So, I'm all kinds of digging on Zelena. Like, I "might have a problem" digging on Zelena. Shout out to LucidLucifer for snapping at me to stop procrastinating and get on with it... because artists obsess, okay?
Songs: Breathe Me By Sia (I prefer the Jasmine Thompson cover, but whatever moves ya) and What If by Emilie Autumn
Zelena let out a little shriek and barreled into the cabin with the bow and quiver slung over her shoulder. She donned buckskin pants caked with snow up to the apex of her thighs and a thick, long-sleeve coat of the same material turned white from the heavy flakes. Another storm crashed into Storybrooke, Emma reasoned. She stayed on the bed on her side, shoulder leaned against the wall, and watched the witch shrug the weapon and bolt back into the snow. She dragged the small deer into the cabin, spilling snow from a pile outside the door. Zelena struggled to seal them inside from the whipping wind and undulating snow bank. Latching the wooden handle that denied the cold wind, Zelena twisted and collapsed against the door. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps as her lungs adjusted to the warmth of the fire. Pale skin flushed. Normally vibrant red hair soaked brown from melting snow.
Emma watched one more second and then returned to the coloring book splayed on the bed. She hadn't even asked where Zelena stole the activity book and crayons, thankful for something to occupy her mind. A tiny squirrel stared up at her. She'd colored his fur green, she didn't have a gray crayon. Zelena pushed off the door, and Emma glanced up again.
The witch winced and touched her shoulder gingerly. Emma noticed the blood. Zelena untied the jacket and shrugged it from the uninjured shoulder. She held her weight on the table on the good arm and breathed, preparing herself for the pain.
"What happened?" Emma asked and hated herself for caring. Since the truth potion incident, though, Zelena hadn't harmed her. She'd lengthened the chain, which allowed Emma to reach the fire. She prepared her own tea and food, mostly when Zelena ventured outside to do whatever it was that Zelena did. Several days ago, the sorceress dragged in another mattress that looked like the ones used at the convent, and Emma grinned at her obvious vendetta against the fairies. Zelena slept on the floor and rolled up the padding, blanket and all during the day. It made no sense, but as long as she kept her distance, Emma tried not to cause too much stir.
The witch reached over her head and swiped drenched red hair across her neck. It wrapped around the other side in a dark, wet coil. She sucked a deep breath and tugged on the coat. She whimpered, groaned, and collapsed against the table again without moving coat.
"Just use magic," Emma called to her without looking up from the squirrel. She wrote ZeZe: The Wicked Squirrel of Oz across the top of the page. "Regina's not coming out in that to investigate a magical spike."
Zelena scowled but remained silent as she snagged a piece of kindling from the wood box. She bit down and defiantly held Emma's amused gazed while she peeled away the buckskin. She plucked at the wound on the back of her shoulder, and Emma finally realized why it hurt so much. The witch squealed around the stick and used the tattered piece of jacket to pull something several inches long from the wound. Knees hit the floor hard, and Zelena, barely caught herself on the good arm. The wet stick dropped in front of her, covered in teeth prints and saliva.
"For fuck's sake," Emma growled at herself and closed the coloring book. "Here," she snapped when she rolled from the bed.
Zelena sprang onto her butt with the injured arm clutched tightly to her chest. The other hand rose with the threat of magic. Emma froze. Zelena's emerald eyes wavered between fear and pain, and Emma felt a tug of sympathy pull through her heart. As much as the witch scared her, she pitied Zelena. She'd been gone a week and figured most of the people in her life went mad with worry. Zelena lived in the forest alone for months with no one to miss her, no one to mourn her – a design of her own making, but it still sang to Emma's compassion. The Savior held out her hands and slowly sat on the hearth.
"Let me help you," she said.
"Why?" Zelena asked. She searched for the trick behind The Savior's kind eyes.
"Because if you die from an infection, I'm going to die of starvation, and that is not a way I want to go," Emma answered honestly. "I'm not going to hurt you."
The witch waited, judging, calculating the different outcomes of this scenario. Emma sat cross-legged on the hearth and fiddled with the chain attached to the shackle around her ankle. She kept her eyes carefully pointed at her lap when Zelena edged into arm's length and turned enough for Emma to see the wound if Emma leaned over her shoulder. She flinched violently at the first touch of fingertips against her bicep. Emma held her breath, stared at Zelena's ear, and touched her again. Emma pulled the long-sleeve cotton shirt to the side, down, then up.
"I need you to take your shirt off. I can't really see anything," Emma informed her captor softly, scared to spook the woman into frying her crispy with any sudden noise or movement.
Zelena nodded and wriggled the other arm beneath the hem. Emma stretched it over her head and peeled the fabric away from the deep puncture on the back of her shoulder. "What the hell happened?" She asked and reached for the bucket of hot water with the rag. It scraped the stone hearth, and Zelena jumped. Emma waited a few seconds before wringing water from the rag.
"Small avalanche shook loose a rock slide. Slate. May as well have been a pile of daggers." Zelena sucked a sharp breath through her teeth at the first dab of the warm cloth, but no other sound passed her lips while Emma cleaned away the blood. The gash stretched the length of Emma's fingers and palm, a jagged slice and a deeper puncture where the slate broke off in her skin. Deep blotches of purple and blue peppered her shoulder and ribs and the little piece of back Emma saw. How had she dragged back that deer, even one that small one, in that sort of pain?
"Can you turn a little so I can reach better?" Emma asked and dunked the rag again. "You probably need stitches."
Zelena's head bowed, jutting her spine into little mountains at the base of her neck. Ribs expanded with a deep breath beneath bruised flesh. With careful control, Zelena set the uninjured hand on the floor and levered her body in a tight arch. Emma's breath jumped against the blockage in her throat, and she forced it out of her mouth a long silent breeze. Thin white crisscrosses of scar tissue cut into the otherwise smooth, pale skin. The fire flickered and danced against the scars, caressing them with yellows and oranges. Fingers entered Emma's vision and traced the thin lines before she recognized the hand as her own.
"Don't," Zelena warned – voice dropping into a deep growl, thick and tight with unspoken emotion.
"I'm sorry," Emma apologized. The words sank deeper, meant more. They both pretended not to hear the sympathy, the pity.
Emma cleaned the wound as best she could with minimal supplies. She dug another sliver of stone from the hole and poked around for more. Harming Zelena should have brought her some sort of satisfaction, but it only churned her guts into a thick knot. "Do you have a needle and thread?" Zelena raised onto her knees and snagged the sewing basket next to the wood box.
"Want to pick your color?" Emma asked, distancing herself from what needed to be done. Zelena remained silent, maybe she hadn't heard her. "Princess pink it is," she joked. The witch clicked her tongue.
"Savior," she murmured. "I need you to take some of that white powder. You'll have about five minutes before you pass out." She pointed to the shelf of herbs and spices. Emma avoided them while cooking because they weren't labeled.
"Zelena, why the hell would I go through the trouble of patching you up just to attack you if you passed out?" The needle glowed red in the flames, sterilized. Emma waited in the silence as it cooled.
"Why did you give me that truth potion?" Emma asked, intending to distract her, and set a hand on the witch's thin shoulder. Zelena hissed when she pushed the flesh together.
"Wait," Zelena pleaded and grabbed the piece of kindling she'd dropped.
She lasted for two stitches before Emma lowered her limp body to the hearth and finished the job. So many times she almost gave into the urge to bash her brains against the warm stone. Each time the surge of adrenaline tingled her fingertips, she looked at the scars on Zelena's back – old, jagged things. They'd not been stitched, and she failed to place their origins, though they looked similar to her own whip marks. Rumpelstiltskin hadn't tortured her, so she'd obtained the wounds as a child. Emma finished the last stitch and tied off the thread. Again, she traced the raised bumps on pale skin, fingertips sliding down her spine and over her bra. A smattering of freckles bordered the lines, and Emma imagined the tiny dots had been flayed, cut out of her flesh by angry hands. Guilt tugged at her chest at the violation of Zelena's wishes, so she wrangled the other woman into her arms and lifted her to the bed. She'd risked life and limb to bring them fresh meat, so she deserved the more comfortable bed.
Coloring book and crayons in hand, Emma spread the thinner padding and sprawled on her belly. She spared a thought to the deer bleeding onto the floor but had no clue what to do with it. She doodled around the edges until her eyes drooped. The cabin, despite Zelena's presence, brought an odd sort of peace. Only the crackle of the fire and occasionally a bird outside the door disturbed the silence. No cell phones vibrated and no needy citizens required attention she lacked the energy to give. She could have run days ago – or at least tried – but she stayed without struggle. Here, no one expected anything of her. Zelena paid her no mind most of the time as she moved about the cabin and muttered to herself. It unnerved Emma when she first realized how far off the path Zelena strayed, but after a few days, the eccentric mumbling comforted her in a way only someone as equally damaged could have understood.
"The world needs their savior more than it needs their queen," Regina whispered into her ear.
Emma dropped the crayon and jerked to find the source of the words. The Queen knelt on both knees beside the bed. In her hand, a bloody heart dripped crimson tears onto the padding. "Regina?"
"The world needs their savior, Emma," she repeated and touched Emma's wrist, turning it palm up. The fire shimmered over the blood covering the dark heart.
"Regina, don't make me do this," Emma begged. Her body froze under the magical influence of the woman cupping her hand. "Please, just go away." She closed her eyes against the specter.
"You couldn't save them, Emma, but I can save you," Regina whispered. Warm lips kissed away the cooling tears on her cheek but not nearly fast enough to catch all of them. "I love you, Emma."
"No!" Emma jerked her hand away from Regina's grasp. "I won't kill you again." Regina grabbed her hand again. "Regina, no!"
"You left me to die alone," Ruby's voice accused from behind. Emma whipped onto her back. What remained of her best friend's body stood over her. Ugly, red lines cut down her naked torso. Another tore across her stomach, severing body from hips. "Do you know how they killed me, Emma? They tied me in the square and hacked me into pieces."
"Emma, let me save you," Regina begged. A hand slicked with blood grabbed her wrist again, forcing the heart upon her palm once more.
"Stop it. I'm sorry." She pulled free from Regina's fingers and dropped the heart. "I shouldn't have left. I'm sorry, Ruby!" She screamed.
"Look, Emma," the wolf commanded and dug her fingers into the gash in her chest. Flesh ripped and tore, opening to reveal the dripping entrails spilling over her friend's hips. Belle stood at her shoulder. Her mouth opened and closed, but only gurgling bubbles popped and rumbled in the deep gash over her throat. Blood spilled onto the yellow dress covered with mud that she'd worn into battle.
Emma scrambled away from the gruesome image. Her back hit the wall, knocking the breath from her lungs. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she gasped. Fear trembled in the fingertips that covered her face against the images already burned inof those she loved most.
"Emma, you can't help them, but I can save you. I love you," Regina whispered into her ear.
"You're going to leave me again, Emma. Some Savior you are," Ruby taunted and crossed her arms over sinewy cords of blood and flesh dangling over her bare skeleton.
"Savior," a foreign accent flowed from Regina's mouth. Emma blinked. "You're dreaming," the accent informed her.
"You killed me, Emma," Belle's dulcet tone added to her misery. "You watched me die and abandoned everyone to save yourself."
"Why did you leave me again, Mom?" Mason asked, his little ashen face contorted into a grimace of pain and betrayal.
"Mason, I didn't mean to leave you," Emma reached for him. She came to her knees and grabbed his shoulders roughly. He cried out pushed her away. Her back and head slammed into the wall. Mason grabbed his right shoulder and glared at her.
"You're dreaming," the accent repeated.
"Let me save you, Emma."
"You always leave, Mom. You always leave me."
"You left me to die alone, Emma. You left all of us to save yourself."
"Stop it," she pleaded and surrendered to Regina's fierce grip around her forearms. The bloody, broken bodies of those she loved most circled her, all yelling, all broken, all betrayed and abandoned. "I didn't cast the damn curse, Regina did!"
A sharp blow to her jaw shocked her. The tang of blood exploded in her mouth. Warm liquid tickled her chin. "You're dreaming," the voice repeated and strong arms shook her into reality.
Lids slammed on puffy green eyes. When they opened again, she came face to face with the redhead squeezing her wrists. She collapsed against the other woman's chest and clutched at the shirt over bruised ribs. "Oh," Zelena squeaked and looked down at the woman wrapped around her midriff. Hands covered in blood and flecks of meat from her earlier kill hovered above the other woman, and Zelena wondered if they refused to touch the other woman because of the mess or because she flailed like a cat in water in the face of human interaction.
She glanced at The Savior, opened her mouth, closed it, and bounced her eyes from item to item in the cabin. She'd not taken inventory in a while. Two mugs, two plates, two bowls. She needed to conservatively use ginger root if she intended to stretch it through the winter. Sharp fingers dug into her lower back, clinging onto the lifeline she reluctantly offered. On a convenient note, her mind continued, plenty of fresh snow fall meant fresh drinking water. Hot tears soaked into her shirt and cooled against her belly. Salt, once the storm broke, she needed to liberate more salt for preserving meet and canning vegetables. Emma hiccupped, and she bowed her head in a fruitless effort to see the other woman's face. Emma sighed, and Zelena rolled her eyes. Her shoulder throbbed with the effort of keeping it elevated above the blubbering woman's head.
"Have you finished?" She asked. No anger or irritation laced the tone, but neither had compassion.
Emma pushed from her thighs and onto her side facing away from the stunted witch. Zelena stood, hands still poised above her shoulders. The Savior stared at the door with despondent eyes that could not be trusted around knives and cold weather. She dunked them into the bucket of water to rinse the guck away and wrung out the towel. Emma glared when it squished against her shoulder where Zelena tossed it.
"You've gotten blood on your arms, I'm afraid," she explained and moved on the other side of the table. She poured a cup of tea and added a pinch of the white powder. "I've added a sedative," she explained just as she had the first night in the cabin and set the mug on the floor beside Emma's head.
Emma chucked the rag back. It smooshed against Zelena's hip and left a huge wet spot on her ass. The witch snagged it from the floor with a click of her tongue but said nothing. A tiny grin tugged at The Savior's mouth. Zelena dove straight back into the project of procuring meat to survive the storm. What looked like a leg hung from a hook in front of the fireplace. Zelena donned a tan tank top that barely covered her back and belly and clung to her body. She looked so freaking, well… not normal, but not Wicked Witch-y either.
"Come now, cooperate," she muttered to the piece of meat currently struggling against her blade.
"Totally digging this eco-warrior, Amazon goddess thing you've got going on," Emma teased the daft woman. No real reason why surfaced in her mind, so she tried not to analyze the need to reach out to her captor. She needed to feel. She wanted to know that she was real because nothing felt real anymore.
"What?" Zelena wrinkled her nose.
Emma raked her eyes over the outfit and back to her face. "Oh," she breathed and followed Emma's previous trek down her body. Without further comment, she turned back to the raw venison. A piece of light green cloth that looked like her nightgown held some sort of salve against the stitched wound.
"How long was I asleep?" Emma wondered aloud. It felt like two minutes.
Zelena tipped the knife towards the deer carcass by the door basically deconstructed and picked clean. "It's well after two o'clock."
"Do you ever sleep?" Emma tugged at threads of conversation and sipped the tea. She looked forward to the dreamlessness it offered.
"I wanted to know if the portal worked, and you refused to answer my questions," Zelena blurted. She shrugged, winced. "You asked earlier why I gave you the truth serum. That's why," she finished the thought and turned back to the deer leg. "There's nothing but tea and sedative in your cup. I can't remember the name of the herb, but I can recognize it in the forest."
"What are you going to do with me, Zelena? Why are you keeping me here?" She'd stopped caring days ago, stopped desiring escape. Where could she have gone, anyway? Back to her life where she waited on edge every single day until she irreversibly hurt someone she loved?
Zelena turned to face her, but those bright green eyes studied the blood on her hands and the blade she held. Empty fingers flexed, bulging toned forearm muscles, and relax. The blood stuck skin to skin and pulled free in tickling vines. "I don't know," the witch answered. Emma believed her.
"Why did you save me? You could have just left me in the barn." Something in Zelena's eyes made her want to understand. She behaved like The Queen, acting out and using whatever means necessary to manipulate a certain result. Where there had only been The Wicked Witch before now stood a broken woman, a woman she wanted to understand.
"Drink your tea, Savior," Zelena snapped and whirled back to her work. She winced almost immediately due to overextending her arm. The uninjured left hand hovered over her shoulder, aching to touch the wounded area, to relieve the pressure. It shook for a moment and then slapped onto the venison with a sharp crack.
"How are you standing right now? Your shoulder just got filleted by a rock slide, Xena."
Zelena hummed a slow melody and cut into the ham. Emma sipped, already feeling a bit dizzy. This cut on her lip from Zelena's harsh awakening stung when she pressed it against hot porcelain. "Stop it," Zelena murmured to the project. Emma settled onto the bedding and closed her eyes. The frozen outside storm raged and howled beyond the boundaries of their untouchable cocoon of warmth. She drifted off to a soft accent berating raw meat and the soothing crackle of the fire.
When Emma grumbled to life, the same nausea assaulted her stomach like the first time she ingested the sedative. She rolled onto her back and waited. Little taps of Zelena's boots moved around the cabin and echoed inside her skull. She pressed heels into her eyes and groaned. Everything vibrated against the floor more acutely than when she'd woken on the bed. Beyond that, she felt rested again. Exhaustion slipped out of her muscles and back into the recesses of her mind.
"I made mint water," Zelena said softly. Emma heard her kneel beside the bedroll and cracked her eyes to find the witch sitting cross-legged with a ramrod straight spine, a sling around her good shoulder to support the injured arm, and Emma's chipped mug without the handle balanced on her knee.
Emma pressed her hands into the padding and sat up slowly. Her legs still felt useless, a side effect of the herb, she figured since it happened twice. "Zelena, if that has another truth serum in it, just dump it out and ask me what you want to know. I can evade your questions without splitting my mind in two."
"Just mint," she said. Emma reached for the mug. Zelena hadn't actually lied to her yet.
The warm liquid eased the ache in her throat and sinuses from a night spent crying, and the mint soothed the roiling waves of acid in her belly. Zelena picked at a seam of buckskin on her calf and sat silently while she acclimated to reality again. She lifted her arm in the sling and grimaced but readjusted it silently. It must have hurt much more than she purveyed. Emma gave her privacy to show pain by lowering her gaze to the steaming cup hugged to her chest. The cool scent wafting up cleared the brain fog.
"They beat her," Emma murmured. Zelena moved her eyes upwards to study the Savior's without raising her head. "Rumpelstiltskin tried to kill her multiple times, but Ruby's hard to kill. Physically, anyway." She raised the mug to her mouth to cover the shudder inspired by images of her subconscious. The scent of Ruby's blood overpowered the mint, and Emma swallowed a different type of nausea.
She spoke into the mug, to the wall, to anything except the last person she should have trusted. "Things weren't that great in the other timeline. People were starving to death and desperate. So desperate that people close to Ruby who had known her for her entire life took money to assassinate her. They beat her almost to death and left her for dead in an alley. She only survived because of her wolf."
When she finally met emerald eyes, Zelena flinched. Emma's big stormy soul held unreadable emotions – shock and grief, yes, but other things The Savior refused to hide. "I didn't put anything in it," she defended before Emma attacked her again.
Emma snorted, one side of her mouth tugging into a lopsided grin that held no joy. "I know. Thanks for that." Zelena's eyebrow jumped in response, but she said nothing.
"Let me look at your shoulder," Emma left behind her grief and moved into the morning.
"I'm fine," the witch protested, but Emma already set her mug on the floor by her knee and moved to the other side of the bedroll.
Emma tugged at the knot around the piece of fabric and uncovered the wound before Zelena objected again. The salve smelled like peppermint and some sort of menthol, probably to ease the pain. "Where did you learn to use herbs like this?"
"My father and I lived off the land in Oz," Zelena said quietly, like a cat testing the texture of snow beneath her paws for the first time. Emma nodded, though Zelena never saw it and covered the wound. It would need another bandage and fresh salve that night, but everything looked clean. She tied the knot loosely in front of her shoulder, enough to keep it covered but allowed it breathe.
"Hold on. I'm going to make you a better sling," Emma murmured. Zelena hunched a bit, uncomfortable with attention, but stayed quiet as Emma snagged a long scarf from the wooden peg by the door. The chain around her ankle rattled against hardwood. Emma shook it out of the way and knelt behind Zelena. The sorceress hissed when Emma lifted her wrist out of the other one and removed it from her neck.
"Hold your arm where it's most comfortable," she instructed gently and forced her eyes from the scars bared once more in the deep back of the tank top. "I'm just going to measure how much I need, okay?" Part of Emma slipped into self-preservation mode, but the other half of her clenched at the thought of causing more discomfort the deranged supernatural entity holding her prisoner. Muscles in her back and arms remained coiled and tense, but Zelena endured The Savior wrapped around her from behind. Emma tucked her elbow into the scarf, creating a hammock of support and knotted the loose end around her neck.
"Better?" Emma asked and squeezed her uninjured shoulder because she could.
Zelena twisted her neck towards the voice's source and accidentally bumped her forehead on Emma's chin. The Savior stayed perfectly still, so Zelena maintained the almost intimate contact. "Why would you help me?" She asked, voice tight with something Emma desired to understand.
"Because it's who I am," Emma answered honestly and leaned back slightly to meet bright green eyes turned up to her face. "It doesn't matter how many times I get kicked or what someone has done to me. I can't just turn into them by proxy, my heart doesn't work that way, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I acted like I didn't care when I could have done something."
Zelena's eyes flickered, searching for the lie beneath the legend currently brushing a warm thumb where shoulder met bicep. Emma let her look, eyes just as wide and scared. "You're a naïve fool," Zelena concluded. The words lacked malice – an observation.
Emma grinned as her eyes slipped shut in the face of the truthful insult. "Yeah." Emma exhaled in a deprecating guffaw that moved the hair on Zelena's neck with the force of self-loathing. "I guess I am."
Emma squeezed her arm again and pushed to her feet. "Want some breakfast? I've got venison with ginger and onion soup. Or potatoes with no butter and venison." She glanced over her shoulder to find Zelena staring at the bicep where her hand rested only seconds earlier.
Another moment passed, and then Zelena jerked into action, finding her feet with a smooth rock forward. She may have used magic for most of her fuckery, but Emma banked on the witch's abilities in a physical altercation. She moved far more agilely than she'd ever anticipated.
"I've seen the concoctions you've created. You're hopeless with the proper rendering of meat. Chop the onions and tend the fire before it goes out," she ordered.
Emma mock saluted. Zelena rolled her eyes. Breakfast appeared in silence.