Whoo! So, here we go! Thanks for all the follows and reviews. Please buckle your seat belts and keep your hands and feet out of the aisles. Please be sure to ask before touching your neighbors, but I highly encourage it.
Enjoy!
Song: Manic by Plumb (Also, how cool is it that I found a song that completely matched the title of this chapter coincidentally and not because I got inspired by it.) Bam!
Ruby grumbled to herself as she stepped into the cold. The bag of trash in her left hand bounced against her leg, and something dribbled against her calf. She sank further into the sulk that followed her around all evening. Perfect, she loved smelling like rotten milk or raw chicken when she went home and wanted some loving from a former princess. Trudging through the knee-high snow in the alley behind the diner, she glared at the dumpster. They'd not made enough that night to justify opening, but Granny insisted – something about her needing a mental distraction from the Emma situation. She counted inventory, every frustrating little pea, until a closing time that had seen no customers three hours prior. The damage left by the storm kept everyone inside huddled under blankets. Only emergency workers clearing the roads and David ventured out that day.
She tossed the bags into the dumpster and wiped her hands on the already soiled jeans. She took a moment to stare towards the moon longingly. The mystical orb shone brightly on the fresh powder. The night sky in winter after a storm always cleared so beautifully, like magic, like a movie. Already she felt the wolf scratching to be set loose. The beast rippled beneath her skin and clawed at her flesh from the inside out, pacing the length of her body in search of a weak spot that might offer it freedom. Two more days until she transformed and ran beneath that ancient satellite in the only form that really ever offered any freedom to the chains society had placed on her. In the woods with the earth beneath her paw, Ruby found solace waiting in the darkness. She glanced at the light in the upstairs window across the street. Belle waited.
She sighed heavily, sending condensed white steam over the light of the moon, and took in the ethereal enchantment of the lunar phenomenon.
With reluctant steps, she turned back to the diner. A loud puff of air caught her ear a moment before flecks of powder burned her eyes. "What the fuck?" She rubbed her face, but the more she touched the foreign dust, the more it seared her eyes.
A blow landed on the back of her knees, and she caught herself in the snow, tucking into a roll beyond the reach of the attacker. One person, her nose identified, covered in the scent of herbs that masked their unique musk beneath. Her eardrum turned, hyperactive in the blindness. Wind rippled around the club they swung. She raised her hands to catch the weapon at the last second. A magically charged blow slammed into her chest, knocking her flat on her back, breathless. Again, she rolled and heard the thump of wood hitting a puffy blanket of snow, probably where her head had been. She used the momentum to find her feet, but footsteps told her she'd not moved fast enough.
A sharp crack and distinctive pop exploded on the outside of her knee. An animalistic scream followed the dislocation and echoed into the silent night as blows rained down on the quiet wolf.
Zelena slipped out of the diner as the lights of the bottom floor of the library illuminated the circulation desk. She leapt from the stoop by the front door, inserting herself between concrete and bushes, and covered her mouth as the door across the street opened. Zelena watched the short woman approach in flat, soft boots of faux leather, flannel sleep pants, and a long trench coat drawn tightly with her hands but not fastened. Belle yawned, barely catching it in her palm, as she ascended the steps. Zelena released a long, silent breath and clutched her sack of stolen goods to her chest. If she ran now, would Belle have caught her?
"Ruby?" Belle pushed open the unlocked diner door. Her partner should have locked that an hour ago, at the very latest, and been home shortly afterwards. "Ruby, are you okay?"
Zelena lost the next words but crept around the front of the diner to keep the librarian in her line of sight. Belle searched the empty room with her eyes and tugged the long coat tighter around her throat. The former princess disappeared into the kitchen and Zelena took the reprieve to glance around the empty street. No one ventured out on nights like that one, and any who dared found the evidence of their presence erased from the snow by the wind or more snow. She hefted the sack higher on the good shoulder, she really had taken more than she should have to move as swiftly as required, especially with a stitched shoulder.
Still, she watched the scene unfold with a tingle of adrenaline as Belle moved to the back door. The call for her lover echoed against the tranquil night, and Zelena used its cover to slip to the corner of the diner and peak around the side. Belle stood at the back door, clutching the coat tightly to her. Even from a distance in the dark, worry lines defined her face. Rumpel's whore, the one he'd left her for, now loved the do-gooding right hand of Snow White. It tickled her as much as it enraged her. A tiny groan demanded both women's attention. Belle searched the darkness for the source, but Zelena froze. She needed to go, but curiosity paralyzed her legs. By the dumpster, a form shifted beneath a layer of white powder.
"Ruby?" Belle called and stepped off the back stoop. The snow bank moaned again. "Ruby!" Belle sprinted to the wolf and skidded to a stop on her knees – her hands already moved the snow before she completely lost forward momentum. In a few seconds, Ruby's face peeped through the blanket of frozen white packed around her.
"Oh gods, Ruby, what happened? Did you fall?" Belle muttered mostly to herself as she uncovered the trembling body beneath the snow. Soon, though, red replaced white on her hands, and Belle froze long enough to check her surroundings for warnings of a lingering threat.
"Hold on, Ruby," she whispered and pulled out her phone. "I'm here, Sweetheart," she comforted the beaten wolf as she punched buttons on the communication device and held it to her ear.
Blue eyes rolled at whatever greeted her on the other line. "Regina, shut up," she snapped, and Zelena leaned harder into the wall to hear the conversation clearly and licked her lips in anticipation. "Someone attacked Ruby behind the diner. It's really bad. Can you flash over here in case they decide to come back while I'm waiting for an ambulance?" Why would Regina bother with protecting her sworn enemy's most valued warrior?
The call must have ended because Belle glared at the device for a moment and then tucked it into a coat pocket. "Hold on, Ruby," she murmured, barely keeping the tears out of her voice. She touched the wolf's swollen face with a light palm. "I'm here," she whispered over and over while she uncovered the wolf. She glanced around again, and Zelena melted into the shadows.
"What the hell happened?" Regina demanded before she completely materialized and startled the younger woman.
"I don't know. I just found her like this," Belle answered, her voice rising to an hysterical pitch now that she knew someone else would take control of the situation. The rising panic intrigued Zelena. She'd never needed anyone with such intrinsic passion, always knew she'd survive the end of relationships. Only living without her power terrified her. Why love when people, more easily than anything else, could be taken in a moment?
"Someone beat her, Regina," Belle continued, but her voice gained some of its control back. "Who would want to hurt Ruby?" Tears glistened and froze on defined cheekbones.
Zelena snorted silently. Emma had been right, Ruby presented the most challenge to physical defeat. So long had passed since she'd seen such brutality, smelled the scent of blood lingering in the moist, salty air. The thrum of battle invigorated her spirit, and she itched to move, to destroy.
"I can think of one person," Regina snipped and met her eyes for a pointed gaze. Zelena felt certain it wasn't her. They believed her dead and gone.
"Why would Rumpel hurt her now? We've been openly together for over a year," Belle bit back. A part of her still jumped to his defense.
"Who else but me would have the capability to beat a young, healthy werewolf this badly?" Regina pushed, cool and calm despite the wildness in her eyes. Ruby's injuries plucked a sensitive chord beneath her skin, and Zelena stared at it, tried to decipher the meaning. Why would her sister care about the wolf enough to come running to her aid in the middle of a frozen night?
"Hold your breath," Regina muttered and grabbed Belle's shoulder none too gently and touched Ruby's arm. They disappeared in a swirl of purple, presumably to the hospital.
Zelena hefted the sack again and started the long trek back to the cabin by walking backwards, stepping in her own footprints when others melted away at the edge of town. When she reached the edge of the forest, the adrenaline of the night surged in her fingertips, aching to be set free in a blast of green energy that brought the earth to its knees. She ran as hard as the newly defined muscles in her legs allowed, leaping over tree roots jutting out of the snow and slipping in snow banks that caught her by surprise. A gleeful cackle echoed on tree trunks, renewing the giddy energy as the sound resonated into her body as she passed. She stumbled through the thick hills of snow outside the cabin and practically fell inside. Emma gasped at the noisy entrance and remained perfectly still where she colored at the table with a green crayon poised above the page.
"What happened?" She queried while Zelena caught her breath against the door. Her flushed face and wide, glassy eyes held a lightness that Emma hadn't seen since her days as The Wicked Witch. She looked alive.
"Nothing, why?" Zelena bounced at her in a defensive maneuver. She controlled the bite in her voice but not the childish elation in her emerald eyes.
Emma's eyes narrowed with sardonic disbelief. "Right. Did you bust your stitches?" She pushed out of the chair and shook loose the chain around her ankle where Blue's magical fairy shackles contained her magic.
Zelena dropped the sack of goodies and shrugged out of the buckskin jacket before Emma reached her and dropped it to the floor, too. The Savior pulled the dark green shirt up her back and hooked it over her head. "Hold that," she teased. Zelena scoffed beneath the fabric and pushed it from her hair, which made it wave and sway with static. Emma smirked at the sight of badass Zelena, Wicked Witch of Oz, suffering the inescapable trap of static electricity. She reached for the bandage around her shoulder, and a blue spark jumped from the witch to her fingertips.
Zelena hissed and glared over her shoulder. "Sorry," Emma muttered and reached for her again.
"Bumbling imbecile," the witch grumbled but remained complacent to Emma's wishes to tend her wound.
"It looks really good. Whatever this miracle salve is, it's working," Emma reported. She took her time tying the strip of fabric back in place, but still Zelena failed to relax even a modicum. They'd explored soft touches all day, Emma initiating all of them, of course. The other woman always relaxed after a few seconds, but not that night.
"Zelena, what happened?" Emma left the shirt where it bunched around her neck and ghosted fingertips down Zelena's arms. Goosebumps erupted beneath her touch, and Emma froze. Green eyes watched the ripple of raised flesh claim more and more skin until freckles and scars on her back stood out in stark contrast.
"Someone nearly saw me in town," she answered and broke free from Emma's enchantment. Ruby's puffy, swollen face flashed behind her eyes, and she snagged the bag from the floor to cover the shudder it inspired in her quickly warming muscles.
"Who?" Emma asked and followed her around the table.
"That unctuous librarian," Zelena snipped. "Does it actually matter?" She added and pulled items from the cloth sack she'd created from a bedsheet.
"What does unctuous mean?" Emma asked, and Zelena actually paused to study the earnestness of the question in Emma's eyes.
"It means that she behaves in a way that is always polite and proper but not always sincere," she explained as her eyes flickered back and forth on Emma's, searching for something she lacked the vocabulary to name much less identify in the other woman.
"Oh," Emma bit her lip and fiddled with the corner of the sack. "Belle's not like that, you know. She's genuinely kind. I mean, she even managed to find something worth loving in The Dark One."
Zelena's eyes darkened. Emma bit her lip again. Right. Zelena had loved him, too, maybe even after all the games ended and the dust settled. "I'm sorry," Emma breathed, not quite sure where to go after her sticking her foot in it that deep. Not just anger, but profoundly etched pain of betrayal and sadness, swirled in a violent maelstrom behind emerald eyes. "Zelena, I'm sorry. I know he hurt you."
"Do not speak of things about which you know nothing," she warned coldly. The deep voice rolled out of her, possessed and gnashing with bloody jowls. Zelena stomped away and needlessly poked at the fire with a long stick. Her shoulders hunched towards her ears, and tension rippled off of her in electrifying waves of energy that filled the cabin with jittery energy that needed to run.
"He hurt Regina, too," Emma confessed because nothing else felt right. "It's not my story to tell, but trust me when I say that breaking your heart the way he did definitely is the better of the two. It's just what he does. He uses people until there is nothing left and then throws them out with the trash. You shouldn't beat yourself up for falling into his trap."
"And you presume what you're doing to be different than what he did?" Green hurricanes swirled in the glassy bits of soul that reflected the lambent flame.
Emma's forehead creased into three white lines. "What am I doing?"
"Touching me, caring for my injuries. You want me to care if you live or die to spare your suffering if my needs ever call for it," Zelena lashed viciously and came to her feet once more in defiance of The Savior's innocent question.
They stared, green upon green in the dim light of the cabin. Emma searched for the glimmer of kindness she'd seen so frequently in Zelena's eyes the past two days. She found cold, deadened pits that glared out at her, at the world, and felt nothing for what they saw. Emma knew that pain. Emma lived that pain. One by one, the tension in her muscles fell away, leaving hollow limbs on the puppet strings that manipulated her movements.
"Zelena, I don't care if I live or die. Why would I care if you do?" Emma asked and turned her back to the witch to finish unpacking the spoils of plundering.
She snagged a cold container and pulled it from the sack. The brown square stared up at her, a coiled snake prepared to strike. The heat from Zelena's arm pressed into her shoulder, and a hand thinner than her own entered her vision and covered the top of the tub. The fingers blurred in the sting of tears behind Emma's eyes. "I brought you butter," she murmured and then disappeared from Emma's side to store the small gift where they kept cold things on a bed of packed snow in a wooden box by the door.