Disclaimers on part 1

Author's Note: I want to thank everyone who has favorited, followed, or reviewed this story to date! I hope that this story continues to interest and intrigue you, as it has me, in the unfolding. In this part, some questions are answered, and some new questions are raised as Emma and Regina have their first real moments together since the chess game... and what came after. Not all is happiness and light in the world of Swan Queen.

Thanks to Laura D for beta reading!

Your Move Part 7
by LZClotho

Emma had slept in many uncomfortable places, positions, and situations over her lifetime. The asphalt of a roadway had to be the most impossible. Her back was soaked and cold; her face felt wind-blasted and the skin stiff, as if it might crack any second. Twitching her right foot sent pain all the way up her leg into her gut which gave a stomach-wrenching twist that made her want to throw up, and it was this notion that made her open her eyes to the pre-dawn light.

Snuggled against Emma's left side, Regina's dark head lay against her shoulder. A hand gently rested on Emma's rising and falling chest. The events of the last twenty four hours played through Emma's memory like a jerky home movie.

She bit her lip and rolled onto her side careful not to do more than shift Regina carefully down so she could see the woman's face and examine the injuries she had only vaguely identified in the shadows of night. Emma winced as her fingertips neared what appeared to be a ruptured boil on the outside of a muscular forearm. Several more boils and bone deep lacerations that reminded Emma of dog bites were evident up Regina's arm all the way to the shoulder. Charred fabric appeared to be embedded in some as well. The woman's legs, though front more than back, also seemed to have suffered similar attacks. What the hell did this to you? she asked the silently sleeping woman, lifting a lock of her brunette hair from her forehead and stroking it back behind her ear.

I had to come through the barrier to get you, Regina had said.

Emma never had considered the barrier, not really. From the beginning, Henry had said she was the only one who could pass through it. He had constantly warned that bad things would happen to the other Storybrooke residents if they tried. She'd humored him but had never seen evidence to support his claim. The night she'd tried to run with him in the car, slipping off the road had been caused by him grabbing the wheel. No mystery there. But then she remembered the weird way the wheel had jerked in her hand before this crash. As if phantom hands had seized it.

She studied the woman in her lap as a discordant chorus of questions filled her brain. Why had Regina come after her? How had Regina known she had crashed? If the curse had truly broken, why was there still a barrier? Was this another case, like August's wooden leg, of Emma's curse-immunity leaving her unable to see what was right in front of everyone else's faces? But she believed now, didn't she? That's how she'd been able to finally see August turn completely to wood, fight a dragon, save Henry with a kiss...

Okay. To avoid the headache that was creeping up the back of her head about to make her brain explode, Emma decided to accept there was a barrier. And she and Regina were now outside it.

"Regina." Despite the low tone, her voice carried and echoed slightly in the Maine morning stillness. Something in the underbrush west of the roadway scurried away from the sound. Reflexively, protectively, Emma grasped Regina's shoulder.

The brunette moaned in pain at the contact to her sores and jerked awake. "Emma?"

"I'm here. We seem to be alone in the middle of the road leading out of town."

"I remember." Regina's tone was dry. Slender fingers slipped over Emma's and Emma's gaze trailed up the brunette woman's damaged arm to the dark brown eyes searching her face. "Are you all right?" Regina asked. When Emma nodded, Regina said, "We'd better get back to town, get someone to set your leg."

"You got out of there. Why didn't you keep running?"

"You were hurt."

"So, thanks for the help. I'll go back on my own. You should go before someone comes."

"No one else can come, Emma. No one else can get through the barrier."

"No?"

"No."

Entrapped by the concern in caramel eyes, Emma could only nod as her eyes filled with tears. Dropping her chin, she picked at the blood encrusted in her jeans to hide this feeling of coming apart at the seams. She didn't even really understand why she was so disconsolate, but she couldn't look at Regina.

A hand slipped under her chin, lifting it. Regina searched her face. "Emma?"

Emma tried to pull away, to push onto her knees, biting her lip to keep from crying out as she felt the pull in her back and broken leg. She turned herself away so she didn't have to see Regina leaning on her hands on the pavement, eyes soft with emotions Emma wanted no part in naming.

"It was just sex, Regina." No it wasn't, a rebellious voice in her head retorted. Regina said nothing. Emma looked down the road in the direction she knew lay the interstate highway. She wrestled herself onto her good leg, dragging the broken one. Regina was suddenly there, moving under her right shoulder, a human crutch, keeping the weight off her busted knee.

"You can run again once you're better," Regina said. "Let's get you into town to set that leg."

Reluctantly Emma put her right arm around Regina's shoulder to steady herself as the brunette put an arm around her waist.

"I saw you," Regina said, her voice so quiet Emma almost questioned there had been words at all. "I saw you leaving," Regina said, and her voice was stronger. Emma took it for hurt and accusation.

"I tried not to wake you when I put you to bed." Here it comes, Emma thought, the morning-after conversation she never liked doing.

"No. Emma, I saw you out hereon the road. Saw the crash."

That wasn't the direction these conversations took. Confused, Emma asked, "How? Last I checked, Storybrooke doesn't have a traffic camera system."

Rolling her eyes, Regina shook her head. But then she smiled and looked up at Emma. "Magic."

Emma did not smile back. She remembered thinking of the possibility when struggling to get out of her uniform at the Sheriff's station. So it was true! Her rage blossomed red hot. She shoved Regina away even as the woman tried to hold onto her. The brunette stumbled, nearly toppling them both. "You lied to me. You dohave magic!"

"I never!" Regina pulled away from Emma, her expression broken with pain. Emma stumbled from the weight bearing suddenly demanded of her damaged knee. They both fell to the ground, Emma still screaming.

"Fuck! Regina, you fucked me!"

Regina dragged herself out of Emma's reach. With her broken leg, Emma couldn't follow her physically, but her words were no less damaging blows.

"You used me. I defended you to my parents! The ones I've been waiting to find all my life! The ones you took away from me!"

Regina wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, accepting Emma's rant as tears rolled down her own face.

"Damn you!" Red-faced and breathing hard, Emma finally cut off her tirade and lunged for Regina. "Say something!"

"I never meant to hurt you."

"Hurt me? You've been lying to me, to everyone! You have magic! You played the damsel in distress so... Fuck, and I fell for it!"

"I never lied! To you, or anyone!"

Emma yelled over her as if she hadn't even spoken. "Why lie to me about the magic? Did you think I wouldn't protect you any other way? I told you good people -"

"Listen to me! I wasn't lying! I don't have my magic." Regina blew out her breath as she finished.

"You just said you found me with magic-" Emma shook Regina fiercely by the shoulders. Though her fingers dug into Regina's open sores, the brunette didn't make a sound and she didn't pull away.

"It's not my magic!" she insisted.

"Your majesty is a liar," Emma said, and she might as well have said "bitch."

"After everything..." Regina looked down at her hands, turning them over and back again, then she lifted her gaze once more. Caramel-colored eyes darted back and forth between Emma's. "I swear to you... on Henry's life, Emma, I have not been lying to you. About anything."

"Then how did you see me out here on the road? You didn't drive out here. I saw no one here when I crashed."

"Actually I did, but that was later."

Emma blew out a frustrated breath. She looked around obviously pointing out in the silence that there was no other car. "You're lying."

"I swear. The magic used was not my magic. It was yourmagic." Her voice trailed to silence as she turned her face away.

"I don't have any magic," Emma stated with a firm emphasis on each word.

"You do." Regina grasped Emma's hand. She felt the skin tingle and slowly a wisp of... something drifted from Emma's skin, like smoke from her pores, and writhed snake-like around Regina's wrist. Her heart beat a little faster. Regina spoke quietly as they both watched their hands. "At the house. You left some... in the chess pieces... Your glass."

The smoke expanded becoming a cloud obscuring her hands and Regina's wrist; the brunette winced and closed her eyes. "What the hell are you doing?" Emma demanded.

"I'm guiding it, but it's not mine. Can't you feel it reaching back... into your chest, pulling at you?"

Having been focused on the smoke, Emma was about to shake her head when suddenly Regina's hand dropped hers and the woman fell backward gasping in pain. Emma did feel a tug then, like something was trying to pull her heart out using several strings. She clutched her chest and gasped. The sensation stopped.

"What the fuck did you do?"

"I'm sorry. It hurt."

"Yeah, fuck it hurt. What did you do?" Emma demanded an explanation.

"My injuries. They tried to absorb... too fast."

"Or you could've been trying to rip my heart out." Emma gave an exasperated huff.

"Damn it, Emma, would you stop running scared for just one minute and listen to me?" Regina gathered herself following her yell, closing her eyes briefly. When she opened them and spoke again, her voice seemed drawn slowly from a well of calm. Emma recognized it as Regina's mothering voice, which she'd often heard used on Henry.

"Somehow... don't ask me how, I honestly don't know... When we had..." She gestured between them and looked uncomfortable as she clearly searched for a way to describe what they had done. "Sex," she finally said, though she looked frustrated with the choice. "I became able to tap your magic. I know it's yours because my glass – and the pieces I touched - are void. It's not unusual for a novice at magic to leave... bits laying around. I used to accidentally change parts of my hair from red to black every time I finger-combed it." Regina laughed at the memory.

Whatever anger Emma had drained away with the sound of that laughter. She had never heard a more beautiful sound in her life. The evident honesty in the memory, the genuineness of the sound squashed Emma's every doubt. In wonder she blurted, "I really have magic?"

"I don't exactly know why you have magic," Regina said with a serious tone. "Neither of your parents do. It may be, like Rumple said, because you're the product of True Love."

That again. Emma took a deep breath, "Can't we just go back to the days when I was an interloping deputy in a small town who kept pissing off the mayor while we fought over our kid?" She found herself seeking out Regina's hands, studying them, remembering their touch upon her body.

Smoky wisps appeared again and this time Emma could feel them, like threads seeping from her heart. They curled – was she really directing them? – around Regina's lower arm. A particularly vicious tear on the woman's forearm rippled and closed. Although the skin was not unblemished, as the sensation and the smoke receded, Emma accepted that, yes, she had just healed Regina. With her own magic.

She looked up to find Regina had been studying her face. "Thank you," the brunette said.

"What do we do now?"

"We go back into town to get someone to set your leg." Regina lifted Emma's right arm and settled herself underneath it, again acting the crutch. Emma settled her arm once again on Regina's shoulder, and the brunette settled her arm strongly across the back of Emma's waist.

Several shuffling steps later, Emma felt a tingle start at her head and travel down with her forward step to her feet. As the sensation passed, she glanced to look at Regina, who was looking at her. "You felt that?"

"Must have been the barrier. After all no one seems to suffer ill effects entering Storybrooke," Regina said.

"Yet it nearly ate you alive when you tried to leave. Magic is such a bitch."

Regina laughed as she repositioned herself and they started shuffling forward again. It was then she blurted, "Wait, where is everyone?"

The roadway on which they stood, supposedly inside the town limits of Storybrooke, was notably very empty.

"Everyone?"

"When I left to get you, there was Snow, James, The Blue Fairy, even Grumpy, Sneezy, and Michael Tillman. I can't believe they'd just abandon you." She frowned. "Why would they take my car? I haven't been gone that long."

Emma reached into her pocket, pulling out her cell phone. "Well, let's see, maybe I can call... Nope, no bars. Power's low though, so..."

"We keep walking." With Regina settling into position under Emma's shoulder once more, Emma concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.