A/N: Needed to get this out of my system. Essentially an attempt to tap into a lot of the things I was pretty dissatisfied with after the Onceapocalypse of 2014, eg.: ooc ladies, missed opportunities, plot holes...Prompted by NYCSerenade. Takes place beg S3B in an abstract space between NYCS/Witch Hunt.
Originally a tumblr one-shot that turned into a giant ass labor of love. I hope the rest of this story satisfies any seeds the original may have laid. Updates, playlist, & related things will be posted on my tumblr (same . Feedback is always welcome and appreciated :) Thank you to my lovely betas on these chapters!
OCs: WWotW here is NOT Zelena, she's entirely of my own design. Robin is written with my own little fantasy TomEllis!Robin Locksley in mind, whose story-role/relationship with Regina I envisioned very differently (I affectionately refer to them as RogueQueen). I personally divert utterly & completely from canon-3B-Robin while writing this. But if you're a canon-Robin fan, or either of the canon likenesses work best for you, go with it.
WARNINGS: Centered on E/R but ALL of their canonic het entanglements are either dealt with, mentioned, or somehow present. Adult themes. anti Wizard Swan. Some potentially triggering drama/references. Discussion & reference to difficult elements in Emma & Regina's backgrounds as well as psychological/triggered/emotional moments that could be triggering. Some rape-culture sub-theme content (due to the show itself). I haven't made any final decisions on how overtly graphic this is going to be yet (with sex, violence, past trauma)-M for language, violence, themes, & later sexual content.
Angst with payoff & amenities.
'SAFE AS HOUSES'
_-X-_
Chapter 1
Shadows
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"Alright…" Emma arms were crossed. She was still rather somber and removed when she spoke: her leaderly tone reluctant, but decisive, in a way she'd probably cultivated somewhere in Neverland, or maybe long before Storybrooke's name had ever crossed her lips. "We're leaving."
"What?" Regina asked. Her eyes snapped up to the other woman, honestly caught off guard by this. She regarded Emma carefully as she shifted around to brood in the shadows across from her.
They were holed up in a back room of the library to have this conversation under the cloak of the evening light, having deemed it a neutral area between their warded homes, and in the hope it was safe from prying green ears. The two had agreed earlier that it was wise to meet and regroup by themselves, to strategize more efficiently and with extra caution.
The Wicked Witch somehow seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
"We have to go," Emma said. The walls around them provided a certain sense of shelter. But it didn't shield them from the urgency of an eerie squall that was wrapping around the town, seeping into the library, and vibrating through the air. They were both still wrapped in their jackets. And behind the bookshelves, counters, and walls—all casting a gray forest of shadows—it was still cold. "We can't stay here."
She could tell Regina was rattled by the confrontation they'd had in the diner. By the way the Witch had seemed to fling Regina's attacks away with casual glee. How the whole thing was so deliberate and calculated, and she'd known exactly where they were—taunting them from the shadows and filling the room with that manic cackling, that was still echoing through Emma's head. The way she'd alluded to all the fucked up things she was going to do to them, before disappearing in a cloud of smoke. And how she'd done it all without even revealing a face or a name.
Yeah, it was theatrical, but it was effective.
You couldn't fake the kind of poison that had been dripping from the Witch's voice. It made the 'Dark One's' approach look like a playful kitten next to a rabid, unhinged jaguar. The Witch had taunted ominous implications towards everyone, but she'd specifically singled out Regina and Henry (thank God he hadn't been there), and then Emma. In that order of emphasis.
At least Henry's safety was something they'd always agreed on.
Regina gave Emma an intense and questioning look. "You're serious…?"
There was a hushed shroud that clung to room. It was just enough to form a safe-haven from the bright, cruel light of the moon and the angry sting of the air that was whipping against the shingles of Main Street outside.
Emma paused for a moment and resolved herself with a breath. She glanced around as if someone might be listening before she spoke."One of the smart things I did this past year," she said, "was set up a safe-house." She began to grumble out much of the rest in distraction, "After our...fire, and..the marathon bombing. I didn't want my job...or anything else for that matter, to put Henry in danger."
Regina blanched at the mention of a bombing but didn't have time to process, or question it before Emma spoke again. Her next words were deeply unexpected.
"You're Henry's mother. Whether he remembers you or not." She leveled herself at Regina, still annoyingly removed. "That means I need to protect you." Emma glanced at the ground and back up again before she spoke. "She wants to hurt my family. And that's not gonna happen."
What light did find its way into the room was just enough to make out the features of a person standing nearby amidst the slate-colored walls; to navigate the corners in the dark. And if Regina's expression hadn't betrayed how the words hit her when Emma had started, it did when she'd finished."You…want me to come with you?" she asked, like it was a joke. Her voice grew thick, "He…doesn't even know who I am."
"You're a client. Who needs to get out of here. Because someone dangerous is after you." Emma pinned her gaze and even demeanor on Regina, who stared at her for a moment.
"You're just going to leave?"
"We have to. She wants us."
Regina hesitated, "Your mother…is pregnant."
"Since when do you care?"
" —Let's call it political circumstances."
Emma looked at her for a moment with that same detached stare. "You actually do care..."
Regina's breath tightened a little.
"You really have changed..." Emma continued to stare at her in an unnerving fashion, an air of curiosity behind her scowl; but in the penetrating look there was something else.
Regina returned the stare without faltering. After a moment she said softly, "We can't just leave them here." It wasn't just the idea of leaving a pregnant Snow behind that bothered her. She felt like she was forgetting, missing, something. It was unsettling.
Emma narrowed her eyes a little at the 'we'. She was still thrown by this turn of affection from the woman who had hated Mary Margaret enough to plot, frame, and kill only a short while ago."She threatened my—" Emma started, and stopped herself with a breath. "She threatened Henry. I have to make him the priority."
Regina arched her eyebrow at this, a silent question that she was willing to take her of all people out of harm's way, but not her own mother.
"The Witch is after YOU, and me. Not them," Emma said. "She was expecting us. She wanted me here. With Henry. She made all of that really clear. I'm not gonna give her what she wants." Her brow knitted, and she moved closer to Regina. "You heard the kinds of things she was saying..." her voice tightened, she said she was going to..." Emma trailed off unable to finish the sentence.
"She's taunting us."
"Yeah, and she's enjoying it," Emma said. "Like a cat before it kills something and spreads its guts across the floor for fun."
"Are you honestly delusional enough to think that if we fled, she wouldn't go after those you care about? Know how to twist our wrists? I thought you'd spent time with criminals."
Emma ignored the jab. "She can't leave, neither can they. Loophole says you can—"
"That's conjecture. You don't know that for a fact."
"Okay. We do know you can leave, right? You said so, yourself...your original curse built this place. It's still your curse, not hers, otherwise Storybrooke wouldn't be here?"
"…Yes," Regina responded under her breath with reluctance.
"And you know risking trying to take Mary Margaret over the border with us right now would be more dangerous that leaving her here."
Regina took a deep breath and averted her eyes from Emma's.
"As long as we're all here," Emma said, "Henry is a sitting duck in open water. I'm not okay with that." She got a neutral look but not a response. "We stay in touch. Leave long enough to figure out our next move. I'm not gonna sit around here plotting when my son is so vulnerable."
"You seem to be forgetting, that it doesn't matter where we are. The town boundary hasn't exactly proven an issue for her," Regina said. "With her little minions...As you've had the joy of experiencing."
Emma gritted her teeth and breezed past this."You seem to be forgetting that that, " she said, pointing behind her in the air, "is my playing field. She might be able to follow but that doesn't mean she'll find us."
"...And if she could manage any magic, it will be nothing compared to what she's capable of here." Regina became somewhat wistful. "Perhaps we can get her to follow us... Lure her out and destroy her while she's vulnerable. Your street methods can't be entirely useless, we could...kill her in her sleep or something…"
"There will be no sleep murdering."
"This woman is trying to—"
"We don't know what she's really trying to do, and we don't know why. Until we do I'm not gonna let you start running around killing people."
Regina scoffed at Emma's conflicting priorities. "I'm sorry, I didn't know I took ORDERS from the prodigal Princess."
"Are you going to pretend there wasn't a time that you were just as bad as her?"
"Oh please, dear, I was never that tacky—Besides that, I didn't get my rocks off threatening children with cheap horror antics. And emulating your mother's insufferable faux-righteousness isn't going to protect our son."
"Regina. We're not going to engage with her until we know exactly what's going on and have a solid plan. I want her where someone can keep an eye on her. I want her as far away from us as possible. Do you understand?"
"Oh?...Us?" Regina cocked a brow at her.
"She has Gold..." Emma rationalized, flying past her comment.
"She said she has Rumple: we don't know if that's true."
"She got past every single one of the spells you threw at her."
"I couldn't see her!"
"That's exactly my point! She threw you on your ass, Regina! We didn't even see her. And if she's one of your former victims coming after you for revenge, with a personal stake in it, she isn't going to let up."
"Oh, of course. This must be all of my fault, because of something I did decades ago."
"Knowing half of the shit you pulled with people, I wouldn't be surprised."
Regina's chin raised into the air, but after a second she gave a slight nod in affirmation, and let this settle into her gut. She rolled her eyes with a long sigh, and clenched her jaw. The idea of spending time with Henry the way Emma was implying was both heart-wrenching and seductive.
"Fine," she relented, taking time to recenter herself. "...Where are we going then?" She had the same tone she'd taken in Neverland acquiescing to Emma's leadership.
Emma's chest deflated, and she looked a little less harried. "I'm not gonna talk about that here. You're just going to have to trust me."
Regina's jaw tightened a little again, as she glared into the other woman's eyes—but then so did her chest. There was no reason for Emma to tell her this, no reason for Emma to take her with them.
If anything, it was more dangerous.
"No..." Regina said, her brow furrowing. "I'm staying here."
"What?"
"Coming with you will only endanger him more."
"Absolutely not."
"Since when do you care?" came a snippy reply.
Emma almost came towards her but restrained herself. She continued to stare at Regina, until her eyes softened. "I'm not leaving you here."
"I can take care of myself. You just keep our son safe—"
"Did you HEAR me?" Emma's cool exterior snapped and she cut her off. She made a brash move into Regina's personal space that almost caused the woman to jump. She looked a little desperate.
"I said, I am not leaving you here." Her voice cracked apart the spell of dust and hushed shadows in the room. Her breath had risen to the top of her lungs, and she was tensed as if she had been challenged by the other woman. It threw Regina, her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and she opened her mouth to speak but was cut off. "—She'll kill you."
Regina was struck by what seemed like the sudden dissolution of the removed, almost apathetic attitude that Emma had been reeking of throughout their exchanges since she arrived back in town.
"I said I can take care of myself..." she said quietly, her voice strangled as if she almost thought she shouldn't continue. Her hand drifted up unconsciously to rub the spot on her face that had been bleeding earlier after the confrontation, long since healed back to perfection with magic.
Emma turned and looked off away from her. "Not alone." Her voice was soft and rushed. "Not like this." She swallowed, and then turned back, preventing Regina from speaking again. Her voice wavered, an unsettled yell caught behind it and seeping through the whisper, "I am not leaving you behind again."
It was there that Regina's heart moved into her throat. She was completely caught off guard by the statement, by Emma's allegiance. But at once some place, folded beneath her gut, welcomed it implicitly. "Wh—"
"After EVERYTHING that has happened, you're really gonna fight me on this?" A pressing distress still crackled through the hush in Emma's voice. "I left you in the mine...I left you to the curse—for Henry because we both knew it was the right thing to do, but I am NOT walking away from you again—How many times do you have to martyr yourself?"
"Emma..."
Emma's voice had gotten more emotional than it should have been.
"What are you gonna do," Emma said, "Stay here and go after her yourself? Let her kill you? We don't even know what she wants!"
"She wants to torture us...She's called Wicked for a reason. She wouldn't just kill me.."
"So what—Do you have a plan? Are you gonna try to be a hero? Because all it sounds like to me, is you trying to walk away from Henry because its hard."
There was silence for a moment, Regina trying inconspicuously to compress the lump in her throat. "Someone has to protect your mother," she confessed. "We don't know what the Witch will do."
"My parents can take care of themselves."
Regina laughed. "Against magic? No. Dear, they really can't."
"So that's what it really is then?" Emma swallowed. "You're asking me to leave—To run, with Henry, without you?" She added, her voice smaller, "...Again?"
When Regina spoke, her voice was downcast and muted, "…I was never very good at running. Even when I should have."
Emma looked at her sadly. "But...he needs you."
"That's a nice sentiment, Emma," Regina choked up, "but we both know it's not true. Maybe once upon a time. But not anymore."
"You're wrong. I can't do this alone." Emma seemed to have moved on from anger to bargaining. "I…I may have been okay with him back in New York when we were...living some...cotton-candy lie, but the reality is different. We don't—we don't know how long we're going to be gone, if we'll ever really be able to come back…"
This received an uncomprehending look.
"I may be 'The Savior', but..." she struggled over her words for a moment, her voice dropping almost to a whisper, "I can't do this without you...I-I can't get him through all this the right way without you."
Regina fixated on her, almost absently trying to figure out why there were tears pooling at the inset of her own eyes.
And what Emma was smoking.
"I won't lose you again," Emma said a little desperately, and not sure what she even meant.
Regina clenched her jaw and, to her horror, the tears started to escape. She wanted to say something but her mind was blank, filled by only the thick breath that was swirling around inside of her. And that lump in her throat. "Emma..."
"Please. Just come with me. This time, just once, don't give up so easily."
"Give up? Give up?…I am trying to do the right thing."
"The right thing is staying with your family—it's fighting for it."
"I'm trying to fight for yours! You think this isn't hard for me—"
"NO, no, I think it's easy. You know what would be hard? Fighting for Henry even though it hurts more than it ever has, being th—"
"Your family needs—"
"THEY ARE not, my family!" Emma screamed, her chest heaving. "As much as everyone wants to think it is that easy, it just ISN'T. They are the people that abandoned me. You can't just appear and have that kind of trust, and..just make those things be there, because you want them to—Everything they have done since that curse broke was because they wanted me—to be someone I am not."
Emma paused long enough to look sincerely upset.
"They didn't even try to find me. After you got back here, they didn't even know Hook left…Whatever they needed me to be before, they don't need it anymore..." For a moment a different person seeped into her eyes, "..they have their own kid now." By the time she finished, her voice was strangled and blistered.
"Emma... You're confu—"
"Do you know who my family is?" Emma interrupted her. "...You."
Regina was at a complete loss for words now. She just gaped at the other woman, her mouth still hanging open from whatever it was that she'd been about to say.
"You are," Emma whispered, and then swallowed. Her eyes glimmered with an earnest ferocity at the other woman. "I .. I know neither of us asked for this, Regina. I know most of the time we barely manage to get along enough to get anything done, but we are stuck together whether either of us likes it or not. And Henry—that boy you devoted every second of your life to for 11 years? He does need both of us." Emma wavered, her eyes flickering. "And..I need you..." she managed to say. She became a little more methodical then, taking fortification from the revelation. "You have never asked me to be something I'm not. You've never given up on Henry before, or stopped trying to fight for him. Even when you did all of the wrong things. I'm not gonna let you do it now," she finished. Then she added, "And if you think I am going to leave you alone here, even for a second, at the whim of that crazy bitch, you are wrong."
Regina's eyes pressed into the other woman's, dark and gleaming, over the soft rise and fall of her chest. She stood stock still, stumbling over empty words until she was able to steady her brow again. A chill ran down her shoulders, the shock of being spoken to this way by anyone—who might actually be authentic no less—hit her like icy water. "...If something happens to that child, you will never forgive yourself," Regina said, a smallness somewhere behind her words.
"Then...protect it. Protect it now. Put an enchantment on it." A steeliness had returned to Emma. "But I am taking you with me if I have to knock you out and carry you." Regina's face blanched at this. "Understood, Madame Mayor?" Emma snipped in her face, as if they had been sparing and this was the end of it. She brushed past Regina in the same sentiment, making her way towards the exit.
Regina stood frozen staring through the wall, her mouth fluttering a little. Emma halted at the door, looking back over her shoulder. "If you do tell anyone about this I will knock you out, and take you out of here. No one can know about w—"
"Excuse me," Regina finally found her voice. "What the hell makes you think you have any right to control what I do?" She surged towards the other woman. "Trust me, Miss Swan, you do not want to find out what happens, when people try to make me do things I don't want to do." A sneer was creeping onto her lip, and her voice was haunted by her former self, but she was still fighting the emotion she'd swallowed from every breath of this exchange.
Emma stuck up her chin, regarding Regina in defiance. She sighed however, with a drawn hiss, letting the unnamed anger that had welled up inside of her seep out in her breath like strangled steam. Her countenance changed as she turned to face Regina fully.
The way she moved forward made Regina think she was actually accepting her challenge, but Emma stopped before she got too close and set her jaw at the other woman instead. "So you really don't want to come?"
Regina didn't say anything.
Maybe it was everything Emma had just said, but somehow, under the tense expression, she thought Emma looked a little sad. A wave of guilt from a sense of abandonment lapped at the back of her spine. But for some horrible reason it was commingled with one just as intense for Snow White.
"I can't make you do anything you don't want to do," Emma said. "But if there's someone here that you want to protect, you need to leave. If she doesn't know where we are, she has no reason to hurt anyone. Not in any way they can't handle themselves."
"Weren't you aware that fresh-born children are hot commodities in our world," Regina sassed her.
Emma stepped in, briefly fixing her with her eyes, the light from the window bathing her face. "I know this is more about you than it is about that. I can read you, Regina. I know when you're lying," she added, pausing to emphasize the reiteration. "The sad part is, I think half the time you might actually believe yourself."
Regina's face dropped a little, but she tried to refrain from showing as much emotion as she could while she looked back at Emma, keeping her gaze even and swallowing the steel in the back of her throat.
"Just think about what I said," Emma said stepping back. "You have till dawn before we're gone."
-X-
