A few things. One, Hook's not in this story. He could have been, but I'm lazy and it would have been a tedious distraction at best. Two, Robin is in this story, but only for about 500 words in person, for reasons that will soon become obvious. After that he's referenced periodically. In all honesty, he's here more in the abstract than as an actual human being. Three, the canon S4 Author/Gold storyline will be very much taking the back seat here, and eventually it will be quietly and neatly rolled up in the background and stowed away. Four, I don't actually know how many chapters this will be yet, seven is just an educated guess. Five and finally, this is, at heart, an experiment. Treat it as such.

one.

They arrive at the apartment and they're too late.

They must be, because Maleficent's call had been three hours ago and surely, surely Gold has contacted Zelena by now, and they must be late. Regina had been slowly boiling all afternoon and evening, quietly drowning in impotent dread through traffic jams and roadworks and map difficulties—

("Hey," Emma had said, glancing sidelong and catching her increasingly wild eyes, "We'll get there, alright?" and Regina's heart had slowed from its dangerous rate just for a moment.)

—but now they're here, and Regina is hammering on the door, calling out Robin's name over and over again until the door opens.

"Regina?" Robin looks bewildered and delighted and alive, he's alive, and Regina can't help but throw his arms around him. "What are you doing here?"

He has no idea, she realises, and she's thankful that just for once she's got one over fate. She promises to explain later, later when they have time for resurrected sisters and road trips and Operation Mongoose—"Where's Marian?"

"Right here."

They both turn in unison, blood icing in Regina's veins at Marian's voice—no. Not Marian.

"Zelena," Robin gasps. "What on earth—"

But Regina doesn't hear him, or anything else. She just sees.

Sees the smile, curling in gleeful triumph. The phone in her left, still half-pressed to Zelena's ear. The pitch-black barrel of the gun, secure in her right.

"Sorry, sis. But you were too late."

The right hand rises, and Regina screams.

She screams, and screams, and screams.

She screams as the gun goes off not once but twice. Screams as Robin crumples, crumples, his body falling to the ground with a dull thud. Screams as she hurls herself at her sister, her bare hands wrapped vice-like around Zelena's neck. Screams because Zelena is still smiling, gloating in her victory even as the very life is squeezed out of her—

"Regina!" She feels arms wind around her body, wrenching her away from the brink of revenge, and she whirls around, ready to turn the brunt of her rage on the person who had the gall to interfere like so until she catches a glimpse of blonde hair—"Regina, stop!"

But she doesn't, because she already sees blood.

(Blood on her face, blood on her hands, blood everywhere—)

She struggles, tries to get free. "Emma—"

But Emma in this world is stronger than her, and she's held in place, her gaze locked forcibly against fierce green. "Robin—you have to help Robin!"

And the rage floods away, replaced by a freezing, asphyxiating dread. She stumbles, falls to his side, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she places them on his heaving chest.

He says her name, but his eyes darken and all she can hear is too late, too late, too late.

At some point that night, people come and take Robin away.

(They take Zelena too, but there had only been one white bag.)

At another point, Emma and Lily leave the room.

(Someone covers her with a blanket first.)

Later, someone with long, blonde hair comes and helps wash away the blood on her hands, her chest, her face.

(She still sees it anyway.)

"Regina—I'm so sorry, but—"

"Don't be. I already know."

"Do you want to go—"

"No."

"I'm—If I hadn't—if I hadn't gotten so distracted with Lily—"

"You didn't. I did."

"You can't blame yourself for this. Not—not for love."

(A mother's loving smile, a son with his heart ripped out, a boy in a stable—)

She never answers.

Too late, too late, too late—

"Regina," someone murmurs from right above her, warm breath against her cheek. "Regina, wake up."

She opens her eyes, raises her head to blinding white light and strange, alien whirrs. "What—where am I?"

"Hospital." Which explains why she's in a bed—though not in a ward, just an ordinary cot. Emma is in a chair next to her, her face still mere inches from her own. "You kind of went into shock for a bit. Then you started crying in your sleep."

Shock? That doesn't make sense, she's supposed to be—"Robin. Where is—"

"Regina." Emma's voice is cautious but her eyes have widened with obvious alarm. "Do you—do you not remember?"

She frowns at her, and almost snaps something scathing because she doesn't have time for this—

(The smile. The gun. The blood.)

—but then she does, and she sinks back onto the bed. "Oh—oh. Yes."

Emma's face twists, and for the first time Regina notices the still-wet tear streaks surrounding her bloodshot eyes. "Regina, I'm so sorry—"

She encloses her fingers gently around Emma's. "I know." She doesn't, actually, but she's pretty sure that that's something Emma Swan, whose sympathy had always outweighed her sense, would say. "It wasn't your fault. It was—"

My sister's—

Rumplestiltskin's—

My own—

Her throat tightens, and the words fail there. Emma gives one sharp, fierce squeeze of her hand. "Are you hungry? Do you want anything to drink?"

She sees the change in subject for what it is, but doesn't object. She honestly doesn't have the energy. "Just water."

"Nothing to eat?"

"No. The water, Miss Swan."

Emma makes coffee instead.

"Stubborn fool," Regina mutters as she sips it, but Emma smiles anyway.

She's discharged from the hospital at eight in the morning. Rather, she discharges herself, with steel in her gaze and her chin raised. Emma had just watched, her brow furrowed and her eyes clouded.

"You don't have to be strong all the time, Regina," she says. "Not right now." Regina ignores her.

She takes one step beyond the foyer when a car pulls up in front of them and the entire Charming clan pours out.

"Regina," Snow sighs as she steps in front of her, the woman's eyes wide and bright with intolerable pity, "Emma told us what happened. I am so very, very sorry." At once, Regina is drawn into a full-body hug, which she stiffly accepts but doesn't reciprocate. "Zelena—"

"Is in custody," she says, her voice rigidly emotionless. And that's all she says, because even the very thought makes something black, wild and choking rise up her throat and—she won't. She won't. "Where's Henry—?"

But she doesn't even get to complete the sentence before she's all but knocked over by another crushing hug and enveloped totally by her son, her son. "I'm here, Mom. I'm here."

She winds her arms around him, this one irreducible sliver of happiness she has left, and hangs on.

A police interview.

Of all the things that she'll be subjected to today, her first port of call is a police interview. And it doesn't matter that the officers' voices are gentle and sympathetic, it doesn't matter that it's nothing more than a statement and that she isn't alone to make it, that Snow is supportive rather than accusing for once, that Emma is behind and aside rather than in front—

(We know who you are, and who you'll always be!)

"Mom." A shivering, cautious touch, a desperately familiar arm folding against hers. "Mom, I'm here."

Henry. Henry who had believed. Who understands.

Emma meets her eye, and she looks away.

The officer watches. "Are you ready, Madam Mayor?"

Clear eyes, raised chin. "I am."

It's easier than she'd expected, but she hadn't expected it to be that hard, just… galling. It's certainly easier than Emma or Snow seemed to have been expecting, based on their silent tears and anguished glances as she describes in exacting, precise detail, the circumstances of her soulmate's murder.

(Two seconds between gunshots, the spray of the blood, the manic glee of the smile—)

"Mrs Mills." The officer puts his pen down. Snow is sobbing openly, Emma is hyperventilating, Henry is gripping her arm like she'll dissolve into the air if he doesn't. "If you don't feel you can continue—"

Her eyes flash. "I can. I will." She does.

The interview ends, the officers leave.

"Hey. You okay?"

"Yes."

"Regina—"

She closes her eyes. "Emma—please. Let me—let me have this."

And Emma, kind, good Emma, does.

Later, over Henry's favourite pizza and the cacophony of New York silence: "I'm sorry."

At this point, Regina almost has to roll her eyes. "Miss Swan, once again—"

"Not for that." Emma holds her gaze, soft but impenetrable. "For Archie."

She opens her mouth, but doesn't speak. She'd buried that hatchet, but she knows exactly where to find it and today—today had been a reminder.

"That was a long time ago."

"Not that long."

And it's true, she knows, the distance between mortal enemies and friends far shorter in reality than it appears. "Why?"

Emma shrugs, a strangely nonchalant gesture that fits her perfectly. "I don't think I ever apologised for it."

Regina reaches across, rubs her fingers over the back of Emma's palm. "No, I don't think you did."

There is one more person they need to talk to, one arrangement that needs to be made immediately.

"You don't have to do this, Regina," Snow says. Emma looks away. "This is—"

"No. I do."

It's the very least she can do.

He's waiting for them at the police station.

"Regina!" The little boy's eyes light up, latching onto a familiar face amongst dull fluorescent lights and blank cream walls. "Hi."

She bends down before him, eye to eye. "Hello, Roland. How are you?"

"I'm in a police station." He's visibly confused and nervous, but his eyes are wide and curious and—and Regina has to do this. "I want Papa. Where's Papa?"

She has to do this. She takes Roland's hands in her own. "Robin has—"

Died—

Been murdered—

"—gone away."

He frowns, his four-year-old brow creasing. "Will he come back?"

Yes.

No.

Her hands are starting to shake and tears are blurring her vision. "He's—he's a long way away, dear. And—and it might take a long time for him to come home. In the meantime, you'll stay with me."

"But where did he go?"

It's a simple question, deserving of a simple answer, of a simple lie. "I'm—I'm not sure. Roland, I'm—"

"When will he come back? When will Papa come back?"

"Roland—"

"Regina," someone whispers. There's arms under her shoulders, and Roland is receding away.

"I want Papa," Roland cries, but reaches out for Regina anyway, and she—she has to do this.

"Regina." Emma's voice is right against her ear, and she can feel the harsh breaths in her hair, can feel Emma trembling. "Regina, stop."

She struggles against Emma's grip unsuccessfully, even though Emma is barely holding on. "Emma—"

"Please, Regina," Emma whispers, rough and unsteady. "Let someone else do this."

Someone else already has, someone else already is, but Regina is disintegrating, piece by piece by piece. "I have to—"

"I get it. But you don't have to do this."

And she's gone, shaking so violently she could well shatter.

"I know," Emma murmurs, swaying gently as Regina sinks lower and lower into the embrace. "I know. I know."

two.

At the hotel, Roland is in Emma's room for the night, whilst Regina shares one with Henry.

Or, rather, he sleeps in the room. She just sits there watching the dazzling array of city lights below, and doesn't see them at all.

The blood, the gun, the smile...

Planning for the funeral starts the very next day.

She organises the whole thing: she selects the coffin; sets down the entire program; creates the seating plan; chooses the burial site. The only point of contention from anyone is the last—and by anyone, she means Snow.

"We should take him back to Storybrooke," she says, her voice feather-light as if it makes any difference. And Regina burns, because Robin had been a thief, not a loyal subject content to be ruled and coddled by royalty—

"Mary Margaret, he lived here longer than he did in Storybrooke," Emma points out, her jaw set hard and the muscles in her shoulders visibly tensed. "Besides, that should be Regina's decision."

Regina knows that there are other subplots at work here, that there are other conflicts raging which don't involve her, but she places a hand over Emma's arm anyway.

"I know what she's doing," Emma tells her later, when they've retreated back to the hotel. "She wants me to go back to Storybrooke so she can sit me down and sort shit out."

"You should," she replies, but her voice has all the life of a quarry stone, "It's not healthy to hold a grudge. And besides, you still have to deal with Gold and the Author."

"Yeah," Emma replies, and her voice is about as empty as Regina feels.

The conversation does, however, give her an idea. Henry takes to it immediately. Emma does not.

"You said that Operation Mongoose—"

"Regina," Emma says softly, "you know that can't work."

Her eyes flash. "Why? Are you afraid that I'll—"

"No. But you know the rules." Death is death, the one barrier magic—even of the reality-altering literature kind—cannot bridge. "And there's no way Gold will let you."

"If you think I care about—"

"You might not, but I do. And so would Robin."

She trembles, struggling to keep the uncontrolled wildfires of emotion contained inside. "Don't you dare—"

"I dare," Emma says, then emphasises the point by stepping forward and holding her, holding her. "If I could do it, I would, Regina. I promise you, I would."

And she would, and Regina knows it—but as she sobs relentlessly into the leather-covered shoulder, she knows it's not enough, it's not enough.

In the end, they choose a small church just outside the city for the funeral. It's nowhere near adequate, but the nearby trees are tall and straight, and the air crisp with birdsong, and it's frankly the best they can do. Even Mary Margaret seems impressed with the choice.

It's a simple service—Robin would have had no time for ornate pomp and ceremony, Regina is sure of that—attended by all of twenty people, most of them Merry Men bussed down from Maine for the day. The church is old, wooden and beautiful, the pastor is generous and welcoming and the elegant coffin she'd picked looks just right. She enters flanked by Henry and Roland, dressed entirely in black, and everything has gone exactly to plan.

But none of that matters once the funeral actually starts.

She learns a lot about her soulmate that day.

She learns, for example, that the first thing he had stolen had been a necklace belonging to a rich local lord. Apparently a friend had wanted it.

She learns that he had met Marian—whose service this is as much as it is Robin's—at the point of an arrow.

"Imagine, if you please, meeting your true love like that," Littlejohn continues, to mournful laughter from all save one.

She learns that he had once owned a tavern. She learns that he had once broken into Maleficent's castle. She learns that he had known Henry's father.

She learns a great deal—and when her time comes, she learns that she has no right to speak about him at all.

"Regina?" Roland asks in that clear, pure four-year-old voice of his. "Where are you going?"

She doesn't know.

(Beloved soulmate, the gravestone says. She'd thought it'd be fitting. Now she learns that the cruelest jokes of all are her own.)

Emma and Henry are eventually the ones to track her down. She's surprised it's taken them so long, as she hadn't exactly fled far—merely far enough to be out of sight of the people who had far more of a right to her soulmate than she.

She wonders if they'd been deliberately slow.

"My parents are taking everyone back to Storybrooke tomorrow morning," Emma says, as they're driving back to the hotel, Henry and Roland asleep in the back seat.

"I—I see." She has to be in New York for the next few weeks, she knows—for one thing, there's the trial.

"I'm not going with them."

(It's got style. I'm in.)

Regina's head snaps around to stare at her in wide-eyed astonishment. "You… you aren't?"

A small, small smile. "You didn't actually think Henry and I would go back without you, did you?"

It's about the trial, apparently—which makes sense, as Emma knows far more about how these matters work than she does, and had actually seen all the evidence. Plus, she still needed some time to deal with stuff with respect to her parents.

But that evening, when the three of them are watching some idiotic, banal TV show, she wonders whether there's more to this particular story.

If only she had Emma's superpower.

The first hearing is the very next day.

Regina had thought, strangely, that she would enjoy it—or, at least, appreciate the sight of Zelena handcuffed, trapped, awaiting her richly deserved fate. Not that today would be anything of the sort, of course, as this isn't the actual trial. It isn't even the arraignment.

If she just had magic—

"Hey." Emma covers a gloved hand with her own, and Regina unclenches the unconsciously tightened fist. "You alright?"

"I will be once my sister is rotting in jail."

"She will. We were both there, and the case is watertight." Once again, Regina's reminded that this is Emma's world, and Emma's conception of justice. "She's got zero chance of getting off."

"You say that now," Regina says below her breath, but she knows Emma's right. Divorced permanently of any and all magic, Zelena is without friends, without resources, and without hope.

Part of her—no small part, either—feels a vindictive, dark pleasure at the thought. The rest of her knows better: Zelena had gotten everything she'd wanted, and all she'll have to do in return is trade one prison for another. If this is vengeance, it's a singularly empty kind.

Though, really, it always is. Regina can attest to that more than anyone.

When Zelena is brought in, she's dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit with her hands handcuffed in front of her. She looks small, her hair frazzled and her complexion pale; there's an odd impassiveness, an aloofness on her face, a strange hollowness in her eyes. For a moment, Regina wonders why that expression, that look seems so familiar—but then she remembers herself, and her stomach clenches ever so slightly.

"All rise," the judge announces, and it begins.

It's uneventful.

As she had expected, nothing is decided today save for sheer banalities. Rights are read. Lawyers are declared. Paperwork is filed. Regina is honestly wondering if anything of even vague interest is going to happen today.

"We'll also need to request additional medical support, your honour," a black-suited lawyer is saying, and at this point Regina is only just paying attention. "As you're aware, the defendant is pregnant..."

Regina's blood ices over in an instant.

"Regina," Emma whispers beside her, latching tightly on to her wrist, but she doesn't feel it, doesn't hear her or anyone else. The judge and the lawyer are going back and forth as if nothing had happened, as if the world hadn't just stopped on its axis, but Regina pays them no regard.

She wants to look anywhere else, wants to be anywhere else, but she can't help but let her eyes drift over to her sister, the still subtle but noticeable swell of her belly and—oh, how could she have been so stupid? How had she missed this?

For the first time Zelena catches her eye—and, once again, the smile.

She's never wished for magic more.

The trip back to the hotel is very, very quiet.

They don't even make eye contact most of the time, but regardless it smoulders between them, a coiled presence in the air bouncing back and forth between locked jaws and whitened knuckles.

Emma glances over, and opens her mouth—

"Don't, Miss Swan," she says, low and laced with something unnamed, something dangerous, and Emma doesn't.

When they arrive, Regina wraps her arms around her boys—her children—and doesn't let go.

Later, after the boys have gone to bed, Emma joins her by the window and hands her a coffee.

"I would have let you, you know."

Regina frowns at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Back when—" She swallows, and that's all the information Regina needs. "You know. After. When you were—"

"About to choke her to death?" Regina has never been one for euphemism in matters like these.

"Yeah. I was gonna let you." Emma's voice is soft, but there are stress lines around her eyes and her knuckles are white around the mug.

"How noble of you."

"I think we both know that I'm no angel."

"And yet you still stopped me, as I recall." She isn't angry about it, not in the slightest—but she is wary.

"Yeah. Robin needed your help, and that's always more important." Mercifully or otherwise, Emma doesn't mention how useful that help had been. "And besides, I don't think you'd have forgiven me if I let you."

"Forgiven? For what?"

"For letting you go back to where you once were, after you stopped me." Emma bites her lip, unsure as ever. "You've worked so hard for your happiness—"

"And then she took it from me." One gunshot, two seconds' pause, another, and it had been wiped clean away.

"Not all of it. You still have Henry—"

"It's not enough." It can't be enough, because Henry isn't her happy ending. Henry is her life, the totality of her reason to be. She would give up any and all pretensions to happiness in an instant for him. Simple, easy, uncomplicated happiness will never be what he gives her, will never be what she wants from him.

"You said I deserve—"

"You deserve more than revenge. You're worth more than that." And Regina recognises her own logic being used against her, knows that Emma is holding Regina to the same standard as herself like she's some sort of hero—

She laughs, twisted and mirthless and painful. "I want her to pay for what she did," she snarls, feeling darkness surge through her, flame and ice, toxic and intoxicating all at once. "I want her to burn—"

"She will, Regina," Emma says, low and fierce. "She will. But not by you."

Emma's eyes are bright, so bright, and Regina understands.

(Justice, Emma calls it. To Regina's ears, it sounds a lot like vengeance anyway.)