"I'm sorry, Regina." Dr. Whale's voice is quiet and resigned, and Regina finally looks up at him, to his blunt cheeks and the shame turning down his mouth, and feels suddenly as though he were a small child admitting a secret to her, a stranger he fears more than his mother. But these are just facts on his clipboard: a cancer eating up her lungs, a tumor they are not hopeful in removing, a sentence doled out in months.
"It's fine, dear." She says and coldly views the walls around her, hating it more the longer she stares. The hospital is cold and the powdery scent of medicine looms around her, the human sound of clacking shoes and tapping keys sneak just beneath the door. It's one of the strange, foreign practices she has not yet assimilated with in this world; she cannot understand the urge to die in such a cold, unfamiliar place.
Clearing her throat, she looks at Dr. Whale, and says. "Is that all?"
He blinks at her and the furrow around his mouth deepens. "Ms. Mills," Dr. Whale says and it seems as though he might actually sit down beside her, or reach to grab her hand, but he clears his throat instead and looks down at her test results, and she lets out a breath, relieved.
It is enough to remind her as he twists his mouth to the side and reviews the paperwork again, the little facts of her life, that he is not an actual doctor. His training is something she had slipped over his shoulders like a coat, and now it flaps against his body, unbuttoned and gangly, easily swept away.
She lifts her head and sighs, "Dr. Whale. If you are quite finished, I'd like to return home."
He frowns at her and moves to grip the bottom of his clipboard. The tips of his fingers are white.
"Of course. It's only that…" Something catches in his throat, and he clears it, uncertain, "Well, with the aggression of your cancer, I wouldn't advise being alone."
"I don't need to remind you that I have a son, do I?"
"No, of course not, but you need to have someone…more equipped to handling you." Dr. Whale sighs at seeing her expression, and brushes the tips of his fingers through his hair, "Madam Mayor, whether you like it or not, you will need someone driving you to your appointments. There will be many, and when you begin taking the chemo, you will be in a very vulnerable position, and -"
"I don't remember saying I will be going through with the treatment, Doctor." She says, and watches as his expression falls into something wary and unknown, helpless, maybe even worried. Briefly, she wonders what would happen if she really did die, and she left these people in a world she had created, with no other structure than the lives she made for them. She wonders if they would feel, if even for a moment, any sense of loss.
Dr. Whale watches her as she rises from her chair, the plastic strip sticking uncomfortably to her legs. "I hope you know by now to keep this to yourself, Doctor."
"Regina…" She slides her purse into her arm and steps around him. She hears him call her name one more time, but she is already out of the door, her purse hitting her lightly on the hip as she walks out. The hospital doors open, and the early morning sun drifts in from its hiding spot between the tops of the trees. She just keeps walking.
~x~
She closes the door gently, waits for the click, and calls out from the foyer, "Henry?"
"In here." Is the quiet reply, and she feels her legs carrying her through her house, through the empty rooms to the large living room where her son sits with that insipid book in his lap. But it's easy to ignore it right now, standing at the entrance of her living room with her son absorbing the pages before him, his fingers tracing each word gently as though they were creatures in themselves, a living thing that deserves a decent, caring touch.
Briefly, she feels the flicker of her happiness, like the quick silver fin of a fish breaking through the stillness of a stream.
She smiles, "Hello, Henry."
Blinking, she watches him slowly look up at her. His expression changes swiftly, and she is left staring at the broad blank planes of her son's indifferent face. He says, "Hello." And she wonders just when he became so grave with her, when he started saying "hello," instead of "hi" or saying Mother with a stern firmness that a stranger might use before shaking her hand, waiting for imminent business to separate them again.
She can't help her sigh, but she is happy to see him, and her heart clutches to that feeling, to the relief of her son. "How was your day?" She had meant to say 'sweetie' at the end, but she had lost courage so quickly that it stuck in her throat and she had to fight the urge to clear her throat and possibly bring attention to it.
But Henry doesn't seem to notice. He looks back down into his lap, "Fine."
This is usually where they would end; Regina would retire to her study and leave Henry to his stories, but the smell of powdery medicine is still in her head, and it is clouding in her throat. She's thinking of the bloody handkerchief in her waist coat and her son who might not cry at her funeral. She is craving more, more, more, and it ends up carrying her to the rise of the couch where her son's head is bent on his shoulders, and his hair brushes the tip of his ears.
She imagines reaching out and smoothing his hair away, tugging playfully at that small ear of his like she used to. She imagines leaning down and kissing his forehead. He might laugh. But he might leave, instead, so she places her hand against the couch and sighs, hoping it sounds like a sigh any other mother might use when she wants to carry a conversation with her son. "Well, did you do anything fun at school today?"
Henry stops for a moment, his hand stilling on his page. She thinks he might close the book and leave the room, but he seems to rethink it and return to his reading. He says, "Not really," and a furtive glow of satisfaction warms in Regina's stomach. Perhaps they only need to take it slow.
She knows not to reach for him now; their moments together seem so forced, balanced on a narrow beam, she has learned slowly what not to do with him anymore, the small affectionate things she once taught herself to use, like smoothing out that little tuff of hair lying on his neck, rubbing his shoulder, tugging his ear, the things she thought might familiarize herself with him are now what makes him stiff, cold and unresponsive.
"Well, something must have happened." She says, managing a smile as she looks closely at the side of her son's face.
"Not really."
"Oh, come on Henry." She says lightly, and bends at her knees so that she can be close enough to smell the shampoo in his hair and the book of fairy tales in his lap. He is reading about snowy nights and a full moon, about red cloaks and a ferocious beast, and she smiles, relieved. "I want to know about your day."
Henry lets out a frustrated huff and moves away from her, to a safer spot, the cushions sighing with his restless body until he can lean against the couch's arm. He says, "I said it was fine, Mom," to the pages of his book.
The small, precarious happiness she had captured leaves at the sound of his voice, and she slowly breathes out, feeling something deep and angry rise up inside of her instead. It clutches at her heart and rattles loudly in her ribs. "Yes, you did." The anger rumbles, lowly, and her son's shoulders hunch at the sound of it, making him lift the book higher, to hide from her.
He's wanted to do that for a while: to disappear from her. The speckled red on her handkerchief returns to her thoughts, and she thinks of the pale, thin cheeks of the victims she perused online at her office, of the thinning hair and the spotted lungs, the cancerous flesh. She wonders if he would try to disappear on the day of her funeral.
Her breath is shaking, and she lets it go, quietly. "Well, then." There is silence, and she lets that go to, this moment and the next, her son as he ignores her. Suddenly tired, she rises from her spot to leave. "Do you want me to make dinner?"
Henry shrugs and she slips away to the kitchen, to the white marble counters and the dark wooden cabinets, to the last of the evening filtering in through her window. But she cannot make herself start dinner. The cabinets are all closed and the hallway is much longer than she remembers it being, and when she opens the door, she feels herself being pulled back into the doctor's room in her head, to the white, blank walls and its faint powdery scent, to the humiliating loneliness.
The cancer is in her lungs. Or. It has spread to her lungs, as Dr. Whale had said. There really isn't knowing the origin though she can imagine just as well on her own.
She can imagine what the black tar in her blood must look like; she can imagine her ribs turning soft, filled with cavities, the opening and closing of her heart, moving with all of that dark magic that has nowhere else to go, growing like a twisted root inside of her. She can imagine her heart, dark and soft as a plum, resting against her lungs, and she wonders if a human treatment could really cure something like that. If anything could.
"Mom?" She looks up sharply to see the kitchen door open. Henry peers out at her strangely, and while it doesn't look like concern, not exactly. More like curiosity - she is doing something unexpected, unexplained. "Are we still having dinner?"
"Yes, of course, Henry." But she doesn't move. She can't make herself start the motions. Even when Henry turns shy with the silence, his feet turning in at his toes, his face crinkling, she can't make herself move. She just keeps staring at the space behind Henry's head, at the white, blank walls, at the space unfolding endlessly between them.
"Mom?" Henry asks again, quietly.
"Yes," She sighs. But she does not move.
~x~
She is sitting in her office with what looks like the Sherriff's reports at her desk, and while the handwriting is small and considerably messy, if she stares at it long enough, she can recognize a familiar letter and follow the pattern from there; she can understand the rest, it's no harder than reading her son's wobbly, ten-year-old writing, and these reports don't matter very much, anyway.
It would take no effort at all to turn in her chair and simply file the reports away like she would for anyone else, but there is something stubborn in her today, something that lifts like a third lung in her chest, aching, angry, bucking back at her as she breathes, and she puts the phone to her ear and calls the Sherriff to her office.
While she is waiting, she sinks back into her chair, and feels that unfamiliar, foreign ache in her chest again. It's been more than a week since her diagnosis and she hasn't gone back to the hospital. There have been, of course, a few messages on her phone, a call from Doctor Whale, but it had all fallen into silence after only a few days, and she returned to work as she should.
Except. It's not the same. She wakes up coughing most mornings, and the ache follows her through the day and sometimes into the evening, too - until she fears the failure of her lungs in casual conversations, in a small cough, in the press of any white cloth against her lips. And she is helpless to it now, to her own flesh, to her blood.
The door opens, and she is relieved. Her thoughts leave, and in the quiet absence, as she straightens in her chair, crossing her legs, she feels her general sense of power return to her, "Come in," She says and feels a strange gratitude for the trinkets lined up on her bookshelf, for the picture of Henry on her desk, for the clear, clean businesslike appearance of her room.
She waits for Emma to move closer with a smile.
"What am I doing here, Regina?" Emma says with a sigh, and Regina's mouth ticks with irritation.
She simply lifts her hand and waits for Emma to sit. "Do you know what this is?"
Emma leans closer, and for a moment, Regina is distracted by the slim brown shoe lace tied around her wrist. It stops her thoughts, and a feeling so unruly takes over her, and she thinks, for a moment, that she might be sick, might cough and let the swell of her sickness spill out again in speckled blood and the black tar resting in her heart.
"Uh, the reports I turned in yesterday?"
With the tips of her fingers, she feels for the edge of the handkerchief in her waist pocket. This one is new and clean, and she hopes it will stay that way, folded and neat in her waist pocket. For longer than the last one did.
"I had assumed so, yes." She says, "Would you care to explain why your writing is worse than my ten year old son?"
Emma rolls her eyes and leans back into her chair; it's easy to hate her for her ability to brush her off, to smile and lean away, to easily sweeps her hair behind her ear, and sigh. "Bad teachers, probably. Though, I did just jot those notes down in ten minutes. It might be that."
"Miss Swan," She sneers, tapping her fingers against the arm of the chair. "If you cannot do what is a basic requirement of you, then may I suggest you start searching for something that better fits your capabilities."
Emma rolls her eyes, "Yeah, alright." She always rolls with whatever is said, like it never sticks, like it never hurts. "I don't see how they're important, anyway. I can save you the read. I chased a few dogs down and played darts, that's basically the monthly report right there."
"Ms. Swan." She sighs. "Do you know why I make you write these reports?"
"To waste my time?"
"No, dear." She's about to speak when she is interrupted by the breathless urgency to cough. Pausing, she lets it pass. It usually does. "Its a simple requirement, really. The bare minimum. A monthly report. That's all I have asked, and it is something I expect from all of my departments, even yours."
Emma's mouth thins, and she breathes out shortly through her nose, her eyes hard and cold, but they do not look at her; its a small victory, she thinks, that they settle somewhere behind her head, instead. She smiles, "Do you understand me, Ms. Swan?"
Emma rolls her shoulders stiffly, but it doesn't roll as easily, her words have stuck somewhere. "Yeah, okay, sure."
"Wonderful." She says, content. She slides her fingers beneath the thin papers and lifts them to Emma with a vague purpose. "Now, I'd like them back by tonight, as neatly written as you can manage."
"You want me to redo them?" Emma blinks, and sits up in her chair. She doesn't take the papers, and Regina sets them down graciously on Emma's side of the desk, sliding her fingers back to the safety of her lap, to the pocket of her waist coat. "That is a complete…I can't just do it better next time? I have to waste my night doing this, again?"
"Yes, waste your time again on what you should have already been able to do." She sneers, leaning back on her elbows, "And anyway, I'm sure it will take you all of ten minutes. It's really just a quick monthly report."
Emma is quiet for a moment, her leg bouncing anxiously in her seat, and Regina doesn't dismiss her. She wants to hear what she has to say, and she isn't particularly eager to return to what awaits her in this room.
Emma finally lets out a quiet breath and pushes her hair out of her face, looking as flighty as a bird. "Regina…" Emma's voice is one she's heard before, from her father and the men and women who looked up at her from their knees, relying on things that don't exist in her: on her kindness, on gentleness, for the heart beneath her breastbone to be warm and soft. "You know I have time with Henry tonight. You scheduled it."
That's right, she did. She had forgotten. "Well." There is something wonderfully hopeful in Emma's expression; it's delicate and barely concealed by the nervous tick of her mouth, too afraid to presume any sort of shape. She smiles into it, "I suppose you don't, anymore."
Emma doesn't crumble; her expression shifts swiftly into something else, and her forehead is smooth and blank just like Henry's when he speaks to her, now. The woman falls lightly against her chair again, her breath leaving her all at once. "You really are unbelievable." The laugh in her throat is not a laugh, and her mouth twists angrily, "I mean of all the-"
"Be careful, Miss Swan." She interjects graciously and watches the muscles work in Emma's jaw as her mouth closes with a quiet click. A pleasant glow of satisfaction settles in her stomach, and she thinks: here it is. Here is Emma's frustration, here is her anger, and here is Regina, for the moment, back on top. "If you remember, getting hired with a known criminal record is a tricky thing. A small town can be very unforgiving, and I can assure you, I can make it even more so."
"Oh, yeah, I'm sure you can." Emma huffs. "Christ, no wonder your son-"
There is a sudden unruly buck of sickness and her satisfaction curls, like a paper touched by warm embers. "Don't you dare mention him to me." She lifts from her chair with every intention to lean over her desk, to domineer, but before she can, she feels the suffocating close of her throat, and with a thick swallow, she lets herself sink back down again. "Who do you even think you are?" Her words barely escape, "You have no right to e-"
And it's gone. Her voice cracks and she stills, frightened. "He-" she tries, but it catches, and falls. The panic lifts her heart clumsily in her chest. She thinks, not here, not now, and tries again, "He-" But she is stuck, the cough is lifting inside her throat like a half deflated balloon, caught.
Emma is watching her curiously, "What is it?"
"He is my-" Her throat burns, and, to her embarrassment, she can feel heat pressing up against the back of her eyes. It usually passes, it usually lets her breathe, but there is a ravaged sense of purpose in it today, the pain pressing up from beneath her breastbone and in her throat.
And then it happens.
She coughs, heavy and wrenching into her hand, and then into the handkerchief she can snatch from her pocket, pressing it hard against her mouth. Just in time, just barely; she is coughing now in a more seamless way that sends panic skittering across her thoughts, it does not let her breath. Oh god, she thinks, and heaves into the white, delicate lace of a cloth, hoping that it will be enough.
"Are you okay?" Emma asks, alarmed, lifting half up from her seat. Regina can only turn more into her chair, feeling exposed, like a creature plucked of its shell and prickling thorns; she is bent over the arm of her chair, trying to wave Emma away, but she can't manage anything more, a slight or even a demand; she is seized by the cough in her throat and the violence in it.
Even muffled from the cloth pressed against her mouth, it sounds like a kitchen plate shattering against the ground, like an arrow hitting deep in the flesh, it sounds sharp and painful and covered in blood.
"Shit." She hears Emma only faintly, and is suddenly aware of her cheeks, wet with traitorous tears; she is shaking against the back of her chair, her fingers digging into the black leather arm as though it were a living thing that could be controlled by her force, by her power, if she tries hard enough.
Emma's approaching footsteps lift her dazedly from the pain, and she nearly moves to snap at her, to yell, to tell her to leave, but she coughs again, for the last time, and lets out a strangled, relieved sigh instead, feeling the beginning of its descent; it sinks back to where it sleeps like a snake burrowed in the ground, dark and coiled, and slick with an oily anger.
For a moment, she just breathes.
"Regina?" Emma's voice is soft, softer than she has ever heard it, and despite everything, she feels pulled towards it. She looks towards her, and is surprised by what she sees, by the angular shape of her expression, in the blunt cheekbones and the sharp, agape mouth, the eyes that lie stagnant on the cloth in her hand.
In her hand.
There is something disbelieving and strangely terrified in Emma's eyes, and she doesn't have the heart or the strength to see the blood in her hands, not again, not now. Not here.
She's about to open her mouth and demand for Emma to leave, but before she can even let her jaw loosen from where it is clenched and hurting, she watches Emma turn silently and depart from her, slipping out of the room. The door clicks shut, and she sits alone in what remains, in the orderly office with trinkets sitting across her book case, in the picture of Henry on her desk, in the faint flicker of her white curtains, in the silence behind Emma's descending footsteps.
Time passes, and after a while, Regina turns and quietly files the papers away, closing the drawer to her desk, and looks anywhere but at her handkerchief.
~x~
A few days pass, and she expects something to happen.
She expects Emma to barge into her office with papers and people that will tell her what to do, what to sign, tell her it is beyond her control, that she is slipping away as it is, that Henry needs something more; he should be in the care of someone a little more solid, more reliable, with lungs stronger than hers and a heart that doesn't poison her flesh and her blood.
She expects Emma to take everything away from her.
An sometimes she doesn't. There are times she imagines Emma barging into her office with something else (the object is vague and maybe it doesn't even exist, maybe it is Emma alone, quietly determined). She can imagine again a time where she reached for Emma, and Emma reached back, grasping beneath her arms and pulling her out (with smoke lifting all around them, with embers in her hair and flames hot on their skin, and the words I would do it again.)
And so. Sometimes.
Sometimes she expects Emma to save her.
A few days pass, and she expects something to happen. Even when nothing does.
~x~
The whisk clicks against the bowl and she watches the egg lighten in the milk with a hazy gaze. She's done this so many times it's almost easier to forget she's doing it at all. She closes her eyes and feels the heaviness resting on her again.
Sleep is pressing along the rim of her eyelids, and she wonders if she could slip away for a few hours, even with Henry in the next room, and his cautious, dark eyes watching her, she wonders if it were possible to be simple and unexplained, to be a mother who was tired and wished only for a few more hours of sleep.
She sighs; it's not even six o'clock yet, but she gets tired so easily now. It hardly takes anything at all anymore.
There were nights in her castle (when it was empty and Snow White was somewhere sleeping on the ground, in tatters) that she did not sleep. Not for days, and at times, it seemed, not for weeks; she studied the ancient language of her mother's magic, she walked her castle's halls and sat along her apple's dark, thick roots, and it seemed, at times, with that warm, powerful anger in her chest, that she could go on forever without thinking of sleep. Without even needing it.
It drove her, it fueled her, it saved her.
It's still there, she thinks, it must be. But what is it now? Without drive, without purpose, (it's won, she's won, she's won) it somehow feels so meaningless now: wasted, worn, tired, it sinks past the surface of her skin to somewhere deep and dark. She can feel it there cool and sated and waiting.
The phone rings and Regina sighs, for a moment simply relieved she has a distraction. She picks it up without looking at it at all. "Yes?"
"Regina?" Emma's voice is soft and tentative and Regina pauses.
The whisk falls silent against the glass bowl and she draws a breath in her mouth, but for a moment she doesn't speak. She is caught in this hinge of possibility, in this space where nothing has been said yet, nothing has been shared and a hundred different situations can still yet arise. The line hums faintly with static.
Finally, she lets out her breath, "Why are you calling me, Ms. Swan?" In her mind, she can imagine two different ways this conversation will lead, but she doesn't know which Emma she should expect tonight. The one who wants to take everything away from her. Or the one who might just save her. She's not sure if she is prepared for either one.
"Um…" Emma drifts off quietly. "I was just wondering when your next doctor's appointment thing was?"
The smell of powdery medicine, the faint chemical taste, fills her head and her throat closes. "And why would I tell you that?"
"Well…" When the silence continues, Regina feels her hands resume their busy work; she presses the phone between her ear and shoulder, and her hands dips skinless chicken into a bowl of milk and eggs. "I wanted to be there. You know, to support you."
In part, she had expected this; but her expectations had been simple and plain and just hopeful enough to feel unreal. She wasn't sure if she could imagine a waiting room where Emma Swan might be sitting in with her.
Emma clears her throat in the silence, sounding anxious. "Doctor Whale said you needed someone to help since the treatment is pretty severe, I guess. And I figured it might as well be me. Cause, well, I'd want to make sure you were getting better, anyway. What with Henry and all. It should be me."
Each sentence feels like another wave crashing on her with white water and stinging salt. She's not sure which one to pick out first. "You talked to Whale?" She finally manages to say, but her voice sounds thin and stripped of guile, it is raw and nervous. "That is a complete violation of my client-doctor confidentiality, Ms. Swan, and I can very easily get him suspended for it. I can easily get you suspended for it."
Her threat is weak, and in the air it seems suddenly laughable that she could have any control over anyone anymore. She stiffens and wonders if Emma might laugh at her.
But she simply sighs, "Honestly, Regina? Dr. Whale didn't say anything about your condition." She says, "Google, on the other hand is a total trouble maker. You might want to put him in line."
"Alright." Regina sighs, "That's enough."
"Honestly, Regina. I want to be there."
"Well." She begins, but she stills, her hands pressing briefly against the white marble counter next to her as she absorbs the words again. I want to be there. I would do it again. She shakes it off. "I don't. And it's not necessary, anyway."
"What does that mean?"
"I won't be going through with the treatment at all."
The silence takes only a few seconds and while her fingers work salt and flour into the meat, she listens to Emma draw in a breath, expelling it out like a fan; her words are cold and filled with air. "What are you talking about?"
"Please," She sighs, "you don't actually think I would have gone through with that ridiculous process?" She thinks of thinning hair and the hollow, aching bones, the practices of eating less, avoiding the convulsive retching and all the other humiliating little details. It's easier to simply prefer death. "That would have been humiliating."
"Regina. You are dying." Emma says; her voice is low and urgent. "You can't honestly think you can just avoid doing the treatment, right?"
"It's certainly my choice to do so."
"Well its a shitty choice!" She snaps, "I don't know what the hell you are thinking, Regina, but you got a kid to stay around for."
Stiffening, Regina feels suddenly aware of her grip on the counter. "This is none of your business."
"Of course it is. When my son's mom is dying, you bet your ass it's going to be my business." She opens her mouth to respond, something to stab that rising sense of purpose that is lifting inside of Emma, filling her voice. But Emma is too quick. "Where the hell do you think he's going to go when you're gone? You have any relatives to send him off to? Got any family or friends? Anyone? Do you have a single other fucking person who will love your son when you are dead?"
The room seems to expand around her with that word. It takes her a few seconds to find her breath. "How dare you!" She spits out, too angry to feel any sort of shame for the how her voice sounds, the breathlessness in it.
"No, how dare you." There is a watery thread of emotion in Emma's voice, and she is caught in it like a spider web; silvery and thin, it sticks like string. "What are you doing? Henry is ten, why aren't you trying?"
There is a quiet, helpless anger pressing up behind her eyes; it differs entirely from the one that she strode through in a carriage with the curse blowing darkly behind her, or with a poisoned apple in her grasp, watching those delicate, white fingers wrap around it gently, fearfully. That anger always held some type of power in it, it had the promise of victory in it, and it rushed through her like the hot coursing of her blood.
It is entirely different than the peevish, fearful anger that she feels now, like when she was a child watching her mother walk into the kitchen, silent and angry, and without a word being spoken, she could tell she was in trouble. She could feel she was about to be punished, and she knew it would be without reason, without a cause. And yes, there was anger. But it felt mostly like despair.
"You have no idea what it's going to be like" She hears herself saying, and doesn't know why her voice trembles; she doesn't know why she sounds so afraid. "Nothing will help. You have no idea." Behind her eyelids is a world of lifting dawn, with dark, looming trees and the morning light drifting in over her villagers' heads, quaking, kneeling quickly at the sound of her approaching horses. Her heart sits in her chest like she did once on a throne: cold and dark and still.
There is nothing in this world that could cure her.
But Emma doesn't seem to agree. She sighs, "Regina, you have every right to be scared-"
"I am not scared."
"I wouldn't blame you if you were."
"I don't care." She hisses and is suddenly aware of the thin doors and walls all around her, of her son in the other room reading his book, with ears that flicker like a small animal, waiting for a predator to creep along the stairs, out from the kitchen door. Her stomach turns, and she lowers her voice. "I won't do anything I don't feel comfortable with, and you are out of line even suggesting it, Sherriff."
The line goes silent for a moment before Emma sighs. "Yeah, okay." There is a brief pause and Regina stills, surprised. "But I'm not letting this go."
"Of course not." She sighs, "You couldn't stand not meddling with my life."
"Maybe." Emma chuckles, and its a little surprising, jolting inside of her chest like a kite suddenly taking to the wind - she has to close her eyes to ground herself again.
"You haven't accomplished anything tonight, Ms Swan." She says, and with her eyes closed and her voice so firm and sure, she can almost convince herself. "You haven't convinced me of anything."
"Okay." Emma says, "But when you do need a ride, I'll be there."
"If you do hear from me, it will be about your job performance, and that's all."
"Sure." Emma agrees, and though she cannot see her, she knows that she must be smiling. The phone call ends, and when the silence slips around her like a robe to wear for the evening. Wiping her fingers on a towel, she sets the phone back on its charger and feels, for that moment, completely resolved.
She will finish dinner. She will go back to work. She will do exactly what she has done for the past twenty eight years, and nothing in her world will change.
~x~
It lasts only a few days.
It is a few days of stubbornness, a few early mornings sitting in the dim light, coffee warm and dark in her hands and her eyes still on the sun that is rising up from the corners of the sky.
It is a few days of thinking, of nothing changing, of Henry avoiding her. It's a few days of coughing, and hiding it quickly, barely, fearing the touch of blood with each touch of her fingers to her mouth.
It's a few absent, empty days that pass by without much notice.
And while it was exactly what she wanted, she only endures a short number of them before she has Dr. Whale on the phone.
She listens to the quiet, nervous secretary that goes through the flurry of changing the phone lines, connecting her to her doctor, and she endures the surprise in his voice, his wonder, and she survives scheduling the appointment, listening through the assurances and platitudes, through the details about the radiation and hormone therapy procedures, about eating healthy and checking in regularly.
She agrees to them all and finally manages to call Emma.
"What's up?"
She sighs. "It's tomorrow morning. Pick me up at eight."
There is some silence, but when Emma speaks again, Regina thinks she might be becoming familiar with the sound of Emma's voice when she is smiling.
"That's perfect." She says.
~x~
The car ride is shorter than she remembers it being. It's only a few minutes before Emma is pulling into the hospital parking lot and turning off the blinkers, turning the key and slipping it out of the ignition. It's her turn to leave.
Regina looks out the window into the grey cloudy sky. It's drizzling softly, so soft it's hardly forming rain at all. But she can smell the salt in Emma's hair, still wet from dashing over from the door to her car, and as though noticing it herself she sees Emma pulling her hair up into a ponytail to contain it, (Regina suppresses the urge to tell her to keep it down.)
Emma, slipping a hair tie off her wrist, says, "Do you want me to go with you?"
Yes. "Of course not." She says, and does not move; she feels like stone against her seat, immobile, waiting for some warmth to move her again, to work its way through her fingers and through her blood, to bring her back to life.
But it doesn't and she sits with her hands tucked in her lap, staring out the window. Waiting.
"Okay, I'm going with you." Emma says and starts to open the door. The crack slips cold, brisk air into the car, chasing away the artificial warmth that the heaters had provided, and Regina feels a sudden and irrational stab of betrayal. She doesn't want to leave, but Emma has already started the process; she can't stop now.
"Sit back down." She snaps, and watches as Emma blinks and sinks back down with some surprise. Her voice carried a sharper edge than she had intended it to, but that also, in a way, is part of the process; it cannot be stopped now. "The only thing I need from you is to be here when I am finished so that I can go home."
"Okay…" Emma says. "How long do you think this will be, then?"
"I haven't a clue, Ms. Swan." Dr. Whale suggested it would take about four hours. "But you signed up for this. I don't care what you do in the time between now and the end, but when I come out of those doors I don't expect to wait another minute. Do you understand me?"
Emma nods once and Regina leaves the car quickly, before the courage leaves her too. The door clicks behind her and with the cool air filling her lungs; she feels the air pressing down her shoulders, slipping through her clothes, sapping any strength from her bones. She moves forward anyway, and doesn't look back. Her steps are sure and firm.
The hospital doors close around her, and she lets out a breath of air. She knows Emma won't be able to see her through the tint in the windows, so she turns and looks back out to the sleek, black car in the parking lot, at Emma's face that is only a distant outline through the glass. She can see the faint glow of her hair and the dark spots where her eyes lie, staring out at her.
If she were a softer, more agreeable woman, she would have said yes. Emma would have walked in here with her. She would have had someone to sit with in the waiting room.
Thankfully, she doesn't have to wait long at all. She is just about to sit down when Dr. Whale steps out from the ward and spots her. He blinks, adjusts his coat and says, with something like a smile: "Madam Mayor, I'm glad you're here."
She cuts him off with a wave of her hand. "Let's just get this over with it, doctor."
He nods, "Of course."
It isn't long before she is sitting in a dark chair, supposedly for comfort, and a nurse is attempting to fold back the sleeves of her shirt. "Excuseme." Regina hisses, "What are you doing?"
Although the nurse pauses, she looks back at her without any impression of worry or fear, and Regina blinks back at her, surprised. She always believed she had inspired at least the very basic level of fear in her people, in all of them, having failed in commanding their love; to think she had failed in that as well, as she waits helplessly for treatment, is almost unbearable.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am." The nurse says, and her voice is steady, bored. "But we have to find your cephalic vein."
Regina swallows and looks down at the sleeve of her suit. She is wearing one of her favorites, today. Sharp and grey, it is the suit she wore when she first spoke behind a podium in front of her town, it is the suit she wore when receiving the bundle of blankets and her son's helpless squirming. It is this suite that has maintained her image, the idea that her entire town has held for nearly three decades: that she is important.
Letting out a quiet breath, she unbuttons the cuffs at her wrists.
The nurse doesn't wait for her to do it herself. She starts to quickly fold up her sleeves, sliding it past the bend of her elbow where she pats the skin with the same impatience, and it is the cold, uncaring touch of a stranger. It reminds her, suddenly, of her mother. And even though she is sitting in a room with white walls and the powdery smell of medicine, she feels as though she is with her mother again, being searched for cuts and bruises, any evidence that she has been carelessness.
She wants to push this nurse away. She wants to grab her by the wrist and tell her: "This isn't my fault, I don't deserve this."
"Stay still." The woman commands and Regina swells with all the hatred in her breath and all the fear that comes with it; she manages, at last, one of her smiles. A needle slips in, and the woman tapes it to her skin. "It'll only take a few hours. I'll come in to make sure it's adjusted right, but don't jostle around." Relieved of her duty. She leaves.
The minutes pass, and though it can't have been very long, she feels a growing pressure building inside of her with each drip of the IV, with the strange moving in her blood. The scent of chemicals drifts in slowly through the halls, and it is nearly overwhelming, lying close to the floor, shuffling like a beast on its belly, she can imagine it devouring people whole.
She hadn't realized she closed her eyes until it flies open with Emma's voice, "Oh finally." Emma is a little blurry around the edges, but she can hear her footsteps approaching closer. Her voice is familiar and it is something to hold onto, to help make sense of the rest. "I was wondering if I'd ever find you."
Her sigh of relief cannot be suppressed. She will blame the medicine fogging her head later. But she is here. And it is better. "You couldn't have been looking very hard, my dear."
"Well, I definitely missed the arrow pointing up to Regina's Secret Room on the top-freaking floor…" Emma starts, and as though pulled by an unspoken command, she moves over to the window and pulls it open. The white curtains flicker and a cool, ocean breeze slips through the rooms, and as though it were a gentle, familiar hand, a warm caress, Regina sighs and turns towards it.
"You are here." She says, but when Emma turns to look at her, she can't follow the progression of her own thoughts properly, if she meant to accuse her, or to encourage it, to beckon her closer.
Emma seems to come to an answer well enough on her own; she slides a chair closer and sinks in it with a sigh. "I don't listen very well."
"I've noticed." Her mouth aches, and she wonders if she is smiling. There is a white, plastic sleep that crowds the corners of her vision, it eludes her when she concentrates on it, tries to make shape of it, but it deepens like a swelling tide when she looks away, expanding behind her eyes.
She tries to focus back on Emma, on the familiar mouth, on the curve of her jaw, on the nose that looks so much like Henry, if she squints, she can see her child in flashes, blurring together by similar skin. Something sharp and painful squeezes inside of her, and she sighs, looking away. It pulls her deeper.
Emma must notice the expression on her face, because her voice softens. "Do you want me to be here?"
"No." She says, and sighs, because it is so easy to lie. "But you are here anyway." She waves her hand as if that could bury the conversation, make Emma's presence just another indisputable fact that is incapable of change. No, she doesn't want her to leave.
Emma's silence sweeps away all her effort. "Do you want to be alone?" She says, and for the first time, it seems like a genuine question, one that she can expect results if answered. The choice settles like a stone in her chest, and she wants suddenly for something she cannot explain, something both options bereft. She wants both, to be herself, alone and capable and uncaring of anyone else, and she wants to be someone outside of this hospital, in a public place, sitting on a park bench or buying groceries, happy and welcomed into this world by the people of her curse.
Emma sighs, "Regina. I know you're a private person. You probably don't want anyone, especially me, seeing you this way, but this is one hell of a thing you're going through. And I don't want you to have to do it alone." She takes a breath, and sighs, watching her so closely Regina might have squirmed if she were any other person. "Is that alright?"
"Yes," Regina finally says with a sigh.
"Alright." There is that small, hint of a smile in her voice, and she can feel the tension uncoiling, slipping away again.
The silence that follows is comfortable. Through the open window she can hear the light traffic of people only starting to get to work, the clicks of tree branches hitting the side of the building and ordinary people walking down the road, unconcerned with sickness, present in a life she made for them.
It's a few minutes before she notices Emma's attention, sitting quietly next to her, her eyes linger on the IV in her arm, the needle hidden mostly by the gauze, and beneath that, a fine cover of her skin. But she can feel Emma's curiosity, hopping around the area nervously.
Finally, she asks: "So, that's it then?"
A faint smile touches her mouth. "That's it."
"Gross." Emma says, and tentatively reaches over to touch the blue vein in her arm.
"Honestly," Regina sighs, "Must you touch it?"
"Sorry." Emma says, and though she shifts away, her eyes do not leave the vein in her arm. She follows it as though it were a stream that flows naturally down to the delicate bones in her wrist, where her vein splints like roots in a tree and she is both flesh and blood and something else, moving together, trying to work all at once.
She's not surprised when Emma hesitantly touches her hand, waiting for a signal that her touch is accepted. The touch is uncertain and she could shake the connection with just a twitch of the wrist. But instead, as she looks away, to the firm white window sill where the white curtains flicker, she turns her hand and lets their fingers entwine.
Emma's hand is solid in hers, with long fingers and calloused palms, it feels gentle and firm and soothing all at once. And a few minutes pass before she has the courage to look over again, but when she does, her breath deflates and she is caught in the gentleness in Emma's eyes. There must still be some part of that girl that exists from Daniel's death, from her mother, from her marriage, because when she looks into Emma's eyes, she feels that implacable hunger, the part of her that still seeks for comfort in something soft. Who yearns still for a gentle, affectionate touch.
A thumb brushes in small circles along her skin, and she looks away, feeling suddenly as though she might cry. It passes. It usually does. It's meaningless really, she assures. But the thumb doesn't stop, and her mouth trembles, and something pleasant and terrifying expands in the space between her ribs, like a third lung lifting inside of her, struggling to work again.
"So, how long does this really take?" Emma asks, and Regina can't look her way, she is caught in this delicate feeling moving in her blood. Emma's thumb brushes down the back of her hand again, and she sighs.
"Four hours."
"Well, then." Emma shifts, but she doesn't drop her hand. It takes a moment of struggle, but when she slips a deck of cards out of her back pocket, Regina can't really be surprised. And though time passes, and a simple game of cards becomes a struggle with just one hand, neither one of them lets go.