A/N: I'm sure others have pursued this line of thought and made better fics too but H&V just wouldn't leave me alone. Minus the whole Regina-in-mortal-peril-for-the-nth time fact, the whole set-up was perfect for swan queen. Canon practically removed the obstacles. Hook's dead and Robin is bro-in-law, he's practically family…
Disclaimer: I own none of them, no not one. All the characters belong to Disney, abc, Adam and Eddy, and whoever else has a claim to them. The setting belongs to Isaac and his creator and whoever else that owns his shit.
Warnings: Beware of grammatical mistakes and fuckups. This is unbeta-ed and practically unedited. You have been warned. Please proceed with caution.
She can hear the church bells ringing. The sign of the end of the book.
They lost.
Isaac won.
Regina didn't stop the wedding. She chose to protect Henry. Time and again, even when the woman has no memory of her son, she protected him. Something that Emma could not do. Some Savior she was. Now she knows how Jefferson felt like during the first curse. Burdened with the truth that no one believed, like Cassandra's predictions. No matter what she says or does, no one believes. She's useless without her magic.
All Emma can do was watch. Watch as the world she knows crumble and reform, where everything good is twisted into something evil. Watch as her lover die by the sword her father wields at her mother's command. Watch as the mother of her son lies, bleeding to death, for saving a boy she doesn't remember. Regina is at death's door again because of her incompetence as Savior.
She can hear Henry screaming and begging for Regina not to give up. She can see Robin holding her hand, keeping vigil as she slips into unconsciousness. Even at three paces away, Emma can feel Regina ebbing away. Emma couldn't move, she couldn't even breathe.
It was her fault that Regina was dying, that the woman was trying to keep her stomach and half of her intestines inside instead of slipping onto the dirty ground. If she hadn't convinced the bandit to follow her heart, Regina would have been halfway across the forest by now, probably on a ship off to some other kingdom. If Emma had not given her hope that the other woman could have her once-upon-a-time in-another-life soul mate then this would not have happened. Her son would not have to see his adopted mother die slowly in front of his eyes.
"Too little, too late"
Emma twists and her fist connects with the author's jaw, knocking off his bag and making Isaac fall on his ass. Then she stalks up to the man on the ground and grabs him around the collar of his suit.
"Then you're going to change things. Return them to the way they were. Bring back Hook, save Regina," Emma says as she drags him to where the contents of his bag were scattered around and threw him next to the pen.
"You can't bring back the dead," he scoffs. "Besides I can't change a thing." Isaac stands and brushes his suit pants, movements unhurried. He doesn't need to worry. He already won.
"Then fix this. Heal her or write me back my magic so I can. I don't care how you do it but fix this," Emma cries, pointing to where Henry was screaming at the onlookers to look for a doctor, a healer, anything.
"Didn't you hear me, Savior?" Isaac replies. He picks up the pen and waves it in front of Emma's face. "I can't change a thing. I'm no longer the author." Then he smiled.
Emma grabs the pen with her left hand and uses her right to land a solid into Isaac's face. She doesn't care that she knocked the living daylights out of the author or that Isaac hit his head on a rock on his way down. Emma doesn't care if he doesn't wakes up. Regina's life was slipping. She can feel it. She can't use her blonde locks to stitch her up. They need a surgeon, like Whale of all people. Or magic. They really need magic right now.
If they had magic, Regina could heal herself or Emma could heal the brunette. But if they had magic, they would not have been in this mess in the first place. But only ones that had magic, which Emma knew of, in this incarnation of the world was Lily, her mother, and the Light One. Lily was a dragon prison guard, her mother turned into an unCharming bitch queen and the Light One himself slashed Regina's midsection open for the whole world to see. She can't expect help from any of them. Emma's grip on the pen tightened so hard but she's too distracted feel the wood begin to crack.
"…mma. Emma! Ma!" Emma was snapped from her reverie by Henry's cry and quickly made her way over to her son, "Mom's not breathing. Emma, she sto-sto-p-stopped breathing!" She can see one of Henry's hands on top of Regina's wound, trying to help Robin staunch the blood. Henry then moved his hand to cradle his mother's face, smearing her skin with her blood, positioning his shaking fingers below her nose to check for breath. Her son then proceeds with CPR. Emma doesn't remember when or how Henry learned to administer CPR but she knows it won't work, not with Regina's internal organs peeking out in-between Robin's fingers.
Emma crumples onto the ground at Regina's right, gripping the pen like a lifeline, like it would help her keep her sanity. She looked over to Robin, silently asking, trying not to be obvious to Henry. The former thief turned, tilting his head in her direction.
"It's only a matter of time," Robin whispered, "the wound is too deep. Go, get the boy and comfort him. He should not see this. Regina's too far gone, I doubt if even magic could help her. I'll stay and keep her company."
Emma nodded her assent and made a move to pull Henry away from his dying mother. "Henry," she says as soothingly possible, trying to coax the boy to move.
"No. No, Emma," Henry whispers. His whole body stills and slowly looks at her, staring Emma right in the eye. She can see his tear-stained face, snot flowing from his nose, her son's eyes. Then he gave his broken, anguished plea.
"Ma, please. Help."
"I-I-I, Henry, I, Regina, s-she…" Emma stuttered but Henry's steady look did not waver. Emma was at her wits end. She bows her head and looks at Regina, moves closer to the woman who has already stopped moving and is lying deathly pale and still. True Love's Kiss won't magically rearrange her intestines back inside her abdomen, won't sew it all together in nice even stitches. It's not a curse, it's a sword wound, a deadly one. Besides, the woman's soul mate just got married to her wicked half-sister. Emma couldn't just shove Robin's face into the other woman's mouth. Regina might sit up to punch her in the face but Emma's not counting on it. She's shaking and hyperventilating. She doesn't know how to take away her son's pain. Doesn't know how to save Regina this time.
"I can't save her, Henry," Emma confesses softly. "I can't. I'm sorry, Regina. I'm so sorry." The blond moves closer, takes the brunette's upper body onto her lap, not mindful of the blood. She cradle's the other woman while repeating her apologies again and again, tears finally running down her cheeks. Henry moves closer and kisses his adopted mother's cheek, begging her to open her eyes. When she would not, Henry turns to Robin and bids him to go after his new bride, and to please help the others search for a healer.
Once Robin left, Henry replaces his hands on Regina, trying to replace all the lost blood back into her body. He's crying freely, begging every deity he knows of, any magical being, anyone to please save his mom. Emma also places her fist on top of Regina's wound as she continues to rock back and forth uttering apology after apology for all the wrong and the perceived wrong that she has ever done to the brunette. She pushes on Regina, trying to shake the woman awake, finally breaking the author's pen she's been holding. The shoot of pain makes her drop it onto Regina and Emma looks at her hand but couldn't see if she had cut herself with all the blood that was already staining herself.
"Emma, what the hell?"
"Kid, I know she's dying," Emma says as she replaces her hurt hand onto Regina, "but she'll kill us if you start swea-r-ring. What the fuck?" The blonde finally looks up and sees light surrounding all three of them. White and purple strips of light flowing and dancing around, twisting to form lavender whenever they meet. There also seems to be the smell of cinnamon with a hint of apples under the pervasive smell of blood.
The circle of light closes in and shrinks some more until it only covers the wound on Regina's belly and their hands. Emma can feel the woman's skin closing itself, repairing the damage.
"Ewww. Ma, take your hand back. It might get stuck inside mom!" Emma quickly complied with a grin and looked up at Henry to see his anguished face transformed by happy tears and a joyful laugh. "The pen has magic, Emma. It's healing mom. She's still pale though." The circle of interconnecting lights grew smaller as Regina's wound closes itself. Emma also notices that the smell of apples and cinnamon grew stronger overpowering the stench of the brunette's near death.
"Rumple slashed her open, Kid. Your mom lost a lot of blood. And I don't think the forest floor would be the best place for her to sleep this off," Emma replies as she untucks Regina's shirt to discover blood-smeared, enviously unblemished olive skin. Then a thought pinged and she slapped a palm to her forehead. "Shit, Kid. We could have used your key and that map," Emma says, giving Henry the stink-eye.
"Oh, don't look at me like that. You can't expect me to remember all the details, Emma. My mom almost died. I panicked." Henry answers, a bit offended that his birth mother blame this on him, "Besides, it's not as if we know where all the doctors hang out during the weekends," he adds to lessen the blow. Emma has just lost Hook and she was clearly as affected to see Regina bloody and vulnerable.
"I'm sorry, Henry. But seriously, we need to get her off the forest floor. Night's falling and the cold would not do her favors. I'll carry her and you ready our transpo."
Henry wiped the blood out of his hands and quickly pulled out the slightly burned map out of his coat pocket and shook out the key from the folds of the paper. He opened the book's former centerfold and chose a city outside of Snow's domain, on one of the bigger islands to the south of the Enchanted Forest. He looked at Emma, only to see the blonde carrying his brunette mother bridal style. Henry wrapped his arm around Regina's limp one to make sure that their all linked together and inserted the key to the page.
Gold light spilled forth from the page and engulfed all three of them. Henry and Emma braced themselves as they were teleported right outside the city Henry was aiming for, a foot off the ground.
There was still daylight in the sky when they finally checked into the first inn they could find using Regina's hard-earned stolen tax money. Henry also used the money to buy a change of clothes for all of them and order dinner while Emma cleaned Regina as much as she can using a towel and warm water. Once they were changed and fed, the two decided to strip the bed of its furs and lay it on the floor so that they can sleep on both sides of Regina to keep her warm without falling off the bed.
For the next few days, they alternately kept Regina warm and cooled her skin as fever struck. They called on different healers to alleviate her pain and followed all their instructions meticulously. Henry stayed with his bedridden mother most of the day when Emma was doing odd jobs here and there trying to increase their dwindling supply of stolen coins. Both mother and son talk to their patient even though she's asleep. Henry mostly talks about how this world differs from Storybrooke, his driving skills on both car and horse, and his operations on how to make the brunette remember him get back home. At night, Emma tells of her fears that they can never return, her guilt at never telling Killian that she loved him, missing her parents and everyone from Storybrooke. Both were just so thankful that the magic healed Regina that they never asked where it came from and what was its price.
By the fifth night, Regina's fever broke and the healer was most certain that she'd recover. But it wasn't until the seventh morning that she woke up while Henry was out getting breakfast.
"Ms. Swan, where the hell am I?"
A/N: Round of applause to you that were able to read all the way without gouging your eyes out. That's pretty much the extent of my writing capabilities, so that's the end of this fic. That plot bunny can now be shoved into its grave. Fuck, this was hard. New found respect to authors putting up thousand thousand word updates. Thanks for reading my first fic. Please leave a review. Tell me how much I suck at writing.