A/N: many many thanks to my regular group of ficverse feeders, with the addition of the amazing strangesmallbard.
The blackness of sleep meets midday sunlight as Zelena awakens. The taste and smell of alcohol still lingers from the night before (and briefly, she's given an alarming reminder of her father, but she waves it away; he's not been a presence for years). Her pajamas are wrinkled and mis-buttoned.
She opens her eyes to Regina's toes and smacks them away, and she in turn murmurs in her sleep as she drools on the end of the bed.
Zelena rubs her eyes and pushes at Regina's shoulder with the heel of her foot. "Hey. Dancing queen."
Regina stirs, pulls the pillow from under her and brings it over her head. "Five more minutes."
"Don't you have a job to attend to? It's nearing noon."
She groans and slowly sits up only to plop back down next to Zelena. Her hair is mussed and the makeup not completely wiped clean, and Zelena only expects to look the same, probably worse.
"Yeah, well. Loose government has always been my way of things." Regina yawns and stretches, purposefully pushing Zelena with her outstretched feet and hands before she's lightly smacked away. "Did you have fun last night?"
"Yeah," Zelena replies, and it's almost curiously, like she didn't expect to have it, like she was not in a position to ever have it from the confines of this house. "It was nice. Yeah."
"I'm glad," Regina says genuinely. "I'm also glad that we managed to avoid a bar fight."
"Yeah, well. Tinkerbell took care of 'im for us, didn't she? Dust straight up the gut." She makes an exaggerated upward motion with her first. "People thought he was just being clumsy."
"Plays hard, that one."
"Makes me miss the days where fun came from the pain and humiliation of others," Zelena jokes, and it makes Regina give the appreciative laugh of someone who only knows the feeling.
And then––"So. Tinkerbell."
Zelena half groans half growls and brings up her covers over her head. Regina chuckles at her like she's overreacting.
"She is amiable and charming and you like that," Regina says, "It's fine."
"No, it's not," Zelena whines. "It's pathetic. Developing some sort of juvenile attachment to the first person who doesn't look at me like I'm made of … mud."
There's a pause, and Zelena can't see her face but she doesn't have the pressing need to look anyway. She's expecting Regina to dig further, carry on with this newfound routine of emotional crises, because she must know that without even mentioning him, she is talking about what she's learned from Rumple. What she's learned from the toxic desire to win him over. She must know. She's afraid that this conversation's taken a turn for the worse and that everything's going to get heavy again, but Regina keeps it up on their comfortable plane of banter.
"You maybe did have some mud at the back of your hair that day. Emma did push you down pretty hard." Her voice is saturated in jest, the wonderful little shit, and Zelena uncovers her head to smack Regina's arm, but not without a grin of her own.
"It's not pathetic," Regina sobers. "And it's not the same. It becomes the same when it becomes destructive."
Zelena maintains the silence only of someone who has been told what she realizes is true.
"Just be cautious," Regina adds. "Without that you two are a bomb waiting to happen."
Zelena scoffs, but the unease is ever present in her. "Caution. Such a foreign concept."
Then there's a low half gurgle half rumble emitting from their stomachs, and it brings attention to how absurd it is that they're bunched up together like teenagers at a slumber party. Like sisters.
Regina huffs something like amusement, rolls up and out of bed, pads towards the door. "I'll tell you what should never be a foreign concept: breakfast for lunch."
"Loose governing" or spending time elsewhere, Regina begins leaving Zelena home alone more often. She's enrolled Henry at Storybrooke High, which Zelena understands is much needed, but it's left her with too much time on her own.
She sits under the apple tree in the backyard, and though she takes comfort in stillness, her head swarms with unsettling thoughts and questions of where she is and where she belongs, and how long it will take her to get there. To equate safety with home instead of power, to see Robin and Regina and not think of Tinkerbell, who at this point may just be an abstract idea of somebody, and not feel a sort of rotting beginning in her stomach again –– to simply be who she is. But who is she? At her real core, who is she but someone who, in Regina's words, merely wants to be wanted?
Zelena sighs. She's been alive for so long. And she's spent it being stupid.
Her life is also supposedly one sick joke: everything in the universe compounds to create a moment of coincidence and twisted humor when the immediate cause of her existential crises literally flies right in.
"Zelena," Tink greets as her feet touch the grass, and she's genuinely pleased to see her, just like the time after she spilled coffee all over hoodie. "I was passing by. I hope you don't mind my company."
She should send her back on her merry way. But she's stupid. Stupid stupid. "No, no," Zelena says enthusiastically, even pats the space of grass next to her. She can't believe herself. But she's so lonely. "I was just enjoying the weather. Rather warmer than it is in the Forest, isn't it?"
Tink isn't even aware of how stupid Zelena sounds, either that or she's not showing it. She sits with her legs crossed on the grass with her back straight, wings fluttering slightly behind her. (The sight makes her miss the feeling of being in the air. This is a bad idea.)
"It is, love it actually," she replies, and usually when people look this happy about something like weather they're either hiding malicious intent or masking the shallow. But not with Tink, for whatever reason that Zelena can sense. "How are you feeling?"
When Zelena hesitates, because it's such a vague and broad question that she doesn't know how to answer, Tink immediately amends.
"Oh, I mean, about everything. Surely it must all be an adjustment. I imagine not every night is a trip to the Rabbit Hole."
"I'm making do," Zelena replies sheepishly, and it's not entirely a lie.
"I lost my magic once, too, you know," Tink says, and maybe Zelena's face is a little stunned. "I'm sorry, I wasn't really thinking, is that a sensitive topic? I just thought you might need someone to empathize––"
Cute and with a tendency to get her foot in her mouth.
"It's fine," Zelena says. "I don't really notice it's gone anymore."
"I bet you don't," Tink replies dubiously, and maybe it elicits a small, small grin from Zelena.
"I notice only when I feel threatened."
"Do you feel threatened now?" Tink teases, and gods.
"Of course not."
The jest softens into kindness. "Good. I want you to feel safe around me."
Zelena remembers Tink giving the magical equivalent to a sucker punch to that man in the bar days ago and oddly yes, yes she does feel safe. She'd like to.
"Listen," Tink begins, rising to leave, "I've got errands to run, but if you're bored and doing nothing at any time, don't be afraid to let me know?"
"Yeah, sure."
Tink waves goodbye and beams and as soon as she flies away Zelena closes her eyes and hits the back of her head on the trunk of the tree.
Yet, something possesses her to come to the backyard as part of her routine when Regina and Henry are out. She's thought it over, and if occupying her time with someone else makes it so that the voices in her head are silenced, then she'll take it. She'll read Wicked under the tree and occasionally look up at the sky to see if a certain fairy "passes by" again.
And she does, and begins to do so more and more frequently. Sometimes she'll stay long enough for Regina to come home and give them the shittiest, most smug grin. Sometimes Henry will join them after he's done with homework and at some point he hauls a giant duffle bag over and tells them how he's always wanted to put up a tent. In a short time the four of them are playing Scrabble in said tent at 9 P.M.
Someday Zelena will be able to feel this security outside of these grounds. She hopes that she and Regina will be loved as much as they feel they are here.
"You look happier," Regina tells her one night, and she's genuinely pleased. Her face is soft and bright.
"I am happier," Zelena replies, not without taking Regina's hand to remind her that she has been the key, she is the key. "I really think so."
Tink is discussing the properties of pixie and fairy dust while demonstrating on an apple, making it dance midair; goes on and on about the limited production in the Enchanted Forest and how thanks to a combination of this world's science and magic, Storybrooke can easily produce different kinds of dust. Zelena talks to her about what she'd read about them, their magical makeup, their origins. It is something Tink appreciates with an ear-to-ear flooding smile. ("You're like Regina. A 'big nerd', as they call it here.")
"It is said that the pixie dust also carries a kind of sentience. It's a kind that fairy dust doesn't have," Tink says, flicking stray specks downward to fallen leaves, making them levitate. "It's how it is used to find a person's soul mate. It connects to its user, analyzes their soul, if you will –– and leads them straight to the person who shares their, er, 'soul stuff', for lack of a better word."
"Yes, but sentience warrants subjectivity," Zelena replies with skepticism, but all in good nature, "so really the soul mate stuff is just interpretation, isn't it?"
"Pixie dust never lies," Tink states like it has been the only constant truth in her life.
"Sure. But you can't lie about what you interpret."
"Just as well. It just knows." Then Tink lifts up her vial of dust, waves it around enticingly. "Don't you want to try?"
Blood rushes up to Zelena's cheeks so fast that she couldn't possibly pass it off as merely due to sun.
"I don't think I'd agree with it's verdict." Having her destiny laid out in front of her was what got her into trouble in the first place, after all.
"Well," Tink begins to amend, misreading her nerves for shyness, "then think of it as a suggestion. If it's subjective as you say, it's not set in stone. And look how well it worked out for your sister!"
Zelena gives her a dubious look, but then Tink takes her hand and then that's it, her resolve is crumbled. "Fine, fine. Make it quick."
Perhaps this is what Regina meant when she told her to be cautious. Tink was all persuasion via glimmering eyes and ridiculous smiles. The two of them are a bomb waiting to happen.
"Okay, just keep still." Tink takes a pinch of the green dust and scatters it over Zelena (and maybe it makes her think of her, Henry, and Regina in the kitchen getting flour in each other's faces, though this is far, far more than a light hearted family moment).
The dust encircles her and the more it lingers the more invasive it feels.
"Perhaps I don't have enough 'soul stuff' for it to look through," Zelena jokes nervously.
"Just wait."
And then sure enough, a green light is cast above their heads and into the sky. It's almost a beautiful sight, and Zelena almost forgets what it's meant to do –– until the light bends back downward at Tink.
Suddenly, everything is very, very warm.
"That's odd," Tink says, bemused, moving her head out of the spotlight and squinting at the narrow archway the dust had created over them. "It's never done that before. There must be something wrong."
Zelena's eyes have not left Tink at all when she tries another pinch of dust. The archway simply intensifies in color, which only earns more of Tink's confusion. Zelena can't bear it anymore.
"Maybe it's not under the right conditions––"
"Tinkerbell," Zelena interrupts with barely restrained desperation. "It's pointing at you."
The blankness on Tink's bright face turns into a second of genuine surprise, the surprise that still has her smiling, and it lifts Zelena up and up and up –– and then she watches the very light leave her. Her eyes are hard. Not even a ghost of a smile graces her face. Her wings become limp, and the weight in Zelena's stomach falls.
She's full of coal, and there are no fires.
Regina's car comes into the driveway just after and Tink takes it as a cue to leave.
"I've got to be somewhere. I'll see you around."
Pixie dust may never lie, but certain fairies definitely do. "Yeah. See you."
The next day, because she's either a bleeding optimist or some kind of masochist or both, she's sitting under the tree again.
She isn't expecting it when someone sets foot in her field of vision. Her head springs up to look because maybe, hopefully it is Tinkerbell, but it's not.
It's Rumpelstiltskin, and her blood goes cold.
"What are you doing here?" She tries to keep her voice steady, but she's not who she was. She can no longer pretend that she's unafraid.
"Just thought I'd pay you a little friendly visit," he says, almost in hisses. Everything in her body is telling her to get up and run but she is like prey and there is no use in moving.
"Why do I get the feeling that this encounter will be anything but friendly?"
Rumple smirks. "You offend me, Zelena, truly." He knocks down an apple with his cane and catches it. He takes a crunchy, wet bite, and it's almost like a sick demonstration. He's looking down at her and she doesn't meet his eyes. "Regina's taken quite a liking to you, hasn't she?"
"Perhaps she has. Tell me, Rumple, what business do you have here?"
He takes another fruitful bite from the apple and it sounds like the crushing of little bones. It's downright sickening how much his casual demeanor jars with his words. "The kind that is unfinished, you see. Surely you must know, a namesake isn't enough to honor my son."
His unmerciful determination used to be what kept her blood pumping. Now it just makes her feel ill. She closes her eyes. Finish her.
Then she hears him laugh. "I'm not going to kill you, if that's what you're afraid of." He adds, slowly, with a slithery kind of quality: "I will admit that seeing your face as you fear for your life could be satisfaction enough."
"Get out of here, Rumpelstiltskin."
"Send me away all you like, dearie. You'll see soon enough that you're not really safe, regardless of whether or not I'm here to ensure that."
Zelena's jaw tightens. "I don't quite follow."
"Your downfall will be your precious sister," he says with appalling glee. "Taking care of you is nothing to her but a practice in power. You're perpetually leashed, my dear."
Zelena shakes her head, wincing, because it's wrong. "You don't know anything about Regina."
"In fact I do," he replies, tossing the apple on the ground by her feet. He walks away and she swears clumps of green turn to rust in his wake. "I practically created her myself."
She tells Regina only that he was here. She doesn't tell her what he'd said, but she gathers that the shaking of her voice gives away that it was anything but a harmless, amicable visitation.
Regina casts a protection spell, and she doesn't intend for it to be the end all and be all of this apparent Rumpelstiltskin situation, but it is a precaution that they would both be foolish not to take. The spell is enacted with light magic; it feels different than her own, if she can still remember how that truly felt –– but it feels warmer, smoother, like new blankets after Regina does the laundry, or hot cocoa in the morning, or the first time Regina touched Zelena's hand in the hospital.
Zelena tries not to think about how this was the same magic that brought her to the brink of death. And if she does, she thinks over and over again of how Regina cried over her and said: No more. That's enough. No more.
She sees Tinkerbell less often and it's easy to accept. Heartbreak is nothing foreign to Zelena. It is now just a matter of moving on. It's not the same and it becomes the same when it becomes destructive, and Zelena won't let that happen. Even if her existence as of late is a cycle of misery and fear.
Emma, after three months since her departure, has chosen to return. All of them––she, Regina, Henry, two idiots and the rapidly growing baby––are in the living room of the apartment awaiting her arrival.
When someone finally knocks, when Snow White opens the door and when it is Emma under the frame, there is a collective breath that is released by everyone but Zelena. She walks in and she looks just a little bit older, but she's brighter. Like she's learned something so, so profound while away and she's determined to show them.
Emma gives Zelena a regarding nod, interrupted by the intensity of Henry's hug. It elicits a laugh and Regina is beaming. There are tears in her eyes.
When she stops in front of Regina, they just look at each other for a while. Regina hugs Emma, then, and both of them are sniffling, and it feels so intimate that Zelena has to face the other direction.
She is glad for her sister. She is glad that she's making more amends with the people she clearly wants to keep. But Zelena is still full of coal and no fire, so maybe she feels something else, something that's been so dormant all this while. It makes her sick.