He's not speaking to her, hasn't since her vow to kill Cora at Johanna's grave, and his moody silence fills the loft as he washes the dishes from her aborted birthday breakfast. He doesn't know what Cora's like, she tells herself, pulling the white afghan tight around her shoulders as she curls into a ball on the love seat. Cora was long gone by the time Charming wandered into her path, and he hadn't been back in the Enchanted Forest with her and Emma. He doesn't understand.
A loud clank startles her from her reverie.
"Sorry," David mutters, tugging the dishcloth from his shoulder to dry the pan he's just rinsed.
Mary Margaret sighs and lowers her head back to her arm. Some birthday.
Someone knocks on the door, a sharp staccato against the heaviness in the room.
David moves to answer the door, but she stays him with a soft, "I'll get it," and throws off the afghan. He holds up his hands, then braces them on the kitchen counter, watching as she walks to the door. She shifts the bolt and opens the door.
"Regina!"
Speak of the devil and the devil, or the devil's daughter, shall pay you a visit.
A cold fist closes around her chest as she wonders if somehow Regina heard her bold declaration to assassinate her mother and was now calling to claim the vengeance she'd terrorized a kingdom for. But her heart remains in her chest, no clouds of purple magic fill the loft, no fire spills from her step-mothers gloved hands, and so she asks, "What are you doing here?"
She hears clothes rustling as David pulls his gun from the waistband of his jeans, and it's so strange how that sound has become as familiar as the ring of a sword being drawn. He stands behind her, close, but still not touching.
"May I come in?"
"No," David says.
"I wasn't talking to you, Shepherd," Regina sneers.
"You have a lot of nerve coming here after what you did today."
"What my mother did," Regina says, holding up her hand. "I just want to talk. To Mary Margaret."
"There's nothing left to say," Mary Margaret says. "I think you made your choice perfectly clear in the clock tower." She hasn't broken down in tears yet. Doesn't mean she's not going to eventually the longer Regina stands in her doorway. She starts to close the door, though if Regina wants in, there's precious little she can do to stop her.
"Wait," Regina says, her black gloved hand wrapping around the edge of the door.
David steps to the side and raises the gun level with her head. "You're not welcome here."
Regina ignores him, pushes the door open further and steps halfway inside. "What if I chose wrong?"
"Then you'll only have yourself to blame," Mary Margaret says.
Her step-mother's eyes go wide, her mouth drops open, and for a moment she looks decades younger, like the newly crowned queen who'd stood shaking before a broken mirror, like a leaf clinging to a skeletal tree in the grip of winter. Snow wasn't supposed to be up there, had given Johanna the slip once the ceremony was over, eager to see Regina in all her finery one last time, and had cried out when she found Regina hugging herself, crouched on the floor. She'd rushed into the room to see what was the matter, why was her new mother trembling and crying when she'd just married her father, and Regina had stammered out a lie about how her mother had an accident, a magical gift gone wrong involving the now shattered mirror.
And that's all this was, all they'd ever had. Just another lie.
"Unless you're going to kill me," Mary Margaret says, "Get out of my apartment."
Regina closes her mouth, glances at David. He still has the gun aimed at her head, index finger crooked around the trigger. She releases her hold on the door and steps backward over the threshold. "Please," she says. "For Henry's sake."
"Goodbye, Regina," David says, keeping the gun pointed at her as he closes the door in her face and bolts the lock. He lowers the gun, carries it back to the kitchen and sets it on the counter.
Mary Margaret stares at the door. What if Regina had meant what she said? She was angry, always angry, always in pain and looking for someone to blame for it, as she'd told her herself a lifetime ago, but underneath the anger tonight there'd been desperation creasing the corners of her eyes, and maybe if she were a good person, the person her mother wanted her to be, she would've opened the door and invited her in, tried to convince her to join them again.
She's not going to be that person anymore, though, because the only thing she's ever done in the name of goodness is get people killed.
"Don't do it, Snow," David says, his voice soft.
"I'm not doing anything."
"She's lying, trying to get under your skin."
"I know."
"But you still want to go after her."
"I won't," Mary Margaret says. "And I think you should sleep upstairs tonight."
"Mary Margaret-"
"Good night, David."
He's still puttering around in the kitchen when she crawls into bed and turns out the light. Silence returns to the loft, and she sleeps.
Based off a prompt from freifraufischer on tumblr. Thanks for reading!