Emma breaks about every traffic law there is on her way to Boston. She justifies it with the fact that a, her baby sister is in trouble and that is far more important than any stupid law, and b, that she's a witch and if she's bending reality a little bit to make sure she doesn't hit anyone she's actually being a far much more responsible driver than most people anyway.
She calls Ruby again on the way, just long enough to get an address out of her before there's a scuffling noise and the line goes dead again. If she weren't a witch, then that's the point in the drive at which she would have wrapped her car around a tree and made Henry an orphan.
When she finally gets there, her heart is beating so loud in her ears it's almost painful. She violates one final traffic law with some heinous double parking, then jumps from the car and across the parking lot at a run. It's easy to locate the number apartment - the door's hanging open - and she rushes inside with Ruby's name falling in an urgent cry from her lips.
"I'm here," the familiar voice calls, much less exuberant than normal, and Emma turns to see her cowering beside an end table, phone clutched in her hand. A strange, vacant look in her eyes.
There's a bruise darkening around her right eye, her lip is swollen and bleeding, and there's several other smaller cuts across her face. Emma has to physically fight down the wave of angry magic that threatens to burst from her.
"Where is he?" she growls.
Ruby shifts, wincing in pain. She looks uncomfortable. "He...he ran when he heard the car."
Emma huffs. There's a choice few words she'd like to say to this Killian, a choice few spells she wouldn't mind casting on him too - but Ruby is the issue at hand here. She's the only thing that matters.
"Get your stuff, Rubes. I'm taking you home."
Emma leans down to help the girl up, by which point she's breathing heavy. The blonde looks her up and down, assessing. She's rumpled and bruised, a few other cuts here and there, but she can stand.
"Oh Rubes," she sighs, "you can't do this to me. We made that promise - remember that?"
Ruby's mouth pulls up into a tiny smile. "Yeah," she nods, "neither of us is allowed to die."
"Neither of us is allowed to die," Emma repeats for emphasis. "Now come on."
As they move though, Ruby gasps in pain, "I think my rib may be broken."
She has to shut her eyes to keep from hitting something. A display of violence is not what Ruby needs in front of her right now.
"I'll get your stuff," she says instead, but Ruby shakes her head.
"I got it," she breathes, and then there's things whizzing about the room, and in a few minutes there are three small suitcases by their feet.
Ruby slumps against her. "Could you.." her eyes flicker to the door, and Emma nods, shifting them so Ruby's arm is around her shoulders. They start at a slow walk, the three suitcases floating behind them.
"I got you, Rubes," she reassures her.
They take it slow, eventually making it to the car, where Emma throws the cases in the trunk with a wave. Then she gets Ruby set up in the passenger seat. By the time she's settling into her own seat, Ruby has a hand over her mouth, muffling her soft crying.
"Rubes," Emma whispers, "it's okay, you're safe. I've got you, you're gonna be okay."
A sob tears from Ruby's throat.
"Ruby-ru," Emma doesn't know what to do, she's never seen her sister so distressed. It's understandable, she just wishes she knew how to help better. "You're safe, we're going home," is all she can find to say.
The girl lets out another sob, shaking her head. "It's not that."
"Then what -"
"Emma," she's cut off by Ruby's crying reaching almost hysterical levels. "Emma, I killed him."
Emma stares at her, not sure she heard right.
"I...I'm sorry what?" she asks, voice shaking, staring at her sister as she shakes, tears slipping down her cheeks at remarkable pace.
The brunette turns to look at her, eyes wide and panicked. "He just wasn't stopping, Ems. He was so angry and he just wouldn't stop, and I was so scared, I was so scared, and I didn't mean to do it, Em, I swear I didn't mean to but he was coming for me again and he had a knife and then there was just this wave and I," she takes a shuddering breath, another sob escaping her, "I don't know what happened, it just did. One minute he was rushing towards me and the next he was just falling backwards."
The blonde just continues staring, speechless.
"I don't think it would have killed him," she says, pleading in her voice, "But the way he fell… he hit his against the table and then he wasn't moving and he wasn't breathing and I...oh god, I killed him. I killed him, Em, I killed him." The last is only just intelligible, Ruby's crying too hard.
Emma shakes her head, trying to wake herself up. Because this can't be real. Her sister can't just have killed her boyfriend, and this has to be nightmare. She resorts to pinching herself, hard, but it does nothing more than leave a smarting red mark on her arm. She doesn't wake up. The scene doesn't change.
She's still sitting in a motel parking lot with a hysterical little sister who's just confessed to murder right there in the passenger seat of her little yellow bug.
Her brain is completely fried, and for a second she feels so disorientated it's almost as if she were blind drunk. Then Ruby looks up at her, eyes wide under wet lashes, and says, "Emma we have to do something. We have to bring him back."
And then she's totally sober again. "What?"
Ruby sniffs, breathing hard but tears slowly subsiding. "There's a spell in one of the Aunts' old books, I saw it when I was little. A spell for bringing someone back - we could do it. We could bring him back and then it'll be fine."
Fine, Emma thinks, must be a word that she and her sister have very different definitions of. Still, they can't do nothing.
"Ruby, we can't. If it was self-defense we have to go to the police."
Ruby's skin turns ashen. "We can't, we can't go to the police."
"Why not?" Emma snaps, she doesn't mean to, but apparently dead bodies created by her own baby sis set her a little on edge.
Ruby winces. "It doesn't look like self-defense," she whispers.
Emma swallows thickly, "I think I need to see the body, don't I?" And there's a sentence she never thought she'd say.
The girl turns guilty eyes to her, then to her lap. She nods.
Emma helps Ruby out of the car and back inside, where she directs them into the bedroom.
The blonde stares at the floor where the body of the late Killian Jones is sprawled across a disgusting, cheap fur rug. Her eyes shift to her sister, then back again, then to her sister.
"Ruby, what did you do?" she asks, dismayed.
Ruby is huddled by the door, pointedly not looking at the body.
"I told you, I don't know," she mumbles. "It was instinctual."
"Your instinct told you to do that?" Emma tries very hard not to shriek, looking back once again to the man on the rug. Only he's not quite a man. Most of him is, except one hand which is distinctly webbed. The rest of him is an odd mottling of normal human skin and the shiny green of a frog's.
"I was scared!" Ruby's eyes are wide. "I think I tried to do two spells at once and it just…went wrong."
"I'll say," Emma exclaims.
"Emma, please, we have to take him back home, we have to fix this."
The blonde takes a deep breath, pinching her eyes shut. Ruby's right, of course. They can't leave him here, because he'll be found, and they certainly can't take him to the police. Taking him home is the only option.
"Okay, Rubes," she sighs. "I can't promise anything. If that spell you remember even is for revival, it'll be old old magic, probably way beyond both our skill levels."
"But you're saying we'll try?" she asks.
"Yes," Emma sighs wearily, unable to believe this how today has turned out. "We'll try."
The drive home is tense, not to mention disgusting. Dead, half-human half-frog bodies really stink.
When they finally pull into the drive, Emma gets out to check the Aunts are still gone, then goes to the car to help Ruby. She floats the body in behind her, taking it into the kitchen and laying it down on the table.
"Which book?" she asks Ruby once she's sat her down in a chair.
"The dusty old brown one on the top shelf," she says, "ya know, the most clichéd looking spellbook we own."
Emma rolls her eyes, calling the tome down with a wave of her hand.
"Page sixty three," Ruby supplies, "or eighty three. There's definitely a three in it somewhere."
The blonde flips through, and on page seventy three she comes to a page headed with a skull, and the title 'A spell to reawaken the dead' in a careful, calligraphic hand.
"Got it."
The ingredients are relatively simple, and she flits around the room collecting them with the kind of ease she long thought she'd forgotten. It would seem it's impossible to forget how to be a proper witch. The Aunts would be proud, she thinks, then laughs at herself because if they knew the spell she was managing to cook up with such ease they would be thoroughly ashamed.
She starts getting everything together on the table then turns to Ruby. "I need something white to draw the pentagram," she instructs.
The girl nods, eyes beginning to flit around the kitchen. A tall metal can lands on the table by Emma's right hand.
"Seriously?" she asks Ruby, and the girl shrugs apologetically.
"That's all there is."
Emma closes her eyes and shakes her head. This is ridiculous. She doesn't know how long they have though, so this will have to do. She picks up the can and squirts the cream out of it into a five-pointed star on Killian's chest.
"Alright, Rubes, I'm gonna need ya now."
The girl pulls herself out of her chair and steps towards the table. Emma looks at the book, skimming over the words.
She gives Ruby a hard look. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Ruby nods.
"Okay. These are the words: Black as night, erase death from our sight. White as light, Mighty Hectate make it right. Got it?"
"Got it."
The blonde expels a long breath through her mouth. "Good, then let's do this."
Regina is completely perplexed by the afternoon's events.
Her confrontation with Emma had left her with more questions than she'd had at the start, on top of which the woman's disappearance is setting her teeth on edge. She hates that most of the reason behind that is that she's worried. Worried sick, in fact.
All she'd managed to gauge from the brief phone conversation that preceded Emma's departure was that something was going on with Ruby - something that made the color drain from Emma's face and fear dance in her beautiful eyes. And call her crazy, but that has Regina a little panicked.
She's angry though, so angry, because she's definite in that Emma is hiding something from her - but her demeanor towards the end of the conversation is making her question whether it's what she originally feared. She hopes it isn't what she feared, because if it does turn out that Emma has been doing anything to hurt that little boy, it will break her heart. Break it into a million tiny pieces she doesn't think she'll ever manage to reassemble, because it would be the biggest and worst betrayal she could possibly imagine.
She doesn't want to believe that there is anything like that going on, finds it very difficult in fact, but when a child tells you their mother says if they express their love for you something terrible will happen - what else are you meant to think? It doesn't help that Emma had started out so damned defensive on the topic. If she'd just explained, or said it was a misunderstanding, Regina would have believed her in a heartbeat. But the woman hadn't given her a straight answer.
It had hurt too, when she'd pointed out so harshly that she had no claim to Henry. She knows that it shouldn't hurt so much, but the thought that if Emma should so wish it, Regina might never be able to even see the boy again is one of the most frightening things she's ever had to face. About as frightening as the idea that Emma would hurt her like that.
That's not the most perplexing thing, of course. That would be the way that Emma had turned back to look at her and asked her to look after Henry, something so deeply trustful in her eyes, swimming in a sea of regretful apology. As if she were taking back everything she'd said in the last five minutes.
Regina looks to where Henry's sleeping, chest rising and falling evenly, chin tucked under the duvet, and sighs. All she wants right now is for Emma and Ruby to get back in one piece, and then maybe they could discuss this properly. They still need to talk about Friday, because taking everything else into account, Regina no longer believes letting that stew is the best option. If they're going to talk, they need to talk, all cards on the table. And if she walks away from that conversation heartbroken, then at least it's better than living a lie.
The sound of the front door opening and closing wakes her from her reverie, and she assumes the Aunts are back - which means she should probably be leaving. She hesitates though, reluctant to leave Henry, just on the tiny off chance that something happens and he's stolen away from her, never to be seen again.
She hears the faint sound of voices, and rises from her seat. She crosses the room, bending down to place a soft kiss on the boy's forehead. He fidgets, letting out a little sigh, and his lips curl up at the corners. Regina's do the same, then she straightens, heading for the door.
As she reaches the top of the stairs though, she hears the most almighty racket from downstairs. There's a manly shout, a female scream, then the sound of a scuffle followed by lots of shouting.
She creeps down the stairs, peering around the railings to peer in the direction of the noise. It's coming from the kitchen, and she leans over further as there's more panicked shouting - shouting that sounds like Emma - and then a loud, male groan that isn't dissimilar to the sound of a stuck pig.
Then a body falls to the kitchen floor with a resounding thud, and Regina has to bite down on her tongue to keep from letting out a yelp of surprise. She can just about make out the body on the floor well enough to see that it's a man, but then she hears footsteps, and retreats back up the stairs enough so she's covered by shadow.
She watches on in horror, stuck in her hiding place on the stairs, as Emma appears from the kitchen, blood smeared across her cheek and right down her chest, with the body floating in the air behind her. The door opens obediently, and then Emma disappears into the night, body and all.
The brunette sits there shell shocked for a minute, then she creeps back down the stairs and towards the conservatory and the back door nestled behind the Aunts' wide array of pot plants. Once she's outside, she doesn't stop running until she reaches her car.
Emma wakes up on the couch, disorientated, with a splitting headache. It takes her a moment to remember that these things are all down to the fact that yesterday she woke a homicidal Irishman from the dead before promptly re-killing him with a kitchen knife when said reawakening went wrong.
For all the jokes and stories the townsfolk make, she'd never thought she would actually wake up covered in someone else's blood. It takes a monumental effort on her part not to lose her shit on a grand scale. Instead she just reaches calmly for a couch cushion and then proceeds to scream into it until the images of running a half transfigured frog man through with a knife whilst he tried to choke the life out of her sister are dimmed somewhat.
She feels a touch better afterwards, better enough to go in search of coffee at least, and she makes it as far as the hallway before something stops her in her tracks.
Regina's coat is hanging on a hook by the door. Dark, and unoffending - save for what it implies. Emma races up the stairs, throwing open the door to Henry's room. He's still sound asleep, soft little snores coming from his bed - that means Regina brought him home last night like Emma had asked. She rushes out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her, and heads to the guest room. It's empty, hasn't been used since the last time they had Midnight Margaritas and Regina couldn't drive home.
She knows it's futile, but Emma tries every door upstairs, then every door downstairs. She's half convinced that if she looks hard enough the other woman will be there, holed up asleep somewhere in blissful ignorance to what happened in this house last night. Except she isn't there, she isn't anywhere, just her coat hanging like a beacon of doom near the front door.
Emma knows Regina wouldn't leave Henry on his own, and the Aunts still aren't back - and that means she knew Emma was home. That means she knew she wasn't in the house alone, and something caused her to leave it again in such a hurry she didn't even pick up her favorite black wool blend coat. The blonde can only imagine which of the many things that happened in that goddamned kitchen that it might have been.
She feels her heart drop to her stomach in absolute dread - if Regina saw Killian...if she saw the casting or the fight or the body. God, she'll probably never look at Emma again.
She has to do something, now, before the brunette can make up her mind about what was going on and Emma can lose the woman who brought light back into her life. She has to make this right.
She has to.
"Regina? Regina? Regina!"
The brunette shuts her bedroom window. She doesn't want to hear her, her heart honestly cannot take facing Emma right now. She's too angry, too confused.
"Regina, please!" It's muffled but it's still there. Emma's voice. Emma's lovely voice that sends shivers down her spine and puts her at ease in a way a voice never has before. Except right now it isn't, right now it's putting her on edge. "Please." And the voice is begging, she can't take begging.
She closes her eyes, concentrating very hard on the thought of silence - and how she wants it surrounding her. It's sloppy spell work, but it does the trick. She can no longer hear the blonde or the pleading in her voice.
She knows she'll have to face her eventually, though she's not looking forward to it, but she's just not ready yet. Because as sure as she was three days ago that this whole thing between them might even work out, now she's almost positive she's about to have her heart broken in every way it's possible to break. She thinks she can be forgiven for wanting to put that off until at least after breakfast.
"Emma Swan." The blonde stops short the moment she enters the house. The Aunts are back and they're standing there and they're staring with those all-knowing looks and oh boy is she in trouble.
"Would you like to explain what on earth you have been doing in this house?" Mal asks, and she shoots her one of those looks that makes her feel like a five year-old who stole a cookie.
Still, she was an excellent cookie thief as a child. "What are you talking about?" she asks, stuffing her hands into her pockets.
Lena raises her delicate eyebrows. "We're talking about the spell you did here last night. This house stinks of old magic, girl."
The blonde swallows thickly. "Old magic doesn't have a smell." It's the wrong thing to say, because next thing Mal and Lena a sharing a look that only goes to reinforce how much of a child Emma feels in this moment.
"Oh my sweet, sweet girl," Mal whispers. "What have you done?"
And Emma tells her. There's no point in lying about it, so she lets them guide her down to the couch and then she tells them everything. About Ruby, and the phone call, and the abuse. She tells them about Killian, and Ruby's misfiring spells, and the frog skin. About the way her little sister had looked at her with wide eyes and asked her to do the impossible, how wrong it had gone and how wrong he had been when he woke again. She tells them about how he'd gone for Ruby and there'd been nothing, nothing but a kitchen knife in her hands and a protective instinct stronger than any messed up morals she may or may not possess.
The Aunts listen with twin faces of sympathy. When she's done, they exchange another long look, then turn back to her.
"And where is your sister?" Lena asks.
Emma shrugs. "Upstairs, I guess. I asked her to keep an eye on Henry whilst I was at Re...whilst I was out," she corrects herself, but she knows it's too late and they heard her. She's going to have to explain all that to them soon too - Regina's just as important to them, and they deserve to know what's happening.
Thankfully, they both seem content to deal with one issue at a time.
"I think perhaps we need to go and have a word with her," Lena frowns, sweeping a swathe of red hair back over her shoulder. "Mal?"
"Oh I completely agree, Lena dear. I think we need to have a nice long chat with the both of them."
Emma rises, followed by the Aunts, and leads the way up stairs. As she reaches the top though, she frowns. There's an odd noise coming from Henry's room.
The blonde opens the door and feels her heart leap immediately to her throat. Ruby is pinning Henry to the window with a hand around his neck, and the little boy is making muffled sobbing noises as he struggles against the grip.
"Henry!" she yells, running for him, but Ruby waves a bored hand in her direction and then she's pinned against the opposite wall.
"Ruby!" Mal's voice calls, appalled, from the doorway.
"Not Ruby," she says, only it's not Ruby's voice, and as she turns her head to grin at them Emma feels herself gasp. They're not Ruby's eyes either, they're eyes she watched the life slip out of as she twisted a kitchen knife between the owner's ribs. Red, and wild, and demonic.
"Killian," she breathes, wishing she couldn't believe it.
Ruby laughs. Or Killian laughs, he's using Ruby's body but it's not Ruby.
"Mommy," Henry whimpers and her gaze locks onto his.
"Henry, sweetie, don't panic it's gonna be okay. I promise," she calls to him, turning panicked eyes to the Aunts.
They share their own look of fear - and that doesn't instill Emma with a whole lot of confidence. She struggles against the magic bonds that hold her, but she can't move, and Ruby's grip is tightening. She looks back to the Aunts with begging in her eyes.
Mal seems to get a hold of herself quicker than Lena, and then she's waving a hand and a book collides with Ruby's head with a thud. The girl falls to the floor, unconscious, and Emma feels the magical grip on her release as she slides to the floor.
"Momma!" Henry calls and then he's running to her and she scoops him up.
"It's okay, Henry, you're okay," she breathes into his hair.
"What happened?" Mal asks, looking down at him sternly.
He steps away from Emma's arms, small brow furrowed in confusion. "Aunt Ruby wanted to hear my spellings," he says, "we were just doing my spellings."
"And then what, sweetie?" Lena asks, bending down.
"And then she went all funny, and she was shaking. And then her eyes were scary and she didn't sound like Aunt Ruby, and she said she was coming for you momma and I told her no."
Lena reaches forward a hand to his shoulder, stroking her thumb across it gently. "It's alright, my darling. Ruby's sick but your Aunt and I are going to make her better," she promises, shooting a worried look back to her sister.
Emma, though, is focusing on something else. "Henry, what did you say?"
The little boy turns his gaze back to her. "She went all funny, and she was shaking -"
"No," Emma shakes her head. "The last bit."
His face crumples, a mix of anger and concern. "She said she was going to hurt you," he replies, "and I told her no, so she hurt me."
The blonde's eyes widen, and awe that her five year old kid was trying to protect her, swiftly turns to panic, to anger.
"Henry!" she yells, and in that moment all she can see is her son, her cursed son, putting himself in needless danger when she's so desperately trying to keep him alive. "Are you crazy? You're going to get yourself killed, Henry. You're gonna die. Do you understand that? You're going to die, you can't do things like that! You're cursed," and now she's hysterical, well and truly hysterical. "Henry, you're cursed, you're cursed, you're going to die."
She's not breathing properly, she can't think straight. All she can think of is the echoing noise of a death watch beetle, and the idea of her son's body lifeless on the ground.
When she looks up though, it's only for long enough to realize that she's screwed up big time, because the Aunts are looking at her like she's grown a second head and Henry's face is a mask of terror. Then he runs from the room with the speed only boys his age can summon and by the time she's pulled herself together enough to follow after him, the front door is wide open and she's left staring at an empty garden.