Chapter Text
--
someday my pain will mark you
harness your blame
and walk through
--bon iver
---
It has been days of wandering through dark oceans like spilt blue ink, days of following blindly the cartograhical lines of Gold's blood spell. They aren't lost, not necessarily, it's just that they keep missing their mark over and over again because that damn globe can't seem to focus yet. They have no way in. And it's not like they've got much choice in the matter. They just have to wait it out and hope that sooner rather than later, the spell finally gets a lock, makes a way, lets them through, because that globe is all they have right now besides each other.
It might be Mary Margaret who notices first, the way Regina's boil has slowed to a simmer (even in the face of this new crisis), the way her eyes are no longer hard, unfathomable onyx, but the soft black of artists' charcoal. They no longer strike and swallow things whole. They just stare, softly blending into something lighter, something that feels more like that moment they met on a hillside a lifetime ago. Regina is still steeped in sadness, though. She may never escape that particular curse (one unimaginable weight lifted, one gained).
Mary Margaret notices rather quickly that it is Emma Regina has been staring at. Emma is light and dark in the same way Regina is, the sort of contrast that comes from a whole lifetime and not from one cowardly betrayal like her own. She isn't sure how she feels about two such important women in her life (for vastly different reasons) sharing something that integral, but she supposes she gave up the right to Emma's intregality the moment she surrendered her as a baby.
So she notices. She notices how Regina follows Emma, who paces the deck lost and upset hour after hour after hour. Regina, who follows no one but blazes a hot fire of her own first, tearing any root or obstacle or family asunder that stands in her way. Regina who should despise Snow White's daughter, who could be destroyed by Snow White's daughter.
Emma won't take much comfort from her mother, or her father, but she lets Regina linger at her elbow, once for an entire evening. Mary Margaret wishes she knew what it is they talk about, if they talk at all. She wishes she knew why Regina has begun to take in her daughter with such soft, soft eyes and why Emma can stand to be around Regina for longer than she can stand to be around her own mother right now. The loss of Henry is the best explanation for this sudden, silent shift, but Mary Margaret doesn't think that it is the only explanation.
Hook keeps telling them, in the spirit of full disclosure (because adventures the likes of this one are best set out upon with all participants fully disclosed): you can never really leave Neverland.
"You obviously got outta here," Emma says.
"How." It isn't a question. Regina says the word like she says the word "no" when someone asks her a stupid question.
Snow and Charming blink and say nothing. They've done a lot of that since climbing onto this ship. Gold broods from his perch near the helm.
"I made a very selfish deal."
Regina and Emma exchange the same grim look.
"We'll revisit this conversation after we've rescued Henry," Emma decides.
Regina steals another look. Emma looks so very tired.
Emma knows that it is late even though she can't even tell what time it is or which way is up anymore because the water is black blue and the sky is black blue and the stars, the stars are fucking everywhere. All watches and clocks aboard have inexplicably stopped keeping time and there doesn't seem to be a general bedtime for anyone anymore or even a general rising time.
The six of them wander like ghosts on a ghost ship in ghostly waters. It doesn't seem like anything alive exists out here, and yet each and every time they consult the globe, there it is: Neverland. A tiny island. Tiny dots representing hundreds of living things, all squirming around inside the magic blood like organisms under a microscope.
They just need a way in.
Emma wrings her hands against the wooden ledge of the ship because she can't really sit still even in a non-anguishing situation. She raps her knuckles and kicks at the dusty floor.
"How are you, Emma?"
Emma starts. "Jesus," she says, taking the hand away from where it flew to her chest. "You're like Batman."
"Sorry," Regina rasps again, coming further out of the shadows. "I didn't mean to scare you."
Regina's hands are in her coat pockets and she looks a little less scary, a little more small and human this way. "I'm still about the same as you, I'd imagine." Emma turns back to the waves.
Regina sighs, and comes closer.
"That good, huh."
They watch the star-studded black blue together for a little while.
"How's your head?" Emma turns slightly, watches Regina from the corner of her eye. The woman had taken a pretty considerable (admirable) beating back in Storybrooke, what with the torture by electrocution and then the whole apocalyptic trigger debacle. And the bunks on Hook's ship aren't exactly silk and down.
Regina just breathes in and out. "It's all right, thank you." Regina is staring dead ahead until all of a sudden she isn't, she is staring straight at Emma instead, and Emma darts her eyes quickly forward. "You--your magic--down in the mines..."
The hint of nervousness is what really gets Emma. She swings her eyes back again. She's never seen Regina trail off, never seen her glance away shyly, never seen her do anything that isn't made either of sharp edges or desperate, narrow curves.
"It did something to me," Regina tells her. "I haven't felt this good in days."
The curious moment has passed and now it's sort of awkward again. "Well," Emma says. "You're welcome. I mean, I guess. I don't know." And now she's curious again. "Are you sure it was me?"
"Oh, positive." There is something breathless in Regina's low voice, something sudden and honest and begrudging. Like Regina didn't want to admit it, but the truth is too much to deny. It makes Emma's heart do...something. It makes her cheeks flush. It feels like an embarrassing compliment hanging out in the open between them.
And then Regina starts murmuring again in that same voice and Emma's eyes have to snap shut.
"The magic inside of you, Emma, it's...unique. I've never...felt that."
Emma buries her head down into her coat collar. She wants Regina to stop talking. She wants to walk away. She wants to stay and ask what it felt like (if it felt anything like what Emma herself felt connecting to Regina--no, no--to the trigger, to the magic, in that moment).
(The problem is that Regina and her magic are one in the same, Emma knows that now whether she wants to or not, how magic is a life force branded by whoever wields it, and Emma knows this, because connecting to that magic in the mines had felt like power and darkness and wounded desperation and the sadness was crushing, the love was obliterating, and she hasn't been able to get the taste of apples from her mouth ever since.)
Regina lays her gloved hands, one at a time, against the ledge beside Emma's like a peace offering.
"I think I'll call it a night," Emma says quickly. She isn't ready to talk about magic and what it does or doesn't create, how it does or doesn't make her feel, anymore tonight.
Regina watches her walk away and wonders how she could possibly explain this, the way she feels so wholly marked by her son's mother. The way she feels softened, the way she despises it, how Emma wants space when Regina suddenly can't stop wanting to just...touch her.
Because Emma is good. The darkness inside of her doesn't even matter because she will never succumb to it like Regina did, like Cora did, like Rumple did. Emma's magic is a bright white revelation and a beacon, and more even than that, Regina sees Henry and has always seen Henry in every line of Emma's face and in every movement of her body. There is something about Emma that Regina aches for in the same (and altogether different) way she aches for her son, but her son is not here.
So Emma leaves and Regina stays on the deck alone, listens to the gentle lapping of dark waves while her mind tries to form the words her mouth probably never will.
Only when she doesn't know what else to do, who else to turn to, does Emma go to Mary Margaret. Tonight it was too much and not enough, this whole situation, the days that have passed with no progress and no regression, either. Just a complete halt, a standstill filled with debilitating worry and confusion and only a dash of hope that feels hopeless in comparison. It's too much and not enough.
Regina's eyes are too much and not enough because they are Henry's eyes, too. Because they were a family for the blink of an eye until they weren't. The things they say and the things they won't say are all too much and not enough. The things they won't even think.
Tonight Emma is falling apart but she'll be damned if she lets anyone say it out loud.
"Shh, honey."
Emma feels the tears prick hot in her eyes, anyway. Crying isn't really surrender, it's just a release that her body needs pretty badly. She feels better telling herself this.
Her mother's hands are smoothing the long blonde hair gently down her back. Her voice is just as gentle. "We'll get there. We'll find him. We always do."
The lull of the boat is ominous but here in Mary Margaret's arms, Emma feels a little less futile. Yeah, maybe they will find him. Maybe things will work out.
(Maybe they won't.)
Emma curls her fingers around Mary Margaret's knee and closes her eyes against everything that is wrong and everything that she cannot fix. She rests here for awhile.
Mary Margaret hates their situation, but she cherishes each moment that passes with Emma asleep in her lap. She strokes her daughter's blonde hair back and back and back, trying hard to fill each small touch with love, to take away the hopelessness, to make up for every lost time and circumstance as all these brand new moments between them pass on by.
It feels even later when Regina looks up from her hands at the sound of the rooftop hatch creaking open and then closed.
It's quiet down here, it's quiet everywhere but here it is just Regina, and the quiet, and the thoughts she pushes away.
Emma steps softly from the ladder. Regina blinks exactly once, big black eyes wide like an owl's in the dark of the creaking ship's belly.
"Hey," Emma says, finally.
"Couldn't sleep?" Regina asks lightly.
Emma hesitates. "Not really."
They stare and stare again and Emma looks away first, like she always does. She doesn't want to have to make up an excuse for being here. She doesn't want that. It would sound stupid and forced.
For once, she is glad for Regina's new softness and for her silence and for the way she moves over on the bunk to make room.
They sit side by side, tensely, for what feels like far too long. Regina tries to breathe and remember what it felt like to hate Emma Swan, to not feel as indebted to her as she does in this painfully long stretch of silence between them. She tries to remember what it felt like to be a queen or a mayor or a daughter or a wife who was never enough, to struggle selfishly, to leave everyone else behind just to survive.
She has wanted a family for so long, she has wanted freedom and love and she has paid dearly for it. She has been trying in all the wrong ways and it has nearly killed her.
"My mom gets what it's like to lose a kid," Emma says finally, and even though the words are not intended to place blame, Regina feels them weigh heavy on her chest. "I just don't think she gets what it's like to be a lost kid. She had her mom and dad for longer than I ever had anyone."
Regina twists her tongue inside her mouth but just nods and swallows. It doesn't escape Emma, the sacrifice Regina is making in not commenting on Emma's mother or Emma's grandfather.
"So, I don't know." Emma scrubs a hand across her face. "So I came down here, because crazily enough I think you're the only one around who can understand."
Emma looks like she might just scamper away, and Regina could not bear that right now, which might be why her voice sounds a little desperate when she speaks. "What can I do for you, Emma?"
Emma blinks over at her suddenly, as if the light has just changed. "Are you fucking with me right now?"
Regina furrows her brows. "No," she says so honestly, without even a hint of her old darkness, except her voice still sounds normal and she still looks like the Regina Emma knows.
"It's just different, this human side of you."
"Thank you," Regina comments dryly.
The boat begins to rock as it crests some bigger waves. Their shoulders knock, Emma teeters, and it's the way Regina reaches out to help steady her that makes Emma take a deep breath and dive in.
She doesn't even mean to though, not really, not all at once. It's just that once she lets go, there are tears in her eyes again almost immediately.
"What if we can't find our son?"
Regina is already touching Emma and Emma has accidentally made herself pliable, yielding, and so it's not much for Regina to just slide her hands along Emma's back and arm, to lie her palms flat and gentle against her. It's not much for Emma to accept them, both of them, and to tip her tired head onto Regina's nearest shoulder.
Regina doesn't reply, doesn't do anything at all except be warmer and more alive, more receptive and giving, than Emma ever imagined she could be.
Maybe, Emma realizes, this is why she has sought Regina out. Because the woman doesn't subscribe to good will always conquer evil, she doesn't subscribe to I will always find you and everything will always be okay. Emma and Regina understand one another and maybe that's why they could never meet before without prickling. They have both known the utter, utter blackness of the world and they have twisted unbearably beneath it until finally, finally, they started to fight back with teeth. And they haven't stopped since.
Regina will sit beside Emma and withhold the world's annoying, insincere platitudes. She understands. She will be truthful but not unkind. Not anymore. Not since Henry.
Emma realizes this at the same time she realizes that yes, she really has been seeking Regina out, and Regina has been seeking Emma out, and it is proof they live in a fucked up world that Emma doesn't even care how goddamn incorrect that seems. Because Regina is Henry's mother above and beyond everything else. Regina is exactly who Emma thought she was and not at all who she thought she was.
"You're the savior, Emma. It's what you do. You find. You save."
The irony of Regina sitting here reminding Emma about her destiny makes Regina's lips curl back slightly, a temperamental snake in a thinly woven basket. But she bites it all back because maybe Emma has saved her a little bit, too. Emma gave her Henry. Regina hates this fact more than she hates a lot of things, and she hates so very many things.
But when Emma tilts her head just so, and Regina can feel warm breath against her neck, she can't even recall a single thing in this world or any other that she hates enough to untangle her fingers from Emma's hair.
"I don't feel very savior-y right now," Emma murmurs. It is something Emma would say to Mary Margaret but instead she is saying it to Regina. The way Regina has begun to stroke her hair is something Mary Margaret would do, too, but it feels so different. It makes Emma feel so different.
Emma is falling apart again and she finds that the pieces she lets fall in Regina's hands are not the same pieces in her own hands or in her mother's or father's.
"I know," is all that Regina tells Emma, not long after. Emma thinks maybe those two words are all she has ever needed to hear.
"So fix it!" Emma is screaming at Gold, her eyes snapping back and forth between the useless magic globe and Henry's useless magic grandfather. "Fucking fix it, Gold! What good are you, what good is any of this--because I swear to god--"
But Emma storms away before she can make any promises.
Gold is left staring at Regina, and Regina spares him a glance only because of their solidarity in being simultaneously so powerful and so utterly ineffectual. She moves to follow Emma.
Snow moves at the same time. They lock eyes and hesitate, and it is the most awkward thing the rest of them -- Hook up by the bow and Charming behind Snow and even Gold who shakes his head darkly -- have seen in a long time.
It would almost be comical except Snow looks pained and Regina looks equal parts submissive and ferocious and...hell, Hook laughs right out loud anyway.
Snow looks away from Regina first and Regina doesn't spare a word or a glance for any of them before continuing off in Emma's direction, some silent battle won between them.
"Ouch," Hook observes.
Charming rubs Snow's back and only barely manages not to shoot the pirate in the face.
When Regina finds her, it is down below deck in that tiny spot of bunks Regina has claimed. It only cements that Regina was right in being the one to go after Emma. Emma is obviously waiting for her (and this is still so, so strange to the both of them...but there it is).
Emma is pacing the small space like a caged animal, throwing back her hair, the boat teeter totters, creaks, and the effect is that all this tension could burst forth at any moment.
"We told him he wouldn't be alone, Regina," Emma doesn't stop pacing and the boat doesn't stop creaking and rocking. "And now he is, somewhere out there in goddamn Neverland, and who even knows what they're doing to him or why! If Gold can't make that thing work I am gonna find another way."
Regina watches patiently only because she knows exactly how Emma feels. "I know," she says again. "I know."
Finally Emma stops, and looks at Regina. She deflates, shoulders slumped. They look at each other and Emma's eyes are so desperate and Regina's are so sad and in this moment, they know that they are both well and truly Henry's mothers.
"Gold is trying. I know that's hard to believe, but for some reason he is trying." Regina sighs darkly. "Neverland is not a place people like us can just cross into without help."
"People like what? Magic people?"
"Adults," Regina says. And then softer, "parents."
Emma sinks beside Regina on the bunk. "Fuck."
Regina lets a long breath out through her nose and nods.
"Isn't there anything else? Can't we just like, secure the border crossing or something?"
Regina smiles and it looks absolutely nothing like anything Emma has ever seen. It is arresting. It looks like Regina is almost fond of her, despite their multiple layers of impossible situations. Despite the months of clashing on every existential level. Emma loses her words which is just as well, because Regina is talking again.
"No, Sheriff Swan, it doesn't work like that. We have to either have more magic to break through, which is not really an option, or we wait for a weakness to present itself. I know it's awful. I know it is less than ideal."
"But it's all we've got. Yeah, I get it." Emma bends forward, elbows on her knees.
"It's insufferable," Regina says quietly. And then, "We can just sit here for awhile, if you'd like. We can just...miss him together."
And so they do.
Leave it to Mary Margaret to make sure that doing the laundry is thing that actually happens on this rescue mission turned extended stay in fairytale purgatory.
Her mom is folding her dad’s overshirt, stiff from the salt water and pine tar soap that she’s been using to clean all their single sets of clothes with, with the added bonus of making them all feel like they’re on the homestead but without the luxury of firm, dry land. There’s an old chest of elaborate linens that Hook says he “acquired” from Antillia that they sort of rock-paper-scissors over ever since Mary Margaret took it upon herself to pursue this cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness project, presumably just for something to do.
Emma is biting her thumbnail and bouncing her foot incessantly and staring hard at a single floorboard. Mary Margaret endures nigh on twenty five minutes of this before pushing the makeshift laundry basket away and fixing her daughter with a stare that, by the looks of Emma’s shrinking shoulders, appears very motherly indeed.
“Sorry,” Emma says quickly.
"Is there something on your mind, Emma?"
"You mean besides the fact that my son is alone somewhere in Neverland and we are stuck on this stupid ship until further notice which, by the way, is not nearly as cool as the Jolly Roger in Pirates of the Carribean?"
As if they weren't all acutely aware of the situation.
Mary Margaret blinks. Emma sighs.
"Yes," her mother responds. "Besides that."
Emma bounces her foot some more. It's really no use, trying to evade her mother's knowing stare. "Yeah okay," Emma relents. "This might be a weird time to ask, but if you insist."
Mary Margaret furrows her brows, and Emma steels herself a little bit.
"Remember that night at the hospital when Greg first crashed into Storybrooke and David said that thing about Daniel? Regina's fiancé?" The words sound strange in Emma's mouth, half-metallic, like they don't belong there.
"Yes," her mother says slowly.
Emma looks away. Scratches at the side of her boot. "I just wanted to know more about that," she mumbles.
"About Daniel?"
Emma nods imperceptibly. "And Regina."
There is a fairly long silence.
"I guess that's where our story began," Mary Margaret admits. She sounds a little wistful and a lot regretful. There is nothing in the world she will not tell Emma. Her honesty is one of the only things of value that she can still give to her grown daughter.
So she tells Emma about Daniel, about Cora, about Leopold, about Regina, the best way she can. She takes care to note the way her perspective has changed, the way time has made revelatory the things that were only tiny details barely noticed by a child back then. She tells Emma what she can, about how Regina was a woman full of love and full of hope until she was not. About how loss and grief and regret and anger and desperation can bind two people together in inexplicable, indescribable ways.
Emma listens. Her eyebrows knit. She worries at her necklaces.
"The Evil Queen, her story isn't in Henry's book," she tells Mary Margaret after her mother has stitched together what she could of the past and of the present, and they both find that the quilt it makes is far from satisfactory. Emma cannot forget the sadness and the love she felt as they destroyed that trigger; they have followed her in every moment since, something deep inside of her begging her try to (finally) understand. "Why is that?"
Mary Margaret looks at Emma for a long time, like she knows something else that Emma does not. Finally, with some strange sense of resigned loss that Emma doesn't really have context for, her mother says, "Sweetheart, I think maybe Regina is the one you should be asking that question to."
Regina is out gazing at the star-studded black blue again when a familiar, lazy drawl sounds just above and behind her right shoulder.
"Brooding again, Miss Mills? You really must find a new hobby."
Regina rolls her eyes. "I was considering trying my hand at crafting oily, half-baked innuendos, but then I remembered that you already have that covered. One lothario per ship is quite enough."
Hook jumps easily from the quarterdeck, lands beside her with a thud and a creak of leather. "You've obviously not spent much time on a pirate ship, milady."
Regina sighs the deep sigh of the long-suffering. "What do you want, Hook?"
She peers over at him under the starlight, catching just the last vestiges of that jackal grin. Hook shrugs, throwing a casual arm up into the the spindly shrouds. "You looked lonely," he says simply.
It's not that Regina has lost her fight, it is just that she is so bone-tired of fighting. This escapade is the last in a long line of events that have sapped at the reserve of her old self. Hook looks to be in the same position. So instead of hurling another snide remark, Regina swallows against the way her throat is constricting, and nods. Instead of joking or deflecting, Hook remains silent.
They are both so tired of what they've allowed themselves to become.
"Did your mother ever pester you about proverbs, carpe diem, and all that?"
The tension breaks a little, and Regina laughs in a way that sounds like a sob, but it is still decidedly a laugh. "Yes," she says. "'Strike while the iron is hot?'"
"Oh, good! So it wasn't just me. There was another one, what was it..."
"'Better to be feared than loved?'" Regina ventures.
Hook snaps, nods. "Yes, that was one of them. Smart woman, your mother."
Regina gives a sigh. She cocks her head, watches the blue black undulate vastly. "Indeed."
There is a pause, and then Hook shifts, another slow creak of well-worn leather. "I know you had a complicated relationship with Cora," he says. "I know you are probably still trying to get your wits about you, trying to figure out how you feel about everything that's happened. I mean," he laughs, big and bright and genuine, "here we are, sailing around Neverland with the Charmings and Rumplestiltskin -- the objects of our tired vengeance, respectively -- and yet..."
Hook drops his chin onto his fist as if deep in thought. He is making a bit of a show, and Regina eyes him curiously. "What are you getting at, Casanova?" Her voice still comes off queenly enough, she decides.
Hook smiles. "I am saying our worlds are a grand and fickle place, Your Majesty. Maybe we just...start again? I know you're worried about Henry. Perhaps we should accept comfort and support where we can." He glances to Regina, and then back out at the water. "Maybe it's all right to keep our enemies closer, this time 'round."
Regina has spent decades cultivating the perfect, blank face. "What on earth do you mean?"
Hook just tilts his head at her knowingly, dark eyebrows raising above dark-lined eyes. "I play with her, but it's just for a laugh. I'm a pirate. She doesn't need games. She needs something real. Like you do. Like your son does." He thinks about Bae and about Milah, about what he wouldn't do for a second chance.
Regina feels her face grow hot. She decides not to play dumb, because neither of them will buy it. It is possible that she is having a hard time reconciling this advice with the man giving it, but there is no mistaking the way her heart starts to hope. She rolls her eyes again though, to regain some composure. "My mother was right," she huffs finally, "in what she always told me about you."
"Handsome?" he asks, turning toward her. "Dashing? Cunning? Unimaginable stamina?"
"Pretty to look at, but lacking in couth or substance," Regina challenges with a narrowed brow. "Like a parrot."
Hook grins widely again, but then his face settles into something sparkling and serious. Their demons are so similar, Regina thinks, despite herself.
Regina wants to believe that beneath it all, this man, the man she is seeing in this moment, is the one her mother befriended for so many long, long years. She thinks of Snow and of Emma and Henry and she wants to believe that they can really see her, too.
"Take one last bit of advice from your mother. Carpe the bloody diem, Regina," Hook says. "While you still can."
Regina mutters something about him being incorrigible under her breath, but when she smiles, she makes sure the pirate can see it.
The scuffle of boots gives her away. Emma pokes her head beneath the hatch.
"Hi," Regina says, putting aside a tiny, careworn book.
Emma steps down carefully, closes the hatch. "I brought, uh...well, it's definitely a drink of some kind," Emma tells her, glancing at the dusty bottle in her hand. "Hook gave it to me. I'm assuming it contains something fermented."
"How courteous of him."
"Right? That's what I said. But I mean, let's wait until we try it to give him any kudos."
Regina smiles. Emma is still getting used to the way it looks so genuine.
"What are you reading?" Emma asks, stuffing her free hand into her pocket because for some reason she's too nervous to sit down yet.
Regina's fingers slide against the book's spine. "Arabian Nights. Also on loan from the ship's captain."
"He's being unnaturally hospitable," Emma observes.
"I think like he said, he just needed to be reminded that he could be." Regina's eyes don't waver a bit, and Emma shifts, side to side.
She decides this might be a good time to crack open that bottle.
"I wanted to ask you something."
They are each two shots down. The bottle turned out to contain some really strong bumbo, spiced to high heaven, and not all that bad for having been stashed in the hull for like two decades.
Regina watches Emma fidget with her empty glass.
"I heard you had a fiancé once named Daniel."
It is not what Regina was expecting to hear. She didn't know what she was expecting to hear, but it was not that. Something green and sweet-smelling overwhelms her senses for the length of one heartbeat; it turns black and bitter on the next. She closes her eyes and tries to remember how she doesn't need to snap in half. She doesn't need to be angry anymore.
"He worked in our stables. We were engaged for all of five minutes before my mother killed him in front of me," Regina manages. "Not exactly a lengthy engagement.”
The horror on Emma’s face is not as pronounced as it had been the first time, when her mother told her, but hearing it from Regina weighs so much heavier.
It is still satisfying to Regina, how Emma's face twists. In a perverse sort of way.
Regina sips the bumbo, letting the silence ride this out. Something so very deep inside of her, something that has barely moved since she set foot on this boat, cannot help but want Emma to feel uncomfortable. Regina has been so terribly sad, so unimaginably alone, for such a long time. All she has ever wanted was for someone to climb down that sadness and sit with her a while.
Emma has had a part in Regina's story since before she was born, and she has barely known it until now.
"But you...loved him?" Emma asks, still averting her eyes, when the silence becomes too much.
When Regina responds, it is in a raw voice that Emma feels she has no business hearing. "With all my heart," she says. "I've never stopped."
Emma frowns. This conversation is already too much. She keeps talking. "David said that he came back, that you--that you had to..."
"Kill him? Again?" Regina sucks in some air, tilts her head, and the force of her gaze almost makes Emma flinch. "Yes." Regina keeps her voice conversational, as if daring Emma to come any closer. "He was dangerous. He...was not himself. Whale..." She unsticks her throat. "Anyway. Henry was there."
So often in the past Regina's words have sounded scripted and insincere, but right now, they just sound hollow. Emma has tried to not think of Neal but she thinks of him now, briefly, how she's lost him twice, too, and how it feels like...well, like a goddamn fairytale compared to what Regina is telling her.
Emma wants to ask something else, but it’s more sensitive. It is frighteningly personal, potentially destructive. She asks anyway because she’s just thrown back another mouthful from the bottle and the sickly burn gives her courage. She just needs to understand, for herself and for her parents and for Henry. For Regina. If they find a way out of this, they are going to have to figure out what it means to be a family.
Emma just needs to understand. “You married my mom’s father, but you didn’t want to, did you?”
Even though Regina hates this moment fiercely, she cannot bring herself hate Emma for it. “What do you think,” she whispers.
Emma blinks. “I don’t know," she whispers back, so softly. "That’s why I’m asking." Not asking before this moment, Emma thinks, may have just been her biggest oversight of all.
“Leopold loved his kingdom and his daughter. That love did not extend to me. I just wanted a life that was mine.”
“What happened?”
Regina wishes she could stop talking, but the words just come and come and come. If Emma is going to begin to hate her again, Regina wants it to be without the veil. “There was not a single way in which he did not ignore me or resent me for not being Snow's mother," Regina tells Emma. "I tried, but I had so little left in me. I was a doll of a wife and a doll of a mother for more than a decade and it killed me far more slowly than the merciful, quick death that I gave to him."
Emma isn’t sure what to say. She feels stunned. She grasps at something, anything honest, to keep Regina talking. To keep herself understanding. “You weren’t....you couldn’t have been much older than she was." The truth and the horror and the absurdity, it is so much to try to accept. "This was...your life. Your future.”
Regina's mouth curves into a pained smile that Emma can't keep looking at, so she turns her face away. “You're beginning to understand.”
Emma stares into her empty glass. Her head is swimming. Regina’s hand is resting only a few inches away from her own. She feels angry and uncomfortable and so soul-numbingly sorry and she keeps having this stupid, stupid urge to slide her fingers across Regina's. She wants to tear their lives down and build them back up in a way that won't hurt them anymore. “This was after Daniel?”
“Immediately after," Regina says, as Emma pulls the scattered pieces together. "We were going to run away together, but my mother wanted me to be Queen. That's why she killed him. I tried to run away again so many times before the wedding. My mother was...persuasive in making me stay.” She could show Emma the scars, the visible ones, if she ever intended to show anyone at all. Some of them are from her mother and some of them are from herself and she will never be able to recall, after so many long years, which are which anymore. “She told me that it was because she loved me. Knew what was best for me. She kept me in a cage my whole life. I never wanted to be like her."
Emma had not been there when Cora died. She has only her own mother's words in her head: there were other paths. She killed my mother, but Cora was a mother too, Emma. I spent my life wanting to keep Regina and Cora together and then I tore them apart and now all four of us have been without our mothers and without our children, don't you see? None of this ever should have happened.
"And now I'm exactly like she was," Regina says. "I blackened myself with magic and hatred. The only difference is I always had my heart, and maybe that means I'm even worse."
"No," Emma says, more suddenly and more loudly than she meant to. She is breathing hard and fast. Regina sounds unrepentant, but Emma knows she has to say something. "I don't believe that. And despite what she did, she loved you because you are her kid, Regina, and we both know that there is nothing we wouldn't do for our children."
Regina looks away. She takes another drink. Even in the dimly-lit space, Emma can see the tears in her eyes. Regina pays no attention to them, as if they are merely incidental.
"And I know you worry that you're like her in the worst ways, that you've been the sort of mother to Henry that she was to you. I know you loved her anyway and you hated all of us because we didn’t believe you, because we refused to see that you were trying, but drowning."
The drink doesn't burn enough. Regina twists her tongue against the taste of it, willing the fire to spread farther. She wishes she didn't long for the things Emma is saying even as she says them. She wishes her mother's last words and last look were things she could just stop caring about, because everything is over, done, and she still doesn't know how to move on (this has been her problem all along).
"And I won't be able to do anything except apologize the best I can for that but...you aren't her, Regina, you're..." And Emma just wrings her hands, her eyes growing desperate. She wishes she could show Regina that look on Henry's face, those times she was his mother, those times she was Regina. To remind her about what she has now, what she has worked for. Emma finds that in this moment she barely cares about the curse or about her destiny, about evil queens or about who to blame or why she never had a family, why she was always, always alone.
(Regina was alone, too.)
Everything is so much more complicated than anything should ever be and Emma wants to run away and she wants to stay and more than anything, she just wants a chance to finally start over.
Regina feels like her lungs are collapsing, like her mind is caving in on her. "Emma," she whispers. "You have no idea who I am."
The tone should be enough to set a blush to Emma's cheeks. It doesn't. It makes Emma stare harder. Emma keeps staring, and Regina raises her head to meet Emma's light eyes, stares back, and neither of them are backing down.
"Except yeah, still I think that I do," Emma breathes. "There was just so much of you I didn't understand."
Regina's eyes slip lower, land on Emma's mouth. For decades now, Regina has taken from others what she doesn't have and cannot survive without. It has become about what will keep her alive, keep her feeling, because despite everything, there is something inside of her that refuses to die.
She is so tired of trying and she misses her son so badly. She is ashamed and defiant of this whole conversation and she wishes, for just a moment, that she had enough strength to call up a bit of her old darkness to hide behind. Because that, at least, would be familiar. In the silence between them, Regina remembers Hook's advice and her mother's last words and she isn't sure what any of it is supposed to actually mean, anymore.
Regina is certain that all the breath and all the reason have gone from her body, and so she lurches forward as the boat rocks beneath them, and pulls Emma's mouth to her own.
Their lips barely touch and Regina melts. She twists her hand into Emma's shirt, presses in, just above her heart. There is something Regina wants there, something she needs so desperately, and finally, maybe, things are starting to fill with oxygen, to turn right side up--
But Emma pushes her away.
It happens like an involuntary reflex, the way the rejection makes Regina's other hand snake immediately around Emma's throat and begin to squeeze.
She catches herself in time, before Emma can react. That bottle between them clatters away half empty and Regina is disappearing through the hatch before it even stops rolling across the floor. Emma will have tiny red crescents denting the column of her throat from Regina's nails, but nothing more (it will feel like enough of a reminder, some sort of metaphor she cannot decipher).
The hatch rattles as it slams and Emma is left with a deep ringing in her ears. All she can think about is that taste of apples in her mouth, the hollow way her chest aches. All she can think about is how it wasn't supposed to happen like this, whatever is between her and her son’s mother. Then again, she thinks bitterly, absolutely nothing in their lives have ever happened they way they had hoped or intended.
Thankfully for all souls on board, Regina runs into no one as she paces and paces the deck. The air feels colder now than it has since they got here. Regina knows, in the same way she knows about the magic in her veins, that they are further away from finding Henry tonight than they were this morning. She knows, in the same way she knows about that magic, that the further away Emma and Regina get from one another, the farther away their son will get from both of them. Somehow, someway, this is true, and it is like vexing over a mathematical equation in which half the numbers are missing.
It has something to do with Neverland and nothing at all to do with Neverland and Regina cannot stop feeling Emma's lips, cannot stop her newly liable heart from racing, aching, longing.
Hours pass, and she paces.
Emma doesn't leave the hull bunk. She considers it, and then decides that Regina has to sleep sometime, so she waits.
And then she reconsiders.
Emma considers and reconsiders bolting until she realizes that she will not be able to rest tonight, she will not be able to breathe tonight, until she gets the chance to talk to Regina again. She wonders, as she lights the oil lamp and settles in to wait (because she knows better than to go searching in this particular situation), if this is just the last in a series of long, scary, and difficult decisions that have enabled her to grow roots.
She remembers, months ago, how Regina had accused her of having none. She scowls because Regina had been fucking awful, but it had been true.
It isn't true anymore.
Emma toys with her necklaces as she waits. She has memorized the indentations of the tiny swan, can feel where her thumb has run the metal smooth over the years. There has rarely been a day where she's taken it off, ever since Neal gave it to her. Emma still doesn’t know what to think about how her entire life, the one meaningful relationship she ever had, had always been beyond her control. Everyone had called it destiny, but it feels more like thievery. She had been born in the Enchanted Forest into a preexisting fate (like Regina), batted off into a non-magical world only to grow up hard, untrusting, before Henry pulled her right back in. And she was supposed to be happy about it, the way everyone told her she was the only hope to saving this screwed up world that she cared so little about? Because she has been there now, and she cannot admit it to her mother or to her father, but she doesn't think she ever wants to go back. She might have not been alone there, but she also might have been some simpering princess, maybe married off as a teenager to someone older than her father, like Regina was. Emma loves her parents and they’d have tried their best, but every world has its inherent injustices, and none moreso than the fucking Enchanted Forest.
Emma yanks at the necklace. It comes apart, the thin gold chain sliding from her neck, draping across her hand. It swings like a pendulum and Emma watches it glitter in the lamplight.
Maybe she can come to terms with Neal being taken away again. Maybe they were never really meant to be in each other's lives long enough to be honest with one another. Probably Neal was just another pawn that she was foolish enough to think she could keep (like Daniel).
But Henry. Losing her son again is not an option. She knows now that she will pick Henry first time and time again, and so will Regina, every time, and that has to mean something.
Emma's parents are really good at finding one another. Apparently, it is what her family does best. Henry found her, and so she will find Henry. She will find Henry and she will find Regina, too, somewhere underneath all this hurt, and then--
And then they'll see what can be done about starting over. Because Emma broke Regina’s curse and Regina broke Emma’s family and this is a circle that must be near its end, or near its beginning, because there is nothing to do now but start over.
It is perfect timing, how Emma's heart glows and beats strong with resolution just as the roof hatch opens.
She's off her feet in an instant, holding a hand up to stop Regina before she leaves again or before she says anything at all. "Wait, no stop."
Regina peers down at her, fingers curling against the leather strap of the hatch opening. Her eyes are dark, darker even than before, but she makes no movement one way or the other, so Emma takes a deep breath. She gathers up all the impossible fathoms and the decades between them, and pushes them aside.
“I think I just wasn’t ready yet,” Emma says. “I think I wasn’t ready to understand all of this. To understand you. But I wanted to and I needed to, so I just...” Emma drops her hands uselessly. “Please just come back down here?”
So Regina does. When she steps off that last ladder rung, Emma comes up beside her. Regina is a fire that has burnt itself out and she has to choose between defiance and conservation in this moment, so she accepts the hand that curls around her forearm.
“I’m sorry,” Regina whispers. She doesn’t dare try to touch Emma again, but her eyes flicker across the marks at her throat, watching Emma swallow.
“We can talk about that,” Emma says, making a valiant effort to keep her voice steady. “I want to talk about that. But first there’s just--there’s one more thing I need to say, okay? Just don’t--don’t talk. Let me try to get this out.”
It is Regina’s turn to swallow. She nods. Emma's hand falls away.
There is something inside of Emma bubbling up and bubbling up, spilling over the edges of her. It has been spilling over the edges of her for months, maybe for her whole miserable life, and it’s the last fucking piece of twisted metal that she is going to throw onto this colossal, existential trainwreck, but she is going to do it. So that she can breathe. So that they can start again.
“You took away the life I could have had,” she tells Regina. Regina marvels, reluctantly, at how Emma’s voice has strengthened in just these last moments. How her bright eyes flash with courage and with something stronger that Regina can’t even place. Regina is envious, astonished, at how Emma Swan seems to have an abundance of all the things she herself so severely lacks.
“You ruined my family and you ruined families you didn’t even know,” Emma says. “You tried to kill my parents. You cursed away the free will from a land that had so little of it in the first place. You made our son feel like he was crazy at one of the most formative times in his childhood. You made me feel crazy. Everything you did these last few months in Storybrooke, god, Regina, I can’t even...” Emma’s eyes fill up with desperation and she doesn’t even need to mention any of it, Graham or Kathryn or the way Regina used and manipulated everyone including her own son, any of it.
Regina turns her face away.
“I don’t even know all of the things you did when you were Queen because I just...I only know Regina. And I know that’s complicated, to say the least, especially when you started trying.” Emma takes another deep breath, and fueled by something deep inside her bones, something that clings to her blood like a legacy, she presses on. “But you know what? All these months that I hated who you were and the choices you were making, there were still so many mornings where I’d have coffee at Mary Margaret’s table, I’d sit there and I’d drink my damn coffee and I’d think--I’d think about how even after everything you put everyone through, even though I still don’t know how to even begin to forgive you for that, I’d sit at that table and I’d still hope that wherever you were, you were feeling love. That you hadn’t given up. Because Henry believed in you. Because you are a human being and you were hurt beyond what you thought was reparable, and if you don’t deserve a break from that, Regina, then I don’t even know where that leaves the rest of us.”
Regina stares at Emma, at the woman, the child, that was always destined to undo the curse that should have brought her something close to happiness. She’d killed her father, the thing she loved most, to cast that curse. She’d given her whole soul to her hatred and to her hopelessness and her father had been right, her only friend had been right, Mary Margaret had been right: the farther she went and the more she took, the emptier she became.
And how infuriating it should have been to realize in this moment that Snow White had in fact, from the very beginning, done both: taken everything away from Regina and given her everything she could ever want or need.
Regina stares at Emma. Emma, because Henry.
Before, Regina would have let loose her venom because of her inability to cope with realization. Now, she just sits in silence. She lets Emma’s words mean something, because yes, the scope of the devastation she has caused is something she is at last beginning to comprehend.
Because yes, her hurt had always been so much more than she could ever hold.
“I didn’t understand,” Emma whispers. She thinks about all the places they connect that she just didn’t want to see before. She thinks about that young woman who saved her mother's life, how she would give so much to be able to meet her, to thank her.
“Neither did I,” Regina admits, and the words seem simultaneously hopelessly inadequate and far too immense to be coming from her throat. It is a wonder she doesn’t choke on them completely.
When she looks at Emma again, suddenly it isn't just Henry that Regina sees. It is Emma's mother, for once. It is Snow White. It is everything she destroyed and how it can never be all the way fixed and Regina tries, at least, to consider this all again in the silence before she speaks. It will be difficult for her to ever understand how sometimes, the ends do not justify the means. She has regrets, but they are buried so very far below her surface.
She still thinks that she is sorry.
“Emma,” Regina says, quietly. “What is it that you want the very most? If you could have anything in the world, with certainty?”
Emma wants to be able to say that what she desires most is everything that Regina took, to go back and change everything, but it just isn't true. She can't help it: truthfully, Emma's mind slips to the way Henry’s eyes light up when he runs to hug Regina, how Regina’s eyes snap shut and the smile just melts across her lips like she’s been given another chance all over again every time his tiny arms encircle her. Her mind slips to Henry in the morning, in Mary Margaret's apartment in Storybrooke, sleepy eyes and fire-bright hair and hey mom, what’s for breakfast?
They can be better, can be stronger, together. Didn’t they just prove that they can fix everyone and everything if only they stop dwelling and move forward?
Would it really be so impossible to just start again?
“I want to know it’s not too late for any of us,” Emma says. “I want to know that soon this fucking eternal night will end and dawn will come and we’ll be able to rescue our son and take him home. I want to know that this is for keeps. This...family.”
“Family,” Regina repeats.
Their gazes lock, and it isn’t really a revelation, this moment between them. It is too soft, too calm for that. It’s more like seeds falling into a line of damp earth, a key clicking finally into place.
Regina smiles that new smile again, and Emma's heart cannot stand it: she closes the space between them to kiss it.
When she eases away, she says, "I was scared. When you did that before. There's something...I can feel something, when you get close. It scares me so I pushed it away."
Regina just nods, eyes closed. She keeps a palm to Emma's cheek just to hold steady. "Yes," she breathes. "That's the magic, dear."
Emma's brow furrows. "Magic," she repeats faintly, thinking about the mines again. It is endlessly uncomfortable to Emma, knowing that she has magic inside of her without her permission. Like it is some sort of viral invasion or an unwanted inherited title.
Regina opens her eyes, gives a slow nod. "I told you before, Emma. Your magic is unique. You can feel mine, too, can't you?"
But it isn't really a question, because Regina knows the answer. Emma meets Regina's eyes in confirmation anyway.
"No wonder you were scared," Regina mutters.
Emma almost wants to hate that hand on her cheek, how it tucks itself more tightly against her skin when Emma doesn't brush it away. Regina almost hates herself for doing it.
But here they are, and still, meeting no resistance, Regina slides her hands back into the mess of Emma’s hair. Emma doesn’t know what will happen if she touches Regina again and means it, so she stays safe, turning only to rest her temple against the inside of Regina’s wrist. She lets out long, shaky breaths, one after another after another, and Regina remains still, trying to pretend it all doesn’t leave her dizzy, too.
They stay like this long into the unending night.
----