Title: The Lighthouse
Author: Bladed Darkness
Category: Once Upon a Time
Summary: Nobody ever went up to the lighthouse.
Characters: Regina Mills, with a bit of Emma Swan.
Length: 300+
Rating: K
Nobody ever went up to the lighthouse. She assumed that it came with the curse. Like the clock tower, the beacon had never worked before the curse broke, and the cliffside had remained dark.
The difference was that the darkness persisted here even after the spell was severed. Still, the remote tower was her refuge from both the town at large and a certain Savior. It was, Regina mused, the perfect sanctuary. A place for the hopeful, but also for those drenched in despair, the way one might be if a chance at happiness had been ripped away from them, but they still had their source of greatest beatitude near.
Henry was her beacon, her guiding light in the storm that had swallowed her life, that she had once surrendered herself to willingly. And Emma Swan, loud and bold and unrepentant, had somehow become her foghorn, the guardian of both Regina and those around her when her tempestuous moods might strike. Those that might smash themselves against her wrath and feel her sharpness pierce their flesh were lucky to have their Savior around.
Weren't there tales of haunted lighthouses, with their guardians disappearing to never be found? Was that what would become of Emma? Would she fade into the shadows, flee away from the town, collapsed by the pressures of her responsibilities to the citizens of Storybrooke?
How many mothers in the Enchanted Forest had whispered to their children that their missing fathers had been taken by the Evil Queen, never to be seen again?
Their hearts crushed to dust like so many ships against the shore.
Was that Emma's fate?
"Regina?"
Regina sighed. "Miss Swan."
She sat next to the brunette. "I didn't actually expect you to be here."
Of course, even a shot in the dark can hit true.