Disclaimer: Don't own, don't profit.
Part 2 of The Light in Autumn.
Also known as "Fuck you, Season 2." FTL happenings through "The Cricket Game" taken into consideration. Storybrooke happenings through "Child of the Moon" taken into consideration. Everything else can go die in a hole.
Henry's sleep medicine is from a world of infinite pharmacological possibility, AKA does not exist. Yay magic!
It is like losing a year of your life.
To what would you lose a year of your life?
Afterward, you go back to the old place—
all that remains is char: blackness and emptiness.
You think: how could I live here?
But it was different then,
even last summer. The earth behaved
as though nothing could go wrong with it.
Landscape, Louise Gluck
The world goes to hell so she does what she does best. She runs.
She stays long enough to watch that tubby guy from Game of Thorns—and how the hell he's got any authority, she can't figure out, because he's the florist—demand the keys to the sheriff's office from David, stays long enough to watch David hand them over and watch Regina get frog-marched into the building and watch the whole world go to hell.
Then David turns to look at her, and Jesus, that's her dad, and it's too damn much. It's too damn much and her whole body telegraphs it, and he reaches out towards her and she runs. Straight up Main—and at least she's gotten used to running with swords strapped to her back—and past the loft, and there's the Bug sitting pretty by the curb. Just waiting for her.
She tries the handle twice before she realizes David must have driven it at some point; the doors are locked, and she pats herself down twice before realizing there are no keys in this jacket—the dark brown, with the fur and the hood, because bless Ruby's soul, she'd seen Emma shivering even in the B&B—no keys, no ID, no nothing.
Fuck.
No, she's Emma Swan, she can boost a car in less than two minutes, she just needs to find—she stops, holds her breath. Henry's school scarf is on the passenger seat, red end trailing on the floor mat, and she has to close her eyes and let her weight collapse against the car. Because Henry, Henry, Henry. Where can she go now that there's a Henry?
She's just not ready. Not yet. Not with wetsoftredsquish—not yet. Five more minutes. Five more minutes and then she can do this.
So she walks. Up Main, rock salt crunching under her motorcycle boots, and over to Castleton, over to Town Hall where the only car in the lot is that '84 Benz with the flawless paint job. It's almost too much, but it's also too relevant, too timely, and she goes to the car, tries the driver door and shakes her head when it opens. Regina knows better. She knows Regina knows better, and from the interior of the car—recently vacuumed, no loose change, no empty wrappers or soda cans or bent straws or anything, not even a leftover glove—it's just—Regina knows better.
Emma drops into the driver's seat and lays her cheek against the rim of the steering wheel, looks at the upgraded dash controls and the glistening faux wood and how there's the slightest scratch in the leather of the passenger seat, from the front left edge towards the middle. She thinks of the office she's never seen messy and the woman she's never seen flustered and how goddamn odd Regina looked, in Emma's jeans and henley and hoodie and her own fitted black overcoat. How odd she looked, under arrest and just… done.
Emma closes her eyes and reaches down, hits the plastic panel beneath the steering wheel and smiles when it pops right off. And then she laughs, outright and hollowly, because there's a spare key taped to the inside of the panel, and it's so damn not Regina that it gnaws at her ribs. She doesn't want to know why Regina would think to avoid hot-wire damage to her car. She doesn't want to know. There's no time for that, so she just untapes the key and slips it into the ignition, can't help but smile when the initial roar of the engine settles into a comfortable purr. The Bug is never so cooperative. She also treats the Bug like shit, so with the Benz, she watches the engine temperature gauge and only puts the car in drive once it's settled two notches above cold.
And then she asks herself where the fuck she's going in October in Maine with no ID, no money, no future and too much past.
She drives to Mifflin because it's the only thing that makes any type of sense over the burn at the bridge of her nose. She's never had a migraine but she thinks this is how they start: like an ice pick at the base of her skull and crawling pain all the way around her scalp to a dull thud between her eyes. And that—between the eyes—she thinks of blood and brain and bits of bone, wetsoftredsquish. She shakes it away, focuses on pulling into the curving driveway. Not that refocusing does anything for her, because what is she going to do here? Sit on the deck all night, until someone thinks to look for her in the least likely refuge of all? Cry about it?
She pockets the car key and goes straight to the back door, runs her fingers over the top of the door frame, lifts the mat, checks the plants near the door, and then remembers exactly whose house this is and that this woman is intentional with every single thing she does, but left the car doors unlocked. So Emma tries the door: open.
Fuck.
There's a single bowl and spoon in the drying rack next to the sink, no other sign of life in the kitchen. No fruit on the counter, no used paper towels or flecks of flour or sugar or even a coffee mug. She can't fucking stand it, because—Jesus, even when Regina was baking a poisoned turnover, there was mess, there was parchment paper and filling and flour and apple peel and Emma can't stand in the kitchen for another minute.
The dining room, the living room, they're all the same. Even the den, and she has to linger in there, run her fingers over the neatly labelled drawers of toys and games, the top of the flat screen and the two game systems underneath. The couch is brown leather and worn and has just the right amount of sag to each of the cushions, and there's a large basket of blankets immediately to the left, just within reach. She sits with her feet up on the coffee table—a big, modern chunk of wood, nothing like any of the other furniture in the house but so, so right for here—and looks around, at the pictures on the wall which all document Henry's childhood. Baby Henry in a photo studio, toddler Henry under the apple tree, a younger Henry at his castle and then again in the sand. He looks happy in all of them—looks elated, in fact, like he's always in the middle of saying "I love you."
What nags at her, makes her stand up and start pacing, is that there are only two with Regina in them: Regina cradling an infant Henry, and a recent one—how recent, she's not sure—of Henry, asleep on the couch, with Regina just at the edges of the photo, one hand reaching out to touch his forehead. Her face isn't visible, but something about the way her fingers are fanned out speaks of hesitance and familiarity and tenderness and Emma aches for that. For those three words, for how her son has them and has had them his whole life.
She gets the hell out of the room. The hall lights stay off because she can't find the switch, and she's so focused on not walking into the end table she saw before that she completely forgets to not walk into the curving study wall and lands squarely on her ass in the doorway. It says enough about where her mind is when she simply sprawls where she lands, with her feet out in the foyer and her hair fanning out on the study rug. When a wall is the fight she forfeits.
Henry is with Snow. Regina is in jail. She's just killed Cora.
She's killed a woman, tonight. She's killed a woman, dismembered her body, and burned it. She's killed a woman because her son's best chance said it was the only way and God help her, she doesn't think she'd hesitate to do it again.
No—that's not all of it. She's jumped worlds and fought wraiths and ogres and zombies and had the Lady of the Lake—who, as far as she's concerned, is a low-budget Mystique—try to crawl into her skin and then suddenly back off and offer the whole fucking world on a platter. If she wanted it.
If she wanted it—mockery. She's had her shot at the world. She only wanted home. She wanted it and she got it and she killed and dismembered a woman to keep it and now, instead of sitting home with her things and her family and her safety, she's sprawled on her ass in her son's mother's house because everywhere else is wrong.
Even here. Even here is wrong. Here smells faintly of coffee and lemon and wood smoke and she knows she doesn't fit. She's too rough, she's too sharp, she's too coarse. Everywhere is wrong; her son is in the wrong house and his mother is in jail.
It takes her about five minutes to sit up again, to look around and spot the phone on the side table. She shuffles over to it on her knees, pulls the handset down and sits back against the wall, closes her eyes and tries to find the number she'd memorized when she first got here. So many things are in the way—which berries are poisonous, how to bed down on young pine boughs, which sword grips best absorb the shock from delivering a blow, how to get a fire going when all the wood is wet—but finally, finally, she finds seven numbers in sequence and doesn't give herself time to second guess.
"Granny's. We're closing in fifteen, so if you're calling in an order—"
"Ruby?"
There's a flutter of static, like the phone's almost been dropped. "Em? Where the hell are you?"
She sighs, looks around the study again. Here would be nice. Here, with ten years of Henry and little pockets of joy. "Ruby, I need your help."
She pulls up behind the diner and pushes up into park, eases off the brake. The main lights are all off, but the back room is lit and there are three shadows moving over the blinds. It doesn't take long for it to be two, then one—the shortest one, so Granny, probably—and then Ruby's bounding out the back door with her hair flying behind her and, bless her, two cups of coffee in hand.
Emma has missed the fuck out of coffee.
The door doesn't bang shut with its usual triple time beat; David's holding it open with one hand and staring, open-mouthed, at the Benz. And then he tries a smile, lifts his hand from the doorframe and gives a little wave, just enough to mean when you're ready, and that's her dad, and she tries to smile back but it just turns into a grimace. She wonders if he's going to buy a new tarp. It smells like rain; he'll need one soon.
Ruby opens the passenger door and Emma takes the distraction willingly, reaching for the white paper bag held out to her and offering a real smile when Ruby settles into the seat. It's a real smile because Ruby's good people, but she's also someone new, now. The grin she offers is wry and cynical and whoever this Ruby is, she doesn't sharpen her teeth with sex appeal and she doesn't have sweetness on the tip of her tongue. But she hands over one of the paper cups with the same steady wrist as always, and looks around the car with the same spark of interest as always. "There are more subtle ways to declare allegiance, you know."
Emma blames the fact that her response is flat and barbed entirely on a month of bantering with Regina. "I didn't want to risk misinterpretation."
But Ruby just nods. This new Ruby, she's softer, quieter; something about her hums with—contentment isn't the right word, but—ease, maybe. Like she belongs in her skin. "Neither do I," she says, and gestures with her chin towards the bag. "Two bearclaws. You're skin and bones."
Emma stares at her, and Ruby stares back, and before she can stop it, Emma snorts, and Ruby grins, and they're okay. "I need answers, Rubes," she sighs into the lid of the coffee cup, and Ruby nods, burrows into her peacoat.
"I figured. B&B?"
The old parlor at the B&B has both the biggest fireplace Emma can remember seeing and overstuffed armchairs next to radiators. She just wants to be warm again. Safe again. "Yeah. B&B," she agrees, and puts the car in drive.
There's far too much caffeine buzzing in her system and the half bearclaw she'd managed to eat sits heavy in her stomach, takes up too much room. She should've paced herself better on the coffee and nibbled on the bearclaw, but she's missed normalcy so much that she forgot what two straight days of winterberries and pond water could do to a stomach, has done to her stomach. She puts a hand to her belly to push against the weight of the pastry and feels the folded notebook pages tucked into the waist of her jeans.
Going to Ruby was the right call. Too right. There's too much history; she'd had to start writing it all down and she can't be bothered to understand or navigate any of it right now. It's too much, too complicated, and she knows when she finally does it, it's going to end up being too painful.
Part of her also knows that for every story Ruby told, there's a whole other version in Regina's head, and she doesn't want to leave any detail to fester in her mind without rebuttal. Part of her wants to be good. Part of her watched her mother nock arrows like Hawkeye on speed and decided that nothing about the truth could ever be simple.
She turns the knob of the front door carefully, smiles just a little when it gives—and then the smile falters, because does she have parents waiting up for her, now, instead of a roommate who just knew to leave the door unlocked? Is that where this whole clusterfuck leads?
The living space of the loft is empty and dark and she doesn't take the time to sort out the relief, the quick release of all the tension at her neck. She just toes off her boots and pads over to the stairs, skips the fourth one automatically and releases the breath she's been holding when she reaches her bedroom door and sees it wide open. Inside, Henry's sprawled diagonally on the bed in a blue thermal with the Superman logo dotted all over it, mouth open and hair mussed to hell.
Emma smiles, and smiles, and smiles, because where would she go now that there's a Henry?
She takes two steps into the room and then two more, and then she's next to the bed and next to Henry and she just takes a moment to watch him sleep. Just a moment, because she's never had it before. Just a moment, because when she sits on the bed he opens his eyes. His sleepy little smile is lopsided and squinty and she thinks, I made you, little man. How weird is that?
"Hi," Henry whispers, and Emma smiles, brushes her fingers through his hair.
"I missed you, kid," she murmurs, and when he sits up partially and wraps his arms around her, all she can feel is that strange sensation of being lifted out of the mine and back into the sunlight. Back into sunlight, where he's safe and she's safe and he's loved unconditionally.
Regina is in jail, and Emma knows too much about swords and bodies.
She sighs, lets go of him. "You know what happened last night?" she asks, and cringes, because where the fuck was she when someone had to explain to her son that his mother was in jail? But he nods, and squeezes her hand, and looks at her like he always has: like she'll fix it.
She wants to say so much. She wants to say so much to him, like I'm not your mom and if I could've I would've been everything you could ever want and you need her, please please please understand that you need her and I love you.
She nudges his shoulder and, after he scoots over, curls up next to him on the bed. "I'm gonna get her back, okay? I'm gonna get her out of there."
Henry smiles, tentatively at first, and it's the same hesitant, careful smile that she's seen every night for a month. "Operation Cottonmouth?" he suggests, and it clicks.
"Did David let you watch Kill Bill?"
"It was so cool!"
She groans, and puts her arm over her eyes, and listens to her son laugh and laugh and laugh.
She takes a shower. Henry's fallen back asleep and her—Snow and David are still asleep, so she goes into the bathroom and keeps the lights off, strips and soaks and takes a razor to her pits and shampoos again and again until she can't run her fingers through her hair for the roughness, until more of the month of oil and dirt and dust and sweat (and the blood, the blood, the blood) has been lifted out with the suds. She stands under the spray until it starts to run lukewarm, and then sits on the floor of the stall with her knees hugged to her chest until the water hits cold and stinging against her chest and she can't breathe for the lingering steam.
Leather makes her feel better. Leather boots that aren't worn through at the soles, a leather jacket that doesn't smell like sweat and fear and ogres and zombies—leather that feels like, moves like, smells like leather. She feels better until she comes through the double doors of the station and sees Doc Grove and Jeremy from the post office standing at attention in front of the middle cell. Behind them, the cell is shadowed; Regina is curled up in the corner of the cot, shoulders braced by the wall and the bars of the next cell.
Emma takes three deliberate steps into the room, because it's hers. Doc and Jeremy look at her with surprise and uncertainty, and she smiles at them. "So. You're not really a pediatrician, and you're not really the postmaster, are you?"
They look at each other, and then Doc shakes his head. "No, Princess. I'm Doc. He's Dopey."
She wants to sit down and laugh. Seven fucking Dwarves. She wants to laugh. "My title is Sheriff, Doc."
He's always struck her as a harsh-faced asshole, but suddenly he gives her a smile that makes him look like a grandfather instead of a hard-ass. "I delivered you, Sheriff."
Oh. And then: well, fuck. "Nice to meet you," she says, quietly, softening her glare. "Now, if you'll excuse me." She holds up the white paper bag and nods towards the cell. "I'd like a moment with the Mayor. And to give her breakfast."
Jeremy—Dopey—nope, fuck that, she's never going to call a grown man Dopey—Jeremy clears his throat, shakes his head. Doc sighs. "The rules are—"
Emma snorts. "I wasn't asking, Doc."
Doc and Jeremy look between each other, and Jeremy shrugs. "Ten minutes, Sheriff. No more."
When they've stepped out into the vestibule, she goes over to the bars, notes the ugly hunk of metal sitting over the standard lock on the cell door, and holds the bag through. "Egg white and spinach omelette, extra crispy turkey bacon, and your coffee-bonbon thing. Granny said it's your usual."
Regina lifts her head, but in the shadows Emma can only see the tip of her nose, the edge of her jaw. "You weren't there."
She doesn't like that voice. She doesn't like how it has no depth, just hoarse overtones. "I didn't sleep."
Regina sighs, tilts her head back. "Leave it on the floor. I'm not hungry right now."
Emma closes her eyes, sees a spotless kitchen and unlocked doors. "How long you been living like this, Regina?"
It's painful, how that slight frown is familiar in two different ways. "Like what?"
Clearly, Regina has no intention of leaving her corner, so Emma bends, leaves the bag on the floor of the cell and then drags her old deputy chair over next to the bars. "Leaving shit unlocked. Nothing left out at home. Having a spare key taped to the steering column of your damn car. Like you're trying to make clean up easy."
It's too rough, too aggressive, but this is Regina and Regina knows her. "Since Henry left."
Thank God Regina knows her, knows that there's no point in lies anymore. "You left shit unlocked while you were home, too? Just letting anyone in?"
"No."
"So just when you left. In case you, what, got killed on the way to the grocery store?"
Regina doesn't speak, doesn't move, and Emma leans forward, puts her head against the bars. She wishes Regina would just pick up the damn bag of food. She wishes she had something more than I'm here, please believe that.
"Tell Henry that this isn't his fault."
Emma wants to throw up.
"And that I—that I'm proud of him. For telling the truth and sticking to it, no matter how many people told him he was wrong or—or crazy, or too young to know." Regina hesitates, and Emma knows that soft whistle of sucking in air, of forcing a breath past tears. "He showed conviction, and courage, and I'm proud of him."
She presses her head against the bars and keeps her eyes closed because she doesn't want this.
"He has the terrible habit of falling asleep in his clothes, and he's normally a heavy sleeper, so once he's out, he's out. Don't let him go to bed without changing into pajamas. He will always complain of a stomachache on Sunday night; it will be the only night he has trouble falling asleep. School makes him nervous, it always has, but once he gets through Monday, he's fine. I don't know when… life might resume, here, but for now he spends the mornings at the library with some other children in a reading group. The sleep medicine—it makes him hypoglycemic in the mornings and dehydrated at night, so make sure he has carbs with dinner and keep water next to his bed and breakfast should be high in protein and simple sugars—not processed food. He keeps hard candy like Lifesavers or Werther's with him now, but you should carry them, too, just in case. Archie's planning on weaning him off the medicine in two weeks, so you'll definitely need to have a back-up supply then. He goes to the stables for at least an hour every day; his riding lessons are Tuesday and Thursday, your father will have to take over—"
"Stop." She begs and she's not ashamed, because this is wrong, and cruel, and she'll beg.
Regina doesn't seem to care. She's sitting straight again, still hugging her jean-clad knees, and there is that stiffness to her neck, that poise. "These are things you need to know, Emma. These are things you can't afford to learn six months down—"
"You are his mother."
"I am going to be executed." She says it so calmly, so quietly. She says it just like she said take the shot and just that, just that link, just the thought of the blood—Emma's stomach turns. She clutches the bars harder. "You are his mother now." And then the smallest smile, a flash of white teeth in the shadow. "Don't screw up."
She can't help but huff out a laugh. "You're not dying."
"Emma—"
"You're not, okay? You're just… you're not. Operation Cottonmouth, so you're not. So just shut up and let me do my savior thing and for the love of God, will you eat your damn breakfast? Because if it gets cold, I'm not going to get you another one."
That poise collapses; Regina slumps back into her corner. "Don't waste your energy. Prioritize Henry."
"Don't waste my time with bullshit. Saving his mother is prioritizing him." She nudges the bag with her boot, glares. "Come eat. Ruby won't be by with lunch until close to two."
Regina sighs, puts her forehead on her knees. For a minute, Emma thinks she's going to have to start up a whole new slew of arguments, but Regina finally unfolds her body and comes over to the bars. It's startling, to see her without her makeup and business wear armor, to see her with deeper waves to her hair and hollows under her eyes and nothing beyond exhaustion at the corners of her mouth. It's startling and it hurts, because there's no way that anyone else will look at her long enough to see all of this.
"Thank you for the food, and the bombón," Regina says softly, but there's actual tone to her voice, now. Like maybe she isn't quite beaten yet. "Getting my usual was very considerate."
Emma tries for a grin, feels it only take on one side of her face. "Psh. I ordered you disco fries and a latte. Granny gave me this crap instead. Egg whites. Who does that?"
She knows that mouth, now, and sees how the corners quirk just slightly. It's enough.
It's almost eight by the time she gets back to the apartment, and her—her family, her family, her family, they're all gathered around the kitchen counter with different forms of breakfast food. When they turn to look at her, she wants to back right out of the room because David looks apprehensive and Snow looks frantic and Henry's just beaming at her and it all says too much.
Emma steps further in, closes the door behind her and shoves her hands in her jeans pockets, ambles forward. "Morning. What's for breakfast?"
David relaxes and Snow frowns and Henry pushes a plate in her direction. "Bagel. But I just ate the last of the cream cheese so jelly or butter for you."
The fact that he is entirely unrepentant about the cream cheese makes something in her unwind. "Good thing I'm a jelly and butter kinda gal," she counters, and sits on the stool next to him.
It's peaceable while she waits for her bagel to toast. David's narrating the basics of whatever happened in town in the last month and Emma tunes out the words, just listens to the cadence of his voice as he speaks. His voice rises and falls and feels… soft. Soft like white wool and purple embroidery.
This is her dad.
"Emma?"
She looks up from the butter melting on her bagel and sees all three of them staring at her. "Sorry—what?"
"We're expected to be on the council—the council to, um, try the case. Both of us. So we'll be gone… almost all day. Which isn't what I wanted for your first day back, but—"
The way Henry's jaw is locked up tight sends something spiteful and sharp through her lungs. "You wanna tell me why they chose right then to arrest her?"
Henry looks up from his plate, eyes wide with shock, and Snow and David just look at her with confusion and hurt. It came out rough and pointed and accusatory and she probably should have thought about it more but—her son's mother.
David, finally, looks away. "I tried to stall them. I told them we needed her to get you back, I did what I could, I thought they'd at least wait until—"
"Until what?"
It's silent and heavy until Snow slowly reaches forward, puts her hand on Emma's wrist. "Emma, let's take this aside, okay?"
She looks at Henry because Snow nods at him, and then she feels like a fucking tool, because even if he's used to his moms at war, internal family strife isn't something he's learned to tune out and walk around. It isn't something she wants him to learn. "Yeah, okay," she breathes out, and reaches over, ruffles Henry's hair. "Gimme a minute, kid. Slather some jelly on that for me?"
"Sure," he says, too quietly.
Out in the hall, she avoid eye contact, works the toe of her boot over a knot in the wood floor. "So, okay, this council thing. How's it work? Do you guys call character witnesses or conduct an investigation or what?"
Her father is Prince Charming and he wears plaid shirts and Tims and likes swords and her mother is Snow White and she prefers cardigans and floral prints and longbows and that may be the sum total of what she knows about either of them. She certainly doesn't know whether they're hesitating out of fear or confusion or grief or respect. She doesn't know and she doesn't know them and they don't know her and she—she has to stop. She has to stop.
"I don't think that's how it's going to work, Emma," David finally says. "The council… is aware of her crimes. We all are."
Oh. Oh, fucking hell, no. "But—she's different."
Snow folds her lips and David's shoulders sag and she doesn't know what that means. "I know," Snow says, "that you've come to see eye to eye with her about Henry—"
"Please don't let them kill her."
Snow looks away entirely. David clears his throat. "I… don't know that we can force an outcome."
"David—you saw her, right? You dealt with her. She's different. She's not that—she's his mom." And they just keep looking at each other, and at her, and she remembers that look. That's the look of little girl, you won't understand and she hates that look. "Please. For Henry. Please. Please don't make him think for a second that he started something that got his mom killed."
Snow gasps and David physically recoils and she thinks, maybe, that it hit home. Maybe. "Oh, gods, Emma—"
"Exactly. Please." Snow reaches for her but she steps back, curls into herself. "Please."
She naps through the morning in fitful spurts. She can't differentiate between the front window of the diner and the skylight of Cora's prison hut and the bright white ceiling of her own bedroom. She can't settle, can't sink into whatever place it was that let her just sit with hot chocolate and—and a friend. She dreams of dragons and dalmatians and a revolver with no bullets. She dreams of blood and blood and blood. She keeps waking to warm, still air and silence.
She gives up at one, throws off the covers, pulls on sweats and stomps down the stairs, hitting the fourth one with a vengeance. The high-pitched squeal of metal startles Henry, standing at the kitchen counter. He's got a slice of bread in one hand and what looks like a mustard-slathered knife in the other. "Hey, kid," she mumbles, and grins sheepishly. "Didn't mean to scare you."
He smiles back, gestures with the bread hand. "I made you a sandwich."
Sure enough, there's a damn masterpiece of a sandwich on a blue plate, the bread lightly toasted and cut diagonally. It looks like—like serrano ham, and there's some type of leafy thing with it, and the good mustard is out on the counter, and a block of mild cheddar, and her stomach simultaneously growls and rolls. "That's a hell of a sandwich," she says, sliding onto the stool, and Henry grins. "You made that?"
He's making another one, too. "Yup."
She takes a bite and has to sigh; it's the right combination of everything she's missed, and not so heavy that she'll get sick again, as long as she eats slowly. Henry watches her face, clearly pleased that she likes it. "Okay, spill—you go to culinary school while I was gone?" she teases, and Henry half-blushes. It's adorable. He's gotta cut that out before high school or they'll eat him alive.
"No—duh—that's how Mom makes 'em."
She pauses with the last bite of the half against her lips. "Your mom does food as pedestrian as sandwiches?"
He wrinkles his nose at pedestrian, but rolls his eyes. This teenager shit is going to suck when it hits. "I go to school, Emma."
"Oh. Right." She finishes the half, hums contentedly. "Well, you did good, kid. It's delicious. Thanks."
He beams again and puts the cheese away. "Welcome." They sit next to each other for a little while, munching away, until Henry clears his throat. "You saw her?"
She nods, avoids eye contact. "Yeah. Thought they weren't gonna let me, but they did."
"Is she okay?"
No, she wants to shout, but she shrugs. "She's safe," she tells him.
He chews his lip, looks up at her shyly. "Can I see her?"
Nothing's ever prepared her for the combination of hope and hesitation on his face. What can she possibly say? "I'll find out," she promises. "But—Henry, I do want you to see her, but you have to understand, seeing someone you love in jail can be… really hard. You get it?"
He looks down, nods. "Yeah, I get it." And then he stuns her, like he has every day since he found her. "But sometimes you have to do the hard things to make it easier for someone else. Right? That's how it works."
He doesn't name it, but she knows, and he knows. Someday, he'll be ready to say it again. "Yeah, kid. That's how it works." They eat silently for a little longer, until she looks at the counter and sees all the utensils Henry used on the sandwiches. "Hold it. Which knives were you using?"
She spends a few hours in the afternoon comparing her notes from talking to Ruby with bits of Henry's book, which mostly just makes her head ache and her heart hurt. Nothing about the book tells the truth about that world—about how brutal it is, how vicious—and only a quarter of Ruby's comparatively straightforward facts even begins to sketch out everything the book talks about. She shouldn't be surprised, she really shouldn't, but she keeps hoping for something to be easy. A few simple answers should have been easy.
Henry apparently has standing appointments with the Tillman kids and then Archie, assures her he doesn't need company on the walk and that he'll be back in time to help with dinner. She notices that he doesn't lisp quite as much as he used to, and that his jaw seems stronger than before. He also puts on scuffed up Converse instead of clean white tennis shoes and wears miniature versions of David's plaid flannel shirts instead of the sweaters and button-fronts Regina always had him in.
It's been just over a month and she feels like she missed another ten years.
But the kid's good on his word, back at the apartment by six and craving spaghetti. He talks, not about Operation Cobra, finally, but about what he's reading with this library group and how Nick is teaching him to play rugby and he constantly corrects what she does at the stove with "Mom does this" and "I think she adds basil to the water" and "Jar sauce?"
When Snow and David come in at seven, Henry runs to give them hugs, leaving Emma in the lurch with a colander full of spaghetti. They both look tired—Snow more than David—but happy to see him. Of course, the first words out of his mouth are, "So when is Mom coming home?" and they all freeze.
David takes it, puts a hand on Henry's shoulder and smiles. "Not yet, Henry, but I'm sure it'll all work out soon," he says, and Emma sees the lie of it written all over Snow's face.
Dinner is tense, in the moments in between Henry's enthusiastic questions about the other world and Snow's elaborate answers. Emma keeps things simple: ogres suck, zombies suck, chimeras suck and are really hard to hunt. She leaves out the truer pieces about being hungry and thirsty and dirty and frightened and confused. She leaves out the part about being cold, all the time. She doesn't want to think about it anymore. She's been all of those things before, she knows how to survive them, but if she hadn't had the tether of the dreams and the diner and untranslatable sarcasm—she didn't know how to survive over there. She's never not known how to survive.
Snow indulges Henry with recounting fights, and teasing Emma about some of her less than heroic moments. David looks between all three of them with a smile, but every time he looks at Emma, she feels his smile slip, just a little bit. She doesn't do anything but fork up more spaghetti and contribute a repetition of "Ogres suck" because she doesn't really know how to survive this, either.
When Henry's fork scrapes his empty plate for the fourth time, Emma stands up, stacks his on top of her own and reaches for the empty serving bowl. David takes them out of her hands, and Snow takes them from him. It's bizarre and sickeningly familial. "I'll wash up," Snow offers, and smiles down at Henry. "Henry, will you help me?" So Emma gets to watch her son and her mother clear the table and start washing dishes like this happens and this is normal and it starts itching at her skin.
There's suddenly a bottle of Blue Moon being held out to her, and she looks up to see David's kind, sad smile. "Drink with your old man?"
The itch explodes on the soles of her feet, but she takes the bottle and presses the top into the center of her palm, twists quickly. David lifts his eyebrows briefly, but just smiles again, and Emma closes her eyes to take a sip. "Take this outside?" she suggests, when she realizes he's still smiling.
He nods, grabs two hoodies off the coat rack and lets her lead the way out of the apartment and back into the alley between the sporting goods store and their building. She pokes around for a minute, uncovers three plastic crates under a pile of collapsed cardboard boxes and kicks one over to him, pushes the other along for herself. "So," she starts, takes a seat and stretches her legs out in front of her. "Wanna tell me why you lied to my kid?"
David sighs, takes a sip. "I didn't—"
"Really?"
He folds easily, looks down at the asphalt. She remembers this guy. This is the bewildered coward with the nice guy smile. She can't be bothered with this guy.
"What's gonna happen to her?"
He won't meet her eyes. "I don't know yet."
"Who's making these decisions? Do they even know her?"
"Do you?" It's the first sign of a fight he's given her and she takes it gratefully, gives him a hard glare. "Look, I know she's been good to Henry, but—"
"I don't think you even understand what that means."
There's a flash of frustration on his face and it looks familiar, eerily so. "So help me understand. This is hard for me, Emma, and it's hard for your mother, too. Sometimes I look at her and yeah, I see Henry's mom, and then sometimes—most times—I see the woman who—gods, who killed people and destroyed my family and stole my grandson."
"She did not steal him."
David grimaces, huffs. "I tried, Emma, I—I worked so hard to be kind, for Henry's sake, but sometimes…"
She wants to say so much. She wants David to understand that Regina's trying, too. She needs him to understand that, so she tries. "When I talked to Ruby, she said—she said Snow tried to kill Regina. With a poison arrow. That she'd almost gone to the dark, but that you stepped in front of that arrow and brought her back. That even with all the pain she'd been through, all the fear, you pulled her back to the light." David nods, and Emma thinks of the white light coming through the diner window and how Regina would close her eyes, just to feel it. "Love brought her back to the light."
David starts shaking his head. "Snow loved Regina. She spent most of her childhood idolizing—"
"That's the goddamn point, David!"
There are too many words in her mouth, and she breathes into the beer bottle to chase them away. She doesn't—she won't tell what isn't hers. She won't do it, even if it would change everything. But she has to say something—something to make it all make sense. "Regina, age eighteen, at most. Watches her mother—you remember, the woman whose body parts you helped dispose of last night? Yeah. Watches her mother kill the love of her life, right in front of her. Then is forced into a marriage to a fifty year old lech after a ten year old girl picks her out like a doll."
David's face twists. "Your grandfather was a great man—"
"My grandfather thought a forced marriage to a barely legal girl was fine and dandy, so let's hold off on the unconditional praise, shall we?" she spits back. He starts to say something else, but Emma just holds up a hand, shakes her head. "So you tell me, David, how the hell that girl was supposed to take that kind of idolatry when it turned her life into that?"
There's so much more she wants to say. Emma wants to scream at David until he gets it, gets what the art of positioning is and how Regina is always ready for a physical attack. She wants to scream until he thinks about what could possibly happen to a pretty young royal wife on her wedding night. Until he has all the same ghosts floating around in his head.
She puts down her beer—almost empty, and she's gonna need a shit ton more alcohol after this—and chews on her lower lip until the right words come. "You need to understand three things. The only love that could have ever brought her back? That's Henry's love. And he does love her, so all of you on the lying and bullshit brigade better cut the crap and accept that. Two, she is the best damn mother I could've ever hoped for Henry to have, and she is trying to be better. I can't make you understand where he could have ended up, who he could have ended up as. But he's Henry and he's a fucking miracle, and that's because of her. And three…" The words fade, and all she's got is that sick, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, like the first time she saw Regina cry. "You will never be able to understand what taking away hope does to a person, not until it happens to you. All of you can say it's about true love and betrayal, but it's not. It's about hope and freedom. That's all anything is ever about."
Emma finally looks at him, and he's clenching his jaw and clutching his beer too tightly. She almost smiles, because that's exactly what she does right before she starts a fight. "We… we had a lot of hopes for you, Emma," he finally says. It takes all the air out of her lungs. "There were so, so many things I wanted to show you. So many things I wanted to teach you, and that—I can't. I can't do those things." He sighs again, lowers his head. "You had to teach yourself."
She closes her eyes and leans back, rests the crown of her head against the brick wall. She can't rail against grief like this. There's no soothing it; she knows that. She feels it every time she thinks of Henry's first steps.
"She took—she took you, Emma. She took you from us. She took your life from you—"
"No." It comes out hard and sharp like an arrow, like a knife. "No. There are… there are a lot of things you can accuse Regina of, but—" and she shakes her head, releases a breath slowly. "No. Nobody took my life from me. My life made Henry. And any other way—any other—no. No one took my life from me."
David drags his sleeve under his nose and she realizes that he's crying. He's crying, and maybe—maybe, if he's like her, that means he's not fighting, anymore. Maybe. If he's like her.
"It doesn't look good for her."
She closes her eyes, because of course it doesn't. "How do we make it look better?"
Something about his face makes everything feel blurry at the edges. "She added to the list of charges. She's confessed to things… things we didn't know about. In that world, and this one."
That sickness in the pit of her stomach rises. "She what?"
"It doesn't look good for her. I don't think—" and David stops, drains his beer. It's a long time before he speaks again. "They'll bring her over to Town Hall at ten, which means they'll ready her at nine thirty. I can set up a distraction at nine forty, which will give you maybe three minutes to get her out the back door of the station. I'll have two horses waiting for you. They'd look for you on foot or in a car. You take the horses straight to the tree line, then go."
She doesn't know what to say besides Are you fucking insane. So she says the next best thing. "I hate horses."
"It's the best way."
"She can't just… apparate us somewhere?"
"They're using special manacles. Magic dampening. The effects take a few hours to wear off."
She shoots back, "Got any racing brooms?" but she's still sick inside. She's still not home, yet. Still not safe. "No. She's not a fugitive. If she can't come straight home to Henry, it's a no go."
There's something dark in David's eyes; she thinks it looks like regret. "This might be your only shot."
She has to laugh at that. "If the past month has taught me anything, David—I've always got another shot."
When she finally stumbles up the stairs to bed, she's more than a little drunk. She's more than a little drunk because after David's idiotic take the horses to the tree line moment, and all the ghosts swirling in her head and how they trace lines in the air that are supposed to be Regina's shoulders and her spine and those sad, sad eyes, and the way the oldest bricks in the wall of the apartment building are dark and blotchy like clotting blood—after all of that, she'd gone back into the kitchen for her bottle of Jack.
Because which way is up is a question she can't answer sober, so why not be drunk? It doesn't take much—five bitter, burning mouthfuls—and there's another thing to blame on fucking fairy tales: that world took ten pounds and her tolerance, too.
Fuck fairy tales. Fuck them all, because they make everyone dumb and naive and so goddamn black-and-white. Because—because people depend on happy endings when the only thing that ever fucking matters is the goddamn middle.
Because what the fuck is Regina thinking, making it worse? Who is this dumb, idiotic, sad, sad woman whose contingency plan looks like suicide by proxy?
She fall into bed and stares at Henry's hair—sticking straight out from his head on top, plastered to his skin on the sides—until it blurs and swims and then fades out into pale, grey, winter morning light and metal-edged formica tables. Regina's sitting at their table, expressionless, with her hands in her lap and her eyes fixed out the window. But she knows Emma's there, because her shoulders shift like everything just got so much heavier, and she whispers something under her breath. It sounds like of course, and it sounds like defeat.
Maybe Emma's not drunk enough, because she snaps. She yanks two chairs out of her way and plants her boot on the edge of the table and maybe those ten pounds didn't come off her thighs, maybe she's still Swan the Bounty Hunter, maybe. She pushes and extends her leg and the table tips towards the wall and Regina flinches, flinches hard, and Emma hates her. "The fuck are you thinking?" she shouts, and has to ball her fists up at her sides to keep from shaking Regina.
Or maybe she should shake her, maybe she should punch her in the face, because Regina laughs at her, soft and dry and casual. "Did you really forget already, Miss Swan? I'm the Evil Queen. Evil must be vanquished."
It's those fucking eyes, those sad, dark eyes. Regina can laugh and smile and taunt her way to Hell and back, but those fucking eyes—Emma deflates. What else can she do? Those dark, dark eyes look at her like—like she has to understand. They look like they did in those crazy, incomprehensible moments when Regina kept whispering take the shot and Emma couldn't see anything but all the lights going out.
She sits, drops onto the chair left next to Regina. "Are you? Evil?"
It makes Regina stiffen, hold her breath, curl deeper into her thick sweater. Emma hates it when she does that, hates the idea that she doesn't want to keep breathing. "Was my mother?" she finally whispers, and oh.
Jesus.
"Regina—fuck—you can't—" Emma reaches out, clumsily, puts a whole hand on Regina's knee, pauses at the feel of well-worn denim. "You're not her. You're not."
"But she could have been me." And then Regina gives that small, mournful smile, actually looks at her. "But we'll never know, will we? Because I killed her. And not even for what she'd done. No—I took her life because of what she could do." That mouth twists, and Regina leans forward just slightly. "I made you cut her up, Emma. And not for revenge or justice or anything that could be forgiven. For fear. I made you cut her up for fear."
Emma tries—she tries so hard—to not close her eyes, to not think of blood and bone and flesh and squish, but she can't not. She can't not.
"So why not the same for me?" Regina whispers, and Emma opens her eyes, pushes all of that flesh and bone out of her mind. "You still don't know what I'm capable of. You shouldn't ever find out."
It's those eyes. It's always going to be those eyes. They're screaming help me just as loud as they did at the mine, in the fire. Even if that mouth can't be honest for a moment, those eyes can't not.
So she says "Henry" and Regina recoils. "Henry. You're capable of Henry."
Regina shakes her head, looks away. "Don't."
"Don't do this."
And that mouth, that mouth turns up into a smile. Emma hates that smile. "This is how it's supposed to go. This is how you break a curse." Regina lifts her eyes and—God—she is so sad and so open and she's beautiful and this isn't how it's supposed to go. Regina isn't supposed to break. "The witch must die. And you've been so merciful. So merciful, Emma. Because now—now it will be quick. Quick and civilized. Take my head with the Witch-Killer, burn my body on heartwood."
"No."
There are tears in those dark, dark eyes, but that mouth is still smiling. She doesn't know how she's never thought bravery before. "I won't suffer this way," Regina whispers. Then she adds, so softly that Emma can barely hear, "You don't know how tired I am of suffering."
She wakes up with her mind so full of Regina, so overrun with those eyes and the line of her spine and all that darkness, that she has to move. It doesn't matter that it's four in the morning, or that it's abysmally cold in the bedroom, or that she has nowhere to go but here. She kicks the covers onto Henry's side and pulls on her worn-out Saints hoodie and tugs out her ponytail, reties it haphazardly. It's drafty in the room; she should dig up some extra blankets for the kid.
Except she needs to get the fuck out of the room. She can't look at him and not see Regina. She can't sit here and not think bravery and suffering and darkness and idiocy.
Regina is waiting to die. What fucking world did she come back to where Regina Mills would wait to die? And—God, just how fucked in the head is she, if she can talk about being beheaded and burned like it's ordinary and not horrific and not—they did that to Cora. How does she not know? Doesn't she know she—doesn't she know there's hope?
Emma lifts her head out of her hands and stares at the two swords hanging in their scabbards from hooks on the wall. She's got to keep track of the days; they'd agreed that after ten days, Emma would reopen the portal. Mulan and Aurora had ten days to try this Hail Mary pass for Phillip's soul. Ten days—nine, now—and Emma would use fucking Excalibur to bring them through.
And maybe she'd throw Carnwennan back through the portal, right then, because the idea of a witch-killing sword in a world where the only witch is Regina—everything in her body rejects it. Rejects the sword and the—
Oh, fuck.
She's up and pulling one scabbard over her shoulders and down the stairs in five breaths, and out the door in ten, and then she stands in the street and looks. Nothing looks different and everything looks different. Stores have been renamed and people moved in to the vacant units across the street and there's a painter's set-up around the library and where the fuck is the blue and white lobster shack that marks the turn onto St. George?
Everything's different and nothing is. She hates this whole fucking world.
She finally sees it—white and red, now—and starts sprinting, because it's cold and there's no fucking time, anyway. Because a witch-killing sword in a world with magic—what have they done?
Gold's house—too narrow, too pointed, too half-assed Gothic—kind of glistens, which creeps her the hell out. At four in the morning nothing should glisten, nothing should stand out. The house does and, if she thinks about it, she does too: sword strapped to her back, hammering on the front door with a heavy fist and kicks interspersed for effect. "Gold! Gold, open the damn door!"
It takes him a good seven minutes to reach the door, and as soon as she hears the lock turn she gives an extra kick. He doesn't take kindly to it. "Sheriff. It's four thirty. What—"
Fuck the talk. Emma steps through the doorway, jabs a finger at his shoulder. "What bullshit set-up job are you trying to pull?"
When she gets in normal people's faces, they tend to look directly into her eye, or look down to avoid eye contact. No one's ever looked just left of her head. "Kindly step back, Sheriff," Gold hisses, but his eyes are still just to the left—
The sword. The bright white hilt of the sword. She gives him a shove and reaches back for the sword, unsheathes it with one smooth motion that feels too natural, too smooth. "You told her about this thing. You told her about it and now she's different."
Gold steps back, retreats three paces, but his eyes stay locked on the hilt. "Well, well. That's certainly not Excalibur."
Something about his tone—something about the way he's balanced—Emma freezes. "You didn't know about this one."
He finally meets her gaze, but only to scoff. "If you're asking if Carnwennan is familiar to me—"
"You didn't tell her to get this one."
His displeasure at being interrupted shows in the way his mouth twists. "No, Sheriff, I did not."
It's got to be a lie. He's—he's got to be running a con. "You told her how to get—"
"Excalibur and only Excalibur. It is not my fault if Regina has a habit of overreaching in her own scheming." Overreaching—this rat bastard. He takes a half step forward, pauses when she resettles her grip on the hilt. "Now, if I recall, I told her that I had no interest in her fight. That also holds true for its consequences."
The hint of glee when he says consequences, the way he tilts his head—it's a con. It's got to be a con. But what's the game? "What consequences?" she hisses, and settles the sword against her shoulder, choked up like she's ready for a curveball.
Gold shrugs at her, crosses his arms above the belt of his dressing gown. "Who knows what the future holds?"
Fucking bullshit games. She folds her lips, resettles her grip on the hilt of the sword and sets her eye on the side table in the entranceway, places the instep of her chucks just beneath the cross-brace of the legs. "Immediate future? I'd put money on property damage." Two feints, the table end rising just slightly on each, and then a full lift and push and it tips, crashes onto its side and takes two vases out with it. "Huh. Look at that. I'm a regular clairvoyant."
Gold clenches his jaw, his fists, glares at her. "That was unwise."
"So is toying with me. Let's try this again. What consequences."
"You're asking me to tell you the future, Sheriff, and that's a large and varied place."
Jesus. If this was the bullshit they'd all put up with back in that hellhole of a forest, she more than understands homicidal urges. "Tell me what the consequences of her using this sword are."
And there, the slightest smile, a shift in his shoulders like triumph. "What happens when a witch wields the Witch-Killer? Why, I can't begin to imagine."
She closes her eyes, feels the sentence roll around in her brain. What happens when a witch wields the Witch-Killer. She's been dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Stupid Swan—she never should've—
Focus. No time for hindsight. "How do I fix it?" she growls, and Gold just grins at her, sharp and smug.
"All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again," he sing-songs, and she half-lunges at him, holds herself back just in time. "I've always been partial to nursery rhymes," Gold continues. "They do such a thorough job of teaching our children the hardest of life lessons."
It's all games and feints and shadows and Emma hates him anyway, because she gets it. Doesn't mean she has to take it lying down, though, so she lets her face do what it wants and morph into a snarl, lets her feet carry her the six paces into the living room, lets her hand twirl Carnwennan with a flourish. And with Gold watching and seething, she slides the blade across the back cushions of his sofa, then the easy chair. The leather splits—like butter, like warm butter—and Emma smiles. "I hate nursery rhymes. They just bring out the worst in me," she damn near chirps, and brushes past him to the door.
His voice, sibilant and saccharine, makes her pause. "I could look into it, of course. Your… quandary."
Emma hesitates. She thinks of little baby Alexandra and how, just before the curse broke, she'd started greeting Emma with raised arms and smiles. "For a price, right?"
Gold makes a small, noncommittal sound. "Perhaps another favor. Perhaps something… else."
"Go to hell," she hisses, and slams the door.
Bonus material:
Thematic soundtrack: Dear Ms. Lonelyhearts, Cold War Kids.
Tonal soundtrack: Symphony No. 11, Shostakovich.
