Author's note: Based on the promo for "Lacey" and a very private fantasy of Emma as Eliot and Regina as ET, all wrapped in a blanket and Emma saving her from bad guys, cycling across the night sky with Regina in her bicycle basket. Alas, there is only so much readers are willing to suspend disbelief for and Regina in a bicycle basket was pushing that boundary. (Because flying across the face of full moon was actually possible…)
Title from "Read all about it" by Emeli Sandé.
Unbetaed, so all mistakes are mine and I apologise profusely from the outset.
Much love
Jane
You've got the light to fight the shadows
.
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The shadows moved around her and electricity shot into her, her burning through her body, separating her soul from her molecules.
"I don't have any magic." It wasn't quite like being a child and promising her mother to be good. Not quite.
"Now, let's not be modest, Mayor." The threat hung in the air like the chemical smells of the "research" facility they were in.
"I don't_" But the words, the argument, whatever fight or resistance was left in her evaporated with the shock dispensed by the electrodes placed at her temples. After that there was only silence, her tongue swollen in her mouth, thick and uncooperative.
"Oh come on, don't be like that. Just show me what you can do."
The rest of her, the little residual Regina that still echoed through her brain and her veins despite the whole paraphernalia around them smiled. No, that wasn't right. It was a smirk though her face muscles were paralyzed. It was a good thing, no more magic. They had drained it out of her.
For a moment she felt at peace. The shadows had drained magic out of her. There was no humming in her bones, in her blood. It was the quieter her heart had ever been since her mother had gone through that mirror.
It was a good thing.
Through the haze that was her vision, Tamara and Greg filtered through.
"Well, now you've gone and killed her. I told you it was too much." Greg spoke but the sounds were coming from very far away through the buzzing in her head.
"On TV this looks simple enough."
"Don't mock me, Tamara. "
"Be glad that I am mocking. You said this one had magic too."
"She does. I saw it. You saw it too."
"I saw a low quality video on a phone. It could have been anything."
"You saw it. I had no reason to lie."
"Yeah you did. Any teenage pimpled girl could have done that with their eyes closed. And frankly, these eyes of hers staring like this are a little creepy."
"She's dead. I didn't know death had started to creep you out."
"She's not dead. Are you, Mayor?"
Tamara's face became more defined, more threatening in shaper focus. Air burned through Regina's lungs and she was disappointed. Air meant she was not dead yet.
Yet.
Her lungs inflated and deflated painfully. Her eyes closed because the light of the overhead surgical lamps was harsher than any midday sun she had ever looked at. Cruel and cold.
"You know, this would all go away with one little spell. Just show me what you can do."
This time, Regina did not reply. No strength left. She thought of Henry and the machines next to her sprang to life, green lines hopping and skipping along the screen. Her magic would die with her. She would not let it be used on Henry.
"See? Still there." Tamara spoke to her companion. "And I know that you can hear me. This would all go away so quickly if you just indulged me. It does not have to end like it did for the nun. Though, I have to say, that was fun. But let me tell you this: I know magic. I can sense it. Feel it, smell it, see it in the air. And I know one thing which is the only reason why are still alive: your magic is the most powerful I have ever sensed. And I want it."
It was a shame really, that the smirk simply could not bloom in a face that was paralysed. Regina thought of Henry again and closed her eyes, trying to hold the perfect thought to her heart. Maybe if she was lucky, this would be the last thought she would ever have and then it would all be over.
"Oh, no, no, no. See, I know what you're doing there. You're thinking that you just need to die quickly to keep them safe. You're trying to be noble. Now let me tell you that is not only pathetic and weak but also, utterly stupid. No one in this town is going anywhere, and magic or not, I will squeeze it out of them, exterminate every single one of them. I know there is magic here. I do. In spades. So your little shit of a brat is next. The least you can do for him is to give me what I want. I might be less inclined to hurt him… badly." Behind Tamara, Greg crossed his arms. There was a little echo of the feisty boy Regina had fallen in love with right in the beginning. Owen. Henry.
"I don't have any magic." She pushed through her raw, burning throat, past her cork like tongue and chapped lips. "No magic." They would not use her magic to hurt Henry.
It was a dial, small and nonthreatening. Just a round dial. But Greg turned it between his bony fingers and the current ran through her body, not even a burn, not even a feeling. Just pain.
Her body arched and her mouth opened but there were no more screams, no more pain, no more anything. Her last conscious thought was for it all to be over this time.
Tamara stomped her foot on the floor like a petulant child.
Greg studied her from his side of the stainless steel table where his lifelong quarry lay with her eyes open frozen, unseeing, mouth open in a scream that would not materialise. He could not help the hard on. Tamara was hot. No matter that she had used him and played him like a fiddle. She was hot, hot, hot. Even more so when she looked over the Mayor, mutely dying on that table.
.
.
Emma was dying and there was no one who could help her, no one left. Snow pulled at her hair and screamed as if the pain was her own. The cold cloth in her hand was useless, utterly useless because there was no fever, just seizures, Emma's back lifting off the bed as she was being shocked with electricity. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and when it was all over she would simply lay there, not a bead of sweat, not moan of complaint. David had Whale by the neck and was squeezing the air out of man.
It didn't matter. Not really. The man was just stating the obvious: he was not a doctor. He was nothing but a monster maker by trade. When it came to saving a life, what did he know? "Let him go. David, let him go." She did not want him in the same room as Emma. It seemed to her that when he had studied the bruises and the cuts appearing on Emma's skin without so much as a touch, he was doing nothing but leering at her child. She wanted him out, out, out. "David!"
The meaty hands around Whale's neck released their choke hold and the man stumbled blindly, gasping for air. "For what it's worth, I think this is not a disease." He cowered shamelessly as David advanced on him again and retreated towards the door of the apartment. "It's like magic." He pleaded silently towards David's silent menace, something so malevolent she had not known him capable of it.
"Emma, sweetheart…" Snow entreated as the door closed behind her last hope.
.
.
It was not what Emma expected the end of the world would be: it was quiet and simple and nothing much to it. Neal lay dead on the ground, lumps of dark earth thumping onto the best wood casket Gold's money could buy and she could not muster an ounce of grief that was not tied to Henry's loss. For her, it was just a loose end that got tied. One moment there was a cold winter day and the next there was a silence of something that changed, a whisper of the wind that tells you that your life will never be the same again.
She was not the only one to feel the change. Snow stopped and looked at the thunder clouds heavy in the air, at the birds flocking away from Storybrooke as if they feared something. David, attuned to Snow's signals, stopped also, his eyes tracking the progress of hers, his hand on the silly cowboy holster that would never really fit in Storybrooke.
Henry stopped too. And then he ran. Emma started running after him but something in her chest seized. There was a moment of panic so intense she forgot to breathe and the next thing she knew, she was on the floor, her parents over her and no sign of Henry.
.
.
"It's not that simple, you know, Mayor? If I wanted you dead, you would be. Dead, I man. Greg and I? We've become quite adept at killing magical creatures. And we have both creative and straight forward ways. But I'm more interested in what I can learn from you. So creative it is."
Regina's head lolled to the side. Conscious again, she had no strength to hold her head straight. She was cold. So, so cold. So cold that she felt the need to ask for a reprieve, to ask for a small mercy. But her jaw was clenched shut and no matter how she tried she couldn't open it; not to ask, not to beg, not anything. The woman touched the electrodes on Regina's temples, almost lovingly. "You are making this a very good sport. I like that." And she turned the dial. The electric current flowed through Regina's body and her jaw unclenched in a scream that hurt her ears. She ran out of breath – and out of scream – before the electric current stopped running through her body, before it stopped being excruciating.
"I can keep this up for a very long time, Mayor. Longer than your heart can keep up with it, quite frankly.
"No magic." The words hurt on their way out of her throat.
"Now, see, I don't like it when people lie to me. It upsets me." Tamara turned the dial again, only briefly to drive the point home. "Neal upset me… Look where it took him. Your problem is that you are exactly what I've been looking for. I can feel it. I thought for a very long time, that I wanted to rid the world of magic. Now, I've come to realise one thing- which is very good news for you: I want it. I want it for myself. And that's the god news: I won't kill you until I have taken it out of you."
Even evil queens have a sense of preservation. Magic was in her. Like an arm or a leg or, more accurately, part of the fabric of her body. If this woman amputated her of her magic, she would die. Or she would die in the process.
She thought of Henry again and closed her eyes.
She did not see when the woman turned the dial again. There was just the jolt, the jerk of her neck, the clenching of her teeth, the absolute pain in her body.
The overhead surgical light was the last thing she saw. Why do people say it all goes black?
It was all white.
.
.
The sheet fell from Emma's bed when her body jerked up in an unnatural arch, her face screwed tight in pain.
Snow turned to the wall and banged her forehead against it until David pulled her back, trying to stop her from hurting herself. When Emma's body finally became flat on the bed again, Snow elbowed David on the ribs and ran to her, exhausted by the last three days of hell.
Snow sat by her daughter's side.
When her eyes opened, Emma was somewhere in between life and death and Snow could not do a damned thing except holding her up and putting a glass of water to her chapped lips.
"It hurts…" Emma's voice was raw from the screaming. "Please."
.
.
It was textbook disaster movie: the hero, in a misguided attempt at saving the last survivor, ran in the opposite direction of all the birds, right towards the centre of the storm. Except there was no storm. There was no panic, no screaming, no movie like scenario. Storybrooke continued its placid existence, its easy rhythm. But the wrongness of it all was there. Emma stood in the middle of Main and looked around her, letting her senses give her an idea of what was amiss. Leroy galumphing along the pavement, Red and Granny fighting again, Ashley and her baby, George and his briefcase and sour face, Michael and his children. The pharmacy was open, the bakery wafted soft scents of vanilla cream and warm bread.
Gold's shop was closed.
Everything was as it was supposed to be. So what was it that made her senses tingle? There was no witch flying in the sky, no fairies battling witches, no white rabbits looking at clocks_ No fairies. Where were the fairies? And where was Tamara? No fairies. She looked up the hill, towards the convent.
Her head swam and she lost her balance. For a while it was touch and go, the floor looking closer than it should be. Pongo whined plaintively, his cold nose giving her a focus on her hand. When her head and her vision cooperated, she dialled the convent's main line. No reply. She tried again. And then she drove the cruiser up the hill, cursing all the way up there.
They could have been asleep, except they were not. The fairies were like flies sprayed with insecticide: dead where they had stood. No fight in them, just fallen on the stone floor. Some still smiling.
Blue was not among them.
Like a bat out of hell was a good description of her drive down into town. Where was Henry? She drove around, burning tires at each corner, sirens and blue lights on. She drove by the diner and home, screaming, though, really why bother, because the din of the sirens was simply drowning out any attempt she made at screaming his name. And then there was only Mifflin street left.
She rammed the car into the pavement and ran out of the vehicle shouting Henry's name.
"Henry! God damn it, kid, where the hell are you?" She found him on the lawn of Regina's home, dazed and with tears running down his eyes. "Hey!" But as she tried for breezy, his expression told her to get real. His eyes pointed at the house and, for a second, for a horrible second, she thought she would find Regina like the fairies, dead on the floor, smiling.
The house was empty. Wrong. Overhead, the birds were still flying out to east, over the sea, out of the eye of the storm. A single thing out of place in the house: Henry's picture, two front teeth missing, was face down on the floor, glass shattered.
She had taken two steps on the lawn when the world was switched off in a wave of white blinding pain.
.
.
The thump, thump, thumping on the floorboards was the first sound Emma was aware of. Now that awareness had her, her head lolled to the side, like a broken doll. Next to her, stood Rumplestiltskin. "You have to do something." Snow's voice entreated.
"I fail to see why, deary."
"She's your family. She brought you back from New York to heal you here. She could have left you there to die but she brought you home. She saved your life."
"Not to make too fine point of it, but you saved me, deary. You and your deception and manipulation saved me. I owe her very little, in that case."
"She's your family."
"You will come to realise, deary, that I am fresh out of kin. My son lies buried in the cold earth."
"I don't understand. How can you_"
"Oh, must I spell it out to you, oh ruler of this realm? Have you not felt it in your bones? Something is out there. A predator more dangerous than I could ever be. Have you not felt magic being destroyed? Have you not smelled the air? Have your precious birds not spoken to you? Ask them, if you are so versed in their language as you are rumoured to be."
"I don't understand…"
"It seems to be your current default. Magic is being hunted down. The fairies are dead. Can't say they are lamented, but they are dead. The Queen has been taken. I, for one, have no intention of registering on their radar. And you should pray that your precious offspring snaps out of it. Magic leaves a trace. It can be followed. I would hate it for my kin to be hunted down such as those fairies were."
"Please…"
"It would seem Miss Swan is awake."
Snow ran to her daughter's side and held her hand. "Emma…"
And still the cane thumped, thumped, thumped on the old floorboards. It would seem that old Rumple had something to say.
"What?" Emma croaked because other sounds would have required more energy that she had.
"I find it interesting, Miss Swan, that's all."
Emma's eye roll was enough of a question for Gold. "There are bonds that are not easily severed. No matter how much the parties will it so."
"What bond?" Snow's head snapped in the air.
"Where is young Henry?"
Emma panicked then. Where was Henry?
Snow tried to placate her. "He's okay. He's with David. Regina's missing. David is out with him, trying to find her. He's okay."
The flood of relief was nearly overwhelming.
"Well, I'll leave you two to it." Gold turned on his heels, and walked out of the room.
"What bond?" Emma managed to croak out and immediately tasted blood in her mouth.
For second she thought that Gold was not going to turn. And it was maybe because everything seemed to be on a delay, like an extreme jetlag, but she would have sworn that Gold did not turn, not really, though she could see his rat like eyes and his rat like profile when he turned (and at the same time didn't) and told her, clear as day (only she did not hear it with her ears but every single one of her cells) "I am no expert, Miss Swan, but there is more than one kind of family."
She did not really say anything either, (except she really did and her throat did not hurt and her voice did not falter) but "Regina" came out of her throat and it reverberated through the air and it moved the molecules in the room, like mirrors of the reality she had just woken up. Gold nodded in assent but didn't (what the hell was she on?) and then the two realities, the one that did and the one that really didn't merged into one image only and that was when the pain hit again, starting at her temples and spreading through her. Her back arched from the bed and the sounds died in her throat. There was only that scream so loud, so not hers that it scared her half to death. To death, really, because her heart stopped and all there was, was the white from above and then nothing but shadows around it.
.
.
I was amazing, really. The Mayor was the same as she had been back then. The same hair, the same eyes, the same scar. Not a single wrinkle had marred her face in the nearly 29 years since she had taken his father from him. Well… safe for the red splotches on her cheeks the electric torment had left there, like a mark of her evil. And the cracked fingernails left by the repeated convulsive clutching at the table. She had taken her father from him and even though the hopes she would- or could- give him back had dwindled, he still wanted her to suffer. Suffer immensely.
This time, he could not wait for Tamara. He had taken the back seat long enough. This one would give nothing back. And he very much doubted Tamara could extract magic out of her. He didn't know much, but as far as he could see, magic was not like a tooth that you can extract. So he took a place by her side and made sure that she saw his fingers on the dial. Better stick with the initial plan. Eliminate magic.
"I can make it all go away. I can do it for you. Just tell me what you've done with my father."
He could see it then, the understanding finally dawning on her. It had taken long enough. It was possible she had enough sins that his father's face would barely register. "Give me my father."
When she had nothing to say, he turned the dial savagely, to as far as it would go. Her scream was the stuff of nightmares, the way her back arched off the table, how she was a bridge suspended between her curled toes and the base of her skull. Then the scream stopped but her body was still arched like that. Huh. He turned the dial back to zero and the current finally stopped. The Mayor's body dropped to the table with a thud.
For a second he was terrified of Tamara. He had messed with her plans, there was no telling what she would do. But the Mayor of Freakville was paying for what she had done to his family and that was good news.
.
.
When the last convulsion hit, Emma was aware of nothing but shadows. Nothing hurt. That sense of loss, of incomprehensible, immeasurable loss did not hurt, not really. It was just there, sitting on her chest, making it impossible to breathe, impossible to move, impossible to want to get up and take care of her life. It was as if the death she had experienced during the convulsions had only now become real.
Snow jolted awake and the tears ran freely from her face. "I thought you were dead. I thought you'd died."
She had. "Henry?"
"In bed. No one can find Regina. Maybe she's hiding again. Like before. But the poor thing is_"
"Stop." It took nearly all the energy she had just to say it, just to get Snow to shut up. And it was important that she did because every single word was like a needle in her. She tried to get up, tried to move but there was- not heaviness, no, it wasn't that. It was more like a paralysis of her limbs that made it excruciating, an effort against herself to get up, to move. And she had to.
"What are you doing? You need to rest. What if it happens again?"
Emma managed only to turn on her side. Nothing else was happening though she was trying.
"Emma!"
"Henry." As if that explained everything.
It didn't. Not to Snow. But to her credit she stood." I'll get him. He might be asleep, though."
"Henry..."
.
.
He disliked Tamara. Actively. Yeah okay, he had nursed hopes that Emma and Neal might get back together (sue him, he wanted to find out how a fairy tale family felt like) and Tamara was in the way of that. (Though if he had been honest with himself, he would have noticed that Emma was less than impressed, less than thrilled with Neal all around.) But right now, he was dead sure she was behind all the bad things happening in Storybrooke, from the gruesome murder of the fairies to the disappearance of all the birds and his mom… Regina…. His mom… Neal's death. No matter what David said. No matter the looks on people's faces when he was out asking if they had seen her. He knew it. He knew it in his heart.
And now Emma was so sick and Snow kept him away and he just knew that he was going to lose everybody. He was going to lose his mothers like he had lost his father.
Snow knocked on the door and whispered that Emma wanted to see him and he hated it, he hated her because those whispers were like when they had told him that Neal was dead and he just could not cope with any more whispering. He pushed past her and into Emma's room. She was half way out of her bed, a sweater half dressed. She was grey, pale grey, lips chapped and eyes wild and for a moment he wished he could unsee that, all of that. Then he walked and sat next to her on the bed. She struggled with the sweater, hands shaking so badly she could barely find the hem of the sweater.
"Emma?"
"Regina."
"You know where she is?"
Emma half shook her head. "No." But she struggled some more with the sweater. Henry took her hand in his and helped her push it through the sleeve.
"Are you going to find her?"
Emma's hands stilled on his face and she nodded. "Family." Her voice came breaking around the edges of the word. Henry pulled her boots and slid socks onto her feet and then the boots up her legs, zipped them all the way up to her knees. She almost looked like his Emma; the Emma had arrived in Storybrooke.
"I'm going with you."
.
.
Tamara was fiddling with the dial is she was playing with a button on her coat: she turned it to the right and then to the left, minutely, as if she had been examining the workings of the machine. The electrodes on Regina's temples reacted to it. It was not enough for the bone crushing involuntary jerking her body had been subjected to but it was terrifying enough, bad enough that it had her moaning stop involuntarily.
Conversationally, Tamara added "No one is coming for you Mayor." Alone, yes. Of all the words she was forgetting slowly with each electric shock, alone was the one word she could not forget. Alone with the shadows. "Just give me what I want. Show me what you can do. I need to see it. Then I will get it from you and all of this will be over. Promise."
Henry.
It would be over soon. And if her magic died with her, Tamara could not hurt Henry. Emma would see to that. Emma was strong and she would keep Henry safe.
The dial kept on moving. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
"You are boring me, Mayor."
Then end it now.
.
.
Emma leaned heavily on Henry. She had to. She was going nowhere fast on whatever strength she had. She ignored Snow screeching behind her "Where are you going?" and "You shouldn't be going anywhere?" and "I'm going with you." But when Snow screamed "Is this because of her?" Emma actually stopped. She pointed her finger at Snow because she was going to say something. Something import and vital but nothing came out. "Why? We can have peace now…" Snow whined.
Disappointment. Emma supposed she was well in time to feel disappointment towards her parents. She grabbed Henry's shoulder. "Fuck peace."
.
.
Henry wished he had magic. He wished he could know where to start looking. He looked to Emma for confidence. He needed her to know what she was doing, where they were going. She was looking at the sky, empty of everything except the storm clouds.
"Where are we going?" He hated the question. He hated the scared look on Emma's face and the pallor of her skin and the way her fingers were digging into his shoulder because it was the only way she could remain upright. She didn't know. She had no clue where to go. "Tamara." He fully expected a rebuke from her. Emma knew he disliked her and why: Neal. When she didn't say anything, he dared look up.
"Where's your phone, kid?" Hope. Henry dared hoping.
He offered to drive but Emma had sat behind the wheel and after a few deep- and ragged- breaths, she turned the key and the engine roared to life and to him it was like it was saying hang on mom, we're coming. Emma had mad skills. She had him call Tamara and yap a little about his dad and how he missed him and he felt truly like a superhero's sidekick. All the while, Emma looked at her own phone and drove following some signal that he could not quite understand except that they were going to save Regina… his mom. They were going to save his mom.
The hospital. The signal was coming from the hospital. Henry could hear the dismissal on Tamara's voice, cold and hurried. When Emma threw the bug into park, he hung up and hurried to Emma's side.
"Stay here."
"I want to help!"
"And I need a getaway driver. Stay." And then she marched into the hospital, a deserted place now that the broken curse seemed to have released everyone from their daily lives.
.
.
Leaving her in the pitch black of a windowless room was just meant to prove a point, to break her a little bit further, but she had no fight left in her. Regina curled on her side and let herself fade away.
She was dying as she had lived: alone in the dark.
.
.
Emma had more than few minutes to regret never having inspected the hospital. She had no clue where she was going and only a vague, half formed idea that, had she been keeping a prisoner, she would do so in the basement. Finding the door, especially when she was more crawling than walking took, it seemed, forever. And then her fingers just would not cooperate and opening the door, a simple four digit code door was a mammoth task.
She was sweating and her body hurt and she was cold. She was just so cold despite the sweater and boots. When the digital ping of the door lock sounded, she crawled in. She would have preferred to stand and walk. If anyone was going to be armed behind that door, she would prefer to be standing but her legs did not hold her up.
The heavy metal door opened in slow motion and behind it there was only a vague electric humming sound that could have been from the florescent lights or a machine reminiscent of her lab classes in high school. Or a Nazi concentration camp. Emma forgot to breathe.
She crawled around the legs of metal tables, past hanging cables and electric wiring towards the voices coming from a small room to the side. She stopped by the white door and heard Tamara's assertive tone and a man's less so. The words magic and dead were thrown around like marbles and they banged against her heart and she grabbed the first scalpel her fingers touched above a table she could not see. The volume of the voices rose and the tone became more and more aggressive and Emma thought that she could take at least one of them out before they killed her. At least one. Tamara. She could take Tamara. And then she identified the second voice- the guy from the car crash- and maybe, she though, just maybe she could get them both if she started with Tamara.
She was ready to go in. She clutched the scalpel in her hand and her fingers tightened around it. She had one shot at this. One shot and there was no way she as going to miss it, no way she was going to mess this up. Except there was this weight in her chest, an absolute loneliness that could not be hers, a darkness she did not want to keep living with. A beating heart. A second beating heart that was ready to give up.
She pulled another scalpel and left it on the floor by the door the voices were coming from, then she slinked to the second closed door leading off the room she was in. It took her to the count of five to jimmy the door open- four numbers than her bails bonding days.
In the pitch black of the room she heard breathing, shallow and laboured. When she moved, the breathing stopped. She crawled towards where she'd heard the sound. "Regina?" No sound, no answer. "It's me." A chocked sob replied from across the room and Emma crawled to it, though at that time she could have flown.
.
.
When the door opened and the light split the room, Regina knew they had come for her. Even evil queens on their death bed have a sense of preservation. She held her breath knowing what was coming but then it didn't. Emma called to her across the room. A sob broke her resolve. Emma.
.
.
Skin. A foot, bare, cold. A leg, a knee. Emma fumbled because this was Regina. A hip, a waist, an arm, cold, limp. "Regina?" A hand grabbed hers. Please. A face, hair.
"Emma."
It was Emma's turn then, to sob her relief. She slid her hands under Regina and pulled her up to sitting. "Come on, we need to get the fuck out of here. Regina, come on." But the woman's body slumped backwards when Emma loosened her hold. Emma grabbed her again, this time against her own chest.
"Sorry." Emma almost missed it because it a non-sound.
"It's okay. It's okay." It wasn't okay. Not by a million miles. Her luck was pushed all the way to the limit and then some. How long could they stretch the conversation about magic and death and getting the magic out of this woman? How long until they came in? "We'll figure it out." No, they wouldn't. Emma was out of strength, out of breath. Out of courage.
Regina shivered against her. "Are you cold?"
No reply.
Emma pulled out her sweater and dressed Regina with it, then wrapped her arms around the fragile frame, almost a ghost, barely there. They were alone in the dark and between them, they would not be able to muster the strength to push a cat away.
"For me?"
"Henry too." It seemed that, between them two of them, they didn't have the strength to so much as use complete sentences. And yet it seemed to make no difference. "Outside."
And then the scalpel slash tell Emma had left outside clunked on the tile floors and they were out of time. The darkness broke and the door to their room opened. Regina's hand tightened around Emma's.
"Magic." Emma begged Regina because she didn't need to know chapter and verse of what had happened in this basement, he had felt it in her body, somehow. "Regina… use magic…"
The hand in hers went limp for a second. "None… none left."
Emma touched all around her in the dark for the scalpel she had bought in with her. There was magic enough in sharp implements, but her hands kept on touching only cold tiles. Regina's hand squeezed hers again "Go. Go now."
There was a soft curse and Greg's voice "where the hell is the light switch?"
Emma knew that if he found that switch they would be dead because there was no way, even if she wanted to leave Regina behind- and face Henry and her own face in the mirror for the rest of her life- that she could slip by him.
Think of who you're protecting.
There was nothing else in the world but Regina and her. And they would not die here. She closed her eyes and reached outside of herself, not really sure of what she was doing, except that she was protecting the little thing limp on the bed.
"There you are." Greg found the switch and Emma's heart nearly exploded.
And nothing happened. The switch clicked from off to on and back again and no light came on. Another soft curse and he made his way, leaving the door behind him ajar to let light in, his shadow ahead of him.
Emma scrunched her eyes closed. She knew the light switch was her doing but nothing else was happening no matter how much she willed it.
"Tamara, get in here. I'm not doing this on my own."
Emma pushed their bodies closer. I can't.
"You can." Regina whispered. "You can." And her hand squeezed Emma's again and then she did. She could. No, that was not accurate: they did. They could.
A jolt of something ran in her cells, in her blood, white hot furious good. Something her body remembered, from before, when they had opened a portal to another realm. As Greg leaned over where he imagined Regina to be, a blinding white light shot between their bodies, between Regina and Emma, the spaces between them filling in first and then shooting out, out, out, across the room blinding Greg first and them Tamara. The buzzing of the killer Taser Tamara had used filling the deafening silence of the room.
Think of who you're protecting.
Emma let it flow out of her, out of them, the light, the strength, the magic. Her head tilted backwards, her body creating surface where light generated, shone outwards, so strong that there were no shadows left in the room.
.
.
It was gorgeous, really. A light so bright than even her sense of self-preservation succumbed to it. Tamara knew magic. She had seen it, destroyed it, eliminated it from the world. But never, never had she been entranced by it. The Taser dropped to the floor and her fingers reached out for it, for that light, never mind that it was blinding, truly, as she could not see, like staring at an incandescent light bulb, the two bodies at the centre of the light the shape of the resistance that became etched in her retina.
A wild thought was her last conscious one: she had been a shadow in the world her whole life, chasing after magic, after the light of it. She tried to look behind herself, tried to find her shadow. The light was so intense there was none.
She fell to the floor and did not get up again.
.
.
Regina could not have told how long it lasted for nor what made it stop. Only that she'd had no magic left and then, with Emma, they'd made magic. Again.
Together.
When it was over, Greg was on the floor, eyes open and unseeing; Tamara was on her knees where she had slumped to the floor, eyes closed and humming softly, something she could not quite understand.
And she was in Emma's arms.
.
.
It would never cease to amaze her, how magic just… flowed. When she had cast a spell, when Gold had directed her, instructed her, as it were, it was like exercising a muscle, like pulling your weight at a gym. It was hard.
With Regina, it seemed, it flowed, like the summer breeze.
"Let's get out of here."
.
.
Regina couldn't move. Too cold. Too uncoordinated. Too weak.
Electricity still seemed to be coursing through her skin, through her muscles, like bees stinging and buzzing in every single one of her cells. It made any touch excruciating.
She could hear the urgency in Emma's voice "Come on, let's get the hell out of here" but moving was beyond her.
Can't.
Emma wrapped a flimsy hospital blanket around Regina's shoulders, careful not to touch more than necessary. "You can."
They had done this before. Regina had leaned on Emma like this and Emma had pulled her out of imminent danger before (though Greg and Tamara were now but shadows on the floor). Her feet were bare on the floor and it hurt. Each step was like walking on needles that shot reminders of the electricity that had run her body only hours ago.
And then, after the longest walk of her life, there was Henry, sitting in the driver's seat of Emma's car, jumping out, leaving the engine running and sprinting towards then. Suddenly, she was all too aware of her state of undress, of how bad she must have looked to young impressionable eyes, how pathetic. She tried to stand a little straighter, look a little less pained, just a little stronger.
And then there was no need. It didn't matter. Not one bit. Henry was around her, all arms and hands and sweet, sweet breath, burying his head on her chest, pulling her into him as if he had missed her like he had missed Emma.
Her head fell onto his and nothing else mattered.
.
.
Gingerly, Emma melted into the wall behind them. This was their moment. It was Regina's moment and she wanted her to have it, without caveats, without intrusions or time limits.
When she'd had her fill, Regina looked up and smiled. Thank you she mouthed, a smile so open that made Emma want to move in there and call it home. Her hands were still around Henry's shoulders, trying to keep upright. Thank you and then, it seemed, she hadn't had her fill, she'd just run out of whatever had brought her outside. She slumped to the floor and it was like a slow motion kind of thing, with her falling, falling, falling and Henry trying and trying to hold her up and Emma failing, failing to get to her.
"You need a doctor." God, they both did, because she could still taste the rawness in her own throat, but Regina, who refused to be down for the count, refused. "No. No doctors. No hospital. No." And okay, maybe she was a pathetic wimp but when the evil queen asks you, begs you in that tone= when Regina asked her in that tone- you just want to do what she is asking, no matter how much it goes against all your better instincts.
"A shower. Just a shower."
"A bath, then. And Henry and I get to tag along."
"If you must." As far as jabs went, that one was pretty pathetic.
"I must. Let's order pizza. Bath and food. Sleep. In that order."
"What about them?"
Emma did not miss the shiver that ran through Regina's body. Nor the way her feet were turning purple in the winter day. Emma wrapped the sorry excuse for a blanket a little tighter around Regina.
"Henry, gimme your phone?"
The kid's hands shook noticeably when he handed her the phone. She called David- she would have texted but her fingers still felt too thick and uncoordinated and told him where to go and what he would find. Then she hung up because she did not have the patience or the stamina for his questions and doubts.
They made it to the bug and Emma settled Regina on the passenger seat, not really surprised at the absence of comments, wrapped the blanket tighter and cranked the heating up for all the good it would do because the bug was as old as she was and it took hours for the heating to work.
Henry jumped into the back seat and, as if he had finally realised what he stood to lose if Regina were to be taken from him, he could not stop touching her, her hair, her shoulder, her cheek.
Regina tuned sideways, curled liked a bug, wrapped in the blanket and touched Emma's hand over the gear stick. "You don't need to… I mean… thank you… but you don't need to…"
"Let me… Please."
"Yeah, mom. Let us. We'll take care of you."
Regina closed her eyes, unafraid of shadows. Emma had the light. Was the light.
.
.
Feeling a lot like Eliot with his ET on the basket of his bicycle, Emma put her foot on the gas and took them home. It would not have surprised her to feel the bug take to the air to fly past a full moon, such was the elation of having Regina's hand still lightly touching hers.