AN: Looks like I'll be shooting to update on Mondays (or at least once a week). Next week might be a little late since I'm relocating, swamped, & still up in the air on betas. I'll do my best to get it out. Something I forgot to note at the beginning since it goes back to S3: it's important to this story to remember that in Regina's mind, consuming the curse at the town line is 'like it was yesterday' and that Emma has just had the memories of her entire time in Storybrooke dumped on her head at once. I'll most likely be posting the playlist sometime in the next two weeks, with the sole intention of ripping your guts out like I keep ripping out my own ;) ::heart:: Enjoy.


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Chapter 2

Cyclone

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Regina stared at the wall where Emma had been.

The quiver that had settled inside of her broke into her lip as Emma drew out her retreat. Emma had stopped after she had her back turned to Regina to gather herself. She sighed, squeezed her eyes shut, swallowed hard, and then made her way for the door.

Regina stayed frozen, staring at some distant point into the wall, quickly becoming overcome with a slew of emotions. She saw a flash of blonde hair disappearing behind the door frame out of the corner of her eye.

" —Emma."

Emma pivoted around, and took a couple apprehensive steps past the threshold.

Regina paused for a breath, looking after her with trepidation and soft eyes. "You don't have to knock me out like some kind of cave person." She hushed and said more sincerely, "I'll come with you." She punctuated this with with a small, reticent smile that, despite its size, managed to meet her eyes with an odd kind of hopeful sheen that Emma wasn't familiar with.

A weight of tension visibly dropped off of Emma's shoulders. She wasn't expecting this. Maybe her words got through to Regina more than she'd thought.

"You will?"

Regina nodded. "But I need you to help me first. Protecting the baby."

Emma was actually really touched by the fact she was serious about this rather than simply using it as an excuse or a ploy. "Do you have any idea what to—"

"Yes," Regina said, her words becoming rapid and efficient. "But I need your magic. To make it strong enough that the Witch can't get past it."

Emma nodded and let out another heavy breath, as she continued to look at the other woman. She sucked in air to say…To say something. Nothing came out except for a brief and tiny smile.

"Regina..."

"Just don't. Just..figure out what to tell Henry and be ready to leave. I'll take care of the spell."

Emma could tell by the change in the tone of her voice that Regina was sincere. And it touched her more than she'd expected. That she'd changed her mind. She shifted, as if moving to hug the other woman and stopped herself. She almost thought she saw Regina do the same, but it could have been a flinch.

Emma cleared her throat. "Can we leave before dawn?"

"If everything goes well I can..teleport us to the western town line near the backroads."

"Good." A bit of Emma's former leadership steel returned.

"I'll meet you at Snow's—Mary Margaret's," Regina corrected herself, "as soon as I can. I just need to gather some things. And...and pack a bag. Um…" She sealed her eyes shut for a moment, with a breath. "Two and half hours, at the most?"

Emma nodded. She hedged, stumbling over her words, "Be careful." Regina seemed preoccupied in thought, so Emma collected herself and made to slip out the door—she stopped herself again after turning to leave.

"Regina."

"Yes, Emma?"

There was a pause as Emma breathed in the doorframe. She turned around to face Regina, steadying the air in her lungs, and looked at the other woman. Emma's countenance was a mixture of genuine warmth and softness that Regina did not feel should have been directed at her. So much so that she instinctively almost looked behind her to see if Henry was there. But that didn't last, because they seemed to exchange something non-verbally when their eyes connected.

Regina pored over her for a moment, getting unnerved: There was just something about Emma…That always made her ribs chatter. And reduced her formative descriptive words to either 'idiot', or a very specific kind of growl echoing through her skull.

Emma crossed to her rather suddenly.

She stopped and stood in front of Regina, and her eyes flicked past the startled little look on her face, studying her.

"Hey…" she said.

It was wrong. The way Emma was ignoring social protocol and looking at her like that, a determined little scowl of sincerity in her eyes.

"…What are you doing?" Regina asked, a little choked.

"I just…" Her eyes darted. "I…I just…" She swallowed and leaned her gaze closer into Regina's, looking into her intensely.

An ember plunked into Regina's solar plexus, accompanied by abject fear.

Emma's eyes stopped flicking across Regina's face. Her voice became faint and still. "I know how hard you try sometimes. But you can't hide everything. Not even in the dark...Not from me."

"What are you doing?" Regina asked more anxiously, her pulse hammering through her chest. Emma's eyes were too close to her, and too persistent. But she couldn't bring herself to tear her own away.

Emma wavered. She tentatively reached out and wrapped her arms around Regina, pulled her chin over Regina's shoulder, and tugging her close.

Regina had almost been expecting it to hurt. But that's not what it felt like at all…It was like a smothering weight was being lifted off of her; one that had been suffocating her, that she'd been carrying so long she'd forgotten it was there. It felt so good and overdue somehow. So surprisingly natural, which was probably what threw her the most at first. She decompressed into Emma. Her breath trilled out over the other woman's ear before her, and into the soft blonde tresses against it. She couldn't help slipping her fingers into them, and pulled Emma against her, inhaling her scent. For the first time, which seemed wrong, given everything they'd been through.

"It's gonna be okay," she heard Emma mumble. But Regina was almost distracted away from the words by their vibration against her. Emma wrapped her arm closer, all the way around Regina's back, and grasped onto her far shoulder, pressing her head further into the embrace. "…With Henry, with everything. We're gonna...fix it, we just need to stick together." Emma was practically breathing her words, and Regina was floating further and further away from them, from a place where her feet touched the ground.

"It's gonna be okay." Emma repeated, whispering. It wasn't until Emma tightened her grip on the back of her shoulder and instinctively pressed her lips into her neck—that Regina realized there were tears streaming down her own face.

She was oblivious to how long they had been there; to at what point she'd started crying. But she was too distracted right now to care—by Emma's actions, by Emma's proximity. And by the unrelenting pins and needles of a smolder that had risen up under her skin the second she felt Emma's lips on her neck.

"I promise," Emma mumbled distantly into her neck, her breath against her skin, and her forehead coming to rest on the other woman's cheek bone. Her hand shifted and moved up to the back of Regina's neck. Something churned and sprang open between them at the contact. Emma's hand trembled. A warmth washed between the two of them, settling into the back of their lungs.

Before either of them could think, Emma's hand was trickling down the side of Regina's cheek against the tracks that her tears had made. Her fingertips were tentatively pressing back up against the crook at the underside of her jaw on their own accord with a persistent and soothing knead. It caused Regina to shiver. She tried to stifle the pulsing, vicious tremble that was racking up the back of her leg—despite her desires—that threatened to spill into the jawbone under Emma's hand. But, then Emma's lips were brushing against Regina's chin, dragging across her skin from where they had been tucked against her, and stealing away a patch of wetness. It was a half kiss. Something that may or may not have been intended as one. And Regina's breath erupted.

Regina closed her eyes, frozen in the sensation of the foreign touch for just an instant, her breath overtaking her, and her body compelled by its own devices. Her eyes darkened and dropped towards the other woman's, where they still lay hidden against her. Emma began to drag her nose across her cheek; her hot, unsteady breath curling out against it. She seemed like she was in a trance and just starting to notice the rest of Regina that was in front of her, every part of her that was touching Regina unsteady, but focused.

Emma stared at Regina's lips as she emerged in front of her...closer.

The echo of that 'Emma-Swan-growl' ripped through the back of Regina's mind. And on an impulse, she came apart. She grabbed the back of her jaw, and pulled Emma's lips to her own, not bothering to think of the consequences.

To Regina's surprise, rather than pulling away—Emma clung to her. She pressed towards her and kissed her back. Something liquid and lightning poured through Regina that was more powerful than any sense of rationality or will power. There was a desperation between them.

Their lips molded together harder.A guttural, distant whine slipped out from someone at the release, between soft wet skin. And then all of the breath in the room came to a halt— It was like a car crash. For a moment there was stillness, and utter pressing silence. And then everything was colliding together. The pressure between their lips folded when Emma gained the traction to suck on her lower lip with the same amount of force, and then consumed Regina's lips with her own; a gesture Regina returned with a vengeance.

Emma's lips circled around hers. Her tongue was slid into her mouth, and Regina's body took her over completely. She grabbed onto the other woman, and was hurtling into her in a space where gravity had been sucked from the room. And before either of them could grasp it: there was pressing and grasping and hands, stumbling and need. And Regina's palm, still pressed against the curve of Emma's jaw and descended across it, was the only thing keeping her centered enough to stay on her feet.

Her fingers searched for some kind of desperate hold. Emma's mouth was all over her, in her; she couldn't breathe. Emma. Emma was on her. Emma was in her. Soft, warm, wet, strong Emma. GOD, Emma was a good kisser— Regina didn't know what was happening. Her entire body was on fire. Emma's mouth undulated against hers. Her tongue probed into its entrance, and began to connect with her own. She gasped into it. The feeling sent sharp chills through her, it shook the muscles of her body against their own fibre. She felt like a balloon that had been cut loose into a hurricane.

Emma stumbled back a couple of steps, still hanging onto Regina, and almost knocked over a book cart. Regina barely registered the intrusion when they collided into a shelf behind it, knocking books into the air. It seemed like an eternity, though it had only been a couple of seconds, before they jared hard against a wall and Emma's back found the stable thing they needed.

Regina hung onto Emma, practically climbing her to some unreachable place, wanting, willing, to press their bodies closer together but frozen in sensory overload.

"Regina..." Emma finally gasped, and her hands clawed up Regina's neck, clutching at her clothing and grasping through her hair with an electric charge: Emma seemed inundated by it, almost shaking. All Regina could do was try to swallow it. She was kissing Emma harder and more passionately than she'd ever even thought about kissing someone before in her life, capturing her lips with an intensity she'd once used to punch the other woman in the face. Emma.

Regina didn't realize that the desperate moan filling the air came from her.

She didn't realize her vision was blurry for the tears stinging her eyes.

She ravaged Emma's mouth, and hovered over the gasps that bound them together, like an angry serpent constricting in upon itself, as Emma started to bow over against the wall under her touch, whimpering in her throat until it turned to shudders. She didn't notice the tears starting to escape from the blonde in sync with the shudders reaching up through her body.

The way Emma was kissing her back made her sure she would fall over.

The room seemed like it was whirling around.

Somewhere beyond the walls, a shriek of wind hammered against the clock tower above them and rattled the building. Before Emma could pull their bodies flush where she'd tangled her grasp in Regina's clothes, they were on their knees.

Regina grasped the side of Emma's head on the cusp of a breath, both hands tangling in the honeyed locks: she propped it flush against the wall, and leveraged her tongue inside of her. Emma whimpered, shuddering at the act. One of Regina's hands descended, angling Emma's jaw, and began to scrape her nails down across Emma's neck: she was nibbling Emma's lower lip like there was something there she needed, her thumb pressing across the woman's jugular.

Emma's eyes were seared shut, and she was trembling. "Regina," she gasped.

Regina answered her by wrapping her mouth around Emma's again, with a desperate kind of ferocity, bellied in the gesture itself rather than its execution, and she pressed Emma's head firmly into the back of the wall with her kiss. "—Shutup," Regina growled with a heavy throat, her voice cracked and carnal, and her throat heavy and struggling for air. "Just shut up.." And she kissed her again. She was crying. Why was she crying?

A short, high pitched gasp, emitted from Emma, her the breath escaping from her lungs in sharp little exhales, and with every breath she struggled to take in, Regina undulated into her kisses. "What's happening..." Emma pleaded, her words breaking through her breathe.

"...Shut up," Regina sobbed, and tried to kiss her again. But it was turning into something more poignant, and she didn't have the strength, or skill, or understanding, or anything, to stop it.

Regina sucked on Emma's tongue, pulling it into her mouth. She pressed her lower body into Emma's—and because Emma had been about to say something, a wanton, feminine gasp escaped her. Her hands slid up under Regina's jacket. She clawed at her lower back, and started trailing slow, hard pressed circles where the shirt had bunched up and her hands came in contact with skin.

It caused Regina to tremble, and begin to lose her strength, as she clung to the other woman, searching for breath in a place she couldn't reach. Her palms traipsed across the wetness of tears on Emma's cheeks, and it jostled her.

"...Regina." Emma said, imploring, almost begging.

Emma tried not to press her hips up into the woman because she knew she may not stop until the world disappeared and exploded a hundred times. And instead of saying anything, instead of submitting to the wet emotion threatening to spill out into the night—they kissed.

But something else was being said, a sweetness, a softness was starting to seep in that was saturating every high part of Emma's brain, and she couldn't help the sob that escaped into the other woman's mouth. Regina seemed to swallow it in response. Egging her on. She kissed the woman with a soft sincerity—something Emma could have only dreamed existed inside of the fierce woman. It was like Regina had been broken open. It was like she couldn't stop it if she tried, and holding onto Emma was the only thing keeping her together.

Emma then impulsively did something she later wouldn't quite understand. But at the time, she didn't really need to.

Something clenched in the pit of her stomach, her eyes went a little wide. She took Regina's head in both her hands and peered unapologetically into her eyes, a pale look of shock still lacing her own.

"Regina...?" she whispered, swallowing a nervous title-wave that lapped up her spine and made her shake. "... I .. I love you…" Regina froze—wide eyed. Emma reacted to her own words, in part like she wasn't the one saying it; was hearing it from someone else, but she still refused to falter in holding Regina's gaze. They both struggled to catch their breath.

Regina slowly began to shake her head, as her eyes teared up.

" - No." Regina's voice rattled, cracking, and her head shook slowly in wider and wider arcs, sobs building in her throat.

Emma furrowed her brow at this, and nodded. She tried to get Regina to keep looking at her, her eyes wide but her heart filling up as she stared at the other woman—the meaning behind the response that was itching at her tongue began to to hit her and reaffirm the truth of the sentiment for herself. "Yes," she breathed, nodding against her own emotions again.

But Regina couldn't look at her and was shaking her head in a panicky way. "No," she whispered, "No, no no..." her voice cracked and tears spilled out of her eyes, as she bowed towards Emma's body, away from her gaze, "...you can't," she said in a broken wavering sob. "No," she said more fiercely, with a lace of anger.

Despite Regina's words she was curling into the other woman, grasping onto her and shaking.

"Yes...Regina…" Emma tried to get her head up again, "I… I love you..." she said again in a sharp whisper, her own breath quaking, but the sentiment firm. She was still in awe of the words that were leaving her own mouth. Regina paused as Emma said this and, despite trying to keep it in, she broke freely into tears and buried herself in Emma's shoulder, clinging to her. "Hey...It's okay," Emma started to tear up herself, "Okay?...You can hate me, I…"

"No." Regina said again, and an unsteady hand came up against Emma's neck as she buried herself tighter into her shoulder, shaking.

'...Oh God.' Emma thought— 'I just fucked everything up. I just fucked everything up really bad, didn't I?' —It started to run like a mantra in her head, but she didn't say it out loud for fear doing so would make it worse. And that it might actually be true.

Regina clung to Emma like that for a long time. Until the shuddering in her body tightened and her sobs died off. Emma held onto her as tight as she dared, not knowing what to do, but wanting to do so much more. She felt like she'd melted, and was now flooded in her own hot wax. A moment of peace passed between them. Her hand clasped across Regina's back, and she felt Regina's breath steady. Regina's head turned in—And a drawn out, feathery kiss pressed against her neck. The simple act was so soft it was maddening. It was incredibly electric in that moment, and Emma couldn't help but breathe into it for as long as it lasted...But then, ever so slowly, there was another one.

Regina shifted a couple inches down on Emma's neck and there was another, and another. Regina's face pressed all the way into the crook of her neck, and the pressure and intensity of the gesture increased so noticeably it ran a shiver up Emma's spine and set her skin across her shoulders on fire.

"R'hgina?" she breathed, strangled by the lips attaching just above her collarbone. "What are you...you don't have...to—" she was cut off almost instantly by the same soft lips connecting with her own, "mnh...?"

"Shhh." Regina gestured a finger towards her lips without touching them. Then kissed her again, more surely this time, a little gusty noise emanating from the top of her throat. A piece of Regina that Emma had never seen before was there, an air to her that was somehow light and free but gravely and grounded at the same time. It was almost young, or even coquettish.

Regina pulled her chest in close to Emma and looked down at her through lidded eyes, her lips a breath away.

Emma was dumbstruck, her lips parted in awe as the woman shyly trailed a light finger across the length of her jaw, sending tingles through her skin, and then back and forth again in a tight pattern, looking down at it as she did.

"Did you mean it?" Regina breathed in a rushed staccato whisper against her ear, before returning her gaze to the trailing finger.

Emma's heart was thudding into her throat, through her skull. It was difficult to hear. Regina's fingers were cold and she had a compulsion to warm them. She reached out and smoothed her hand out over the side of Regina's face, reverence in her touch, half baffled by the fact she was actually touching her. Like there shouldn't really be a solid person there. She leveled the woman's face towards her, her touch soft but firm, until Regina's gaze popped up past her lashes into Emma's eyes. Emma got stuck for a second on her words. She had never really looked at Regina's eyes like this before. And even in the muted light, she fell into them.

"Emma...?" Regina asked apprehensively.

"What?" she said absently.

That shy woman in front of her, actually grabbed her jaw aggressively and jerked it a little, leaning in with her gaze. "Did you mean it?" But there was a light gleam in her eye, in her tone, that Emma hadn't seen before. And along with the move, Regina pivoted herself in flirtation on Emma's lap—it was certainly pointed enough not to go unnoticed.

"Fffu..uhnhh—yes...Yes," Emma gasped. She sured up a little with a thick swallow, recovering herself. "I meant it," she said, looking Regina in the eye, offering a quick glance as she stretched her fingers out to smooth away a dark lock, jerking them away before she did.

Regina made some soft vowel noise in the the back of her throat as she glanced over the blonde's features—the expression on her face now one of a hunting animal. She smiled. It was a smile much more like the woman Emma had come to know. And because of that, it drove her slightly mad.

"Good," Regina drawled. It was breathy, though sincere. Not something that could have been mistaken for the pure divisiveness, or simple coy attitude of 'the Evil Queen'. That was what the throaty little half chuckle she punctuated it with was for.

She bent in and kissed Emma again.

After a long, indulgent moment passed that left them both grounded but dazed, Regina's lips came to a parted rest on top of Emma's, swollen and tingling.

"What are we going to..do?" she breathed. It was a loaded question that came off more as a statement. Her brow furrowed. Reality hung back in the air. And she was visibly swallowing down a wave of latent emotion.

"Hey..." Emma breathed. She grasped a shaky hand around Regina's flushed and tear-stained jaw, and pressed a thumb lightly under her chin to try get Regina to look at her again.

"I'll come with you, Emma," Regina breathed against her cheek.

Emma had to close her eyes at the contact. An unspoken sigh undulated down her shoulders, as she clutched Regina a little closer in relief. "..Thank you," Emma whispered back against her.

It felt like they were clinging on to one another as life-rafts; in some kind of explosive blur inside a liminal spell. Emma knew if they let go, the shock of that very contact would quickly disappear like a receding fog. But she forced herself to do it. Because she had a nagging sense that if she didn't, they wouldn't make it out of Storybrooke. She knew somewhere in her gut that if she didn't, they may not make it out of this room for a very long time.

"Go...get packed," she whispered.

She smoothed her hand reverently across the side of Regina's face in an attempt to steady both of them, and to wash away the nudity and trauma in the air. "I'll figure out what to tell Henry. Go get ready."

-X-