I don't own Once Upon a Time or it's characters, I just like to borrow them.
This isn't my usual style and I still have no idea where it came from but be warned, angst ahead.
"Regina, please. Just get in the car." Emma said, her frustration growing at the woman in front of her.
"I'm fine. I won't be needing your services this evening, Sheriff." The title rolling off her tongue like it was leaving a bitter taste in her mouth.
"I'm gonna have to disagree with you…"
"Don't you always?" Regina's tone was biting and the accusation hung in the air.
"Regina, you're miles from town, you aren't wearing shoes, and you can barely stand up straight. Despite the valiant effort to show me otherwise. Let me take you home." Emma looked at the broken woman in front of her and couldn't help but wonder if she wasn't the cause of it. Hair mussed, her makeup smeared, feet bloodied and bruised. Nothing like the woman she'd tried so desperately not to fall in love with and yet somehow standing there in the middle of no where, it was evident once again that she had failed miserably. All she wanted to do was take the woman in her arms and comfort her, whisper in her ear that everything would be alright. She knew if she did though she would be pushed away, like so many times before, and Emma's heart wouldn't withstand another rejection.
Regina only stared at Emma, the battle to surrender swirling in her eyes. This woman, once again coming to her rescue, was the reason she was on this deserted road, drunk and tired and messy. She needed to feel something tonight, the walls of her house too confining anymore, she ran, soaking in the feeling of the ground beneath her feet. Cutting and bruising and aching, but it was something. She couldn't feel the things that the woman begging her to get in the car made her want to feel. Too dangerous, too much, too messy. That word again. Regina Mills did not do messy and yet she had been driven to that exact thing she was trying to avoid. She laughed to herself at the irony. "Messy." She mumbled, stumbling, bracing herself for the fall before strong arms circled her waist and kept her upright.
Emma pulled Regina towards her, trying to keep them both upright, and stilled the moment she felt the contented sigh escape Regina's lips. The moment of peace shattered when Emma felt the sobs wrack the small body in her arms, Regina's moment of weakness realized and the effort to hold back too much. Emma tightened her hold and walked them both backwards towards the waiting car. She tried to released one arm to open the door to the back seat and Regina clawed at it, pulling it back to circle her waist. "I'm not letting go, I just want to get us in the car." Emma whispered into dark hair, her words soaking in slowly as the grip lessened on her arm.
With the door opened, Emma slid herself down onto the seat pulling the other woman in with her, her back resting against the other door, Regina nestled between her legs in the tight space. She kept both her arms wrapped around the woman, the sobs still wracking her body. She breathed in Regina's scent, cursing herself for her own weakness, and continued to whisper soothingly into Regina's ear. Her only comfort in the moment, the fact that Regina wouldn't remember any of this in the morning. She would walk away, again.
The sobs slowed and Regina's breathing evened out, the arms holding hers in place slack, the alcohol taking its toll. Emma waited a few more minutes before twisting around the open up the door she was leaning against, sliding out of her hold, and laying Regina down fully on the seat. She climbed into the driver's seat, checked the rearview mirror to make sure the woman was still out, started the car and headed back towards town.
When she pulled up in front of the manor Emma checked the mirror again and found the woman still soundly sleeping. She jogged to the front door opening it wide and headed back to the car, gathering the small woman in her arms. She slowly made her way up the walkway and into the house, kicking the door shut with her leg and started up the stairs. Her thighs burning with every step, she finally made her way to the top, breathing out a sigh of relief that she hadn't had to set the sleeping woman down before she made it to her bed.
She laid the woman down on top of the covers and after a moments hesitation she removed her pants, the bottom's wet and dirty. As she pulled them down over slim hips and over battered feet Emma knew she couldn't leave her like this either. She headed to the bathroom for supplies and pulled the chair from the vanity over to the bed to help make her task easier. She wiped and cleaned and bandaged the feet as good as she could, her effort laughable at best, but hopefully enough to stave off infection until morning. Putting everything back where she found it, Emma stopped by the bed one last time to pull the covers over the woman and cursing her weakness again, she leaned down and placed a lingering kiss to her forehead. As she pulled back she was surprised to find wide, dark eyes staring up at her.
Emma watched, frozen, as Regina's hand came up from the bed and slid across her cheek tucking stray blonde hair behind her ear in an eerily intimate gesture. "My beautiful, sweet, good, Emma…" Regina whispered, the words filled with regret and pain and love.
The anger bubbled up inside Emma and she wanted to claw away the hand from her cheek, rage against the voice that dared to sound loving when she'd been denied so many times before, but all she could do was try and stop the tears burning in her eyes as she searched for something in the ones looking back at her. Something that would tell her this wasn't all a joke, a trick to batter her broken heart again. Finding nothing, the tears leaked out and she wiped them away, angry with herself for still feeling this much. Regina's hand moved, sliding down her neck and across her chest, resting just above her beating her. Emma wondered if this was the moment that Regina finally would put her out of her misery, finally just take what had been hers for so long and crush it once and for all.
Regina felt the hammering, the pounding, as she rested her hand above the spot that she knew Emma kept so guarded from everyone. She looked into Emma's eyes, desperate to see the love shining from them that she'd been so resolute in shutting out not long ago. A shimmer, between tears was all she needed to whisper the words Emma should have heard from her weeks ago. "Please, try. Keep trying…"
Emma's breath caught in her throat and she backed away, slumping down against the wall and she let the tears flow freely. The memory Regina's words unlocked floating in her head.
"Regina! Please! I'm trying, I'm trying so fucking hard to break through those walls you keep around your heart and I can't. I can't anymore unless you give me something…" Emma screamed, another attempt at coaxing something more from their late night meets blowing up spectacularly. Frustration pouring from her veins, Emma paced the office, waiting for the woman's cast off.
"Maybe I don't want you too! Did you once think about that? That maybe these talks, these nights where we seek each other out are nothing more than a distraction for me? Something to quell the boredom of this small town life?" Regina spat back, her words all lies but Emma's super power failing as it always did when it came to her. She wanted Emma, wanted Emma's love but she couldn't surrender, give it away with out breaking herself and she didn't yet trust Emma to be there to put the pieces back together.
Emma's pacing stopped and she stared at the woman perched in the chair by the fire. With a nod of her head, like she was coming to some sort of agreement with herself she turned to the door to walk out for the last time. "Fine, Regina. If that's all this is then I'm done. I'm done trying. If there's anything more tell me now or I'm walking out and I'm never coming back…I can't keep doing this to my heart…" Emma waited for anything, something to keep her from turning the door knob and when the minutes ticked by without a sound she bowed her head and wrenched the door open. She stepped through, never looking back at the woman crying silently by the fire, choking on the words she wanted, needed to say.
The memory suffocated her, breaking her into pieces just like it had that night and every night since. She cried the tears she'd held back over the last few weeks until there was nothing left. Nothing left, but to wait and see what the morning brought.