Chapter Text
Tonight should have been like any other Friday night over the past few months, and yet here Regina stands on the roof of a dilapidated apartment building, narrowed umber eyes trailing the smoke that billows up from the burning nightclub across the street. Well, to say things aren’t going according to plan is probably an understatement, she hums considering her options.
Bright flames lick at the sky, bathing the street in an orange glow that clashes garishly with the neon lights spilling from the club entrance. It’s oddly chilly for Boston mid-summer, and cool wind pricks at her neck, raising goosebumps along her hairline, even as sweat begins to pool at her collarbone from the heat curling up from the blazing building. She pulls the collar of her leather jacket higher on her neck before rolling the sleeves up past her forearms in an effort to even out the temperature. Little good that did, she glowers, fingers flexing in frustration as she tries to ignore the sweat sticking at the crooks of her arms. Just a few more moments to confirm, and she can leave.
On another side of town, it’s a night where doe-eyed lovers dot the sidewalks, digits intertwined as they huddle together in their light sweaters. This side, however, looks more like a horde of maenads just swept through it. Throngs of drunken clubbers paint a chaotic tableau as they shove at each other in escape: some stumbling, barely able to walk straight let alone run for their fucking lives; most slurring swears at the top of their lungs while futilely attempting to cradle their overpriced drinks. The one, two…three shrieking bottle-blondes in various shades of fuchsia arguing with the world’s most patient manager add a nice touch.
Regina lets out a derisive sigh at the mess, transient clouds of cooled breath fading quicker than they can fully form. She casts a cursory glance at her watch, thoughts shifting towards a number of contingency plans. Emergency services should arrive within two minutes, news media in another…ten, on a slow night, but she’ll be long gone by then. With a quick decision that perhaps won’t make the evening a total bust, she turns away from the ledge and quick strides carry her to the fixed ladder on the side of the building.
The air loses some of its brisk snap as she scales her way down, and she shucks off her jacket upon reaching the ground, revealing a tight black tank which clings at the small of her back where the tiny rivulets of sweat gather as they trickle down her spine. Ugh. There’s a long, glorious, well-deserved shower in her future, right after she traps her mark. With a trained glance to the alley behind her, she confirms the area is clear before folding into the shadows and edging towards the street where the chaos and confusion is still running rampant.
From her concealed position, she scans the crowd and quickly confirms her mark — an eccentric man by the name of Jefferson Palarier — has slipped away. The man has proven slippery though not incredibly tactful in the past...downtown wildfire aside… Much as it pains her to admit, that was a particularly effective diversion.
Cropped sable tresses brush at bare shoulders as she looks down to retrieve a phone from one tight leather pocket. She taps a button to activate the display, slides her thumb over a textless crystal ball icon. The discreet app opens to a deceptively blank screen, designed to throw off any eavesdroppers. She could never be too cautious, especially now. After a moment, the screen flashes white once to verify the sync to her remote comm device. Quick and easy, just like her quirky tech woman said it would be. It helps that Jefferson hasn’t discovered the device yet — a fact confirmed by another flash and blinking violet LED.
Returning the phone to her pocket, Regina sighs, resting her head back against the brick of the building for the moment. This is partly her fault, though she’s begrudging to admit it with the mayhem raging a few meters away. It had been many years since a target had actually managed to slip by her, and were she paying better attention, there'd be nothing of note about the night other than the forming of few scarlet streaks on the walls.
One moment’s distraction —and for a reason that makes her think her eyes will be stuck in the back of her head for the next week from the force she just rolled them with because really, some woman?— and at the drop of a hat, the man was gone, leaving a very irked assassin behind. His sense of self-preservation was…admirable, she admits. It’s merely a professional courtesy, though.
Still, her teeth grind thinking about it, and she damns the woman with those brilliant green eyes along with herself.
An hour earlier
Dusky lashes flit over the crowd, taking in the sea of bodies within the interior. Wonderland is a miasmic den of stale smoke, cheap liquor, and feverish, perfumed flesh. Vast swaths of the club are shadowed with immodest silhouettes grinding against each other, their figures crammed together like gnarled trees in a dark forest, thundering bass keeping time like a languid heartbeat. Scant light falls from flickering lasers and neon bulbs, offering the eyes little reprieve with their sudden blinding intensity.
The spot boasts a sensory overload groping at every perception. It’s a place where tricks play on the eyes. Bass oozes, vibrating along slicked skin. Thrumming techno raucous inundates coherent thought. But that is the charm the spot offers these types — a near complete escape from reality. It is a place to get lost in feeling. On a Friday night, it easily reaches capacity with the city’s clamoring delinquents. It’s their haven, existing in some ways above the law by way of a few well-placed bribes and the favor of people in high places hoping to keep their frequent visits out of the public knowledge.
Regina makes her way through the sea of gyrating forms towards the vantage point she eyed on the way in. No one bumps, all compelled to give her whatever berth possible despite the dense spread of bodies. She finds her sneer often has that effect.
The couches are littered with bodies as she passes — some trashed on opiates, others ground together at the hips in some other drug-fueled vigor, though all with the same proclivity towards shedding their clothes.
So, of course, Jefferson would choose a place like this to hide out in.
From her position, she can see most of the dance floor. Keen eyes quickly map viable exit routes, a rote compulsion she learned to value long ago. This squalid hotbed doesn’t leave many options.
Halfway through a second pass over the crowd, she bristles slightly, the odd sensation of watchful eyes pricking at the nape of her neck.
Evidence of the steady stream of women —and a few men at odd times — that parade through whatever bed she chose for the night, Regina knows she is...appealing. But the weight of this gaze is not merely of the appreciative nature she's used to, being neither entirely malignant nor benign. Curious, she turns her head in search of her observer and meets sea green eyes a few feet away.
How she hadn’t noticed the woman when she first entered is a mystery spinning in her mind, as she willfully angling her body towards her observer. How she’d gotten this close without clocking on her radar is probably the better question. The blonde is, in a word, stunning. But it’s the sharp, unwavering gaze that commands the brunette’s attention.
Regina cocks an eyebrow at the woman’s brazen observation, a sense of familiarity that she can’t quite place niggling around at the back of her mind. Most people exist as ephemera in her life, composed of lust-laced grips fading and always changing from night to morning, or streaks of crimson pooling down the drain after a successful mission. Sometimes both.
It's curious. The blonde isn’t a target, and she hadn’t had her on her back in some way or another.
Because that — she muses, wetting the corner of mouth as she absently lets her eyes roam down a lithe form —she’s sure would remember.
Moments slipped by as the women observe each other, the blonde’s gaze glassing slightly as she tilts her head in thought, causing loose waves to slip over her shoulder. Something flashes over the woman’s face suddenly, brief but easily caught with Regina’s intent focus. A faint widening of the eyes, minute pull to her pale pink lips. Bemused, Regina would almost call it recognition but--
“Shit!”
And Regina’s head whips around swiftly. She couldn’t have been distracted for more than a few seconds, but somehow after stumbling out of a private room with a ginger-haired woman in tow, Jefferson had laid eyes on her immediately. Shoving that woman forward to intercept Regina’s path, he takes off in the other direction, ignoring the sounds of indignant protest and high-heels stamping behind him.
Cursing, Regina chases after him, bodily thrusting people who too slow to move out of the way. Chasing a mark through a crowd. Like she's some novice in a movie causing a scene. All she needs is for this…minor incident…to show up on some news outlet.
Thoroughly offended, she decides she’s going to have to make him pay for both their errors; first, for her own embarrassing distraction, and second, for coming out of hiding in the first place. He should've stayed in Europe.
She is just gaining ground when he dives behind the bar. He snatches a rag and bottle of high-grade vodka off the countertop, and she narrowly misses an oblivious dancing couple as she forces herself to an abrupt stop.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she mumbles, watching intently. To be fair, Jefferson is known to have a few screws loose, but surely he wouldn’t.
An orange glow begins to grow behind the bar, derailing her thoughts of sane reactions. She turns, quickly assessing her catalogue of viable exit points. Making a split decision, she runs to the back of the club, patrons wise enough to make way for her this time though completely unaware of their imminent doom. But they’re not her problem.
Behind her, a chorus of exploding glass and screams rend the air, just as she bursts through the heavy backdoor.
Jefferson just couldn’t face death like a man. He had go and blow up a nightclub in the process.
Fuck, and she might not have even killed him if he had agreed to cooperate and give her the information she’d wanted before. Regina pushes off the wall, mind already spinning with some convoluted punishment for when she finds him.
Slender, calloused fingers comb through her hair as she walks down the alley, the fresh memory plaguing her. She had never been so easily distracted before, and for what? A pretty face? Lengthy, blonde hair? Long, long legs she could wrap around he--
She exhales sharply, knowing that’s not the case. Beauty is not a novelty to her. It had to be the way she watched her. That brazen look of familiarity she had absolutely no right to.
Rubber scrapes loose asphalt behind her, and Regina spins quickly, knife drawn and level in one hand as the other blindly closes around a lean throat. She has a body pinned to the wall before she registers the owner’s identity — and the cool blade pressed against an exposed sliver of her own stomach where her top has ridden up with her swift movement. Oh, that's great.
Her eyes focus, finding the blonde from before, and she’s torn between aggravation and amusement — because what else should she expect from this clusterfuck of a night — but is inclined to express neither as she her fierce expression nosedives into impassivity.
“Just who the hell are you?” she intones, voice dark and hard as the asphalt beneath her feet. It never waivers, despite the intent focus of her touch receptors on tracking the weapon poised at her stomach.
The woman smiles before glancing down at her own hand, and Regina feels the blade move from her skin. She is minutely relieved, but keeps her guard up in the face of the clearly skilled woman.
“Sorry about that,” the blonde drawls, “force of habit.” She lets the knife drop, the clinking sound of it hitting the pavement preceding the splay of her freed hand in surrender. “I’m not so used to getting slung around like a rag doll.”
Regina arches a brow in response and tightens her vice-like grip on the blonde’s neck, almost smirking when her eyes bug a bit.
“Let’s try answering the question this time.”
The woman clears her throat, the pressure making the effort difficult before responding tightly, “Name’s Emma. Emma Swan.”
Regina jerks her hand back as if burned, that same feeling of familiarity rebounding stronger on the return. Emma coughs lightly at the sudden release, but resists the urge to rub her throat.
“And you,” she continues, swallowing after a moment, “well, you’re Regina Mills, aren’t you?”