A/N: Hi! First of all thank you so much for all the Reviews, Favourites and Follows! Seriously thank you so much, all encouragement and helpful criticism is much appreciated! Also sorry for the slightly late update but I've been stupidly busy! *Warning* for this chapter and probably the rest, there's swearing in here. Enjoy!
Regina halts so abruptly she nearly falls. The scene before her is red, bright pulsing red like the hearts from her drawers in the Mausoleum, and it threatens to suffocate her.
Emma lies in Henry's arms, much like her mother had laid and died in hers, and the parallel is sickening; something that makes her feel close to dropping to her knees and crawling to them. She is frozen, such a cliché that it's painful, but she cannot help it. She is stuck, confused and shaking, unable to process that Emma, who'd come up here to read their son her story, is bleeding out on Henry's floor.
Henry.
He's shaking as he holds Emma, crying so fiercely that he looks ready to fall apart, and it is that, her son's weakness, his vulnerability that forces her to move.
With his hands pressed against Emma's stomach, Henry tries to remember how the heroes act in the movies. The hero will kneel at the victim's side and look into their eyes and tell them that everything is going to be ok; that they're fine. Don't worry.
He guesses he is no hero when his hands, now coated in Emma's blood and disgustingly warm, shake where they lay pressed against wounds that he can't bear to look at. He can't even look Emma in the eye and tell her it will be ok as he's crying so hard that he can barely breathe, and the realisation that he can't be a hero, even to his own mother, is crushing.
But then his mom is there, and she looks him in the eye as her hands slide over his against Emma's stomach. Henry keeps his eyes on her as he slips his hands away, and even though she isn't looking at him anymore, she tells him it's going to be ok.
And for the first time since the curse was broken, and even before then, Henry finds himself wishing he was more like Regina.
The idea of losing Emma threatens to choke her for a moment, as the woman's blood slips through her fingers much like the ash of a hundred different hearts she'd crushed. She refuses to dwell upon the people who she's lost- who she's killed- and instead focuses upon actually saving someone; something that is an entirely new concept to her. For a moment she's unsure if she has the ability, and it's odd to have so little confidence in her magic when she needs it the most. But she pushes past the idea of failure with familiar stubbornness and focuses once more, Henry almost forgotten behind her.
The darkness that she is so used to being affiliated with her magic isn't there as she imagines healing Emma, and instead there is a brightness that seems to come from both of them. Emma glows softly, luminescent and strangely angelic and for a crushing moment Regina panics that this is her lover's death; Emma's ascension to somewhere that she herself will never belong.
But then her hands glow too and warmth sweeps across her, even as her shoulders slump just slightly from the magical exertion.
'Emma?' she whispers, reaching for the woman's face. She brushes a fingertip across her cheek bone, cringing at the crimson smear that it leaves behind; a stark contrast to the woman's skin. She moves to rub the streak away with her thumb before it hits her, slowly and with an air of revulsion, that the entirety of her hand is coated in Emma's blood. She swallows heavily, before shaking the woman's shoulder, regardless of the handprint she leaves on Emma's shirt.
When the blonde groans, sounding as if she's just been punched in the stomach rather than viciously attacked, Regina drops her head forward to rest against Emma's collarbone, her breath hitching as her adrenaline ebbs away and the full weight of what just happened crashes on her shoulders. She sinks, if possible, lower onto Emma so that she lies atop of her, hands clutching at the crumpled material of her shirt.
'Regina-'
Before she can say another word Regina sobs. It's a mixture of things, one part relief and the rest sheer disbelief that she has saved someone she loves. Her best was good enough this time, and she wonders if it's maybe because Emma's the Saviour and the Fates or whatever else is out there could not afford to lose such a force of good. But it can't be because it was her who'd saved her. She'd not lost this time, not like so many times before.
She sobs again.
It's startlingly loud in the quiet of the room and makes both Emma and Henry flinch with its abruptness. Henry scrambles over to his mothers, and lays his hand on Regina's back to feel her shake almost as fiercely as Emma had when she collapsed just minutes ago.
Emma clears her throat as she hushes Regina, running her fingers through the woman's hair as she looks over to her son, who is knelt at their side his eyes wide with relief and confusion. She tries to smile at him, but she can't find it in herself; too thrown by what happened to her and the fact that Regina is sobbing in her lap. She leans down to whisper soothingly into the brunette's ear, knowing it will do little to calm her yet can think of nothing else to do, but Henry leans forward before she can. He smiles at her, their little boy who still has her blood on his hands and stained into the chequered print of his pyjamas, and she feels her heart swell with pride as he looks her right in the eye.
'Don't worry, Ma. Everything's going to be ok'.
Henry, remarkably put together for a twelve year old who'd just witnessed his mother's attack, jumps at the opportunity to watch TV past his bed time; a tact that Emma uses so she can talk to Regina alone. He collects a new pair of pyjamas and hurries first to the bathroom, switching on the shower for a few minutes, before hurtling out of the door, still dripping wet but clothed in new, mercifully untainted pyjamas.
Only when she hears his footsteps fade and the distinct thump of his small body hurling itself onto the sofa, does Emma push herself up, taking Regina with her until they're upright.
With Regina curled in her lap, she suddenly realises just how small she is; that behind the façade that she puts up every day, whether it be the Mayor or the Evil Queen, even over protective Mom mode, she's vulnerable. Emma can't help but smile at the fact that Regina is comfortable enough to let herself be small around her; that she lets her see behind her larger than life attitude to reveal the woman whose hands are actually smaller than hers, and who curls into the foetal position when asleep.
Emma lets her hand slide under Regina's blouse with a small smile, fingers stroking along the hard knots of her spine, knowing that the brunette responds best to physical reassurance. After all, that was why Regina has laid atop of her; to hear her heart beat, a symbol that was so very prominent in the brunettes' life.
'I'm ok, Regina,' she says gently into the shell of the woman's ear as her fingers continue stroking a pattern against her skin, 'I'm ok'.
Regina shifts in her lap, bringing her head round to look up at her. Her eyes are wide and red rimmed, and something in Emma aches at the look of her.
'What happened?' Regina asks quietly, her voice rough and despite herself and the situation, Emma burns at the sound of it.
'A good question, I'll give you that. But I have no fucking clue'. Emma shrugs her shoulders in indifference and watches as Regina glares at her.
'I'm glad you seem so blasé about this but you were just attacked-' Regina falters and Emma takes advantage of it, drawing her arms around the brunette and bringing her closer. She tilts her head back to look at her lover and resists the urge to map the features of Regina's face.
'I know,' she says slowly, 'trust me. I can still sort of feel it'.
'What?!' Regina pulls back, but Emma keeps hold of her, forcing her to sit.
'It's ok, you fixed me remember? But I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a little achy, considering I just had bloody massive sharp things in me'.
Regina swallows hard, biting her lip to stop another round of tears. 'Do you know who attacked you? Do you remember what happened?'
Emma sighs and lets her head fall back so that she stares at the ceiling. 'I remember reading and thinking it was weird, but cool at the same time because I could feel the things that were happening in the story. I could feel the heat. I could feel the exhaustion'. She closes her eyes and lets herself be submersed into her memories, 'I remember reading about The Shadows-'
'The Shadows?' Regina questions anxiously.
'They're the monsters in my story-' Emma's head snaps back up as it hits her so abruptly that she nearly jerks Regina from her lap. 'No way,' Emma breathes in realisation, 'no freaking way. I think that it was a Shadow'.
'What was?'
'The thing that attacked me was a Shadow. I remember reading and I kept getting drawn in. I couldn't stop. It was like, well,' Emma looks at Regina seriously, her eyebrows furrowed, 'it was like when I use magic. It felt the same-'.
Regina feels something in the back of her mind niggle at her, a story she'd heard a long time ago, years before she met Snow or Daniel. When she was just a girl who still believed in impossibilities.
'Jesus, I think I read it out of the story,' Emma says lowly, her fingers unconsciously curling into Regina's sides as she tries to think how that's even possible. 'I just brought my story to life'.
And then Regina has her own epiphany as the stories she'd heard when she was young rush back to her, whispers from pages long since burned. She remembers her mother's search for the person who could perform such magic, her yearning for that power and how desperately she sought for it. She'd sent her father's soldiers out to villages, had searched and burnt down whole populations in search of just one person.
'A Wordsmith, Regina, is the most powerful of all. They hold the power of the common word. Can you imagine that? To write down whatever you may please on parchment and then simply read it into being? Imagine the things you could do, the people you could have knelt at your feet. You could rule them all. Possess them all'.
Regina looks at Emma again; her jade eyes and furrowed brow, bowed lips and pale complexion and realises that this is what her mother had been searching for nearly all her life. She had found a Wordsmith, A Storyteller.
It was almost laughable and so very fitting to find that she was in love with a woman her mother had sought to kill.
'A Wordsmith? Like a Blacksmith but I don't make swords I make words?' Emma frowns as she turns the shower on before beginning to strip. They'd moved to the bathroom when the blood began to congeal, sticking their fingers together in such a manner that Regina had actually yanked Emma up and toward the shower.
'You don't make words,' Regina sighs, unbuttoning her blouse as she glances up at Emma who's fiddling with her belt buckle, 'anybody can make words, dear. It's called learning a language, something even you have accomplished'.
'Rude,' Emma mutters.
'No, a Wordsmith is a creator, an author if you like. Write down the story, read it out loud and it comes to life'.
'Like a movie?'
'A little, I suppose,' Regina concedes as she steps into the shower, looking over her shoulder as if telling Emma to hurry up and join her.
Emma hurries up and joins her, stepping under the warm spray and sighing contentedly. 'So I'm a film director?'
Regina slaps her shoulder before scrubbing vigorously between the webbing of her fingers. 'No, it's like a movie only because you can bring whatever you like to life. Unlike a movie, it's permanent, life threatening and doesn't involve any actors'.
'So whatever I read, if it includes real life people, will happen to them?' Emma, rather than sounding impressed sounds scared and because of it, her disinterest in controlling others, Regina draws her into a firm embrace.
'Yes, you could make them do anything, believe anything you write down. Everyone is a puppet to you now, Emma, and you their master'.
Emma pushes back a little, looking down at the floor that swirls pink with diluted blood. 'I'm always something. The Orphan. The Bitch. Now I'm the Saviour. The Wordsmith. The puppet Master,' Emma chokes on her tears and if she weren't so lost, so utterly overwhelmed by the day's events then she would be horrified. 'When am I just Emma? I'm lost under it all, under all the fucking names-' She strikes out, fist cracking against the shower tile, and she stumbles; almost falls but Regina grabs her round the waist, holding tightly. She feels weightless yet hopelessly tied down all at once, and the contrast is infuriating.
Worried at the flickering emotions that burst within Emma, a whole surging myriad of them, Regina hangs tighter onto the blonde.
'I'm always something, Regina,' Emma says eventually, her body's vibrations calming until she slumps against the brunette.
'Yes, you are,' Regina begins resolutely, 'you're Emma Swan and you're –'
Emma's gasp cuts her off. The blonde struggles to get free, wrenches herself away from Regina until she is pressed against the tiled wall, eyes wide and frightened. For the first time Regina sees young Emma Swan, sees her more clearly than she had when she read the pages of her story. She wants to reach out but doesn't, knows that if it were her she would lash out.
'People can use me. If people find out, if they know I'm a Wordsmith,' she spits the word out like dirt, 'then they can use me'. She presses a trembling hand to her mouth, this title now the worse she's ever been called.
'I'm Emma Swan and I'm a Weapon'.