Hello Sweet Doves! Thank you for all of the reviews and follows. This is a difficult story to write, and I imagine to read as well. So, thanks for your dedication to go through this journey with me.
Enjoy Lovelies!
Songs: Mz. Hyde, Innocence and I'm Not an Angel by Halestorm
Emma groaned to life and pulled the blanket over her head, shutting out the bright morning light. She hated mornings. The previous night crashed into her, and she reached out for Regina, eyes cracking when she came up empty. She sat up slowly and grabbed her head when a dizzying rush of blood throbbed through her temples. The pain receded a moment later, and she dared to glance around the shed. A small tray of crackers, toast, fruit, bottled water and a two thermoses awaited her.
Emma snagged the tent of paper with her name on the front in perfect loopy cursive with two fingers. She fumbled to hold it open with one hand and blinked rapidly, wetting her contacts.
Miss Swan, as I am unused to caring for addicts, I brought you a variety of things. I will be in counsel meetings most of the morning, so fend for yourself until I return around 1:30 on my lunch break. The door is padlocked, and I confiscated anything that looked remotely tempting from your pockets. -Regina
Emma smiled sadly. Regina cared. People who fulfilled bargains out of obligation wouldn't have bothered leaving such heartfelt note and fussed over what she might have wanted to eat. Emma gingerly sat the note on the tray, snagged a cracker and the thermos with the string of a teabag hanging from the cap. She took one bite of the cracker, tossed it on the tray when her stomach immediately protested, and washed it down with lukewarm tea.
It was mint flavored and soothed her stomach slightly. She sighed and took another sip. The tenderness of Regina's care surprised her and confirmed her theory that Regina felt too deeply, which led to extreme bitchiness that kept people at arm's length. Like Emma, once she loved someone, she loved them forever and sacrificed everything she had if it meant making them smile one more time.
Emma sat the thermos on the floor near her pillow and then moved the bottled water there as well. She laid down and pulled Regina's note onto the mattress, holding it open with two fingers and tracing the bumpy lines of Regina's forceful handwriting with her thumb. Someone cared, Emma thought and closed her eyes against the tears as she gave herself back to the sleep that pulled at her mind.
She awoke hours later to an acid burning through her veins. She screamed and scratched at her chest, trying to alleviate the pain, let it out somehow. Move. Run. Get out. Her mind screamed at her, and she followed its instruction. She tore her arm sling off as she crossed the cement in her bare feet. This was a terrible idea. She hadn't the strength to do this again. She could have learned to live with the habit, get herself on a schedule in order to function properly. She had the strength for that. She could do that.
She slammed into the solid door with her uninjured shoulder. It never budged. She jerked at the knob, growls and groans of frustration tearing from her throat. Regina. Regina had done this. Regina wanted her to suffer. She took pleasure in it. Emma reasoned with her disoriented brain. She tugged at the door one more time and screamed in frustration. It hurt. Everything hurt. She burned alive from the inside out. She had to get out.
Emma ripped off her jacket and flung it to the floor, followed by her shirt. Her skin burned from the inside out, and she hyperventilated with the effort of remaining calm. The water. She needed the water. Her knees hit the mattress a second before she tipped the bottle into her mouth, sucking down half and pouring the rest over her head, chest and back. It heated almost instantly on her feverish skin but offered a moment of relief.
Emma grabbed the note on the mattress, seething with barely contained rage. Regina had done this to her.
"Fuck you!" Spit flew. She ripped the note into tiny pieces and flung them over the bed. A different sort of pain stabbed her heart when a scrap of paper fluttered to the mattress at her knee. The letters Re glared up at her, accusing her. She collapsed onto her elbows and gathered the tiny shreds of paper.
"No, no no. I want it back!" She cried when her hands shook too violently to put the note back together. "I want it back," she repeatedly weakly and jammed her fist into the mattress as heart wrenching sobs pulled from her chest. She sniffed and straightened as a new thought filled her. Regina. This is what she'd wanted.
She wanted Emma to believe that she cared in order to control her, to trap her. She wasn't coming back. She was going to starve to death in this shed, and no one would have even known. No one else knew where she was. Had Regina taken her phone, too? Of course she had. How else would she have prevented Emma from calling the outside world? Emma reasoned in her paranoia, not bothering to search for her mobile device.
She looked around at all of the tools and grabbed a shovel before her mind even registered that she'd stood again. Glass crashed and flew around her when the spade made contact with the window. She hit it again, breaking the wooden beams that held the glass in place.
"Emma! What the hell are you doing?" Regina called from the door. Emma roared and charged the other woman, her captor, her enemy. She must escape.
Regina dropped her purse and brown paper bag from Granny's and caught the shovel handle in her hands, but Emma's momentum slammed her into the door anyway. She grunted as the breath left her chest and gasped as she struggled with the crazed woman attacking her. Emma's normally compassionate, slightly haunted eyes were devoid of all emotion except for a cold rage that bore into Regina's panicked brown.
"Emma stop!" Regina begged, fear seizing her heart and voice.
Emma faltered for a moment, and her pressure on the shovel lessen as Emma shook her head, trying to focus through the haze in her mind. Regina gulped a breath and relaxed, hoping she'd broken into Emma's mind. She had for only a moment before Emma's eyes hardened again. Regina froze a moment and watched the transformation, and then instinct took over. She jerked the shovel upwards, catching Emma on the cheek and temple.
She gasped and fell against the door as Emma crumpled to the floor, taking the shovel with her. Regina gathered her bearings and waited for the second attack, but it never came. Emma was out cold. Her hands shook uncontrollably, but she managed to roll Emma onto her back. A dark purple bruise had already formed on her swollen cheek, but there was no blood. The deputy was going to suffer from a massive headache when she awoke, but there probably wasn't any permanent damage. Regina sighed in relief and pressed her hands into her thighs as she slumped and allowed the adrenaline to leave her body.
Emma woke about ten minutes later and grunted quietly at the throbbing behind her eyes. Had she dreamed attacking Regina with a shovel? It had to have been a dream. She tried to rub her aching face, but her hand was thwarted by an unseen force cutting into her wrist, and her left arm was hooked into the sling. Emma cracked her eyes and rolled them towards her bound wrist, finding her own handcuffs to be the culprit restraint.
"Welcome back, Miss Swan," Regina called from across the room, but Emma lacked the willpower to turn her head or open her eyes again.
She gasped when something cold pressed against her pounding face. Emma groaned into the soothing relief of the ice pack against her injury. Regina pulled it away and prodded the skin gently with her thumb, checking the extent of the swelling, and then returned the pack.
"Are you calm enough to be released?" She asked, and Emma cracked her eyes and stared hazily up at her caregiver. Regina grinned involuntarily, face softening with emotion. Emma's bright green orbs had returned to their usual soulfulness.
"Did you hit me with a shovel?" Emma rasped rather than answer Regina's question.
"I did," Regina answered matter-of-factly and smiled wider at the surprise in Emma's face.
"I'm so sorry, Regina. I was crazy, out of my mind. I didn't mean to attack you," Emma apologized and allowed one solitary tear to leak onto her cheek. Regina brushed it away with her thumb and cupped Emma's cheek. She caressed the skin beneath Emma's eye even though no more tears followed. It was a soothing gesture that Emma almost believed to be instinctual, subconscious on Regina's part.
"You warned me this would happen. I was amply prepared," came the response and forgiveness automatically. Emma winced at the blatant lie and sliver of fear in Regina's eyes but said nothing. Regina dropped the ice pack and released her wrist before setting the cold compress into Emma's hand and guiding it back to her swollen face.
"Hold that there another ten minutes. I have another in the freezer. I'll bring it out in an hour or so," she said gently, remorseful for having caused the injury. She kicked off her pumps, sat cross-legged as she had lasted night, and pulled a disposable tape dispenser from her coat pocket.
"Do you want to talk about it?" She eyed Emma wearily, studying the different emotions dancing through her face.
Regina wasn't sure why she'd texted Stacy and cancelled all of her afternoon appointments or why she felt compelled to sit with Emma. They were supposed to be enemies, after all, but here she was, patiently waiting and taping together a silly note that she'd written. It meant nothing to her, but Emma had obviously tried to reassemble it during her withdrawal-induced haze. If completing that task helped, Regina intended to tape it seamlessly together, like tape laminate. Perhaps she gave it a fighting chance for the next go round with the suffering deputy.
"What do you want to know this time?" Emma sniped. She hadn't wanted to talk, but she owed Regina something. If she took payment in stories of a pathetic and inconsequential life, well… at least it was something she had in overabundance. She'd have been able to pay the toll for years.
"Tell me about the first time you chose to use heroin," Regina said evenly, her eyes focused on her task.
Emma puffed a sigh, closed her eyes, and settled against the pillow. "Why do you want to know about that?" Emma asked, hoping Regina backed away from the subject.
"Humor me," Regina pushed. Emma sighed and tossed the ice pack onto the bed. Regina almost chided her for not leaving it against her face long enough but bit her tongue.
"I was 17. It was about six months before I went to jail.
She and Matt were close, closer than she'd been with any of her other foster siblings since. He was the first person she cared about since Candace and Marcie. After the murder-suicide, the state kept them together for emotional support for a few months until Marcie's aunt agreed to take in the teenager. They begged her to take Emma as well, but she refused, blaming the other girl for the death of her sister. Emma still believed her. It was her fault Candace died, and she refused to open herself up to anyone else, afraid she'd have destroyed them, too.
Matt was different, though. No matter how much attitude and unjust ire she flung at him, he laughed it off, punched her shoulder amicably and sauntered away to give her time to cool down. She loved him and trusted him. He had stepped into her life at a time when she desperately needed something to cling to, and he made her love him. So when she barreled into his bedroom after school that day and saw the needle sticking from his arm, she felt compassion instead of disgust and judgment.
She offered to help him get into a program and to help him tell his parents. They were kind and caring people, and Emma sensed if she continued behaving and doing well in school, they might actually have kept her until she turned 18 and maybe even helped her get into college and let her come back during summers and holiday breaks. It was the family she'd always longed for, and the thought of losing them terrified her.
"Matt, we can get you help, man. It doesn't have to be this way," Emma implored and grabbed the boy's arm affectionately. If they weren't bound by the no relationship between foster siblings rule, Emma might have admitted her romantic attraction to him.
He shook his shaggy brown hair and pulled away. "You don't get it, do you? I don't want to stop," he admitted, glee in his eyes. "Come on, Em, try it with me. Just one time, and you'll understand. You'll be okay if you only do it once," he assured when he saw the apprehension and fear cross her eyes.
"Are you sure?" she asked, wanting desperately to understand her brother. She wanted to help him, and maybe he was right. If she understood the way he felt, she understood how to help him fight it.
"It's perfectly safe," he comforted her, and trailed his fingers through her wild blonde hair. He cupped her neck and traced his thumb over her jaw. Her bright naïve eyes told him all he needed to know. She'd already given in, and he readied the syringe.
"Just a little," Emma instructed and swallowed the thick fear in her throat.
"You can trust me," he said with a wink and tie the tourniquet tightly around her bicep. "I won't lead you astray."
Emma nodded and studied his face as he injected her with the liquid bliss. It took her pain. It made her fly. Matt flew with her, and she loved him more. It took only a few days until she begged him for a hit several times a day. He always smiled and obliged. This went on for months, and Emma cared about nothing except getting her next high. Screw college and summers and breaks and school. All she needed was Matt and heroin.
She'd been addicted for three months before they hit their first wall. She came to him as she always did, but he refused her. He explained that she'd been freeloading, and if she wanted more, she had to pay. They fought. Emma had nothing to give, no money, no possessions, nothing but her devotion and companionship.
"You have something to give," he said as his eyes leered over her body lasciviously. She gulped and backed away.
"No. I don't want us to be like that, Matt. I want to be with you, but I don't want our first time to be like this," she pleaded, jerking when her back hit his bedroom door suddenly. His parents arrived home two hours after she got off the bus. No one was there to stop him if he forced her.
He approached her slowly, clearly hazed out of his mind. "Matt, please. I've never been with anyone," Emma begged, afraid he'd take what she wouldn't give willingly.
Emma fell silent and covered her eyes as if she might have blocked out the images in her mind with the gesture, and Regina studied the rest of her face. Had the boy raped Emma? Had that been her first sexual experience? Regina gritted her teeth, memories of herself taking another young girl's innocence filled her thoughts. Belle. She hung her head and forced the next question from her mouth.
"Emma, did he…" she choked, unable to finish. Her emotions swelled from two facts that became crystal clear in this moment. She cared for Emma Swan, and the Evil Queen was dead and gone forever. 28 years in limbo softened her desire for vengeance, healed her anger. All that remained was Regina.
"No. Heroin can cause impotence in men. It actually saved me that day. I ran away, quit school, and never looked back," Emma finished her tale succinctly, devoid of emotion.
"You must have met Henry's father soon after," Regina pushed, wondering how much more Emma felt comfortable revealing.
"Regina, I'm tired," she said and rolled onto her side facing away from the older woman. She wasn't sure that she'd ever be ready to tell Henry's adoptive mother that his birth father was either a rapist or a dishonest thief who left her to take the fall for his crime, and that she hadn't a clue which one. She snagged the ice pack, rested her head on it and picked at the comforter her absently.
Regina's brow tightened with her throat, and she swallowed her tears. She sat the tape aside and lowered her body behind Emma's, holding her weight on her elbow. Her breast pressed gently into her back when she leaned over and slid the immaculately taped note into Emma's hand, effectively halting the assault on the threads of her blanket. Emma's hair obscured her face, but Regina watched her thumb brush over the words she no longer had the ability to touch.
She wrapped the note in her fist and tucked it beneath her chin, holding the it to her chest. Regina nearly broke down. This poor woman only wanted someone to love her, to care about her. Everyone Emma had ever loved either died, abandoned her or took advantage of her. The note she'd hastily written in irritation this morning barely constituted civility, but it meant something far deeper to Emma Swan, a woman so damaged and abused that she made Regina feel better about herself for a moment. She wasn't the only broken soul in Storybrooke anymore.
Regina tucked her arm beneath her head and scooted into Emma. She released a shaky breath and then gingerly touched Emma's waist. She would have much preferred touching her shoulder, but it was injured and probably ached badly from Emma's earlier episode. A tear slid down her face when Emma's back vibrated gently with silent tears of her own. Regina squeezed her side, letting her know that she wouldn't have let go if Emma vocalized her pain.
"I'm here, Emma," she whispered to the back of her head and squeezed her eyes shut tightly. She never meant to give her heart to Emma but realized in that moment that she'd had very little choice in the matter.
Emma Swan had won her over, and she couldn't have turned back from that even if she wanted to. Maybe if she tried, she no longer had to suffer through a friendless existence anymore.
