Ageless Attraction
Chapter 1
Summary: Confusion, magic, and more confusion. Why are a teenage Emma and a teenage Regina wondering through Storybrooke forests?
A/N: Apparently, I'm on somewhat of a "mess with Swan Queen ages" kick. I still dislike the title. Here goes nothing.
-/-
Emma shakes her head as she sits up and then has to resettle her glasses. Where the hell am I? It looks like the middle a forest somewhere. Hadn't she just been in the city? A groan grabs her attention and she looks across the clearing. A girl who looks to be around her age, maybe a year older, is sitting up too.
Emma's eyes widen because, even though the girl is dressed kinda weird, she's gorgeous. Dark brown hair, pulled back in a braid, reveals an angel's face with the most expressive brown eyes Emma has ever seen. The other girl is wearing black pants tucked into black boots, which look normal enough if way above Emma's pay grade, and then a maroon fancy coat of some kind over an equally fancy white shirt; the whole outfit is probably worth Emma's entire wardrobe put together. Maybe it's some private school's super old-fashioned uniform?
The girl spots her a second later and they both scramble to their feet at the same time. The brunette speaks first, "Where are we? I do not know these woods. Who are you?"
Emma shrugs, "No idea, I've definitely never been here before. My name's Emma though, Emma Swan."
Regina frowns at the casual way of speaking the blonde girl has. Her eyes trail down the strange blue pants and the rolled up sleeves of a loose, open red shirt, with a bizarre pattern of some sort on it, revealing a plain black shirt underneath. "Nice to meet you," she says automatically as her eyes swing back up to meet blue-green ones. "I am Regina of Milliar."
-x-x-x-
It takes a few minutes of them both feeling the other out, trying to see how much they should trust the other, for them to figure out why they keep misunderstanding each other. "Wait a minute, are you saying you actually think you're a princess? Not just some really sheltered rich kid?"
Regina frowns, for what does Emma Swan think she has been saying this whole time? "My father's father is a reigning monarch, therefore my father is a prince and so it follows that, while rather removed from the line of succession, I am a princess."
Emma finally realizes that Regina is completely serious and gapes. "But we haven't had princesses and kings and knights and all that stuff for like hundreds of years, not real ones anyway," Emma sputters.
"It is possible I have been taken to another world," Regina looks thoughtful. "Mother is a very powerful sorceress. I simply don't know why she would have sent me here, but not come herself." Mother should have at least given her some instruction or informed her of her trespass if this was a punishment.
Something catches her attention; she frowns and closes her eyes, obviously focusing on something within. She opens her eyes and stares at a hand she holds out, cupped. "I also seem to…" She flexes her hand and a ball of fire appears in it. Emma's eyes go wide, her mouth dropping open as she backs away from the very real heat it gives off. "Ah, yes. It seems I have magic now, as well instinctive control over it. How peculiar."
"Holy shit!" Emma finally finds her voice. She makes frantic gestures, her eyes never leaving the fire. "Put that thing away!" Regina looks up and sees her companion's distress. She closes her hand, extinguishing the fireball. "God, crap."
Regina ignores the blonde's panic as she herself is rather unsettled by her new abilities. She doesn't trust magic—it gives her mother too much power and control, makes it too easy to deal out punishment. She chooses to focus on something else that has caught her attention, "What I don't understand is; if you are years in the future from my time or in a world that is, why do you have a knight's sword?"
"I don't have a sword," Emma responds with immediate confusion before she follows Regina's eyes. She looks over her shoulder and sees the hilt of the sword that's apparently strapped across her back. "Oh crap, I have a sword. Well damn, maybe we are in your world."
-x-x-x-
After a half an hour of walking, they pause for breath at the top of a hill. Emma pulls her hair tie off her wrist. The hiking made her heat up, even though the autumn air had been cool when she first woke up on the ground. Regina had the right idea, but Emma doesn't want to take the time to braid her own hair; plus she knows hers wouldn't look nearly as nice as Regina's, so she just pulls it up in a ponytail.
"Those look like no buildings I have ever seen," Regina says, gazing down at the part of a town that is visible through the trees.
Emma peers closer and lets out a sigh of relief. "But I have, thank god. We're in my world." She looks at the clock tower and various buildings that signal a small town. Somewhere near the coast, she notes at the sight of the waterfront. "Okay, new plan. We follow my lead."
Regina frowns, because this means she isn't in her own world and she knows nothing of this new one. "Very well."
"No need to sound so thrilled about it, princess," Emma snorts as they set off again.
Regina glances at the blonde from the corner of her eye. Emma looks amused, but Regina can tell she's a little hurt by Regina's apparent lack of faith. The brunette smiles a little to herself before adopting a haughty tone, "I'm simply not sure you're up to the task."
Emma gives a squawk of outrage, "Hey, I am so up to the task. I was born up to the task." She punctuates this by banging her fist on an open palm.
"Deeds, not words, Miss Swan," Regina challenges back.
-x-x-x-
They wander the town and no one pays them much attention, although a few eye Regina's outfit with mild surprise and interest. They come upon the building Emma was reluctantly looking for within a half an hour. "Here." Regina stops looking at the strange buildings with interest and stares up at the one they've arrived at. "I'm not a huge fan of the police, but I have no idea what else to do."
"Police?" Regina asks, wishing she would stop feeling a step behind the blonde.
"Police officers," Emma tries to clarify, "Law enforcement? Protectors? Sheriff?"
Regina brightens when she recognizes the word, "Ah, a sheriff, yes."
"Right," Emma nods, "So we should go in and see if they know anything, because if we are in my world, we're still nowhere near the city I've been living in recently. We're in some small town by the sea or something. We need to find out where we are."
"I see." So even Emma is not where she was before they awoke in the forest, even if they are in her world. "This whole episode is turning out to be most strange."
Emma gives her an incredulous look, "You're just reaching that conclusion now?"
-x-x-x-
There's a tight knot of anxious and frustrated looking adults crowded around a desk. Emma nearly walks out, wanting to just figure it out on their own, but then she glances at Regina. Regina who is looking around the room with interest and is obviously puzzled by light bulbs. Regina who is counting on her. So she walks further in, the brunette instinctively following her while her interested gaze still goes everywhere.
"Um, excuse me?" Emma says tentatively. Regina can't help but stare at Emma from the corner of her eye. Where is the brash young woman who was so confident a moment ago? In her place is a girl Regina remembers is younger than she. Regina thinks about how she herself has been acting and how she would if Mother was here and thinks she understands. She moves closer to Emma, trying to offer silent support. Emma seems to straighten and her voice is more sure when she continues, "Is the Sheriff around?"
Everyone turns to stare at the girls. Snow's eyes drift from the young blonde, hair up in a ponytail with glasses. The girl's face and her outfit, especially the plaid shirt, look familiar, but it's the brunette in the riding outfit that she recognizes first from her memories. Younger even than then, but still… "Regina?" Why is a teenage Regina here? How? Where is the adult Regina? They are all here because she'd been investigating something with Emma and no one has heard from them in—her eyes snap back to the blonde. "Emma!?"
-/-
A/N: This was supposed to be a quick little one-shot of maybe five pages that had some cute teenage interaction and it spiraled out of control. Good news is, most of it is written-it just needs editing. I don't normally work in present tense so idk how that turned out either. I have no idea as far as the title is concerned. This was mainly because I have opinions and feelings for teenage Emma and Regina. I was going to post it as one long story, but since editing is annoying and its long, I decided to break it into pieces.
As always, let me know what you think. Thanks for checking this out!