AN: Okay, I soooo planned on updating this earlier than now, but life got in the way and the power of 3… so after THREE things went wrong medically, a final that had to be delayed TWO days and ONE trip to the hospital, I'd say it's time to call Houston and tell them I'm ready for take-off… Again, I'm sorry for the delay, and I should be updating weekly now… Here it is:
Henry and Emma are sitting at the kitchen table in the mansion; it's the day after the party and the poofing…err, the 'flashing'. Regina is finishing with loading dishes after her son and lover emptied the clean ones for her. She glances outside to her shed and decides it's time for another bout of painting so she can clear her head.
Once she finishes, she dries her hands and walked over to see what exactly her son is up to. Henry turns and sees her peering at his homework, "Vocabulary…" He provides.
"All of those sentences are about the Hulk." Regina gives him a look, "Are you supposed to pick one subject for all your words?"
"No, but it's fun. And Miss Blanchard just shakes her head when she grades my papers… It's entertaining for both the student and the teacher. I get to write about a different Marvel superhero every week, and she laughs at how much I have to bend my vocab words to fit the superhero I chose for the week…" Henry shrugs and goes back to his vocab.
Emma and Regina exchange an amused glance before Emma tries to hide behind yesterday's paper. Regina shakes her head and kisses the top of Henry's, ruffling his hair before moving on to his other mother. She kisses the top of the blonde's head as well, but Emma doesn't settle for just the top of her head. She leans into the back of the chair and Regina's front and side. Really, Regina has no other choice but to lean down and kiss her lover—not that she would choose anything different even if there were.
She makes to move, but Emma grabs hold to her forearm, silently asking her where she thinks she's wandering off to. Regina smirks and nods her head outside, telling Emma exactly what she was doing as she tries once more to leave, but Emma's grip stays strong, and Regina is yanked back so that she's right in front of the blonde "How long?" She asks just barely loud enough to hear (so as not to disturb Henry) as she wraps her arm around the brunette's lower back, securing her hold on her.
Regina shrugs, "I don't know." Regina matches her tone, "You can visit me if you get bored." She grins and kisses her girlfriend again, "Just need to clear my head." She says through an Eskimo kiss.
Emma puckers and steals yet another kiss, and this is when Henry drops his pencil and looks at his mothers expectantly, "Alright. I know that you guys have been together for a while now and I know that you know that I'm okay with it… But I repeat for the seventy-billionth time…. I Don't Want To See It!"
This makes both women laugh, "You're right, I'm sorry Henry." Regina pushes from Emma and moves to the door, "We have this evening while someone is at that sleepover…" She winks at Emma then closes the door behind her as she leaves.
The mother and son left behind watch her walk down to her many apple trees and inspect them before she can't be seen anymore as she makes her way inside the shed.
"You know your mom is good, right?" Emma says just before he picks his pencil up once more.
"So you say, but I still think that when she gets her powers back, things might change…" Henry looks to his blonde mother.
"Well, have you noticed anything different in her from two days ago to now?"
"No…?"
"She got her powers back yesterday, kid…" Emma bites her lip and looks at him seriously, "She believes in herself about as much as you do…"
"I believe in her."
"So you say…" Emma repeats his words.
"I do, I just think that her powers can only be used for evil… I don't know how much control she actually has over them…"
"Kid…" Emma turns to him square on, "I think that as long as you and me are around… as long as we stick together and stay a family… I think she'll be just fine. She does too. She just needs someone to love and to love her… preferably two someones…"
"You know I love her…" Henry looked down.
"What I don't know is why you're ashamed of it…"
"Because she's the evi—"
"WAS! Henry. She was the evil queen… She is Regina… did you ever read her story?"
"Yeah…"
"So you know how she became evil?"
"Yeah… her mom killed Daniel and she hates Snow White because of it…"
"And what is the key difference between her as an Evil Queen and her as Regina?"
"L…Love?" Henry asks.
"Isn't always?" Emma smirks, "Listen kid, she doesn't want me to tell you this, but I'm going to anyways… She took me to her wall of hearts…"
Henry stares at her blankly, "What happened?"
"She wants to put them back in the bodies… She wants to take you once that's done… once her evil deeds—the ones that she can fix, the ones she can reverse are taken care of… She told me that if she didn't even want her powers… sound familiar?"
"Sounds like Regina when her mom had the powers." Henry looks out into the backyard again, "Why can't I see before the hearts are gone?"
"Because she doesn't want you to see just how evil she once was… Neither do I."
"But I will get to see, right?" He asks.
"Mhmm…"
~0~0~0~0~0~
Emma and Regina are once again standing at the wall of hearts. They are both wearing all black, and both of their lithe forms look amazing in their fitted black. Emma has a knit hat on and is scratching her head in a curious way, "So… how do we go about doing this?"
Regina rolls her eyes and looks at her, "Excuse me?"
"Well… do we go row by row? Column by column? Do we make like a square spiral thing starting with the top left then spiraling to the center? Pick and choose are random? How do we do this?"
Regina smirks and snaps her fingers. A holographic 3-D rendering of Storybrooke comes between the two of them.
"Oh cool!" Emma says in awe.
"I figured we could go by neighborhood…? Starting here…" She swirls her finger around a neighborhood's lines and certain drawers from the wall begin to push themselves open.
Emma watches on in fascination, "Alright… Sounds good…" She continues to watch as Regina orders the boxes to stack on top of each other like Legos and with a final snap of her fingers shrink down to something so small the Borrowers could handle it with ease. Emma's jaw is dropped as Regina walks over to her and takes her hand.
"Ready?" She asks.
Emma blinks slowly a couple times, "Uhh… sure… That was so cool! How'd you do that?" She asked then face palms because she knows the answer.
"Magic." They say together.
Regina snaps her fingers and she and Emma then find themselves standing in a cal de sac.
"Okay, the houses have indicators above them like—"
"Like the Sims!" Emma points at the giant twirling green diamond, "Honestly Regina, you couldn't even pick a different color?" Emma feels Regina's stare on her and watches as the diamond changes to purple, "How hard was that?"
"You're getting too used to this already…" Regina smirks then leads the way up the driveway to the gate of the large estate they were headed for, "Shall we?"
"We shall." Emma locks her fingers together and bends down a little.
"Honestly, Darling, I can just flash us in, why do you insist on cat burgling?" Regina asks as she's hoisted to the top of the gate.
Emma takes a running leap and rather gracefully gets herself high enough to pull herself over, "Okay, first of all, we are not burgling… we're just… catting…" She frowns at this word, "And second, just because you can flash doesn't make it as fun… with this there's a bit of a Bonnie and Clyde, In Time kind of thing… except we're really not taking a damn thing…" Emma jumps down before Regina and grabs her upper thigh and ass… to help her from the gate of course, "And I get to see you all stealthy-like, which is rather sexy…" Regina turns into Emma's hold… who has yet to remove her hand, "And then there's this whole… my hand on your ass thing…" The blonde waggles her brows.
Regina swats Emma and shakes her head, "You're horrible."
"More like adorable." Emma grins.
It's at this point they hear a distinct growling. They turn to find two rather large guard dogs about five feet from them ready to pounce, "So…let's flash into this place…"
"Right." And with that, they flash into the bedroom they were headed for.
Regina puts her hand up as whispers some kind of incantation that puts both people in the bed into a deep sleep. Emma cocks her head to the side as Regina pulls the tiny boxes from her pocket. Regina sees her curious look, "You ever see Sleeping Beauty? The cartoon one?" Emma nods, "You know how Flora, Fauna and Meriwether put the kingdom to sleep while Philip fights Maleficent? So that they won't feel pain at the potential loss of Aurora" The blonde nods again, "Well… I don't want them to feel pain while I shove their hearts back into their chest…" Regina taps on the glowing box to make it normal size and removes the heart from it.
She walks over to the man asleep in his bed and does exactly what she said she was going to do… She shoves the heart back in his chest.
"Uuugh! Oh! What the hell! That looks so wrong! Is that what you did to these people before except opposite?" Emma asks in disgust and… something else. Regina gives her a look, "Alright..sorry…wrong place, wrong time I got it. But really!...Is it?"
Regina gives Emma her best snarl, but Emma's face is filled with emotions from disgust to intrigue to curiosity…and she obviously just wants to know what Regina was like in Fairytale Land…so she looks down in shame and nods. She gives another spell, then looks up to explain, "So they won't be out of sorts whenever they wake up and they won't feel like something was shoved back into their body…"
They do a neighborhood a night for the next couple weeks…going door to door, then going back to the heart wall to put the boxes back…
They are all done except for one heart; Emma stares at it then back to Regina. Regina motions for the heart box to come forward and it opens. The blonde looks inside to see dust. She looks at Regina quizzically.
"When they are crushed, they are literally crushed to dust." Regina says quietly.
"Graham?" Emma asks.
"Graham." Regina nods, her voice barely audible. Emma turns her head quickly to the side; not looking at the remains or Regina, "It was before…" She didn't really have an excuse. "It was the last evil thing I've ever done. I saw how much I truly hurt you, and I st…I stopped. I couldn't see you hurt ever again." Emma looks at her and knits her brows. She opens her mouth to speak, but Regina continues, "I could see you mad as hellfire. I could see you frustrated..both sexually and generally. I could see you pissed at me and everyone in this town but your mother and your son. I could see you manipulated, I could see you humiliated, I could see you worn out. I could see you troubled, deceived, and anxious; I could see you angry, annoyed and resentful…confused, concerned, exhausted, worried, lost." Regina gets closer to her, "But I could never see you sad, heartbroken, helpless, hopeless, or hurt; I could never see you feel like you had been rejected or unloved or like you were used or so completely vulnerable in that way ever again. So I stopped."
"And you started doing good, like building your son a safe castle." Emma pulls her in as Regina looks away. "That's why I love you, you know?" After a questioning look, Emma continues, "I love you because you own up for your shit…whether you realize you do or not, you do it in your own way. You've always done that, but now you're owning up for so much shit that people are going to be like, 'What the deuce? She's really nice?' and I'll be all like, 'Hell yeah, Bitches! Too little too late for you! She's all for me!'" Emma looks down goofily and back up at her, "Right?"
Regina can't help the smile, "Of course, Dear. That's exactly right."
They hear the distinct sound of Regina's father's tomb being pushed aside and hear the small footfalls to reveal their son. They both give him raised brows. "What? I followed you guys here… I wanted to see the wall." Henry looks at Regina who crosses her arms, telling him that he is still in trouble, "Mom!" He says offended, "Emma said that you said it was going to be okay once all the hearts were back in the bodies… She also said that you were finishing tonight… So… I waited until I heard your voices again…"
"Emma told you that did she?" Regina's 'mom' stare is now trained on her lover.
"Did Emma not tell you that she already told Henry?" Emma asks, "You know… I'll bet she was caught up and exhilarated by all the stuff that's been going on lately that she forgot…" After a beat or two she sobered from talking in the third person, "Please don't ground me!"
She points at Henry, then gestures for him to come stand in front of her, which he does. She wraps her arms over his shoulders, which is something she won't be able to do much longer, "Look, Henry is half me, and let me tell you… his father was neither curious nor stubborn, so I knew what he was going through and I thought he had the right to know what we were doing instead of us saying, 'Oh, hey… Henry, we finished cleaning out the wall of hearts. Yeah, it existed. If you want to see it, we'd love to take you down and tell you who we—well, you shoved hearts back into…' I mean, he would have known something was going on…"
"Yeah mom, I would have…" Henry tries to help Emma out.
"Is this how it's going to be? You both giving me that puppy look all the time? When one of you does something that I don't know about."
"No." they both say but nod their head 'yes'.