Mothers of Daughters, Daughters of Mothers
i.
There is a lot a powerful witch can do with magic, but stopping herself from getting hit in the head with a rock when she's not expecting is not one of them. Cora had been distracted by Mulan, the perceived bigger threat (stupid frigid bitch), and Snow had taken far too much satisfaction in being able to come up from behind and knock her out.
Unsporting, perhaps, but Snow is not in the mood to play fair.
She spins around to check on her daughter in time to see Emma give up on her sword and hit Hook square with one hell of a punch, forcing him to his knees as he yells out in pain - broken nose: probable, black eye: guaranteed - and she only has a second to feel the still new swell of pride - a life spent separated, and she was still very much her parents' daughter - before Emma screams to her to move, that it was time for them to go home.
Snow stares at the portal warily, not knowing how much time they have - Cora and Hook had already opened it by the time they attacked - and as with any parent, even the unconventional one Snow has found herself forced into being, the number one goal is always, always protect the child, and she didn't know what they were jumping into here.
Her first instinct is to get Emma in first, so that even if it closes before she can follow, at least her daughter will have made it home, and she will have done what she needed to do and kept her daughter safe, brought her daughter back to her grandson. But as she stares into the abyss, the phrase 'swirling purple vortex of doom' comes to mind, and she realizes that they have no guarantees here, that the portal Cora had opened could end elsewhere, could have been a trick, could lead them straight into their deaths.
Always, always, protect the child.
"I'm going in first!" Snow yells over the din. "You count to ten, then follow. If something goes wrong, I will yell, and you turn around. You forget about me, and you make your way back, you get back, no matter what."
Emma just gapes at her.
"What?"
Snow focuses her attention on Mulan.
"You sure you don't want to come to our land with us?"
"Yes," the warrior replies stoically. "I promised Phillip. I need to find a way to save Aurora. I cannot do that from your land."
"Then you grab Emma, pull her back if something goes wrong."
Her daughter finds her voice back, and its not happy. "No way in hell!" Emma yells. "You told me if we go back, we go back together. I'm not letting you break that!"
"If something goes wrong..."
"Then it goes wrong for both of us! At least then I don't lose you!"
Snow still has doubts, and she stares at the portal, and as Emma looks at it too, she realizes with a stomach-pitting horror that it is closing.
"There's no time to do this!" Emma screams. "We've got to go!"
She sucks in a breath.
"Come on, you told me David taught you to have faith! I need you to have it now! Mom!"
It is this, the first time she hears Mom come from her daughters lips - a moment she'd dreamed of countless times, and never like this - that convinces her, and with a slight, wobbly, terrified, barely-qualifies-as-a-smile smile, she grabs her daughter's hand, and together they leap.
ii.
Henry is screaming, begging, attempting to throw himself onto the well, and every word, every struggle breaks Regina just a little bit more.
"You said you wanted to change, to be better!" he told her, and the break in his voice hurts worse than anything she'd ever heard him say before, because that break tells her that when she told him she'd change, he'd believed her. "This is how!"
"You want me to have faith in you? Have faith in me!" he finishes, with more wisdom in his eyes than a boy that young should have. "It's going to be Emma and Mary Margaret, I know it, and you can't kill them! They're good! You need to stop this!"
Swallowing, Regina turns back towards the well. She doubts this ends well, but suddenly she needs Henry to believe in her more than she's ever needed anything in her entire life, and there is little she wouldn't do to achieve it.
"I don't think so, dearie," Rumplestilskin snarls, but the wolf-girl had gotten back up, and with the imp distracted, had snuck on up behind him, as quiet, as stealthily as the animal she turned into, until the very last second, when she carefully, intentionally, places a foot down onto a loose twig.
The snap splits Rumplestilskin's focus, and as he spins, as he moves to send Red flying backwards once more, Regina does something she had sworn she'd never do again, and she saves Snow White.
It can't be longer than a few seconds after Regina had stopped the murderous unsurvivable storm swelling in the well, when the smoke exuding from it turns a blindingly pure white. She has to bite back the scream of terror, for the only colour she had ever seen of magic was purple, and something had to have gone wrong here, and it's going to be Cora, she knows it, she just knows it, and she wraps her arms around her boy and closes her eyes tight, for if the end is here, she doesn't want to see it.
For a moment there is no noise at all, and she waits, she just waits to hear Cora's laughter, but when something finally does break the dead silence, she's haunted enough to wish her fears had been true after all, rather than deal with what had really happened.
For when Henry breaks her hold, gasping, breathing the word Mom, there is enough disbelief and wonder and joy in the word that she just knows he's not talking to her.
She blinks open her eyes just in time to watch her son fly into another woman's embrace, and Emma Swan pulls herself back to her feet, lifting her son right up with her, and Henry hadn't allowed her to pick him up since he turned four. She feels a swell of hatred but for the first time in many years, beats it back.
Forcing herself to look away from the boy she loved with the mother he preferred, she stares at the other woman who had emerged from the well.
Snow White looks around the forest with an unveiled desperation, recognizing that they had somehow made it home, but not seeing anything. Across the clearing, having been thrown rather spectacularly against a tree by Rumplestilskin's overzealous, infuriated magic, the wolf-girl gasps a greeting. "Snow!" she shrieks, and there's joy in it, but Snow White hears nothing.
Her gaze had finally landed on Regina and Rumplestilskin, standing side-by-side, and something in her expression clears, sharpens somehow, before twisting into a rage Regina had never seen of her before.
"Where is Charming?" she demanded, looking quite deranged. "What the hell did you do to him? Is this the new plan to destroy me, you psychotic, evil..."
"That's quite enough, dearie," Rumplestilskin cuts her off sharply. "Your prince volunteered for his own fate, demanded to be set under, all in the name of seeing you one last time, and if he dies in the process, it's on you and him, not me."
Snow lunges for him, ignoring the screams of warning from both Emma and Red, and it's Regina who grabs her, holds her back before she gets herself killed out of sheer desperation. She twists around the girl who after everything remains her step-daughter, twists her to bring them face-to-face, and after years of fantasies of just going ahead and choking the life out of the girl, here she's got the perfect opportunity and all she can see in the grief and pain that lines Snow White's face are the very emotions that faced herself every time she glanced in the mirror, before she allowed the darkness to drown them out, and suddenly Regina feels something that feels strangely like empathy.
"He's in the back room of Gold's shop," Regina tells her, voice devoid of emotion. "And he is alive. It's not like it was with Henry, magic works more typically now that it's back here. You should have no problem waking him up."
There is a confusion in Snow's eyes, breaking through the agony.
"You didn't kill him?"
"No. We put him under a sleeping curse, because he asked us to. He didn't want to send Henry back to that inferno, and he was so positive he'd see you that there was no way of changing his mind."
She can feel Emma staring at her just as warily as Snow is, but out of the corner of her eye she sees Henry beaming, and that's enough to bear on.
"This isn't a trick, not this time," she told her. "I will need to talk to you later, but for now... Go. Henry will show you, I'm sure."
They both know that Snow knows her way to Gold's shop perfectly well without the boy, that that's not what this is about. Sending Henry with them is a reassurance.
For they also both know that there is a single line even the Evil Queen wouldn't cross.
iii.
Snow had never entered into a portal before, and realizes immediately that she was woefully unprepared for it. She hadn't known what she was doing, nor would Emma have, and she allowed both of them to leap into a situation that was more likely to end terribly than well.
Not something any decent mother would do, but what choice did she have?
Glimpsing other lands, other worlds as they fly through otherwise empty space, Snow screams to Emma, praying to every God she can think of that her daughter will hear her.
"Focus on Storybrooke! Think of Storybrooke, think of home! You must focus!"
And when they come to a dead stop, everything going dark, Snow knows that one of the worlds has pulled them in, and she grips her daughter's hand tighter, reassuring herself that if nothing else, at least her daughter was still with her.
When the darkness bleeds away to sheer white light, Snow feels herself land dead on her knees, while her daughter flops flat on her back. She can feel the hard ground beneath her, and she digs her nails into it, something to hold onto as sheer terror envelopes her, knowing, knowing that if they had gotten it wrong, Charming would be lost to her forever, and the thought just about breaks her in half.
She throws herself to her feet, glancing around in desperation, not really seeing or hearing anything. If she had, she would have recognized the well she stood next to as one of Storybrooke's monuments, would have heard her best friend's gasping of her name, would have exalted in the reunion between mother and son happening right next to her, would have realized she was home, would have realized everything was alright.
She didn't though. Didn't see, didn't hear, because what she needed in that very moment was Charming, and he wasn't there.
She hadn't made it home at all, she thought, gasping for a breath, for air that would not come. For Charming was home, would always be home, and wherever she was now, he wasn't.
Her vision blurred, and she sucked back a sob, not wanting to cause Emma fear, and the thought of Emma, her sweet girl grounded her enough, focused her enough to allow her to see who was standing right in front of her.
Regina and Rumplestilskin.
It didn't occur to her what that actually meant, that they'd made it back, that Charming couldn't be far. There was a ringing in her ears that prevented her from being able to think rationally. All she knew was that the two people she stared at now had both long histories of destroying her happiness, and the magic to do it with.
Suddenly, she knew she was capable of murder.
She reached to her side where she had belted the sword through all the time spent back in her old land, but coming up with nothing realized it must have been lost to her in going through the portal.
So she was unarmed.
Never stopped her before.
She screams at the pair of them, evil hateful monsters, and Rumplestilskin, clearly lacking in the knowledge of when not to piss off a hysterically emotional woman, goads her with some comment about her being responsible for Charming's death. She lunges for him, figuring that at this point she'd probably be able to tear the imp to shreds with her nails alone, before someone grabs her, and suddenly she's eye-to-eye with Regina and she figures she's dead, which would work for her if not for the whole daughter thing, and that thought stuns her right back into sensibility.
Or, maybe not.
Because there's something that almost looks like empathy in Regina's eyes, and she finds herself with flashbacks of a beautiful kind woman telling her to get back on a horse, and that's just not convenient right now.
What Regina tells her makes limited sense, considering the long list of memories she has of all the times that her stepmother had kept her and Charming apart out of little more than a twisted pleasure for watching her own agony, but when Regina nominates Henry to lead the way to Charming, Snow stops questioning it.
Regina would never allow Henry to be hurt. Would never allow him placed in harm's way. She's a hateful, evil, twisted woman, but there's still something humane to her, and the boy she considers her son makes up most of it. As long as Snow has Henry with her, there will be no attacks.
Ordinarily she'd object to using her grandson as a pipsqueak sized bodyguard, but she's past the point of reason, and besides, she's taken off running out of the forest already, and she'd seen the kid in gym class, there's no way he's keeping up.
iv.
Her mother takes off running, and Emma Swan forgets that she's got a reason to watch her language now.
"Aww, shit, shit!" she mutters, and feeling her kid still caught in her embrace, glances around wildly for options. There's no way in hell she's leaving her son with Evil Thing 1 or Evil Thing 2, and though responsibility had never really seemed Ruby's strong suit, the time that the young girl had helped her with the Kathryn Nolan case stands out in her mind, and besides, the girl had definitely toned the make-up which was a check in her favour, so she tries to hand Henry off to her. "Here, take Henry back to my place..."
"No way!" Henry exclaimed. "I'm not missing this! I watched Gramps mope around about Snow when he thought I wasn't looking too many times. I'm coming! You can try to drop me off at home if you want, but we both know I'll be out of there five seconds later."
The thought strikes Emma that the universe probably gave her the most stubborn kid in existence as some sort of ironic comeuppance, and it is with a very exaggerated sigh that she changes her instructions to the waitress.
"I'm not going to be able to talk him out of coming, but I need to run ahead. You stay with him, bring him to Gold's shop?"
The brunette gives her a rather put-out look, and though this is really, really not the time for such amusement, Emma can't help but think that Ruby might well get 'bitch, please' written across her forehead and save herself the time.
"Dude," she starts, "You know the story of Red Riding Hood?"
Emma smirks. She can't help it, it's reflex. "Uh, yeah. That you? With the basket?"
"Yeah, well, the story this world tells its children kind of messed up the part where I'm the wolf too. And honey?" Red smirked right back even as she picked up Henry. "Even carrying Henry, even in human form, a wolf can move a hell of a lot faster than you."
She reaches a high on the Emma Swan Scale of Disbelief, even after the rather sweeping adjustments that had occurred to it in the last few weeks of being the Savior, Beloved Child of Ridiculous Lovey-Doveyness, and Person Who Has to Deal With All Kinds of Previously Believed Make Belief Crap, as she watches Ruby take off running with her kid at a speed that wasn't actually humanly possible.
"Aww, come on!" Emma exclaimed, as she quickly followed at a rather disappointingly human speed.
She finally turns down Main Street just in time to see her mother rear back and kick her way through the locked front door to Gold's shop, and it strikes her, yet again, that she was born to a woman more bad-ass than she could have possibly imagined.
Reaching Henry and Ruby, huffing and puffing like the damn wolf she suspected was from a different tale, she attempts to shoot the younger woman a baleful glare but is pretty sure it gets ruined by the fact that she really, really feels like laughing.
She's definitely going to have to get to know Ms Little Red Riding Hood better.
Her mother has already gone running in to reach her father, and she glances in after her, unsure.
"Hey," Ruby tells her. "This doesn't involve me, but it does involve you and Henry. You two go in there. I'll wait out here."
She has but a split second to nod in gratefulness at her family's friend, before Henry grabs her hand, and pulls her back into the back room of the shop.
Her father is lying on a cot, her mother kneeling on the floor next to him, grasping his hand, tears streaming down her face.
Terror twists her stomach, and she sees it on her son's face too, as Henry gasps out the thought haunting both of them. "Did it not work?" he cries. "Did true love's kiss not work?"
"I haven't tried it yet," Snow whispers. "I'm scared it won't work. Magic always comes with a price, and the price is always higher here. If Charming pays it..."
"It will work!" Henry exclaims. "I promise you Snow, it'll work, Gramps knew it would, that's why he went under! True love's kiss breaks every curse! It broke the Curse when Mom kissed me, remember? Even here, it worked."
Emma smiles at her mother. "Have faith, remember?"
Snow smiles back with shaking lips, and lowering her face to Charming's, places her lips to his.
The man she knows to be her father sucks in a breath and his eyes fly open, and even as Henry cheers from his place sitting in her lap wrapped securely in her arms, she places a kiss to the top of Henry's head, and fights real live actual tears.
She has parents.
Charming stares at Snow somewhat disbelievingly, as though he's lost track of what's real and what's not.
"Snow," he murmurs, "We're not... we're not in the fire room?"
"No," Snow whispers with a vibrant grin. "No, no, Charming, we're in the back of Gold's shop. Where you went to sleep. Which, by the way, you're in so much trouble for."
"Then... then this is real? You're here? You're back?"
"We found our way home. You got us back. We found each other."
"We?" he sits up in a start, panic tightening his features. "Emma?!"
Snow moves back the tiniest amount, allowing him to see Emma and Henry sitting in the back of the room.
"She's right here, Charming."
"Em?" he asked, as if to make sure.
She's still bewildered by this whole thing. She'd had a hard enough time being Emma Swan, Normal Person, and now she's Emma Swan, Daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, and Savior of all their fairy tale friends, and that role seems like it's going to be a bitch. The stories she'd spent her childhood sneering at - for it made it hurt less that there was no one to read them to her - they were real, and she was caught smack dab in the middle of one still being written. She wasn't abandoned at the side of a free-way. She was sent through a magical wardrobe by a desperate father trying to save her from a curse, even if he nearly got killed in the process.
She'd fended off a dementor - forget what everyone else called it, she knew a dementor when she saw one - and she'd fallen after it through a portal to another land. She'd killed a dragon and climbed a beanstalk and fought off zombies and come very, very close to being murdered by ogres and giants both, not to mention psycho witches and their overly charming manipulative pirate stooges. She'd watched her son die, then brought him back to life, by magic of all things.
And she had seen what her parents had meant to be her life. They'd wanted her. After twenty-eight years of feeling like thrown away trash, she'd seen that they wanted her. That they loved her.
And so she gives her father what he needs.
She smiles at him, embarrassingly watery eyes and all.
"Hey, Dad."
His eyes go warm, warmer than she had ever had any idea that bright blue eyes could go, and she thinks that maybe she's been waiting her entire life just for her father to look at her like that.
v.
Snow thinks that she and Regina are equally surprised when she actually shows up on the mayor's doorstep the next day, Charming in tow.
"You're here," Regina says, though it seems more a question than a statement of fact.
"You let me get to him," Snow replies, nodding to her husband. "And I don't understand why. I figured it was worth a shot to see what you had to say."
Truthfully, she and Charming had figured together as they'd discussed it the night previous. Neither of them were a big fan of not knowing where they stood with their stories villains, and so Snow had decided she would go to the meeting, alone, to which she was quickly corrected by her husband.
"I spent too long without you," he told her seriously. "And I'm not quite ready to let you out of my sight yet, especially not if you're going to go wandering into a game that we don't know the rules to. You can go, but I'm coming with you."
He'd then placed his lips to the exact spot on her neck that always got him his way, so that was that little argument.
Regina eyed the pair of them. "I do believe I said I wanted to speak to you, Snow, and by that I meant alone."
"You'll understand if I don't feel comfortable with that," Charming replied dryly.
"Very well then. I'll make this quick. I do want both of you to know that I am trying to change. For Henry."
"We can appreciate that," Snow murmurs, to Charming's nod of agreement. "Is that why you wanted to see me?"
Regina laughs, though without much humor. That said, there is no cruelty in it, and that much is an improvement. "There's no need to look so distrustful. I just want to know what happened back in our land. What happened with Cora?"
"Not much. She's as twisted and conniving as she ever was, and she'll kill anyone who gets in the way of what she wants, as ever. She was desperate to make her way here."
"As expected. Did she have help?"
Snow nods. "A pirate, she'd gotten onto her side, and a rather treacherous and devious one at that. Kilian Jones."
Regina raises an eyebrow. "Hook?"
"Yes. It seemed a partnership of convenience more than anything else. He was as desperate to make his way here as her. Apparently he and Rumplestilskin have a score to settle. He'll play whatever side he has to. He tried teaming up with us, but Emma didn't trust him, so he jumped right back to your mother. And anyone that desperate..."
"Is a threat, indeed."
"They were the ones who opened the portal. We fought them off, and took it ourselves."
Regina looks distrustful. "No one fights off my mother."
"You did. Cunning and deceit, I find does it with her. I knocked her out when she was distracted dealing with a friend."
The look in Regina's eyes changes, almost looks impressed. "That's one way of doing it. Hook?"
"Emma got him down on his knees in pain. Gave us the second we needed to escape."
Regina nods, coming to the most important question of all. "Any chance that either of them followed you into the portal?"
Snow sighs. "Unlikely. The portal was already closing by the time Emma and I jumped, and Cora and Hook were both down. That said... I prefer not to make a habit of underestimating your mother. If there's another way..."
"She'll find it."
"Yes. She won't stop, Regina."
Regina's eyes flash, and for a moment she looks as dangerous as she ever was as the Evil Queen, as she pulls herself up to her full height and glares down at her step-daughter. "I don't know why you didn't just kill her when you had the chance!"
vi
It's rather unfortunate timing, really. Regina wouldn't have actually done anything, she just happened to look rather spectacularly murderous for a split second. And Snow was caught off guard, which only made her look defenseless. And Emma Swan is still in a place where she just got her parents back and anyone who tries to take them away from her now is asking for an ass-kicking.
Because Emma is still in a rather naive place where she still doesn't have a clue what she's doing and what she's dealing with and exactly how capable her mother actually is of taking care of herself, because the fairy tale forgot to mention that Snow White? Kind of a bad-ass.
She forgets the takedowns of ogres and zombies and highly trained ancient warriors and witches and pirates and God only knows what else in the name of saving her own ass.
All Emma sees is her parents being threatened by a psycho witch. And she's never really made a habit of thinking things through all that much.
She storms up onto the lovely little porch before anyone sees her coming, throws herself in between her parents and evil step-granny, and bellows, "Back the hell off."
Regina spares a split second to sneer, before she blasts Emma off of her porch with a flick of her wrist.
"Emma!" Snow and Charming yell as one, and Snow is off the porch, onto the pathway picking her daughter up before anyone can blink.
Regina swallows, sucks in a breath, stunned. The magic had escaped her before she had even thought to use it, and she hadn't done anything like that in a long time. After all the promises to her son, all her attempts to stop her magic, and if she can't do that, to only use it to help, all undone by Emma.
Par for the course, she thinks, as she tries to beat back the guilt, even as her shocked eyes meet the stare of the family she'd attacked (you take down one, you hurt them all).
Emma just looks more stunned than anything, as though she'd forgotten the little detail of Regina having magic and maybe that doesn't make her the best person in town to head threateningly towards.
James glares at her the way that he used to, back when she would imagine that he was pondering what part of her body he would most enjoy skewering his sword through.
Snow's eyes are the hardest to meet of all, for she suddenly doesn't see the woman, but the girl; the child who had been so deeply betrayed by the idea that Regina could love anyone who wasn't her father. And seeing Snow as a child again hurts more than she would have ever expected it would, because suddenly she can easily see, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, a resemblance between Snow and Henry.
She wonders how she'd ever not known whose family the boy had been adopted out of.
And suddenly she understands something, and she wants to go to Snow, badly, wants to sit down with her, wants to understand more, but Charming has leapt into action, and grabbed both his daughter and his wife, and without a word, without so much as a hateful look, leads the trio away and out of sight.
She needs to talk to Snow.
It takes a few days, after she sends the message, but Snow finally responds, willing to meet and naming a time and a place, and Regina waits by the Wishing Well patiently when the time comes but still is surprised when Snow actually shows up, and alone at that.
"You are armed?" Regina asks.
Snow shows the knife she has at her ankle, figuring there's no harm in revealing that little card. "It won't do me much good if you go wicked witch on me, but if you do go wicked witch on me, I won't have myself just completely at your mercy."
And Regina is almost amused as she replies, "I would have expected nothing less. But I don't intend on going wicked witch. I didn't mean to the other day..."
"It just explodes out of you," Snow mutters. "I can see that. I rather wish it hadn't been to my daughter..."
"She caught me off guard. You know better."
"I do," Snow agrees, and they as they sit down on opposing logs, the younger woman doesn't look frightened so much as weary. "Why am I here, Regina?"
"I want you to tell me, what really happened that day."
The surprise lights up Snow's eyes before she can hide it, and she looks at her step-mother with no small amount of disbelief. "You mean with...?"
"Daniel. Cora. Tell me what happened."
Snow is stunned enough to quickly calculate in her head how fast she would be able to make a grab for the knife at her ankle, for Regina has never made time for explanations before, and this out of character move seems likely to be a time grab for unfortunate wicked witch surprises.
That said, there is a lot about Regina that seems different, closer to the woman who saved her from falling from a horse than the woman who forced her to eat a poisoned apple, and the woman who saved her, she owes this much.
"Cora knew something was up," Snow started, "She had to have. She was questioning me too much, about you drifting away from her, about what you may have said to me about it. She said she'd do anything for you, that all she cared about was your happiness."
"You must have known she was manipulating you!"
"I was a child, Regina. A child who had recently lost her mother, and wouldn't have wished the same pain on anyone in the world. And Cora knew that. She knew how dearly I missed my mother, and she insinuated that you were going to lose yours, unless..."
"Unless you told her my secret?"
Shamed, Snow looked down. "I was naive, even for a child. My father had withdrawn from court after my mother's death, and pulled me back with him. At that age, I should have known the manipulative games that take place in any kingdom, and how to recognize when somebody was playing one. But I didn't. I was unaware of anyone being capable of that kind of cruelty, that kind of evil, and so when I begged her not to force you to marry my father, that you didn't want to do it..."
"I think I knew, once," Regina interrupts. "I think I'd guessed what must have happened. You were a child. You were so young, barely older than Henry is now, and I'd never expect Henry to keep a secret like that. I don't think I should have expected you to, either, and I understood that, for awhile, even in my grief, but then everything went so dark..."
"You'd lost love," Snow murmurs. "It happens. We all have that darkness inside us, that takes over if we turn off the light."
"How can you know..."
"I turned it off too, once," Snow whispers, stunning Regina. "I took a potion from Rumplestilskin, back when I couldn't be with Charming. I wasn't strong enough to be without him, and so I wanted to forget all my memories of him. I hadn't known what it would do, how much it would cost me. Taking away my love for him... it took everything good in me with it. I set out on a mission to kill you..."
"How is it that I never had any idea of this?"
"Charming found me, stopped me. Didn't want me to do to myself what killing you would have. He loved me enough that I felt something for him, even through the darkness, and I kissed him, which broke the potion's effects, gave me back my memories. Brought the light back, and made me me again."
Regina can't help but scoff. "Quite the cure for everything, your kiss, isn't it?"
"It is. You'd know it if I hadn't messed up so badly," Snow sighs, and the regret in it is palpable. "I know I am responsible for Daniel's death, Regina, and I am sorry for it."
Regina swallows. "I lost my light, but that's my doing. I let it go. It wasn't immediately gone after Daniel's death, not all of it. I let it creep away, when I should have fought to keep it."
"Losing one's love is enough to bring the darkness into anyone..."
"I adored you," Regina interrupted. "I should have let that be enough. I'd always wanted a child, and if I couldn't have one with Daniel, I should have focused that attention, and energy, and light on you. I love Henry, truly love him, I know that now, and that's the reason for what little light I've been able to bring back now. If I could have kept that love for you back then..."
"You couldn't have been expected to. I was responsible for Daniel's death."
"Cora was responsible. You were innocent. Foolish, naive, but innocent."
"Well," Cora starts, emerging from the trees, "now this is precious."
vii.
It takes several moments before she realizes what had just happened.
She'd had the knife out from her ankle within the blink of an eye, and armed with it, had positioned herself in front of Regina just as Regina threw out her hands, placing a sheer, shimmering purple barrier between the pair of them and Cora.
For a moment the three women just stare at the barrier, beautiful in a way that her magic rarely was, for this was different, this was defensive, this was protecting somebody else.
Cora's mouth twists into something resembling a smile, but the hatred and fury in her eyes don't match it. There's little she can do here, she realizes. If she'd caught one of them separate, on their own, they'd be dead - preferably after some good old fashioned torture - but having them both together, for once on the same side, there's nothing to be done. She can take out Regina's barrier with her own magic rather easily, she knows, but cannot advance an attack until the defense is broken, and in the time it would take to do that, Snow would have buried the knife deep within her chest.
The little brat had grown talented with weapons. There's no way she would miss, particularly from such short range.
These are the stakes, the circumstances. And unfortunately for her, no one is caught unawares.
"Precious," Cora sneers once more, before disappearing into thin air.
Regina does not lower the barrier, rather expands it, spinning in a 360 degree circle so that she and Snow are both surrounded by it, protected by it, before spinning Snow around to face her.
"She wants us both destroyed," Regina gasped. "She won't settle for just me anymore."
"She'll go after Henry!" Snow shrieks, and panic makes her voice go shrill. "She'll know to use him will be to hurt both of us, not to mention Emma!"
"I know her, Snow, she's not going to just show up on the doorstep and take him, especially after she's revealed herself to us. She wasn't expecting us to defend each other, we both should have been dead then and there, but she couldn't take both of us out at once and wouldn't have had time to kill us one at a time. She'll retreat, plan something. She's not going to be so obvious..."
"Then what the hell do we do?!"
"You go home! Grab your husband, grab your daughter, and grab my son, get into your apartment, barricade the doors and stay there. I'll find Rumplestilskin, if Cora's here, Hook will be too, and the threat of both of them will be enough to get the imp into an alliance... You need to focus on protecting Henry, while I come up with a plan for an attack against her. I'll need to go on offense, so I need you on defense..."
"There's little I can do if she decides to blast her way into my apartment! I need magic!"
"You'll have some in Emma!"
"What?"
"My powers weren't working until she touched me! There's something in her, and we're both going to have to trust that it's enough to protect Henry until I can come up with a plan!"
"Magic is inherited, Regina, you know that! Of the parent or of the land! Charming and I have never had magic, and Emma is from a land without magic!"
"She's not of this land," Regina pointed out. "She may have grown up here, but she's not of it. Any magical ability would have been inherited right when she was born."
"How?" Snow exclaims. "Charming and I had an hour with her before you infiltrated the castle, and Charming had to send her through the wardrobe! It's not long enough..."
"It's plenty long enough, if she got it directly from you."
"I don't have magic!"
"Alone, no. With your husband? Yes."
"What in the name of the Gods are you talking about?!"
"You don't know," Regina realized.
"Know what? Damn it Regina!"
"Rumplestilskin bottled true love by combining hairs from you and James. The most powerful magic of all, he called it, and he used some of it to create the Dark Curse, and to bring the magic to Storybrooke! If that kind of magic comes from you and James together, your daughter is probably more powerful than I am!"
"That's... not possible," Snow gasped.
"It's reality, Snow, and it needs to be protected. That kind of magic could be the turning point here. Cora knows what Rumplestilskin and I are capable of, and she will be planning for it. But Emma? If you had no idea, Cora won't either, and that little detail could save us all. Go home. Keep Emma and Henry safe. I will contact you with instructions on what to do next," she finished, as she finally lowered the protective - and soundproof - barrier surrounding them.
"How do I know that I can trust you?"
"You don't!" Regina exclaimed. "And I don't know if I can trust you either, but neither one of us has another option!"
For a moment the two women stared at each other, almost five decades worth of history, from two different lives caught in between them, the vast majority of it ugly and pained.
But there were times, long ago, too short, too lost, but unforgotten, when they had adored each other.
"You know I love Henry," Regina told her, and the effort involved in keeping her voice steady cost her mightily. "And I am trusting you with him. That needs to be enough."
It did, and it was.
By necessity, and the possibility of something more than it, they were on the same side now.
fin.
Author's Note: I've been thinking about this show too much, wondering what's going to happen Sunday, and after the break. This, with all its possibilities showed up in my head this morning, and I needed to get it out of me.
Please do let me know what you think.
Freedom Love readers, not to worry, I'll be getting back to work on the next chapter. I just would have had a hard time writing it, with this floating around in my head. I'll be able to focus entirely on FL now that I've got this written.
Thanks, as always, for reading.