Because I'm sadistic…
My music was all over the place for this chapter, so I've listed a few character choices instead of chapter choices. Pick and choose as you see fit.
Songs: Come on Get Higher by Matt Nathanson (Emma & Regina), Hunger by Amaranthe (Emma), I Will Not Bow by Breaking Benjamin (Regina, Ruby), Dance with the Devil by Breaking Benjamin (Emma)
Emma wandered thru her dark house. Everyone else slept peacefully… or slept anyway, but her mind refused to shut down and let her fall into the oblivious respite of unconsciousness.
Three days.
Amelia kept her from chasing that bastard for three days. How could she sleep when she knew he was here? Saw how angry he'd been? He meant to destroy her family, she knew it. He'd started on the outside and worked his way in, which made her wonder if Belle or Ruby was next.
Would he go straight for her children? Regina?
She sighed and poured a cup of coffee as soon as the pot spurted enough to fill it. It was thick and bitter on her tongue, but her weary body refused to move from the stool to sweeten the caffeinated beverage. She only wanted to stay awake anyway. This was a means to an end, not something to be enjoyed.
How had their lives become so screwed up?
She cradled her head in a hand and stared into her coffee. She didn't find any answers, nor did the black liquid offer any solace. It only presented more questions. She scratched at the gauze on her forehead gingerly, and sighed deeply.
What was Bethany hiding? What the hell happened to her to make her so angry at Belle?
Why was Jason here? How had she missed the fact that he was unhinged? How had an entire police force missed it? Was he here just to be creepy or was he the force orchestrating the guerilla attacks on her family?
Ruby's father returned and destroyed the tenuous control Ruby exhibited over her wolf. Belle holed away in their cabin in the woods. She had yet to tell Regina and Ruby that the librarian came to the hospital that day and retrieved her keys to the cabin. Belle wanted to be alone, to sort through what happened on her own terms, and Emma protected her location in order to give her time to do that properly.
Why the hell wasn't her natural lie detector working? What the hell was wrong with her?
The only person outside of her family who definitely told the truth was Rumpelstiltskin, but now he knew that someone targeted them again. It was a necessary evil to inform him in order to ascertain his involvement, but as long as Ruby possessed his dagger, his lips remained dormant on the subject.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but the throb behind them only grew. She really needed to stop getting knocked out. Amelia said there was a lot of scar tissue beneath the surface and on her brain, probably from Neverland when Rumpel bashed her into a tree. She probably would have died from the slow leak inside her skull if Regina hadn't given her Ruby's magical wolf healing elixir.
Was Jason the culprit? Her mind jumped back and forth between thoughts, and she rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.
Why the hell couldn't she focus on one thought at a time?
Maybe they were being paranoid and self-involved. Amelia admitted that she believed initially that she'd made an honest mistake until Eva's attack. Perhaps Eva's past reared its ugly head. Who had she wrong? Her ability to encase others in fear scapes certainly had the potential of creating more than a few enemies. Perhaps all of the events of the past week were entirely unrelated, pure coincidence.
She snorted. That was far too much coincidence, even for fairy tale characters.
The hair on the back of her neck prickled uncomfortably, and Emma glanced behind her, nearly toppling off the stool in her haste. She found nothing but the coffee pot. Her stomach roiled and knotted with tension and the sudden spatial disorientation blotted her vision with black dots. The feeling of dread swelled. Adrenaline spiked her heart into a painfully frantic race of a thousand stomping feet.
She dropped to the floor and pressed her back into the corner of the cabinets. From this position, she viewed all three entrances to the kitchen, and the island offered her cover if an attack should come from any direction.
Her chest constricted painfully, and she fought valiantly through the panic. She was having an anxiety attack. Her mind acknowledged her body's reaction to the stress of her situation, but it refused to calm no matter how many deep breaths she took.
"Em?" The raspy, sleep-filled voice of her wife called from the door leading to the foyer.
"Regina, get down!" Emma ordered in a harsh whisper. Regina dropped her knee instantly, believing Emma to be under an attack of some sort. How was she to know it was inside her wife's mind.
"What? What is it?" She asked as she crawled across the kitchen floor and pressed her back into the cabinets beside Emma.
The tingle of Dark Magic brushed across Emma's cheek, comforting her. She relaxed almost completely when the heat of Regina's fireball touched her shoulder. Regina glanced around anxiously, but no threat revealed itself. What the hell had Emma so spooked?
"He's watching me, Regina. I felt it," Emma whispered.
Regina extinguished her fireball and studied her distraught partner. Ghostly blanched cheeks, a clammy sheen of sweat covered her shivering body. Her hands quaked violently. Chest heaved with the effort of catching her breath. Wild, irrational terror omitted from shining eyes. Black dilated pupils swallowed up the emerald.
"Oh Emma," Regina breathed and touched her cheek. "Darling, you're okay." She spun on the floor so that she faced Emma and sat cross-legged as she gently pressed both hands to her panicking wife's face.
"Em, look at me," she coaxed. Emma listened, and a flood of relief rushed into Regina's chest, loosening the knot of tension. Emma heard her. She wasn't too far gone to calm.
"You're perfectly safe, My Darling," Regina whispered and brushed damp and tangled yellow hair from her face.
"There's no one watching you, Emma. Do you hear me?" Emma nodded. "Do you trust me?" Emma nodded, face scrunching with the effort of deciphering reality from fantasy.
"Then believe me when I assure you that you are not in any sort of danger. Do you feel safe here in the kitchen?" Emma nodded again.
"Alright, Darling. Stay here a moment. I'm going to get a blanket and a pillow from the living room. Won't be gone a minute. We'll stay here tonight." Regina smiled when a rim of green grew around the black of Emma's eyes.
"You won't leave me here?" Emma asked in a voice much too young and terrified for the strong, resilient woman she married.
Regina brow furrowed in concern. "Of course not, Emma. I'll be back in a moment."
She raised both of Emma's hands to her mouth and pressed a tender, lingering kiss to them before standing. Emma immediately shook as the fear gripped her heart once more. She calmed moderately when she reminded herself that Regina wasn't abandoning her to suffer this alone.
"Regina," she called softly and the older woman whirled at the end other end of the island, ready and willing to fulfill her every need.
"Thank you."
Regina smiled again and bowed her head slightly. "Always, my Dar…"
A crack and whistle interrupted her response. Her head jerked back. Blood spattered the doorway and foyer floor. The sound of Regina's body hitting the floor made Emma jump. What the hell just happened?
Emma surged forward. "Regina?" Her feet peeped around the island but the structure obscured the rest of her body.
"Regina?" Emma called again and forced herself to take a step on numb legs.
A pool of red spread slowly on the floor, and Emma followed it with her eyes. It came from Regina's head. Had she busted it when she fell? "Regina, are you okay?"
Brown eyes stared at the ceiling, but they never moved towards her. Those soft hands twitched on the floor, clenching as releasing like Regina controlled her pain. "Babe?"
Regina's arm jerked, leaving a red streak across the white tile. Emma dropped to her knees and took her hand. "Hey, oh god, that's a lot of blood. Regina, can you hear me?"
Emma studied her eyes and tried to soothe the twitching hand in both of hers. A part of her knew why Regina wasn't responding. Panic reignited. Her eyes focused on the blood weeping from the round wound on her forehead.
"Regina, get up," she whispered and jerked on her hand. Regina moved under the force of her hand but remained otherwise still.
"Regina, we have to go check on Annabel and Henry," Emma tried again.
"Regina!" Emma grabbed her shoulders, knees sliding in the hot liquid seeping across the cold tile.
"Regina, get up!" Emma shook her shoulders violently.
She straddled Regina's waist and stared into her glassy eyes. She held chin with one hand and slapped gently at her wife's cheek with the other. "Regina, it's time to get up. You're scaring me." Emma confessed, voice quivering as a sliver of reality invaded the fantasy that her wife would ever stand again.
"Regina!" Emma grabbed her cheeks with both hands and shook her again. "Get up!"
Amelia and Ruby suddenly appeared on either side and grabbed her arms. "No!" She screamed and pin wheeled her arms away from their grasp.
"Emma, stop!" Ruby ordered.
"No! She has to get up, Ruby! Make her get up," Emma pleaded with her friend as she jerked on Regina's shoulders.
"Get up!" Amelia and Ruby grabbed her hands again.
Emma broke free from the surgeon with a jerk and loosed her fist into Ruby's face. The wolf fell back and tumbled out of sight. How had she disappeared in the kitchen floor?
Emma didn't care. She clutched Regina's pajama shirt in both hands and pulled her wife into a sitting position. "Get up, Baby. Please, get up." She begged.
Regina's head lulled between her shoulder blades, arms limp at her side. "Get up, Regina!"
"Emma," the raspy voice of her wife whispered, but her mouth hadn't moved. It was in her head.
"No, no, no, no. I can't do this again, Regina! I can't hear you everywhere I go unless you're there!" She dropped Regina body, and it slumped to the floor, limp and lifeless.
"Stop!" She screamed, voice shrill and hollow at the same time. Bloody hands pressed into her temples. "Stop! Stop!"
"Emma," the distant voice repeated.
Amelia grabbed her again. Ruby reappeared.
"Stop! I made a blood oath," she murmured nonsensically and rocked back and forth on Regina's hips.
"Take me, too!" She yelled at no one.
"No, Ruby, stop!" She demanded as the wolf wrapped her arms around her, trapping Emma's arms against her body.
"I made an oath! I'm supposed to die, too!" She thrashed and fought and struggled in vain against the wolf's hold.
"I can't do this! I can't spend the rest of my life hearing her!" She jerked again and then collapsed against Ruby's chest in a heap of sobbing savior.
"I can hear her," Emma wailed into her friend's chest.
"She's still in here. She's in my mind. I can hear her. Please, take me, too. Please. Please kill me." She begged of anyone who might listen.
"I heard her before and it drove me insane. I made an oath," Emma babbled.
"I made an oath!"
She screamed, a bloodcurdling, fear-evoking, haunting, hollow wail of an inhuman sound that ensured that none of them slept soundly for at least a month.
"Emma, you're having a nightmare," Regina's voice told her in a soothing tone that sounded much closer than the haunting whispers of before.
Emma blinked several times and glanced around at the sudden darkness of the room. Her bedroom? She still straddled Regina's hips and Ruby still held her tightly, but the cold tile transformed into a firm bed. The hot blood on her knees became Regina's hands.
Regina's hands. She followed one of the arms attached to those soft hands with her eyes, stopping for a moment to study the heaving and very familiar chest. Parted, flesh-toned lips supplied the air that moved the chest. Shimmering, petrified brown eyes flicked back and forth, searching her own.
"Regina?" She whined and struggled against Ruby's hold. The wolf released her this time, and Emma fell into Regina's shoulder, sobbing once more.
"It was a dream," a broken child-like voice murmured from beneath Regina's long black hair.
"It was a dream, Darling," Regina confirmed. She nodded to Amelia and Ruby, letting her know that she felt comfortable being left alone with Emma in this state.
Amelia slid from the bed, and everyone froze when a lightening fast strike snatched her arm. "Please stay," Emma implored and glanced between her two friends.
Amelia nodded and climbed over Regina's legs. She guided Emma to the bed and spooned the shaken savior. Whatever she'd seen during her night terror shot fear straight to the core of her being. Emma wasn't a savior or a sheriff or a powerful witch in that moment. She was a woman who had been abused by a former lover and made to fear for her safety and the safety of her family.
"Ruby?"
"Yeah, Ems," the wolf answered.
"Will you check on the kids and make sure the doors and windows are all locked?" Emma's voice was so small, so scared, so unlike Emma. Ruby gritted her teeth against the tears burning the back of her throat.
"Yeah, I'll be back in a couple minutes," Ruby agreed easily. She knew the doors and windows were locked, but she gratefully accepted the chance to remove herself from the situation for a few minutes.
Emma's body quivered. Regina lay on her back and pulled Emma's head to her chest. Her neck and shoulders hurt from being bodily shaken from her sleep by Emma. Her wife clearly had no clue that she'd acted out her dream in real life. She'd done it a few times before but mostly during sex dreams, and she always woke up before she crossed a physical line.
This was different. Emma wasn't completely asleep, but she wasn't awake. Her eyes had been wide open but unseeing. It was terrifying. Regina felt ashamed of the slice of fear in her heart directed towards her wife.
Amelia wrapped her arm around Emma in the new position, hand resting on Regina's stomach. Propriety and awkwardness had no room in their lives in this moment. Emma needed to be surrounded by them, literally. She'd asked for it. That request in and of itself spoke of the depth of Emma's fear right now as if the night terror wasn't enough.
"Hey, it's just me," Ruby announced as she returned. "Everything is locked up tight. Henry was awake, so I sent him to Katy's hermit cave to stay the rest of the night just in case you have another dream."
The wolf slipped into the bed behind the doctor and wrapped her arm around Amelia. Gingerly, she placed her hand on Emma's ribs, and the blonde flinched but stayed still. She knew it was Ruby.
"I love you," Emma whispered without specifying exactly to whom she spoke.
"We love you, too, Emma. We've got you," Amelia answered for all of them.
Regina absently dropped soft kisses to Emma's hair, careful not to bump the sore spots. Surrounded by the warmth and love of her friends and wife, Emma nodded off within a few minutes while the other three lay perfectly still.
"What the hell just happened?" Ruby blurted into the darkness.
"It's called a sleep terror," Amelia whispered. "Emma's was probably caused by her severe head injury combined with the stress. It has less to do with emotional trauma than external or environmental conditions. It was probably triggered by her brain unable to process the fact that she's sleeping in a different room than the brightly lit hospital due to the injury.
"They generally occur in the first half of sleep, so while we may only get an hour or two after that, Emma will probably sleep soundly for the rest of the night, which can only help prevent this from happening again.
"It's possible that she was completely unaware of asking me to stay. She may not have even been awake. If I had to add my professional opinion, Emma probably won't remember any of this in the morning. It's quite common. People wake up in strange places, miles from their homes with no knowledge of how they came to be there. Drive safely for miles. Operate heavy machinery. Cook complete meals."
"Amelia, you're babbling, and you completely lost me after sleep terror," Ruby groused and rolled away from the doctor now that Emma had settled.
"She scared me. I talk too much when I'm scared," she admitted quietly. "It's not always a blessing to understand what's happening."
Ruby scooted closer, pressing her shoulder into Amelia's back. "It's okay. I think she got to all of us," Ruby comforted the doctor, wishing to be anywhere but there at the moment, except maybe in Emma's dream.
When Regina's hand covered Amelia's on the elder sorceress' belly, the doctor met brown eyes over Emma's head. "Are you okay, Regina?"
"I think I have whiplash, but yes," Regina answered numbly. "Can we please just try and sleep?"
"We should take her for a scan tomorrow," Amelia tossed out as casually as possible. Regina huffed a sigh and gritted her teeth.
"Look, I know you don't like Whale. You guys have history, but we need to go see Eva and Lauren anyway. Eva is really upset that The Council gave Whale her position. I need to be there for her." Amelia's voice held no room for argument, not that they'd have protested her point anyway.
Ruby yawned, "We all do."
Regina opened her eyes and took a deep breath. " Yes, she has a long and painful recovery. We will support as much as we can emotionally. Right now, however, I love you both, but if you do not stop yapping, I will teleport you above the harbor and drop you into it. Shut up or get out," she threatened, her tone telling her friends that she meant every single word.
Eventually, Amelia and Ruby slipped into the blissfulness of sleep, and Regina lay perfectly still listening to three sets of deep breaths fill the room. Silent tears finally slipped onto her cheeks and trickled towards her ears. She brushed at them gently with one hand and tighter her grip around Emma's shoulders.
"Please," she prayed to anyone listening. "Please."
Please let her brain heal. I can't fix this. No one can. "Please."
They all woke a few hours later when the sheriff's phone rang the classic bell jingle. Regina jerked, dozing between sleep and wakefulness. Emma groaned and reached across Regina. A weight against her back shot tendrils of fear into her heart and awakened her mind like a zap of magic to the ass. She twisted at the waist, spine popping and snapping with the quick realignment.
Her brow scrunched when she found Amelia and Ruby in the bed she shared with Regina. The thumping of her heart continued when Belle's name appeared on the caller id.
"Belle," she greeted, genuinely happy to hear her friend's voice.
"Emma, I need you to come to the library as soon as possible. Someone's… just come, please, Emma," the librarian begged, her voice strained as though she'd been awake all night or had recently been crying.
"What's wrong, Belle?" Ruby asked, her wolf ears catching every word of both sides of the conversation.
Emma repeated the question, but Belle disconnected the call without answering. Ruby jumped up and sprinted from the room, her intention of dressing and accompanying Emma clear.
"Hey, you okay to get the kids up and to school by yourself?" Emma asked, hovering over Regina's face.
Regina stared at her, slightly dumbfounded. Emma remembered nothing of her episode in the middle of the night. She touched Emma's face, traced the edges of the gauze that needed changed. "Of course, Darling. Amelia can make breakfast. Katy hasn't let Henry out of her sight since Emma's attack, so he'll ride to school with her."
"Okay," Emma said, stilled feeling guilty. Regina pulled her into a sweet, tender kiss that quickly grew in passion and decibel.
Amelia snickered, "This is as close to a threesome as I will ever get with you two."
Emma's shoulders collapse and her face found a hiding spot in Regina's neck. "You're incorrigible," she muttered, voice muffled by the luscious skin before her. She clamped down on the urge to kiss it, lick it, worship it.
Emma groaned. Amelia chuckled. "I'm up. I'm going. Coffee. Pancakes. That's the only thing I can make."
Emma waited until the door clicked shut before lifting her head. "Morning," she murmured and pressed her lips against Regina's.
"This hour barely constitutes morning. Despicable. At least the sun has begun to rise," Regina grouched and pushed herself up until she leaned against the headboard.
Emma nuzzled against her chest and wrapped her arm around Regina's waist. "Why were Ruby and Amelia in bed with us?"
Regina threaded fingers into tangled blonde hair. "You had a sleep terror, Darling. Amelia can offer better explanation, but briefly, your brain was unable to process something that turned into a nightmare, which apparently is actually very much like reality. You asked her to stay with you."
Emma traced thin scars on her wife's chest. "It was bad?"
"Very," Regina confirmed. She hummed when wet lips followed her wife's fingertips.
"Belle requires your assistance," Regina protested without any real conviction.
"Someone always requires my assistance," Emma tossed away carelessly and straddled her wife's voluptuous hips. Post-pregnant Regina body made her climb the walls and walk backwards on the ceiling. She may have thinned considerably since giving birth, but not even the powerful sorceress possessed the power to undo the widening of her hips.
"Right now, my wife requires a good fucking for putting up with my ass," Emma whispered into her ear and bit the lobe for emphasis.
A thump against the door drew their attention. "Ow, son of bitch! Let's go, Sheriff, before my wolf ears hear more than dirty talk."
Emma growled and dropped her head to Regina's chest. She hissed and scrambled upright, hand flying to her forehead.
"Are you alright?" Regina gushed and sat up with her.
Emma nodded and wrapped her arms around Regina's neck. Soft fingers played with the hem of Emma's tank top, tempting her to remain right there all day.
"Em, you should go check on Belle," Regina nudged, not really ready to release her wife into the world just yet.
"I know," Emma said as she hooked her chin over Regina's shoulder.
The hug lingered. Regina's hands found warm skin and hard muscles beneath the flimsy fabric of Emma's top. Emma hummed and rocked her hips into Regina's, heat spreading from the apex of her thighs into her chest.
Lips moved together slowly, and everything melted away. Emma raised her arms, golden hair bouncing as her tank pulled free. One arm wrapped around Regina's back and the other held her cheek and neck as her beautiful wife kissed across her collarbone. A warm hand slid up a flat stomach and covered a modest breast, grinning when the nipple grew into a hardened peak.
"Seriously, guys, stop," Ruby ordered and opened the door.
Emma rolled her eyes, head falling backwards in frustration. Regina almost used magic to fling the wolf down the hall but Annabel mewed into the monitor on the nightstand. She sighed and kissed Emma innocently on the throat.
"Later, Darling, I promise," Regina vowed, in need of Emma's touch as much as her wife clearly needed hers. Emma rarely chose the selfish path, and she sprinted towards self-fulfillment this morning rather than rush directly to her best friend's side.
"Emma," Ruby huffed and cocked her hip to the side, arms crossed. Emma's partial nudity hadn't fazed her one bit, nor had their compromising position.
"I'm coming," Emma grouched and rolled off her wife. "And not in the way I want to be," she reminded Ruby and disappeared into the bathroom.
By the time she dressed, Amelia had coffee waiting in thermoses for her and Ruby. Emma took a moment to sweeten hers before following Ruby to her cruiser. The wolf drummed the steering wheel impatiently, and Emma glared at her, unsure if bringing her along was the best idea. Belle disappeared for two days without contact in order to escape from her lover.
"I know she's been staying in the cabin," Ruby blurted. "I've been keeping an eye on her for the past two nights."
Emma choked on coffee and stared at the wolf's profile, waiting for two heads to grow. Ruby shrugged. "I was running, caught her scent in the woods, followed it to the cabin."
"Wait, Rubes, stop," Emma ordered, eyes focused on the streets. "What the hell?"
She jumped out of the car and strode to the window of Marco's shop. Her heart fell to the floor and flopped around, gasping for air. She jerked down a flyer and sprinted back to the car.
"Go, Ruby. Go now!" Emma yelled at her friend, not giving her time to glance at the piece of paper.
Tires squealed. "What the hell is that?"
"It's a homemade poster," Emma said and pulled her gun, checking the clip and chamber before flicking the safety off. As she checked her weapon, she explained the situation by describing the paper. Belle hadn't needed her emotional support. She needed their protection.
"It has a picture of Belle using magic and reads: Ask me why I destroyed Breck."