Hai. (Smiles shyly, with a wave) I'm 'Fangirl. With Dimples' on here, only-a-grrrl-gang on Tumblr. Long time lurker, turned poster. I hope you like my first offering.
This is AU in that it's set in a world where Regina's redemption kind of moved slowly along on it's cheery little path, uninterrupted. No Cora or anything like that. Neal is in this world though. He'll be touched on more in later chapters.
This is probably the shortest chapter that I will write, just to kick things off.
This will be 13 chapters long in total. No warnings that I can think of, but there will probably be the odd little swear word here and there. Nothing major. Expect an update about twice a week.
Oh, and SWAN QUEEEEEEEEEEEEN.
Disclaimer: Don't own any of this. No profit, just playing.
Chapter One
"Smoke Demon," the Blue Fairy had explained. "Created when a magical fire isn't extinguished properly."
A heated glare thrown in Nova's direction, driving the young nun even further into the corner that she had been attempting to shrink into, unseen.
"No time for blame," Emma had stated breathlessly. "What will it do?"
"Create as much havoc as it can," had come the despondent reply. "It has no more complicated urges than that."
...
"Get Regina."
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It hadn't been hard to follow the trail of destruction to Gold's shop. Fire, overturned cars, and acrid smoke, like a line of dominoes in the warm nighttime, stretching out before her. As she'd run, she'd alternated between coughing and hacking and yelling out exhausted threats to a woman who couldn't hear them.
"I swear, Regina...if you don't answer your goddamn phone!"
Her father's sword had slapped a steady heartbeat against her thigh.
Until, finally, she stood at the door of the pawnbroker's shop. It was so late that the proprietor himself was long since gone, headed for a warm home and a gradually re-blossoming relationship with a little boy now a man, and a young woman with a beautiful heart.
No one here but Emma and a monster.
She trailed her fingertips almost dreamily through the thick trail of smoke that was snaking through the building. Panic had taken her beyond thinking now, but even if she'd stopped and considered, she wouldn't have been able to tell you what she was stalling for; the arrival of her son's other mother, or an inevitable, unpreventable death. Her knees shook.
It was a thundering crash from somewhere in the back of the shop that brought Emma back to her senses. She was stood in a building with a creature of pure malevolence, and some of the most powerful magical artifacts that had ever existed. She flexed her fingers around her sword, and let her feet carry her to the source of the noise.
To her surprise, the demon was nowhere to be found in the decimated back room. She spun wildly on her heel for a moment, eyes raking desperately over the debris, before she realised that there was a door hanging open in the wall, a door that she had never seen before. A door that had been so painstakingly wallpapered as to appear near invisible to the naked eye, she reflected grimly. Through it, she could just about glimpse a darkened staircase that disappeared into the earth.
Fantastic. A secret room in Rumplestiltskin's shop. She just knew that it would be where he kept the seriously dark shit, and now there was a magical smoke monster in there. She looked to the heavens, sending up one more silent plea to Regina to please, please, come soon, before following the bellows of the demon.
The staircase led to a cold, stark, whitewashed basement, lit by a single hanging bulb and filled to near bursting with various odds and ends. Lone items jumped out to Emma's panicked eye, for absolutely no reason other than to delay, for just a second more, glancing directly at the monstrous black bulk of thick smoke and glowing red eyes, howling and roaring in the corner of the room.
An hourglass, a headless statue, a mirror.
Her hair rippled in the dirty wind that came from the demon's latest cry.
A goblet, a wedding dress, was that a doll?
The lightbulb swayed drunkenly, making her feel even sicker.
She had to look.
The Smoke Demon appeared to have tripled in size if the Mother Superior's description was anything to go by; a shimmering, inky black mass of smoke that had already tainted the sweat that coated Emma's skin with grimy soot. It was curled into the top left corner of the room, seemingly fixated on a gothic candelabra that it seemed to be...sucking something from...?
"Oh, no way!" Emma yelled in bravado, lately well aware that nothing good ever came from the inhalation of mysterious magical threads of light. Ever.
She heaved her sword above her head, pulling it back, before hefting it towards the demon with every ounce of her not insignificant upper body strength. The weapon flew heavily through the air, straight into the centre of the demon's mass.
Upon reflection, Emma wasn't quite sure what she'd expected to achieve by throwing a big pointy stick at a smoke cloud. At least it was looking at her now.
"Right," she muttered to herself, watching the creature's red eyes narrow as it drew itself into an even denser black cloud. "Right."
Clearly, this wasn't a fight that was going to be won with brawn. Taking a nervous step backwards, she desperately worked to remember what Regina had told her about her newly burgeoning magic.
Instinct. Emotion.
"I really need this thing to not hurt everyone I love," she breathed.
A ball of white light spluttered into life in her palm, seeming almost surprised at its own existence. She hurled it at the demon.
An agonising screech emanated from the creature, as smoke leaked from the impact point, swirling like ink in the ocean. Apparently, she had succeeded in wounding it.
And now, it was pissed.
Shit.
Her back was to the creature by the time it struck back; a wall of black light flying furiously, unstoppably towards her, pulling her off her feet and flinging her into the wall with a sickly crack.
At least one of her wrists broke on impact, of that, she was certain. And the other didn't feel to have escaped too lightly either. The air was knocked out of her lungs, bringing a hollow ache to her chest, and sharp, stinging tears to her eyes. When she fell back to the ground, she felt her tailbone tremble like a tuning fork, in a way that, confusingly, made her teeth hurt in an odd sort of sympathy.
Like the walking dead, she numbly forced herself to stand up again.
This time, she didn't even have time to summon up any magic before the demon flung her again, this time dragging her through the air, across the room.
She landed in a stack of wooden furniture, which crumpled like a tower of matchsticks under the force of her body. She tumbled messily through the debris, feeling thick nails and splintered shards ripping at her like so many branches until her back collided with a tabletop. She couldn't stop the wild sobs now as once again, her stubborn body pulled itself up, wrestling with pain and unconsciousness with every breath.
Blood trickled, like vinegar into her eyes.
"FUCK YOU, REGINA!" she roared nonsensically as she once more focussed on the elusive magic within her.
Her fingertips were sparking when it tossed her for the final time. She felt the vomit choking its way up her throat as the huge, arched mirror at the edge of the room flew up to meet her.
It shattered immediately and she knew she was done for.
"No!"
She sobbed. All she could taste, all she could smell, was smoke and her own blood.
She thought about Henry, and her parents, and even Regina.
Poor, poor Regina. Trying so hard, fighting so hard for love and forgiveness. Who would help her now?
"NO. No, no, no!"
The magic was using her now; not the other way around. She felt it shudder through her veins, burning in her palms.
There was a light - a desperate, blinding white that consumed everything.
Something howled. Someone laughed.
The last thing she saw before the darkness was her own shattered reflection.
Then nothing.
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Regina was in her garden, looking at the stars. She couldn't help but smile a little to herself as she reveled in the gorgeous summer night, stretching languidly on her picnic blanket as she ran her palms over grass that was still a little warm and dry against her skin. The air was so still that not a branch, not a leaf, shuddered about her. It was a sort of stillness that she could get used to. No blood, no death.
No little boy either, but the promise of breakfast in the morning, and a day spent working on his Solar System project. Poster paints, paper and PVA all waiting patiently on her kitchen table, ready to begin patching up the relationship between a mother and son as soon as daylight returned.
But for now, silence.
This was a life she might just be able to get used to.
When the obtrusive trill of her home phone finally, weakly, broke through her little bubble of peace, she took the journey back into the house at a gentle jog. Redemption or no, people did not call an Evil Queen at midnight just to exchange gossip.
"Regina Mills...?" There was no harm in playing it safe. Perhaps someone with friends and loved ones and a sickeningly clean conscience had simply gotten the wrong number.
"Regina? Please! Emma...Gold's shop! Please!"
She hung up on Snow immediately, stillness gone, purple smoke curling over her form before she'd even finished placing the phone back in its cradle. She was not there to see it fall toward the carpet, hanging on its cord like a condemned man at the gallows.
She pulled her cardigan about herself as she sprinted the last few steps towards the shop, noting the way that the building's walls shimmered with pearly white magic, like the surface of a soap bubble. A colossal black wolf was pacing furiously before the translucent barrier, snarling, baring its teeth, as though it could scare the obstruction away.
With a flick of her wrist, Regina returned the young waitress to her human form.
"Emma's inside!" Red choked out immediately, still shaking away the last vestiges of magical mist. "She made her parents stay with Henry and she chased a Smoke Demon all the way here by herself and now I can't get in!"
"Emma's magic," Regina explained. "She must have done it without realising. She wants to protect everyone else from what's inside."
She drew her arm back, taking a deep, strengthening breath.
"How long has she been in there, Ruby?"
"Close to half an hour," the younger woman admitted, her bloodless cheeks glowing in the reach of the streetlights. "It went quiet about fifteen minutes ago."
Regina swallowed another breath before she incinerated Emma's protection spell.
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Neither of them chose to mention the smell of char that clung to the inside of the shop, instead choosing to wordlessly follow their noses to the basement.
"The smoke's not as thick as it could be," Regina noted blandly as they descended the stairs. She was pleased that she managed to keep her voice from shaking.
It was the witch who reached the secret room first, and not with a hundred years of practice could she have prevented the way that her knees gave way ever so slightly, so that she had to reach for the edge of the doorway to stop herself from falling. She heard Ruby's gasp from behind her - sharp and nauseated. It was a sentiment that swirled queasily in her own stomach.
There was no Smoke Demon.
Every single item in the room seemed to have been reduced to so much splintered wood and glittering broken glass, but she was barely aware of the fact. She couldn't tear her eyes away from Emma Swan, sheriff and Mother; beaten, bloodied, bruised, and tied to the room's lone radiator by rapidly purpling wrists; her clothes torn, her hair matted, and streaked with pink.
"Regina..." Red's voice was wavering wildly, and it was obvious that she was fighting to contain her sobs. "Regina, what did this?"
She was pointing above Emma's lolling head, above the radiator, and up at the words that streaked across the wall; smudged, smeared, and ominously red.
THIS WOMAN IS NOBODY'S SAVIOR.
"I don't know, Ruby. I...I don't know."