x. hands and heart (chained as ever before)

"Regina! Regina!" She hears the breathless squealing before she sees Roland, running unsteadily down the sidewalk toward Henry and her. "Help!" Her heart stops when he steps onto grass, too close to the street, and she's running to him and scooping him up as he hides his face in her neck.

"What's–" She stops, determining at last that the gasping sound from the boy is laughter, not tears, and recognizes the familiar voice around the corner.

"You can't run forever! I'm gonna get you!" Emma speeds into view, nearly crashing into them both, and Roland howls with glee again. She grins at them. "Oh, so you think you can hide behind a witch? I've got magic too!" She grabs him with long fingers and immediately starts tickling Roland as he clings to Regina, the boy falling back and forth between them with every giggle.

"This is familiar," Henry observes wryly, watching the way Roland is snatched by Emma and then Regina and then Emma again.

Regina gives him a dark look and he shrugs, smirking. That year with Emma. It's always that year with Emma that turned him into a teenager.

"Hey, you go back to your dad, okay, kid?" Emma sets Roland down and rubs her palms against her jeans as he stumbles back around the corner, still laughing. "He's pretty cute. I can see why you put up with his father."

"Emma." But she's feeling unaccountably shy again, the same anxiety she's had around Emma for days now.

Emma had walked her to her office from Granny's every morning since they'd had that night out together- more, in fact, than they usually do in a week, as though they're both aggressively attempting to pretend that nothing has changed. Nothing is different, really. The elephant in the room had been addressed but it's all for naught and now Regina doesn't know what to do with her hands when Emma's around.

She settles for twisting her fingers together as Henry watches them both with sharp eyes. "I thought you only spent time with Robin when there was alcohol involved."

"You think there's always alcohol involved with me," Emma retorts, rolling her eyes. "Maybe I was just hanging out with your boyfriend. Being nice. Polite. Whatever."

"He's not her boyfriend," Henry mutters, and they are not talking about that and not to Emma.

"Huh?"

She steps on Henry's foot and curls her lip. "I'm not sixteen and choosing a prom date, Miss Swan. I don't use terms like that."

"You call Hook that all the time!"

"Hook is a sixteen-year-old trawling for a prom date." She scowls and Emma stares brazenly at her in response. There's a long pause, green eyes swimming with frustration and defiance and it doesn't have to be this way and Regina looks away, straight into an identical gaze- with a dash of irritation at what he doesn't know- in Henry's eyes.

Emma coughs uncomfortably and hooks her thumbs into her waistband. "Anyway. I was talking to Robin about the Lost Boys. Between them and the Merry Men, there's been a rash of petty crimes to deal with lately and a whole lot of people camping in the woods, and I was thinking about some kind of mentorship program to keep them all out of trouble. Once they're government funded, we can try to take care of everyone."

She frowns. She doesn't know if the hurt and the trepidation at Emma consulting with Robin before her is justified but it overwhelms her all the same, and it's a struggle to keep her face blank. "That sounds like something you should be discussing with the mayor first."

Emma sees it anyway, and how can the blonde possibly believe that her lie detector doesn't work on Regina when she seems to know her so well? "I was going to go to you next, of course." A hand reaches for her arm with a timid touch and Emma is managing a small smile and Regina burns at both, touch and look setting her chest aflame. "I just wanted to check with Robin first to make sure I wasn't wasting anyone's time."

They both wince and Regina struggles for something more to say. "That's…very thoughtful of you," she manages finally.

Emma shrugs, pulling her hand away with reluctance. "Well, I try."

"And it's a very good idea." She flushes at the beaming smile bestowed upon her for her praise. "The best I've heard to deal with those miscreants, actually. Henry wanted me to adopt them all."

"We have a really big house, Mom." He makes a face. "I was just screwing with you, anyway."

"Henry!" That year with Emma. She's going to kill her. Really. As soon as those identical hangdog expressions leave Henry's and Emma's faces.

"She's blaming me for you again, isn't she?" Emma mutters to Henry.

Henry bobs his head up and down. "It is your fault. I was much better behaved when I was with Mom."

"Oh, please, you were terrible! You used to sneak around with me all the time. You ran away to Boston once."

"That's just the remarkable self-sufficiency I gave him coming into play," Regina feels obligated to point out. The memories don't burn as much anymore, now that Henry is home again of his own free will and Emma is…important to both of them. The two and a half years that had followed had been some of the worst of her life, but she finds she can't regret them anymore now that they've led to who they all are now and this very moment, standing together on a street corner with bright eyes and hearts light with family.

"Yeah, yeah," Emma's grinning and rolling her eyes at the same time, and the shyness is back with a vengeance. Emma and Henry are probably the only people in the universe who can make her like this, peering out at them through her eyelashes and flushing and smiling at once as though she's a dimwitted Charming instead of the scourge of multitudes that she once was.

She wouldn't have it any other way.

Henry is staying at the Charmings' late that night and she's stalking around the house, collecting laundry and dusting when there's no need to do either. She doesn't like this, feeling uncomfortable in her own home, as though she needs to hide from the man upstairs or be brought into a conversation she doesn't dare to have yet.

Still, though, it's better than actually venturing up the stairs and facing him to say more than just a goodnight, to acknowledge that he's in the next room instead of her own and she hasn't admitted to him why. She isn't certain she herself has figured it out, either, to be honest, and she's not ready to think that through.

She turns from the washing machine, sighing to herself, and comes face-to-face with Robin. "What are you doing?" she demands, hackles raised at how close he is. "Why are you in here?"

He takes a step back, hands up, and his face crinkles in that way that reminds her so much of Emma when confused, eyes quizzical under–

No, she thinks, and Robin says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have startled you."

"That's fine." She pushes past him, face set. "I have work to get to in my study, if you'll…"

"I can't help thinking that I must have done something wrong, but I don't know what it could have been," Robin says, and she freezes. "I do wish you'd let me on it so I can properly apologize and make it up to you."

She closes her eyes. There's still an escape from this conversation, a curt and abrupt dismissal that she knows might be enough to test even Robin's patience with her, but she can't be that person anymore. She can't keep putting herself first and hurting others who've only been kind to her. "You haven't done anything wrong."

She makes her way upstairs and he follows, taking a seat opposite her on the couch. "I'm sorry," she says finally. "I shouldn't be treating you like this. I used to do this a lot, and you deserve more from me." She'd acted like this before, hot and cold and silent toward the men who would look at her with desire, and she'd never thought twice about it with them. There had been Sidney and Graham and dozens of others when she'd been a queen and a mayor and she'd felt utterly…

Trapped.

"…not sure about things," she finishes instead when she tells it to Robin.

He watches her for a long moment. "You spent a night out with Emma and you came back unsure about things?"

Maybe she should be dating a Charming instead of this thief with sharp eyes who understands too much too quickly. She bites her lip. "It's not about Emma."

He leans back, a sigh escaping his own lips. "Of course not."

"It isn't," she insists, and she's already breathing too fast, coming into this with too many emotions left raw inside her. She thinks of Emma on her porch you make me happy now and her chest feels as though it might burst. "Don't you ever have doubts? Don't you wake up some mornings and look at me and wonder how you can possibly care about someone who's done so much to hurt others? Who still walks freely in a town of people she'd stolen away to make miserable?"

She can see from his eyes that he doesn't understand this, that he's still seeing her through pixie dust-colored glasses. "You did none of that to me, Regina."

Does it matter? Does it change her, that he'd escaped her wrath? It shouldn't. This isn't the "fucking martyr complex" that Emma claims she's had since Pan's curse. This is her, surrounded by so many good people who can't fathom the idea that she can't be one of them, and her tone hits a pitch far out of her range. "I did it to everyone!" She lowers her voice, mindful of Roland asleep upstairs as it wavers. "I would have done it to you, too, if not for coincidence. I sent my guards to wipe out you and your men dozens of times. I would have killed you."

"You didn't." His voice is quiet, insistent, earnestness in his eyes. God, he looks so much like Emma sometimes. Of course she'd ceded to the pixie dust so easily.

"I killed people you loved. I must have." She gropes blindly for words, for something to explain to him how ridiculous his being here is. She can feel her chest heaving, hear words straining to break free and catch in her throat as they bubble up. "Haven't you thought about this at all? My reign was one of terror. I might have hurt your cousins. Your men. Your wife."

His eyes flash and she knows she's awakened something within him, something she talks about so rarely for fear of coming up short. She continues unsteadily. "I'm sure if you trace it back far enough, you can find the moment where I brought on her death. Where I set items in motion to ruin you, too. And yet you sit in my house and claim to love me when–"

"I do love you!" he snaps out, and she can't keep it in anymore, can't hold back her frustrated tears when he's looking at her with all that love shining in his eyes. "I know you aren't that person anymore and I'm proud of you for it." He shakes his head. "Why are you desperate for me to hate you?"

She's sobbing freely, a hand pressed to the spot just above her mouth and covering it, and she can't stop jerking in place with every breath she dares take as he speaks. He moves to stand, to walk to her, and she flings out, "Why would you do that to yourself? Why do any of you love me? Don't you know who…" She chokes. "Who I am? Who I still am? My heart is black and you insist on wanting me, on imagining that I can be anything more." She can feel the darkness still, strong in her veins and ever tempting, and no one understands, they don't understand how close it still is, how she can still look back at her past and find murders she doesn't regret. Find hatred she still holds strong. "Why can't you hate me?"

She can look at Snow some days and love her, love her like she'd once loved the little princess she'd saved, and other days she's glad for the misery and the pain inflicted and she's glad Snow's father is dead and she's glad that she'd taken his kingdom and claimed it as her own. She can't regret Emma's life for an instant and it makes her feel so wrong, so unworthy and twisted and evil, all for selfish desires of my Henryand my Emma and how can they still love her when she's still so dark, when she's never going to be the hero they deserve. How can Robin say he loves her when she's still so wrong?

She hangs on to the cushions on either side of her, nails digging in deep enough to permanently imprint them, and she weeps for her weaknesses and for the fools who keep dismissing them. "So this is about Emma," Robin says softly, standing over her. He doesn't try to touch her, and she's grateful for that, at least. He's in tune with her in ways that few others ever have been, even when she hasn't even been able to touch him these past few days. Her soulmate. She swallows, feeling sick.

"No," she whispers. "No, it's not. It's me. I shouldn't matter to you. To her. To anyone." She thinks of Henry right now, probably on Snow's couch playing video games with Emma, and her throat closes up some more. "There are some things you can't ever come back from, and the kind of darkness I was drowning in…I think that's one of them." She isn't crying anymore, but her eyes are still wet and there's a draft coming from the foyer that leaves tears cold on her cheeks. "I wish you'd all stop caring about me when I'm just going to hurt you."

"You won't hurt me." He reaches for her and she flinches. "I'm not going anywhere."

"No," she agrees, raising her chin to meet his eyes. "You're my soulmate. We're together or alone, and we don't have a choice in the matter."

He drops to the floor then, crouched in front of her with his eyes wide and horrified. "You make it sound like…I'm not your prison sentence!"

"Aren't you?" she murmurs, and her heart aches at the way he reels back, at how he closes his eyes as though she'd struck him in the face. "Aren't we both?" Destiny had made that decision for both of them and now they're trapped within it, saddled with each other or unhappiness for the rest of their lives. And Robin's such a good man, so much better than she can be for him or for anyone else.

Emma's so good, has believed in her and changed her and put aside so much suffering for her, and she dares to claim that Regina could be her happiness. Where has Regina found these fools who look at her and see someone more? How can Emma of all people try to choose her when she's a step down from even the damnable Captain Hook?

Robin doesn't move and she realizes that she's crying again, shaking on the couch as he remains on his knees in front of her, and all she wants right now is to find Emma and talk to her about this. All she wants is the condemnation no one she loves will give her.

Her vision is blurred from tears and she doesn't realize that Robin's been replaced by someone else until she notices that the figure standing in front of her is smaller, shorter; and when Henry sits beside her and wraps his arms around her, she holds him tightly and allows herself this one selfishness that matters most of all.

xi. ship of fools (and the fool who loves them)

They're standing together on the deck of the Jolly Roger, hands tight in each other's as they gaze out into the waters that surround Storybrooke. Henry has been with her almost every moment since the night before, protective in a way she associates more with Emma or David than her son, but she's warmed by his solicitousness. He's the one who had only reluctantly accepted Hook's invite for a family outing this Saturday on the condition that Regina join them, and his request is the only reason why she's here on this ship to begin with.

"I feel as though I owe you an explanation for last night," she says finally, eyes still on the water. "You shouldn't have seen that."

Henry lifts his shoulders in a half shrug. "It's okay. I don't…I don't want you to feel like you have to do anything. Tell me anything," he amends, and his eyes are serious like he'd heard too much of her tearful outburst at Robin. She doesn't want that for him, to be saddled with the burden of who she is and what remains within her heart.

She swallows and forces a smile and he manages to grin right back. "I'd rather you and Ma just…figure stuff out together first," His hair is blowing away from his face in the wind, leaving him looking even older than his tender adolescence for a moment, and she's glad that nature and nurture had sneaked some of hers and Rumple's intuition through to him past all that Charming blood. "But maybe wait until sailing season is over for that, okay?" He beams up at her and stares significantly at Hook and his other mother and there's that Charming subtlety. "The Jolly Roger is kind of awesome."

She squeezes his gloved hand in her own. There's another dose of non-Charming, wrapped up and hidden behind his good heart. He's a treasure she'd never thought she could have. "You are a opportunistic little sneak, Henry Mills."

He bobs his head smugly. "Aren't you proud?"

She rolls her eyes, laughing into the wind before she remembers to set the record straight. "There's nothing to figure out with Emma," she says, too little too late. "We're close friends, but we're not going to–" She stops. Saying anything more feels final, feels like a lie or a concession and she's not willing to make either, no matter how impossible the former is. "We won't be fighting over you anymore," she says instead.

Skepticism mixes with amusement on Henry's face. "Hey, remember when Ma introduced you to me after we came back to Storybrooke?"

She remembers moving in for a hug and getting a handshake instead, remembers agony and sorrow and a low voice murmuring How was that? Are you okay? like her only anchor in a raging storm. "I do."

"That's pretty much how she introduced Walsh to me." He bounces on the balls of his feet and misses her sharp intake of breath within the sound of waves crashing around them. "I thought you were the reason she'd come to Storybrooke at first. And then I talked about Walsh to see how you reacted and you got so annoyed–"

"Because I had no interest in you picking up any more parents!"

"–I just assumed Ma was dating you for a while." He smirks at her and she drops his hand, flustered. "Then Hook suddenly became my full-time babysitter and I figured that this was only a matter of time." He lets steps away for the first time since they'd boarded the ship and saunters off toward where Roland is trying to push a pacifier into Leo's mouth.

She takes a deep breath, cheeks flushed from the breeze, and is grateful that Robin had politely declined the invitation to join them today. I don't think that would be wise. I'd like to give you the space you want, he'd said, and he'd run the back of his fingers along the curve of her jaw and she'd wished for a split second that Emma had never come back to Storybrooke.

She might have been content, if she'd never thought to want anything more than Robin. She might have settled down and loved him and never felt as bound as she does now, an invisible tether still connecting her to the man on the shore as her eyes drift to Emma, tying a knot near the sails under Hook's watchful gaze.

"It's a lot more fun on here when we're not fighting or panicked over Henry," a voice says from beside her, and she jerks in surprise. Snow had come to sit beside her while she'd been watching Emma and she hadn't noticed at all, too caught up in her own thoughts to consider the world beyond Emma and her.

She hums in agreement. "Your husband seems to be enjoying himself." He and Emma both are bounding around the ship as though they belong there, pirates-in-training who tackle every task eagerly and follow orders for probably the first time in their lives. Well, maybe not David, she amends, glancing over at the spouse who undoubtedly calls the shots.

Snow smiles back. "It's hard to believe that no one's threatening our lives right now. Storybrooke hasn't been this calm since…"

"I cursed you all? Really, dear, I was doing you a favor. You'd been running from me for years, you needed a break."

"My hero," Snow says dryly, leaning back into the rail. Her eyes take a distant cast to them and Regina knows that she's remembering their histories together, years of conflict written and rewritten and somehow weaving together into peace at last.

She presses her lips together and recalls the past, the bitterness that still burns within her and darkens her heart. She'll never be like them, like the Charmings running free on this boat with her son and Robin's. She's too dark, too tainted by too many years of hatred. She'd ruined Emma Swan's life and Emma still wants her, and she cringes at the indignity of the concept. Snow would weep if she knew.

Snow, whose smile is gone as she says suddenly, "Does she seem unhappy to you?"

"Emma?" Regina asks pointlessly. It's always Emma. "What do you mean?"

Snow nods to Emma, who's tugging at the sails to keep them steady, and Regina watches her. Her brow is furrowed with concentration, the curve of her lips tilting downward as she focuses, and it's not that she's not happy, it's…

She looks like she had when she'd come back to town, cheated of the happy ending Regina had offered her and teetering under the weight of keeping Henry from the secrets of the town. She remembers an afternoon spent sitting together in the Charmings' home, sipping tea as Emma admits, I want to take Henry back to New York after this, and Regina had stared at her and said nothing (what had there been to say, when she'd willingly given them up to move toward that happy ending? When she's a stranger to Henry?) and Emma's face had folded into itself and neither of them had spoken about it again.

She looks like that Emma again, caught in a situation she'd entered out of obligation rather than desire, and this time there's no memory curse to break and remove the second option from the equation. But when she smiles, it doesn't quite reach her eyes, even when Henry waves her over and she snatches up Leo from his carrier. "I don't know," Regina says finally.

"I thought Killian would complete her. Like David does me." Snow wraps her arms around herself. "He's so devoted to her, but sometimes I wonder if she feels the same way. She's so closed off even now, afraid to open herself up to someone else," Snow says, and Regina remembers Emma on her porch, Can't I choose you? like the idiot she is. A Charming idiot who would decide for the first time in her life to chase her own happiness and pick an evil queen as her subject. "You're her best friend," Snow says, peering at Regina. "You must have some idea of how they're doing."

"Best friend?" Regina repeats. She laces the words with scorn but there's enough of a tremor in her voice that Snow quirks an eyebrow knowingly and smiles at her. Maybe there is one Charming with enough intuition to pass on to Henry.

Or maybe not, she reflects just as quickly when Snow gazes at Emma twirling Leo through the air and says, "Do you think she's thought about having any more?"

Leo spits up on Emma's cuff and Regina startles. "With Hook?"

Snow looks at her strangely. "Of course with Hook. They've been dating a while, and if she's unhappy…" Her voice trails off, a little wistfully. "She's great with kids."

"I don't think her happiness is dependent on how many baby pirates she can make. She isn't you." Her hackles are suddenly raised, irrational fury coming to the fore at the idea of Emma building a family with Hook. Maybe she does want more children. Maybe her family as it is now isn't enough for her. "For god's sake, don't tell her that. She's just desperate enough for your approval that she might actually start spawning mini-Hooks if you said the word."

Snow laughs, apparently unaware of the way Regina's face has tightened and her fingers have clamped onto her knees. "Come on, Regina, even you must be thinking about it now that you've settled down and Henry's growing up."

"Also not you," she tosses at Snow, standing up abruptly enough that the boat rocks slightly. "I'm not looking to replace Henry with a newer model." Which is low and Snow's eyes widen and instantly fill with water, but she doesn't care. Not when she's suddenly inundated with the idea of tiny toddlers who look like Roland and Henry running around together, Regina and Emma sitting over them and watching them and nothing will have changed. They'd be friends who sit just a bit too close and go home to men at night and Regina would dream of what could have been instead of the life that had been destined for her. She imagines an existence still heavy with regrets, even within the joy, and she's at once overwhelmingly queasy.

The boat rocks beneath her and she conjures a bucket just in time, emptying the contents of her stomach into it, and there are gentle hands drawing her hair back and Emma's saying, "This is so gross," into her ear as she vomits again and again into the bucket.

"That's very sensitive of you," she gasps out when she's done and Emma fishes a water bottle out of Leo's diaper bag for her.

Emma smirks at her. "At least I stuck around. Mary Margaret looks like she's going to faint." She nods to where her mother is still sitting, the tears gone and replaced with something that looks suspiciously like delight, and Regina groans, piecing together the story as Snow sees it.

"Your mother is going to think I'm pregnant," she mutters. "I can't even get seasick in peace without keeping it private from her."

"Pregnant?" Emma frowns, looking a little green herself. Regina can empathize. "You're not…?"

"No."

"Oh." The color returns to her cheeks and she flashes a daring glance Regina's way. "Good."

Which is presumptuous and uncalled for, as is the warmth that fills her at the comment. She dares to glance toward Snow again. Snow is smiling like a twelve-year-old with a secret. Which never bodes well for her. "Don't tell her that. This could be fun." She's reformed, not declawed.

"You're such an ass." Emma nudges her with her knee. She fishes around in the diaper bag until she procures a pack of wet wipes and hands them over so Regina can wipe her mouth off. "She's going to be so happy for you. You're going to have to sit through weeks of pregnancy advice and talk about how your kids will–" She rolls her eyes. "–break the cycle, or whatever, and it'll devastate her when she finds out it was a lie."

"I know." She preens and Emma rolls her eyes and reaches out to dab at the corner of her lip with a wipe.

"You're impossible." They both fall silent as Emma's finger traces her lip, and sheknows her mouth hadn't even been dirty and the wet wipe comes back clean. Emma's eyes are soft and Regina knows that her own gaze is probably giving too much away, but this is harmless, Emma in a crouch in front of her, hair whipping in the wind at Regina's face as Emma's touch lingers on her lips. Emma licks her own. "I…uh…"

It's too much, even for the oblivious Charmings present, and this will only end in disaster, so she moves back and flicks her fingers, magically tying Emma's hair back in a neat braid. "Don't you know better than to run around on a boat with your hair down?" she says shakily. "You're just clumsy enough to get it caught in the rigging and wind up tied to a sail somewhere."

"Whoa." Emma drops her hand, moving the other to touch the braid. Her eyes narrow. "Wait. So your hair isn't naturally perfect. You roll out of bed with bedhead just like the rest of us and then just magic it to be perfectly sleek and bouncy." She shakes her head in exaggerated indignation. "And in all our time practicing magic together, you never taught me to do the same! You really are trying to destroy my happiness." Regina's face pales and Emma bites her lip. "I didn't mean that."

"Of course you did." She doesn't resent her for it. Emma's the only person in her life who brings up the past as easily as she talks about what to order at Granny's, a constant awareness of who she was and what she'd done. And Emma cares about her regardless, and it's clear every time she flippantly references evil and queens and Regina's day all in the same breath. Emma challenges her and doesn't forget any of it and still treats her like a friend.

And claims Regina could make her happy. The smile returns and fades away, and she's left gazing uncomfortably at Emma, that ridiculous idiot who believes in her too easily. "I…I don't think you have the control for that," she says finally. "I tried to teach you how to direct a bullet better and you exploded the gun."

"That only happened once." That's definitely the start of a whine in Emma's voice, and Regina relaxes, back in her comfort zone.

"You have the attention span of a five-year-old. Roland has better self-control than you do." She shakes her head. "You can try. See what you can do with my hair- which, you may recall, was perfectly styled even before Storybrooke had magic."

"It was much shorter then," Emma points out before she squeezes her eyes shut and focuses.

Regina catches the telltale odor of smoke before all her hair goes up in flames and flicks Emma's forehead until her eyes snap open. "Let's try something easier." She waves her hand and focuses, tracing the shape of Emma's body with ease. It's all business. Really. And Emma's pants and turtleneck are replaced with black leather pants and a dark top that has a tight cape-skirt trailing down to her ankles. "Now you're a pirate princess."

"Whoa." Emma stumbles back, staring down at herself. "How'd you– is this an illusion?"

"Of course not. You don't have the stamina to maintain an illusion like this. This is transformation. You can't conjure from thin air, you have to be able to build something from something else. Real conjuring only works with the elements, while you can transform or teleport items to make them appear out of nowhere."

"Oh. Okay." Emma stands, testing out her new boots. Hook is gaping at her from the other side of the deck and Regina scowls at him until he shrugs and turns away, tilting his head at them appreciatively. "So I can just…focus and I can change my clothes?"

"Think about your body, how it curves and how you want your clothes to move around it. Then picture your clothing changing, billowing out or tightening or changing color." She leans forward, giving Emma another once-over for good measure. The leather does suit her, clinging in all the right places and open just above her chest to her neck, and for a moment she indulges, imagining a world where there's no Hook and Emma's the pirate come to town with her mother. That might have sped things along.

She swallows and looks up to find Emma raking her eyes over Regina's body with determination, indulging a moment too long at her hips; and she forgets herself for a minute before it occurs to her what Emma's planning on doing. And she does not intend to be set on fire by a novice sorceress. "Wait a minute, Emma, I didn't say you could–"

Blue smoke- harmless, thankfully- ripples around her and she's abruptly in a dress.

And not a dress like the ones she'd worn as a queen or a mayor. No, this is a monstrosity of Snow White proportions, puffy and round with a petticoat under a mushrooming haze of pink lace like she's a six-year-old at her first ball. The dress is so wide that it nearly reaches Emma herself, who has a hand in front of her mouth but can't quite hide her laugh as it peals out over the deck.

"Oops," she says, not sounding sincere at all. David and Hook are snickering behind her and Henry, the traitor, is smirking too as Roland furrows his eyebrows at her in confusion.

She grits her teeth, though it's a struggle to be angry when Emma's still grinning and the earlier stress has faded from her eyes. "Sheriff Swan."

"Wow, you're really in trouble," Henry mutters, sidling further away from the two of them.

She shoots him a glare and turns back to Emma. "Turn it back. Now."

"I thought you'd be proud," Emma pouts, but it isn't very convincing when the smile still curls up the corners of her lips. "Now you can be my high-ranking hostage. You seem harmless at first, just a beautiful noblewoman who can't defend herself, but in the middle of the night, your magic comes out and you go all Carrie on our asses. Only the dashing pirate heroine proves to be a match–"

"Emma."

"Okay, okay." She eyes Regina again, taking in her curves with perhaps a bit too much gusto, and this time the dress bursts into flame.

She puts it out and transforms their clothing back to normal over the sound of the blonde's laughter, and only then does she turn away from Hook and David and Henry primly, her eyes instead shifting to the stern of the ship.

Snow is watching Emma with thoughtful eyes, and Regina follows her gaze back to her companion. She doesn't know what she's looking for at first, not until she catches how Emma's brow is relaxed, the stress that had lined her face earlier faded, and the laughter sparkling in her eyes leaving her looking a good five years younger than before. She's striking like this, happy and unguarded (and, yes, mocking Regina, but she's used to it by now), and she doesn't look unhappy at all.