Title: Destiny Is The Rabbit Hole (10/?)
Author: Maggiemerc
Rating: T
Characters: Swan Queen eventually.
Spoilers: Veers from canon after the third episode of season 2.
Disclaimer: Of course I don't own them. All the lady loving would be hella canon if I did.
Summary: Henry begging Regina to rescue Snow White and Emma from the Enchanted Forest in the season 2 premiere sets the formerly evil queen on a quest that takes her from the mountains of the Middle Kingdom to the pirate lair of a serial killer and straight into conflict with her own villain, the Queen of Hearts.
Author's Note: Every time you leave feedback—especially when it's to mock the many grammatical errors, another sentence in the next chapter gets its period… Which makes it sound like sentences be menstruating all over the place. I didn't think this through. But feedback is appreciated and welcomed and worshipped. Thank you for your wonderful responses thus far.
Chapter Ten
It was Storybrooke but the homes were all at least ten stories tall, winged monkeys haunted the skies, armored centaurs stalked the streets and Regina stood before a pile of hearts. They didn't glow with dark magic. The rhythm of them did not drum through the pavement she stood upon. They were wretched bloody masses of flesh.
Cora stood on the other side of the pile. Laughing. Empty. Patient.
Regina's hands were bloody. It had soaked through her sleeves and was tacky between her fingers. Red. Redder than anything she'd ever seen.
She squeezed and there was a heart in her hand and Emma Swan stood where the hearts had been and there was only a hole where her own heart should be.
It was in Regina's hand. Inert. Rapidly cooling. She dug her fingers in and blood leaked from it. Oozed out into her palm.
"Don't."
And Emma was beside her. Her hand covering Regina's. Covering that pathetic muscle dying in her grip.
"Don't," she said again.
Cora laughed.
Storybrooke shattered.
It was all glass.
Mirrors crumbling into ash.
And then Regina was awake. Shivering with adrenalin and trying not to clutch at her chest.
A dream. Just a dream.
Dreams were potent. They told the future. Illuminated the past. They were guides. Warnings.
Dreams were—
Something that only happened when one was asleep.
Regina tried to remember how she'd come to be fully dressed on a bed. There'd been the shantytowns and Emma Swan and pirates. She'd told the pirates to sleep.
Used the last of her magic. And then…
Her hand came up to her mouth in shock.
She'd fallen asleep in the middle of the street while trying to break into a castle.
Now she was lying on a bed and dressed like a pirate.
Somehow her tailored riding coat and pants, very expensive cotton blouse and custom boots had been traded for a waistcoat, men's shirt, leather pants and boots all about four sizes too big.
And a hat, which hung on one of the boots, picking up mud from the sole that no one had bothered to clean off.
She didn't have much time to consider how'd she'd come to be dressed in the clothes of a fat pirate or gotten from the streets to the hut. The door to the room jerked open. Sunlight, blindingly white, poured in, revealing a dank hovel with two beds, a table of rotted wood and not much else.
Another pirate stepped through the entrance and shoved the door shut with their foot, mumbling all the while like they were having a conversation with—
The pirate in the doorway was, in fact, Emma Swan. Only she'd exchanged her awful jacket and too tight jeans for an ornate burgundy coat, brown leather pants that somehow were tighter than anything she'd worn before, and a tricorne she'd tucked her hair up into. With the coat buttoned she almost resembled a man.
"Ms. Swan." She said the name imperiously—a bad attempt to reclaim her dignity while wearing the leather pants of what might have been the descendant of a giant. She had to gather them at the waist with her fist when she stood. "What on earth is going on?"
Her relief at the sight of Regina was unsettling.
"You're awake."
"Clearly. Where are my clothes?"
"Hidden at the bottom of a barrel outside, same as mine."
"Okay." She pursed her lips. "Why are my clothes there, instead of on my body?"
"Because we're hiding from the crazy serial killer in the castle and two women out of a mall catalogue would be obvious?"
Fine. Regina drew in a breath through her nose to keep from yelling. Something she'd read in a book about counting to five and taking a breath. But something smelled… She had to clinch her hand into a fist to keep from unleashing a well deserved lashing via magic. "This is perhaps the most important question." Her knuckles were white with restraint.
Emma raised her eyebrow.
Regina sucked her next breath in through her mouth. "Why," she said through gritted teeth, "do I smell homeless?"
Emma shrugged and flopped down onto the other bed, resting her filthy boots on the table, which creaked under the strain. She set her package in her lap and tore at the paper. A sandwich of what smelled like corned beef and death was inside. She offered half of it to Regina.
She politely declined. "That's food poisoning in a wrapper."
"I've survived two of them so far."
"Where did you get food? Where did you get these clothes? Do they have lice? They feel as though they have lice. And is this—" What was on her shoulder? "Is this vomit?"
Emma said nothing. Just continued to chew on her sandwich like a cow with cud.
It was definitely vomit. On her shoulder!
She ripped the waist coat and shirt off, the pants sliding down her hips in her haste to divest herself of everything.
"And urine," she protested. "Did you go out and find the saddest, drunkest buffoon of a man to rob of his clothes?"
"Pretty much," Emma said with a full mouth.
"I look and smell like Leroy fell into a Gilbert and Sullivan piece."
Emma cocked her head and waved at Regina with her sandwich, "Pretty sure he doesn't wear the lacy shelf bra."
She would have blushed once upon a time. But Regina was a clever woman. Clever people had active imaginations. Imaginations that immediately conjured up the image of the hirsute dwarf in Regina's shelf bra and bikini briefs.
"And in addition to the bleach for my body I now need more for my brain."
"You think that's bad. I had to see the guy I got it from naked."
He'd probably had crabs too. Lice. Crabs. Vomit. She threw the shirt and jacket onto the dirt floor and kicked off the boots and pants, shoving them into the pile and as far away from her person as possible sans magic.
Which left her in her underwear.
Emma continued to watch her with interest while she noisily wolfed down her sandwich.
A cool draft buffeted the shack and spread goose pimples across her skin.
"Comfortable," the ingrate asked.
"Can you retrieve my clothes?"
"When I said barrel? I meant the one everyone's using for their—" she wrinkled her nose, her intimation clear.
"You threw seven hundred dollar boots into a barrel of piss?"
She shrugged again and took another bite of her sandwich.
Still fighting the urge to strangle the woman—stronger now that she'd given up the locket—Regina dragged her hands through her hair. The pain of her nails scraping across her scalp assuaged a little of the simmering rage.
She'd really loved those boots.
####
It was easy to forget Regina had magic. Conjured chair in the forest aside most of the magic she'd done had been below the surface. Stuff Emma could feel but couldn't see.
Then she stood there in some pricy looking underwear, snapped her fingers and the clothes Emma had painstakingly dressed the woman in stood at attention, as if filled by an invisible body.
It had taken Emma the better part of an hour to get the unconscious guy out of the clothes without gagging and then get them onto Regina. Unconscious people were floppy and more akin to jello than a Barbie doll. It made putting their arms through shirts difficult.
Pulling the pants on the woman she'd actually broken out in a sweat. One that hadn't been helped by head Regina making unhelpful comments about how Emma was a pervert for enjoying the view.
Which was just—she could appreciate a human body damn it! Just because it belonged to her arch nemesis didn't mean she couldn't notice the way her breasts swayed with every jerk of the pants or the way her stomach was really smooth and probably would have looked killer in a bikini. Those were normal reactions. Completely positively not pervy—
She tilted her head with interest. Regina was still standing basically naked in the middle of the room. Her arms were crossed and that sour look hadn't left her face since she'd woken. She made a few slashing movements with her hand and the fat pirate's clothes shrank. The leather waistcoat with the high collar suddenly had a waist and room for a woman's bust. The leather pants seemed to cinch in to the point that Emma was sure Regina was day dreaming.
No way her ass could fit in pants that tight.
Emma knew.
She'd been awfully close to that ass hours earlier.
But Regina fluttered her fingers and she and the clothes were surrounded in a cloud of purple smoke. When it dissipated Regina was fully dressed. The vomit-covered white tunic had undergone a color change in the process and was now a very clean deep burgundy that almost matched the coat Emma was wearing.
The pants weren't as tight as they'd been before, having been let out a little in the cloudy purple Wonder Woman trick and the boots—she squinted—they looks a lot like the ones she'd thrown away.
A choice she hadn't needed to make. Regina's boots would have worked just fine. But the woman had passed out in her arms while they were trying to break into a castle and she'd been pissed.
Though not as much as the shoes.
She snorted at her own joke.
Regina paused in her preening to eye her like a stray dog in the back yard. "Everything all right?"
"Sure. You done with the magic show?"
"I smelled like a vagrant and looked like—"
"The eight dwarf, Barely Functional Alcoholic I know."
"Stealthy," she murmured.
"What?"
Regina shook her head. "Never mind. So besides using me as a doll what exactly have you been doing for the last…"
She waited for Emma to finish the sentence. Emma took a moment. Relished the way Regina's eye bulged. "Day? Not much. Actually scouting the palace and coming up with a plan that doesn't involve winging it and then falling asleep in the middle."
Regina huffed and turned her back on her finding the barren opposite side of the room interesting. "And did you have any luck?"
"I've come up with a couple of ideas. I'd be happy to share if you can promise not to, you know, pass out."
"It was an accident."
"You sure you're fairytale counterpart isn't Rip Van Winkle?"
She huffed, "He's not even from this land!"
Emma balled up the wrapper from her sandwich and chucked it onto the table before leaning back against the wall. "Okay. So what exactly happened? Because I'm not walking out of this hut with you until I know."
"It's nothing."
She pegged her with a stare that made one bail runner pee all over himself. Okay. He'd been drunk. And on hallucinogens. It still counted.
Regina…almost…quailed. "It was my magic. It…ran out."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Magic is like—"
"A battery?"
"No," she said with a frown. "I am neither a Duracell or an Energizer. More like a nuclear reactor or some other complicated generator. Normally one can expend a great deal of magic with little physical detriment, but continuous use, without the chance to—"
"Recharge?"
Regina gave her a bitter look. "Can affect the user."
"So you, what? Ran out of juice? After a couple of hours?"
"After four days without sleep. I'm not some little witch who makes poultices for the town whore. I'm a sorceress of immense power."
"With a dead battery."
Regina snapped and Emma founder herself on the floor.
Part of being a good bounty hunter was knowing when to press an advance and when to back off. She gave Regina the ounce of dignity she'd gained from her petty trick. "Point taken."
Regina agreed smugly.
"Can you bring the bed back now?"
"Why? If you need to sleep the floor looks to be down to your standards."
She tried the plaintive look that had worked a couple of times before on the mayor. Regina crumbled like a stale cake. A puff of purple smoke and Emma was returned to her previous spot atop the bed.
She quickly hopped off and yanked off the mattress. Relief flooded her system, "Oh thank God."
####
Regina had to admit to a modicum of curiosity. The sheriff had leapt off the bed as though it were aflame and whipped off the mattress. She's sagged in relief when she'd spied whatever she'd hidden in the frame.
"Everything intact?"
Emma dipped her foot into the frame and prodded something. "I think so. How bad does that magic trick affect a guy I keep knocking unconscious?"
Did she just—? Regina stepped closer, wrapping her arms around her middle protectively and peering over the sheriff's shoulder to find a scrawny naked man expertly bound with rope and passed out.
Not quite sure what to say under the circumstances Regina asked the first question that popped into her head, "How many times have you knocked him out?"
Emma shrugged, "Four?"
"You didn't think to drug him?"
"I left my Rohypnol in my other pants," she snapped.
Regina went to her pack, mercifully saved from the water grave her clothes had been consigned to, and rooted around. She allowed herself some relief to find the peach magically preserved and still in its silk purse. But it was the leather pouch resting on top of it she was interested in.
She pulled it out and laid it on the table.
"Find some water, preferably not infested with parasites."
"Is that—"
She opened the pouch. They were herbs, weeds and many plants in between. A small apothecary's worth of greenery. Most of it was from her garden at home, but some were plants she'd obtained since returning to the Enchanted Forest.
Emma was still gaping at her.
"Well?"
The woman tried to form words, her mouth failed her and she shrugged, grabbing her hat and dropping it on her head before tromping out of the hovel in a huff.
Regina took a breath.
Let the solitude settle over her.
She blew on her fingers then directed them at the table. Crafting a mortar and pestle from thin air was delicate work. It was the forging of molecules. Stacking them one on the other until something tangible formed.
The chair in the woods had been easy. She'd had the stones and the trees for raw supplies. In the hovel she had just dust and air.
Purple smoke gathered on the table. She let her fingers dance in the breeze. They drew the mortar and pestle within the smoke. It faded and she reached out to touch her work. The stone was cool to the touch and felt solid enough.
She divvied up the herbs needed and ground them. It was a familiar task. One she'd done thousands of times in Rumpelstiltskin's lair. There was a way to twist and press. Twist and press.
"I think if you grind that any more there won't be anything left."
She startled at the presence of Emma Swan looming over her shoulder. Regina had been so entranced by her work she hadn't heard the woman's return.
Emma just nodded, for once not taking the low hanging fruit. She set a bucket of water gingerly on the table. "Got it from a well. I was told it was clean."
Regina leaned into eye it, "I suspect I've contracted dysentery just looking at it."
"And yet still safer to drink than the beer."
"They have beer?"
"It's a shanty town full of pirates. There's a bar in every other hovel."
"And I supposed you've sampled the wares?"
"Getting the lay of the land. Kind of important when you're casing a place to rob."
Regina rolled her eyes. Always, it seemed, luck was on her side. Her son's birth mother would be the sort familiar enough with breaking and entering to use a phrase like "casing the joint" casually.
Swan caught her scoffing and sighed. Mindful of the herbs she took a seat on the table and leaned down to look Regina in the eye. "Here's the thing your majesty." The title was a barb coming from her lips. Her eyes were flint-like. Hard. She exuded that confident seriousness Regina had seen only a few times—when the woman wasn't being unsettled by talks of magic and curses and parenthood. "Sorcerers in castles and centaurs and ruining young lovers' lives may be your thing? But this is my wheelhouse. I've spent most of my life either living with losers like the ones outside or putting them in jail."
"How fortunate am I to have you on my side."
She shrugged. The seriousness that had aged her features and given Regina a brief glimmer of what the daughter of Snow White might have been bled off her shoulders.
"Just trust me on how to deal with them and," she leaned down so far she had to place her hand on Regina's wrist to stay upright. The pads of her fingers were foreign and familiar all at once on Regina's skin. The charge of the locket's magic sparked between them. "And maybe trust me on how to keep us alive?"
In an instant Regina's hand was wrapped around Swan's. She tugged her down close so there would be no mistaking the menace she intended, "I make it a habit not to trust people when their sole purpose in life is to destroy what I love."
"You really think that's why I'm here," she said softly. Her voice too intimate for comfort.
Regina wondered if Emma saw the moment of indecision she felt. Did it reflect on her face? Shine light on the dark corners she preferred remain in shadows?
She squeezed in the vain hope that if Emma Swan had seen something it was forgotten with the bite of her nails into her wrist.
"I know it."
####
Regina Mills had spent twenty-eight years living a lie. When lying went on that long, when the fear of being caught lasted a lifetime, it warped a person. Emma had seen it before. Fugitives couldn't run forever. Sooner or later it ate at their souls.
Had it consumed Regina's?
Her eyes were fervent. Hungry and angry. She was a creature a breath away from feral.
But for a moment—just a moment—Emma saw some other woman. The one that had pulled her close on the saddle and loved Henry profoundly. There was a human there underneath the monster.
And maybe it was being a foster kid. Maybe it was the years of neglect and abuse, or maybe it was the "product of true love" garbage. Any way she looked at it she felt empathy for Regina. A sense of understanding.
Because between the woman and the monster. The mother and the tyrant. There on the edge of all the masks Regina wore there'd been fear. A potent kind Emma had seen too often in the mirror. One fueled by doubt and misery.
She pulled away from Regina. Let the moment she desperately wanted to press pass. Her hands found the low slung waist of her pants and empty belt loops there and she hooked her thumbs through them.
"You finish your poison," she asked.
Regina gave her a tight smile. "I did. I presume there's a more corpulent nudist in the other bed?"
God yes. She'd almost passed out trying to move him. She had to dig down deep and tap reservoirs of strength that she was pretty sure were only used when a mom's kid was trapped under a car. Her back was still a little twitchy from the effort.
She yanked the mattress off and joined Regina in staring down at him.
"I thought about shaving his beard," she mentioned, "stapling it to your face for a disguise."
"The curse I would have retaliated with—"
"Would have killed me. Yeah yeah idle threats your majesty."
"Hairy palms Ms. Swan." She waggled her fingers. "A particularly effective curse for someone like you. Goes all the way out to the tips of the fingers. Very coarse. Like steel wool."
"And now I want to vomit."
Regina toed the guy with her boot, newly cobbled via magic to cling to her calf and foot. "You could have just killed them. Would have been simpler."
"Maybe with magic. Us mortals have to physically dispose of our dead bodies."
Regina failed to hide her exasperation. She turned back to the table and added the powder from her little bowl thing to the bucked of water. Over her shoulder she demanded, "As you seem so adept at physical labor get down there and pry open his mouth."
"You," she retaliated.
Regina sighed. "Unless you have a distilling trap in that paint you call pants I have to do it via magic. It requires two hands."
"Fine." Emma slipped past her, brushing her hand across Regina's back just to delight in the shiver of irritation. Squatting next to the guy she wrinkled her nose. "Wow. The smell is worse down here." Like a porta potty without the chemicals.
"Which is why I suggested murder. Less concern for the bodies needing a chamber pot. Or food. Water. Live captives are very time consuming."
"I get it!" She pinched the guy's sloppy beard with two fingers and carefully tugged it down, grimacing in disgust.
"Actually hold his mouth open—"
Back seat driving— "You want to do this?"
Regina said nothing. Which was the closet Emma was going to get to an apology. She took a deep breath through her mouth, grabbed the guy's jaw and cheeks and squeezed.
The bucket of water and mashed herbs hovered over him on another cloud of purple smoke. Regina's hands started their crazy movements again. Her face screwed up in concentration. This close to the magic Emma felt—maybe not it, but something. There on the fringe again. A thin stream of liquid slowly—painfully—achingly—slowly rose out of the bucket. It glowed blue as it corkscrewed down into the pirate's open mouth.
She held her breath.
Regina bit her lip.
Their subject inhaled suddenly then exhaled a contented sigh. Regina curled her hand into a fist so quick her knuckles cracked and the remaining liquid whipped back into the bucket.
She smiled at Emma. It was meant to be patronizing—because that was Regina's default emotion, but it came off relieved. "One down," she said, her voice shaking a fraction.
"What'd you do to him?"
"Sleeping spell."
"Like Henry?"
"That was a curse. This is a spell. No kiss. No potential side effects. He'll wake up in three days well rested with the exception of whatever brain damage you've already inflicted."
"I think he'll survive," Emma said wryly.
"He's not the first man you've kept bound and beaten in a bed frame?"
Emma motioned to the other bed, "Nope, he is."
Regina shook her head and if Emma thought she saw a smile she tried to ignore it and any pleasure she might have gotten from amusing Regina Mills with a joke.
They made their way over to the other guy. Emma tried for conversation to beat back the thick silence blanketing the hut. "So the herbs and junk. You carry that everywhere?"
"When your son sends you on a quest it pays to be prepared."
"With the fixings for homemade knock out drugs?"
"We don't all punch our ways out of problems. Some of us prefer guile and finesse."
"Because it was my fists that got us this place to stay?"
"Wasn't it?"
It had been the money she'd found on the two pirates Regina had put to sleep. Remembering Regina's comment about the lack of women she'd thrown on the little guy's jacket and hat as a disguise and paid for the hut closest to the three of them then dragged them all in while the old guy she kicked out of the place stumbled to the closest bar for more booze.
She'd checked on him three times since then to make sure he hadn't said anything. The last time had been while getting the water for Regina's spell. He'd been passed out in his own vomit, a grin on his face and half a bottle of something held tightly in his hands.
"Sure," she said. Let Regina think what she wanted. She didn't care. "Let's just finish this."
####
After they'd dealt with the owners of their new clothes Emma purchased a bottle of wine which she insisted was the cleanest thing in the shanty town to drink.
"And how are you so sure?"
"Almost no one drinks the well water, the biggest drunks drink the beer and the only guys drinking the wine are the ones who look like they've bathed in the last twenty-eight years."
Emma Swan using logic. Regina should have assumed she could. The woman, despite dress sense to the contrary, had been gainfully employed as a bounty hunter and when Regina had allowed her to do her job as sheriff unhindered she'd displayed some aptitude for the profession.
She had to admit, however reluctantly, that Swan had some skill dealing with the people of the town outside Bluebeard's gates. For all her talk of being a foster child and savvy person of the street Regina had just assumed she was like her mother. Quick with easy words and slow with integrity.
Emma pulled one of the greasy wrappers from the miserable sandwiches she'd consumed from her pocket and smooth it out over the table. Using a pen from their world she had sketched out a very, very rough approximation of the palace and surrounding area. It was…impressive.
Regina elected not to tell her that.
Emma motioned to the map, "Do you know where in the palace we need to go?"
She had no idea. When inside and past Bluebeard's barriers she'd be able to find the object required with just a touch of magic.
"He keeps it hidden," she said instead, "but inside I'll be able to use magic to find it."
"His stone guy things—"
"Golems."
"Keep guard. I'm guessing they don't take breaks. But a lot of guys from the town here get invited in for parties at night. We get an invite and we'd have plenty of time to poke around."
"After first having an audience with the Duke. I would prefer not having to meet with Bluebeard."
"So we sneak in with someone else. Slip away before the audience or whater. It really isn't that hard."
"They're pirates Ms. Swan. They'll notice two women just walking with their group."
Emma rolled her eyes, "I know that. We can either disguise ourselves, or we, just a thought, make a deal with one of them? These guys," she waved at the bed, "were pretty loaded. I got enough gold to bribe somebody."
"And you have a particular somebody in mind don't you?"
She nodded, "A guy arrived at the same time as you and I. Real famous too. Been missing for twenty-eight years. Only according to people in town he hasn't aged a day."
She frowned. That wasn't possible. She and Emma and Snow were the only one who had come from the other side. "You think he's from our world," she asked.
"You tell me. Did you bring Captain Hook over?"