(Before the Sun Goes Down) You Will Find It All Unraveled: Chapter Ten
Standing on Regina's doorstep had become something of a gamble for Emma Swan; she never knew what sort of way the brunette would react upon opening the door. From being invited in for cider (and threats), to being gifted a poisoned turnover, to being nearly strangled on the account of "stealing" Regina's magic, to being smarmily ordered to do her grocery shopping – and somehow Emma keep ending up back in this spot.
But it was Emma who had to fix things again because for one, it was Emma who had flung Regina around and for another, it wasn't as if Regina could go anywhere to do any active apologizing.
And so Emma sucked up her pride, raised her fists, and knocked loudly on the manor door.
She scuffed her boot against the porch as she waited for the sound of heels clacking their way toward the front door. Yet even after a solid four minutes, there was nothing. Not a click or a clack or even a "go away Ms. Swan." So she knocked again, this time slightly slower but with more force. Still, no sounds of life came from within.
Emma sighed. She wouldn't put it past the fallen queen to purposefully ignore her despite the deal they had made. But even so, that didn't change the fact that Emma needed to take steps to apologize, and truthfully, if she didn't do it sooner rather than later, a part of Emma worried she would put it off altogether. Sure it sounded cowardly and pathetic when it ran through her head, but Regina was exhausting to be around more so than not. No, she needed to get this over with and move onward.
As Emma's hand reflexively fell to the doorknob, she thought back to all the different locks she's jimmied in her more rebellious years, and she wondered if some expert work with a bobby pin could get her past this one. Upon attempting to twist the handle open, however, Emma found that not much of an "attempt" was even necessary; the knob turned easily, to her surprise, and so she pushed the door open.
Blinking at the empty foyer that swung into view, Emma hesitantly poked her head inside before taking a careful step over the threshold. She couldn't imagine a reason for Regina to have gone out walking around her lawn – it wasn't as if she could step outside her property. And surely Regina would have locked it after Emma had left the day before, right?
"Regina?" The blonde called into the house as she carefully shut the door behind her. Nothing really seemed out of the ordinary, Emma thought as she actively looked around, except for the obvious fact that Regina wasn't anywhere to be seen. She could still be in bed sleeping, Emma supposed, but it was nearing eleven in the morning and she knew that the former mayor wasn't one to typically indulge in sleeping in. Taking a few steps farther into the manor, the Sheriff listened carefully for any indication of the brunette. She considered padding up the steps to knock on Regina's bedroom door (which, yeah, would probably piss Her Royal Highness off but at least she'd get her attention) but before she could take further action, she heard the faintest rustling coming from the living room.
A low groan met Emma's ears just as she rushed to the living room to see Regina finally stirring from where she was sprawled on the floor.
"Regina! What are you doing?" Emma moved swiftly to the woman's side, the toe of her boot knocking an empty bottle of cider as she approached.
"I was sleeping," Regina grumbled in reply, sitting up slowly and adjusting her blouse with every semblance of an irritated politician. She closed her eyes again and wet her lips before sighing, "Must you screech so loud, Ms. Swan?"
"I didn't – Regina, did you finish this whole thing last night?" Emma bent to pick up the drained bottle and glass and set them on the nearest end table before crouching again to get a better look at the brunette whose eyes were still squeezed shut and whose hands had come up to rub circles into her temples.
She'd never seen Regina like this before, and she wasn't sure how she felt about that.
"You're… hung-over."
"You're observant," Regina retorted sarcastically, opening her eyes only enough to glare at the blonde, "and you're in my house. Why?"
Emma straightened to a stand and stepped back, offering a hand to help Regina up as well, "I need to talk to you."
"You mean you're not just going to tie me to the wall with my own magic again? How very charming of you." Regina unceremoniously swatted Emma's hand away and gingerly lifted herself off the floor, brushing herself off once she was steadied. Not bothering to glance at the blonde woman who had entered her home uninvited, Regina brushed past the Sheriff and headed toward her kitchen.
Emma sighed at Regina's blatant avoidance of her request and also turned to follow – "Regina, please. I'm sorry. Things got out of control yesterday, I didn't intend for that to happen."
The brunette, who had gotten herself a rather large glass of water, leaned against her countertop and continued to level the blonde with a withering stare as she doused the her dry mouth.
When a moment passed and she still had said nothing, Emma ran a hand through her hair and began again, "Here's the thing, I'm not too good at… I don't always have a perfect grip on my emotions, and I know that's affecting the magic that I have. You really, really pissed me off yesterday and I don't do well under that kind of stress. It's not an excuse and I am sorry, but I am trying to get this right."
Regina pursed her lips and looked down briefly before taking a breath and choosing each word meticulously, "I suppose that I can be… pushy, sometimes. But learning to wield magic is a serious matter, Ms. Swan. The faster you learn, the less possibility there is to accidently hurt the people around you." She gave a pointed look in the other woman's direction, but Emma knew that the underlying meaning of those words had more to do with a certain ten-year-old boy than they did her own self. And as self-righteous as Regina Mills was, she nearly always made a valid point.
The problem was that Emma wasn't always the fastest of learners.
"I get that and I'll be extra conscious to be careful with magic – and not just with our lessons," the blonde supplied, "but we need to go a little slower. It's not ideal, but I'm not sure that I'll be able to do this any other way. You're going to need to be patient with me. I don't want to ever again feel the way I did when I magically assaulted you. It… was horrible. Just let me learn at my own pace, okay? It's hard enough adjusting to all this fairytale crap without being a host to your wonky-ass magic."
With a sigh that Emma hoped meant that her and Regina were flipping to the same page again, the other woman acquiesced, "Fine. You can set the tempo of our lessons. But if I deem you ready for a little challenge, I will push you because otherwise I fear our progress will be sluggish. Within reason, of course" she added at the way Emma's nose twitched at her response before asking, "Is that acceptable?"
"It's just – you drive me crazy and I don't trust you," she stated honestly.
"The feeling is mutual, dear."
"But I don't want this magic either, and we do have a deal. So we try this again?"
Emma met Regina's gaze, fully aware that they'd been here before; at least, Emma had tried to hit the refresh button on her relationship with Henry's mother, but it always seemed something from the past was drudged up and spit back at them only to ruin things again. Emma wasn't naïve, she unfortunately was aware that there would be no true 'start-over' for her and Regina. However, she hoped that if they kept coming to terms over and over enough, perhaps someday they would eventually land on common ground and stay there.
Regina took an excruciatingly long drink from her water and then simply said, "Yes."
"Thank you," Emma murmured, knowing that the woman didn't have much of a choice in the matter either way but appreciating her cooperation again regardless.
"I'm not doing this for you."
"I know, neither am I – I mean, for you. But still."
"Is… he well?"
"He is. I don't think he expected just how many adjustments would be made to his life in the wake of all this, but he's a trooper."
Regina's face softened at this information, and Emma was compelled to add, "He always asks about our lessons. He pretends it's just because he's interested in learning about the magic, but I know he likes to hear about how you are."
The sharp inhale that Regina takes is almost too swift to make a noise, but Emma hears it – sees it – in the way Regina's eyes widen and her lips part for just the briefest of moments. She can just barely see hints of fear color her face; fear, Emma presumes, that she's telling their son how horrible a tutor Regina is, and so the blonde takes a small step forward.
"And I tell him that you're strong and smart and that you're doing your best to teach me what you know. That I think you miss him very much."
Regina drops her gaze but gives a nod. It's not fair and it's painted all over Regina's face and Emma knows it. Regina raised Henry, loves Henry, and doesn't get to see Henry. She's doing all this just for the possibility of getting back some semblance of the son she lost.
What Regina lost, Emma got handed to her.
It's almost funny, Emma thinks, because she knows she should blame Regina for the curse, for keeping Emma away from her family, for being so fucking alone for twenty-some years. It's almost funny, except now that things have turned around – now that Emma gets to go home every night and have dinner with her parents and with the son she never expected to see grow up, now that she imagines Regina sitting alone, eating alone, being alone for hours on end – Emma feels more like sinking into the earth than thanking any stars.
But there's only so much even the savoir can do, and she can't make Henry's mind up for him. He has to decide when he's actually ready to see his mother again.
When Regina does speak again, it brings Emma out of her thoughts and reminds her of the empty bottle that had previously been found on Regina's living room floor.
"If it's all the same to you Ms. Swan, I think we should do without today's lesson."
Since it wasn't as if Emma hadn't pulled something similar once or twice after a particularly hard day, the blonde nodded in understanding.
"Burnt toast might help," she tossed out as she took steps backward to make her way out of the manor, "Sounds weird, but it works for me. Try to relax today, Regina."
Without waiting for a response, Emma showed herself out.
….
"What do you mean we can't leave Storybrooke, I thought the curse broke?"
Snow White placed her mug back on the linoleum diner table with a soft click, "Well, everyone got their memories back but we haven't been sent back to the Enchanted Forest. And when the dwarves tried to cross out of town… Sneezy lost his fairytale identity completely."
Emma chewed her french fry thoughtfully while Snow mused, "I supposed you could leave if you needed to though, since you were never really stuck here in the first place. The point is, we're not sure why things didn't amend themselves after the curse broke. Maybe there was more to the curse than we thought, but either way we're searching for solutions. "
"That's so strange…" Emma trailed off around her french fry, while she then proceeded to pick up another and pop it into her mouth.
"In fact… speaking of the Enchanted Forest, we may have found a possible way back," Snow whispered, leaning closer over the table so Emma could hear.
The blonde fumbled with her burger that she'd just been about to pick up before looking up at her lunch-date and asking, "What? A-are you sure?"
"You see, two days or so after the curse broke, some of the fairy-nuns found a giant beanstalk growing over near that old well in the forest here. They had to shrink it before it grew too large and uprooted the well or the other trees in the area, but before they did they noticed it had managed to grow a couple bean sprouts!"
"Bean sprouts?"
"Don't you understand, Emma? If we transplant them we might be able to farm magic beans!"
"Oh," Emma blinked, familiarity ringing in her ear, "Like Jack and the magic beanstalk?"
"Right," Snow nodded, smiling now that her daughter was successfully following her train of thought, "Magic beans can open ways to other realms –,"
"- like the Enchanted Forest," the Sheriff finished, setting her burger down without taking another bite. Her stomach was starting to roll uncomfortably at the thought of traveling to an unknown world.
"Precisely," the brunette chirped, taking a sip of her hot chocolate, "though we're not positive that they'll grow actual beans quite yet. We'll just have to wait and see!"
Emma hummed, choosing to focus on pushing her fries around her plate, even though she wasn't up for stuffing her face anymore. As much as she expected that traveling back to fairytale land was the next step after the curse broke, she didn't actually see herself (or many of the townspeople, for that matter) going to live in a… well, a forest, or whatever the hell it was, without modern appliances and in-door plumbing. She didn't want to go, plain and simple. All she knew was this world.
But Snow White seemed so excited about the fairies' discovery that she didn't have it in her to say these thoughts out loud. Maybe the beans wouldn't work out after all; perhaps it was selfish, but Emma couldn't help but hope they'd all have no choice but to stay stuck in her world in the long run, even if that meant also being stuck behind a memory-stealing town-line.
"Alright," she said finally with a quick glance back up at the pixie-haired woman, "well until then, no one leaves town. Not like anyone ever did anyway – I'm sure it won't be a problem."
….
"We have a problem, dearie."
The young woman looked up from the book she was reading to see the object of her affections step through the doorway of his well-kept estate. The corners of her mouth turned downward and her brow creased at the grave look on the man's face, and she decided to set her novel aside in favor of approaching him.
"What's wrong, Rumple?"
He didn't understand; the curse was broken and he'd brought magic to this godforsaken world. That should have been enough to have annulled the magical barrier around the town – he had devised it to be so! And now that his curse wasn't behaving the way that he had expected it to… well, someone was going to have to answer for it. Laying low was obviously not working.
"I can't cross the town line as planned. I can't go find my boy."
A/N: And this is where we more obviously veer off canon, folks. Kinda sorta, anyway, I'm definitely re-arranging a lot. I am going with my original plan for this story (which began before season 2 aired), though the canon has filled in a bunch of gaps for me, so it will be a major influence (except for the Swan Queen part... because if A&E never give us canon!SQ we'll just have to take it ourselves)!
Feedback is much appreciated!
-mirroredhearts