Pregnancy does things to magic.
Changes it, makes it play tricks. Makes it flutter and short out.
Regina knows this, she has felt it. Both her pregnancies had been brief, failed affairs, but she had known, had felt the difference in the way magic buzzed and flowed through her veins.
And Rumple had known, too.
She'd struggled more than usual, had found her fireballs guttering out, or flaring hot, turning pinky-purple for the first child and a cool blue when she briefly carried the second. She'd tried to pull a heart from a tavern maid and gotten her fist stuck behind ribs and muscle for a brief but terrifying half-minute.
"It's the bairn," Rumple had told her. "It plays tricks, reaches its little fingers into the middle of you and twists everything all up. It wants your energy all for itself." He'd leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper: "It feeds off the magic, dearie, sucks the power from inside you, around you."
Her little ones had learned to share before they'd even learned to kick.
The first, she'd lost, barely six weeks in. The second, she'd snuffed out almost as soon as she'd missed her cycle, with a potion from Rumple that made her double over and writhe for days. Neither time had been a heartbreak for her – they'd been the King's, and she hadn't wanted them. She hadn't wanted to be a broodmare for heirs, hadn't wanted to give Leopold the satisfaction of a fruitful end to his careless use of her. She'd hoped one day he'd decide that it wasn't Queen Eva who'd been to blame for their lack of children, but him, and leave her alone.
She'd wanted vengeance, not… love, or softness, or children. Love was weakness, and she couldn't afford weakness for what she'd had to do. (She couldn't give Snow a sibling and then rip them so cruelly apart, or worse – watch them form a tight, loving bond, and not be able to stomach her vengeance after all.)
So she'd chosen revenge over love, as always, and she'd let go of those little lights inside of her. Her red-blue flames had become glowing orange once again, hearts burst through bone and gristle as they were meant, she stopped appearing one room too close or too far from where she'd intended and instead arrived exactly where her mind had set.
So she knows. Regina knows.
Pregnancy does things to magic.
And thank God for it, because that bitch of a sister of hers really has some nerve.
She'd noticed it first when she'd gone to visit Marian's body. It's kept away from camp, away from Roland, in a safehouse guarded by three of the Merry Men. She visits, now and then, trying out a new potion or incantation over the frozen form to no avail.
Her last visit before the curse of Shattered Sight, she'd spotted it. She'd thought it was a trick of light, of… something. But now, now she knows.
There'd been streaks of red through the black of Marian's dark locks – visible even through the blue-ish layer of ice that encased her. It wasn't the lighter streak of silvery gray the curse had caused, but something brighter. Sharper.
Regina had blinked, and it had been gone, but now…
Now she's gone to fetch Marian's not-quite-frozen heart from its careful storage in her vault, and it's… changed.
Where once it was glowing, pulsing red, pure and heroic as the woman from whom it had been yanked, now it's mottled with black streaks.
A glamour, is all Regina can think. A spell to mask the truth of who lies beneath, for "Marian" has done nothing but cool her heels, so to speak, for months. There's no way her heart could have grown so dark while she's been basically a popsicle.
And whatever this glamour it, is has magically stopped working.
The heart in her palm flickers between light and dark, like a lightbulb screwed in not quite tightly enough. Regina thinks of blue flames, and potions that tasted like ash and death, and she wonders. What if…
Maybe it's foolish, maybe it's overly hopeful, maybe she's been spending too much time with Snow.
But what if it was all just this easy…
Robin isn't due for another thirty minutes – Regina had transported Marian here herself with a wave of her hand and purple smoke.
She has time. Time to check, time to… time to see.
This body that looks so much like Marian isn't covered in ice anymore, the spell that turned her cold is gone – all that's left is for her traitorous heart to be returned to wake her up.
But there's still magic here, magic that isn't her own.
Regina can feel it now that she's looking for it.
This place always has a hum to it, a low buzz of the power held in its depths, a pulsing beat from her wall of hearts, and a scent, like ozone, like the air after a good rain. But something is different, now, today.
Regina licks her lips and tastes something sweet-tart, tries to push her magic out into the room and feels it resonate against something oh-so-subtly different.
She'd have noticed it before if it was anybody else. Would have noticed it earlier if Zelena was awake, stronger, in possession of her own heart.
But Regina feels it now.
It pushes back against her own energy, gives it a little hello, that telltale flickery flutter of instability underneath, and that bitch, that bitch, how dare she.
Regina stands above this fake Marian with her hand clenched and shaking around this warm, flickering heart and mutters accusingly, "I gave you a second chance and this is what you did with it?"
The heart beats, beats harder, Marian's hair goes red all over, all at once, and then black again, and Regina chuckles darkly.
"Oh, I'm on to you, don't bother trying to hide it," she chuckles, her fingers squeezing, squeezing as she leans in and hisses, "That baby wants every bit of your energy for itself."
She should stop; she might kill her if she goes much tighter.
"Regina?"
It's Robin's voice at the bottom of her stairs; she'd been so distracted by her little epiphany that she hadn't heard him coming, but now that he's here her hand goes slack with another, much more unwelcome revelation: the baby could be his.
Regina's hand goes slack around the heart as Robin asks a cautious—no, suspicious—"Is everything alright?"
She'd be angry about that if he hadn't walked in on her standing over his wife's body squeezing her heart half to death.
But right now all she can feel is her own heart pounding hard against her breastbone, a dreadful, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that Zelena might have managed what she'd promised all those months ago – to take everything Regina had ever wanted for her own.
She swallows thickly around rising nausea and ignores his question for one of her own: "Have you had sex with her?"
She looks at him, finally, and Robin's brows shoot up nearly to his hairline. "Have I what?"
It's an odd question, isn't it? She should... She should be more clear.
Regina clears her throat, tells him, "Please, it's important. Since she's been back, have you been with her?"
Robin frowns, scowls even, and tells Regina cautiously, "No, I haven't. It didn't feel right, with my heart belonging to you. I told her I wanted to take things slowly, rediscover each other after so long apart – for me, at least."
Well, thank God for that.
He shifts awkwardly on his feet, raising a hand to scratch at the back of his neck as he grimaces and admits, "I thought with more time, I might… be able to… get over…"
He can't bring himself to push all the words past his teeth, and knowing what she knows now Regina regrets ever having pushed him away. She should have pulled him down into her weak will sooner, should have climbed on top of him over Zelena's frozen fucking body in that office that isn't hers anymore on that very first night.
Would have if she'd known.
But it doesn't matter now.
All that matters is the way she reaches out a hand to Robin, squeezing his in her own before turning it over and plunking that flickering heart on it as she tells him, "Good. Because that—" she points to the body behind her "—isn't your wife."
Robin's suddenly slack jaw is no surprise, nor is the way he peers over her shoulder at the body he knows so well.
"Look at the heart," Regina urges, pulling his attention back to where it belongs. He obeys, and that look of shock turns to one of utter confusion. It flickers and pulses, wars with itself, glowing red and then streaked with black, red again, mottled again.
"I don't understand," he says, and Regina points a thumb back at the body lying prone.
"That isn't Marian. That's my sister. And I'm pretty sure she's pregnant." She plucks the heart from him again, holds it up between them and says, "Whatever glamour she's using, whatever charm or trick, it's beginning to fail. Not an uncommon side effect of carrying a child – the baby is trying to grow, they need all the energy they can find, and it leaves less for the mother to fuel her magic. It starts to short out – like this."
"But didn't she end herself? In the prison cell?" Robin questions, although he doesn't seem to doubt her claims, not with the way he's looking at the body now with disgust. "You said she'd used the last of her magic to do so."
"Apparently, I was wrong," Regina sighs. "She's more powerful than I'd imagined. Luckily, I have a cure for that."
She passes the heart back to him and seeks out that cuff she so reviles, locked away down here behind a blood lock, a prick of her finger enough to open the little box hidden behind a loose brick.
"A cure for magic?"
"A block," Regina tells him, carrying the cuff back over to Zelena's body much the way one would carry a live grenade. She hates this thing; it makes her palms sweat, makes phantom shocks run through her temples, her arms, her ankles. But it has a purpose, it has its uses, and she takes advantage now. "She'll still have her magic, but she won't be able to access it – and the wearer can't remove it. She'll be powerless."
"That's handy," Robin remarks, as Regina reaches down and slips the cuff into place.
She expects the glamour to end, then, for it to be turned off like a switch when the magic stops running, but it doesn't.
She's still in Marian's clothes, still has Marian's face, Marian's hair.
There's no sudden shift, just a soft thunk as the pendant on her necklace rolls back and disappears into her hair.
"This isn't right…" Regina worries, shaking her head, as Robin mutters something about a conniving witch and reaches forward to fish the necklace from dark locks. "She should have changed; the spell should have ended."
"It did," Robin tells her, holding the pendant up for her perusal. "She wasn't concealing herself, she was concealing this."
Another glance, and she realizes he's right. Marian's necklace had been delicate, just a small charm, but now… now it's a heavy stone. A barely-there glamour, something little she must have had just enough strength for.
"It's one of the six-leaf clovers of Oz," he explains, and Regina finds herself impressed that he knows about a magical artifact she doesn't. But then, he is a thief, he'd have an interest in valuable artifacts. And as for this one in particular, "I have one of the others. It's a glamour charm, it can make you appear as anyone you like."
"Well, well…" A charm. The perfect thing for a witch starving for magic – and a tantalizing source of magical energy for the little one inside her. "Let's turn it off, then, shall we?"
Robin gives the stone a turn and it glows bright green, and then fades again, the body before them melting from Marian's to Zelena's, her skin growing pale, her hair finally doing what it's been so desperate to do and turning to those bright ginger curls.
And there lies the truth.
Robin yanks the chain from Zelena's neck and pockets it, offering up the heart to Regina (it's not flickering anymore, its true colors shining through).
"Why don't we wake your sister," he mutters darkly, "And find out just how long she's been parading as my wife."
Regina sinks that darkened heart right back where it belongs, and watches as Zelena comes awake with a gasp, icy blue eyes popping open.
She looks from Regina to Robin, then pushes herself from the cot and moves as if to embrace him, gasping his name – she still hasn't realized the jig is up.
Robin takes a step back, away from her, just as Regina drawls, "Hello, sis."
Zelena freezes then, looks down at herself, lifting a hand to finger a lock of telling red hair, and when she turns to Regina, it's with a look of angry surprise.
"How?" her sister demands, and Regina simply smirks and points to Zelena's still flat belly.
"A little bird told me," she whispers conspiratorially, crossing her arms and telling Zelena, "Congratulations, by the way."
Zelena's eyes pop even wider and she waves a hand—instinct, Regina knows, an attempt to flee in a swirl of smoke.
It doesn't work, of course, and Regina casts a satisfied glance back at Robin only to find him staring at the back of Zelena's skull with a look that could scorch.
Right.
This isn't a moment to gloat.
So she tells Zelena, "That won't work. You may be the stronger sister, but I'm the smarter one."
Zelena growls, "Hardly," but Regina doesn't give her the satisfaction of thinking her insult has landed.
Instead, she simply smiles, gestures to the cot beside them and invites with a veneer of faux-politeness, "Why don't you have a seat, Zelena."
Regina reaches for Robin, then, taking a step closer and squeezing his hand, a united, galvanized front.
It feels like another win, like tucking that pendant of Zelena's power into its box, when Robin squeezes her hand in return and she hears him tell her sister, "I think it's high time for some answers."