A/N: So I know there a whole shedload of stories like this at the moment, amazing fics I couldn't even begin to compete with but the idea just jumped into my head yesterday so I figured I'd put pen to paper. Why not, right? Anyways, there's more to come so please send me any thoughts/feedback you might have...like Britney Spears says I'm a fool for you!...
She was tired.
Bone tired.
The kind of tired where it took effort to remember to breathe when you brushed your teeth before bed. The sort where it took more than muscle memory to remember to hold the trashy paperback open so your eyes had the chance to focus.
Not that either of those things were on the slate for tonight.
Doing two things at once was pretty much out of the question as Emma dragged her legs up the rickety, paint-cracked stairs and along the hallway to her room. She wasn't even sure why she was so drained, really. Sure, there had been a mountain of paper work on her desk and a flurry of phone calls lighting up the switchboard when this morning's storm had turned south west, taking all the homeowners on the edge of town by complete surprise but beyond a few splintered fences and reassuring chats there hadn't been anything majorly arduous to deal with.
Perhaps then, it was exactly that at the bottom of it.
The familiarity of the day. The routine.
The monotony.
Emma's head lolled to one side as she made it into her room and grabbing it by one sleeve slung her leather jacket onto the chair in the corner as she blew out a hot sigh.
Of course, there hadn't been much chance to complain about boredom since her and Henry had left their old apartment back in Boston. Exhaustion, yes.
An impressive amount of crazy rule-breaking by the newly homed lost boys that bordered on ridiculous… sure.
But not boredom.
Even with the decline in open hostility between the townspeople who'd stayed and those that had decided to go back to the Enchanted Forest….things had never been boring in Storybrooke.
Not until today.
For one thing Regina would never have allowed it.
Up until a year ago the woman had practically revelled in bad feeling, sowing seeds of ill will wherever she went as if she needed the stuff around her feet to be able to breathe.
That isn't fair.
Emma growled in frustration at her conscience as she pulled her tee over her head. She was all too aware that Regina wasn't that person anymore; Hell, she hadn't even really been that way at all back then, she'd just been lonely... and hurt by Henry's constant rejections without being able to show either of those things to the outside world.
Without being able to take off the mask for fear it'd be too cracked to put back on.
If anyone could understand that it was a foster kid from the East Coast brought up on leftovers and government directives.
Emma slumped down onto her unmade bed as thoughts of tailored pant suits and pursed lips assaulted her vision.
Regina had actually been pretty...great lately if she really thought about it. Not exactly hugs and banoffee pie great but a little more open, a little less guarded around everyone since Cora and Zelena had been defeated. As if she'd laid to rest some of the blood ties that bound her to her past.
To her family.
If that was even the right word for the Freudian nightmare of her past.
She'd even cut down on her sniping recently, settling for the odd glare across the diner at dinner as if she was somehow skirting some kind of tentative peace inside herself. Not that she'd ever turn into a wall-flower or anything… and Emma supposed that went for the town she'd created too since it was basically an extension of her own mind.
The blonde let out a groan as she rolled her neck from one painful side to the other.
She knew she should stop thinking about Regina. Stop thinking about the odd hard earned smiles she'd managed to wheedle out of her when their magic lessons had gone well and she'd not blown anything up for two days straight. Stop thinking about the hand that had a tendency to skirt her back when she'd gotten too clumsy for her own good; not touching but protective nonetheless.
That was the Regina she knew, the one she…
The one she'd started to see emerging before she'd messed everything up by intervening in the natural timeline and saved a life. A life that meant nothing to her in any real sense but meant a world to a handful of others.
Robin.
And Regina.
With one knee-jerk moment she'd inadvertently caused Regina more pain than she ever deserved and everything had gone to shit.
A shiver ran through her spine at the memory, nipping at her vertebrae even though her logical mind knew that the Mayor was perfectly well and safe right now, tucked up in bed on Mifflin Street.
She'd done a lot of stupid hurtful things in her time, but none of them seemed to compare right now to the wounded look on Regina's face when she'd realised what Emma had done.
What she had stolen from her without a thought for the consequences.
That disbelieving expression seemed to float in front of her eyes wherever she went now. Blaming her with such familiar coffee coloured eyes that it made it hard to breathe.
And she had no excuses for her behaviour except that it 'had been the right thing to do.' Whatever the hell that meant.
It didn't feel like that now. At this particular moment it felt as if she was being punished for spending the last two years pretending to be something she wasn't. A saviour.
A child of good and righteousness.
All the fairytale bullshit printed in hardback and sold on bookshelves in the big cities.
The kind she'd laughed at during class.
Jesus! Stop thinking so much!
Unless you want a migraine on top of everything else.
Pressing fingertips into her temples, Emma pulled her hair out its rough ponytail and let it fall untidily onto her shoulders before she rolled sideways across the bed, flicking off her boots as she did so; the earthy sound of them thocking onto the floor almost bringing a smile to her face.
Her back began grumbling in protest at the position but she didn't care.
She didn't care about anything. All she wanted was a night of uninterrupted sleep with no phone calls from a deputy, no grand designs from any nameless evil-doers wherever the hell they might be hiding out these days and definitely no guilty thoughts concerning the resident mayor of Storybrooke.
Just peace.
Stillness.
And so what if today had been more exhausting than it should have been? She was just antsy that was all, expecting the next barrage of mental-ness to hit town the way it always had. Waiting for it so there were no surprises.
That was habit, nothing more.
A pattern easily broken.
That was all.
Suddenly green eyes flicked open and the ceiling swung overhead for a moment.
Christ, you're actually justifying your own behaviour to yourself now.
That was it; she was well and truly done for the freaking day. Pulling herself up for a moment, she rolled the jeans down her legs and pushed them over each ankle before slipping quickly into a grey NYU vest top and a pair of shorts. Then she ripped the duvet off one side of the bed and crawled in letting it drop on top of her once she was splayed out in the middle of the mattress.
My bed, my rules she thought grumpily burrowing face first into a soft pillow.
And that was the last thing she remembered as sleep began to kick in.
She didn't recall the first forty five minutes or so where she started out on her right side facing the door then sloppily rolled over to face the opposite way. She wasn't aware of turning so that she was lying on her back, a thin strand of blonde hair caught in the corner of her mouth as she breathed in.
She was lost in dreamless sleep, wrapping herself in its threads- muscles relaxed and limp.
Until something in the air of the room changed and cut through the tiredness bringing her back to consciousness in an instant.
Wild, green eyes snapped open as she lifted her head.
"Who's there?"
There was no reply as she held her breath, her body attuned to the muted creaks of the old house. Nothing. Nothing but silence as heavy as cloth.
Feeling her eyes begin to droop again, Emma scanned the darkness, watching it shift and slither in front of her.
Still nothing though.
Just a mind collapsing in on itself...
Drawing in a quiet breath, Emma blinked resignedly as Regina's face swam into her vision once more; at first warm and thankful. Then icy. Betrayed.
Flawless.
Her eyes closed of their own accord for a second although she tried to fight the weariness overtaking her. Forcing them to sweep the room again, she pierced the gloom as best she could despite the fact she couldn't make out much beyond the rigid square of the wardrobe near the window and the casual curve of the armchair.
The room was as it had been.
Not a thing out of place.
Letting out an inaudible sigh, Emma slumped down onto the pillow again and gathered the corners of the duvet in her fist.
"Really?! That's the best you can do? You're supposed to be this town's first line of defence aren't you?"
Jerking up wide awake now, Emma reached out a pale hand and grabbed the gun that was sitting in its holster hanging off the bedpost.
Cocking the trigger with her left hand she clicked the bedside light on, the barrel trained in the proximity of where the disembodied voice had sprung from.
"Identify yourself!" she yelled as her eyes struggled to absorb the light that seemed almost blinding after the darkness before.
"That's more like it."
The gun should have made her feel more secure. She knew that deep down in the rational part of her brain, it always had even in her rookie days but somehow its weight didn't have the desired effect at this moment. Right now, it was all she could do to grip the damn thing and hold it eye level as if the metal it was made of had changed properties in the last few minutes into something mercurial and slippery.
It had to be the tiredness in her wrist muscles.
Or perhaps it was the fact that sitting cross legged at the end of her bed was the shape of a person so familiar to her that she couldn't quite process what she was seeing.
"Do I still need to identify myself or shall we get right down to it?"
Emma blinked, resisting the urge to lower her gun and wipe roughly at her eyes to see if she was hallucinating.
This couldn't be happening.
It was just fatigue. Fatigue induced hallucinations.
"It's not," was all the figure said tilting their head to one side. The gesture was so eerily familiar and the intonation in the voice so recognisable that she wasn't entirely sure she wasn't caught in the first throes of having a stroke.
"It's not what?" she stuttered.
"A hallucination from being tired."
"...How did you..."
"Or a dream from the three-cheese sandwich you snuck out of the vending machine before leaving."
Emma wrinkled her nose as she backed up against the headboard, nerves screaming.
"Are you..."
She was cut off again by a bored tone, "...No, I'm not a shape shifter, I'm not a Nephilim or a Banshee. And don't get me wrong, it's very cute that you took some time to research a few myths and legends over the last few weeks but I'm not any of the things that are running through your mind right now."
"How do you know what I've been doing; you've been watching me?"
The woman smiled a little in the low light. "I don't need to watch you Emma to know all the secret little things you get up to. You know that."
"Bullshit."
"And you're as eloquent as always."
Though her eyes never wavered Emma's hand unwrapped itself from the revolver for a moment as she reached out and pinched the thin skin of her forearm.
"Ow!"
Pain sang through her muscles.
"What are you five years old? Is this how dreams usually go for you?"
Emma tilted her chin up with a hard glint in her eye and an unamused smile building. "So I'm just supposed to believe that you're..."
Her voice trailed off but she couldn't quite bring herself to feel embarrassed about it with all the other chaotic thoughts tumbling about inside her mind.
"...You?"
Emma stared at the other woman. At the perfect copy of her own face, right down to the tiny scar above her left eye and frown lines at the centre of her forehead.
"Strange." She muttered.
The other Her raised an eyebrow and Emma offered a haughty shrug. "You look like me but not like me at the same time."
Her double seemed to take that in for a second, her body changing position as she leaned backwards transferring her weight to her arms.
"You know I read an article by some Professor who said that if we met a clone of ourselves that we probably wouldn't even recognise them. Because we never get to see ourselves face on, right? All we have are like mirror images and reproductions of ourselves."
Emma's eyes narrowed. "I don't read articles like that."
The other woman gave a snort. "You should. It might make situations like this a little easier to deal with."
Emma couldn't really argue with that.
"So... can we carry on without the red dot on my chest?"
Emma glanced at the other woman then at the gun she still held in front of her.
"It's not a sniper rifle."
The other Emma rolled her eyes. "It was a metaphor."
"For all I know you're a metaphor," she threw back.
Her counterpart couldn't contain a sigh at that.
"Fine. I've come to give you a message. So here it is." Her expression darkened immeasurably as she leaned forwards, her hair falling across her face. "All this is going to end. And it's going to be all your fault."
Emma's double crossed her arms as she stared into green horrified eyes.
"Now do you want to put down the gun?"
TBC...