Chapter 10 – Crossing Boundaries
Outside the School, Now…
Regina waited somewhat impatiently for the bell to ring to announce the end of the day for the school's pupils.
She had been subjected to the stares and pointed mutterings of the gathering throng of parents and she didn't even have her phone with her so that she might play a meaningful game of solitaire whilst she waited. She'd been there for twenty minutes solid and was debating on whether or not it would be worth putting up with them if she were to go over there and torment someone for her entertainment.
Henry and Graham would be disappointed in her but at least she wouldn't be bored.
Regina shifted and drew Graham's coat fully over her chest, it was cooler now that she sat in the shadow of the school building and she wasn't walking around or pressed up against Graham. She hadn't realised how much time she had spent doing that recently until she found herself without the belting power of his body heat.
Something clunked against her elbow and Regina turned her attention more fully onto the coat itself. Seeing an inside pocket, she dipped her hand inside and frowned when she came across something cool and solid.
Lifting it partially out, Regina's brows rose when she saw a full sized bowie knife secreted into the lining of his jacket, the antler haft of it worn smooth with years of use. How long had he had THAT there?
"Is that a sword?"
Regina's head snapped up and she shoved the knife back into its hidden sheath all in one move. She blinked when she saw the little boy sitting calmly across from her.
She slid a glance over at the parents waiting for their children and frowned. Had the bell rung and she'd missed it?
"No." She answered belatedly. "It's a knife."
"Really? It's pretty big for a knife."
"Hmm." Regina cast about the schoolyard. No, the bell couldn't have rung, there were no other children pouring out of the doors of the school…so why was this boy here?
"Why does the sheriff have a knife in his pocket?"
"What is a little boy like you doing out of school when he should be in class?" Regina asked instead.
"Oh, that." The boy scrubbed a hand through his hair that stood straight up as if in an attempt to flatten it. The hair was smoothed down for only a moment before springing back upright again in a gross defiance of gravity. "I get let out of class fifteen minutes early so the other kids don't beat me up on my way home. That's the theory anyway."
Regina straightened in her seat and a frown stole over her features.
"You are bullied."
"Well, I suppose the other kids think it's a game rather than a serious detriment to my sociological development, but…yeah." He grinned at her and held out his hand. "I'm Norman."
"Hello, Norman. I'm Regina." Regina leaned across the table and took his hand in hers, she tried to cover the wince she felt when his handshake jolted her wound but he was immediately contrite.
"I'm sorry! That was dumb. I shoulda known you wouldn't be completely better."
"Don't worry about it. I'm fine." Regina mustered a smile from somewhere and Norman gave a cautious one in return. She studied him a moment.
He was small for his age like Henry, skinny, that shock of black hair he had standing straight up from his head in a permanent parody of caricatured horror. His eyes were pale blue and sparked with evident intelligence and his smile was nervous but quite endearing when he let it reach his eyes. His uniform was old and well mended, too big for him and his hooded jacket and backpack out of fashion (if ten year old boys had a fashion).
Orphan.
The word whispered harsh and condemning in her head, the shade of her mother, and Regina slapped it to the back of her thoughts and focussed on Norman instead.
"Was it scary?" He was asking her. "When that man attacked you?"
Regina blinked at him, surprised he would ask about it. She knew that the parents over yonder had been murmuring about it for as long as she had been sitting there but –unsurprisingly- none of them had come over to enquire about her health. Norman, it would seem, did not share their reticence.
"It was very scary." Regina nodded.
"Is that why you've got the knife?" Norman nodded to Graham's jacket and Regina sat forward, folding her arms onto the table and mulled him over.
"I shouldn't have a knife in my pocket."
"Yeah and I shouldn't have a brick in my bag, but both of us wanna walk around safe, right?"
The laugh caught Regina by surprise and Norman's startled smile let her know he'd never expected it of her either. She smiled at him and ignored the out and out staring they were getting from the parents across the way.
"Yes, we do." She finally sobered after a long moment. "Are you in Henry's class?"
"No. I've seen him around but we've never spoken. He keeps mostly to himself."
"I know." Regina looked down at her hands, guilt gnawing at her. She had done that, made her boy an outsider in his own town.
Still, at least he didn't have to leave class early so he avoided getting beaten up on his way home.
"He seems nice though. He likes to read." Norman sounded like he was trying to comfort her and her heart melted a tiny bit for him. "So he's not, you know, a moron."
Regina laughed again and he looked like he'd won a medal because of it.
"Who beats you up?" She sobered after a moment. "Why have the teachers done nothing more than let you out early?"
"Seems a bit more like curing the symptoms than treating the cause, right?" Norman twisted a rueful smile. "I suppose they'd expel the kids that did it if that didn't mean they'd be expelling half the student body."
"Really? That many?"
Norman shrugged.
"And…no one does anything?"
"They try." Norman shrugged. He turned and looked over at the staring parents and waved. Many of them looked away. It was then that Regina saw the bruise on the side of his neck. Finger bruises, like someone had grabbed him by the scruff and thrown him.
She'd seen bruises like that on her own neck from time to time growing up. Her mother had not always used magic to force Regina to do her bidding…though she had always said that using magic was so much more ladylike.
"They should try harder." Regina's voice came out with more steel than she had intended and Norman shot a look at her, wide eyed. He softened and smiled again, shrugging a shoulder.
"Don't worry about it. I can handle it."
"The point is that you shouldn't have to." Regina clipped out suddenly angry and realising after a moment that –for once- it was perfectly understandable for her to be so. How dare the teachers who were supposed to protect him slap such a band aid solution on such a horrible problem?
They were getting paid weren't they? She should know, she had to deal with the migraine of the annual budget meetings for three weeks out of her year. EVERY year.
"What they gonna do? Tell the shmucks I tattled, make things even worse for me? Get the kids in trouble for fighting at school? At least if they fight at school there's usually someone to break it up for me. Somebody jumps me in a back alley and it doesn't end so quickly." Norman shrugged his skinny shoulders again. "It's not great, but it's better than it could be."
Regina sat there, staring at him, and had a very strong urge to give him the knife in her pocket.
"Norman, that's awful. You're a ten year old boy, things should not be this way for you."
"You're the Mayor. Guys shouldn't be mugging you in the street either, but here we are." Norman shrugged and then nodded to the badge on her borrowed coat lapel. "No offence to your boyfriend or nothing."
"He's not…"
"Really?" Norman arched a brow at her and Regina twisted her mouth and silenced herself.
"Fair enough." She nodded. "But my situation is different. I'm mean and horrible and everyone hates me because of it. What have you done to deserve being punched and kicked on your way home from school?"
"There's usually sticks and stones too." Norman said matter-of-factly and then shrugged again. "I think it's mostly because I talk to things that aren't there. I'm different and kids don't like it. Of course they're going to beat me up."
"I'm here and you're talking to me." Regina shifted in her chair and watched him intently. "What do you mean 'things that aren't there'?"
"Ghosts, mostly." Norman huffed out a sigh at having it pulled from him. "Some animals….ghost animals."
Regina watched him hold himself terribly still for long moments. Waiting for her to deride him, reject him, terrified that she would be what everyone else was to him.
"Any good conversation to be had?"
Norman's eyes shot to hers and Regina didn't smirk, she looked at him perfectly seriously. She jerked her head towards the parents across the yard and finally smiled a little.
"It's not like the live ones have much to say for themselves after all."
Norman grinned and stifled his laugh as best he could. His smile slowly drained away and he frowned.
"You…you believe me?"
"I've never seen a ghost," Regina allowed, "but I've never seen anything proving that they don't exist either and I have definitely come across animals that understood every word that I have spoken to them. It's not so farfetched to me that someone might understand what they would say in return." She did not add that she was one of those someones. He would only think that she was patronising him. Maybe another day she would prove that she wasn't but not today.
"Really?"
Regina smiled a little sadly.
"My first friend was an animal." She shrugged her shoulder and looked at her hands. She didn't often open up to people (or ever really) but this little boy…he was hurting. She could blame Henry. Maternal instincts could be a bitch once roused. "I didn't have…anyone, growing up. All I had was Frostfire, he was my pony. He…he understood me. Every word that I said to him. I suppose it was just as well that not everyone can understand animals because I told him everything. All my secrets. He was a VERY clever pony."
"Grey pony?"
Regina's eyes flashed to his.
"Blue eyes? That's weird for a horse, right?"
"It's called wall-eye." Regina said slowly and Norman nodded.
"I've seen him around. Following Henry actually. He seems nice."
Regina stared at him. For a full minute she just stared at him. She stared at him even when his face fell and his shoulders hunched.
"You didn't believe me. Of course you didn't. You were just saying so because you felt sorry for me." He spat the word like it was caustic and threw himself from his bench, rounding the table and hunching his backpack higher on his shoulders.
"Norman, wait!" Regina reached out, gripping his wrist as he passed. She gasped in pain when he didn't stop and he wrenched her painfully sideways.
He spun back, her hand falling from his wrist and stared at her, hunched over, her hand pressed to her wound on her chest. She seethed out a breath, aware that people were staring.
"Come here, sweetie." Regina reached out and took his hand in hers, drawing him back to the bench to sit beside her. "It's not that I didn't believe you, it's that you surprised me. I didn't think that Frost would have followed me for all this time. The way he died…it was my fault."
"He doesn't think so. He loved you. A lot."
"And I him." Regina looped her arm through his and smiled down at the boy. "I believe you. Really. I do."
Norman looked at her as if she had just reached up and taken a slice out of the sun and handed it to him.
"Re…really?"
"Truly." Regina squeezed his arm and realised then exactly what she had done to Henry. When she had denied him, told him he was talking crazy…what a horrid thing to have done. To her own son no less. "I believe you and I'm going to help you."
Norman scoffed and shrugged on a rueful smile.
"Thanks for the offer, but…"
"No. I'm the Mayor my…boyfriend is the Sheriff so I'm pretty sure, between the three of us, we can figure out how to get you from school to home safely."
"You can't be everywhere at once." Norman gave her a sceptical look. Good gods, how many adults had let him down up until now that he was so disbelieving about her being able to help him?
"I don't have to be." She smiled for him and held onto him when he made to bolt when the school bell rang loudly, echoing throughout the yard. "I just have to be where you are."
"I gotta go. They…I shouldn't have stayed so long."
"Don't worry. I'm here." Regina held him in place. "Don't be afraid. If you're afraid, they win. If you're afraid, they own you."
"If I'm afraid and I run, I don't get beat up."
"That is sound logic." Regina nodded, watching the kids pour out of the school, keeping a weather eye on those that stared at them a little too long, memorising their faces. "Though there are worse things that being beaten."
"Not in my experience." Norman looked at her like she was crazy.
"I'm glad." Regina managed a smile. "Now, what we're going to do, is…"
"Mom!"
Regina lifted her head and turned with a smile.
"Hi, honey." Regina levered herself to her feet and accepted his hug, nearly clunking him on the head with her cast. Damn, she had to get used to that.
"Where's Graham?"
"He had…things to do. Sheriff related I believe." Well, they could be for all she knew. "We're going to meet him at the diner."
"After my haircut?"
"I was actually thinking of giving that a miss today." She tousled his admittedly overlong hair and smiled at his giggle. "I was thinking we could all go for ice cream instead and wait to meet Graham."
"All?" Henry looked up at her with confusion and Regina stepped aside waving behind her and turning to beckon her new friend over.
"Yes, Norman is welcome to…" Regina trailed off when she found the bench empty of one particular little boy. She turned on the spot, scanning the schoolyard for his distinctive head of hair and couldn't see him amongst the Crayola mob of students. She couldn't see Norman or his green backpack anywhere. "Damn." She murmured.
"Mom?" Henry appeared at her side looking at the bench with her. "You lose something?"
"Odd." Regina turned away from the bench and looked down at Henry. "He was just here, I was going to invite him to come with us."
"Who was?"
"A little boy –about your age- called Norman."
"Ten isn't little, mom." Henry informed her.
"Ten is tiny." Well, considering she was over sixty it certainly was. "He had blue eyes and black hair that stuck straight up. Do you know him?"
"Oh!" Henry's chin kicked up in a nod of acknowledgement. "That's Para-Norman."
"Pardon?"
"Para-Norman, it's what the other kids call him. He's even crazier than I am."
"Henry!"
"What?!" Henry held his hands out and hunched his shoulders. "It's true!"
Regina looked down at him for a long moment and her shoulders seemed to stiffen under a weight that Henry couldn't see but she could quite obviously feel. She looked troubled.
"Did I really teach you such cruelty?"
"N-no." Henry was caught off-guard by her baleful look. He looked down at his toes and scuffed at the concrete with his shoe. "You've been a good mom."
"Do you enjoy it when the other children call you crazy?"
"No." Henry looked stubbornly away from her and she bent at the waist, resting her good hand on her knee to prop herself up and turned him back to face her with the fingers of her casted hand.
"Then shouldn't you have a little more empathy for a boy so much like yourself?"
"I don't talk to myself!"
"But you do believe in fairy tales. You believe that your teacher is Snow White, that a coma patient is Prince Charming and that your own mother is the Evil Queen."
"But that's all real!"
"Who's to say that Norman's voices aren't all real too?" Regina looked him dead in the eye, letting him think on that for a moment. "Do you really think that this world has science enough to explain everything that happens in it in ways that we can understand?"
Henry looked at his shoes again and smirked.
"What?" Regina couldn't hold her stoop anymore and had to straighten instead. She huffed out a slow breath.
"I'd forgotten how nice you could be." Henry looked away and shrugged. "Made myself forget."
Regina was stunned for a stretched moment and then mustered a lopsided smile.
"Well," she settled her hand on his shoulder and steered him towards the school gates, "I don't do it very often so I suppose you can be forgiven. Now, I believe someone mentioned ice cream."
Henry grinned and bounded along beside her. She smiled at his antics and it became slightly fixed at his next excited announcement.
"Then we can talk!"
Regina let out a slow breath and nodded wearily.
"At home. We can talk about it at home." She watched his face become mistrustful and didn't blame him one bit. "It is a very long conversation and…can I have one more? One more afternoon of just being your mother."
Henry's mouth twisted and he considered her carefully. The rest of the school had pretty much emptied and they stood several paces apart now. She supposed if he ran from her now, there would be a limited pool of witnesses to this fresh humiliation.
He smiled suddenly.
"I guess so."
She smiled and it slipped from her face a little when she spotted a familiar figure headed for the school gates, head ducked, trying to avoid her.
"Miss Blanchard!"
Henry groaned and tried to stop her but Regina had already passed him and was bearing down on his teacher with a purpose.
Miss Blanchard cringed to a halt, her shoulders hunching a little, and she turned back to Regina. She pulled a smile from somewhere and tried to project that serene aura of hers that drove Regina wild. She ignored it, she had bigger fish to impale on a pike at that moment.
"Madam Mayor, good to see you up and around again. I hadn't heard that you were…in public once more."
"Yes, yes, rumours of my grim demise were grossly exaggerated, cancel the parties." Regina waved it away. "I need to talk to you about one of the students in this school."
"Really, uh, well, you'd really have to direct any complaints about their conduct to the principal and then he can contact the parents…"
"No." Regina cut the other woman off sharply. "There is a boy in Henry's year, his name is Norman, who is his teacher?"
"Uh…Norman…" Mary Margaret looked so sorely put on the spot the vacant tundra that was her head was obviously even without a sparse tumbleweed of thought to populate it.
"Para-Norman." Henry took pity on her and Mary Margaret's face brightened in recognition.
"Oh, that Norman!" She mulled it over and frowned. "Norman Parr, I think his name his, he's in, uh, Missus Cake's class."
"Missus Cake." Regina rolled the name about her mouth and her eyebrow arched a little bit. "Inform Missus Cake that she has a four thirty appointment with me at the diner tomorrow."
"You…you want me to go to Missus Cake and…and…inform her that she has an appointment?"
"With me. At the diner."
"You…I didn't know you were back to work so soon." Mary Margaret hedged and Regina narrowed her eyes a fraction.
"Are you afraid of her?"
"I…I think 'wary' is a better description of it." Mary Margaret nodded to herself.
Regina stepped closer to Mary Margaret and looked deep into her eyes, deep enough to see the hazy film of the curse there, obscuring Snow's personality and leaving behind the meek Mary Margaret. She gave the film a bit of a…tug.
She might not be able to conjure fireballs or lightning, she might not be able to heal her wounds and restrain her Huntsman anymore, but some things were just basic headology.
"Dig deep, Miss Blanchard, find your spine. I KNOW you have one." Regina bit out. "There is a little boy whose life is a living hell because of the ineptitude of the adults around him and I will not STAND for it. Do you understand?"
Mary Margaret gathered herself and gave a careful nod. She seemed to straighten a little and then nodded more confidently.
"Yes, I'll tell her."
"And you'll make sure she's there?"
"Yes."
"Good." Regina was suddenly all smiles and Mary Margaret was taken completely by surprise.
As she always was when the Mayor pulled such a switch. It was always easy to forget that she could be pleasant. She could be wonderful…so long as you did exactly what she wanted.
"Well, you have a pleasant evening." Regina reached out her hand and Henry appeared under it so her fingers could rest on his shoulder. "Say goodbye, Henry."
"Goodbye Henry." Henry dutifully parroted and Regina smirked down at him.
"Goodbye, Henry, Madam Mayor."
They turned away and Mary Margaret watched them go with a sensation much like she had just had a near death experience. She huffed out a breath and headed for the other gate.
Every time she thought she had a handle on Regina and her mercurial moods, she went and threw her another curve ball. Mary Margaret had never known Regina to even look twice at a child not her own and now she had a sudden interest in Norman being bullied? It wasn't even an election year.
She heaved a sigh and gladly decided that it was all about to be Missus Cake's problem.
Out the other gates of the school, Henry bounded with his limitless energy at Regina's side and told her about the massive sundae they were going to have when they got to Granny's. It was going to have every flavour known to man in it and they were going to have a spoon each and he was going to let her have most of it 'cause she needed to get her strength back and obviously ice cream would cure all her ills.
Regina smiled and listened to him babble, amazed at what a simple promise to talk with him had gained her. He was no longer the completely innocent little boy she'd had before the book, but that didn't mean to say he was ruined. He spoke animatedly with her, even if it was about something so nonsensical as ice cream, and she delighted in the conversation.
She saw his shadow first.
To begin with, she thought it was a trick of the light. A side effect from her medications. A speck of dust in her eye…anything other than what it was.
Regina's attention wavered from Henry's conversation and she didn't crane her head about but she did widen her awareness of her surroundings to their fullest extent. This wasn't right. Something was wrong.
She was suddenly cold, that shadow falling over her very definitely and…footsteps. Footsteps she could feel but not hear. Footsteps following in the wake of hers.
Regina glanced in the wing mirror of a car parked on the street as they passed it and she very nearly screamed when she caught a hint of gigantic denim clad legs.
Regina spun on one heel, her hand lifted and her eyes rising to see…nothing.
Nobody was there.
"Mom? You okay?"
Regina realised belatedly that her hand was clawed as if she could still conjure fire to it and she dropped it sharply to her side. She turned to face Henry and froze when she saw the grassy verge between the sidewalk and the street. Ice water poured through her.
Footprints.
Gigantic, boot shaped, footprints.
"Henry," her voice was a harsh croak, "take my hand."
"Oh…kay." Henry hesitantly put his hand in hers and she clasped it tightly in her own. She began to walk once more at a much faster clip and she could feel him now.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the great impressions of a huge stride flattening the grass alongside them. She could see his warped reflection –as high as his knees- in the polished hulls of the cars they passed and Regina doubled her pace.
"Mom, wait."
"It's alright." Regina knew her voice was strangled but the afternoon was suddenly cold, the sun having hidden behind a cloud and she frantically searched for an escape. They couldn't outrun him. His stride was three yards long, he'd run them down in two steps.
"Mom, what is it?"
Regina looked wildly around for an escape, an ally, it was over a block to Granny's and she knew they weren't going to make it that far.
Regina's eye caught on a familiar flash of yellow and she didn't think she just moved.
"Miss Swan!"
"Aw, mom, really?" Henry groaned even as he let himself be dragged out between parked cars, onto the street and into the path of an oncoming one.
Leroy slammed on the brakes, missing Regina by inches. He leaned hard on the horn and Regina jolted in surprise. She turned to the truck, a fierce glare on her features and snarled at him.
"Asshole!" Regina lifted one foot and kicked the fender of his truck. Hard.
Leroy yelped when the airbag went off in his face and Regina, too highly strung to spare him a second glance, carried right on where she was headed.
"Mom!" Henry was dragged right out into the middle of the street then, running to keep up with his mom's clipping jog. Her hand was white knuckled on his, she kept looking half behind herself and then wrenching her head back around to face front.
She was scared and she had sworn. Henry didn't think he'd ever heard his mom curse before.
"Miss Swan!" Regina arrived at the Yellow Bug just as the deputy was swinging her way up out of the driver's seat. She clapped the driver's side door closed at the same time as Regina opened the passenger side.
"Uh, hello?"
"Henry, get in." Regina hauled the front seat forward and practically threw Henry into the back of the tiny car.
She could feel him getting closer. Oh god, Graham was right. She couldn't hear his steps, she could only feel him coming. Had she imagined that rush of air? Like the swinging of a great axe? Her side throbbed, that wound that he had given her in the dream world hurting very much like she had suffered it in the real world.
"Regina, what's going on?" Emma looked over at her and Regina had to think that it was fairly obvious.
"You're driving us home."
"Listen, I know you kind of have something going with Graham, but I'm not a taxi service so…"
"Get. In. The. CAR." Regina bit out through bared teeth and then hurled herself into the passenger side, leaning over and flinging open the driver's side door. When Emma bent down to look at her, she grabbed the deputy by her stupid silver necklace and hauled her bodily into the car.
"Hey!" Emma crashed into the seat and would have upended her coffee all over herself had Regina not neatly relieved her of it. "What the hell?!"
"Drive us home." Regina waved at the wheel somewhat frantically. "Now."
"God, calm down." Emma glared at her and managed to get both legs into the car and sit somewhat normally in the chair. "Where's the fire?"
"Please hurry." Regina turned to grip her seatbelt and froze at what she saw out of the window.
Well, see was inaccurate. What she could feel however, terrorised her into a violent shiver. Her teeth chattered together.
He was there.
He was right there.
Right outside the flimsy window and the paltry shell of this poorly manufactured car. She thought about the casual strength with which he'd swung his axe into her tree, nearly felling it with a single blow from just a flick of his wrist.
He'd crush this car like the beetle it was named for.
"Drive!" Regina spun back to Emma, forgetting about her seatbelt. "Drive now."
"Regina, calm down, whatever…"
"NOW, Emma!" Regina almost screamed at her, her hand rising to do who knew what and the engine roared to life. That seemed to snap the blonde out of whatever questions she had and she fumbled the car into gear and pulled out of the space she'd parked in.
Regina sat back in her seat, her hand pressed to her chest, hoping the damp there was sweat and not more blood because her chest certainly hurt enough for her to have pulled her stitches apart.
She felt the pressure of his presence fade behind them and began to breathe easier. She braced herself against the dash and closed her eyes, focussing on her breathing. She ignored both Henry and Emma's questions, focussing instead on the more pertinent problem.
How was she supposed to get the keys into the ignition without Emma realising that they hadn't been there when the car had started?
The Woods…
Graham hopped down out of his truck and inhaled deeply. The sharp scent of pine and fresh air sucked into his lungs and he let it all out on a slow whoosh. He looked about himself. He was on an abandoned stretch of dirt track. As deep into the woods as he could drive. He would usually have hiked up here –would have relished it- but he didn't have the time.
He looked down the track then as deep into the woods as his eyes could see in all directions. He stretched his other senses taut, pushing them to their maximum and listened and scented carefully of the forest around him.
So very much like home.
Well, not the Blackwood, but the home where he had grown into an adult. The home where he had hidden and learned to pretend to be a man.
Once he was sure he was alone, and only then, did he begin to strip.
He unbuttoned his waistcoat and tossed it in through the open truck window, his tie followed next and his shirt closely after that. He stripped even his white tank top away and pondered why the hell he wore so many layers. He hopped from one foot to the other, yanking off his boots and socks and decided to leave his pants on.
His senses were not what they once were, if he did come across a local, being half naked would be hard enough to explain. Full nudity nigh unto impossible.
Graham sucked in a few deep breaths and orientated himself. He was high above the town, towards the Northern most point of the boundary. There was a bluff high above him that he needed to get to. The acoustics there would be best.
Then he took off at a run.
It was hard going, he was out of practice. Luckily for him, the curse had frozen him in the same condition he had been in when it had been cast so his strength and stamina were in no way diminished but damn running was hard.
There had been a time when he had run barefoot and wild every single day. Even when in Regina's clutches as her Huntsman she had loosed him in the woods for at least a day most weeks, seemingly for the sole reasoning of missing him and fawning over him when he came back like the good little pet he was.
Graham's breathing was harsh, his arms felt wrong moving at his sides. He stumbled readily and cursed softly to himself but pushed himself harder. He didn't have time to faff around with easing back into it. He needed to be the Huntsman NOW.
Graham sucked in the scents of the forest, felt the damp of impending rain cold against his skin. He absorbed the feel of the earth gritty and clinging to his feet, the slap of branches against his chest and arms when he crashed through him. He snarled and ran faster.
This was ridiculous. He was the Huntsman. Scourge of the Enchanted Forest, warhound of the Evil Queen. He had been unstoppable in the greenwood. A wraith in the night, a shiver in the spine, the shadow in the corner of the eye. He had been the wolf…the wolf at the door.
Graham growled from deep in his chest and suddenly he was in it.
His body became fluid and lithe, like he had never stopped hunting. His arms moved perfectly in synch with his legs, his balance shifting and focussing, conforming to the twisting roots and rough ground beneath him. He slid through the branches soundlessly, not even knocking the dew gathered on them to the forest floor.
His heart thundered in his chest but it was the thunder of excitement rather than exhaustion. His entire body throbbed with every thump of his pulse through his muscles and sinews. His senses exploded and he was suddenly that creature. Not a man and not a wolf but that had never meant that he was weak.
His pupils flashed silver when he ran whisper quiet through the shafted shadows of the trees, his teeth –when bared in his chuckling growl of a grin- were just a little too sharp and he ran twice as fast as any other man.
Graham poured on the speed, rejoicing to be himself once more. To finally fit the shattered pieces of his head into some semblance of unity –even if it was just for this run- and he laughed. A dark and echoing sound in the trees that bounced around and seemed to come from everywhere at once.
He felt the two ragged halves of himself, the Huntsman and the Sheriff, reconcile with one another. He felt them gel and fit together, the bleed into one another. The two lives circling one another in his head, snarling for dominance, blended into one and –for the first time in days- he felt something like peaceful.
He was entirely himself again.
Graham hurdled the last boulder and hit the rocky slope right up to the summit overlooking the town. He slithered to a halt, chest heaving with panting breaths, and only then did his grin slip away. When he remembered what he had come here for.
He took a moment, to catch his breath and overlook his town.
He frowned a little at that. His town. He had not thought himself overly attached to it, in all honesty, but he found that he had ties here. Regina, Henry, even that bizarre sense of fealty –of duty- that the Graham side of him felt to the people and buildings sprawled out far beneath him.
It looked so small and fragile from up here. The buildings like cardboard cut-outs, the cars like crawling beetles with bright carapaces and the people barely discernible even with his keen vision.
Graham sobered when he realised the Woodcutter would tear through all of it like a scythe through wheat. He might not feel attached to this town with his whole self, but he knew that he had a responsibility to finish what he had started. To put to sleep the monster he had wakened.
The dead wolf, the pelt, had told him that he was to be the Wolf At the Door. That he was to take over that ancient wolf's war. Of course, the pelt had told him that whilst in the Enchanted Forest. Where there was magic that Graham could apparently access to help him defeat the Woodcutter. Magic he could not get to now.
Yet another reason he had to break the curse.
Still, he had given his word that Regina nor Henry would come to harm whilst he was there to protect them. He had to defeat the Woodcutter, had to destroy him, he wasn't going to let a paltry thing like lack of magic get him down.
He wasn't a wolf and he wasn't a man but perhaps he could be enough of both to get this done.
With that in mind, Graham threw back his head and howled.
His voice remembered the call as easily as the rest of his body had remembered his true self and it rose into the greying sky of the afternoon in a single haunting note. He sucked in a deep breath and howled again, cupping his hands to his face and changing the pitch and tone in a way that his very human vocal cords could not manage by themselves. He composed the message as best he could. Out of practice, but he was almost certain he had gotten the wording right.
Graham stilled, listening intently. He kept his mouth open, breathing hard in taut anticipation, waiting for an answer. Counting off the seconds using his beating heart as a metronome.
Nothing.
Graham sagged a little and then shook it off. No. He wasn't going to give up that easily.
He lifted his hands again, cupping them to his mouth and then froze when there, far in the distance, a lone howl rose above the trees.
Graham went completely stock still, listening as hard as he could. Translating note by note.
Slowly, a smile spread over his face.
He waited until the message was done and then howled his reply. Waiting impatiently for theirs.
Again and again, he howled to the wolves beyond Storybrooke and they joined him in song. He spoke to them far longer than he had intended and it wasn't until he measured the shadow he cast against the ground and realised how much time had passed that he jolted from the conversation mid-sentence.
He howled a hasty goodbye, promising to meet them at the agreed time and then spun on his heel, sprinting back into the trees and racing for his truck.
Regina and Henry would be waiting and he had no desire to leave them alone any longer than he had to.
Not with the Woodcutter abroad.
The Mayoral Mansion…
"Well, we're here…" Emma trailed off when Regina had already flung open the door to the beetle and hurled herself out of it.
She threw the passenger seat forward and almost dragged a protesting Henry from the backseat, shoving him up the garden path with an unquestionable order to open the front door and get inside.
"You're welcome." Emma muttered to the empty car and threw open her door, hauling herself out and rounding the car to watch Regina's latest episode unfold.
Even she was a little surprised to see the Mayor move to the front of her car and fling open the hood, revealing the trunk underneath.
"Hey!"
"I'm borrowing this." Regina held up a crowbar (that Emma kept for purely legal reasons she swore) and nodded to the ground. "You dropped your keys."
Emma glanced down and frowned. Hell she didn't even remember taking them out of the ignition. Emma straightened in time to see Regina attacking her garden path with the crowbar.
"Hey, crazy lady!" Emma bounded over and snatched the crowbar away from Regina. "You're gonna pop a stitch and I do NOT want to be on the business end of Graham and Henry both when they find out you got carted back to the hospital under my watch."
"I am not under your watch." Regina snapped and reached up, shoving her hair back impatiently and leaving it uncharacteristically rumpled.
"Oh, sure, they're really gonna see it that way." Emma nodded and held the crowbar in both hands. Regina sure as hell was twitchy today.
"Alright, fine, help me then." Regina stepped aside and pointed to the stone she had been methodically knocking loose. "Prise it up."
"For reals?" Emma arched a brow but Regina's thunderous expression changed her mind about playing twenty questions. "Alright, alright. Just don't sue me for property damage or something."
"Hurry." Regina practically hopped from one foot to the other.
Emma rolled her eyes, working the iron under the stone and prying it up out from between its fellows. Must be the drugs, she mused. Made her scattier than usual.
"Flip it over." Regina crouched down at Emma's sides, her good hand joining Emma's in turning the white stone over onto its back. "Move."
Emma was surprised when Regina just shooed her out of the way and actually waited for her to move rather than bodily shoving her. She was a little too absorbed in sweeping the dirt and bugs from the underside of the stone to pay Emma any mind though.
Emma's interest was perked when she saw carvings on the other side of the stone. It looked kind of like writing, but no writing that Emma had ever seen before. There was a strange star or flower shape in the middle, branching out into the writing. Regina used her fingers to clear as much away from the engravings as best she could and even stooped down to blow it away.
Seeing how frantic she was, Emma pulled the neckerchief from around her throat and scrubbed it over the stone, ignoring Regina's surprised gaze on the side of her head. Like that, cleaning the stone went much quicker and Regina nodded once.
"Thank you, now, don't make a fuss." Regina held her hand over the stone and made a fist. Her teeth bared when her knuckles whitened and Emma was confused for a moment before she saw the droplets of red welling from between Regina's fingers and pattering onto the stone.
"Hey!" Emma reached to grab her hand but Regina's cast clunked across her collar bone and put paid to that idea pretty quickly. "Graham is going to KILL me!"
"I'll explain when he gets here." Regina measured her blood dripping onto the stone and finally relaxed her hand when she deemed it enough. "Alright. That should hold it." She murmured mostly to herself. She pressed the fingers of her bandaged hand to the stone and focussed hard for a moment.
"Urgh!" Emma grimaced when she was shocked with static electricity from the stone and her ears popped rudely at the same time.
Using Emma as a ladder, she hauled herself to her feet, panting with the effort and panic. She staggered on the path and Emma stood too.
"You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?"
"Not particularly." Regina headed for the manor and then hunched her shoulders. She turned back, gripped Emma by the wrist and then hauled her over the threshold of the garden gate.
Emma blinked and shivered when she felt like she'd just slipped between the wires of an electric fence and narrowly avoided being burned. Regina didn't look happy about it, but she gave Emma's wrist one last tug as an indication to follow her and turned away, hurrying to the house.
She clattered up the steps in her heels and reached down with her bloodied hand picking up a seemingly artistically placed rock on her steps and switching its place with its brother on the opposite side. She left bloody handprints on both.
Oh yeah, Graham was going to lose his cool big time when he spotted those.
Regina kicked both stones so they were flush against the frame of the front door. There was another strange crackle of static electricity and then Regina opened the door and disappeared inside.
"Okay, what the hell is going on?" Emma flicked the door shut behind herself and flinched bodily when another snap of power rattled through the air.
Damn, did they need the wiring looked at?
She turned back to find Regina watching her with an unreadable expression on her face. She seemed to give the question a great deal of consideration before dismissing it entirely.
"I need to clean my hand." She spun away, heading for the kitchen. "I need to call Graham."
"Regina!" Emma hurried after her and stalled in the kitchen when she saw her struggling with one of the cupboards. she was cradling her injured hand close to her chest and trying to reach into the cupboard with the inflexibility of her casted arm. "Oh, for the luvva…"
Emma crossed the kitchen, gripped Regina by the shoulders and body steered her into a stool by the island worktop. She pushed her into it and ignored all protests that Regina summoned. She tore out a wad of kitchen towel from the roll and clapped it into Regina's palm that she had sliced open with her own manicured nails.
"I can fend for myself."
"Certain police reports and hospital visits decree otherwise." Emma's voice was flat and she turned away, reaching up into the cupboard and pulling down the first aid kit. She snapped it open and –unsurprisingly- found it to be fully stocked to the point of overflowing.
Regina might have a fairly fluid idea of what constituted her own good health, but there was no way she'd let Henry go sore if she could help it.
She turned back and let out a wordless sound of frustration when she found Regina crouched down in front of the drawers under the sink, hauling them open one after the other.
"Where the hell is it…?" She was muttering to herself and Emma pinched the bridge of her nose to keep from knocking Regina the fuck out and just putting her to bed. Then she would really get a strip torn out of her from Graham and Henry. One after the other in a tag team or maybe both at the same time. She wasn't sure which and had no desire to find out.
"Regina," Emma kept her voice as calm and as level as she could, "get back in the chair and let me look at your hand."
"You don't have your gun, do you?"
"My…? No. I'm off duty, I was under the impression I wouldn't need it."
"Oh, how naïve of you. Um…try in that drawer there. I'm sure Graham has one or three secreted about here somewhere."
"One or three guns?!"
"Maybe more." Regina shrugged a shoulder. "He's developed quite an affection for the things."
"And he keeps them here? In the house? With Henry walking around?"
"Well, it's not like he uses the boy for target practice!" Regina turned on her knees and hissed at her. "Henry's not an idiot, no matter who contributed his genetic material to him, he knows better than to even touch a gun."
"Wow." Emma muttered and pressed her thumbs to her eyes. "This is nuts."
"Could you have your little crisis later? I need your help right now."
"Then get in the damn chair." Emma gritted.
"Language." Regina admonished lightly. She fished a large jar out of the drawer and studied the seal on it. It was intact. She gave a manic kind of smile. "Now we're cooking with gas."
"I beg of you, do not operate complex machinery right now."
"A hob might be complex to you, Miss Swan, but some of us are a trifle more domesticated than your average Neanderthal."
"Hey!" Emma threw her hands wide. "I can cook."
"Edible food?" Regina rose to her feet and weaved dangerously.
"Alright, that's it." Emma took the stool over to Regina and slammed it into the tiles right at her toes. "Sit on the damn chair before I MAKE you sit in it."
"I'm fine." Regina growled right back.
"You're about to keel over."
"I am not weak!"
"You're right, you're not. If it were me, I'd be folded in half on the floor right now crying for the mother that I never had, hell, any other woman would be too. You are made of solid steel, lady, and it's terrifying him!" Emma pointed over her shoulder and Regina followed her finger to see Henry standing in the doorway, leaning around it so she could only see half of his face. He was chewing on his lip, his eyes wide and over bright.
Regina sagged and let loose a sigh. She looked down to see her bloodied handprints all over the jar she was holding. The small wounds –having been left unchecked- had run blood all the way to her elbow and even she could see the way she weaved unsteadily.
She dredged a smile from somewhere and looked up at Henry.
"Come here, honey."
Henry dashed from the doorway to fling his arms around her waist, forgetting in that moment that she still wasn't at a hundred percent and Regina paled alarmingly for a moment when his shoulder bumped against her wound and his arms cinched about her aching side.
"It's okay." She rubbed at his back with the fingers of her casted hand and held out the jar to Swan who accepted it between thumb and forefinger pincered around the wax seal of the lid.
"Why do you go and find my purse for me? It's got my cell in it. I need to call Graham."
"Okay." Henry turned away and ran from the room again, rummaging frantically for her purse that he had carried in with him from the car.
Regina looked over at Emma for a long moment and then, slowly, climbed up onto the stool.
Emma knew better than to rub it in and nodded once, turning back to the first aid kit to find what she needed to clean and dress Regina's fresh wounds.
Henry dashed back into the room, already rummaging in her purse for her cell and thrust it at her, squeaking to a halt in front of her.
"Relax, honey, everything's going to be okay." She smiled for him and gave him something else to do. "Dial Graham for me?"
Henry swiped through the phone's memory and Regina let her tug her hand under the spray of water from the sink. She accepted the already ringing phone from Henry and clapped it awkwardly to her ear, listening to the burring rings of the other end of the line.
She thought it was going to ring out, but he finally answered.
"Where the hell are you? I said the diner. Did I stutter?"
Emma's brows raised at the growl that she could hear over even the splashing of the running water. She knew better than to turn and gape.
"No." Regina gritted with a warning in her tone. She was close enough to the edge as it was, she didn't need him pushing her over it when the only targets for her wrath were Swan and her son. "We're at the house. You need to get here."
"You walked all the way there?!"
"I was given a ride by Miss Swan, she's right here with me still." Regina gritted and that seemed to get through to him.
"What happened?"
Regina huffed out a breath and thought how to explain with two pairs of sensitive ears in the room.
"He was there." Regina glanced at Henry and then forced a smile. He didn't look comforted. Smart boy. "He was right there. Right behind Henry and I. We had to get out of there."
Emma stiffened in the act of shutting off the faucet and slammed her hands into the edge of the sink, twisting to glare at Regina.
Regina shrugged and listened to Graham instead.
"You SAW him?"
"No." Regina shivered at the memory. "I saw…his reflection. I felt him, he was there, I'm certain of it. It was him."
Regina heard a thrumming roar through the connection of the phone. The sound of a revving engine.
"I'm five minutes away. Don't leave the house until I get there."
"We'll be waiting."
"See that ye are." Graham tersely signed off the call and Regina handed her phone back to Henry with another smile.
"He'll be here soon."
Henry stood there clutching her purse and watching Emma dry the watered down blood from her hand. She wished there had been a way to do it without bleeding in front of him but they were called blood-locks for a reason.
"Are my pills in there?" Regina gave him something else to do. If he had something to distract him he was less likely to panic.
"This is gonna sting." It was all the warning Emma gave her before she clapped an alcohol soaked pad over Regina's scratches.
Regina growled out a sound of pain and shot the other woman a narrow eyed look but otherwise did not react.
Emma scoured the cuts clean and then dabbed them dry with more paper towels and finally taped fresh pads in place to protect them from being reopened.
It was a hell of an awkward place to be cut, but Regina had been low on options at the time. She hadn't exactly wanted to reveal that she was carrying a bowie knife in her pocket. She didn't think the excuse 'but it was here when I put the coat on' would carry much water with the deputy.
"There." Emma strapped the last piece of tape into place and turned Regina's hand this way and that to check the fit. "That should hold it."
She released Regina and turned away, cleaning up the mess she had left behind. Which left Regina looking down at her hand with an extremely nonplussed expression on her face.
"Um…thank you." Regina muttered after a moment and then jolted in surprise when a small hand was thrust under her nose. She leaned back and held up her own hand, letting Henry drop two of her pills into them and then thrust a glass of water at her so enthusiastically that she was nearly wearing it.
Regina hurriedly knocked the pills back before he got anymore overzealous and smiled for him.
"Alright, I just need to…"Regina froze in the action of sliding down off the stool when both Emma and Henry looked at her with matching unimpressed expressions and arms folded over their chests. If Regina had ever doubted the veracity of Henry's claims that Emma truly was his biological mother, she'd have had them confirmed then and there. She scowled.
"Fine." Regina sat back up on the stool and folded one leg over the other. She nodded to the jar on the worktop, still stained with her blood. "If you would be so kind as to take that outside and pour it over the threshold of the gate?"
"What is it?" Emma looked over at the jar but didn't pick it up.
"Salt." Regina shrugged a shoulder. "Amongst other things. You need to pour it from right to left, use ALL of it and don't open the jar until you're standing over the stone that we turned."
Emma gave her a long look. Regina let out a long breath through her nose.
"Call me superstitious."
"You're superstitious." Emma agreed.
"So you CAN follow orders?"
"Mom…" Henry pleaded with worried eyes and she smiled tightly for him, turning back to Emma, speaking through bared teeth.
"Please?"
"Alright, I've helped up 'til now, might as well do the whole circus act." Emma said mostly to herself and scooped up the jar, holding it by the lid.
"Remember, don't break the seal until…"
"I got it." Emma waved a hand over her shoulder at the Mayor and tried to stop herself from stomping with irritation as she left the kitchen.
What the hell was going on?
Regina had seen –well, felt- her attacker and she hadn't told Emma then and there when she might have been able to do something about it?
Then again, Emma opened the front door and stepped out into the path, Regina had been scared. Emma had never seen nor imagined she would ever see the Mayor in such a state. Her chest had been heaving, her eyes so wide the white showed all the way around, her teeth had even been chattering.
Emma shivered, it was cold suddenly. The afternoon had clouded over in that perennial grey that Emma had come to associate with typical Storybrooke weather. She'd thought that summer had been on its way since she'd arrived, but apparently not. Emma stopped over the stone that she and Regina had flipped and did a double take when she saw it was clean.
No blood.
At all.
Emma dropped to a crouch and reached out to touch the stone, just to be sure. She snatched her hand away when an alien tingle snapped at her fingertips. Shit, was it attached to the mains or something? Emma shook the hurt from her hand and turned her attention back to her appointed task, the sooner she got this done, the sooner she could go back in and maybe act as a buffer between Henry and Regina because she was scaring him.
Not intentionally, Emma was comforted by that in a small way, but Regina was so out of control that she couldn't seem to stop herself. She was being scatty and crazy and refusing to accept help to the point where she had nearly fallen flat on her face several times.
The refusal to ask for help didn't surprise Emma in the slightest. Mayor of a town before thirty? Emma had known that Regina was a fiercely independent type A from the first moment she had seen her…but the fear was new. The fear was worrying. How bad did this guy have to be that he could scare Regina into asking for Emma's help.
Up until that afternoon, Emma would have bet on Regina taking another knife to the chest before she voluntarily asked Emma for a ride anywhere.
Emma broke the seal on the jar and did exactly as she was told. No doubt Regina would know if she screwed it up. She poured from right to left, used all of it and even gave the jar a thump on the base to make sure the last of the salt crystals, cloves and miscellaneous chunks tumbled out onto the flagstones.
Emma frowned when the air seemed to get curiously filmy for a moment but then the roar of an engine distracted her and she hopped to her feet in time to see Graham's truck skid to a halt at the front gate. He hurled himself down out of the driver's seat and rounded the hood, grinding to a halt only when he saw Emma standing over a line of salt, empty jar in hand.
"Hey." Emma spoke a little awkwardly, wondering how to explain what was going on.
Graham prowled to a halt on the other side of the line of salt and studied it carefully.
"She really is scared." Graham spoke mostly to himself. "Good."
"You know what this is?" Emma waved at the flipped stone, the salt and the symbols with the empty jar. "You can read it?"
"No." Graham looked up at her and didn't miss her hastily hidden flinch. He heaved out a breath and softened a little. "I know what it says, but I don't understand the symbols. It's…a protection ritual. She'll have marked it with her blood for family and used the salt for bricks."
"I never pegged Regina for the superstitious type."
"No, but I bet you pegged her for the type who would build whole walls to keep people that aren't her family out." Graham offered a wary smile and was glad when Emma managed something like one in return.
"She's really scared, huh?"
"Terrified." Graham studied the line of salt. "As well she should be."
"She said he was right there, I didn't see anyone following her." Emma put the lid back on the jar.
"You wouldn't have." Not yet anyway, not whilst she didn't believe.
"You know who he is?"
"We suspect."
"You feel like sharing that information?" Emma asked pointedly. Graham looked up at her and lanced her with that frosted gaze of his. He was surprised when she held it. Not many people could. She went up in his estimations a little.
"Not yet. You're not ready."
"Not ready?" Emma asked dangerously.
"Nobody is. Don't take it personally. It's best if you don't know for now."
"And I'm supposed to just smile and nod whilst an attempted murderer walks about stalking the victim he screwed up with last time?" Emma waved her arm wildly. "While my boss and the mayor know about it and go off on their own little investigation? Listen, you might literally be in bed with the Mayor, but…"
"Too far." Graham's voice was steel and Emma looked sharply away from him, her jaw clenched. She turned back after a moment.
"You know this is fucked up. This isn't how things are supposed to be."
"I know that, and I know you have no reason to, but I need you to trust us when it comes to this…man. He's dangerous. We need to be certain it's him before we do anything. Will you give us time?"
Emma blew out a harsh breath and looked down the street. The clouds grew thicker over the sun and she hugged her arms about herself. She looked at him, her blue eyes suddenly steely.
"You're not doing this as the Sheriff and the Mayor, are you?"
Graham watched her for a long moment and slowly shook his head.
Emma looked down at the carved stone that had absorbed Regina's blood and pressed her lips together. She heaved out a sigh and mulled it over. It wasn't like she was anyone to be harping on about the sanctity of the law now was it? Emma knew that sometimes…sometimes you just had to do what was right for you.
"As soon as I can help, you'll bring me in on it?"
"Regina won't like it."
"Regina doesn't like anything."
Graham smirked and nodded.
"As soon as you can help, I'll tell you everything. I can't promise you'll believe me though."
Emma frowned at that. She studied him for a long moment and stepped back suddenly.
"Alright, that keeps people that aren't family out, right?" Emma smirked. "Can you come in?"
Graham glanced down at the line of salt and snorted. He didn't let on that he'd been thinking exactly the same thing himself. Emma might believe it was superstitious nonsense, but Graham knew that Regina's magic –while incredibly limited- was still potent when she needed it to be. She might not be able to fence with lightning as she once had, but she could sure as shit put up a protection barrier that could fell a bull elephant at five hundred paces.
"Of course I can." Graham took one large step over the line of salt and the keystone of the path both and felt the rush of magic over his skin and clothes. It ruffled his hair and shirt collar but otherwise didn't hinder him in the slightest. He arched a brow at Emma with a smirk and then waved for her to precede him up the garden path and into the house.
It was only once she turned away from him that Graham twisted this way and that, scanning for any sign that the Woodcutter knew where Regina lived. Terror clawed at him once more but he battered it down. He could freak out later, right now, he needed to get in there and see for himself that she was alright.
Regina did not often feel fear and –when she did- bad things happened. She did not like being at the mercy of anything, least of all her own emotions.
The Woodcutter had best watch out.
"In the living room!"
Emma changed direction to enter the lounge instead of the kitchen and found Henry sitting on his own on the couch, looking worried.
"Where's your mum?" Graham strode fully into the living room and stood over him.
"Upstairs, getting changed. She got blood on her dress." Henry's voice was small and frightened and Graham reacted as he would to a son of his own. As he had promised.
"Hey," Graham sank down onto his heels and looked up at Henry, "I'm right here. So long as that's the case, no-one's going to hurt either of you."
"You promise?" Henry looked at him very seriously and Graham nodded.
"I promised your mother and I promise you. Anyone comes after either of you and they have to go through me."
Henry sucked in a deep breath and nodded, he managed something of a watery smile.
"Haurool."
Graham stiffened at that word, at that name. He twisted and stood at the same time, turning to see Regina walking carefully into the living room. She looked tired, dark circles forming under her eyes, but otherwise unharmed. She also looked pretty pissed under the calm façade she was putting up.
Regina walked into the lounge dressed for business. She wore dark leggings, a chunky cable-knit sweater that looked suspiciously like it had come from his closet. The rolled neck of it was far too big for her and it was so long on her that it hung to mid-thigh, she had rolled the cuffs of the sleeves back several times. Her knee high leather boots with sharp toes and sharper heels were definitely hers. The boots were plated with shining brass over the toe and the heel was even made of a spike of the metal. He imagined if she kicked someone with them it would hurt. A lot.
He made a mental note to keep his shins out of reach.
"What have you been up to?" Regina spoke again but it was still in that alien language. She spoke in Wulven.
He tilted his head in silent question and she glanced at Emma and Henry, shrugging one shoulder.
"They won't leave us alone for a private conversation and I need to speak with you now." She eyed his trousers again. "Mud on your legs but not your paws?"
"I was in the wood above the town. I needed to check something." Graham answered in Wulven too. His accent was a little rusty but he found his tongue and teeth falling into the cadences and rhythms of the old language easily. "It was faster to run as my old self."
"What language are you speaking?" Emma demanded. "It's like nothing I've ever heard. Like a dog choking on German."
"It's something like Romani." Regina answered in English and then switched back to Wulven to speak to Graham. "We need to go to my den of the head." There was no word for 'vault' in Wulven. "To see my changed tree carcasses. They know what I do not." No word for 'book' either.
"You want to go now?"
"Better in the day, no?" Regina raised her eyebrows at him and Graham huffed out a breath.
"I do not know if he is stronger in the day or the night."
"But we can both see better in the day. I did catch glimmers. In reflections. Perhaps because…I do not have the word for it. The still, hard pond upon the cave wall."
Graham nodded when he understood she meant her mirrors.
"That would make sense, your magic was ever tied to them."
"If I can find a piece of one that survived the journey from there to here then it might be helpful." Regina tilted her head towards the door and Graham nodded. If they were going, they had best go now.
"Where are you going?!" Henry bounded up off the couch and gripped Regina's arm. "Stop speaking wolf! Speak so I can understand. Where are you going?"
"We're going to try and find out who was following us this afternoon. You're going to stay here with Miss Swan."
"He is?" Emma folded her arms over her chest and Regina lanced her with a look.
"You came all the way from Boston to spend time with my son and now you're too busy?"
Emma's jaw clenched and she nodded.
"I'll have to make a couple of calls. I didn't think you'd ever willingly let him spend time with me."
"This afternoon has been filled with surprises for all of us." Regina smiled tightly and waved to the hallway. "The telephone is out there, feel free to make use of it. The fridge is filled with food, eat as much as you like. Henry wanted a sundae, there's ice cream and marshmallows in the Tupperware box marked 'broccoli'. Do NOT order anything in, or invite anyone into the house or leave the house. Do you understand?"
Emma looked at her for a long moment and Regina spoke in a low tone.
"It's this or he comes with me."
"I want to go with you!" Henry put in his two cents and was summarily ignored.
"Alright, orders received and understood. Barring life or death, we won't leave the house."
Regina relaxed a little and nodded.
"Mom," Henry threw his arms around her waist and looked up at her, "I'm scared."
"I know, honey." Regina wrapped her arms about him and hugged him so tightly her stitches creaked. "I know, but you get to stay with Emma. Isn't that what you wanted? She's going to tell you stories about being in prison, won't that be exciting?"
"I didn't want it like this." His voice was muffled against her chest and he summarily ignored her cheerful jab at Emma. "I want you both."
"Yes, well…not today." Regina kissed his hair. "I have to go, but Graham is with me."
"Does he remember?" Henry looked up at her, his voice so low that only she could hear it. "Does he remember he's the Huntsman? You can't trust him if he does."
Regina looked down at him and knew this wasn't the time for this but…but she had promised him. She had promised him that they would talk about the curse and she had promised herself that she would tell him the truth. She heaved out a breath that made her various wounds twinge and sank down onto her heels, holding his arms and looking up at him.
"Graham swore on everything he holds dear to protect both of us. We can trust him. We won't let anything happen to you. Anyone wanting to hurt you will have to go through both of us."
"That's what I'm afraid of." Henry looked down at her with big sad eyes and she smiled at him.
"Never happen." Her hands slid down his arms to squeeze his fingers. "I told you, it would take armies to steal me from you and nobody here has armies. We'll be back soon. I promise."
"Like you promised the night the guy stabbed you?"
Regina's jaw clenched at that and she heaved out a breath.
"The difference between then and now is that I'm no longer pretending to be helpless. We'll be back before sundown."
Henry looked mulish for long moments, evidently wondering if he could physically restrain her from leaving and heaving a sigh when he realised he couldn't.
"I'll be waiting. Not a minute more or I'm coming to find you."
"Yes you will, brave little prince." Regina rose to her feet and kissed his forehead. She straightened with barely a wince and looked over to see Emma tucking something into the back of her jeans.
A quick glance confirmed that the gun holster on Graham's hip was now empty. She looked back to Emma.
"Anyone who's not us…"
"Taken care of." Emma nodded and Regina returned it a little shakily with one of her own.
She turned to Graham and held out her hand.
He seemed mildly surprised but moved before she could change her mind, engulfing her hand in his own.
"See you at sundown." Graham nodded to them both and ruffled his hand through Henry's hair. He at least sounded less like he was trying to convince any of them.
Regina gave one last smile to Henry and then let Graham tow her out of the front door. It was a testament to how scared she was that Graham not only draw her under his arm and close to his side to keep her from shaking, but that she allowed it.
Gods, she hoped the vault had what she needed.
She didn't know what to do if it didn't.