Author's note: Hi, there. My name is Jane and I'm a ficaholic. No seriously! Actually I'm new to this fandom, so I'm a little bit terrified of posting here for the first time.
So, tell me what you think, will you?
Note 2- This story kind of got away from me. It was supposed to be a short tag to that cracking season finale – guys, there was dragon slaying!- but it became a monster. So, here you go, the first part. The second and final will be up tomorrow.
Note 3- (I'll shut up in a second ) Thank you to my wonderful beta MickeyBoggs. Without her, this would be a garbled mess.
Much love
Jane
"Your judgement judges and defines you"
It had to be funny how she always lost. She just failed to see the humour.
The Blue Fairy gave her a hooded look and a threat "You better find a place to hide, Your Majesty". Her fight or flight instinct tilted heavily towards the flight. But never without Henry. She wanted to wrap him in her arms and take him with her where she could love him, just love him.
In the end, what stopped her arms from reaching out to him was his thoroughly uninterested expression about her fate, his hand on Emma's.
"Henry, please remember, no matter what they tell you, I love you"
The words were ripped from her throat despite herself. Love is weakness. Dear old mom made sure she knew that lesson by heart. But for once, just this once, she could not bring her survival instinct to kick into gear. So she said it. She said it and it was true and good and the White Knight saw it and judged her for it.
And the Blue Fairy too.
But she couldn't help herself. Her child was her true love.
She wanted to touch him, to have the memory of that touch because this time, she knew, it would be the last time. And there is some twisted comfort in knowing when the last time of anything is, because you cherish it fully. She would go to her death cherishing it and that would be the only thing they could not win out of her.
She ran. She ran out of that hospital with Emma's strange gaze memorised and Henry's indifference seared into her heart. She ran because even Queens have a sense of preservation.
She ran because when the villagers came for her she would make sure she looked the part.
She would die like the trees, on her feet, on her own terms.
She regretted nothing.
.
.
Regina dropped on her son's bed and hugged his pillow and cried. For her losses- every single one of them- Daniel, Father and Henry. Even Snow. She cried and the tears ran hot and angry and lonely. She had hoped against good sense, when she realised Emma had broken the curse that it might have included her. That her own curse had been broken too. That she might actually not be left behind this time. Stupid, stupid Regina.
.
.
And then, more than seeing it, she felt it. The cloud of magic. Gold's betrayal. That twisted little imp. He was bringing in the ultimate power. In his hands? Mass destruction.
And then it dawned on her: two can play that game.
She had magic in the old land. With magic free here, she would have her magic again.
And with magic, her sense of self.
When she'd had nothing, she'd had her magic. She was never alone when she had magic.
She would have her power. Empty and unfulfilling though it might be.
So let the angry mob come for her with their sharpened pitchforks.
She would be ready.
She opened the window and waited for the wave to crash into her, to rise her like the wave of a broken curse had flattened her. She waited with a smile on her face.
Though it was a smile that did not quite make it to her eyes.
.
.
Emma and Henry were the only ones truly at odds that day. Everyone else seemed to have a biological understanding of magic. To belong to it and with it. They either had some or they didn't, but old alliances and old habits quickly resurfaced leaving Henry and Emma to grapple with the notions of the people they knew and the flesh and blood, living and thinking fairy tale creatures before them. Though nothing seemed to have visibly changed, everything had, in fact, changed.
Mary Margaret had a new fierceness in her eyes, David was illuminated by purpose. Leroy's anger had a direction outside himself. Ruby had a strength that was somewhere in between something of the heart and of the body, a definition that had never been there before.
Emma and Henry were left the same among a sea of change to bear witness. The mild-mannered people of Storybrook had mutated into simpler, more direct, less diluted versions of themselves.
And that, for some reason, was an unsettling turn of events that left her defensive. Despite the fact that, quite clearly, both her and Henry were quietly and reverently addressed.
.
.
Mary Margaret and David- well, Snow and Charming- oh good god, Mum and Dad- seemed lost in a haze of their own love until they saw Emma sitting on the hospital bed with Henry. Then, all hell broke loose and all there was a whole lot of hugging and tears and touching and careful study.
David had a look of perfect adoration. The little writhing, crying bundle he had stuffed into a wardrobe had come to find him. Find them. Save them. Never in his wildest dreams back then could he have imagined someone giving him such pride. His little girl was more than a promise and could do no wrong.
Mary Margaret looked at her daughter like she had for the very first time when she had come out of her body in pain and blood, counting all ten perfect fingers and toes, looking her up and down and making sure her baby was ok and healthy and that she looked so much like James when she had hoped that she would at least look a little like herself.
Emma… well, Emma was simply struggling with the idea that her parents actually did love her and that they had come for her and that every abandoned child's fantasy had actually come true in her, with parents that were good and kind and brave and her mother was pretty and her father was handsome and that finally, finally, she was not all alone in the world and someone would protect her from the monsters in the closet.
All told, there were not enough arms and hands to hug and hold almost 29 years away.
There was anger for what been taken away from them. But mostly, there was just wonder that they had found each other because that's what families do.
.
.
.
It was strange, Emma thought, as she got Henry cleaned and dressed, that she was dressing her kid. He had been hers in a very abstract sense when she had daydreamed about him before he had found her or when she had confronted Regina about her choices. He had been her kid in a storm-the-castle kind of way when she had stolen him in the dead of the night to spirit him away from Storybook. But this was Henry being hers in a bread and butter sort of way. In a get dressed and go to school, kind way. Henry was hers in a way that was difficult to reconcile with the gypsy existence that she had had so far: with all roots firmly attached on the floor, a whole family, mum, dad, son, relatives, friends, community, job.
She couldn't help the rush of blood to the head, the 'how on earth can I possibly do this?'.
She found herself on the street, walking to the place she shared with Mary- and oh god, she had been living with her mom, how crazy was that- guess family does find each other even when they don't know they belong together. And in the midst of all the head spinning bat shit crazy day she was having, it suddenly felt a lot worse, a lot like being stuck in cross between a zombie apocalypse and Mutiny on the Bounty kind of film, because, even though it was full Technicolor, this could not be, the throng of people- was that Rapunzel?- walking the streets with the single mindedness of a mob out for blood. And she knew exactly whose blood they were out for.
.
.
Regina waited patiently for the magic to hit. Until the moment the hairs at the base of her neck stood on end, because trouble had arrived but not yet announced itself.
.
.
.
Emma was paralysed in the middle of Main Street. The residents of Storybrook were on their way to exact revenge. And who could blame them?
Henry held her hand and when she thought she would see worry and panic in his face, when she thought he would run to stand in front of his mom ready to defend her, she saw only impassiveness. "I think they're out to get her." But for all the excitement, he could well have been remarking on the weather. And he pulled towards Mary's house, his hand in Snow's paralysed one.
They remained apart from the throng, not really participating. Definitely, though, not making a move to stop any of what was a sure thing
.
.
.
The first to arrive at her door was the Blue Fairy. The others stood behind her like she was some Joan of Arc fighting the devil incarnate. There were no pitchforks. This was a matter for their bare hands.
.
.
.
Regina saw the wave of magic but it she never did feel it. No. She felt it, but she felt it only as much as you feel the see fog rolling from the ocean in waves when everything is already pitch dark. There was no acknowledgement in her body of the magic returning to inhabit it.
Everyone's curse had been broken. Everyone's but hers. She remained as magicless as this land. As barren as she had been. As alone.
She remained Regina.
That she should not be able to experience magic again, that she would not be able to fend for herself was one of her smallest disappointments ever.
She would die standing then.
She heard the shuffle of feet in her drive way and around the house. They were surrounding her.
She had half expected the cries of burn the witch. There were none. What made it so much worse was the silence, eerie, menacing.
She made her way to her office and sat in her throne like chair.
Let them come.
No more, gods, no more.
.
.
.
It was not difficult to enter the house. The door was unlocked. There were no dragons guarding it. It might as well have had a welcoming red carpet.
The Blue Fairy walked in ahead of the mob, a diminutive general. Behind her, Kathryn, her arm around Frederick. And Sydney Glass, still in his asylum scrubs, his love turned to hate.
So many hands pushed open the door to the studio, there was no fear.
The Evil Queen had been vanquished and could no longer harm them.
Theirs was the revenge.
And they advanced into the room, not a word spoken.
.
.
Regina stood. She missed only the brass ring that she had carried hidden throughout her marriage and her 28 years in this magicless land. All the rest, she tried to forget. No more.
No more, gods, no more.
.
.
Emma joined the procession. Regina had taken it all from her. Her childhood, her family, her parents' life, and, nearly, her son's life.
And then, as she passed the boarded up library, she remembered. Regina had also fought tooth and nail to get it back.
Her father's sword. It was her father's sword, leaning innocently against the library door. Had it not been left behind on the ashes of a dragon?
As she took the sword, she felt, for the third time that day, an event come over her in a wave of something she did not know to describe, but that felt as real as the ground beneath her feet.
.
.
Regina smiled. All the good citizens of the old land, all of the civilized citizens of Storybrook were here to kill her with their bare hands. Only this would not be murder. Theirs would be justice, wouldn't it?
She felt hands around her neck, squeezing slowly. She felt the air fail her and then, before it all went dark, they were all on her, each trying to get a little piece of revenge done with their own hands and their own knuckles and their own teeth and their very own words. Oh they had words now. They had the usual words. They had witch, they had evil, they had bitch and they had die. They had a chant. Like a cheerleading squad singing die, die, die.
And she wanted to. Gods knew she wanted to. So very much.
.
.
Emma walked in through the door and pushed her way in. She would have walked all over them too, if the crowd had not parted like the red sea for Moses. It helps when you have a sword in your hands. When she reached Regina, she raised her sword. She felt remarkably calm as she asked them politely to step aside.
And they did. And sweet Jesus, this looked like a Discovery channel footage of black ants walking away from a white carcass.
When everyone stood well behind the desk, Emma turned her sword slowly to Regina and then, to the mob.
"I swear I'll kill the next one who touches her."
TBC