"Ow!"
Regina snapped back into consciousness with a side serving of minor whiplash. Her sister was glaring at her, green eyes blazing, ruby lips pressed against the pale white skin of her forearm.
"What?"
"What?!" Zelena motioned to the saucepan that sat bubbling furiously atop Regina's kitchen hob, brown sticky liquid spitting from its depths. Her hand wafted angrily in its direction. "Flaming hot caramel, that's what! Burnt skin, that's what! Sister non compos mentis, that's what!" She stuck her arm out at Regina with proof of her sister's culinary recklessness. "Fuck's sake Regina, what the bloody buggery hell is up with you?"
Regina ducked the question, fishing in the sink for a wet cloth, chucking it at her sister. She ignored Zelena's eyebrow that shot elegantly skywards, and the accompanying huff.
"Sympathetic much."
Regina rolled her eyes, moving back to the pan and turning the heat down. Zelena could be so overly dramatic sometimes. "It's nothing some simple magic won't heal."
"That's hardly the point, love, and you know it." Regina picked up the pan handle and rolled the contents gently, taking care not to crystalize the browning sugar inside. Zelena tutted loudly. "You can pretend you're hard of hearing as much as you like, I can keep this up all night if need be. And don't I don't know what you're on about me, I didn't come down in the last tornado."
"Well to be fair.."
"Smart arse."
Regina couldn't stop the faint glimmer of a smile from tweakimg the corner of her mouth. She knew Zelena would took it as fair game to press a little harder with her line of questioning. Zelena pushed her sister playfully, triumphant at her ability to crack the infamous Mills' resolve. "There she is."
The Mayor of Storybrooke wiped her hands down her apron front, then moved from the pan to the oversized wooden chopping board on the other side of the kitchen island, picking a chef's knife out of the block and rotating it easily in her left palm. Plucking a shiny red apple from the large selection to her right, she made deft, short work of the homegrown fruit, slicing it at almost lightning pace. She could feel Zelena watching her lazily, her back leant against the countertop, arms crossed over her chest, waiting for a suitable gap between slicing to dart in with her fingers and pick off a scarlet-edged, crescent-shaped, crunchy sliver of deliciousness. She popped one in her mouth, eying her sister with no small trace of curiosity as Regina grabbed another apple, then another, and another, working her way through the basket with almost psychotic precision.
"So what gives sis?" Zelena reached out for another slice, letting the air of expectancy drop around them. "You've been all over the place lately, people are beginning to talk."
"People?"
The redhead considered her choice of words. "Ok. Person."
Regina grunted audibly, knife still flying. "And would this person's name happen to start with an 'M'?"
Zelena cocked her head. "It would."
The point of the knife hovered dangerously mid-air for a few seconds, the former Evil Queen automatically thinking of sinking its hilt into something other than crunchy red apples. "And what exactly has Mary Margaret been saying?"
"Oh, you know, this and that." Zelena bit a slice clean in two, munching slowly on it, covertly reading her sister's reactions. The knife resumed its work on the chopping board. "This and that."
"This and that hardly warrants this conversation. Would you care to give specifics?" Regina's lips were pursed, the faint scar above her top lip deepening ever so slightly in her frustration.
"She may have mentioned something about you and a certain Dark One, you and a certain Emma Swan. She may have tried to impress upon me that you might be her dear, darling daughter's Saviour. Sound familiar? Ring any bells?" Zelena leant in and wagged the remaining half of apple slice under Regina's nose. "Ding, dong?"
Regina's batted her sister's hand away with growing irritation. Why could Snow White never leave good enough alone? It was practically a fucking affliction. "Mary Margaret would read something into the ABCs if she could. The woman doesn't know what she's on about."
"She seemed pretty convinced to me."
"She's just desperate to get her daughter back. She'll clutch at anything right now, even the ridiculous, remote notion that I might be the Saviour of the Saviour. I mean, really." She finally looked her sister dead in the eye. "Do you see me being the one to save Miss Swan?"
"So then what's with the major case of distraction then?"
"I haven't been distracted!"
Zelena fairly snorted her derision. "Oh come on Regina! You've been on another fucking planet lately. The last few days, you may as well not have bothered turning up at all! I don't know what's up with you, whether it's the latest incarnation of the Dark One, or something else entirely, but something has got your panties in a twist. One thing I do know," her tone becoming suddenly pointed, "is that it's definitely not Robin."
"What do you mean?"
"Well the man's been in hospital the better part of a week now and you've not been to see him once! And I say man, what I actually mean is your boyfriend. You know, just that really small detail Regina. We find the pair of you in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night, the entire place looks like it's been hit by a nuclear fucking weapon, he's out for the count and yet, have you spoken to me once about it since then? No, you haven't. You haven't bought him up at all. I mean, unless I knew any better, I'd say he wasn't your boyfriend."
Regina put the knife down on the chopping block and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to relieve the growing sense of stress and frustration at her sister's incessant questioning.
"If you must know, no, we're not together any more."
"Aha!"
"Easy Sherlock, it's not exactly this year's greatest mystery. Things haven't been working between us for a while."
"I call bullshit on that one sis. Isn't he the love of your life? It was only a couple of weeks ago that I caught the pair of you all over each other behind Granny's diner! Which, might I add, is something I'll never be able to unsee, so thanks for that."
Regina picked up a clutch of apple slices and began laying them out on a sheet of puff pastry, desperately trying to lose herself in the mundane yet surprisingly satisfying OCD task. "Things change, Zelena."
"What, overnight?"
She could feel the anger mounting in her veins, the crackle of magic just underneath the surface of her skin. If her sister wasn't careful, scalding caramel would be the least of her worries. Things had changed, things had changed beyond compare, and she was no longer the person her sister knew, no longer the woman caught behind the local restaurant with her legs wrapped around Robin's neck. The thought of being with anyone else other than Emma Swan made her feel physically sick, made her head spin with the inability to understand what had ever come over her. The things she thought of now, the deeds that filled her head these past few days, the dreams that scorched through her body every time she shut her fucking eyes… she was a walking wreck, absolutely on the edge, barely holding on to reality. She'd had a taste of what it was like to be taken by this Dark One, just a glimpse of what it could be like to belong to Emma Swan, and then had it wrested away from her in the blink of an eye, left bereft on the bathroom floor like a cheap whore and not a word, not a whisper, not a sighting of her since…
"HELLO!"
She came to, blinking rapidly, Zelena's face swimming just inches from her nose. She actually looked genuinely concerned. How could Regina tell her? How could she tell her what dark and sordid images flitted through her brain, how could she let her in on the secret desires she guarded so vehemently? How could she let her sister know that for the first time in a long time, she could once again feel the delicate, soft, burning caress of the Darkness? Just faint, barely there, only a ghost of a whisper in her ear, only a wisp of a touch across her skin. But there, all the same, calling her name once again. She shook her head, refocusing, pulling herself back into reality.
"I'm just going through a shift. Yes, my mind might be wandering off every other second, yes I might seem easily distracted. I do have a lot on my mind but it's not something that I want to talk about…" She held her hand up to stop her sister butting in. "Not just yet. When I do feel ready to talk, you'll be the first, I promise. But right now, I'm not in that place. Sorry."
She finished the swirl of apple slices and drizzled the soft, gooey caramel over the top. Opening the door to the oven, she slid the tart inside, ignoring her sister's stare.
"Well, you know where I am if you change your mind."
"Yes I do." Zelena's eyeballs were practically boring holes into her back. "And I'm still not going to talk about it."
The Wicked Witch sighed loudly. "Your choice I guess. Although I have to say sis, there's a definite upside to your current mental breakdown."
Regina followed her sister's gaze to the window sill, where over a dozen apple tarts lay steaming, their pungent aroma wafting out on the evening breeze, carrying the smell of her demented baking to the residents of Storybrooke. Her prized apple tree, usually brimming with crimson orbs, branches heaving under their weight, stood almost bare of any fruit at all. If she carried on like this, she'd run out of apples before the week was out. She needed to see Emma Swan before she lost her damn mind.