I'll Stand By You (Whether you Like it or Not)
Fandom: OUAT
Pairing: Red Queen (Regina X Ruby) this means F/F.
Spoilers: Cricket Game and the Outsiders in particular.
A/N 1 Well, this started out headed one way. It was going to be a nice fluffy little piece of Red Queen, but after the last few episodes, it has taken a definite turn for the different. This is ultimately Red Queen.
A/N 2 I had to deviate greatly from certain aspects of the Outsiders, particularly the 'Archie's alive' scene in order to fit what I had already written and then it goes somewhat AU from there because damnit Regina needs one minute of happiness. The characters will probably be OOC but I'm channeling a lot of my current personal feelings about the characters and the show right now. Lastly, Cora will NOT appear in this story because if I brought her in, this would turn out to be way longer and more complicated than I have the sanity for. I apologize in advance. I just wanted to write a story where Regina finally gets the one thing she's been lacking for so long…unwavering support.
A/N 3 My intentions at this time are that this is my last fan fiction. (Again). So…let me just say thank you for all who've been so wonderful with my previous offerings, especially with Red Queen Tale and the very kind words about my writing style. (Now, should the writers give up some lovely Red Queen (RegalWolf) goodness in future episodes, perhaps this may change.
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Ruby Lucas sighed with a sad sort of sympathy as she observed Pongo walking listlessly beside her. After Archie's death, she had volunteered to take the dog who was obviously traumatized by what had happened. She did what she could to help him but knew that Pongo was still grieving for Archie.
After a day of moping, she had finally decided to take him for a walk, hoping he'd find a bird to chase or something to bring the light back into his sweet eyes. He had merely walked beside her not taking interest in anything.
Ruby was about to turn around and take him home when he started to growl. She looked, surprise to see Regina, the woman accused of killing Archie Hopper walking in their direction.
"Well isn't this interesting. A wolf taking a Dalmatian for a walk," Regina greeted with the patented smirk that always seemed to be present on the unfairly beautiful face.
.
Ruby suddenly remembered Regina's 'take yourself for a walk' comment from before and it still irritated her. Everything about the former Mayor irritated her…among other things.
"Shouldn't you be in prison?" she retorted, feeling Pongo tugging at the leash and tempted to let him go.
"Probably," Regina said pleasantly, "but not for killing Archie." Regina looks down and calmly meets the growling Pongo's gaze. After long second, the growls stopped and Pongo cocked his head as he studied Regina.
"What did you do to him?" Ruby glared, loosening her grip on the leash.
"Oh for…I didn't do anything," she said with exasperation. To both women's surprise, Pongo carefully approached Regina sniffing her jacket then the hand the former Mayor held perfectly still. After a long moment, he let out a whine, licked Regina's fingers and sat down beside her.
Forgetting Ruby was watching, Regina smiled gently at the now friendly Dalmatian and stroked his head softly as he sat calmly beside her.
"Okay, so that's weird," Ruby muttered thoughtfully before kneeling down and placing her hand on Pongo's face and 'talking' to him.
"Right, and that's perfectly normal," Regina replied sarcastically, watching the silent communication.
"Your scent is wrong," Ruby stated getting to her feet.
"Excuse me?" Regina glowered at the younger woman.
"Oh please," Ruby snorted even as she rolled her eyes. "A dog's senses are far better than humans. The 'you' that killed Archie smelled different. Pongo recognized your face, but not your scent."
"Perhaps I used a different soap," Regina replied offhandedly.
"No. That's not it." Then to Regina's shock, Ruby stepped into her personal space and lowered her nose into her neck, sniffing deliberately.
"Miss Lucas," Regina protested, stepping away even as she felt a not particularly welcome flutter in her stomach.
"Sorry," Ruby said, not the least bit apologetic. She discovered she enjoyed throwing the uptight woman into a tizzy. She'd have to do it again.
"Would you care to explain yourself?" Regina crossed her arms over her chest and glared daggers at the brazen waitress
"Just curious," Ruby said with a shrug, though the growing smile gave away her amusement.
"Well Miss Lucas, in the future, I'd strongly advise you to find another method of satisfying your curiosity."
"I'll remind you of that invitation later," Ruby said with a smirk before turning thoughtful once more. "I saw you go to Archie's office the night he died," she stated. "There was no question in my mind it was you."
"Yes, so I was informed," Regina retorted just as blandly.
"It wasn't you," Ruby replied, somewhat pleased by the way she'd wiped the arrogant smirk off the woman's face.
Regina hadn't expected that and was unable to hide the surprise she felt before forcing the mask of indifference back into place. "And you reached that conclusion based on my smell?" She asked with a skeptical smirk.
"Yes and when Emma and I found Archie there was a distinct scent and it wasn't yours. Plus there is the fact that while you're painfully rude," she grinned at the death glare she received, "you're not a stupid woman. You know everything that goes on in this town, which means you know what time Granny's closes and that every night I go outside to get the sign. So why would you choose that particular time to go to your potential victim's office knowing I would most likely see you?"
"Perhaps because I don't care what you think?" Regina didn't even try to hide her sarcasm, though Ruby was right. Pity the town's Sheriff couldn't figure that out for herself.
Ruby was torn between laughing at Regina's absolute unwillingness to show any vulnerability and shaking some sense into the frustrating woman. "It just seems to me," she continued, choosing to ignore her sarcasm, "that every piece of evidence Emma has points to either the most pathetic criminal ever or to someone who wanted to be caught. You are anything but pathetic and no offense, but if you wanted to kill someone, part of the fun for you would be making Emma and David work to prove it."
Regina was floundering and she didn't like it one bit. "Miss Lucas, I don't know what game you're playing but…"
Ruby studied Regina closely. "For someone who claims to be innocent, you sure are determined to convince the one person who believes you that you did it."
"There are precisely two people in this town I thought would possibly believe me, but they didn't." Regina sounded casual as if she were merely talking about the weather, but the pain in her eyes was blatant.
"Regina," Ruby began sympathetically, knowing that one of those two people was Henry.
Regina held up a hand, not needing nor wanting sympathy. "You, on the other hand, have no reason to believe anything I say, yet you stand there declaring I'm innocent based on your olfactory senses and a psychic chat with a dog?"
"It would seem so," Ruby smirked, almost giddy over having the upper hand with this woman for once and finding the bemused and utterly confounded expression on the usually impassive face, inappropriately adorable.
"Why?"
Ruby should have expected the suspicious question but despite her little epiphany, she wasn't about to roll over for Regina. "Beats the hell out of me," she admitted smugly.
Regina's lips twitched at the blunt honesty. That was one of things she'd always privately admired about the clothes-fearing waitress.
"That's quite helpful," she retorted. A wet nose nudged her hand and she looked down, her lips lifting in a genuine smile as Pongo apparently got tired of being ignored.
Ruby was surprised to say the least to watch the previously lethargic dog prodding the ice cold former Mayor for attention and actually receiving it. "He likes you," she stated with amazement.
"I'm a likeable woman," Regina commented as she scratched Pongo's ears. Ruby's light laugh rang pleasantly in her ears but even though her lips twitched, she chose to ignore it.
Ruby noticed the hint of amusement in Regina's face and her heart fluttered at the sight. "Dogs are very good judges of character," Ruby replied instead. "They can sense evil and don't take kindly to it."
Regina turned her attention to the strange woman thinking she would have been less surprised had Grumpy stood in the middle of Main Street and declared his undying love for her. "And what about wolves Miss Lucas?"
Ruby refused to rise to the aggravating woman's bait. "Well, I am mostly human but I think my senses are sharper than other peoples."
"And you don't detect my… evilness? That's a dangerous mistake Miss Lucas."
Regina was full out mocking her now and though it irritated Ruby to be made fun of, she had a pretty good idea what was driving the other woman.
"Oh you're a definite badass Regina. I don't need special senses to pick that up," Ruby acknowledged as she ran her eyes over the older woman who wore sensuality like a second skin. "That just makes you hot, not evil," she added with leer that was only partially teasing.
Regina was not unaccustomed to being ogled. Most of the time she ignored it unless it suited her purposes, but the slow perusal Ruby 'Red' Lucas had just given her was a distinctly unique and not particularly unwelcome experience. Not that she'd let the already cocky woman know that.
"That's good to know," she replied casually.
Ruby shook her head thinking rather unexpectedly that being with Regina Mills would never get boring. Unfortunately, there were more important things that needed to be resolved before their odd little game could continue. Which it would, if she had anything to say about it.
"Look Regina, we could stand here and play all day, and as much fun as that would probably be, we need to get started on finding who framed you."
"How?" Regina asked fighting to contain the anxiousness she had been bottling up. "The Sherriff and her disgustingly doting parents have already convicted me and stripped me of my son." She struggled not to remember the painful encounter with Emma Swan. "And maybe I'm simply not interested in fighting anymore."
"You and I both know that's a lie," Ruby replied brazenly, though part of her could sense that it wouldn't take much more for Regina to get to that point. She looked at the Dalmatian who was now sitting so close to Regina he was practically leaning on her, "Pongo believes in you and so do I," she announced. "And since we both got you into this mess to begin with, we're going to get you out of it, whether you like it or not. Now, I know you're into the whole privacy thing, but tell me what you were arguing with Archie about."
"Are you serious?" Emma Swan looked at her friend wondering if she'd lost her mind.
"Very." Ruby didn't like the expression on Emma's face. It was an expression that said she had made up her mind and wasn't about to change it.
"Wait a minute," David interrupted, "Ruby, you know Regina is a fugitive. If you saw her you should have brought her in."
Ruby met David's eyes unwaveringly. "If I thought she would have been treated fairly, I would have."
"How can you say that?" Snow asked, sincerely hurt by the way her best friend was siding with the woman who'd made her life miserable.
"Because I've seen how you're treating her already. You had her convicted even before you even saw Pongo's memories. Hell Emma, you yourself told me what happened when you went to arrest her."
"So because Pongo 'told' you that Regina's scent was different from the night she'd killed Archie, you no longer believe she's guilty? Every piece of evidence we have points to Regina."
"What evidence?" Ruby pushed, aware of Henry listening with Pongo in the next room. "You have me saying that I saw Regina arguing with him, which doesn't prove anything. Hell, you and she have had plenty of knock down drag outs and you're still alive."
"She tried to kill me once," Emma reminded the other woman angrily, "and nearly killed Henry instead."
"She didn't try to kill you. It was a sleeping spell. If she wanted you dead, you would be."
"That's hardly an advertisement for her innocence," Snow interjected before Emma could say something she'd regret.
"Plus she's already broken her promise not to use magic," Henry spoke up from where he'd been playing with Pongo. "That proves she lies."
Ruby was unbelievably relieved Regina wasn't present to hear that. "Yeah, but that was to help people Henry," Ruby reminded the boy kindly. "Especially Emma and Snow."
"That's what she says," Henry muttered.
Ruby sighed. Apparently, stubbornness ran in the family and she was saddened and somewhat angered by his indifference to the woman who'd done nothing but love him. She turned her attention back to the adults who should know that things weren't always black and white.
"Look, I'm not excusing what she's done in the past," she told them, "but you've declared Regina guilty with very little proof. All your evidence is based on what I saw which is hardly conclusive and a brief memory pulled from Pongo. Have you done anything to verify what you saw? Have you tried using that dream thingy on Regina?"
Emma's stomach knotted at the realization that she hadn't. She honestly hadn't even thought about it. Still she refused to second-guess herself. If she was wrong, that made her…she shook her head. "No I haven't," she answered defensively, "but hell Ruby, she could just manipulate her memories to show us what she wants to."'
"Seriously Emma?" Ruby shook her head, hearing the doubt in Emma's voice and surprised that the one truly open-minded person in Storybrooke had succumbed to the same 'rush to judgment' attitude of everyone else in town.
"Ruby, we appreciate your playing devil's advocate here," David said with a condescension that had the waitress gritting teeth, "but if you don't have anything more concrete…
"That's the point David. I don't have anything concrete and neither do you and I'm not going to let you use my words to railroad an innocent woman," Ruby insisted angrily. "Yes. I did see Regina and Archie arguing, in public I might add where plenty of other people could see it, but from what Regina told me, her anger was justified. He broke her trust by telling you things he had no business telling. I would have chewed his ass out too."
"Which gives her a motive," Emma argued, ignoring her own guilt. She still remembered the night of the welcome home party. She remembered how open Regina had been when Emma had followed her outside to try and convince the skittish woman to stay. Unfortunately, she had admitted that it was only Archie's comments about their sessions that made her extend the invitation in the first place and Regina had shut down after that. Not the wisest thing she'd ever done, she admitted.
"Oh come on Emma," Ruby said with exasperation. "Yes Regina was mad…okay she was furious, but it wasn't as if she were threatening him. In fact, I also heard her tell him to be thankful she'd changed right before she walked away. This is the infamous Evil Queen we're talking about. If she were truly angry enough to kill him, she would have done it right there and not have been the least bit ashamed of it."
Emma couldn't disagree with that, but she wasn't going to relent. Not this time. "You saw her go to Archie's the night he was killed."
"Did I?"
"That's what you said," Emma argued. "Are you now saying it wasn't her?" She wondered if Regina had somehow managed to take Ruby's heart and was controlling her.
"No," Ruby drawled with waning patience, "I'm saying that it could have easily been someone trying to make me think it was her."
"What would make you change your mind Ruby? It couldn't have just been her smell" Snow interrupted, hoping the two friends weren't about to come to blows. Especially over Regina Mills.
"Well, you yourself told me that after you went to arrest Regina, she used magic to vanish right?"
"Yeah," Emma still felt a little guilty about what she had said to Regina just before she disappeared. The wounded look on the former Mayor's face when Emma had told her that she'd never change, still haunted her.
"Well it seems to me that if Regina was going to murder Archie, she would have just…poofed herself into his office instead of making sure she was in a position to be seen by anyone who happened to be leaving Granny's. Regina is a lot of things but stupid is not one of them."
"That's true," Emma acknowledged. That was the main reason she'd believed Regina at first. No matter what schemes she was carrying out, Regina Mills was not careless. The knot in her stomach turned to nausea as she finally began to realize she might have made an enormous mistake.
"And what about the fact that Pongo is still alive?" Ruby pushed, seeing that the Sheriff was finally starting to see the light. "That's pretty telling isn't it?"
"Not really," Henry answered. "Regina wouldn't care about a dog."
"You're actually wrong about that Henry," Ruby said, finding herself offended on Regina's behalf. "She's actually very good with him and he loves her, which totally contradicts what that dream catcher showed you."
"No it really doesn't," Emma replied shortly.
"Look, I know it's impossible to ignore what you saw but If she was the murdering bitch you say she is, she would have killed Pongo too, if for no other reason than to add to the pain. Whoever killed Archie wanted Pongo alive."
"That's a pretty good stretch," David replied skeptically.
"So is the so-called evidence you have against her." Ruby argued. "I have more evidence providing reasonable doubt than you do to convict her."
"You're forgetting that her file was empty, which proves she was there and that she was hiding something," David reminded her. "What was in them that she didn't want us to see?"
"How does an empty file prove anything?" Ruby exclaimed. "All that tells me is either Regina took the papers but was stupid enough to leave the file with her name on it for you to conveniently discover, or there never were any papers in it to begin with. Does she really seem like the type of woman who would allow anyone to take notes of her private conversations?"
"No," Snow admitted reluctantly. "No she doesn't. None of this seems like Regina."
"Have you forgotten about Graham?" Emma argued, still not willing to admit she'd made a horrible, horrible mistake. "She killed him."
"Did she?" Ruby questioned.
"Oh come on Ruby, we all know she did, even if there isn't any proof." Emma paused and then closed her eyes as the reality finally hit her. While the images she'd seen from Pongo clearly showed Regina Mills killing Archie Hopper, she should have known….should have been open to the possibility that it wasn't that simple. Nothing in this damned town was ever as simple as it appeared.
"Let me ask you something," Ruby said gently seeing that Emma was finally beginning to understand. "How much effort have you really put into looking at other options?"
"I believed her at first," Emma said growing defensive. "I was the only one who did."
"Really? If you did truly believe her then it should have taken more than just a dog's memories to completely change your mind," Ruby stated.
"She's evil Ruby," Henry protested. This is what she does."
"Oh Henry," the waitress said sadly, her heart hurting as she imagined Regina hearing those words. The woman had an impeccable poker face until Henry did or say something to hurt her.
"Okay let's say I believe you, which I don't," David said firmly, "we don't have to wonder who would want to frame her, which would be everyone in town. The question is who would have the ability to make themselves look like her? Ruby, you're the only Shapeshifter we've encountered."
Just then, the door to the Sherriff's office opened and the man they'd recently buried came strolling in, drawing gasps from Ruby, David and Snow and an expression of dismay from Emma.
"What the…Archie? What happened?"
Emma stood back as Snow and David embraced their friend.
"It was Cora," Archie said with relief as he wrapped an excited Henry in his arms. "She kidnapped me."
Emma felt physically sick and her knees threatened to give out under her as she was forced to confront the biggest mistake she'd ever made. The image of Regina actually strangling Archie had been so compelling and ridiculously easy to believe. That alone should have told her that something was off. Regina would not have looked so expressionless if she was extracting revenge. She would have been taunting him almost playfully about his grave mistakes. God. Emma felt tears sting her eyes at the realization that for all her 'noble' posturing while defending Regina, she had leapt at the first thing that looked remotely conclusive and turned on her. Even worse, she did the very thing she'd promised Regina from the very beginning that she had no intention of doing. Taking Henry.
"We were wrong," she murmured blankly. "I was wrong. Regina didn't do it." Emma cringed as she relived every cruel and hateful word she'd thrown at a woman who'd been trying so hard to redeem herself.
"I knew it!" Henry exclaimed happily. "We should probably let her know."
Ruby sighed. Only the fact that he was just a kid, a kid she cared a lot about kept Ruby from reminding Henry of the very hateful words he'd just said about Regina.
"I'll go," Ruby said quickly. "I'm fairly sure that she won't be up to talking to any of you right now." With a final hug to Archie, Ruby left, hoping that the woman who was not known for forgiveness, hadn't already done something stupid.