Thanks for all the reviews! I got a lot of stuff about evil Elsa, so I decided to humanize her a bit. Hope you like it!
Disclaimer: Sadly, I do not own Once Upon A Time, or Hook and Emma would have gotten together a long time ago, and MARIAN WOULD NOT BE BACK.
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After she'd stormed out of the diner, Regina hadn't known what to do.
Of course, a few years ago, she'd have burned the diner to the ground and buried her pain deep within the carnage. But the invisible strings of her newly acquired heroism held her back from revenge, rendering her almost useless, unable to bury her pain as it spilled over. With nothing else to do, she'd gone to their spot.
The spot.
She sat there for what felt like hours, knees pulled to her chest after the first ten minutes, tears pouring down her cheeks after the second, in the spot where she'd kissed Robin for the first time, wondering if he'd ever come for her, and what he'd say if he did.
Goodbye? Or I love you?
Or worse, both?
It seemed so childish, that if Robin came looking for her, he'd know to come here. But maybe it was just Regina's hope that if he did know how to find her, he might still love her. And Marian wouldn't be with him.
Sitting in the spot and gazing up through the freezing moonlight, Regina felt her first pang of sympathy for heroes, for people who chose to do the right thing. Whatever pain they felt ate away at them, broke them down and tore at their very soul. Villains felt it too, but they could drown it in blood and revenge. Heroes had no choice but to sob.
Regina lit a pinecone on fire and threw it as hard as she could at the tree she leaned against, scooting away to watch the leaves crackle and burn against the biting air, embers cascading from the branches, the bark flaming red-gold against the black sky, all as tears poured down her cheeks. She wasn't a hero or a villain, she was both; she could drown her pain, but in doing so, she despised herself.
With a whisk of her hand, the flames sucked themselves from the tree and the area around it, sputtering as they shriveled into tiny bursts of light that popped against the ground. The spot was completely charred, blackened, any vegetation crumpled. Half of Regina wanted Robin to find it, burned to cinders; the other half wanted the spot back.
Regina turned on her heel and disappeared into purple smoke.
Not three seconds later, Robin burst through the two willow trees hiding the spot, and dropped his head into his hands when he saw that Regina was not there.
Only ashes remained.
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The pillow beneath Belle's cheek was colder than it had ever been, and it was that that startled her awake, in Rumple's house.
Rumple's bare body was pressed close to hers, his arm draped over Belle's shoulder, but he was the only source of heat in the room. She smiled blissfully as he snored, but vaguely wished Rumple had remembered to turn on the heating.
Prying open an eye, she wondered if she could make it to the heater to switch it on without waking her brand new husband. Attempting to move an arm, she found herself so entangled in him that she thought it impossible to shift without waking him. The thought made her giggle softly, and Rumple hummed in his sleep.
She glanced across the room at the old fashioned heater as she snuggled closer to her husband, hoping he'd be enough to warm her near-frozen skin. A red blinking light coming from it yanked her eyes back for a second gaze.
The heater was on, so why was it freezing?
Belle glanced at her arm as chills snaked down her skin, and shrieked as she saw what looked like actual ice molded to a section of her skin, slowly spreading to cover her arm. She thrashed and kicked as the ice covered her mouth, jolting a sleepy Rumple awake.
"Well, isn't this an awkward situation," said a cold, sharp voice as Belle found herself pinned by ice against the headboard, the covers wrapped around her and Rumple falling away. A blonde woman in a sparkling dress appeared by the bed. "Oh, my," she said, with a genuinely disgusted and flustered expression.
Rumple fully awoke now, thrusting his hand forward to shove the woman back. She flew backwards into the wall, seemingly astounded that the man's magic had worked on her.
"But I-but I trained-" she stuttered from the floor, waving her hands frantically to fill his lungs with snow, but he parried the streak of blue with his own magic.
Rumple thrust his hand again and she fell to the ground, blood trickling from her mouth. He rushed to Belle, thrashing under the ice.
"Hold on, love, please, just-" One of his frantic bursts of magic suddenly and unexpectedly worked, and Belle fell from the wall, shaking harder than she ever had, her lips so blue they bordered on purple. Rumple let out a sigh of relief and crushed her to his chest as she fainted, but still breathed steadily.
He tucked her under the covers and strode over to the blonde woman, him still naked as a newborn child. He crouched in front of her and waved a hand over her head, taking great care in fastening bindings he'd shaped from the darkness and pulled straight out of the air around her wrists. When she jolted awake, Rumple smiled.
She struggled against the bounds, freezing them solid over and over until she slumped against the wall, baring her teeth. "Congratulations, you've got me. Now get it over with and kill me."
Rumple laughed through his teeth, and with a flick of his head pushed the hair out of his eyes. "Oh, dearie, I'm not going to kill you. For one thing, I don't even know who you are."
She looked almost insulted. "Elsa. You imprisoned me in an urn for three hundred years for being powerful, and you kidnapped my sister. You deserve to die, monster." She spat ice in his face, which he cradled with interest in his hands.
"Ah, yes, I remember you. Elsa, the ice queen. Your powers have improved, little one, but you are nowhere near defeating me."
Every part of her being seemed to sag, her eyes whizzing about confusedly. After a long moment, her voice no longer as cold or hard, she asked, "What did you do with my sister?" When he did not reply, she said softly, "I loved her."
Rumple strained his memory.
"The redheaded girl?"
Elsa stared into his eyes with pure disgust, but nodded.
"I believe I sent her to another land from your own, a neighboring kingdom of Snow White and Prince Charming's. The royal family there was in dire need of an heir. I provided one."
Elsa seemed to deflate even more, the anger flaring half heartedly in her eyes. "So I'm- I'm never going to see her again?"
"No."
Rumple had imprisoned Elsa with the darkest of his magic, so when she let out a shout of despair, he rolled his eyes slightly and sat back as she struck her ice at the bonds uselessly again, but something was different. Her ice, once blackened, for a short second, turned blinding white in her selfless despair, and with another pain-filled scream and a burst of white she was gone, the bindings falling soundlessly to the ground. Rumple cursed.
His phone rang.
"Hello?" he said, his tone sharp, horrified at himself for letting her slip away.
Emma's panicked voice echoed through the phone. "Gold? We've got some crazy powerful chick running around town hell bent on freezing you to death."
Rumple rolled his eyes. "Yes, I know, she just paid me a little visit. Your warning's a bit late."
"This connection was a miracle! The storm wouldn't let us out of the diner, and phones weren't working until about two seconds ago!"
He glanced outside. Sure enough, as Miss Swan would put it, it was storming like a bitch. Dark snowflakes covered the window in a grimy paste, and the temperature was dropping lower and lower.
"No need to worry, Miss Swan, she's not as powerful as she believes herself to be. Her only danger is her vicious fixation on vengeance," Rumple said, touching the window pane lightly.
" Are you kidding me? She incapacitated the whole diner at once and- and- look outside, that looks powerful to me!" Emma spluttered.
"Think, Miss Swan. Was it her power that incapacitated you, or her threats to a hostage she most likely took? You are much more powerful than her in actuality."
Emma made a noise of relief over the phone. "So we just don't let her take anyone to hold over us and-"
"We're golden. Goodnight, Miss Swan, and do not let anyone leave that diner. Cast a protection spell."
He hung up before she could tell him that Regina and Robin were already gone.
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Is Anna alive? Will Elsa find her?
Please review!
