Title: Queen of Spades (2/5)
Author: Maggiemerc
Rating: T
Fandom: Once Upon A Time
Pairing: Evil Queen|Regina and Jack
Disclaimer: Guys if I owned them this would be canon. Clearly they belong to others. No foul intended.
Summary: Rumpelstiltskin's apprentice, Regina, meets another in the long line portal jumpers who steals whatever he desires, but always for a price.
Author's Notes: Oops. I made another. Three more to go. This one might push the T rating.
Royal Flush
A month and a day after Regina left Rumpelstiltskin's tutelage she appeared. The first time sitting on the window sill, leaning against the frame and relishing each bite of an apple from Regina's tree.
"You found me," she said in hushed awe.
She wiped juice away with her sleeve and smiled in that rakish way that only worked on her. "You're the queen. I hardly think you're hard to find."
Her steps were quick on the stone, crossing the distance as fast as if she'd used magic. "My husband—"
"Is not your master." So sure.
"He's the king."
The core of the apple was tossed mindlessly through the window and Jack swung her legs around. With a push of her hands she could propel herself forward and into Regina's arms. Or she could roll back lightly and disappear over the window's edge.
"And you are the Queen. Your authority is the only I recognize."
They waged gentle wars. Cutting remarks and clever wordplay were their weapons. It was a game. One which they both understood implicitly. One would give and the other would take and the next day the lines would be redrawn and the battle waged anew.
Regina surrendered first. With a smile that spoke of feelings neither allowed in their dalliances. But Jack chose to interpret it differently and then stepped into Regina's space. Her hands settled on Regina's waist above the flair of an outrageous gown.
"I thought we'd be through." Her hand lifted to play with the cords of Jack's tunic. "I had to leave so suddenly and—"
"And I move between worlds. What possible challenge could movement from one castle to the next hold?"
"And Him?" She wouldn't say his name. Couldn't. His name was an invitation and one Rumpelstiltskin would gladly accept.
Jack laughed. Dropped a kiss on Regina's cheek. "An employer. Just one of many."
"He's—"
Those hands squeezed her waist. The worrying would be set aside. The fears would disappear in soft kisses that bordered on affectionate.
And then someone would pursue someone else. This time it was Jack, cupping Regina's face so tenderly she might scream and deepening a kiss she'd missed for a month and a day. Her tongue slipped past her lips and she invaded every part of Regina. Found every secret with her mouth and pushed them deeper into shadows.
They would not question what it was or why a month and a day had felt like ten years. They would only sigh and moan and Jack's nimble fingers would find every thread and pull until the whole dress and Regina too was unwound.
"I missed you," she murmured between wet kisses down Regina's bare throat.
Regina's hands found purchase in Jack's tangled brown hair and she guided her like a horse on reigns. The sweet pleasure she'd known since that first day in Rumpelstiltskin's library wound up inside of her—growing taunter and taunter with each kiss and bite and lingering taste. Until fingers found her thread and stroked her to an all too uncommon unravelling.
"I missed this," she finally said later, when clothes had been forgotten and a fine film of drying sweat covered them both and Jack looked up from where she'd been resting her head on Regina's bare thigh and grinned.
She ran her finger across those leering lips. Her lover didn't tease her or catch a fingertip in her teeth. Her bright eyes tracked Regina and she was still as though she was mindful of all the things that Regina could not control. 'So take this' her inaction seemed to say. 'Have what others steal.'
She tugged on a few strands of hair and Jack climbed up her body in one fluid movement. "I have a trip to another land," she said with a kiss to the shoulder. "One where gods walk among men and they all prepare for an end of days."
"Sounds like my wedding night." A joke. Dark. Morbid. But Jack laughed. Jack always laughed. She leapt between worlds. Saw them at their beginnings and at their ends. She'd witnessed so much of the span of life. There was never grief for Jack. Only a laugh at the fates' many threads.
"They call it Ragnarok. A great final battle where all is lost. The world burns. Lives are torn asunder. Everything is ash." She splayed her open hand on Regina's belly. Her thumb rubbed familiar patterns on her skin. "And then, when there is only unfathomable emptiness and despair, two mere humans will peek out from the destruction and start it all anew."
She paused Jack's wandering hand. Their fingers entwined and Regina looked up at the ceiling. It was far more vibrant with a Jack in her bed rather than a King.
"Hope."
Jack straddled her waist. Wanton and warm. "Tell me Regina, how would you like to see the end of the world?"
A world with no Snow White. Where Daniel was not lost. Where her mother was not vile. Where her father was valiant. Where there was only her and Jack and that beautiful smile.
It was cruel how happiness trickled through her veins. There was wickedness in her joy. Evil fingers of glee digging into her heart and suffusing herself with something as terrible as the mentor whose name she could never utter.
A puff of air on her cheek and Jack loomed over her curious and, for once, not so knowing of what rose dark and terrible in her thoughts. There was only that smile that led to other worlds. "Well," she asked.
"I'm to take Snow riding." Leopold and Snow so loved her horsemanship.
"Impart your wisdom my Queen. Teach my daughter all you know." She'd tried that once and it had ended with a stable boy growing cool at her feet.
"Teach the girl to stay astride in the morning. And in the evening you and I will dance at the apocalypse."
"What shall we wear?"
"Joy and ash and that jeweled bustier your husband meant as a gift for his first wife."
"You're a terrible person Jack."
"You'll look far prettier in it then she ever could." Her head tilted, like she didn't know Regina's answers to her questions. "Will you though? Join me in watching the twilight of another world's gods?"
She laughed. "Of course dear. I'll even bake a pie."