A/N - A very short one shot I played with as my body slowly recovers from a devastating bout of the flu.
She came to me one night when I was terribly deprived of sleep. Way before the waking hours of a cold and winter Sunday where the drops formed into ice on my window panes.
Where the street below lacked the kind of activity wanting of a Saturday night. And although I had anticipated a trembling state to settle in during those hours after our escapade to the Underworld, like an angel, her presence stole into my room to heal.
I remember the way her shadow moved towards my bed after the bedroom door creaked just a little. The way her whispered silence seemed to create so much noise alongside the beating of my heart.
Many times I used to savour the smell of her perfume that used to remind me of better days in New York when my job swirled around that Victoria Secret shop. But that night, her fragrance was part of the definition that consisted of the important woman she had become to me. And as I inhaled that scent, and as she drew nearer, I knew deep down inside that this wasn't just a social call.
But it would unfold into something that would either tear us apart or draw us nearer together like the dawn and morning.
"What's wrong?"
I opened the heavy yellow blanket covering my bed and offered a strained expression.
She didn't say a word, but without hesitating, coat and all, slipped into the space next to me.
Her warmth was immediately effective in that cold winter of my heart. Back when I had terribly lost a man who was beginning to feel less like home and more like a torment to my life. Gone were the hours where I yearned to live a life long with treasured hopes for him. Now I was choosing to allow this person to somehow remind me that I not only existed but I symbolized something.
I sighed.
Regina merely rested on her back. The rise and fall of her chest was evident and I kept wondering silently if we were both dreaming. Because something like this had never happened before in the years I had come to know her. What we had was somewhat professional and friendly at the same time, yet tinged with the kind of unsettling feeling of something else residing in the air. And as I scrutinized her demeanor without even boldly looking at her, a new kind of tremor dawned upon my beating heart.
She was the closest thing to home I had ever known.
"Are you going to talk to me?" My voice was a whisper. I had been crying. My eyes were swollen. Mourning wasn't an easy fete, especially a strained mourning. I had missed how he loved me. I didn't miss him because I loved him back.
"I don't know what to say," she still stared up at the ceiling.
"Then why are you here?"
"I want to be here."
I found the blow of her confession somewhat softened by the fact that my mind probably anticipated that reply way before it came. That my heart didn't explode because the truth wasn't harsh. But it was a necessary evil. It was like waking in the morning and already knowing that your path would lead to work. Already knowing where you were going. Being where you needed to be. And as I studied the side of her face, I realized that maybe I hadn't been crying because of him.
My tears were like balm to my shattered heart, preparing me for a much more difficult blow.
"Do you miss him?" she asked me in the dark, because the light was still out and for the past two days darkness was my choice.
I found her question rather strange. "Yeah."
She said nothing in return.
"Why?"
"I was…merely asking," a shrug was offered.
"You're not the kind of person who just asks something without meaning something," I reminded her. God how my voice was hoarse from crying. "Talk to me."
"About what?" she croaked. Her chest heaved.
"Tell me why you're here." I wanted to sit up but was too weak to complete the act. Somehow, towering above her lying form would have given me some kind of false courage to unearth the truth.
"It's not that easy to begin," she said with the kind of uncertainty that would have warranted suspicion if I hadn't already known something about the nature of her visit.
"Begin with why you honestly believe that I would need you here when I've been telling everyone to leave me alone." I said it with some kind of bitterness. Somehow she wasn't even affected by that.
Regina turned a little to gaze at me. "Maybe I'm rather selfish. Maybe I need you. And I don't care if you need me."
"You were always selfish when it comes to personal space," I reflected with a sigh. Staring up at the ceiling, my body had begun to thaw off. It was like waking from a block of ice. Like waking from a coma. "I never could get why you stepped away when I moved in. And yet you always wanted to come closer when I wasn't ready."
"Such words might be misinterpreted," she had the audacity to say.
"There's always something that slips past you," I was frustrated already with her. "I could scream the truth and you would become as naïve as my mother."
"Stop mocking me."
"Stop patronizing me."
"I don't know where we begin and end anymore."
"Shit," I scowled in the dark.
This was not easy.
Sometimes the night scares the hell out of me. The silence. The stillness. Like a graveyard where the rustle of leaves in the trees were like the sound of my thoughts. Every tombstone was something buried in my memory. I didn't dare venture to unearth them but I wondered always why she was the one shadow that lurked between the haunting scene. And maybe this was madness, to believe in something else. But weren't you supposed to go completely mad before breaking even?
"I know you're mad at me," she sounded so wounded. I hated to hear that in her voice. "I am not perfect."
"I never expect you to be," I said with the kind of petulant behaviour that summed up my mood.
"But then you look at me sometimes like if I've failed you. So many times." Her voice trembled. "And I don't ever mean to fail you. I try my best to be adequate. At least by doing that, I am reassuring myself that I am doing some good."
"I don't want you to be adequate. I never wanted you to be adequate. I always wanted you to be," I shrugged, "I don't know. Truthfully and completely whole with me."
"I am whole with you."
"Regina."
"But me being whole with you is never enough because something is always missing. Isn't there?"
I turned to lock eyes with her. Those brown ones glistened with tears. In that moment, something dawned upon me. That we were so close and yet so far still. Our hands, our fingers rested an inch apart and our hearts a million miles away. I could suffer like this forever, and she would go on living. Even without me, her world would continue. Even my tears would never burn her. And when the realization kicked in that we were not going to be on the same page, I averted my gaze.
"Ask me again why I came here," she said now, her voice barely a whisper.
I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear, evaporate and never come back. Of all the times I had let someone through the door, she was the only one who left her damn footprints all over the floorboards and never returned the key.
"Why are you here?" I couldn't breathe. My world wasn't her world. We were living on two different planets.
"I came to kiss you goodnight," she said in a voice that had changed. The husky quality had diminished into something very softer. Delicate. If she could display that kind of softness then maybe something had cracked her walls.
"What?" I turned a little and stared at her. My eyes widened.
She was barely smiling at me. I could see how flushed her cheeks were. Her eyelashes barely fluttered. "I need to know where we begin and where we end. I need to."
"The underworld shook you up, didn't it?" my throat was parched. I still could not process, or even begin to believe what she had just said to me.
"Being down there made me realize that I could lose you and I could never see you again. I could find a way then to get to you. But what if I got to you and you had already crossed over? What if you weren't there? What if we never have an end?"
"I think you might have a fever," I studied her face intently. Her skin was so flawless.
"I'm love sick."
"All this came from being dragged under?" I sensed something shifting behind her dark eyes. I held my breath.
Regina sighed.
She resumed her staring up at the ceiling. Colour still rested on her cheeks. Her gloved hands were folded on top one another on the rise and fall of her chest.
"He's dead." I said to the room at large.
"I'm glad."
"I expected nothing different. But back when he was here, I enjoyed the look on your face when he flirted and you fumed. It was too cute a look." It was my turn to smile.
She scowled. "There you go again, playing with my heart."
"And what about the way you've played with mine?"
"Nobody told you to come into my town, Miss Swan," she said with such softness, I felt my heart sigh. "Nobody told you to stick around. By the time the pirate showed up, we had both buried our fangs into each other, poisoned by something that we still could not understand."
"The dictionary calls it love," I suggested.
"Is it really?" she still sounded in denial.
"You tell me," our eyes met. "Didn't you come here to kiss me goodnight?"
"Friends kiss each other goodnight, don't they?"
My heart pained a little. "I never expected to hear anything different from you. You're so predictable."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. You're just being you." I turned on my side, and away from her. A tear slipped down my cheek. "Now leave me let me be me and mourn all by myself. For someone I cannot have."
There was silence whilst I wept without sound. Strangely, I felt her watching me. Observing. At one point, the ghost of her finger trailed a path around my left shoulder. And I held my breath and I tried to avoid the urge of yearning for more.
"If you only knew what you do to me," she whispered suddenly in the dark. "When no one else is around and I'm all by myself. I feel as if I'm always haunted by your ghost. I smell you everywhere I go. I cannot go a day without seeing you. I lie awake for hours wondering what it would feel like to touch you –"
"Don't do this to me," I croaked, squeezing my eyes shut. "It's the bottle of Vodka doing this to me. You're not really here. You're somewhere out there lying in bed, sleeping and not even thinking of me. You're just a ghost next to me. Something my imagination made up."
I felt her soft lips press onto my left cheek. My body trembled. My heart quaked. Those soft lips stayed there. I could feel her breathing on me. Her warm breath. And a few tendrils of her hair tickled my ear.
"You can't imagine me like this," she whispered. "I'm real. Remember when we once consumed so much alcohol and you confessed that you wanted to screw me senseless? Well I've always wondered what that would feel like."
"Regina –"
"Hush," she pressed soft kisses beginning by my left temple then the bridge of my nose then the corner of my mouth. "I want you to wake up tomorrow with a smile on your face. I want you to stop mourning. This is not about him anymore. This was never about him. It's always been about me."
"You always knew." I felt her kiss away the tear that trailed down my nose. "Damn you, Regina. You always knew."
"Yes."
Her fingers grasped my chin tenderly and she turned my face. Even when I could have died from peace in the unfolding pleasantries of the moment, the best was yet to come. For my eyes were barely fluttering open when I felt her soft lips upon mine. Barely there at first. Existing. It was a kiss that I had always wanted and dreamed about. And then she was kissing me, parting my lips and deepening our connection like never before.
I tasted wine. Red wine. I remembered the bottles she had in her mansion. Dust never settled on them because she loved to sample one and two with me on various occasions. This time though, she was taking a sip of something quite refreshing and it seemed as if her waking heart didn't want to turn around.
"Never settle for second best," she said to me whilst rubbing our noses together affectionately. A smile rested on her lips. "You were always and will forever be my first."
"I find that hard to believe," I said, raking my fingers through her hair as she still remained above me. "You seem like the kind of woman who had one more."
"You're the first woman I have ever kissed. I swear on my mother's grave."
"Then that's something I can come out of mourning for."
"Maybe I'm completely insane, Emma," she rested our foreheads together. "But what I feel for you doesn't scare me anymore. It makes me feel like fighting until my last breath to prove to everyone that this is real."
"It's us against the world," I said smiling.
She was so beautiful.
"You and me. A beautiful chaos."
"Take off your gloves," I suddenly said. The leather felt cold against my skin still. I needed to feel how dangerously stimulating her touch would be even upon my face.
Slowly, she slipped them off. Her fingers curled upon my cheek, caressing and then feeling the curl of my lips. I guiltily parted them, and allowed her to rub her thumb against my teeth.
"Stay with me tonight," I said, barely conscious of the rest of the world around me.
She turned me onto my other side, so that we were in each other's arms now. Her fingers still slowly caressed my cheek.
"Who told you that I was ever going to leave?"
We both smiled in the dark.
x