The mind is a funny little thing.
It blunders with some concepts,that are matter of fact and it easily eases into others that most definitely aren't.
Birth and Death and Life and Faith and Love and such are subjects that have cracked the skulls and hearts of fools and wisemen alike for generations and centuries.
And yet reality, as a concept, as a word in the dictionary, has always been easily enough accepted and tucked safely away in the recesses of one's mind.
Such luxury for a thing so cumbersome for some and so irrelevant to others.
Such certainty for a thing so subjective.
An individual perception taught by parents and environment.
To some it is taught by their children
The savior,of course.
Emma was sitting on the mayor's very white couch.
How the queen managed to keep the upholstery this exact shade of whitest white and spotless to boot with a ten year old around was a mystery not even the use of dark magic could explain.
Dark Magic. Savior.
Pinocchio.
Poisoned Apples.
Not believing was a luxury Emma Swan could not afford anymore with her son's life in the gamble.
She believed,because she had to.
A book, a curse, an unfound miracle..
There was no wondering what her role, her place in this new world she suddenly found herself in was.
It was written.
She was the savior.
She was the magic being who was to break a curse.
The curse, that held them all enthralled.
All of them,but her.
-And the queen.
Regina having found her way back to her old self sauntered into the living room with two crystal tumblers of amber liquid in her hands.
Her eyes were still red rimmed, there were dark lines underneath them, that weren't to be attributed to the flawless make up she had touched up upon.
Maybe she wasn't all of her old self,yet, but there was as always, the old animosity and challenge in her eyes when she addressed Emma.
"I take it,you don't care for any soda, or maybe even," she smiled a smile that was more of a sneer " a spritz of lime?".
Emma set her lips in a line, "This is fine, thank you." she couldn't help the barb " I hope there are no other special ingredients."
At this,the mayor blanched,almost imperceptibly,and Emma Swan, was,for once, sorry about her goading.
"Look, this has got to stop." the blonde tried to lighten the mood "Both of us want to help Henry.", change it into something more productive,for, by the Grace of God, this needed to change,too, a stalemate of bitchiness would get them nowhere..and Emma,really, was sorry.
The mayor had sat down next to her, letting her brown eyes lose focus in the finely chiseled crystal she contained in her grasp.
Everything was definitely not alright.
Regina was not back to her kind of normal.
"Both of us need to work together." the queen concluded,after a pause, still looking into her glass.
"Yes." Emma was still truly sorry, she reached out and took the other woman's hand,giving her a tight lipped smile.
Regina could see the effort this cost her and turnng her head fully smiled back at the blonde.
There was something about the way the sides of the lips quirked, when she smiled,that reminded her painfully of Henry.
She gently squeezed Emma's hand in reassurance.
"We can go back to trying to kill each other,when he's alright again." the queen said softly.
At this Emma's smile grew, and it grew lopsided, like her son's,and Regina had the brief sensation of being struck into the heart by a sharp object.
A sensation she had not experienced in a long time, and yet, today seemed to be the day she had a subscription to that sentiment in differing intensity.
Trying not to notice the brief flash of pain in the queen's eyes, Emma unlatched her hand and turned to the book spread out before them on the coffee table.
"So,how do we start?" she asked as cheerfully as she could.
"You ask me questions."
The blonde turned to the mayor in surprise.
"What do you mean?"
"I hold no magic in this realm, which means we are going to have to do it your way, and you're the sheriff."
Emma pondered this for a moment.
Believing didn't mean that she was particularly infatuated with the idea, that there was another world, where she had a set, and very vital part in.
Too vital for her taste.
But there was no time and space to be regretting that now.
This was also not the time and space to try to be ignoring all of this as best as she could.
This was not the time and space to be perusing books for answers,when the very evil queen herself was sitting just inches away from her,either.
Oh,boy.
Emma took a sip of her drink.
A very mellow malt whiskey.
Classy.
Of course.
"So," she leaned back against the side of the couch, drawing her white stockinged feet up with her to face the woman she was about to interrogate,"you're the evil queen."
Regina kept her glass in her hand, and swirled the liquid in it around a few times before answering.
She,too, leaned back into the cushions, making herself more comfortable.
"Yes." she said, as a smile crept across her lips.
Emma furrowed her brow.
Instinct and reflex was how she worked.
"Were you born wicked?"
In a reverse mirror sentiment both of Regina's brows shot up.
"The nature, of evil,I see.." she took another sip of her drink.
"Interesting line of questioning there, sheriff."
Without replying to the question,she got up to get the bottle of liquor from the kitchen and refilled both of their glasses before slipping off her high heels and tucking her legs underneath herself on the couch.
She swirled the liquid in the glass without drinking it.
Her look drifted into a far off distance.
" Evil is made and not born,Miss Swan. No matter what anyone says."
Emma blinked, the queen's immediate defensiveness suggested a challenge, but she waited instead of going for it.
"There are rules in the world of magic, which you are not the only one to know very little about. This is one of them."
The queen kept looking into somewhere a lot farther away in time and space than her living room wall, while she took another taste of her drink and waited for Emma to ask the next question.
"Why you,then?"
At this,Regina gave a short burst of an angry laugh.
"How would I know?" she growled.
"I was happy enough. I was..I was going to be even happier, before..."she chucked the remainders of the glass down in one,bitter,flaming gulp, "before SHE showed up."
Emma was surprised.
"She?"
The queen turned around to her, facing her fully, malignancy now obvious in her features.
"Your very dear,very good mother. Snow White."
Emma felt her own drink suddenly burn her tongue, forgotten.
But instead of a "How?" which the queen expected,which she would have been very happy to explain, Emma said," Your adopted son's grandmother?"
Regina had been about to pour herself another glass, when the bottle almost slipped form her grasp.
How easy it is to ignore the things one does not want to see.
She set the bottle down and buried her head in her hands.
"He is mine." she finally said, when her face reemerged.
There was a fire burning in her eyes, but it was borne more of desperation than anything else.
"You gave him up, she doesn't even know who he is, she doesn't even remember you."
Regina finally got up,to pace the room in her silk stockinged feet.
She ran a hand through her usually so well groomed hair,which was getting to be more and more of a mess today.
"All of this.." she began, "is Maleficient's fault."
"Come again?" Emma was leaning forward in her seat.
She had the feeling she was missing something here.
"Maleficient..she said..a pet..that they are some sort of comfort...and that I would get over it..the price..the price to pay..would be too high.."
Regina stalled her wanderings.
She suddenly turned to Emma.
"28 years, Emma, I remember all of them." she looked up to the ceiling.
"The others, they don't remember, this is their curse.." she took up her pacing again, her steps now, however,were small and fast and anguished,her hands clasped behind her back.
"Remembering,with this hole in my heart..with this emptiness...is mine."
Again, she turned to the blonde sitting on her couch.
"Time did not pass for them." her voice grew low, as her walking slowed.
"But it passed for me."
She had reached the couch now, and grasped its back,where Emma was sitting.
"A pet...Maleficient said,there's comfort in a pet...but there's weakness in love..and..and Maleficient grew weak over a horse..a pony." there were tears starting to shine in her eyes, tears of mockery and anger and pain.
"But for me,you see, in a land with no magic, there was nothing to grow weak by..there was this..this hollowness..this great and terrible hollowness..." she touched the blouse,where her heart was, "and I wanted it to stop..I needed it to..to.."
Emma gently covered the hand that still held on to the couch.
"..stop." the queen concluded.
There were tears now finding their way over her cheeks.
Her eyes had a light in them as she looked into Emma's, but she quickly averted her gaze in favor of an intricate study of the coffee table.
"A child,then.." she breathed.
Her other hand covered Emma's in turn, as she turned back towards her.
There was suddenly,surprisingly joy in her eyes.
It gave them a softness that amazed the younger woman.
"I had no idea." Regina whispered with a smile.
"The diapers.." the mayor rolled her eyes with laughter,"the fevers, the toys,the scratches.."
"You cannot believe the way Henry used to smile when he found a grasshopper. The first time he bit into an apple he had eyes the size of saucers! And every time.." The queen withdrew her hands to cover the smile on her mouth, "everytime he walked, he fell down, and he would just keep sitting there, and he did that for a year!It drove me quite mad!"
Her right flew to a place over her heart,and this time there wasn't any malice in her voice,but a plea for understanding.
"I am his mother... Because I was the one who knew him with that chipped front tooth before the seconds grew .." her voice drifted off.
There were tears in Emma's eyes,too.
"How did he chip it?"
" He ran into a lampost."
Emma now laughed,too.
"How did that happen?"
"Well," Regina threw her hands up in the air.
"He ran and didn't look, he was waiting for Archie to catch him, and he turned around, and there was a was so surprised to find it there,he even forgot to cry."
Both women smiled at each other.
But Emma's face fell quickly.
"Archie? How long has he been in therapy for?"
Regina sighed, rounded the couch and plopped rather unceremoniously down on it.
" Not for that long, but you know..." she raised her eyebrow suggestively.
"No one gets out of Storybrooke." Regina reached for her glass again.
"Company is rather limited."
She gave a lopsided smile before taking another sip.
"Why,then?" Emma asked, serious again.
"Why,what?" Regina picked up on her tone.
"All of this." the blonde gestured around the cool,stand offish mayorly mansion.
"The suffering, the strictness.."
"I am, dear Miss Swan, the mayor of a cursed town. And anyways," she set down her glass to refill Emma's.
"A tiger doesn't change its stripes,I believe is the saying."
There was a dark glint in her eyes.
"Weren't you happy?"
Again, Emma's question startled the queen.
"With Henry,I mean?" the blonde elaborated.
"Time passed."Regina refilled her own glass.
"And time had a meaning, all of a sudden. But some things," she sighed.
"Some things do not change."
She fixed Emma,with that intense look in her eyes again.
"Your mother's unhappiness gave me some pleasure.." a challenging smile played around her lips.
"Why was she unhappy?"Emma 's question was genuine.
It did take the queen aback nonetheless
"Didn't you read the book?" she asked,surprised.
"Of course I have read the book, but considering we're talking about real people here, or at least as real as they get,"Emma sighed,"and not fairy tale characters, even though..well,what I wanted to say was, why would Mary Margaret be unhappy? Everybody, and I mean absolutely everybody, yourself excluded,obviously, likes her, she has a job she loves, she genuinely cares about the kids she teaches, has a nice place to stay and no archnemesis that she is aware of."the sheriff shrugged.
"Well,Miss Swan, but Mary Margaret"there was an ironic undertone with the name," is without her true love. There is no suffering greater than that,let me tell you."
The queen slunk back into her pillow like a snake.
"But don't you see the flaw in your great plan?" Emma gestured with her glass,"She doesn't know it."
The queen leaned forward with a hiss, "But don't we all suffer without the ones we love?Aren't we aware of that?"
Emma remained unfazed.
"I don't know."
She picked up the queen's habit of swirling the liquid in her glass.
This was really good whiskey. She was wondering how many she had already had.
And where this line of questioning was going.
But she had the feeling they were getting to something there.
After all, it had been Snow White who had survived the apple and awoken from it.
Too bad they couldn't ask her how the true love's kiss thing would work on a ten year old.
Did Henry have a true love?Was that something meant for him?
Did they need to find her..or him?
Was there even a possibility for a him in the fairytale world the curse came from, that they were all a part of now?
If there would only be the possibility of a her, that would,at least, narrow things down by 50%.
Maybe it was that girl Paige, or Grace,or whatever her name was.
And Henry would end up with a crazy as a hat father in law.
Hold on, even though, the mad hatter wasn't all that mad, when everything he had been talking about had been true.
Although, a guy who tied up and forced random women to make hats at gunpoint was pretty wacko in her book.
Sorry,Henry.
"Emma?"
Obviously,the sheriff had been gazing into her glass for a little too long.
Turns out whiskey has hypnotic properties, even when you were just looking at it turning around and around.
"Yes."
The blonde caught the mayor's eyes.
"A penny for your thoughts?" there was a smile tugging at the corners of the mayor's mouth, and Emma now wondered how much her hostess had had to drink.
"I don't think there is true love for everyone." the blonde continued her former statement.
The mayor leaned back into her pillow,waiting for her to elaborate.
"Ok, you see.." Emma took another sip for steadiment,and because this was,indeed some really good whiskey, "in your world, maybe, everyone has a True Love."she paused, collecting her thoughts.
"And that is ok,cause it is a fairy tale world,but in my world" she made a big circle with her free hand,"that guarantee does not exist."
"You see, we try and try, and we believe,and then we lose faith,and we lose the person we love,and we generally lose," she took a deep breath," but that doesn't mean that we can't be happy. It's just a different kind of happiness."
She took another gulp of her drink.
This conversation was so much more bearable tipsy.
"So,there is no True Love in your world?" the queen was back to business.
"No,no..there is. But when you find it..And get to keep it,you're not happy..you're.." Emma paused for emphasis, she looked the queen right in the eyes to accentuate the dramatic pause, "lucky."
The queen only rolled her eyes, and sunk deeper back into her pillow.
"What a wretched world, no wonder this is the one chosen for the curse."
"Pah! Really?" Emma now leaned forward.
"And you were such a ray of sunshine and happiness in your pretty little world,that you got all wicked witch on a whole people?"
Now, the queen leaned forward.
"Snow White destroyed my happiness." she spit.
"Yeah, just blame EVERYTHING on my amnesiac mother." Emma's eyes glittered with anger.
"I read the book,remember?Just the fact that you keep pining over your unfulfilled destiny and keep making everyone miserable is sad enough, but you can't even be content,when you've got everything you ever wanted."
The queen stretched forward to cover even the last inches between them:
"Tell me then:What is it, . ?"
Emma really didn't mean it that way,but this was just a perfect retort,served right up into her face,literally, and she was really, awfully drunk.
She certainly didn't mean it that way, but she didn't think about it either,that she didn't.
She did think about Regina smiling and talking about Henry,about the light in her eyes, and the way the corners of her mouth rose up in self irony.
She thought about the softness her stern,stern face was capable of.
Which had surprised her so much.
But those things were hard to put into words.
She wanted to say"You have Henry."
She could have said, "Because,despite it all, you still have these things.",but she didn't.
She simply leaned forward and kissed her instead.
Kissed the evil queen herself.
The mayor of the cursed town.
Kissed Henry's other mother,who had had the hell of a time talking about his chipped tooth without smiling.
Evil is made and not born.
Happiness is,too.
And Emma Swan could feel her heart swell with joy, as the queen kissed her back.