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There have been problems ever since Emma Swan and Snow White came back from their misadventure into Jefferson’s hat. There are monsters in the woods, creatures that should not be appearing.
Regina feels like she is the only one who’s noticed, or maybe the only one who cares enough to do something about them. She’s still the mayor, after all. Freely elected (though she’s always run unopposed), and certainly more competent than anyone else in this town when it comes to keeping the peace.
The forests provide solitude, a place where Regina can break her promise over and over to Henry, all in the name of keeping him safe. She hopes that he will understand, should he ever discover the truth. Henry has always been a pragmatic child.
Still, she toys with her kills. She embraces the vicious streak that she has taken years to cultivate within herself when she’s alone among the trees. She lets fly her anger, her pain, her longing over and over again.
Today it is a small dragon and Regina is enjoying the chase far more than she’s relishing the kill. Her boots dig into the rain-soft earth beneath her feet as she tracks the beast. She’d found the small tear in reality that it had squeezed its way through an hour ago, and had been tracking the beast’s confused wanderings ever since.
Once, she’d hated the hunt. Her mother had lived for the kill, Leopold had been the same. He’d watched with wide and shining eyes as the huntsman’s knife plunged into the neck of the deer after the dogs had been called off. Regina has no dogs now, and she has no knife. She has her pride and her pain.
The pain is what fuels the magic now. Gone is the rage, the anger at first her mother and then Snow White has dissipated. Now there is only the pain of longing for a mother she’d never truly know, a son she can never truly love. She longs for Henry’s love because she cannot deny him what denied her.
They say that some magic corrupts, but there are many types of magic.
The dragon crouches behind a rocky outcropping - a remnant of gods or glaciers past - and fire bursts from its mouth as Regina steps confidently into view. She throws up a hand, catching the fire and pulling the power and heat of it into her cold body, warming herself and stealing from the dragon’s magical attack as she does so. This is so easy it’s almost comical.
Regina has often wondered why Snow’s beloved had so much trouble with the dragon he’d slew. His daughter had no trouble, and this was not the first dragon she’d had to kill to protect the town. She figures that the man is so dim-witted that it is probably his pitiful brain, rather than his skill in battle, that sets him at such a disadvantage.
She catches the dragon as it lunges forward, almost blacking out the sky above, drawing it into the air and holding. The spells come to mind one by one and she knows no mercy - letting the pain and the anger lose until there is nothing left but bone and ash.
And she is not alone.
"You…" Emma Swan has her father’s sword slung over her back and looks like she’s in mind stride as Regina watches the stiff breeze blow the ash into whimsical circles around her. The ash of the battlefield. Regina realizes that she’s missed the smell of charred flesh and a wicked smile blossoms on her lips as she regards the woman before her. “You…"
"I what?" She’s drawling, daring the savior with all her righteous indignation to strike against her. Her father’s sword is charmed, she knows, but Regina doesn’t think that Emma will attack her for Henry’s sake. It’s a gamble she’s willing to risk.
Emma’s eyes are wide and she looks a little shocked. "You killed a dragon," she says, her mouth agog. She sounds almost like Snow in that moment, and Regina hates her all the more.
Bending, Regina picks up a handful of ash and stares at it, watching as what is left of the dragon floats away into the forest. "Someone had to," she says quietly, glancing sidelong at her unwanted companion and daring her to object. When Emma says nothing, Regina sighs and begins to explain. She’s not entirely sure why, but she supposed that it’s because she wants her to know. To make her excuses to Henry for the magic and the blood she’s spilling in the name of protecting the town. "When you and your mother came back to this world, the portal did not close neatly." She tips her hand and lets the rest of the ash fall back to become one with the wet ground beneath her feat. "There is a rift, and things are getting in."
“Jesus," Emma says quietly, and runs a hand through her hair. She looks half-exhausted and she spins on the spot, scowling around at the clearing and the charred remains of the dragon. "What did you do to it?"
Regina gives the smallest of shrugs. "Killed it with its own fire," she sees no point in mincing words at this point in time. She’s been discovered, and while she’s sure that Henry will hear about it, she hopes that it will be enough to say that no one else would have bothered to kill the beast before it raised the town to ruins.
Her hand dropping to her side, Emma looks down at her feet. "Oh," is all she says, like she was expecting a different answer. Regina doesn’t really know why, for surely Snow has told her daughter all about the sadistic streak that Snow’s cruelty has birthed within her.
The conversation is over, though, and Regina closes her eyes and thinks of home once more. She doesn’t click her heels together, but it’s a close thing. When she opens them, she sees a curious look on Emma Swan’s face and the forest disappearing in a swirl of purple smoke and malicious intent.
-
She’s faced with the sheriff three days later when she’s buried underneath a ten-high stack of spell books. The books were amongst her mother’s things and Regina’s been reading, ignoring the books that she recognizes as containing dark and blood magic and concentrating on the nature of the magic contained within them. Her own magic is so dark, but she’s discovering that she has an affinity for earth spells so strong that she marvels that no one ever caught onto it.
Elemental spells are neither good nor evil, she thinks it was Rumpel who told her that first. It was only through trial and error that Regina learned the true nature of the spells that these books contain. They can create and destroy, just like the elements that they draw power from.
And she doesn’t bother to hide what she’s doing from the curious gaze of Emma Swan. Regina knows that if the mob has not come yet that it probably won’t come. The savior has as many secrets as anyone else in this town - and she can keep them as well.
"You’re trying to close the rift," and it isn’t a question. Regina fixes Emma with a steely gaze and doesn’t say a word. She offers up the first book without a word and doesn’t say anything as Emma collapses into the love seat and opens it. She hasn’t put her feet on the couch, which Regina counts as a win.
And the afternoon passes in silence.
Much later that evening, Emma asks Regina question that Regina never expected. Regina’s been chewing over a spell that seems like it has potential for an hour now. She’s taken the ream of construction paper that Henry still hasn’t worked his way through and has diagramed it out every way she can think of, pausing to look up star positions and elemental conversations from her world to this one. Emma’s watched her silently, offering nothing more than the quiet sound of pages turning.
"If you had a choice, would you stay here, or would you go back?"
And Regina doesn’t know the answer.
She flips over the page she’s working on and starts anew, writing the runes and the spell’s language that the top of the page.
Emma turns the page in her book and regards her with solemn eyes.
-
"I would go if that was what Henry wanted," Regina says conversationally when she encounters Emma in the woods some three days later. Magic has pooled in her belly and she’s got her boot pressed firmly against the gutted stomach of the Minotaur at her feet. There’s blood splattered all over her and Regina’s got the beast’s heart clutched in one hand. She’s taken it out the old-fashioned way, with pain and a great gaping hole in its chest.
Emma looks like she’s going to be sick and Regina feels the small thrill of victory trill down her spine when the town’s supposed savior turns away.
The blasting spell that Regina releases coats the entire clearing with a fine, bloody, red mess. She breathes in the destruction and lets the Minotaur’s heart fall to the ground. It lands with a satisfying thump and a strangled sound from Emma, who’s now splattered in blood herself and looking at Regina with something akin to fear.
"I’d rather not, though, if it’s all the same to you dear," she says to the faintly green-looking Emma Swan. "Plumbing, democracy, feminism… need I go on?"
Emma shakes her head mutely and Regina smiles sweetly and snaps her fingers. The bloody mist dissipates safe for the splatters from earlier that still dot her cheeks and wrists and thighs. She doesn’t mind being covered in the blood of the enemies that she can maim and kill.
"Sorry for the mess," she says, and brushes past the savior back towards town.
It takes a minute, but Emma calls after her and Regina turns. She’s struggling to keep her breathing low and even - but her heart is racing. The blasting spell is a new one, one she’s just encountered. She likes it, likes how it isn’t truly dark.
And the price is far easier to stomach.
(Even if it is making her turn around slowly and regard the savior with something akin to approval and dare she say interest for the first time in her life.
Damn. She’d hoped to avoid her today for this very reason.)
"That spell didn’t feel evil," Emma says flatly, her eyes are still full of the fear from before, but they’re looking at Regina with interest. They don’t look like Snow White’s eyes in this light and Regina can almost look into them without a blinding rage welling up within her and driving all reason from her.
And she wonders what they’d look like full of lust.
It is time, Regina realizes, to play another game.
"It isn’t," she says simply. "There is good magic and evil magic, Ms. Swan, but there is neutral magic as well. That spell was one of the more elemental varieties."
"Earth?" Emma guesses and Regina realizes that she actually read the book Regina had pushed into her hands. She almost wants to be impressed that Emma Swan would bother to actually learn something from a book, but she pushes that want down and buries it under a cool and neutral expression.
"With a bit of fire," Regina agrees judiciously. "I rewrote the spell."
"You did?" She’s leaning forward curiously, regarding Regina with her arms folded across her chest. She looks like her father, most of the time, and Regina is grateful for that. She struggles with how much Henry takes after his grandmother most days.
(And she looks beautiful when she’s curious. Her eyes are full of nothing but innocent inquiry and Regina wants to hate her for looking so much like her mother in that moment.
This is the price though, and she’ll take it willingly. These spells don’t burn when she uses them. These spells don’t steal her humanity and rot her soul. They don’t corrupt her heart. They just fill her with want and lust and take away her sense of self-preservation.)
"Come now," Regina replies, her eyebrow arching high across her brow. "Did your mother not tell you that I am a magical genius?"
Emma scowls and mutters out of the side of her mouth, “And modest to boot."
"Then I will show you." She reaches forward and takes the savor’s wrist, drawing her silently into the spell and back to the empty shell of what Regina had once called home.
Emma Swan smells like sweat and coffee and leather. It’s a masculine sort of a smell, but there’s a feminine hint to it in her the scent that clings to her hair. It seems that the princess spares no expense on her shampoo. Regina wonders it this came after her trip to the other realm, but pushes the thought from her mind as Emma leans forward across the dining table with her lip caught between her teeth. Her nose scrunches up as she reads the runes out loud slowly.
“Ark-nateø-α,” the magic grows around them and Regina reaches forward and snatches the paper from Emma in mild alarm.
“Don’t,” she hisses.
Emma has the good sense to look confused. “What?” she demands, her green eyes narrowing almost angrily as she tries to pick the paper up and have a better look at it.
“You were bringing the words to life, Ms. Swan,” Regina says shortly. She folds the paper and tucks it into her pocket with a moody scowl.
“But I—”
It’s easy for Regina to close her eyes and wish for some higher power to take pity on her and spirit Emma Swan away to anywhere but here. She’s sure that Emma’s about to protest that she has no magic, that none of the luck and annoying habit of not dying and excellent swordsmanship are caused by anything other than good breeding. Regina simply can’t stomach another sanctimonious Charming family lecture, really. She grits her teeth and throws up an elemental protection spell around them.
The air outside the house grows hard and icy cold, impervious as Regina feels the cost set in once more. They won’t be disturbed, and she really, truly, desperately wants her answer. She reaches forward and catches Emma’s chest with her flat palm. She’s the evil that is known, the evil that will always be known. Elemental magic lowers all of her defenses, lowers her sense of self-preservation.
“What are you doing!” Emma almost shrieks as Regina’s fingers close around her still beating heart and she’s froze in place by Regina’s magic reacting to her own. The magic buzzes around her, filling her, driving her to what can only be akin to a high unlike any she’s ever experience before. Regina breathes it, lives it. She lets her fingers caress the heart of the savior for longer than is strictly necessary, and raises her gaze to meet the panicked green eye it belongs to.
“Tell me, dear,” Regina says quietly, reaching and oh-so-gently plucking the heart from its place inside Emma. Her mother had not been able to do this; she’d been stymied by the barrier of her own missing heart. Regina had no such problem, her heart still beat in her chest and she still could feel the love needed to extract a heart as powerful as this. “Have you ever actually tried to use magic before?”
Emma’s scent is everywhere and they’re so close together. Regina hasn’t drawn her heart out, she’s almost afraid its brilliance will shatter all that’s left of the curse and keeping them here. Regina doesn’t want to go back to the enchanted forest. Not yet.
(Not ever if she can arrange it.)
“N-no,” Emma frowns.
“Only those with the purest of hearts can use magic,” Regina says quietly. She looks away, “And you are made of the greatest magic of all.” She steps back, and pulls Emma’s heart out with her. She’s taking an almost suicidal gamble here, for if the savior’s heart truly is enough to shatter her curse, she doesn’t want to be the one to undo it. That just seems so messy. “Don’t you see?”
The heart in her hands glows almost white hot with the magic that thrums through it. It beats steadily in Regina’s hand and she feels the magic flow into her like waves against the shore, rising with the tide. Here, in a place where magic is slow and deadened, it flows freely and Regina can hardly contain the surge of want within her. She wants to taste this power, to relish it, to possess it. She’s punch-drunk on just holding it, but if she could possess it….
“Why is it glowing so brightly?” Emma asks quietly.
It takes all of Regina’s will-power to shove it back into place and to pull her hand away once more. She feels giddy, free of all that holds her back, and she intents take advantage. “Love,” she replies quietly, and looks away.
Emma’s fingers splay across her chest, and she stares down at it for a moment before she takes a hesitant step forward, and then another. She’s walked right into Regina’s personal space again, and there’s the smell of her once more. She smells like the forest and magic now, the sharp scent of it almost alien on her breath as she reaches forward and cups Regina’s chin.
There’s a spark there, and Regina wants to be defiant.
She wants to be a lot of things, really.
But Emma’s got this strange look in her eyes and Regina’s a little afraid of what she might do. She wants to push the savior into doing something that she’ll regret later, or maybe it will give her pause and make her see that there is far more to this than the good and evil it’s painted to be in the storybooks.
“You could take it out,” Emma says quietly. There is a strange sort of timbre to her voice now, and Regina’s breath catches at the back of her throat. There’s a surge of arousal there too, at the proximity and at the power. “Cora wasn’t able to.”
Maybe this is really what she’s always wanted, but Regina pushes the thought away violently. This isn’t real, these feelings aren’t real. Use of elemental magic takes the baser senses, to run and to flee, to hide and to certainly not kiss your mortal enemy’s daughter.
But it feels good and right and Emma tastes like no one Regina’s ever had before. It’s been decades since she’s had a woman, even longer since she’s wanted one. The queen could have anyone they wanted and she took what she was deserved once Leopold was dead. She’d had warriors and guards and a few ladies and waiting besides. But none filled her with the same sense of desperation and want that Emma Swan was drawing out of her.
The savior kisses like she’d done it before all firm lips and gentle pressure at Regina’s bottom lip. She hums and Regina doesn’t dare touch her, afraid of what she might do. Almost afraid that she might break.
She’s just self-destructive at this point that she’ll tear the heart out of the savior without thoughts to the consequences. Kissing her is something else altogether. It has risks and rewards aplenty.
And Emma takes and takes and takes and takes. Regina has fingers in her hair and teeth worrying at her lip. She gasps and lets Emma’s tongue slip inside before she feels it again. The magic that lives within Emma’s heart curls around her, overwhelming her, making her feelwhole for what feels like the first time in many decades. She embraces it, relishes the feeling that the combination of the spells she used and Emma Swan’s own unique blend of true-love gifted magic has on her; and she wants.
It is with some effort that Regina is able to pull herself away from Emma’s kiss and their foreheads rest together, noses barely touching. She wants and she wants and she wants. Regna is desperate to let Emma take her, but she knows that it cannot be.
“I can take it out because I have love in my heart,” Regina explains, her breath comes short, a whisper. She won’t tell Emma Swan that her mother’s lack of one (and the stain on Snow White’s pure heart) was what made it refuse to come out.
“Your eyes are glowing,” Emma replies and Regina looks away. They’re glowing from the magic, the high that’s come up within her, taking her to a place that she’s never quite understood before. Emma doesn’t know that, she wouldn’t know that – but it feels good for the first time in a long time and she doesn’t want to stop.
Regina leans in once more, and her eyes flutter closed. “You did that,” she whispers.
“Ho-” Emma begins, but Regina has kissed her once more, desperate to feel more of that high. Her fingers reach up with trembling hesitation. She’s resisting the urge to sink into Emma, to let herself be taken a she so desperately wants. It would be the ultimate price to pay, she thinks, and the magic would know it well.
But Emma’s magic, the magic of true love, it’s something she’s never before held. It’s warm and moving around her, all arms and limbs and too-long legs. Regina’s had this once, but it was so long ago that she scarcely remembers over all the torment of years of being used and using herself.
“They say magic is like a drug,” Regina says quietly. “And I don’t want you using it.”
She looks like she wants to protest, but the words die in her chest when something seems to snap between them and Regina looks up, startled. The high is gone, replaced with a feeling of dread and the knowledge that she should not have done what she did. The kissing, the holding up the savior’s heart for all the world to see.
Something new has come through the rift and it’s tugging at the corners of her consciousness.
Emma seems to sense it too, for she’s cursing and picking up her sword and pulling Regina towards the door, her neck and lips covered in blood-red lipstick.
“You’re going to close that rift,” Emma says shortly.
Regina squares her shoulders and lifts her chin high. “I will close it, Ms. Swan. If you can handle what came through.”
Emma nods just once, and Regina reaches for the magic that she’s taken from her without asking. It feels good on her skin, warm and welcoming – like Emma’s lips on her own.
And maybe that’s enough.
Because she will chase this high again.