A journey, in three acts.
ACT I
The first day of the journey is an exercise in patience. She's tied up with rope that won't cut with magic and whenever she looks to her right, Belle is regarding her with compassion mingled with You deserve this, accusing in her eyes. They don't have the gags on anymore, now that Hook's ship has successfully sailed from Storybrooke, but Regina can't think of a single thing she wants to say to the woman beside her.
"You do have a knack for being taken prisoner," she drawls at one point.
Belle says nothing, and Regina stares at the ceiling trapdoor, inexplicably ashamed. She's an evil queen, even if it's been tempered by Henry and that infernal woman who'd crashed into their lives a year ago.
She wonders if Emma had gotten to the ship in time, remembers Archie running from the docks and Regina's decision to find out where he'd come from first, and prove her innocence second. Cora had ordered Hook to depart right then, and though there'd been some squabble over that and Belle had proven rather handy with the side of an anchor, Cora had gotten her way as always. Regina's last conscious view had been the sheriff, racing across the docks as the ship departed.
Maybe she'd be more like the mother Henry deserves if she wishes that Emma isn't aboard with their two sociopathic captors. But she's too selfish to indulge goodness right now.
Hook is very drunk when he comes down to the hold, stinking of whiskey and brandishing his hook at a very terrified Belle. "Did you think he'd save you?" he slurs, and Belle shrinks back. "He'd kill you like he did his wife."
Belle says something, but her defense of Rumpelstiltskin is as tiresome as ever and Regina tunes them both out. Hook goes on for another few minutes, all bark and no bite until even Belle is unimpressed, and when he staggers out they both sigh heavily.
"He didn't get his crocodile," Regina notes, more to hear the sound of her own voice than out of a desire to talk to Belle. "He's going to get more and more difficult to control."
"Last time he hit me with his hook," Belle ventures.
Regina remembers, but she thinks it best not to bring it up. This is the closest she's had to a conversation in a day, after all. "He's unpredictable, but not the true threat on this ship."
Emma couldn't be here, concealed from her mother. It's impossible.
The next morning, Cora comes to see her. She's full of empty promises and syrupy reproof and Regina contemplates how easy this journey might be if she chooses her mother over Henry, far away in Storybrooke.
But without the threat of Henry's suffering hanging over her head, it's even easier to resist her mother's siren call, to hold on to well-deserved grudges that serve dual purpose as cautionary tales.
When Cora finally shifts from doting mother to disapproving witch, Regina takes it in silence, even when her ropes are constricting around her and she feels as though she's being hollowed out from the inside. All for your own good, dear, Cora croons in her mind- or maybe it's aloud, Regina can't tell anymore- and when Regina grits her teeth together and meets her mother's gaze directly, there's still triumph gleaming in her eyes.
After, Belle manages to slide over right next to Regina and uses her free hand to extricate a handkerchief from her pocket. "Get away from me," Regina hisses, but Belle ignores her, and Regina's bonds are far stronger than hers.
Belle dabs at the blood seeping from her nose and pinches it together to stop the flow, and Regina mentally curses the pity and understanding she sees written all over the other woman's face.
She says nothing more.
Hook and Cora are arguing again, their voices muffled by the distance but the words easily distinguishable. He's still furious about her taking her prize at the expense of his crocodile; she's pacifying him with practiced arguments. Then there's a thunk of a hook and silence, and Belle flinches.
He arrives a few minutes later, not drunk but furious and bearing bright red scars across his face. He grabs Belle to him with the ferocity of a desperate man and then he's growling threats at her, dark and seductive and terrifying to the woman he holds.
"Enough," Regina says, raising her hand wearily. "She isn't your target."
"She would protect him," Hook growls, dragging his hook along Belle's face until it draws blood.
"She's a fool in love with a man who will keep hurting her." Belle doesn't look at either of them, her head slumped forward as Regina speaks. "She will suffer from him as you have."
Hook drops Belle as abruptly as he'd lifted her before he follows suit, crouching in front of the girl and launching into a litany of all of Rumpelstiltskin's sins, one after another after another until Belle is huddled against the hold, her hands pressed to her ears and tears rolling down her cheeks.
When he finally leaves, Belle speaks with a voice hoarse with loathing. "You both are a thousand times worse than he will ever be."
"He made me," Regina points out.
Belle shoots her a look rooted more in despair than hatred. "You make yourself," she says, and Regina has no response.
Hook and Cora both return the next day, fresh from another argument and seeking blood. This time, Regina dips Belle's handkerchief in the dirty water Hook brings them to drink and scrubs away blood and grime. It seems the right thing to do, what Emma or Henry would do in her place. Belle won't look at her, and Regina understands.
She doesn't fully understand when Belle presses the cool cloth against the burns now marring her back, but she thinks she's getting there.
They talk now, desperate for companionship even among enemies. Sometimes Belle talks about her childhood, her time with Rumpelstiltskin, an adventure she'd had since. Regina is reluctant to share but she can feel madness threatening to take her, too much time alone with her thoughts and her mother, and she begins to speak, haltingly at first. She talks about Henry and his childhood, about the Storybrooke that Regina had never allowed Belle to see, about Emma Swan and her brashness and that frustrating goodness that follows her around.
By silent agreement, they don't talk about the years that Regina had stolen from Belle. This isn't about friendship or forgiveness, it's about desperation, even as Regina finds herself liking this soft-spoken girl with a heart of steel more and more each day.
Wherever they're going, magic feels more and more accessible, and soon Regina is drawing enough through the blocks Cora has set up to heal their scars. Hook doesn't come as often but Cora has taken to hurting Belle as a precursor to attacking Regina, and now their wounds are a matching set.
Hook is thrown in the hold one day, Cora finally having lost patience with her partner in crime. He spends most of his time passed out with a bottle of whiskey, but when he's sober he's vaguely apologetic for hurting Belle and cuts through her bindings with his hook.
He doesn't cut Regina's, which is probably wise on his part. She isn't quite as forgiving of beasts as Belle.
"We need to destroy Cora," Hook decides, and Regina agrees, whatever last bit of love for her mother that had remained all these years almost entirely quenched at last.
She's seen the light, she gasps out to her mother one day. She'd rather be on her side than against her, and that Cora seems to believe.
"Well, then, darling, we have so much to catch up on." Cora escorts her to the deck and Regina breathes in fresh air for the first time in weeks. Her hands have been unbound though her ankles are still tied together, and Regina wonders if she's too out of practice to challenge her mother now.
She tests the power running through her, raises a hand, and then Cora says, "There is one thing, though. You know I have great faith in you, but it never hurts to be certain…"
And then the door to one of the deck cabins flies open, and Emma Swan is staring at them, gagged and bound with a rope made of pure magic. She's been unharmed by Cora's whims and her eyes seek out Regina's with an emotion behind them that Regina can't remember. Hope.
It takes all of an instant for Regina to spin around and send energy shooting toward her mother, rough around the edges but still powerful enough to throw her backward.
"Such a disappointment," Cora murmurs, and then the ship itself is falling apart, loose wood and metal and cloth whirling into a deadly tornado around Regina, faster and faster until Regina can't focus on fighting back at all.
ACT II
They're all in the hold now, four victims of her mother, and Regina busies herself with freeing Emma from her bonds. Hook alternates between raging at her failed attempt and flirting with Emma, and neither gets more of a reaction than an eyeroll from the others.
"He didn't know I was there," Emma tells her quietly when Regina manages to pull off the gag. "Cora wasn't all that confident in his loyalty, either."
"Where are we going?" Belle wonders, but neither Hook nor Emma knows.
They all drift off, Cora's bonds still tight, and when they wake up the ship is on fire.
It's Hook who saves them all, slicing through the ropes that keep Regina from walking and finding the vulnerability in the wall of the hold that lets them swim out of the destruction of his ship. The sea around them is ash, black and hot as the wreckage burns bright, and Regina weaves magic to keep herself from needing air and hangs on to Emma with all she has as they rise to the surface.
"Here!" Hook shouts, and she catches sight of him on what must be a lifeboat, a little canoe with two oars that he's paddling away from the ship as quickly as he can. His clothing is singed from swimming into the fiery ship, and she's suddenly grateful that he's with them.
"Take Emma," she orders, heaving her over the side of the little boat. Emma isn't conscious anymore and Hook starts clapping her back to force out the water she's swallowed. He doesn't know CPR, of course, and Regina pauses, torn between the need to save Emma and retrieve the last member of their party.
"Belle!" Hook shouts, and then she's there behind Regina, floating up to join them and coughing through ash. They both climb onto the boat and Regina immediately drops down beside Emma, breathing into her mouth and pumping her chest desperately.
"Is this really the time?" Hook demands.
Belle laughs through a cough. "I think it's sweet."
Regina ignores them both until Emma's eyes are open again and she's vomiting water all over the floor of the canoe.
"I know these waters," Hook tells them when he and Belle manage to row them far from the still-burning ship. "We're close to-" He curses. "Jafar."
"Jafar?"
"She's negotiated with him before. If she's burning bridges like this, she must finally have what he wants, which means he can give her what she wants."
"And what's that?" Emma asks, testing out the thinning ropes Regina's still working on. They tear, falling to the ground. "Money? Power? Regina?" Regina's hands stiffen, and Emma presses a cool palm to her wrist.
"Worse," Hook says grimly. "He's a genie. And she must have finally gotten those three wishes from him."
Once Emma's gotten some time to stretch, she volunteers herself and Regina to row while Belle and Hook sleep. "I should have believed in you," she murmurs.
Regina's been craving those words since she'd first been declared a murderer, but now she just feels tired. "You had an airtight case. It's hard to believe when I've been framed so effectively."
Emma laughs. "I found a human heart with my roommate's fingerprints on it last year and-"
"And you did your job." Somehow this conversation has fallen to her reassuring Emma, which is different but not all that unpleasant.
Emma is quiet for a while, and when Regina looks up, she's watching her, smiling. "You really have changed, y'know?"
"Yes," Regina agrees, because there's no reason to fight it anymore. And when Emma slides her hand over to Regina's for a moment and squeezes it for a hair too long, she can't find it in herself to regret it.
They make it to shore sometime in the middle of the night. Regina rouses Belle while Emma takes glee in splashing Hook with sandy water until he awakens and shakes wet and dirty hair all over him.
"Children," she scoffs, and Hook smirks and flicks some sand at her.
Agrabah is hostile to foreign strangers, especially ones as bedraggled and wet as they are. But Hook has somehow managed to save a sackful of jewels and soon they have a room down the hall from the baths to spend the night.
Hook goes wandering the town in search for alcohol, and the women take the time to luxuriate in the baths and muse on Cora. "Whatever she's going to do, it's probably world domination-related, right?" Emma is a distraction from her own words, nude under the water with the tops of her breasts peeking out.
"It must be," Belle agrees when Regina finds herself momentarily speechless. "Regina was always her priority, but if she can't have her…"
"She'll take all of Storybrooke," Regina finishes, noticing with satisfaction how Emma's eyes are drawn to her own body when she speaks.
"We need to warn them," Emma decides, but their home has never seemed more distant.
Belle knows her better than most by now, and when she tells them she's going to go dry off she does it with a grin for Regina. Regina raises an eyebrow, a picture of innocence that Belle doesn't buy for a minute.
"What was that all about?" Emma wonders when Belle leaves.
"I'll never understand that girl."
But then they're finally alone and there's quiet discussion of what they'd both gone through on that ship and the little boy they both miss and invariably, they draw closer and closer until they're circling each other like moths to a flame, caught in each other's glow until there's no reason not to embrace it.
They'd done this once before, though they don't talk about it. Emma had yanked her from the wraith and they'd fallen into each other's lips, messier than it had ever been with her fairytale romance with Daniel but right in a far more adult way. And then Emma's parents had arrived and there was no time to discuss it, not after Emma and Snow had vanished. And when they'd come back, they'd spoken in code about cake but neither had dared break the code and admit.
Not until now, when they're wrapped around each other and kissing harder than last time, even, lips welded and Emma's hands doing something under the water that makes her arch up and sink underneath. She uses the same magic she'd used less than a day before but to a very different end, inhaling in Emma rather than nothing at all. Their fingers dig into the other's skin and Emma is panting under her ministrations, scratching a pattern against Regina's back as she brings her to pleasurepainecstasy all at once.
Emma is curled up against her by the fireplace, Belle at her other side talking about Jafar, and Regina's nearly content. Hook makes sly comments at them, ostensibly torn between lasciviousness and jealousy until Belle tells him to stop and he surprises them all by listening.
Emma rolls her eyes and mutters, "It could be worse. My parents could be here," and Regina has to laugh.
A lot has changed in Agrabah over the years, and Hook discovers the next night that an old friend he's been hunting for in the marketplace has since been elevated to princess's consort. Aladdin is an unimpressive prince, Regina thinks, but he knows the city better than anyone and promises to help them find Jafar's lamp.
She feels another twist of guilt when Aladdin recalls an old friend of his, another genie who'd gone to the Enchanted Forest in search of adventure, but now isn't the time to rehash old wrongs and alienate new friends, so she says only, "I have seen him in Storybrooke," and leaves it at that.
They make it into Aladdin's cave just in time to see Cora standing below a monstrous genie that laughs at their impotence, and then the room is spinning and Regina is grabbing onto Emma as the world disappears from around them.
ACT III
Cora rules Storybrooke with an iron fist, settling into the dictatorship she'd so graciously intended for her daughter. Regina finds herself living in her own house with her mother and Henry the moment the wish takes hold, unable to escape her wrath.
"You're lucky your mother cares," Jafar laughs at her when she attempts to leave, Henry's hand in hers and the stubborn door refusing to open. "You could be outside otherwise."
Outside the sky is blood red with the genie's power and she glimpses people in the street sometimes, their heads bowed with the weight of dark magic surrounding them. Once, she thinks she sees Hook and Belle in the light of the full moon, chasing a chained wolf through the street with Ruby Lucas's red cloak in hand.
She never sees Emma, and when she comforts Henry she's reminding herself, too. "If there's anyone in the universe who can come out of a spat with my mother untouched, my bets are on Emma Swan. She'll be fine."
Two days after the full moon, Cora is raging about one of the apple trees on the lawn. Someone has taken a chainsaw to its largest branch in the night, and Regina smiles.
They're in a town under siege but Regina has been a prisoner in a palace before, and she wields passivity as her weapon once more. She has Henry to protect and Cora knows it, so Regina stands by in silence and never questions her mother's reign.
She wonders what is going on outside, if Belle has returned to Rumpelstiltskin or if Hook has gotten his revenge, if Snow and Charming are mounting an invasion force or if they've decided that Storybrooke is too much trouble to keep safe. She wonders if Emma would go with them, when her son is here. When Regina is here.
Hook is "invited" to dinner one evening and sits sullenly while Jafar and Cora make thinly veiled comments about his incompetence. Regina is forbidden to speak, but Henry has no such compunctions. "Have you seen my mom?"
Hook glances at Cora, who's still smiling pleasantly. She waves a hand, uncaring, and he admits, "No one's seen her."
She does her first bit of magic in her home that night, moving glacially slow so as to avoid her mother's watchful eye. She closes her eyes and searches the town for that glowing pure energy she associates with the Savior, but there's nothing. Cora's empire is no place for a white knight.
But in the morning, another branch has been cut from the apple tree.
It's Henry who keeps her going now, who makes sure that she eats and keeps her far from her mother's wrath and talks about Emma and Snow and the people she can't afford to think about anymore. It's Henry who gets her out of bed in the morning, and it's Henry who discovers that the enchantment that keeps them inside doesn't apply to the basement windows.
He climbs out first and helps pull her up, and she only needs a little bit of magic to make it through the window and out under the apple trees.
Belle cries when she sees them and hugs a very bemused Henry. "We've been worried sick!"
"You were worried about me," Regina says. She doesn't doubt it from Belle, but Ruby and Rumpelstiltskin both look more wary than worried. Hook is smirking, feet up on the table.
"Belle was," he drawls. "These two were more worried about when you'd team up with Cora and hunt them down."
"Don't you have a crocodile to kill?"
"Don't you have a mum to kill?" Hook counters, unbothered.
Regina swallows, any indecision there long gone. "Just give me the chance."
Later, Belle brings her tea and they sit together in the pawnshop's storeroom, far from where Cora can find them. "We're thinking about destroying the house. We kill Jafar, we free the town, right?"
Regina watches her sip her tea, vaguely disturbed at the gentle girl speaking of cold-blooded murder so easily. "Rumpel and Hook have had an effect on you, haven't they."
Belle flushes. "I don't…we need Rumpel now."
"But do you want him?" Regina leans forward, interested. "After all you know…"
"After all I know, I know we need him as he is now, not vengeful because I've left him," Belle says firmly.
"And Hook?"
"He knows we need Rumpel too." She stares into her tea. "And I won't let him become a slave to vengeance again. He's better than that."
Regina thinks otherwise, but it's a relief to hear Belle speaking about someone she isn't romantically tied to with this much faith.
There's still the question of where Emma has gone, and Regina is certain that this is a part of Cora's plan. Her mother always prepares herself a back door, a secret trump card, and if this is anything like the ship, she'll be…
It isn't until the Charmings have caught up with them, offering aid, that Regina makes the connection. "We've been trying to contact you for over a week!" Snow explains, packing the explosives Rumpelstiltskin has obtained as Hook tests each one. "Charming even cut down branches on your apple tree to try and get through to you and let you know we were willing to help."
Regina pauses her own work, where she's lacing the explosives with magic to keep them contained and effective against the less-than-corporeal. "You." She frowns. "You cut the tree."
"Yes? You, me, poison apple…?" Snow shook her head. "I thought you'd make the connection."
Then Emma hasn't been free, sending her messages in the night. No, Cora has Emma in the house that they're about to destroy.
"Impossible," Rumpelstiltskin says flatly. "We don't have time to search the house for your theories."
They're all huddled in the back yard of the house, Rumpelstiltskin still holding the case of explosives to toss into the basement before detonating them. The Charmings are standing in front with Ruby, ready to serve as a distraction if Cora gets suspicious. Belle looks troubled, Hook determined.
"I need five minutes," Regina says. "Five minutes to find her and then you can have your victory."
He laughs, loud and high-pitched and without the veneer of class that Mr. Gold had always worn like a mask. "I'll give you three."
It takes her three minutes to sneak into her mother's room- what had once been her own room, before Cora had taken her bed for her own- and find Emma, asleep in a ball in the closet.
Regina kisses her awake. "Up, Miss Swan."
"Hi." She smiles sleepily. "You keep saving me lately. I'm going to get a complex. How long have I been out?"
"Too long," Regina says, and just then there's a shout from outside and Hook is suddenly howling, "Cora! CORA! Help me! He's here to kill you!"
And then Belle is screaming, too, and she hears Cora approaching the crew in the back yard and tastes the bitterness of betrayal. "Look!" Emma says, and they both run to the window, where they can see Rumpel struggling with the box and trying to retrieve the detonator from Hook, and Hook is running and pulling a crying Belle with him as he does.
Cora and Jafar reach Rumpel as Hook presses the detonator, and there are three frozen instants before the explosives detonate, the magic within them keeping the blast contained to the three villains, gone in an instant while Emma and Regina look on.
"He wanted to destroy the house with you inside," Hook says later. "I couldn't allow that."
"I'll bet," Emma responds, because Belle won't speak to him at all and Regina prefers to remain neutral. This is a problem for the white hats, and she hasn't changed that much.
They endure.
Cora is gone, but there are new threats. (This witch that Jefferson has summoned from Oz is the first, but Regina doesn't doubt that there will be more.) Belle mourns Rumpel- who'd loved her even if it had been twisted and corrupted by the magic that had been his life- amidst the rest of the town's guarded happiness, and Regina thinks she understands better than most. Hook is locked away in prison until there's no point anymore, no threat on his part.
Emma moves in to the home that had been a prison- most recently to Cora, but before that to old grudges and vengeance when there'd been nothing else to live for. She storms out more often than is proper and Regina's pride rarely allows her to chase her down, but she always returns, and things are always better then.
They've changed, but they remain themselves, planted on firm ground.