A/N: A little Dark Swan oneshot for you all! Thanks a bunch to streep-parrilla for giving it a couple read throughs for me and helping me debate over the title lol. I hope you'll enjoy and let me know what you think!
One month had passed. An entire month without sight nor sound from Emma Swan, an unfathomable sort of silence that Regina had forgotten this town could possess since the girl came kicking and screaming her way into their lives.
A month since Emma sacrificed herself to the darkness for Regina's happiness.
Her supposed happiness.
Regina wasn't happy though. She couldn't be, not when Emma was missing and in danger and falling who knows how much deeper into that unholy abyss, the dark shadow of her absence blanketing heavily over every waking moment.
There was some debate when Regina was the one to pick up the dagger from where it lay on the pavement. The pirate thought it should be himself to possess it. He never did understand that Emma was not a woman to possess.
Regina held the artifact tightly in her grasp, ready to fight before she'd ever consider relinquishing it. Emma needed to be protected, not contained or controlled. In the end, the Snow and David sided with Regina. After all, if anyone could find a way to bring Emma back, it was her. She would keep the girl safe.
The power to summon the Dark One at any time was quite literally at her fingertips, Regina knew. But she wouldn't do it. She thought about it, more than once, thinking maybe she could steal just a moment of relief from this pressing feeling of loss and guilt. The desire was selfish, though, and she wouldn't dare rob Emma of her agency, Dark One or not.
Life soldiered forward. However bleakly, it simply had to. They had a son who was already down one mother, the ever present pain in his eyes so much more pronounced than it ever was before, even following the loss of his father. Regina couldn't afford to retreat, no matter how badly she might ache to. She already did so once before, but that had been a mistake and she would not repeat it.
There was also still a town to run. A town that that mourned the loss of their savior, yet carried on alarmingly well in her absence. At least Regina found it alarming, wondering how they couldn't see how very dull and lifeless it had all become. Their world wasn't rocked the way her own had been, she supposed. They revered Emma in title, for what she was, but they didn't know her like Regina did. Who Emma was hadn't become inextricably woven into the fabric of their very lives. They simply didn't understand. There was nothing to do but press dutifully forward.
Regina had no appointments that morning, and no word from her secretary to alert her to the presence of an unexpected visitor. Halfway to her desk before managing to peel her weary eyes away from the floor, Regina stopped cold in her tracks upon being greeted by the back of a woman with a shock of red hair staring out the window.
Zelena was her first thought, wondering for just a moment how the woman had managed to escape her cell and thinking someone was definitely due for an earful. The hair color was all wrong, though. It was too bold, and too wild to be her sister. The figure's legs were clad in gripping black leather, ending in remarkably tall stiletto boots, and over her shoulders rested a frighteningly familiar looking red leather jacket that made Regina's heart plumpet.
"What are you doing in my office?" she inquired sternly, in no mood for anyone's shenanigans when she already had so very much to worry about.
The figure turned, revealing an extremely enhancing black bustier below the jacket, breasts perched round and high beneath her chin. She wore heavy eyeliner over a dangerous smirk, and it took a moment for the sight to register, but once it did Regina's stomach lodged in her throat.
"Emma?" she said breathlessly, unable to resist raking her eyes over every scadalizingly pronounced curve. Before her stood an image that she might have fantasized about seeing behind closed doors, had she ever allowed such thoughts to blossom, but never like this.
The woman caught Regina's leering gaze, however fleeting, and a new kind of danger crept in around the corners of her soulness grin. That was not Emma's smile, Regina observed with a painful grimace. The light in her bold, beautiful eyes was no where to be seen, a hollow blackness residing in its place.
"I thought I'd try out a new look," Emma said with a predatory sneer. They were first words Regina had heard the woman utter in weeks. She had longed desperately just to hear the sound of that voice again but now, laced with hazard and malice, she found it made her skin crawl.
"What if Henry were to see you like this?" was all Regina could think to say, attempting in agony to appeal to the woman she knew lay trapped beneath the dark facade. Rumple had never wavered in his love for Baelfire – surely the mention of their son could ignite some semblance of the Emma Swan she knew.
"What?" the woman replied instead, ignoring the ploy and glancing down at herself with big sad eyes that didn't really look sincere at all. "You don't like it?"
"I..." Regina stumbled, slumping in defeat. "I didn't say that."
"Mmm," Emma hummed lasciviously, as if knowingly all along just the effect she would have. Her voice dropped low as she sauntered forward like a predictor closing in on its kill. "That's what I thought."
"Emma, please," Regina beseeched, unable to bring herself to shrink from the woman's advance, a little afraid, yet shamefully entranced by the enticing vision. It couldn't be like this though. "This isn't you."
"It's the new me," Emma declared, throwing her arms out dramatically and reminding Regina far too much of Rumpelstiltskin and his theatrics in the Enchanted Forest. It made every part of her despair to see Emma this way, an immense sense of guilt washing over her. She was supposed to protect Emma, and had sworn that she would. Yet here the woman stood, darker than the night itself, and all for a failed attempt at ensuring Regina's own happiness.
"I need you," Regina confessed. "I can't do this alone. I need the old Emma Swan back."
The plea sounded slightly selfish, and maybe in a way it was. But she had to believe in the bond they'd forged, that their relationship really did evolve along the way into something beyond the mutual love for their son. Maybe, just maybe, she could appeal to the woman on her own merit. Summoning her courage, Regina reached out, pushing aside reddened locks and tenderly cupping Emma's cheek. "I miss you."
She saw it then, just a flash of recognition, of something more than the yawning emptiness that had drowned the endless compassion from Emma's eyes. She was still in there, the woman who had given her everything, who made her feel in a way she didn't even know she could without even realizing it.
"Everything is all wrong since you left," Regina pressed on, determined that she would find her way in, that all was not yet lost. "I was so blind and now, just look at you." Her voice cracked, and she couldn't hold back any longer as she felt hot, angry tears spring to her eyes. "Why would you do something so stupid, Emma?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Emma replied, and it was her. The pain her in words, the gentleness in her voice – it was really Emma talking to her now.
But It wasn't obvious. Some part of Regina cried out that it was, but Emma had told the pirate she loved him, with her back to Regina she had said the words "I love you," and in that moment the queen's heart cracked wide open and suddenly everything and nothing made sense.
Emma saw it, all the questions Regina couldn't and wouldn't dare say out loud, reading her eyes like an intimate journal laid out before her. Regina found she felt completely naked under the woman's knowing gaze and it was all she could do to keep from trying to hide.
"I wasn't talking to Hook," Emma said quietly, answering every uncertainty with those five simple words.
Regina was sure she felt her heart stop beating for a moment then, only for a moment, until it roared back to life with all the words she had failed to acknowledge until that day, let alone speak. It was she herself that had suggested it was time they fought back against fate, and yet she had played right into its humorless hands, so fixated on what she thought was meant to be that she had never realized happiness always was within her grasp.
Gasping in sharp succession around the tightness in her lungs, Regina leaned in closer, hand still pressed against Emma's cheek that was so much more pale and grey than it ever was before. Their breath mingled wantonly as their mouths drew close, longing to become one gust of air that danced between them. Emma's hand gripped her hip tightly, almost painfully, but there was restraint in her hold even as it begged their bodies to meld together.
This was her chance, Regina thought. She wanted to kiss Emma so badly, she had dreamed of it every night since losing her. She didn't want it to be like this, but she needed it. She needed to feel some semblance of the woman she realized all too late was everything she ever wanted. And so she leaned in closer, desperate to feel even these ashen lips upon her own.
Emma jerked away violently, sending Regina careening several steps backwards in shock.
"This is all a trick, isn't it?" the woman spat, the flicker of self extinguished from her eyes and drowning Regina's hope with it. "You figured out my secret and want to use it against me!"
"No, Emma," Regina implored despairingly, hating herself for trying to move too far too fast when Emma was so incredibly vulnerable. "No tricks, I swear."
"You're afraid of me. Afraid of my power," Emma said certainly, her words laced with accusation and betrayal. Regina could only imagine the woman thought this was all a part of some plot forged in alliance with her parents, and it broke her heart that Emma, the one person who always knew her, couldn't see her anymore.
"For the first time in my life I feel strong," the dark woman seethed. "I won't let you take that away."
Regina saw someone else now, someone buried even deeper making way to the thinly veiled surface. It was the little orphan girl she saw before in Neverland, who had never had any control over her fate, who had lost everything time and time again. A girl who had tried, so very hard, to put her faith in her newfound family only to have it all ripped from her hands repeatedly.
"This," Regina gestured abstractly, trying to signify the new power Emma yielded. "It isn't strength. Holding on to this... it's fear."
"I'm not afraid of anything anymore," Emma replied defiantly, and there was a part of Regina that wanted to let her keep it. A part of her understood that need to be something more. To be a force to be reckoned with, because nothing and no one would dare try to hurt you again. It wasn't real though, that kind of security. In the end, it only wrought more of the same kind of pain.
"That's not true," Regina said cautiously, terrified that Emma could magic herself back into oblivion at any moment but needing, so very badly, for the girl to hear her words. "You're afraid that I can break this curse. You're afraid to love me. But love... that's true strength. You taught me that."
Emma took a step back.
"I was being naive," the woman insisted, but Regina saw the spark of light. It was her again, afraid and uncertain, but she had found Emma. Carefully, with the utmost trepidation, Regina inched closer.
"Please, Emma," she begged, all reservations so far gone she couldn't even fathom them anymore, once again holding the girl's pale face in her hands. "We can do this. I just need you to be brave. Please be brave enough to love me."
Emma only starred for the longest time, thoughtful, unmoving, and wary. There was also the faint whisper of trust, growing imperceptibly stronger, if only Regina could keep it there long enough to flourish.
"And what if I'm not?" Emma snapped, but the indignance was feigned now. "What if I can't love you, Regina? You'll banish me like Belle did to Rumple?"
"No," Regina said firmly, certain that they were right on the cusp at last. "I will never give up on you."
A fog lifted then, and the woman's face softened. There was disbelief, but also longing in her gaze.
At last Emma nodded, so slightly Regina would have missed it had their faces not been only inches apart. Emma leaned in, just barely, and Regina jumped on the permission, pressing their lips together with every ounce of love and need she had discovered in her heart for this woman since they'd been apart.
With a startling flash, Emma was propelled backwards, but Regina held on tight, unwilling to ever let go again. Clouds of darkness poured out of the tortured woman's chest, catapulting into the air where they exploded one after another in a beam of light, obliterated for all time, until there was nothing.
Emma gasped, as if awakening from a nightmare, righting herself to find she was still securely in the arms of the one person who would never, ever let her fall.
"Welcome back," Regina whispered with a gentle smile, not wanting to jar the girl after all she just went through.
"Regina," Emma panted, eyes filled with life and love and all the things that made Emma Swan exactly who she was. "I..."
She looked stricken, and speechless, and Regina wouldn't press for words, but her own absolutely must be said.
"I know," Regina nodded, tears in her eyes at the revelation of what had just transpired between them. Maybe they weren't ready to talk about what it all meant, but one truth was abundantly clear. "I love you, too."