Emma tried to breathe through it.
She sat, slumped and stupefied, in the black arm chair in Regina's office. She was beginning to notice strange things now as her hearing came and went. Like the way her jeans were so tight they were pinching a bit behind the knees, or how it seemed like there wasn't enough leaves to be healthy on that potted plant behind Regina.
Regina.
She was kneeling in front of Emma, the woman knew that much. The smell of her hair was smothering her—the sound of her voice was a betrayal. Because her heart was speeding up from elation at the sound, and how fair was that? When the words were so painful, how could her own body fail her?
How could everything have failed her?
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this…" she thought she heard the woman's muted voice mumble. She winced; shook her head slightly, wiggled her jaw and swatted a hand up to her ear, tugging on it hopelessly once she found the lobe. Everything sounded far away, as if there were voices trying to reach her underwater.
As if she were drowning.
Emma moved slowly, convinced her own limbs had given up on her. Her head lolled downwards as her vision took in her leather boots resting flat against the black and white marble. Her eyes trailed lazily over to Regina's knees and she noticed, off handedly, the way the hard floor was turning the skin there red. Would there be bruises there in the morning? She felt like helping her up, but then hated herself for it. And the floor? Why was it still beneath her? With the way she felt, shouldn't it be falling out from under her? Shouldn't it be crumbling, bit by bit, before it devoured her whole? Wouldn't that be more fitting? More merciful?
"I didn't mean to develop feelings for someone else, it's just something that happened…"
Emma tried to see through the mist gathered in her eyes that made everything blurry around her. She blinked it away, but only a few seconds later it all went out of focus again.
She knew. Through the throbbing headache and the sudden chill in the room, she knew who Regina was speaking of. Because she had grown suspicious, but had decided to trust her partner. That's how things worked.
Until they didn't, she supposed.
"Emma, please. Say something."
She heard the pleading loud and clear, but her mind refused to function properly. The world should have been upside down. The chair was never this uncomfortable before. There was a curtain that was stuck to the rod a funny way by the window. Why was it so cold?
"Emma? Talk to me."
And then suddenly, she took in a deep, terrified breath.
Shocked, she looked down and saw the small hand of the other woman resting on top of hers. She stared at it, eyes widening in horror as she realized what a horrible thing it was to do to her. When all Emma wanted was for this to be a nightmare, with that one touch, Regina pulled her back to reality.
When she found her voice it came out weak and watery, so very unlike her.
"How can you touch me?"
And all she could hear in her mind was an onslaught of agonizing, soul-shredding thoughts over and over again, like the world's worst record.
Don't touch me. Don't stop. How dare you? Get off me. I need you. Don't leave me. It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie.
Then Emma saw, as her eyes finally functioned long enough to meet Regina's, all of the pain swirling inside them. All of the tears she had allowed to fall on her behalf. And she thought Good and she thought Please don't cry and she thought You deserve it and she thought I wish I could make it better.
She hated the situation more than she had ever hated anything in her entire life. Even more so, and even less, when Regina's hand slowly lifted from hers and was run shakily, self-consciously through her deep brown hair.
Emma mentally coached herself through breathing, but she wasn't sure it was worth keeping up.
Regina stood up and paced, speaking to Emma, surely, but it was all lost on the woman in the chair. She kept wondering when this awful hole in her chest would stop leaking all of her sanity out of her body. She found feeling in her limbs and, like lifting lead, she raised a hand to her chest and wiped at the spot where she knew her heart was. She pulled her hand back, examining her clean fingers meticulously. But there was no smear of blood. Not even a drop.
She knew Regina was watching her from the way the heavy silence was ringing in her ears, but she was too shocked by the realization that she wasn't losing her own vitality to care.
And then it came rushing in.
The thought of Regina leaving her. The idea that someone else had been on her mind all this time, and still was. The deceit and the betrayal and the loneliness of it all.
And then like the worst sickness one could possibly experience, a torturous thought seeped into her consciousness and threatened to knock her out entirely.
What if he could make her happy?
The idea that it wouldn't be the three of them: Regina, Emma, and Henry. The suggestion that the life they wanted together just disappeared in a puff of smoke without her say. The thought that all of this was taken from her in one fell swoop and could possibly be better, could make Regina happier, was enough to make her hate her own heart for not stopping in it's tracks.
There was cold pressed against one side of her face—pressure against half of her body. She knew she was laying on the floor sobbing, but she didn't know how to stop it. "Oh God," she heard her voice echo after it ripped it's way up her throat. "Oh God…"
She felt hands on her shoulder but she wailed, "Don't TOUCH me!" Because it wasn't fair and she didn't deserve to touch her and beneath the layers of logic and pain, all Emma wanted was for her to lovingly hold her again, and the fact that her desire could not manifest swallowed her whole.
"What can I do?" she heard from behind her, the voice breaking somewhere in the middle of the sentence. Emma curled in on herself, because she was alone after being promised never to be that way again. Because she was in so much pain she thought she would fall to pieces if she didn't gather herself up in her own arms. Because it was so cold…
"You've done enough," she rasped, choking on her own words and crying even harder as the suggestion hit her full force over and over. Someone else. Someone else. Someone else.
And then she was shaking and trying not to vomit. She gagged and tried to force her esophagus to relax. She kicked the chair so hard she sensed the wooden leg give out and felt the weight of the black mass a moment later. She laid there, flat on her back, the chair crushing into her hip and ankle, trying to breathe through it all without even wanting to survive the moment.
Regina went to move the chair, but Emma heard her lips form a sound to stop her, and so it remained resting heavily on top of her. The other woman stood and walked dejectedly toward the double doors. She opened one slowly, wincing a bit as it squeaked in protest. The bright light from the hallway filtered in and cast her shadow in a steep silhouette against the dimly lit office. Emma felt the dark spots on her face, the sudden light from the corner of her eye being blocked by the body of her…of whatever she was to her now.
It rose then like a sudden buoy from the depths of her subconscious, tumbling from her lips in a pathetic whisper before she could stop herself.
"Are you going to fight for my trust back?"
And then the worst sound that could possibly follow that question filled every square inch of the room, even the cracks in the stone and the folds in the drapes.
Silence.
Emma's sobs were foreign to her then—loud and piercing and violent. She felt them rumble through every part of her exhausted anatomy. She experienced the betrayal like painfully paralyzing venom rushing through her bloodstream, pulsating relentlessly, not relieving her of the agony for even a moment.
She wanted the chandelier above her to fall on her, to crush her into all of the tiny pieces she insisted she was already in.
"I'll leave you alone…" she heard from the hallway as the door quietly clicked shut. And it hit full force, all over again, because that is exactly what she was doing, Emma realized. And that was exactly what this made her.
Alone.