This is a multichapter story for EC Week 5! It will cover prompts for Days 2 through 6. So it will entail Amnesia, Bed Sharing, Injury, First Date, and Regina Losing Magic. But not in that order. Enjoy!
David had never run so fast in his life as he was then sprinting from his truck and in through the hospital with Henry only a few minutes behind on his motorcycle having been pulled out of school by himself. He felt sick to his stomach ever since he had gotten the call that Regina had been in an accident. A pickup truck slamming in to the side of her Mercedes as she drove to work that morning. Allegedly on purpose. An attempt to end her life by a man particularly unwilling to forgive her for her actions in the past, even after redeeming herself so long ago. It was sickening.
Emma hadn't called him until they had settled Regina in to a room, still unconscious but miraculously appeared to be uninjured save for several cuts and deep bruises. They suspected her magic had played a part. But no one knew for certain how she had truly faired for she would not wake. So he sprinted through the hospital as fast as his legs would carry him and he soon heard her voice and burst in to tears at the sound of it. But the moment of overwhelming relief was washed away almost instantly. Something was different, something was wrong.
And then there was yelling and shouting, a complete ruckus in the room just down the hall as various things crashed to the floor and the yelling grew more intense, more panicked and far, far louder. And just as David got close, a nurse was thrown out of the room at a speed unobtainable by anything but magic and hit the wall across the hall that left her limp on the floor as a second nurse ran out of the room to tend to her while surrounding staff quickly flocked toward the scene.
"Where the hell am I!"
Her bellowing voice shot an old fear down his spine and through his skin and as he came to a panting halt next to the terrified nurses, Regina slunk out of the room. She was bloody, her hair a tangled mess, her clothes were torn and filthy, her steps were slow and furious, as though she were sizing up and stalking her next kill. Her hands were both filled with flames, ready to throw them at the very slightest provocation as she snarled at the women on the floor and bristled at the doctors and staff surrounding her.
She wasn't his Regina.
And then her attention snapped to him, her head swivelling to look at him and he felt his blood run completely cold at the expression on her face and it only got worse as recognition dawned on her, "Regina," he called gently as he lifted his hands a little in surrender and her lip curled back in a higher snarl.
"You," she growled as she stalked toward him and he held his ground.
"Regina, sweetheart," he tried to soothe but was answered with her flames being thrown at him in full force. The hospital filled with screams and protests as they ran and David ducked and dodged to the side to avoid her magic as best as he could but she was relentless and his leather jacket caught on fire as she followed his path. "Regina!" He shouted but her flames only came harder as the hospital staff scattered screaming aside from those shouting for sedation.
She only stopped when he threw a metal tray at her, scattering medical supplies across the hall as he did. It distracted her for a moment, stopping her fiery assault to catch it and it offered him time to pull his coat from his body and stomp out the flames but her temper was nowhere near dampened.
"Sweetheart?!" She bellowed incredulously as the metal tray clattered to the floor.
"What the hell is going on in here?!" Emma exclaimed as she jogged back in to the hall.
"Emma no!" David warned but it didn't offer much time for her to react as Regina sized her up and shot her hand forward, vicing an invisible grip around his daughter's throat and lifting her in the air, "Emma! Regina!"
"Regina! What the hell!" Emma pushed out as she thrashed and tried to get free. But the magic only tightened further and her expression grew all the more rabid and cruel, a face she had never seen on anyone before.
"Regina!" David shouted but the woman wouldn't listen and as he watched her fingers start to tighten further and Emma start to fight for breath harder, he threw himself at her. Knocking her off her balance and out of her focus, slamming her against the wall and praying that he didn't hurt her. "Enough, love," he breathed and suddenly she had vanished and purple smoke took her place. Before he had so much as a chance to look for her he was being thrown backward and his back hit the opposite wall of the hall with enough force to leave him winded and fighting for breath just as Emma coughed for her own up the hall a little ways.
"Sweetheart?! Love?!" She snarled as she prowled up to him and he grunted as he rolled on to his hands and knees with a grimace, "who do you think you are, filthy shepherd?! I am your queen! The only thing you may call me is 'Your Majesty'!"
"Regina," he grimaced as he tried to get to his feet only to have her call a scalpel from the floor and press it to his throat as she leaned down in to his face, bending at the knees and waist so her wild dark eyes were level with his. It was like calling upon a memory, being overwhelmed by déjà vu, her expression was so cold and so cruel, he knew right then and there that she absolutely would kill him. He wasn't with Regina, she wasn't there. The woman standing before him with a scalpel to his throat was without a doubt the Evil Queen. A very angry and very upset Evil Queen.
"Your majesty," he conceded and she accepted it but did not back off.
"That is better," she snarled as she dipped in closer.
Then David practically jumped out of his skin at the sound of a gunshot and Regina threw herself away from him with a shout of pain and outrage, dropping the scalpel and pressing her hand to her upper arm. He watched her fling herself away from him and then snapped his attention to Emma who stood with her gun in hand and its barrel trained on Regina, "Emma, what were you thinking!"
"She was going to kill you!"
"Emma-!"
"Emma," Regina drew out smoothly, her voice like a velvety song written to truly appreciate the name for the first time as she slowly turned around with a vicious smile and blood seeping through her fingers from her wound.
Emma's face paled at her name being said in such a truly evil tone, as if a demon were singing it from her closet in the middle of the night. Her heart skipped and the hairs on the back of her neck rose in unease and fear and she could not recall a single instance in her life she regretted more than shooting Regina in the arm.
"Dear," she smiled with a cock of her head and then without the flare of smoke, disappeared from beside the shepherd and reappeared right in front of the spooked blonde so quickly if you had blinked you would have missed it. It unsettled the blonde even further and Regina settled herself well within the woman's personal space, stopping only inches from her as the blonde tried and failed to breathe smoothly. The fear that hitched and shook their breaths before they died was always the most satisfying part to her.
"What happened, Regina-" in an instant Emma's voice was silenced by the woman's bloodied hand wrapped around her throat and her nails digging in to her skin.
"Stop calling me that!" Regina hissed in her face as she pulled at her wrist, "what makes you think you have the authority to call me by my name," she snarled and her grip tightened, "pretty little peasant."
"Seriously?" Emma pushed out in confusion and the next thing she knew, her head was being slammed against a wall hard enough to make her vision tunnel for a moment. But even in her disorientation, Emma could still make out a shining scalpel being twirled in the woman's free hand, her arm clearly unhindered by the bullet wound. David was on his feet in an instant at the sight of the blade but before he got anywhere close to them, Regina was throwing him down the hall, spinning him in midair with nothing but a thought as she quickly drew back her arm with every intention to stab the blonde to death.
But the scalpel never hit its mark.
It was intercepted with by a book being thrust between herself and the blonde and outrage scorched through her veins once more and it came out in a loud and most furious yell.
"Mom! Mom, what are you doing?!" Henry shouted in disbelief and she threw Emma to the floor once more before whirling around to face him with a snarl that made him shrink back in fear.
"Who the hell are you!" She roared furiously at the young man and then laughed incredulously, "I am no one's mother!"
Henry never thought he would see the day she ever said that. No matter the circumstances, she always insisted that she was his mother. To him, to Emma, to Snow, to anyone with ears. And yet there she stood laughing at the idea. It caught him off guard and he opened his mouth to speak only to close his mouth again. And then he shook his head with a quiet and baffled, "are you serious?"
"Do I look like a mother to you, boy?!"
Unsure of what to say to that, Henry did a quick glance of his surroundings. Emma trying to catch her breath on the floor, the emptiness of the hospital, the mess, the scorch marks on the floor and walls, the blood on herself, the blood on Emma, and then to David who was looking worse for wear standing a safe distance away shaking his head in warning with an expression that sunk Henry's heart. He knew she had been in an accident and given the chaos and the menacing temper, Henry was left to assume she didn't remember who she was. And given the fact she had been ready to kill both Emma and David without a thought, he was left to conclude that the last thing she remembered was being the Evil Queen.
It made his heart sink. But he didn't skip a beat.
"I apologize, your majesty," he began politely, humbly even with a slight dip of his head and she listened closely with steady eyes boring in to his own, "I am sure that none of this makes any sense right now but I would be happy to help you make sense of it. I imagine you have a lot of questions. I can answer them for you," he told her and for a long while, she didn't move. Just stared at him with a scowl.
What got to him the most was the lack of recognition in those dark eyes. She had watched him grow up, had played witness to his whole life, had known him better than anyone else and now she stood there learning his face for the very first time. It broke his heart and he wanted nothing more than to pull her in to a hug and let go only when she remembered who she was. But that would not go over well at that particular moment.
"Where am I?" She asked lowly and for the first time, she actually got an answer.
"You are in Storybrooke. You cast your Dark Curse and this is the town you created. The curse was broken several years ago but you found your happiness regardless. This morning on your way to your office your...vehicle was hit by another's and you were brought here to the Storybrooke hospital to make sure you weren't going to die. From what I can tell, you seem to be just fine, thank goodness," he laughed a little in relief and her eyes narrowed suspiciously so he sobered very quickly, "it just looks like you don't remember some things," he noted and stared at him through those narrow eyes for a long while until Emma pushed herself up on to her feet with a huff. And even when her eyes did leave his to look at Emma, it was merely a bored glance in her direction before they were back on him.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Henry," he told her and he could see something twinge inside her, something shift uncomfortably at the name, "I am your son."
Regina scoffed a disbelieving laugh and shook her head, "that is impossible," and then her tone switched to anger for their efforts at playing with her mind, "I cannot have a child!"
"He is my son," Emma pitched in gently with a slightly hoarse voice, "but I put him up for adoption as a newborn and you are the one that took him home," she explained and the wild brunette only seemed to spiral deeper into her rage once more. She was terrifying. Emma had once felt pride over being able to deal with who she had thought to be the Evil Queen. Had once wondered why her parents had had such a difficult time in the Enchanted Forest with the queen. At one point she had even started to believe that the stories in Henry's book were exaggerations.
But after today, those stories were very clearly downplayed impressively. This woman was a raving lunatic, she was a killer through and through and she scared her. She never wanted to cross paths with her again and could not believe that Regina had come so far to be the kind and feisty woman Emma called a friend.
"This is absolutely ridiculous!" She roared as she stepped away from the boy and spun to look at the shepherd standing just off to the side, "you expect me to fall for this?!"
"Fall for what?"
"Oh don't play stupid, shepherd! You and your dear wife are behind all of this, aren't you?! You've incapacitated me, taken me to this place, woven me this story of a happy ending and a family, and then woke me up! Trying to distract me, trying to deter me from for what I have in store for you! It isn't going to work, shepherd!"
"No, Regina, that is not-"
"How old is this boy?! Seventeen?! Eighteen?! You are trying to make me believe that I have forgotten what, nearly twenty years of my life?!"
"No, Regina, we are trying to tell you you've lost at least thirty six," he told her gently and felt utterly sick doing so, "if not more."
"You expect me to believe that?" She questioned with an amused smile and began walking toward him, "whose idea was this? Your precious wife's? Some last ditch attempt to give me a happy ending?" She drawled out bitterly, her humour lost with every step closer she took to the shepherd.
"Snow and I are no longer married, your majesty," he told her and she scoffed another laugh, "you saw to that quite some time ago," he assured and she stopped right in front of him. Dark and merciless eyes, a snarl twitching at her full lips, her posture tall and rigid, her movements pointed and fluid, her presence strong and proud and angry. The woman that had worked so hard to be good was nowhere to be seen and it was so disappointing. For she had worked so hard to be better, so hard to get to where she had been. He just wanted to pull her in to him and hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay.
"And how, shepherd, did I see to that?" She purred viciously as she tipped in a little closer, "hmm?"
"I know how to show you we are telling the truth," Henry interrupted for if David told her that they were married, she would have slashed his throat right then and there without hesitation. And they didn't need that. Slowly, the queen swivelled her head to look his way but what broke Henry's heart was how David didn't look away from her for even a moment. He looked at her with all of the love and sorrow and patience in the world. He wasn't going anywhere, Henry knew right at that moment, David would go to the grave fighting for her no matter the circumstances they found themselves in and if Henry weren't so devastated by the loss of his mother, he would have smiled. But unlike she did David, the queen held absolutely no memory of the son who loved her more than anything.
"And how is that?"
"I have a book that holds recorded stories of everyone in the Enchanted Forest I can send Emma to go get it along with some photo albums of our time here in Storybrooke. She can also bring you a change of clothes if you like. They are quite different from what you wore in the Enchanted Forest but they won't be covered in dirt and blood and won't be torn to pieces," he suggested and Emma looked as though she was going to slap him for putting her in charge of the queen's wardrobe.
"Where is Snow White?" She snapped and Henry shrugged and shook his head.
"I actually don't know. I came straight from school to see you but I didn't see her there today," he told her honestly and she gritted her teeth and took a moment to look around her to try and make sense of the building she was in. The world she was in. She was agitated and short tempered and Henry knew that any misstep would result in a repeat of what he had initially walked in on. So he tread lightly and spoke gently and truly just hoped for the best and relied on how obsessively he had studied the Evil Queen in his book eight years ago.
And finally she found herself with very few options and a need to know what was going on. Even if it was just with the intention of learning as much as she could so she could kill them all. They just had to take it one step at a time.
"Fine," she bit out sharply and then snapped her gaze to the shepherd and stepped around him on a path straight to the room she had woken up in.
"Kay, Emma, go," Henry urged quietly.
"Henry! I don't know what she is going to want to wear!" Emma snapped under her breath.
"Black leather, bright coloured silk, one of her less formal blazers, the tallest heels you can find, and some jewelry. An outfit that is just like...bold and sharp and bad ass," he told her as he started backing away from her and toward the room his mother disappeared in to.
"Henry!"
"The storybook is on the shelf above my desk in my room and the photo albums are all in the upstairs library. There are four of them and they are all the same on the outside."
"Henry!"
"Use magic to go there and back, be quick, and also your neck is covered in mom's blood, you should probably wash it off," he noted and then slipped inside the room with David following close behind him.
