Hello, my loves! Thank you for all the new follows and reviews! This story is tricky, so picking my way through it is an interesting challenge. Also, I'm starting to do this twitter thing, so if you want to follow me, my handle is AmberwritesWV. It's mostly weird thoughts at this point, but soon I'll figure it out.
Enjoy!
Song: Fix You by Mysha Didi and Get Away by Jessie J
Emma wanted to be anywhere else – the magical nexus, under Cora's thrall, stuck in a cell with Leroy. Exactly anywhere but standing on Regina's stoop, hungover and guilty from her actions the previous night, sounded like a good place to be. White breath wisped and disappeared, blending with the door. She tried to just go, get the hell out of town before anyone noticed her absence, but it all felt wrong. She'd left Ruby and her parents and Henry a note at the apartment, but she needed to say goodbye to someone. She'd left them letters because they needed them. She needed to say goodbye to Regina, goodbye forever, because she needed it. No one needed her anymore, and maybe without her constantly mucking up plans with Henry, he and Regina might have found a stable family with Robin and Roland.
No one wanted her, not like this, least of all Regina.
Lip trembling, she touched the door. The cold burned her fingertips. "Goodbye," she whispered. A second later she nearly leapt off the stoop when the door opened.
"Do you intend to freeze to death on my porch?" Regina snapped from the top of the stairs and crossed her arms against the cold rushing into the warm foyer. Emma eyed the intentional distance kept between them but made no move to close it.
"I came to apologize for last night, and… to say goodbye. I'm leaving Storybrooke for a little while," Emma explained with her hands clasped tightly behind her back. The last thing she wanted Regina to remember of her was something aggressive and ugly.
"Why?" Regina asked, shocked.
The reaction reminded Emma that she spoke to Regina, not The Queen. She'd have been tossed into the isolation room and mutilated by that point if she'd ever touched The Queen the way she'd grabbed Regina the previous night. This Regina processed the incident, gauged the cause and effect with maturity and logic than emotional backlash. She hesitated, but on some level, this Regina knew that she'd have never acted that way without being severely emotionally compromised and drunk off her ass.
"Because I'm dangerous," Emma said simply, and Regina inhaled sharply.
"Come in, Ms. Swan. You're shivering," the mayor offered bluntly and turned from the doorway. Emma listened to stilettoes tap against hardwood and then porcelain. She'd gone to the kitchen. The Savior stepped beyond the threshold, lingered in the cold for a few seconds, and closed the door softly, carefully so as not to scare Regina again. She'd never dreamed it possible before the alternate timeline, but now, now she knew how afraid Regina felt most of the time, how lonely and scared of rejection and herself and intimacy.
Regina raised an eyebrow when she finally made it to the kitchen but said nothing as she set a steaming cup of cider, fresh off the stove, onto the island. "Henry isn't here," she said softly and turned back to the stove to dip a mug for herself. Emma knew presenting her back, her vulnerability like that, made a statement that she'd never hear aloud. Regina accepted her apology. They'd always acted that way with one another. No matter what sort of toe-stomping came between them, they moved on so easily; they'd seen too much pain and horror to turn their backs on someone they knew to be reliable if given half a chance.
Emma lingered in the doorway despite the peace offering. "Why don't you hate me? I crossed a major line last night, Regina."
"I'll help you learn control of your magic," the former royal offered, still not able to face the woman who practically attacked her the previous night.
"Why would you do that?" Emma stepped into the kitchen, careful to stay on the other side of the island.
"Why did you save me from an angry mob after you broke the curse?" Regina asked just as seriously as she faced her former arch nemesis. Something deeper caught Emma off guard in those soulful caramel eyes – a slight fear and reticence, yes, but something else, something she'd not expected. Something she'd learned on the other side of that portal, how to read the subtle nuances of Regina's eyes. Regina wanted her to stay?
"Because I know you," she repeated the words she'd implored her parents to comprehend when they'd suspected Regina of killing Archie. Just more of Cora's fuckery. The skin around Regina's eyes tightened, and Emma tried to understand. Was this what The Queen constantly felt around her? Befuddle and bewitched and terrified. No, Regina shared her confusion, she saw it. "And Henry had been through enough, I didn't want him to lose you, too," Emma added, hoping to dispel the strange silence.
"I agree. Whether I like it or not, Ms. Swan, you're part of my son's life." She waved a lazy hand in the air. "I may have misspoken in anger last night."
Emma almost laughed at the silent conniption Regina had just spitting out those words. A snarky jab about actually getting a halfway decent apology bubbled and popped just beneath her throat. She hadn't the energy to rile Regina. She was tired, too exhausted to expend energy on teasing. "What do you mean?"
Regina grunted, a solitary rumble in the back of her throat. "After Daniel died, I grew angry. I lashed out when I had no other outlet." Emma held her breath, afraid to destroy this one perfect moment. Regina hadn't spoken about Daniel to her since their return from Neverland. They'd made a helluva team there. Regina picked at her mug with a calculated thumbnail, eyes carefully averted to the steaming cider. This woman was not The Queen, not even close. They'd grown into two completely separate people during the 28 years of curse.
"You've followed exactly in my footsteps," Regina finally said and leveled those agony-ridden brown eyes at the stormy green studying her. "I haven't a clue what happened, but I know what it feels like to be abandoned when you most need one person to weather a storm with you. My life might have been quite different." She lifted one shoulder and destroyed their intense gaze to stare into amber liquid in a blue mug.
"She died," Emma blurted, immediately gaining access to those light brown eyes again. Shock registered on Regina's face. She opened her mouth to speak, found nothing came out, and searched Emma's turbulent sea green eyes instead.
Emma held her gaze as steady as the voice rolling over her tongue, forming the words she'd never intended to speak. "She…I didn't know that I loved her so much until recently. I didn't know things could be that way with her, but…" Emma wiped at wet cheeks with cold fingertips. "I fell in love because I finally gave her a chance to love me back. She was so afraid that I'd abandon her, that I couldn't love her because of the things she'd done in her past, but…"
Emma gave a little shrug and smiled into a wet, breathy sigh. Bright green glazed with sweet memories of stolen kisses and whispered secrets. "She didn't know how afraid I was that she couldn't love me. That's why I never told her how I felt."
More tears trickled onto her cheeks, and Emma let them fall from her chin, more afraid to break eye contact with Regina than to allow the other woman to see her pain, her weakness. "She died," she repeated softly because she hadn't the strength to project anything louder.
Regina blinked rapidly, dispersing her own tears before they fell. "I'm so sorry, Emma."
"She has this smile," Emma continued, caught in a trance of memories that all seemed to replay perfectly in the reflection of Regina's eyes. "When she smiles like that, everyone in the room just stops to stare because it's so rare and so beautiful. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's like… it's like feeling sunshine for the first time after a long winter."
A small smile tugged at Regina's lips despite the single tear trekking down her cheek. "She sounds wonderful. Why had you never mentioned her?"
"I…" Emma choked on tears, shrugged, shook her head. "No one here knew her."
"Last night, when you said you missed me, were you talking to her?" Regina spoke cautiously, careful not to portray anger or judgement for Emma's lapse in sanity.
"You look like her, dark hair, brown eyes. I didn't mean to hurt you. Is your wrist okay?" She glanced at the appendage in question to find a dark blue sleeve blocking her view.
"Just a bruise," Regina set her mind at ease with her tone while telling her the truth. She loved that about Regina, she never lied to her no matter how much it hurt.
"I'm sorry. I'd never… I didn't mean to grab you that hard."
"What was her name?" The mayor steered the conversation back to the original destination.
Emma froze. This very reason dictated her desire to keep everything to herself. She wouldn't be responsible for crashing Regina's life in this timeline, too. "There's a letter for Henry in my apartment. Make sure he gets it." Emma bolted for the door. Sharp clicks followed her.
"Emma, wait, I'm sorry." Emma stopped in the middle of the foyer. What else could she have done when Regina spoke to her like that? No, it wasn't The Queen, but some form of this woman held her heart. Regina was right, they knew each other. They knew when to push and when to leave and when to break open the walls to instigate healing. Emma could never have found closure while staring into the eyes of the woman who died every day. She needed to go. "Don't go without saying goodbye to him."
"I can't. I don't want to give him hope that I'm coming back," The Savior admitted, not able to turn and look the love of her life in the eyes.
"Emma Swan, you will not run away from him because you want to run from your pain. If you need time from Storybrooke to heal and gain control of your emotions to control your magic, then take it, but you do not get to walk in and out of his life like that. You made the decision to stay, and you don't get to take that back. I won't allow it, even if I have to curse this whole damn kingdom once more." Regina commanded the room, and Emma felt no choice but to face her. The former royal looked raw, she looked… scared?
"Why does it matter to you so much if I stay or go? Isn't this what you wanted?" Emma baited her, using anger to cover the ache.
"Yes, before Henry got attached to you. Before you broke the curse. Before…" Regina crossed her arms, guarding herself as she ran out of steam to fuel her own anger.
"Before we became friends," Emma read between the lines Regina couldn't bring herself to cross. A muscle in Regina's neck jumped as the vein on her forehead popped, belying the emotions she refused to show.
"After the curse broke, you were the first person who called me Regina. I wasn't just the mayor or the queen, I was a person." Regina shifted uncomfortably and clasped her hands in front of her hips, a nervous tick both Reginas retained from Granny.
"You've always just been Regina to me," Emma said, her voice soft with the ghost of her lover. She'd said that exact thing when she'd released her from the magical cuff, that Emma had been the first person to see the woman beneath the title. "If you ask me to stay, I'll stay."
Regina inhaled through her nostrils, once again shocked by The Savior's words. What the hell had gotten into Emma Swan? "Why me?"
"Because you're the only person in this town who wouldn't say it if they didn't really mean it."
Regina opened her mouth, and Emma's heart surged adrenaline into her fingertips. A sliver of light found a crack in the darkness. It grew into a beacon, a lifeline in the storm, a direction to travel. As quickly as the illumination soothed her soul, darkness crept back with each passing second. Regina's face fell slack, each muscle taking time to ponder the ramifications of the decision before one by one giving up on the tortured, lost soul begging for mercy. When the verdict reached those soft caramel eyes, Emma bowed her head and held her breath against the tears that threatened her last show of bravery. No one here wanted her, not really.
"Promise me you'll come back for him," Regina implored, completely extinguishing any light left in the crack of hope Emma almost found.
Emma laughed out loud, a harsh bark that rippled in the quiet moment. "He never wanted me, Regina. He wanted a hero. Now, he has you."
"I'm not a hero."
Emma smiled, took a moment to really study the unsure, searching woman Regina had become. Emerald lingered on the tired lines around her mouth, caressed bewildered brown eyes, kissed the adorable emotion vein on her forehead. The intense scrutiny confused Regina more with each passing second. The Savior blinked rapidly, splashing fresh tears onto her just-dried cheeks. She'd seen many expressions in Emma Swan's striking green eyes, but she'd never seen that… softness? Emma's lips parted slightly to release a wet breath in the space between them.
"Yes, you are," she whispered. In the moment it took Regina to recover from the enchantment those eyes cast, Emma disappeared out the door in a puff of frozen Maine air.
"Stay," she breathed too quietly for her own ears to hear, wishing on an empty foyer with no fairy to grant the silent plea.