Chapter 10: Stopping the Storm

Emma was out of the shop before her synapses could even fire telling her to move; the gas pedal hitting the floor as Storybrooke flew past her window in a flurry of brilliant colors.

Her head was spinning almost as fast as her tires were as she raced towards the center of town.

Okay. So, you are Regina's true love. In the grand scheme of things, that's really not the worst thing that could possibly happen. I mean, you already share a son with her, and the mayor is incredibly hot… ahh, but it's Regina! She kind of has a pension for killing people when she's angry. Or feeling threatened. Or when she thinks she's being made fun of. OH GOD. She's going to think I'm making fun of her. How am I going to tell her I'm in love with her without making her think I'm mocking her? Am I in love with her?

Being someone's true love is a mutual thing, right? So if it's true that she staved off the curse by saving me, she should love me on some level… Yes? Yes. But for the kiss to work I have to get her to acknowledge that feeling. Of love. …right, like that's ever gonna happen.

Emma raked her fingers through her hair and snarled when one of her digits snagged in a tangle. She let out one of those exasperated yells full of nonsensical noises that one always feels inclined to make when they are so overwhelmed that words no longer describe how they're feeling.

The town is going to be demolished in an armageddon of green flames if I don't get this right. We'll all be turned to dust. People are going to die. I am going to die. Mary Margaret is going to die. Henry is going to die. Regina is going to die…

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her heart was still thundering inside her chest.

Calm down, Emma. You can do this. You have to do this. You're the Savior.

Deep down she knew she liked Regina, and apparently Regina liked her back, which despite all of the other shit that was going down right now made her feel a little giddy. Under different circumstances the blonde could honestly say that she would probably be dancing around her room in unrestrained joy at the confession.

But as it was, Gold had turned her feelings into a sort of job, and that complicated things. This tentative new relationship she had started with Regina was taking off slowly and she liked it like that. If Emma was going to fall in love she wanted it to happen naturally, not be forced upon her like some unwanted, predestined fate.

It felt an awful lot like someone asking for your hand in marriage immediately after the end of a somewhat pleasant first date. It was just a lot to take in, and felt very much like it was too much too soon.

And even if Regina did feel the same way, she would not take kindly to being used for a kiss, let alone used to save a town full of people that wanted her dead. Emma didn't even want to start to think about how the rest of Storybrooke's population would react to the Savior hooking up with the Evil Queen.

Her stomach did a somersault at the thought. Hooking up with the Queen. Her face flushed.

Emma turned on the siren to drown out the noise in her head. She had always been a 'figure it out when you get there' kind of girl any way.

The sheriff could see the tornado looming from two blocks away. It towered into the sky, eclipsing the sun in a column of green fumes that cast the entire street a hazy and forlorn shadow. The swirling mass of cloud crackled with sparks and jolts of neon lightning, lighting up the darkening afternoon sky with flashes of obscene brightness only to have them fade almost instantly, leaving the world even darker than before.

The squad car screeched to a halt in a stop that was sure to leave tire tracks imprinted on the road and then Emma was instantly sprinting headfirst into the fray, running full-throttle towards the sweeping current of jade.

A lurch on her arm nearly yanked her off her feet, "Whoa there Emma, I wouldn't do that if I were you."

The blonde whirled around to see Ruby's panicked eyes staring back at her, "Why not?"

The wolf-girl glanced nervously into the riotous green cloud that was whipping the air about them in violent gusts.

"Is Regina in there?"

Ruby looked almost sorry, "Yeah, she is."

And then suddenly there was a crowd pressing in around her, everyone talking at once, so thankful that the sheriff was here to save the day.

"We have to stop her!" "Why is she doing this?" "Kill the Queen!" "Where have you been?" "You have to save us, Emma!"

The buildings shuttered, the pavement trembled, and the mob suffocated her with its mass: Marco, Archie, Granny, Jefferson, Mother Superior, each voice louder than the last, clamoring to be heard above the din. It seemed that the entire town had turned up to watch the festivities.

Emma bellowed over the uproar, "Okay! Okay! Everybody needs to calm down! I can only do one thing at a time people!" She turned her attention back to Ruby. "How long has she been like this?"

"A couple of minutes. But the storm just keeps getting bigger."

"We tried to rush her but it didn't work," Charming added slightly breathless as he edged in beside his daughter.

"The dwarves started an offensive line," Snow supplied, popping up beside her husband. "They charged the cloud hoping to overtake her by sheer numbers, but when they touched the smoke it sent them flying."

"Scattered 'em like bowling pins," Granny muttered.

Ruby piped up, "Leroy got the worst of it. He was flung so high he could have cleared the telephone wires."

"They're all alive, thank god," Snow finished, "but they're still pretty banged up. Dr. Whale had to cart them off to the emergency room."

Emma rounded on her mother, sick of talking about the foolhardy dwarves, "What set her off?"

Mary Margaret bulked at the intensity, completely caught off-guard. "What are you talking about?"

"Regina," Emma repeated. "What was it that set her off? Why is all of this," she gestured to the flurry of green zooming around behind her, "going on?"

"I have no idea. We had just left the diner when we heard this scream behind us and when we turned around she was sparking and generating this massive storm."

David nodded his agreement but Emma caught the apprehensive glint in Snow's eye. She scowled. "You saw her at the diner? What did you say?"

"Nothing that wasn't true," Snow insisted, but her face was guilt-ridden nonetheless. "She was threatening us with magic and we said that Henry wasn't safe with her."

Emma pushed the bile that was creeping up her throat back into her esophagus. Snow's choice of words was less than ideal. She was starting to see why someone might be tempted to curse these people, even if those people were her loving and doting parents.

"Did you really need to go out of your way to say that to her?"

Snow looked genuinely affronted by her daughter's veiled accusation, "She's said far worse to us in the past, Emma. Believe me; what I said was comparatively mild."

"But why does that make it okay to do the same to her? The blonde rubbed her forehead in exasperation. "What happened to our whole 'we will deal with Regina tomorrow' thing?"

"We were!"

"Not without me!" Emma exclaimed.

Snow tilted her head to the side as an uneasy expression crossed her face. "Why are you defending her?"

A street lamp suddenly exploded as a green surge of energy ricocheted out of the cloud and hit the metal pole. Sparks rained down as people screamed and ducked and a few of them ran for their homes, closing their windows and locking their doors behind their backs.

As if that would help.

Emma had to get Regina out of there now; she was running out of time. The whole town was. But she couldn't risk telling any of them that… it'd just incite more panic. And panic led to chaos. And if the situation got any further out of hand than it already was there would be no help for any of them.

"But Mom," Henry interrupted her thoughts as he pushed himself to the front of the pack of fairytale characters, "Snow was totally right about her. She was making things explode and her fingers were green and–"

The blonde's eyes widened at the fact that he was even there, worry pushing to the forefront of her mind. "Not now, Henry."

"But Grandma's hand–"

"Henry! I said not now!" The sheriff snapped at her son and Henry shrunk back a little at her fierce tone; he had never seen Emma in actual 'mom mode' before and was surprised to see that it was remarkably similar to when Regina chastised him. 'Angry Mom' resembled 'Evil Queen' a lot more than he had originally thought.

The blonde was deadly serious and her tone had officially put an end to their conversation before it had even begun.

Emma scoured the crowd until she spotted Mr. Tillman situated somewhere towards the middle. "Michael!" she called out, waving him over.

"It's not safe here. I want you to round up all of the kids and take them to the hospital; it's far enough away that if anything should happen the blast might not hit you guys as hard." The mechanic's eyes widened in alarm but he nodded mutely and rushed back into the crowd, his head ducked low in search of children.

Emma crouched down in front of her son. "Henry, I need you to go with Michael and stay with Dr. Whale and all the other kids at the hospital until I come to get you."

Henry pouted and stamped his foot in a way she herself had done many times before, "But I want to stay with you."

The blonde shook her head, the wind picking up speed and blowing her curls into her face. "I know kid, but I need someone I can trust to be there to look out for everyone. Grace and Ava and Nicholas, and even Leroy, I'm sure they're all pretty scared right now, and I need you there to show them that everything's gonna be okay, alright?"

"Is everything going to be okay?"

Emma's face broke a little at the concerned hope she could see shining in his eyes. The hope he placed in her.

So she responded with a bravado she didn't feel in the slightest. "I sure hope so, kid. I'm gonna get your mom out of there if it's the last thing I do. After all, I am the Savior, aren't I?"

"Right! You can do anything!"

Emma stood but her stomach remained in her toes. "I'll come get you when everything's calmed down."

"You promise?"

"I promise," and after a swift side hug and a kiss in his hair, Henry disappeared into the crowd.

Then with a determined frown etched across her face, Emma did a quick one-eighty turn and marched for the eye of the storm.

"What are you doing!?"

Emma reluctantly stopped and turned around to see her mother racing after her, panic practically radiating from the tiny pixie-haired woman.

"I'm the only one that can stop her, Snow," the blonde sighed.

"That storm could kill you!"

"It won't."

"But how can you be sure?" Snow's eyes were terrified for her daughter's safety and her voice was bordering on near-hysteria.

Emma's face screwed up in an expression of helpless indecision before she suddenly just blurted it out, "I kissed her. On the porch. I kissed her and she woke up."

When Mary Margaret just kept staring at her, obviously not following her train of thought, Emma ducked in closer to the woman and continued in a low growl through teeth that refused to part, "You of all people should get what that means."

Snow's face morphed from concerned confusion to undiluted horror faster than Emma had expected. Her mother's mouth dropped open in disbelief, "Emma, if you're saying what I think you're saying–"

The sheriff shrugged as if to say, What can you do?, and raised her gaze to the crowd of people watching eagerly for her plan of attack.

"No one is allowed to follow me in here, you got that? You'll only get hurt," she announced to the surrounding onlookers. "And if I'm not back in ten minutes, run like hell."

And then Emma charged headfirst into the storm.

Emma careened through the speeding smoke, squinting her eyes to try and see through the rapidly thickening green, until she finally could make out the vague outline of the mayor situated in the middle of the tempest.

Regina's arms were flung out to her sides like a crucifix and her head was tilted back on her neck at an odd angle, as if she was half-looking up at the storm she was creating above her. Sparks rolled off of her skin in waves as electrical currents snapped and popped over her form, her body shaking violently with the effort to remain standing. Her flesh was almost glittering with how much magic was flooding through it.

"Regina!"

The wind was whipping past her ears so fast that it was all she could hear. Emma shook her head to try and rid herself of the infernal rushing sound it was creating.

She ran towards the brunette as she tried again. "Regina!" Still no response.

Standing in front of her now, Emma could tell that the mayor was barely conscious. Her feet were rooted to the ground like someone being electrocuted, her body quaking and sizzling with strung-out magical fumes as the green pulse within her increased its internal rhythm. Emma could literally see the curse racing by under the thin membrane of the brunette's skin and the sudden strangled noise that came out of Regina's throat made the blonde's head snap up in surprise. Her face was contorted with pain and her eyes were a blazing neon green, unseeing and emotionless as they littered her flawless olive flesh with rivers of tears.

Standing there, looking at the devastated Queen, Emma had never felt more helpless in all her life.

What on earth was she going to do?

The world was green. Everything was green and pain and hurt and sorrow and sadness. Endless suffering and depthless rage choked and churned around her organs, riling up her emotions and goading them to spill out of her heart only to have the curse rip them away, leaving her feeling as empty and hollow as an unused tomb.

Regina gasped and shuttered as the curse continued to suck her dry, feeling as though someone was tearing out bits of her soul as the little pokes and twinges gave way to a blinding pain that stabbed and kicked at her emotions like she was a punching bag in a varsity gym. Her fingers twitched and her skull pounded, her veins seeming to freeze with hatred as her hope shredded like tissue paper in the vortex of wind rushing past her aching skin.

The curse beat mercilessly at her psyche until it was battered and bloodied and bruised, and she found herself giving up the fight against it as another crushing wave of agony finally forced her mind to flutter and dwell on all of the wrong she had ever done or caused in her lifetime.

Hundreds of faceless people crumpled to the ground again and again as she tore heart after heart after heart out of their bloodless chests to fill her ever-growing vault of vengeance. Misery flooded her synapses as she was rewarded with Graham's anguished expression. Her father's pitying gaze. Daniel's lifeless eyes. She relived empty castle corridors and Henry refusing to hug her back infused with haunting magic lessons from Gold and countless disappointed words from her mother, until the memories muddled together in a non-consequential blur.

She was tied to a post in the middle of a palace courtyard with nothing but a measly shift to hide her humiliation under.

She was mounted atop Rocinante, her battle armor cloaking her form as she skewered men left and right, their blood dripping a blackened crimson on her blade.

She was powerless against Rumpelstiltskin as he whispered 'please' and walked away unscathed.

She was banishing her mother through a mirror on her wedding day.

She was trying not to cry under the weight of an aging, infatuated king.

Her heart was breaking as she tore down Henry's castle, soaring with sickening satisfaction as Snow's face fell slack, choking on a chunk of apple, then twisting with horror once again as she entrapped her son in a tree like Cora had done to her so many years before.

Each memory dragged her down deeper and deeper into the cursed abyss until she was drowning.

A new pulse had begun to throb in her chest outside of her own heartbeat, growing colder and more painful by the minute as an unseen pressure began to push at the undersides of her skin. Her mutinous body ached and screamed against the unknown malice but it made no difference; it seemed as though all of this torture was coming to a point and she was flying towards the apex, hurtling herself at it with her arms wide open and praying it would take her. Anything to make this wretched pain disappear.

If she had been thinking clearly the Queen probably would have realized that she was about to explode: her life was flashing before her eyes.

A voice whispered through the air like a phantom, so soft against the noise of the wind that she wasn't sure she'd heard it.

Then the memories were back.

Henry was inviting her to lunch and then never showing, Daniel was pleading with her to end his life, Henry was lying in a hospital bed in the coma that she had put him in.

The voice cut through the pain again, a little louder this time. She strained her ears to hear what it was saying.

It was saying her name.

"Regina."

Her vision swam.

Emma was punching her in the graveyard, Emma was hacking up her honey crisp tree, Emma was nearly choking her in the back room of the hospital.

Emma was coming back for her in the fire, Emma was smiling at her as she climbed out of the mineshaft, Emma was not wearing pants when she came to drop off her token basket of apples.

She pushed the hallucinations back and tried to search around her for the source of the voice but she came away wanting. She had no idea where she was. Everything was green.

Green pain. Green wind. Green sparks. Green eyes.

Green eyes? She'd know those eyes anywhere.

They blinked. They looked a little watery.

The voice cracked. "Regina. Please come back."

There were eyes and a voice. And hands. Someone was holding her hands.

And suddenly her hands were very, very warm.

Her palms tingled and jittered with sensation before the feeling shot up to her elbows, and then it was everywhere at once: bursting in her shoulder blades and erupting in her neck, behind her ears and in her knees and her thighs and her heart, melting away the anger and the garish numbness with its blinding light until she almost felt human again.

Regina blinked once and the owner of the hands came into focus.

Emma was poised in front of her like one would imagine the Savior would be; intense and unwavering, and fiercely protective. The brunette watched in awe as magic poured from her fingertips into the pale hands clutching her own and Emma's skin also started to glow a brilliant neon green.

Stray tremors from the ground beneath their feet vibrated through both of their bodies as the sheriff began to absorb the storm Regina had created.

It was as if Emma was a black hole that had just exploded in the middle of a galaxy filled with dying stars, and only she had the ability to wrest all of the pain and misery from the heavens and put it back where it belonged.

She looked terrifyingly lovely basking in all of that power.

Her blonde hair levitated and sparks snapped between their hands as the wind that had once been circling around them now funneled in at a frightening velocity as if someone had pulled the plug on a kitchen drain. The flashing light emanating from the cloud pulled the sheriff's cheekbones into sharp relief and showcased the tightening tendons in her neck as she fought to control the immense amount of magic that was rapidly pummeling her being, her arms straining through the onslaught as her fingers clenched around the Queen's. But through it all her steady eyes never strayed from Regina's face.

Regina thought she had never looked more beautiful.

Eventually the wind began to settle. The sparks ceased and the lightning vanished. The buildings around them ended their groaning, the mayor's head stopped pounding, and the green glow dissipated from both of the women's flesh; which left the pair standing in the faintly swirling after-mist, still clinging desperately to one another's hands.

Regina was immensely thankful for the little privacy the hovering emerald fog afforded them for the time being. For a minute she could do nothing else but stare at the blonde across from her.

"Emma," she breathed. Those green eyes were like a tornado all on their own, daring to swallow the mayor into their depths.

"Hey," Emma replied somewhat sheepishly and just as breathlessly as Regina.

"You came for me."

"I told you I would."

Regina's bewildered expression at the simple declaration spoke volumes more than actual words could ever give meaning to. The brunette's lip began to quiver anew and she sunk her teeth into it to try to get it to stop. Emma's heart broke a little bit more at the sight.

The Queen's hands were shaking in her own but the blonde simply tightened her grip. There was no way in hell she was letting go of this woman now.

"Tell me what happened."

Regina's shoulders trembled in her effort not to sob openly as she desperately tried to regain some of her composure, but her voice hitched and hiccupped with tears that had never really stopped falling as she tried to speak. "Henry said… he didn't… want to… see me anymore," the brunette sniffled.

Emma's eyes darkened with a rage she wasn't used to feeling. Henry had been getting away with saying whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, for far too long without suffering any of the consequences. The kid needed to learn to think about other people's feelings before he spoke.

Wanting to be a part of Henry's life did not constitute phasing out his other mother. Emma wasn't here to replace Regina; she was here to become part of a family.

The thought of being a real family with Regina and Henry sent an unexpected wave of heat flooding through her.

"He's ten, Regina. He's a smart kid, but he's also got a huge freaking chip on his shoulder. He thinks he's the bee's knees ever since he convinced a town of people they were cursed and on top of that he's pre-hormonal, which means that everything is either the worst or the best thing that has ever happened to him. The kid doesn't see the gray, just the black and white. I'll talk to him and we'll get this sorted out; he'll come around, you'll see."

"He hates me."

"No, he doesn't."

"Yes, he does. He hates me."

"He loves you, even if he thinks he doesn't right now. You raised him for ten years, how could he hate you?

"But I'm the Evil Queen."

"And I'm the fucking Savior for god sakes! So what!? I'm also human. And so are you. And so is Henry. And humans make mistakes. And when he realizes how much he's hurt you I am sure that this will be something he regrets saying."

Emma released her right hand from the confines of Regina's fingers and gently brought it up to the Queen's tear-stained cheek and brushed the excess water from her eyes. She left her palm against the soft olive skin and the brunette nuzzled into it ever so slightly, her eyelids fluttering closed for a fleeting second at the contact.

Emma's voice sliced through their brief moment of intimacy. "You do know that I meant it as a joke, right?"

The mayor's spine stiffened, immediately defensive. "To what are you referring Ms. Swan?" she asked crisply. Her face was hardening by the second; her vulnerability limping to hide itself behind her eyes.

But Emma's hand trailed tenderly down her neck until it was resting at the base against her shoulder, the blonde's thumb lazily drawing lines up and down the Queen's throat, as if memorized by the fact that Regina was still really there in front of her.

The corners of Emma's lips tried to twitch up into a playful smirk but she found herself unable to meet the Queen's penetrating gaze, so instead she watched her thumb caress the skin covering the mayor's vocal chords as she mumbled her words, "You know, when I told you could blow up the town in the morning, I meant it as a joke. I didn't think you'd actually try it."

Emma glanced up at the brunette through her eyelashes and managed a weak grin to show that she was trying to make her laugh.

Regina coughed out a feeble chuckle that could have been mistaken for a sob, but a reluctant levity twinkled in her chocolate eyes and Emma let out a smile of minor victory in return.

But their slight reprieve from reality was shattered as a verbal uproar swept over them like a tidal wave; the mist had started to clear and already disintegrated to about their knees, leaving the pair exposed to the public eye.

"There she is!" "Get her!" "This was the last straw!" "Make her pay!" "She has the Savior!"

It took a second for Emma to realize that the surrounding Storybrooke residents were not concerned about Regina's fate in the slightest; they were just worried about their own. And now that they were sure that the initial threat to their happiness had passed, they wanted her blood as payment for their fright.

She glanced at Regina, and even though her posture was still ramrod straight and her jaw was clenched as usual, the blonde could tell that she was not okay. The brunette's eyes betrayed her panic as her breathing shallowed to the top of her chest and her hand nearly squeezed the blood out of Emma's fingers.

So Emma did the only thing that felt right.

She took a deliberately protective step in front of Regina and pulled the brunette in behind her back, effectively using her own body as a shield against the enraged horde of fairytale characters that was currently converging on the Savior and the Evil Queen.

Squaring her shoulders, Emma hollered out over the crowd in what she hoped sounded like a commanding voice, "Stop! Stop it all of you! Nobody is allowed to get any closer than where you are right now, do you hear me? No one is going to touch a fucking hair on her head."

"After all she's done, we deserve retribution!" Jefferson demanded.

"This is just one crime on a list of many!" Geppetto chorused.

"Our streets aren't safe with her around!" the Blue Fairy echoed.

Emma's voice rumbled low in her throat as she spat back, "I know full well what she's done, but I'm not about to leave her here to get slaughtered by you all. I'm taking her back to the mayoral mansion, alone, where we're… meaning she and I… are going to figure out what to do about this whole mess in peace. Like civilized adults."

The uprising started again: "But what about the children!?" "I want her locked her up!" "Push her over the border!" "Make her eat one of her own poison apples!"

"Oh my god, are you serious?!" the blonde screamed over the clamor, effectively silencing the heated throng once again. "I am tired of an angry mob forming every time someone in this place does something someone else has a problem with. This is not how normal people deal with their issues!"

"But Emma you can't just–"

Emma rounded on Mary Margaret with fire blazing in her eyes, "Oh but that is where you're wrong! I can just. I am the Sheriff of this town and as such the protection and safety of Storybrooke falls under my jurisdiction, not yours. So yes, I will be doing this my way, and you all are just going to have to deal with it."

The sheriff glared at the crowd, daring them to question her authority. When nobody moved she nodded affirmatively to herself as a kind of job-well-done and tugged on the brunette's hand. "Come on, Regina."

And with that Emma stormed off towards her squad car, dragging a completely dumbfounded queen behind her.

Regina was more than a little shell-shocked. Not only had she had three near-death experiences within the last thirty-six hours, one of which was not even two minutes ago, but Emma had just defended her in front of the entire town. Emma had taken her side over her friends, her neighbors, and her parents… just to keep her safe. The brunette couldn't recall a time when anyone had ever taken her side before and she found that knowing she had the Savior's support left her feeling slightly lighter than air.

If the mayor hadn't had known any better, she would have sworn that she saw Emma's fingertips begin to glow a faint golden color, nearly the same shade as the blonde's own curly hair, as she belittled the small-minded town citizens. But given her current dazed mindset Regina didn't quite trust her eyes just yet, and after a quick blink whatever it was that she'd thought she saw was gone.

But even so, Regina couldn't seem to tear her gaze away from Emma's hand: it hadn't let go of hers since the moment she had opened her eyes.