Raise your hand if you've ever felt personally victimized by Regina Mills.
*raises both hands and both feet...levitates off the ground*
So, yeah, I updated...I think y'all are going to wish I hadn't though.
But HEY, at least I can tell you that the next chapter will be better. Maybe. Probably not. I mean y'all should know by now that I like to take baths in my own masochism so here be my warning: even I thought Regina in this was a bit harsh. But since when has our girl EVER known how to handle vulnerability?
As a side note, I actually hate this chapter but it has been sitting in my word document for almost three months now, actively taunting me every time I clicked past it to write in another story so this is me. Getting it the fuck out of my tabs.
So they were talking.
It was nine o'clock in the morning and they were talking.
It was nine o'clock in the morning, they were talking, and Emma was really, really regretting the decision to 'act like mature adults about this' and drive over to the mansion to have breakfast with Regina. She'd cried her throat raw not six hours ago. She wasn't really in the mood to act like a mature adult around a woman who cursed an entire realm because a ten year old blabbed a secret about her.
She wished it was the weekend so she could use the whole 'Henry's around, we can't talk about the phone sex that can never happen again right now' excuse.
But it wasn't the weekend, Henry was at school, and she and Regina actually did need to have this conversation.
She's just made some snide comment about Robin Hood and happily ever afters (because honestly, if she hears his name one more time she's going to scream). It's muffled by her cup. Regina hears it anyway.
"He's not my happy ending, he's just a part of it." She says it on a sigh, like it's getting a bit annoying to repeat. Emma notices the slight emphasis on 'part'.
Emma lets out a snort, sitting the still steaming cup of (truthfully amazing) coffee down on the island.
"You know I actually might have believed that a day ago."
She makes sure to find Regina's eyes when she speaks next. "If you're so happy, Regina, if Robin's a part of your happy ending then why did you fuck me over a phone last night?" She watches Regina's jaw muscles flex, watches as her eyes blink rapidly before flickering to Emma's immediate left. Somewhere near the sink. Her nostrils flare.
Hey, you wanted to talk about this, Emma thinks.
"Does that mean I'm part of your happy ending too? What about my parents? Killian?"
Regina's eyes snap to hers once more, looking wholly affronted. Emma might've laughed out loud at the expression had it been any other day.
Had her heart not been crushed to fine dust last night by this woman standing in front of her now crossing her arms and looking at Emma like she's the world's greatest idiot.
"You're being ridiculous."
"Am I?" Emma asks, eyebrows lifting. Because she sure as hell doesn't think she is. She thinks she's being perfectly plausible actually.
Regina's glare intensifies, added now with the 'seriously?' head tilt. "Yes," she says. "Why on earth would the pirate and your parents be a part of my happiness?" Regina's nose scrunches (adorably actually, and god damn it, Emma, you're angry with her, shut up) with her words, disdain dripping from every syllable.
Emma's about to follow through with an eye roll of her own, a retort on her lips, when she fully cognizes what Regina's just said. She blinks.
"So does that mean you don't find it ridiculous that I could be a part of it?"
And there's a split second where Regina's face shifts into that 'deer in headlights' look Emma's not sure she's ever really seen on her before. But then it's gone, just as quickly as it had come, and her features smooth into one of practiced indifference.
Emma narrows her eyes. She knows that look. She hates that look.
"You are my son's mother," Regina says, monotone, slowly as if Emma's a small child who doesn't quite understand semantics just yet. And damn if Emma's not a little peeved at how quickly Regina had pulled out the Henry card. Emma's almost certain she'd have blanked completely.
"Your point?" Because seriously, Regina's about to make this sound really convincing and it's pissing Emma the fuck off. She doesn't allow herself to fully think about why that is.
Regina fixes her with one of those 'you're annoying and I'm only seconds away from charring your hair with a fireball' glares. Emma feels vaguely triumphant.
"My point is that our son and his happiness is a very large part of my happiness and you being his other mother – someone who makes him happy – makes you, by extension, part of it as well. So no, to answer your question, I do not find it ridiculous because it's an unalterable fact."
It's a logical explanation. And it is also, as she'd anticipated, very convincing. But Emma's lie detector is going off in her mind and though she's still mad at it for being so perpetually faulty during the time the whole town was under the curse, she does know when Regina is lying to her. At the very least she knows a dodge when she sees one and if there's one throne Regina's got claim over indefinitely, it's that of elusion.
"Right."
She licks her lips, the past month, all those phone calls, Regina's soft voice and melodic laughter (she'd never heard it so light before), blipping through her mind like a slide show.
"So I'm only a part of your happiness because we share a son and you fucking me through a phone last night never happened and can't ever happen again because you're with Robin, who is a part of your happiness not by any shared sons or actual, emotional connection but because some pixie dust given to you by some rogue, amateur fairy told you he's your soulmate and I guess it doesn't really matter if you're truly in love with him or not, he's your soulmate so you have to be with him." Emma takes in a deep pull of air, feeling her skin buzz with a sudden anger that's threatening to make her hands tremble. "Did I get all of that right?"
She meets Regina's gaze. Her eyes are wide again, mouth parted like she's trying to form words. Like she can't decide which ones she wants, can't decipher which emotions to feel first. Or perhaps which to show.
But then, just like earlier, she steels herself, face going neutral, into that Madam Mayor façade Emma'd thought was long done away with by now.
Emma wants to shake her. She wants to unravel that goddamn defense mechanism of hers. That look she gets when she's so obviously hiding her emotions. When she's hiding the truth. Emma wants to grasp ahold of every single brick that makes up that mile high wall Regina's got around herself. She wants to take them down gently, one by one, and sit them at her side. She wants to dust them off and let Regina see them as well, see Emma holding them. She wants Regina to let her.
She wants Regina. Not the mayor, not the evil queen, not this closed off, unyielding version of her either. She doesn't want her guises, her titles. She wants the woman underneath the many masks. She wants the Regina from all those phone calls. She wants the Regina from last night.
"Get out." Regina's voice, hard and all ice, rips her from her thoughts.
"What?"
"Get. Out."
She's seething now, jaw clenching, eyes flashing. Her lip is doing that curling thing it's so prone to when she's this angry and Emma's gaze is always so captured by that scar above her lip when it does.
"You asked me to come over here, Regina. To talk." Emma points out, hands tightening into fists at her sides, standing up from the barstool. She's been accused of running away from her problems her entire life but she's pretty sure that between the two of them, it's Regina who gets the cake for that particular character trait. Mature adult my entire ass.
"Yes, and now I'm telling you to leave."
Regina turns to leave the kitchen. Emma doesn't budge. "Why, because I've hit the nail on the head and you're going to throw a tantrum right here in front of me if I don't?"
Regina whirls around, thundering toward her in a second, lip curling again and god is that going to become a kink of hers?
"You think you're so clever, don't you? Think you've figured me out? Think because you've made me laugh a few times over the phone, that I've divulged things to you no one other than Henry knows, that you and I shared an intimate few moments last night, you now have some special insight into my feelings?" Regina snorts, the sound crass and discordant on such beautiful lips. She presses her index finger, nail bare and perfectly filed, into Emma's breastbone. Her dark eyes follow the action and stay there even as she speaks. "You know nothing of my feelings, Emma." She tips her gaze up, russet meeting blue-grey. "Nothing."
And Emma's hurt, yes. Regina's words are actually burning against her skin, wriggling and honing in on that place in her heart that was only just cut into last night. She feels them tearing at the stitching she'd haphazardly woven through the muscle and tissue there, opening the seams with little effort. It's astounding to Emma, Regina's talent. How she can make such meaningful things, such meaningful moments, sound as if they actually meant nothing at all.
It takes a large amount of restraint not to let it show on her face. And she thinks she's succeeded. But she can do nothing about what flashes in her eyes.
Whatever it was – hurt, anger, heartbreak, all three – Regina sees it. Emma knows she does because Regina's lip twitches. As close to a smirk as she's ever seen it.
It sets Emma ablaze.
A voice inside of her hisses I know more of them than that fickle forest beard does while another one whispers she's pushing too hard.
The closest one to her eardrum though, that one chuckles. Bullshit.
"A few intimate moments, huh?" Emma wraps a hand around Regina's still at her breastbone. Regina jerks, gasps as if she'd completely forgotten she still had her finger there. Emma takes a step forward, their noses almost brushing. Regina's eyes snap up to meet hers, flickering back and forth, a question in them, a most definite warning.
Emma ignores it because Regina's yet to even attempt to remove her hand from underneath her grasp, and her gaze tips down to Regina's lips, parted and bare, ridiculously kissable. Emma's heart hammers against her ribcage.
"Shared intimate moments," Emma breathes. It breaks across Regina's mouth and she watches as plum lips part a little bit further on a soft inhale.
"Does that mean you came too?" A stuttered exhale. Coffee and maple syrup. Emma's eyes flutter.
"Did you touch yourself?" Regina's fingers twitch beneath her own.
"Were you thinking about it?" She smooths her thumb over a knuckle, flicks her eyes up. "Were you wet?"
Regina's lashes flutter shut at that, breath snagging in her throat, this little sound bubbling up, something pained, needy. Almost like a whimper.
Emma's stomach furls violently at the sound, blood whooshing and pounding in her ears.
"Emma," Regina whispers and Emma's heart jumps in her chest, eyes shooting up, searching rich brown irises. It sounds like it did last night. Raw and just bordering on broken. She's completely open in this moment, walls in crumbling heaps around her. Something blooms inside of Emma's chest, warm and bright.
And she thinks they're about to kiss. Feels it like a tangible thing, mouth tingling with the anticipation of it. Regina's eyes dip down, trace the lines of her lips. Emma thinks she even sees Regina's head crane forward ever so slightly.
And then those perfect, perfect lips are brushing against her own. Her eyes slide shut and god she feels it race through her, feels it jolt, feels that tingling shoot through every pore and centimeter of her skin. She parts her mouth further, presses more firmly, needs to feel more.
But then Regina sucks in a sharp breath and Emma's eyes fly open.
Regina's entire visage changes with the action. Hardens again. Walls slotting firmly back into place and she pushes at Emma's breastbone hard enough that Emma stumbles backward, her grip on Regina's hand loosening before coming apart completely.
Regina covers her mouth with her hand just briefly, an ephemeral fissure in those walls, and if Emma sees it tremble, well, that's probably just the feverish workings of her addled brain.
Then she shakes her hair out her face – an overly regal movement – takes a deep inhale, and finds Emma's eyes, piercing and walls, walls, walls.
"This is how this is going to work, Miss Swan." Emma winces at the moniker. "You are going to never pull something like that again and we are both going to pretend this discussion and the previous night never happened." She puts a hand on her hip, encased in a deep cerulean, form-fitting dress, and leans her upper body forward a bit, eyes unrelenting. "As a matter of fact, how about we just forget the phone calls altogether."
Oh.
"We work better as co-parents with a mild tolerance for one another anyway, don't you think?"
"Do you love him?" She feels herself blurt out, feeling her body tilt, mind a cacophony of the many, many voices scratching and clawing at one another to be spoken first.
Regina veers back. "Excuse me?"
"Robin. Do you love him?"
Emma feels déjà vu, sharp and blinding, ripple through her body.
Henry. Do you love him?
Unlike four years ago though, Regina continues to stare at her, incredulity very much prominent in her features. But there's something else dancing within those ochre irises of hers and Emma's thinks its recognition.
As if Regina remembers that day just as vividly as she does.
So it's only fitting when she responds with, "of course I love him. He's my soulmate."
It's funny though. When she'd said it four years ago, Emma's very first reaction had been one of disbelief.
When she'd said it four years ago, the tone had been neutral, devoid of sentiment. Emma's body had almost sung with liar and at the time she'd wanted to believe it. She'd wanted to believe it so fervently (because a deeply selfish part of her, a just freshly uncovered part of her at finding her son at her doorstep had thought that if Regina truly didn't love Henry then that'd surely gain her at least some solid ground in a courtroom) that her lie detector had binged loudly between her ears at the response.
But that night, in her room at Granny's, she'd remember the crumpled up tissue that Regina had surreptitiously slipped into the pocket of her grey blazer. She'd noticed the red around her eyes, the glisten in them. And she hadn't been sure at the time why she was so frigid, such a raging bitch. So fiercely determined to keep her emotions dulled and hidden away from everyone – to the point that even her own son believed she didn't love him.
She hadn't understood one bit and she'd gotten so caught up in what Regina was showing her that it took her while to see what she wasn't. What she'd let slip through the cracks that day outside her mansion.
A woman who didn't love her son wouldn't have looked so wrought with relief running (in heels no less) to wrap her arms around him when Emma'd brought him back to Storybrooke that very first night.
A woman who didn't love her son wouldn't have let such worry paint her words that morning she woke up in a jail cell. Graham, Henry's run away again and we have to –
A woman who didn't love her son wouldn't have allowed a complete stranger – her son's birth mother – to see that tissue or the too prominent shine in her eyes from shed tears.
Regina hadn't been lying. She loved Henry.
When she says the words now though, it's vehement, almost breathless. She's showing what she wants Emma to see, eyes fierce and challenging. As if daring Emma to question her. Almost looking desperate for it. Perhaps, Emma muses, a little too desperate.
And Emma's head cocks to the side. Because this time what Regina is showing her is actually the truth. Her lie detector is silent, unmoving. She does love Robin.
But it had been tacitly clear which type of love Emma was referring to and she's got this niggling feeling that Regina's feelings for Robin Hood aren't as expansive as the word 'soulmate' implies.
So she rephrases her question.
"Are you in love with him?"
Regina freezes.
Emma watches her face very, very closely.
There's shock first and foremost, as if she hadn't been prepared for the question. Then an almost overwhelming flash of fear. Regina's mouth parts with it. There's a brief flicker of what Emma's almost certain is pain and she's so confused by it that she misses the very last emotion before Regina's face goes blank.
Then angry. It twists her features, makes them look more severe, makes her look like the evil queen Emma's never seen her as.
"I know what you want me to say, Emma." She breathes it, eyes alighting, face twisting still, lip curling again and this time it makes Emma feel nauseous. "I know what you want from me." Emma's heart thuds about in her chest and she swallows, a powerful sense of dread washing over her.
And then Regina leans in, a dark glint in her eyes, a brittle smile on her lips. "And whether I'm in love with Robin Hood or not is completely irrelevant because no matter how much you wish it, and I know you wish it, I'm not and never will be in love with you."
And lie or not it destroys Emma.
It knocks the breath from her lungs, makes tears prick at her eyelids, her vision blur.
She hates her lie detector in this moment, hates that she's always thought she was so attuned to Regina, that she could tell when she was lying or not.
Because right now? Right now she has no idea. Right now she's in too much pain to even try to wade through all the emotions she feels running rampant within her, to see if her lie detector is going off or not.
Right now she wants to get as far away from this woman as she possibly can. But she wants something else just as much.
So she sucks in a trembling breath, wills her tears from falling.
"I was wrong before."
Regina blinks, brow furrowing in confusion.
"What?"
Emma laughs then, feels it grate roughly against the back of her throat. Regina's eyes widen, looking at her like she's insane. Emma wonders how she could have ever thought of Regina as a runner like her. Because she's not. God, she's not. She's the complete opposite.
"You don't run from your problems. You don't run away when someone gets too close to you." She finds Regina's eyes, throat closing up, and tears blur her vision again. "You push. You beat everyone back with a stick. You find a person's weakness and then you twist a knife in them with it. You dismantle another person's heart for the sake of your own and that's…awful, Regina, it's just – "
Emma's voice cracks though, wobbles, and those stupid tears fall, scorching hot trails down her cheeks.
She draws in a sharp breath and meets Regina's nonplussed gaze.
"I just hope that when the time comes you decide to push Robin away, you do it with a little more compassion than you just showed me."
And then she walks out of the kitchen and out the door, not allowing herself to break down until she's safely in her bug atop the hill that overlooks the town.