wrist.
“What are you doing?” Zelena croaks, and Regina looks at her, eyes red-rimmed and furious and desperate.
“Getting this damned thing off of you.” Regina’s voice is hoarse and she looks like hell, cut on her temple and bruise on her cheek and hair everywhere, and Zelena can feel her fingers trembling against her wrist.
“Thought that was a magic deal.”
“Yes well, I’m currently a little tapped out.” The scowl on Regina’s face would be frightening if it weren’t also so tired, and after a moment she sighs and lets her shoulders sag. Stops tugging at the cuff and slides her hand down so that she is clinging to Zelena’s fingers instead, and Zelena wants to laugh at the absurdity of it except she thinks that might make Regina realize what she’s doing and let go.
“What made you come?”
Regina’s gaze slips from staring at the heart monitor to Zelena’s face. Her brow furrows, lips turn down at the corners. “I don’t know. I just…had a feeling.” She looks back at the cuff and shakes her head, hair falling into her face. “It wasn’t supposed to get you hurt,” she whispers.
Zelena doesn’t know what to say to that.
*
Zelena’s in the hospital for two days, and when she’s finally discharged, she doesn’t go back to the cell. Regina brings her back to her house instead, sets Zelena up in a guest room that makes her skin tingle from all the wards and spells layered into the air.
“Protection for me or from me?” Zelena asks, sitting on the edge of the bed and casting curious eyes around the room.
“Both,” Regina admits, and Zelena snorts.
There’s a large cardboard box on the floor near the bed, Zelena’s name scrawled along the top in large script, and Zelena nudges it with one foot.
“And this?”
“Clothes. Yours,” Regina says, when Zelena starts to make a face at the thought of whatever odd selection Regina might have amassed for her. “I cleaned out the farmhouse after you…well. Anyway, they’re yours. I don’t know how much longer they’ll fit. But at least some of them should still work for now.”
Zelena lifts the lid of the box and fingers the familiar items, all neatly stacked and folded, layers and layers of greys and blacks. “And you’ve just—what? Had them sitting around your house ever since? How sweet.”
“Please. Things got hectic, and I forgot about them. Don’t go making it all sentimental.” But Regina has one hand folded across her stomach, and she’s not looking at Zelena directly, eyes fixed somewhere in the vicinity of Zelena’s left shoulder instead. “Dinner will be ready in a couple hours. Take a nap until then. You look tired and I don’t want you cranky around Henry.”
Zelena thinks she should maybe be offended. Should certainly not be grateful for this new set-up, not when Regina has admitted she still doesn’t trust her, admitted this is just another way of keeping Zelena under her thumb.
But the room is bathed in warm sunlight, the bed is inviting as hell after only a few minutes of sitting on it, and there’s a pregnancy book sitting on the nightstand, and Zelena finds it harder and harder to cling to offense and outrage in the face of Regina twisting her hands together like she’s actually worried about what Zelena thinks, of wasn’t supposed to get you hurt and warm fingers clutching her own.
“I’ll take it into consideration,” Zelena says, stretching out on the bed with her arms folded behind her head, and she’s pretty sure she sees Regina fight a smile as she leaves the room.
*
It doesn’t take long for a routine to develop, of Regina cooking and Zelena throwing it up, of Zelena waking at 2 in the morning with cravings so severe she thinks they might drive her mad, Regina grumbling but going to the store anyway because “maybe it will help clear my head between readings.”
The sight of Regina scribbling furiously, surrounded by piles of books and parchments and notes, is always the last thing Zelena sees before she goes up to bed, the first thing she sees when she wanders down in the morning, and sometimes Zelena looks at the circles under Regina’s eyes, the cup of coffee never far from her hand, and wonders if Regina ever sleeps. She sees the way Henry watches his mother each morning, worry-wrinkle between his brows, and thinks he wonders the same thing.
Regina still hasn’t managed to get the cuff off Zelena's wrist, and periodically when Zelena’s sleeve slips up she catches Regina staring at it with a mix of guilt and pain Zelena can’t quite understand.
“I think you hate this thing more than I do,” Zelena comments one night at dinner, and Regina’s eyes fall to her plate while Henry frowns.
“For how much you spied on me, you really didn’t see much,” Regina says. Her face is tight and eyes distant, and she won’t explain further.
*
Two weeks into her new tenure, the doorbell rings while they are halfway through lunch (Regina’s chicken noodle soup, one of the few things Zelena can reliably keep down right now), and Regina lets out an impatient huff, balling her napkin in her fist and tossing it onto the table.
“Honestly,” she mutters, “If that’s Snow again…” She gets up and moves towards the front door while Zelena stays seated, crumbling a few more saltines into her soup.
It’s not Snow. It’s Emma, looking at Regina with a little half-smile, and even from here Zelena can see the way Regina’s body tenses.
“Zelena, go wait in your room,” Regina says, eyes never leaving Emma’s face. “Now!” she snaps, when Zelena doesn’t move, and Zelena goes. Mostly, anyways, she doesn’t exactly enter her room, hovering instead halfway up the stairs where she can hear but not see; she waits there, knuckles white on the bannister and heart hammering in her chest.
“You can’t be here,” Regina tells Emma. “You know you can’t. Not with Zelena, it’s too…too..." Regina falters, breathing out a long shuddering sigh. "Why, Emma. Why her?”
“She hurt you!” Emma says, and Regina laughs, long and low and tinged with hysteria.
“If that’s your benchmark for attacking people you have a long list to get through. Many of whom will not go over well with Henry.”
“But—”
“Emma,” Regina says then, and it comes out like a plea, like a caress. “Emma, you can’t—that can’t—“
One of them—Zelena can’t tell which—lets out a strangled half sob, and then there is silence. After several beats Zelena chances a few steps down, past the curve of the first landing where she can see over the railing into the front entryway. Emma and Regina are still standing in the doorway, foreheads pressed together and hands tangled.
“Please,” Zelena thinks she hears Regina whisper. “Please, Emma, please…”
Emma disappears in a swirl of silver smoke, and Regina droops against the doorframe. She’s clinging to the wood like it’s holding her up, shoulders shaking, and Zelena flees back up the stairs before Regina can turn and catch her staring.