Give me the Child
Sighing raggedly, Emma set the screaming infant back on the couch- her bed, and his- and sunk onto the other end of it. The neighbors upstairs began to pound on the floor again, shouting for her to 'shut the damn kid up, for god's sake!' Eyes puffy and red from lack of sleep, the eighteen year-old ran her hands through her hair and stared at the ceiling. Her son continued to scream.
He'd been crying for hours now, and she was completely at a loss. His diaper was clean, he was fed, he didn't need to be burped. He needed sleep. So did she. But no matter what she tried- singing, rocking, reading a story- he continued to stay stubbornly awake. And howling. Grasping at straws, she reached for the closest movie she could find and popped it in the ancient VHS player, hoping maybe it would be just the thing to quiet him down.
The tape was old, jumped in places and the sound fizzled in and out, but it was one of Emma's favorites. She'd watched it a hundred times, and the kid seemed to like it, when he was quiet enough to listen. Which was not tonight. They got about halfway through the first appearance of the Goblin King before the neighbors below starting pounding, too. Pausing to pick her son back up, she cradled him in her lap and turned up the volume a little, and she fought to wipe away the tears before they could drip on the baby.
A while later, with her arms exhausted, she laid the finally sleeping baby back on the cushion of the couch, and prayed he'd stay asleep. He did.
Giving a sigh of relief, she turned off the tv, shook out her arms, and laid herself down around him. Staring at his face- so sweet, so perfect, now he was asleep, she tried not to cry again, and just watched him. "You deserve so much better than this, kid..." she whispered, and brushed a bit of brown hair out of his face. He didn't wake. "You deserve a real house and a yard to play in and no damn neighbors on every side of every wall... You deserve your best shot at life... I'm sorry, kid. I wish I could give you that." Laying her head down beside his, she sighed again, and closed her eyes. "...I wish you could go somewhere where you'd get all that..." Hell, she wished they both could...
As she finally drifted into her own sleep, the worried furrow that had stayed on her brow since she'd discovered her pregnancy finally relaxed. Just a little. He made a tiny whimpering noise. Sleepily, her hand reached out for his, wanting to hold on to him for her own comfort as well as his.
It wasn't there.
Eyes snapping open, she stared at the empty spot on the couch in disbelief. He was gone.
Frantic, she bolted up from the couch, checking the floor, under the sofa... her eyes moved over everything in a matter of seconds. It wasn't a big apartment by any standard. She checked the couch again, lifting up the cushions even though they were far too thin to conceal a child.
Outside, an owl screeched, startling her.
"He's not there, dearie." A dry voice, cackling, from a small man in the center of the room. It startled her far more than the owl. But this, at least, she could do something about. She whirled on him, eyes blazing, and didn't even care that he hadn't been there a second before.
Snarling, she lunged, hurling herself at him with all her might and knocking him over, pinning him to the ground by his leather coat. A hundred questions whirled through her head- who are you, how did you get in here, why are you covered in gold paint- but the most important burst from her lips in a dangerous growl. "Where's my son?!"
Even with her hands on his shoulders, the little man cackled. "So worried," he giggled, and rolled, shoving her off with entirely too much ease. Coming to his feet like a cat, he brushed off his coat with one hand, the other now holding the case of the movie that they'd been watching. "But you know right where he is." He grinned again, and held out the case to her. "Right where you asked for him to go." It dropped from his fingers, face up.
Her gaze dropped to it, and she stared at the winding maze of the cover art, at the castle beyond it, and a lump rose in her throat. "...You can't be serious." She looked at the man again. He wasn't there.
He was behind her, and laughed again to betray it. "Oh, but of course I'm serious. Very, very serious." He smiled, revealing teeth that were far too white for the rest of him.
She couldn't help it. She snorted. "You don't look like the Goblin King." Actually, apart from the copious amounts of gold paint, he was just about the furthest thing from David Bowie you could get.
"I never said I was, dearie." He just laughed again, from the couch this time. She was getting tired of that.
She thought about pouncing on him again, but instead just looked at him, angry and worried and wanting nothing more than to strangle this weird man. "Enough bullshit. Give me back my son!"
He shook his head, and then she did pounce him. He rolled away again, faster than she could see. "Shan't," he cried gleefully. "Can't. I don't have him anymore."
"THEN WHO THE FUCK DOES?!" She howled, louder than any noise her son had ever made. And not three seconds later, the neighbors began pounding on the walls again.
The little man rolled his eyes. She began to wonder if he wasn't more like Hoggle- he was irritating enough. And then she shook her head because she was being ridiculous.
"He's not yours any longer, dear. He's mine."
The new voice froze the little man in mid-eye roll. He stared behind Emma with nothing short of shock on his face. She was almost afraid to turn around. The voice of the new person alone was enough to send shivers running down her spine. If she'd allowed them.
"Well!" he swallowed, "I'll just leave you two to it, shall I?" And before the blonde even turned her head, he was gone.
"Do forgive him, dear," came the voice behind her. "He's a useful little imp, from time to time, but he is a bit of an idiot."
Emma's heart was pounding in her throat. She needed a drink. Or a cigarette. Or something stronger. But she'd stopped doing all that when she'd found out she was pregnant. It hadn't done her any favors.
Slowly and methodically, she turned around. Her jaw dropped to the floor.
Resplendent in black feathers and a glittering gown that was dark as sin, stood a woman who could well have given David Bowie a run for his money in terms of sex appeal. Emma actually found another shiver running down her back, and it was not from fear. Well, not only from fear, certainly. Still, she steeled her will, swallowing thickly as she tried to glare down the kohl-lined eyes of the woman before her. "You're her," she breathed. "The Goblin ...Queen?" That was certainly a twist. "What have you done with my son?"
A bemused chuckle burst from dark red lips. "'Goblin?' Hardly." The Queen- for she had to be, the mere way she moved and hell, even breathed screamed royalty- seemed not to take notice of her words, instead gazing around the small apartment, her nose wrinkling in distaste at the squalid living conditions. Finally, she bent smoothly at the waist, picking up a small ball from where it had fallen beside the couch. Effortlessly, she began to run it back and forth over her fingers and hand. "As I said, I think you'll find he's my son now, dear. You gave him to me." The image of the baby suddenly appeared in the ball, and the queen smiled at it. "And he's certainly a lively little boy." Her voice sounded sweeter, now. Higher and freer-sounding. "He has my eyes..."
"Give him back!" Emma nearly whimpered, her eyes glued to the the vision of the boy in the ball. "I didn't mean it!"
"Didn't you?"
"Please! He's my son! He's the only thing I have, and he must be so scared... You have to give him back!"
The queen merely inclined her head, looking regal and powerful and incredibly in-control. Emma envied that. "You seem to have some very queer ideas on how this all works, dear. You asked for the boy to be taken. So I took him. I don't recall any stipulation on how you might get him back."
Scrambling to think, Emma finally elected to simply turn on the TV behind her. David Bowie once again appeared on the screen, an argument of his own on his lips. "It's just a movie!" she insisted. "I was watching it half-asleep and made a stupid wish!"
This time, the Queen said nothing, staring at the moving pictures behind the blonde with confusion. The girl on the screen was peering over a city in the distance. "It doesn't look that far..." Behind her, the Goblin King side-stepped."It's further than you think... and time is short. You have thirteen hours in which to solve the Labyrinth, before your baby brother becomes one of us... forever. Such a pity..."
Emma turned off the screen with a flourish, turning back to the Queen before her with renewed vigor. "You see?" she insisted. "I have thirteen hours to solve the labyrinth... or whatever puzzle you throw at me... and defeat the Goblin- defeat you to get my son back!"
In thought, the queen walked around the room almost absently, as if she owned it. Hell, she may as well have. Finally, she glanced back at the blonde, an unreadable smile on her face. "Thirteen hours... " Her smile suddenly deepened, and it wasn't entirely pleasant.
"Yeah," Emma said warily, raising an eyebrow at the Queen's tone of voice.
A dark chuckle. "I'll be much nicer, dear. You have ten years."
Emma's jaw dropped again, this time in outrage. "What?!" she screamed. She lunged forward, daring to come into the Queen's personal space so quickly that the dark-haired woman dropped the ball she'd been playing with. Neither of them noticed the toy vanishing out of existence. It was a bit hard to notice anything other than Emma's hand wrapping around a feather-wrapped neck and pressing the dark queen into the nearest wall. "This is bullshit, lady! I don't know what the hell kind of game you're playing here, but you will give me back my son and you will do it right the fuck now!"
A slow, sad, shaking of perfectly coiffed dark hair. "Oh, Emma," the Queen sighed. "Don't you understand, dear? You don't have a son anymore. You gave him to me." Even before her eyes, the Queen began to slowly vanish, thinning out of Emma's grasp until all that was left was the gleam of the sparkles on her collar. "You don't even remember his name."
"Of course I do! It's..."
But she was talking to no one. There was only a slight smell of apples, quickly overpowered by the ever-present smell of curry from the neighbors down the hall.
"...It's..." Blinking, Emma stared at the apartment around her, and licked her suddenly dry lips. She shook her head, trying to clear out the sudden fuzziness of her mind. She'd been saying something, she knew, but for the life of her, couldn't remember what it had been. She blinked again, and looked around her apartment. Everything was the same- the popcorn ceiling, the parquet floor that had seen better days. On the tiny TV, flame-colored puppets were throwing their heads around a scared-looking girl. Emma's brow furrowed. She could have sworn she'd turned the movie off before falling asleep.
Alone.
She shook her head, almost laughing at herself. For a moment, she'd almost expected to see someone else's things here. But that was ridiculous. She lived alone. Since coming out of prison, she'd always lived alone.
She had no one else.
...
...
In the secret rooms beneath a mausoleum, the Queen bent down low, scooping up a wailing, squirming child in her arms. The boy instantly quieted, opening his brown eyes impossibly wide as he stared up at the woman who held him. He gurgled, delighted.
His mother smiled back, re-situating the child more comfortably in her arms. "Hello, Henry," she cooed. "I brought you a present." In her hand appeared a small ball. "Do you want it?" Henry grabbed for it, immediately wrapping his tiny hands around it and bringing it to his mouth. The queen laughed, bouncing the child in her arms. Her son, now.
She spared a passing thought for the blonde-headed girl, still a child herself. Her image flashed into the ball that Henry was currently gnawing on. He gave a whiny screech at the familiar sight, nearly dropping the ball. The Queen caught it easily, sparing no thought to the spittle around it, instead peering through to the image of the blonde in her tiny apartment, all alone.
In ten years, through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered, the girl would find her way here. And when she did, she would demand the child.
Regina's eyes grew hard at the thought. If she had to, she would reorder time and turn the world upside down to keep that from happening. And she would do it all for Henry.
"I ask for so little," she whispered quietly to the boy in her arms, looking up at her with eyes the deepest brown. "Just let me rule you, and you can have everything you want." She pressed a kiss to the baby's tiny brow, her eyes still looking on the fitfully sleeping blonde in the ball. "Just love me. ...And I will be your slave."