I LIVE! No excuses for the radio silence except to say life got in the way. This chapter is long though, and a lot of ground is covered in it.
Also, thank you to everyone who left messages and reviews when I was essentially AWOL from writing. It means a lot to know people read the fics even when they aren't being updated regularly.
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"Are we really doing this in a graveyard?" Lily questioned Henry, the sunset giving way to night around them and adding a cliché, haunted air to their walk.
"It's where mom's vault is. She keeps all her magical artifacts there. Where else would we do this?" Henry explained, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Lily's foot caught on the corner of a gravestone and she stumbled briefly before righting herself, silently bemoaning the dimming light. "Oh, I dunno, maybe somewhere I don't feel like a living sacrifice in a witch's stew? Why aren't we doing this at her house, anyway?"
Henry gave her an odd look. "Mom doesn't really like bringing magic into the house. I think it's something about 'not shitting where you eat' or whatever? You should've seen her when I brought the storybook home before the first curse was broken. I'd never seen her face get all screwy and pinched up like that before."
"Perhaps she was concerned about leaving magic where a child could stumble upon it," Maleficent added from behind Lily, her voice thoughtful.
"Yeah! A kid like Roland could get hurt if he thought something like a cursed knife or amulet was just a cool looking toy," Henry agreed, walking ahead and practically bouncing with every step.
Lily was tempted to point out that Henry was a kid too, given his young age as well as his sheer giddiness at the chance of the latest tracking spell somehow working. Instead she held her tongue.
"I meant it more as a danger of worlds colliding," Maleficent said under her breath. She spoke so quietly that Lily only vaguely realized she was being spoken to.
"What do you mean?" Lily questioned just as softly, guessing that Maleficent didn't want Henry to hear for whatever reason.
"Henry's parents may hail from the Enchanted Forest but he is very much of this world. He's one of the few people in this town who never experienced the Evil Queen at her worst. Magic was never supposed to be part of his life and I imagine separating him from magic gives Regina hope that she can move past all the wrong she's done. He's her clean slate, so to speak."
"Her second chance at not fucking up?"
Maleficent's mouth twisted before tipping upward in agreement. "Yes. Just you watch, she'll want Henry out of the chamber for the spell, if only to preserve the image in her mind a little longer."
"I thought he was the 'Word Wizard' or 'Author' or something? Doesn't that mean he has magic?"
"He has one sort of magic now," Maleficent agreed. "But he's also Regina's son. And that will always come first in her mind where he is concerned."
Something about Henry and Maleficent's words stuck and Lily's mind began replaying her recent encounters with the Evil Queen, a pattern slowly taking shape as she compared them. There was initially meeting Regina Mills in Maine with a darkening Emma and a gun, compared to the lonely Storybrooke bus bench where the Queen stole some of Lily's blood for Isaac's curse. There was Lily's hospital room from the other day where the Queen didn't discuss the darker magical aspects of Lily's condition until Roland was out of earshot. And there was the story Henry just added about bringing the storybook of the Evil Queen's greatest hits into her magic-free home. If Lily let herself really examine those encounters she started to see a picture emerge of two distinct women, or at least, of one woman trying separate her past from her present.
In front of people she cared about, and especially in front of children, she tried to be simply Regina Mills, but in front of those she deemed a threat or in need of intimidating she was the Evil Queen. She didn't want those worlds mixing for fear of being branded as evil through and through, similar to Maleficent's reluctance to share her own dark origins (In Lily's mind Regina Mills was still and probably always would be the Evil Queen no matter how many PTA meetings she attended or potholes in the streets she filled. Probably, anyway…). Regina Mills, adoptive mother and town mayor, lived in a house. Meanwhile, the Evil Queen, collector of hearts and dispenser of curses, worked shut away in a crypt.
On second thought, maybe crypt was too generic and not grandiose enough of a description. Henry had described the place they were going as a vault, but the marble structure lording over the greenery and tombstones was more of a mausoleum built with weathered stones, somehow managing to look ancient and new all at once and very much like something straight out of the Evil Queen's castle in the Enchanted Forest (The thought crossed Lily's mind that all of Storybrooke was just an elaborate replica of the Evil Queen's kingdom, complete with various architectural tributes in the graveyard and playgrounds and who knew where else?).
The entrance to the vault was flanked by a pair of smooth columns and overhead was a seal with symbols Lily couldn't make out from the ground. While not physically very tall, the building was unique in the cemetery and imposing enough to stop Lily in her tracks for a moment as she took in the heaviness of the surrounding air, the invisible and chilling fog that seeped into her bones. Lily quickly found her legs and neared the door where Henry and her mother were heading inside.
Distantly, Lily wondered if there was even a dead body inside the damn vault to validate it's placement in the cemetery, or if it was it all for show just so Her Majesty could justify having a really big stone building somewhere inconspicuous.
(A less distant part of Lily wondered how dangerous this tracking spell was going to be, and if the distance between the vault and Lily's final resting place was a lot shorter than it should be for so early in her life.)
Climbing down the vault steps behind Henry and Maleficent, Lily could hear several voices inside, all chattering nervously in hushed tones too soft to make out, but loud enough for her to recognize the owner's of those voices. Lily swore she felt her hair standing on end in anticipation of meeting those people again, and had to force her feet forward. As she landed on the final step, the first thing that Lily noticed was the presence of a stone tomb in the center of the chamber, the name 'Henry Mills' engraved on the immovable lid.
'The Queen's father,' Lily remembered. A chill ran through her at the sight and she didn't stop the involuntary shiver.
The next thing she noticed was a trio of heads swiveling toward her, three pairs of eyes locking onto her and freezing her movement further. In the crowded vault amongst the entombed remains, stone shelves, and various bubbling magical accoutrements stood the Evil Queen and the un-Charmings, all three of them oddly chipper for such a dour setting.
A question about just how much time the group spent in the eerie vault for them to be so at ease replaced Lily's earlier notions about the once questionable presence of a body in the stony tomb.
"Glad you could both show up," The Queen intoned. She turned to Maleficent, her next words dripping with annoyance. "Mal, do I have to teach you how phones work again? This is twice in a week I've called and you couldn't be bothered to show up on time."
"I'm not one of your subjects to be summoned on a whim, Regina. We've been over this. And I'm told my talking brick needs to be fed. Why do these bricks require such constant maintenance? I never had such troubles with my ravens," Maleficent commented as she stepped further into the chamber, moving carefully around the stone coffin.
The Queen rolled her eyes. "You sound like Hook."
Lily found her voice and asked, "Where is Jones, anyway? I thought for sure he'd be here."
Henry jumped in, obviously excited. "He and Belle found a way to cross realms without magic beans, something about the apprentice's wand? They're still working out the details but they're really close!"
"And their progress will mean very little unless we can glean Emma's location from Miss Page," The Queen reminded her son. Gesturing to a chair set up by the wall next to a folding table she locked eyes with Lily. "Sit, please."
Lily moved off the step and into the vault chamber but remained resolutely on her feet next to the chair. She crossed her arms uncomfortably as she eyed the crowd of people still inside the vault with her.
"We'll get out of your hair for the spell. I know David and I are probably the last people you want to see," Snow White started to say, noting Lily's discomfort. "We just wanted to say thank you in person first."
"But I haven't done anything," Lily fidgeted. Her feelings about the too-noble couple were far from sure anymore and she didn't want to feel like she owed them something by being thanked.
Prince Charming shook his head, adding, "Yeah you have. You stayed. And I know it was probably for your own reasons but you could've skipped town ages ago. With you here now we have another shot at finding our daughter. So thank you."
Lily had no words, something she hated herself for in that moment. She wanted to stay angry with the Evil Queen and the un-Charmings, wanted to cling to her unrealized vengeance against them because without it she was lost and adrift without a purpose. Angry was all she knew how to be toward these fairy tale characters, toward these people. And maybe that was part of the problem. They weren't just abstract names on a bulletin board of fairy tale vengeance anymore; they were real people with real world problems. People with groceries to buy and taxes to pay and families they wanted to look after. Families they wanted to reunite.
It wasn't the first time Lily was faced with the realness of the characters in front of her, but this time Lily was reminded of Maleficent's comment regarding names and how Maleficent learning Lily's name made her real, not just a distant figure. The memory of that conversation only further reminded Lily of the struggle her mother had gone through trying to reunite with her, and the damnable flicker of warmth in Lily's heart clenched in guilt as it compared Maleficent's struggle at reunion with that of Emma's parent's. The flicker clenched further as it silently reminded Lily that she and Maleficent had only been separated once, while Emma and her parents had apparently been separated multiple times.
"We'll get going," Snow finally said. "Regina, we'll be at the library with Belle and Killian when you find something."
"You're my first call," Regina assured Snow.
Once the pair left the vault Lily felt the tension leave her. Maleficent noticed her change in demeanor and offered her daughter a hidden smile that Lily struggled to return.
Regina turned to her son and, just as Maleficent predicted, said, "Henry why don't you go with them?"
"Mom, I want to stay," Henry insisted with all the non-authority of a teenager.
"Henry…"
"It's fine," Lily interrupted, surprising them and her. "He can stay. So how's this spell thing work?"
Regina struggled to answer, her eyes flickering between her son and Lily. In a moment of conviction, the Queen straightened her shoulders and pointed to a fog-filled sphere on the folding table. "You're going to find Emma's location on that globe. This is essentially the same spell that Gold used to lead us to Henry in Neverland, but I've taken some liberties to give the spell a little kick since you and Emma are connected by your hearts."
"A kick?" Lily's eyes dropped to the folding table where the foggy globe sat next to several steaming cups that looked deceptively like brewing tea and some jars of dried ingredients. "With a bunch of kitchen spices and weird smelling tea?"
The Queen added, "Hardly, Miss Page. The entire town has been working to find all the necessary ingredients and your own mother helped me brew these intermediate potions. I'm not adding a dash of cinnamon for flavor."
"Or eye of newt," Henry chimed in jokingly, bouncing on his toes and eager to see the spell start. His mother's neck snapped comically fast toward her son, who only shrugged at her pointed stare.
"It's just some basics and some rarities that should strengthen the spell. Some crushed mermaid scales in water, the shell of a used magic bean," The Queen listed as her manicured fingers daintily picked up a jar of dirt and held it proudly to the dim light in the chamber, "And to top it all off, fairy dust. Re-crystallized and purified from it's raw form."
"That's fairy dust? Shit, Ruby wasn't kidding about it being nondescript," Lily muttered. She heard Henry snort under his breath at that and ignored the pointed look Maleficent shot her.
The Queen ignored her and began carefully pouring out ingredients into an empty bowl, mixing them together into a sloshing, muck-colored brew that looked and smelled anything but magical. Lily fidgeted as the Queen worked, and wondered aloud, "So it looks like you've got everything covered here. What exactly do you need me to do? Chant something over the magic mud?"
The Queen pulled a small knife from the table and sauntered toward Lily, who immediately tensed and rushed backward. At Lily's skittishness the Queen's face twisted into a mixture of exasperation and annoyance, and in another context Lily would have thought the Queen were reprimanding a teenager for some petty nuisance. "I need your blood, Miss Page. You knew this would require blood going into this whole thing. Don't try and tell me you forgot that."
"Yeah, but there's no way in hell you're cutting me open!"
"I'm not- We only need enough to fill a small vial. We're skimping down on the spell as it is," The Queen tried to explain.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"Yes it is, Miss Page, along with the fact that the blood has to be willingly given, so you'll be collecting it yourself. Mal, hand her the vial. We're wasting time."
Lily's eyes flashed to her mother, who held a small glass vial in one hand. Maleficent's features flitted quickly between the Queen and Lily, a deceptively neutral expression carefully arranged there. She extended her hand out to the Queen. "Hand me the knife, Regina."
The Queen blinked in confusion before understanding dawned on her and she complied. She took an exaggerated step back from Lily and Maleficent, joining her son against the wall. Maleficent handed the vial and knife to Lily, who took them slowly. "No one is going to force you to give blood or participate in this spell or do anything you don't want to do, Lily," Maleficent told her quietly, searching her daughter's face.
"Not like there's a hell of a lot of choice here," Lily retorted. "I'm the only one who can find Emma, right? If I don't bleed then this whole thing is dead in the water."
Lily had spent so much time lately actively not-thinking about the tracking spell that she never got around to considering whether she actually wanted to help find Emma at all. Obviously it was the 'right thing to do' but being used as a tracking beacon for Emma was just another reminder that Lily's presence in Storybrooke was tolerated for the sake of the goddamned Savior. Lily wanted to be needed, yes, but not as a tool that would be tossed aside once the job was done.
No one wanted Lily for Lily. Maybe she should've gone back to Granny's after all, ended the day on the high note she so rarely got.
Where Lily normally expected to feel the cold blanket of her darkness reaffirming the knowledge that she was well and truly alone in the world, she was instead faced with the voice of the flicker of warmth that had grown inside her all week.
'Not true,' The flicker insisted, growing steadily stronger. 'You are wanted.' The flicker flashed images of Roland, Will Scarlet, her mother, and even Ruby, Henry, and Jones through her mind, growing warmer as Lily let herself mull over their faces. More images passed through her mind, of Henry's offering of company and sandwiches in the woods, of all the Merry Men by the campfire, of Robin's gratitude, of the beginnings of Ruby's acceptance. Every image played before Lily's mind's eye like a mini movie and she was helpless to stop the tumultuous wave of warmth that swept over her, her arms wrapping around herself in a need to hold something solid as the unfamiliar emotions surrounded her, threatening to overwhelm her.
Henry stood next to the Queen, the jovial and eager air from earlier vanished and replaced by a strange expression. "Lily, please? You're right; we can't find my mom without you. We need your help."
'This is the right thing to do,' The flicker reminded her.
In a final push to quell the rising warmth, and dare she say, optimism, Lily told the others in the vault, "For the record, I don't like this plan. Shit happens when my blood is involved. You remember Isaac's fantasy world. And don't forget what happened when I used my magic earlier this week. I'm a supposed 'gateway of darkness' aren't I? Everything I do goes from bad to worse, no matter how good my intentions are. What if this goes sideways too?"
"It won't," Henry told her, gaze steady and sure as it locked onto Lily. "I know you can do this."
Lily sighed, not in defeat, but in a strange sense of relief. A weight was lifted from her shoulders, lightening the dark load Lily carried with her. She eyed the knife. "This thing's clean, right?" At the Queen's look Lily muttered 'never mind' and brought the blade to her skin, the sensation pointed in the moment and stinging in its aftermath while she filled the vial. Once the small vial was full Lily snatched a cloth bandage from her mother's hands and wrapped it around her palm. A dull ache throbbed from the wound where she applied the needed pressure.
"Stir it in with the rest of the ingredients," The Queen reminded her.
"Why can't you do it?" Lily questioned.
The Queen's response was impatient, annoyed at having to explain every step of the spell to Lily and no doubt frustrated with Lily herself. "This has to be done willingly, which also means it has to be done by you. Now stir it in. Slowly."
Lily hesitated but took the vial in hand and tipped it into the bowl. The murky slosh glistened at the contact and the immediate change surprised Lily. She swore she felt a pulse of something radiate from the contents of the bowl and assumed it was magic, and glancing at the other occupants of the room she realized they felt it too.
Lily tried to stir the ingredients with her one uncut hand, but quickly realized that two hands were necessary and her cut hand was in no mood to do any more work. She grit her teeth clenched the edge of the bowl with her injured hand. It was a struggle to keep the cloth bandage in place, a pulsing pain radiating from the shallow cut as Lily tightened her grip and steadied the bowl.
"So what now?" Lily questioned once everything was mixed and glistening. "I say some magic words?"
Maleficent replied, "You're going to pour the contents over the globe, but while you're doing that you need to concentrate on Emma. Try and grab onto that connection between you two. Follow it like a string that leads somewhere and don't let go until you reach the end of the line."
"Grab how?"
"With your magic," Henry chimed in. "You had those dreams and visions and stuff about her, try and think about those."
"With my-? I've never 'followed' that link before. It just kinda happens," Lily tried to explain. "And I'm usually asleep for it anyway. How am I supposed to hold on to something like that when I'm awake?"
"By trying," Henry told her, adamant and hopeful in the way that Lily just wasn't, even with the newfound layer of warmth that was growing around her heart.
"Lily, remember when we practiced transformations the other day?" Maleficent asked her.
"When I lost control and sent us both to the hospital?"
Maleficent's jaw tensed briefly. "Yes. That. You told me you couldn't recall the sensation of having claws but you remembered the feelings you experienced that led to the transformation. Try focusing on a feeling that accompanies those visions of Emma."
Lily nodded, not sure if it would work, but glad to at least have somewhere to start. She thought of Emma using magic in the forest, of the creepy dragon-like man with the taunting chirp for a voice. Lily thought of the warmth she felt in her limbs and how it turned cold but explosive, a frozen burn that left her angry and frustrated at her lack of control. As Lily felt for the familiar pull of darkness in the magic Emma used she felt the darkness inside herself spring forward, eager to latch onto this unexpected crack in Lily's demeanor after being shut away. She focused harder on the warmth she first felt in that dream, before it turned cold and dark and so painfully familiar, an effort that left Lily gritting her teeth in concentration.
Taking the bowl in stiff hands Lily poured it over the foggy globe. The glistening muck didn't surround the globe like Lily thought it would, but instead was absorbed into the sphere, turning the inner white fog into a glimmering dark pool of swirling magic. Again, Lily felt the pulse from before radiate from the globe, but this time she didn't let it slip past her. She imagined herself snatching the pulse of magic with an invisible hand, grabbing tight and letting her eyes slide closed and her real hands come to rest on either side of the globe.
She could feel the energy in her palms; feel the pulse like a rope that was pulling her through murky and treacherous waters. Following that rope felt like pulling her way through a swamp, the air around her thick and muddy and she struggled to breath. In the space of an eternal moment she felt herself swallowed whole and spat out on the other side. As she looked around she saw a line of massive trees with shrubs and fog shrouding their trunks. She was running through them, desperately following after someone. Or was she chasing someone? Why was she chasing them? A spark of blue flashed before her and a flurry of red hair followed after it in her mind's eye. The taunting chirp of the dragon man whispered in her ear but Lily couldn't hear him well enough to make out the words beyond 'Dearie', 'kill her', and 'necessary'. She recognized the darkness that seeped from those words, but something about it seemed distant and removed. It was still familiar in the way the darkness always had been to her, but the flicker in Lily's heart twisted against it, not wanting to stay so close.
'Emma', Lily realized dimly. 'This is what Emma's seeing right now. What she's feeling.'
"What Emma's seeing? Tell us what you see, Lily. We can't see anything from here. What's happening?" A voice, the Queen's, pulled Lily half back from the edge of the image. It took her a moment to remember that she wasn't actually running through a forest, that she was standing in the Queen's vault with her hands on a globe. Her mind was the wanderer here, not her body. The realization didn't lessen the clarity of the image but it did dampen the realness of it, to Lily's relief.
The relief was short lived as a force pushed Lily out of the forest, sending her shooting upward until she was flying overhead, the great trees below now little more than twigs on the ground. Lily tried to swoop back down below the tree line but met resistance in the form of an invisible shield, one that she couldn't find her way through.
"Something blue… Red hair… I don't know, I'm being pushed back," Lily struggled to explain, holding onto her awareness in both realities and refusing to let go of the rope binding her and Emma together. "There's something stopping me."
"A barrier of some kind. Try and break through. You've looked through whatever this is before," The Queen urged.
"I was asleep and I still got kicked out!" Lily reminded her, frustrated and fading fast.
Maleficent's soothing voice focused Lily. "Don't worry about the barrier, Lily. Just tell us what you can see from wherever you are."
Lily fought to hold onto the magical connection tying her to the sphere and supposedly to Emma, trying to keep her grip long enough to see something useful and not let this entire spell be a waste of everyone's time. "I see a forest," She started.
"Helpful," The Queen deadpanned. A flash of shame burst through Lily briefly and she tried to shove it aside. When she couldn't will it away she settled for letting it perch on the edge of her awareness like an impending storm cloud.
"Regina!" Maleficent hissed.
Henry chimed in. "Lily, what else? Do you recognize any of the types of trees? Are there any landmarks near you, a mountain or a castle? What about a river?"
"They're the same kind of trees as the forest here," Lily told them, feeling helpless at how little she could glean from the scenery around her. Her eyes caught sight of a small clearing a short ways off and she shot toward it, an unknown instinct telling her to go there. "I think there's a stone circle… It kinda looks like a super rustic Stonehenge in the middle of the woods. There are some weird symbols carved into the rocks."
"Ok! That's great! What else?" Henry's excitement was electric and a small part of Lily was glad that this spell wasn't a complete waste.
Regina's excitement was less obvious than her adoptive son's, holding herself in check and demanding more specific answers. "Keep going, Lily. What else can you tell us about this stone circle? How big is it? What shapes are the stones it's made out of?"
The nearer Lily got to the stone monument the more she struggled. The barrier that kept her from flying back into Emma's vision was keeping her from getting closer to the stones. Lily struggled and fought but the barrier only grew stronger. Dimly she realized that the barrier must have been coming from Emma and that as Emma neared her final destination at the stone monument, the barrier would only get stronger.
Like hell Lily was gonna get so close only to be shoved aside at the last minute.
Lily focused harder on the barrier, determined not to let it stop her from getting the information needed to find Emma. "I think I can break through this barrier, I just need to…"
If the barrier was determined to keep her away, then maybe she could use that? Maybe she could trick her dragon into thinking the barrier was being more aggressive than it actually was? Trick her dragon into thinking Lily needed more magic to defend herself?
Lily surged forward into the barrier, letting it shove her conscious around like a leaf in the wind, and was rewarded with a burst of energy from within her. It sprang to life, fiery and eager, and it took all of Lily's concentration not to let it overtake her completely. But she couldn't stop the magic of her dragon from lengthening her nails or shifting her vision even through the scope of her mind's eye. Nor could she find it in her to care that she was teetering on the edge of control, her growing nails scraping harshly against the glass sphere in the Queen's vault and the colors of the forest around her no longer visible to human eyes.
What she was doing was working. Letting her dragon's magic run just a little wild was working. She could feel the barrier shifting beneath the weight of her magic, struggling to hold together under the assault and a thrill of pride surged through Lily.
'No way Her Majesty stays unimpressed after this,' Lily thought, her inner voice sounding rougher, angrier. 'This'll show her.'
She could bring down the barrier, could break it down under the might of her dragon's magic. She could get back into Emma's head and find out exactly where she was and prove to the Queen and to all of the fairy tale things in Storybrooke that Lily Page was more than a tracking beacon for their precious Savior, more than an ominous cloud of darkness over all of their heads.
'More than a waste of magic and potential,' She thought distantly, the thought touched with the cold of her darkness sneaking its way back to the front of her thoughts.
Maleficent's voice cut through the anger and the cloud of pride swirling through Lily's head. "Lily, that's enough. Don't worry about the barrier. Just tell us what you see and we'll-"
"No! I can do this. If you want to know where Emma is then I have to do this!" Lily imagined her growing talons clawing at the barrier, beating down its defenses. The barrier shifted and struggled against her, refusing to budge. Lily grit her teeth and tried to push through the walls holding her back, letting the darkness inside her lend it's power to her attempts, but as hard as she pushed she couldn't break through. The more she pushed, the heavier and more drained she felt, and she soon felt her mind's eye pulling back from the other realm all together.
'No! Not yet! I'm so close! I can do this!'
"Lily, please! You've done enough. I need you to be safe. Just let it go!" Maleficent insisted, voice cutting through the dark energy infecting Lily's magic. Lily forced everything from her mind except her mother's voice and the barrier. She let them both focus her and with a final push Lily threw her dragon's remaining magic at the barrier, listening to it crack apart beneath her as it crumbled to nothing in the other realm.
'I did that,' Lily thought dimly in the weightless aftermath, too sapped of energy to do anything else. Lily's mind suddenly went blank, her head empty of all thoughts and control over what remained of her magic, and in a rush she felt her mind being pulled back through the swampy muck it first traveled through to find Emma, landing with a thud back inside her body in the vault.
Lily felt her legs give out from under her and collapsed to her knees on the stone floor, her arms clinging to the table in a stubborn refusal to fall unconscious this time. She couldn't stop her vision from going dark completely, and when she came back to awareness she was panting heavily with a light sheen of sweat covering her forehead and her gaze glued to the floor. A distant part of her was pleased to have at least remained mostly upright this time.
"I broke it," Lily muttered, her mouth fuzzy and cotton-filled. She barely registered her mother's hands on her shoulders.
The Queen's voice broke the sound of Lily's continued panting. "The globe? Yes, you did, but it's Gold's crystal so I don't particularly care about-"
"Wha- No," Lily shook her head once, her vision swimming briefly and head flashing with pain. "That thing stopping me from seeing into Emma's line of sight. I broke the barrier."
Her own voice sounded in awe of itself and from the silence that followed Lily guessed that the there were three equally awed faces around her. She didn't honestly know whether she was pleased to have rendered them all speechless or annoyed that they didn't think she could do it in the first place. Mostly though, she felt too bleary and drained to think about it further and only wanted to finally move from the hard floor.
Lily groaned in complaint as she tried to pull herself to stand. Ignoring Maleficent's attempts to help her. "I'm getting really tired of being this exhausted every time I use magic," She wheezed.
"I've got an energy bar in my bag!" Henry exclaimed, running for his faithful backpack in the corner of the vault.
Maleficent helped Lily stand from the stone floor and sat her in the neglected chair. The Queen hovered uncertainly to the side. Once settled, Maleficent pulled Lily into her arms.
"I'm so proud of you," Maleficent whispered into her ear, her embrace tight but warm around Lily who was too tired to return the hug. "Not only did you break the barrier, but you fought back against both your darkness and your dragon trying to take over and you kept more of your control."
Lily returned Maleficent's smile with a hesitant one of her own, letting a small bit of pride warm her at the knowledge of all she had done.
Henry rushed to Lily's side with his backpack and a granola bar in hand, offering it to Lily, who stared at it longingly. "Kid, you're gonna have to open that for me. I don't think I could even pick my nose right now. Seriously though, am I gonna be this drained all the time from magic? 'Cause it sucks."
Henry chuckled at her but obliged, ripping open the wrapper and letting Lily take slow bites from the bar, the contents far too chewy for Lily's current mood. For fuck's sake, how could she be too exhausted to even chew a damn bar?
"Using magic is a lot like using a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. But you're going to run through your magic and your energy very quickly until you build up that kind of endurance," The Queen told her, looking at her oddly. "I will say, however, that it is commendable how far you've managed to come in barely a week."
Lily paused at that. "Did you just give me a compliment?"
"It wasn't a compliment," The Queen bristled. "It was an acknowledgement of your magical growth and tolerance. You still went into magical debt again."
"You said I went into magical debt back at the hospital too," Lily said around a mouth of granola.
"You did. And you'll keep going into magical debt for as long as you keep over-taxing yourself and your powers. It's unhealthy and a terrible thing to do to yourself, so stop doing that."
Maleficent interrupted before Lily could speak again. "I think what Regina means is that you should take smaller steps with using your magic until you build up the strength to use it with such…" Maleficent struggled for the word, "Gusto again. Perhaps try those partial transformations I told you about before?" Lily nodded in agreement and Maleficent smiled at her.
The Queen's voice pulled Lily from the heartfelt moment, bringing her back to the reason she was in the vault in the first place. "Now then, if you could tell us what else you saw, Miss Page. You said it looked like the forest around Storybrooke? That can't be the exact forest you saw. We already know Emma's in another realm."
Lily shrugged. "It wasn't this forest exactly. I mean it kinda looked like a cross between Scotland and the forest here. Or what I think Scotland looks like. I've never been there, I've just seen pictures."
"Did you see Emma?" The Queen asked, insistent.
Lily shook her head. "That's not how the connection thing works. I never see her. I just see things through her eyes. So for a minute or so I was seeing what see saw before I got pushed behind that barrier, and what Emma saw was the forest rushing by while she ran through it."
Henry interrupted. "She was running? Why? Was she being chased?"
"No I think…" Lily struggled to remember. "I think she was chasing something, or someone."
"You mentioned a flash of blue light and red hair," Maleficent added. "Was that what Emma was chasing?"
"I think so? I didn't see a face or anything distinct, I just remember feeling desperate and knowing I needed to find whatever or whoever it was I was chasing after. That if I didn't find them something bad would happen to me." A shiver crawled up Lily's spine as she remembered the feelings that accompanied those visions from Emma's sight. "I felt the darkness. It was everywhere but it was… I dunno, it was different somehow, not totally dark like normal. I think I was feeling Emma fight the darkness, but she was so desperate too. I don't think she's gonna last much longer against it."
Silence fell over the group at Lily's claim and Lily felt the temperature and the mood in the room lower. A surge of guilt barreled into her at having been the cause for the dour shift in the room.
"Wha-what about that Stonehenge thing you saw? The one you thought you were running toward?" Henry asked in avoidance, a tremor of fear in his voice that Lily couldn't ignore. "What did that look like?"
"Um, I didn't get super close but the stones looked as big as those Easter Island statues, just these big rocks all standing upright in a circle," Lily tried to tell them. "I think I remember a few of the symbols carved onto their fronts, though?"
"I've got paper!" Henry offered, eagerly busying himself with his backpack. He yanked the bag open and started rummaging through the contents, throwing books and school supplies to the ground along with spare clothes and toiletries, the sight of which made Lily narrow her eyes.
"You're a regular Boy Scout, huh? Ready for anything," Lily muttered.
Henry ignored her quip and handed her a notebook and a pencil. Lily scribbled down the strange symbols she had seen; trying to remember the order they were carved in. The symbols were like nothing she had ever seen before, but then again, since they were from another realm she couldn't be blamed for not recognizing them. It wasn't as if the symbols would pop up on Jeopardy anytime soon. She handed the paper to Henry when she finished, and the kid looked over the drawings in confusion. The Queen's confusion at the symbols lasted only a moment before a hint of recognition settled in her gaze. Her eyes flickered briefly between Henry and Lily before she came to another decision and turned to her son.
"Henry, in Gold's shop there's a large book with a collection of symbols used in several northern kingdoms; In Arendelle and the Clan Lands and such. Would you grab it and bring it to the library? Hook and Belle should be able to help you identify these symbols," The Queen requested.
Henry didn't seem convinced that this book was necessary, but seemed to recognize something in his adoptive mother's gaze and grudgingly collected his jacket and backpack before heading up the stairs and out of the vault. Lily was surprised he didn't put up a single word of protest, wondering what he knew that she didn't. As soon as Henry left the air rushed out of the room and Lily was even more worried. If the Queen wanted Henry out of the vault for something then whatever it was couldn't be good.
Maleficent apparently agreed. "What is it Regina? What did you not want your son to hear? Was it something about those symbols? I vaguely recognize them, but only insofar as their origins."
"It's not about the symbols, although I have a pretty good idea which of the realms Lily was looking in on. There's just something I need to confirm first… Mal, would you grab that looking glass from the shelf?" The Queen requested, cryptic.
Maleficent's eyes narrowed in suspicion, and she grudgingly left Lily's side to collect the mirror. As she moved away the Queen stalked forward and Lily tried to scoot impossibly backwards to escape, the wall behind her halting her efforts.
She didn't like the way the Queen was looking at her, eyes narrowed with intent and concentration, clearly preparing for something. It was a repeat of the Queen's earlier approach with the knife, only this time the air around her was darker and more concentrated. A sudden dark pulse of energy burst through the room as the Evil Queen plunged her hand into Lily's chest, through her ribs, to grasp her heart. Lily gasped at the shock of the intrusion and brief pain. She lurched back against the chair as the Queen yanked her heart from inside her, holding it in her manicured hand.
"Regina!" Maleficent cried out, eyes suddenly glowing in anger and rushing forward with a fiery ball of magic in one clawed hand. She stopped short as the Queen's fingers closed ever so slightly around the heart, leaving Lily to groan at the flash of pain.
"I shouldn't have been able to do that," The Queen answered too calmly, gaze locked on the exposed organ.
"You're right, I should have burned your hand off and then there could have been two handless wonders in this town!" Maleficent snarled.
As the two women argued Lily found she didn't particularly care what they were talking about. No, that wasn't quite right. She cared, but everything was muted, dull, even the cold that clung to her and the darkness that normally spoke in her head were silenced, as was the flicker of warmth she had grown reluctantly fond of. It wasn't peaceful, but it wasn't terrible either. It wasn't anything at all. What was something was the beating heart in front of Lily, pulsing in various shades of purple with nearly impossible to spot bits of black and bright red. Lily couldn't take her eyes off it, and neither could the increasingly frustrated Queen.
"Will you just listen, you overgrown lizard? Lily's heart is no longer pure," She insisted over Maleficent's continued snarling.
"Pure? What are you talking about?" Lily asked, finally pulling together enough sense to speak.
"Explain, Regina. Now." Maleficent's eyes had lost most of their unearthly glow but her nails were still lengthened into sharpened talons.
The Evil Queen rocked back on her heels; the heart held in front of her like a carrying tray that she was modeling. "Do you know the reason Emma Swan's heart could never be removed from her?"
Maleficent snorted at the question. "She's the product of true love, gifted with light magic. Her newborn brother will likely be the same."
"I used to think so too, but that's wrong. If true love were the only requirement there would be other children whose hearts aren't removable and who could wield powerful light magic. But there aren't. I haven't seen Snow's baby or even Aurora's son do so much as levitate a tea cup," The Queen informed them. Lily didn't miss the way Maleficent's eyes narrowed at the name Aurora, but found she didn't care enough to comment on it.
"Fine, there are other requirements apart from true love. Give me Lily's heart first and then finish your little speech." Maleficent thrust her hand out expectantly, jaw tense and twitching just like Lily remembered it had when they walked to the clearing the other day.
The Queen actually had the nerve to smirk at Maleficent's anger and distress, but ultimately reached out and gave Maleficent the heart (It occurred to Lily that she was being given a glimpse of the Evil Queen, of the shrewd and calculated woman that once ruthlessly lorded over the Enchanted Forest. Even through such a small display, it made a lot more sense to Lily why Regina Mills would want to keep the Evil Queen hidden from her son and the other children of Storybrooke.). As the heart met Maleficent's bare skin her nails shrank down and the red spots on the organ glowed briefly, lighting up brighter and then returning to their earlier dark hue.
"Don't put it back just yet. Tell me what you see first," The Queen instructed, a knowing smugness still present in her eyes.
Maleficent narrowed her eyes at the Queen but turned her gaze toward the heart. Lily watched her mother scan the heart, eyes widening then quickly narrowing again. She ran a hand above the organ, and Lily swore she felt a gentle brush of magic course through her, inquisitive and searching. "But, how…"
The Queen didn't seem surprised. "You see it too."
"See what? What's going on?" Lily's voice held none of its usual bite and she struggled to understand why.
The Queen addressed Maleficent as she spoke. "Emma Swan's family tree is hardly magical in origin. The combination of a purely light heart and her birth as the product of true love is what gave Emma her light magic. On the other hand, Lily comes from at least one magical bloodline, yours. She would have had a propensity for magic no matter what. But combine that with her heart being purely dark at birth and not only would it have given her more powerful magic, it would have actually protected her heart from ever being removed, just like Emma's, but at the opposite end of the spectrum. But look at her heart now. Does that look purely dark anymore to you?"
"No. No it doesn't," Maleficent muttered to herself, half in awe and half bewildered in silence. "The question now is why."
"What are you…? What's going on?" Lily asked, entirely lost. The question pulled Maleficent from her captivated gaze on Lily's heart, and she reached forward, cupping her hands around the heart and placing it on Lily's chest. With one solid push, Lily watched in muted awe as the organ magically re-entered her chest, filling her with a rush of sensation and weighted emotion, fear and confusion at the forefront, followed closely by relief.
The Queen barely acknowledged what happened, something that worried Lily greatly and made her question just how often she removed people's hearts from their chests. Instead she picked up her phone as it started buzzing in her pocket, a flurry of emotions flashing across her face as she took in whatever message she had received. Most notably among them, elation followed quickly by confusion and outrage.
"As much as I would love to stay and chat about this, I'm needed elsewhere," She told them abruptly.
"What is it, Regina? Have your son and the others translated the symbols already?"
The Queen grimaced. "Henry must have sent pictures of the symbols to Belle and she translated them. So now we know more or less where we're going and how we're getting there…"
Lily narrowed her eyes at the Queen's annoyance. "I'm guessing there's a 'but' here?"
"We know where we need to go to find Emma but now I have a baby blanket to grab, a wicked sister to re-capture, and a certain pirate to track down and absolutely throttle for the mess he's made in a few measly hours," The Queen listed off with a sneer as she punched out a reply on her phone.
"I'm taking Lily somewhere she can rest," Maleficent said.
The Queen waved Maleficent's plans aside, already on her way out of the vault and muttering darkly to herself in contempt. "Why would that one handed drama queen possibly think going after my sister was a good idea? She's the last person to be trusted with anything! And Henry should know better than to get involved with something so dangerous."
Lily watched the Queen saunter away, the woman's disdain for whatever was happening with Jones, her son, and apparently her sister pulling the energy and life from the vault. In its place was a vacuum of stillness, giving Lily a new understanding of the phrase 'quiet as a tomb'.
Lily turned to her mother after several moments of silence. "Should we be worried? She sounds… " Lily couldn't find the right word and let the pause do the work for her, expressing her discomfort and uncertainty with the situation and the woman trying to put herself in the center of it all.
Luckily, her mother understood. "Probably," Maleficent admitted with a shrug. "There's nothing else we can do tonight. We should get you somewhere quiet where you can rest. That's the most important thing right now."
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Again, I apologize for the delay and I hope the length of this chapter at least partially makes up for it!
The magic thing has actually bothered me for a really long time. There are so many True Love kids on the show but Emma is the only one that we know for sure has magic. Aurora and Philip have a son, but he has no magic (That we know of) and Emma's baby bro hasn't shown a hint of being able to use magic either (Unless it's too soon in life? Idk). The only thing that separates Emma from those other True Love babies is her pure light heart. That has to count for something more than we realize.
Read, Review, and keep pestering me for the next chapter!