Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Inspiration for this oneshot came from a blog about theories for Once Upon A Time. I hope you'll like it! It's mostly Regina's POV. Reviews are appreciated as well :)
Emma and Regina were swaying back and forth to the gentle, dulcet tones of Norah Jones' voice. Their cheeks rested together, and Emma inhaled deeply, taking in her bride's apple scent. "I love you so much," Emma whispered in Regina's ear. "You know that right?"
She could practically feel Regina's eye roll. Chuckling, she listened as Regina offered her a sassy retort. "What do you think?"
Emma laughed. "I knew you would answer like that."
"Then why'd you ask?" Regina asked sarcastically.
"Because I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice," she replied, her voice slightly muffled by Regina's raven hair. She tilted her cheek so she could place a gentle kiss beneath Regina's earlobe. "I do love it when you use that sassy sarcasm of yours." Deep down, though, she knew the sarcasm was a shield. A shield that she built up after her former fiancé, Daniel left her. She had been so resistant to love afterwards. Emma tried for over a year to get her now-bride to even consider saying "yes" to a date with her.
However Regina gradually learned to love again and open her heart.
Moving her cheek back, Regina touched Emma's rosy cheek and murmured, "I will always love you. Just like I said in my vows. I will be loyal to you until we die. No matter what."
Feeling overwhelmed with emoting and deep joy, Emma leaned forward and passionately kissed her wife. "I think I knew that."
12 Years Later
"Henry!" Regina called to her eleven year old son. "Are you ready to go?" She looked in her pursed to see if she had the new leather-bound journal she was giving as a gift. Looking at it forlornly, she sighed. Today, like every day four, sometimes five days a week was weighing down on her shoulders. Even though the weight was heavy, she wished that she could visit every day, but weekends were closed to visitors.
She prayed her wife would like the gift. She had told Regina that she needed another one (she had filled all the other ones) so she hoped this one would suffice. It was a beautiful brown book decorated with floral patterns set into the leather. Hopefully she would like it.
"Yep. Ready, Mom," Henry said, coming in the mudroom. In his arms he held a large book of fairytales with swirling gold letters that read Once Upon A Time. It was a book from his childhood that he kept throughout the years. Regina remembered fondly reading the stories to him when he was just a toddler. The fact the book remained with him throughout the years touched her. She brushed some of his shaggy hair out of his face. He bit his lip, his eyes blank. "Let's get going."
She leaned over and kissed the top of his head.
They got in the car and began pulling out of their driveway. As they drove through the pine-tree lined roads of Maine in silence, Regina felt her heart grow heavier. Things had become so hard lately. Henry was quieter than normal and rarely did he speak with her. He just shut her out, keeping himself isolated from her. She stole glances toward her son whenever she could. Henry didn't miss the looks and huffed. "What, Mom?" he grunted.
She sighed with sadness. "I'm just worried about your," she explained gently. "You've locked yourself in your room for —"
He interrupted her. "I'm fine," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "I just wanna go see Mom. And Aunt Ruby. She said she would meet us there."
At a stoplight, Regina took her son's hand. "We'll be there soon," she murmured.
XXXXX
"How is she today, Dr. Blanchard?" Regina asked as she and Henry were walking down the stark hallway towards the rec room at Benson Mental Health Facility. Henry was walking beside her, a grim expression on his face and completely silent. She knew instinctually that he was listening, though. He was always listening when it came to his mother.
Mary-Margaret Blanchard, the kind-hearted, lead doctor at the hospital grimaced as she met Regina's eyes. With a small shake of her head, she communicated nonverbally that they should discuss the matter later, when Henry was not around. Heart clenching, Regina nodded. Tears began to prick at the back of her eyes. The look in the doctor's eyes told her that the answer to the question was not a happy one.
They came to the door of the rec room and Henry peeked excitedly through the glass. Regina glanced in where she saw familiar faces. There was David Nolan, the head orderly married to Dr. Blanchard, helping a patient; Mr. Gold, a patient, and his wife, Lacey who was visiting him; and Ruby, Henry's godmother, who was already sitting at the table waiting for Regina and Henry.
Henry looked up at his mother with a hopeful look in his eyes. "Can I go in, Mom?" he asked excitedly.
Leaning down, she kissed his cheek and nodded her permission. "Go ahead," she murmured. "I'm just going to talk to Dr. Blanchard, and I'll be right behind you."
When her son had bounded off into the rec room, Regina squeezed her eyes shut a moment before turning back to the sympathetic Dr. Blanchard. With shaking hands, she took a deep breath. "So…" Her voice trailed off. She didn't know how she was going to get through this. It was very clear by the way Dr. Blanchard had looked at her and wanted to talk to her without Henry present that something was not right. "What's — what's going on?" she asked hoarsely.
"Why don't we go talk about this in my office?" Dr. Blanchard said tenderly. "This is something you'll want to be sitting down for."
XXXXX
"How are you today, Emma?" Red asked gently, taking her hand.
Emma Swan looked at Ruby, better known as Red Riding Hood, and smirked. "I'm just waiting for Henry to come around," she said wistfully, looking out the window. "Regina hasn't let him come see me in forever! I can't believe I didn't know she was the Evil Queen. All those times Henry tried to tell me…" She sighed. Moving her blonde hair out of her face, she smiled. She couldn't wait to see Henry. Even though she had only met her son she had given up for adoption a year ago, the boy was the most important person in her life now.
And her life had certainly taken an interesting turn.
Henry had tried to convince her that she was the daughter of Prince Charming and Snow White, the Savior who would free all the fairy tale characters from the Curse cast by Regina, the Evil Queen. It took her a year to believe him. And that was only after Regina had poisoned him with an apple tart meant for Emma.
When she looked back at Red and saw the sad expression on her face, she frowned. "Red? What's wrong?" she asked. There were clearly tears burning in Red's eyes. Why, though, Emma had no idea. She leaned forward and took her hand. "Red, you can talk to me if there's something going on. What is it?"
Red took a deep breath and opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, an excited voice sounded from behind Emma.
"Mom!"
Turning in her seat, Emma grinned as she saw her son bounding towards her, the book of fairytales he loved so much in his arms. She rose from her seat and wrapped her arms around Henry as he threw his arms around her waist. "Hey, kid!" she said happily. "You manage to ditch the Queen for a little while?"
Something flashed in her son's expression — was it sadness? — and his eyes met Red's eyes. She bit her crimson lip and shook her head. Henry nodded and turned back to Emma again. The possible sadness went away and was replaced with a bright grin. "So I thought we could read some of these today," he said, sitting down between Emma's chair and Red's. "Is that cool?"
Emma sat back down and nodded. "Oh, we should invite Rumple and Belle to read with us," she said. "Your grandparents are busy right now, but I'm sure Belle would love to listen. Rumple might be a little bit harder, but he's been in a decent mood today, so maybe he'll be up for it."
Red stood and jerked her thumb in the direction of Belle and Rumplestiltskin. "I'll go ask them," she said quietly. Her voice was somewhat hoarse. Emma was going to ask her again what was wrong, but Red disappeared before she could ask her.
Shrugging, she turned back to Henry and asked, "Which story do we want to read first?"
Thumbing through the pages, Henry bit his lip in contemplation. "What about the story of Aurora? We haven't done that one in awhile."
Ruffling his hair, Emma leaned back in her seat and nodded. "Sounds good," she said with a smile as Henry began to read aloud.
XXXXX
Regina sat down in the armchair in Dr. Blanchard's office. She glanced around the room as she folded her hands on top of her crossed legs. The doctor closed the door to her office before walking over to sit in the armchair opposite Regina. She, too, folded her hands and asked, "Is there anything I can —"
"No," Regina said, harsher than intended. "I just want to know…" She took a deep breath and choked on the air. She was fighting the stinging tears that were still attempting to break the levees behind her eyes. Trying again, she found her voice, albeit more scratchy than before. "I just want to know what's going on with my wife."
Dr. Blanchard nodded. "Of course. As you know, the last few weeks you've been coming, Emma has been less lucid than in the past," she said. "In the three years she's been here, this is probably the worst the delusions have been."
Thoughts of the past years started filtering back into Regina's mind. Memories of Emma as she had always been — full of life, strong, beautiful — and then the memories of things that hurt worse than any amount of physical pain she would ever feel. This heartache was so crippling that it made Regina cry into her pillow most nights.
Emma's delusions had started around five years ago, gradually getting worse over the passing years. They had been a problem then, but it wasn't until Henry's eighth birthday party that things had begun to get truly out of hand.
"Baby, can you —" Regina began as she headed into the kitchen to grab more fruit punch for Henry and his friends who were with Ruby. When she entered the kitchen though, she dropped the pitcher to the ground when she saw her wife poised angrily in front of her, a knife held out and ready to strike at any moment. Her expression was filled with hate as she glared at Regina. "Emma! What the hell are you doing?"
"You! You're the reason Henry ate the tart and got poisoned!" she hissed viciously. "How could you?"
Regina's heart sank. It was another one of Emma's episodes. They had been coming more and more frequently now. But never had Emma looked at her with such venom when she was having one. She knew her wife had been seeing her as the Evil Queen and was thinking of herself as "The Savior" of a realm of fairytale characters. But never had the delusion crossed into something this serious. Never had Emma raised a weapon against her like this.
Regina put her hands up and shook her head. "Emma," she whispered. "Baby…you know who I am. You know me!"
"I know you poisoned my son!"
"No, Baby," Regina said, tears starting to trickle down her cheeks. "Emma, you're having an episode. It's not real. I'm not the Evil Queen. I'm your wife. Henry is our son!" Hesitantly, she walked forward and tried getting closer to Emma. "Baby, you know who I am. We've been married almost ten years. We have a life together." She looked around wildly until her eyes fell on a family photo of her, Emma, and Henry on the fridge door. Hurriedly, she grabbed it and held it up for Emma to see. Pointing at the smiling faces of their family on the photo, Regina tried smiling through her tears at her wife. "See? It's us, us and Henry."
Glaring, Emma's gaze switched from Regina's face to look at the picture. She lowered the knife to her side and moved closer to observe the photo more carefully. Her brow furrowed as she studied the photo. Hesitantly, Regina moved closer to her wife, hoping to take the knife from her grasp. As her fingers nearly reached the hilt of the knife, Emma's face shot up and her eyes bored viciously into Regina's.
"This isn't real!" she spat. "You used magic to create it! You'll pay for what you did to Henry!"
"Emma, wait!" Regina cried as Emma brought the knife back up to jam into her wife's abdomen.
The scar on Regina's stomach tingled as she gulped. Meeting Dr. Blanchard's eyes, she blinked several times before speaking. "So, the delusions are worse now?" Her voice was hoarse. "What - what does that mean? She was lucid twice this last week. She talked - she talked about coming home. And she knows what she did was wrong. I think if a judge heard her story, she would let her come home."
Dr. Blanchard nodded. "When she's lucid, it's true that she shows extreme remorse for what happened," she said. "But the problem is when she's lucid. And lately that hasn't been often. She seems to be living in the fairy tale world she's created around eighty, maybe eighty-five percent of time. She firmly believes in that time that I am Snow White or Mr. Gold is Rumplestiltskin. And…" Her voice trailed off and Regina gulped, knowing what she was going to say.
"She hates me," she whispered.
The doctor sighed and looked at Regina empathetically. "You need to remember that these delusions are not her," she said. "Your wife is very unwell. When she's lucid she knows who you are and remembers your whole life together. It's only when she's in the state of delusion —"
"Spare me the rest of the explanation," she snapped, looking away from the doctor and out the window.
"Emma loves you, Regina," she said.
"Then how did I become 'the Evil Queen' to her?" Regina murmured. Her wife's doctor was silent for a stretch of time while she allowed Regina to sit and think. Tears were burning behind her eyes, fierce and coal-hot, but she was refusing to let them fall. If she did, she would begin crying so uncontrollably she wouldn't be able to stop. The best way she could figure to keep herself from crying was to talk. Laughing bitterly, she said, "Did she feel that way when things were…when she wasn't like…this?"
"You need to remember: these delusions are not real," Dr. Blanchard assured. "Those aren't her feelings. When she's —"
Regina's eyes flashed as she lashed out viciously at Dr. Blanchard. "Then what are they?" she hissed. "The feelings must be coming from somewhere!"
"I wish there was some way to tell you otherwise, but the reality of it is they aren't coming from anywhere," Dr. Blanchard said. "I know this has been a hard three years for you and Henry. There is no easy way to deal with something like this. But you're strong. I've never seen a family member do so well with such a terrible situation. Just remember that you are still the woman Emma married, that she loves you, that she's still there."
With a hard look at the doctor, she gritted her teeth. "What is her prognosis?" she asked.
This was when Dr. Blanchard's expression changed dramatically. It made Regina realize that something was going on that was the real reason they had needed to speak in private, with Henry out of the room.
"At this point, Emma's delusions are coming more frequently and lasting longer during the day," Dr. Blanchard explained. "We don't know when they're going to come, and we don't know of any way to stop them. If she has an episode, we don't know if she'll turn violent, or if she'll remain docile. What I'm trying to say is we don't know when she'll get better." She paused, unsure of how to form the words to deliver the news to Regina. "Or…if she will."
Regina fingered the leather-bound journal inside her purse. The tears were burning even fiercer behind her eyes, her vision gradually becoming blurrier. With a tight throat, she looked down at her lap. "If," she murmured, managing to choke her way past the lump in her throat. The thoughts of never having Emma at home with her and Henry, of never laying in each other's arms, or of never kissing each other goodnight before shutting the lights off filled her head. She forced herself to take a deep, cleansing breath. Shaking her head, she finally looked up to meet Dr. Blanchard's eyes. She dug into her bag and pulled out the journal. "Will - will you give this to her when she's having a lucid day?" she asked. "I - I want her to know it's from me…not the Evil Queen."
Dr. Blanchard smiled. "Try giving it to her," she said. "Maybe it will give her something to hold onto with the delusion when it hits. She could see it as the Queen doing something kind for her."
Reluctantly Regina followed Dr. Blanchard back out of her office and towards the rec room. Regina nervously clutched her wife's gift in her hands and looked ahead of her wordlessly. As the doctor was opening the door, the first thing Regina saw was her son, the book of fairytales he had brought open and him reading aloud. There was a whole crowd around him including Ruby, Mr. Gold and his wife, and Emma herself. Her heart tightened in her chest, the usual dull ache around the region turning to a hard and deeply stabbing ache. Emma's expression as she looked at Henry was one of complete normalcy. It was clear the love she held for their son, and if anyone were unaware of where she was, they wouldn't know she was having delusions.
The only reason Regina was reminded of it at that moment Emma was unwell was when she looked up and saw her. Immediately a hostile glint overtook her eyes, and her body language became aggressive. Henry noticed his mother's change in body language and stopped reading. He looked to Regina with worry on his face.
"Alright," David Nolan said, gesturing to the group of people gathered around Henry. "Let's let Emma visit with her family, everyone." He started leading people away, a kind smile on his face as he and Lacey led Mr. Gold towards the window once more. The rest of the people dispersed, save for Ruby and Henry.
Hesitantly, Regina approached the table with the journal clutched tightly in her grasp. "Hello, Emma," she said softly.
"Madame Mayor," Emma said in greeting, her tone even and cold.
Regina gulped past the ever-growing lump in her throat once more as she and Dr. Blanchard sat down in two of the other chairs at the table. She took a deep breath before holding out the journal for Emma. "This is — this is for you," she managed, her voice almost inaudible as she spoke. The look in her wife's eye was almost too painful for her to keep holding the gaze. Even worse was the knowledge she might know there were tears that were constantly threatening to spill out. Emma took the journal and was eyeing it like it were a poisoned apple. "You told me you needed another journal to write in, so —"
"An interesting peace offering," Emma interrupted.
A tense air took over the group of people and Regina felt her hands begin to shake. "I hope you like it," she tried again. "You told me you liked the leather ones, so I…" Her voice trailed off as Emma's look harshened even more.
"Don't try and act like something like this will make me like you," Emma snapped, looking at the offered journal as if it were a knife poised to slit her throat. "You poisoned Henry. He could have died." Regina tried to speak, but the moment she opened her mouth, her wife was speeding on. "You're sick, you know? I should be keeping my son ten thousand miles away from you. But he wants to see you, so I'll let him. I hope someday he'll see what a disease you are to —"
"Mom!" Henry gasped, looking at Emma with shock. His head swung back around to look at Regina. The expression on his face was one of empathy, wanting to take the hurt away from her if he could.
But even the comfort her son was trying to offer her couldn't help Regina. She got to her feet as calmly as she could and kept her gaze averted from everyone. "I have to use the restroom," she mumbled hastily. She hurried towards the door to the rec room and burst out, unable to keep her tears in any longer. Pushing through the door to the stairwell, she fell against the wall. Deep, heaving sobs wracked her body, and the tears came in great waves that coursed over her cheeks and dripping down onto her shirt. The pain of her wife's hatred — delusional it may have been — was pressing her down the same way stones would. Her back leaned against the wall, and she slid down to the floor, sobbing the whole time.
Regina wanted things to be different. She wanted her wife back. Nothing would have made her happier than for her son to have a stable life and for them to be a family again, versus the broken and split entity they were now.
Her sobs filled the stairwell, echoing off the stone walls. She loved Emma with all her heart and would never stop being her wife, but it didn't change the fact she wanted their life the way it had been. Nothing compared to this pain. Her heart couldn't bear all the emotion raging through her on a daily basis, and she couldn't handle Henry only getting half of his parents.
But at the end of the day, there were moments when Regina wished she could join Emma in the delusion and escape the agony she found herself living in.