A/N So the first scene was basically completely rewritten by PerditusFic because the first draft was just bad lol please feel free to check out her stuff, it's all awesome XD
Chapter thirty-six
There were screams everywhere. She could feel them, but all seemed silent. Soundless even through the warfare.
Emma moved through the battlefield cutting down enemies. They had faces she forgot the moment the life left their bodies. She felt no great power in her hands or of the sword in her hand, but her adversaries didn't seem capable of fighting back with any success.
As lightning continued to strike the ground around her, a warrior missed her swing. Their swords clashed, ringing over the crackling fires and claps of thunder. For a moment, Emma thought there was someone who could challenge her.
She shoved him out of the lock and sidestepped his attack. Strangely, after a few blows the warrior missed and Emma struck him in the chest. Like all the rest, his body turned to black dust, blowing away in the wind.
"You really are a cut above the rest," Ares's voice boomed. Emma spun around to face him, brow furrowed in concern. The thunder stopped. Crackling fires died to plumes of smoke. And they were all that was left on the now empty battlefield. "But never when it matters."
Emma doubled over as familiar pain bloomed across her stomach. Her unconscious moved to cup the spot. It burned to the touch and she pulled away, finding blood on her hand. Her dark leather darkened from the wet wound. Something familiar about it tickled the back of her mind but she ignored it and brandished her sword towards the man.
In a blink he was on her, forcing Emma to straighten up in time to block the strike. He leaned close to her with a smug grin.
"You won't see your wife again."
Emma pushed him off, anger flaring up with enough intensity to block out the pain in her abdomen. In a short burst of rage, Emma loaded strikes and grew angrier with every miss. And then Ares is swinging his sword at her and her block isn't enough to prevent him from victory. Her sword flies from her hands and out of her reach.
Ares does not hesitate to finish her.
Her feet are knocked from under her and Ares shadows over her. His elbow is drawn back and the sword is aimed for her heart. Emma threw her hand out instinctively – knowing it would do nothing to stop him – and closed her eyes. There was no way that she could get out of this, there was no way that she would ever see her wife again, just as he said. Or her parents.
A sharp light burst from her hand sending Ares flying backwards. She opened her eyes in confusion and she saw him just landing in the dirt. But, to her disappointment, he recovered quick enough to get back to his feet, hand never loosening around his sword. Emma stood up as well, searching briefly for her own weapon.
It was nowhere in her immediate area but she looked down at her right hand and then her left. Both of them were glowing a bright white light. Ares lifted his sword at her, it beginning to gain a golden glow around it. Emma raised her hands just as he thrusted his sword towards her and let a shockwave of light discharge from her hands. The magic hit him like a wall freezing him in place before he exploded into shards of light.
Emma watched the sword fly at her and it seemed to slow down. She stepped aside, and it darted past her. And then the bright magic along with Ares' remains vanished. Time seemed to speed up again.
She glanced behind her and found Ares' sword hovering at another man's palm. He waved his hand and is disappeared. In that moment her pain seemed to return. A pained sound escaped her throat as she fought her knees attempting to buckle under her. Her hand glided over the wound again and she discover more blood on her fingertips.
"Theirs is no need to worry, child. You are not dead," the man's voice said. He seemed calm, but his voice consumed the atmosphere as if he were all around. "It's be a flesh wound for you."
The princess turned to him fully, straightening herself against the pain. She had never seen him before, but she was certain of who he was. Something about the aura he was putting off.
"You're her father. Regina ..." She breathed. She had met her fair share of god and goddesses, certainly more than any mortal should – or would. There was something different being in the presence of a Titan. It was warm and cold, daunting and comforting. The fear of the power he possessed fought with that feeling of knowing one was mostly safe with him.
The feelings became even more overwhelming when he simply smiled.
"You can call me Henry."
Emma nodded. She took a moment to settle her thoughts and asked, "You said that I'm not dead?"
"You have a greater destiny than a death from Ares." Henry chuckled. His eyes seem to scoff at the thought. "You will soon awaken but I wanted to take this opportunity to talk with you."
Emma wanted to question about her destiny but obviously she wouldn't be told.
"What is it you wish to talk to me about?" the blonde asked, hoping that she wasn't insulting the Titan, though the man looke d far too well-natured.
"The natural balance of the universe," Henry replied. "There is a reason that I chose Regina to be Zeus and Zelena to be Hades. The cosmos needs the roles to be occupied by the correct divine being."
"But Zelena has been Zeus for thousands of years," Emma replied, she couldn't help but wonder what it was about her that made the Titan believe that she was capable of inciting change.
Even if she was the granddaughter of Ares, she didn't feel like that made her particularly special, considering that she was sure there were thousands of mortals with divine blood in existence. Ares seemed rather blasé about the fact that they were related so she doubted that her father was his only half-mortal child. It did make her wonder if her mother knew she had married a demi-god, and if her father even knew considering how little he seemed to know about his own father.
"Yes, and for thousands of years the cosmos has been unbalanced. Mortals were never supposed to live such lives of pain. Zelena doesn't see the value of human life the way that Regina does. She is not fit for the title of Zeus."
Emma nodded in understanding. She had no doubt that Regina was better fit as Zeus than her despicable sister, but there was one major problem with such a plan.
"Regina does not desire such a title any longer."
"She has given up out of despair. A despair that she would undoubtedly fall back into following your death. You must help her see that she has a duty to humanity to stop wallowing in the Underworld," Henry replied.
"And you believe that I am capable of such a feat?"
"It is the reason you were born, Emma White."
s
-The morning of the tournament-
"Are you okay, Dawn?" Emma asked as she followed the demi-goddess through the palace.
As Dawn continued to walk tensely, the princess felt her anxiety rise.
This worry was definitely disproportionate for the situation. If she was this set against her competing then she would have refused to train her in the first place, so she was sure that couldn't have been the problem here.
Emma reached forward to grab the brunette's arm and pulled her to a stop.
"Please tell me what is wrong, Dawn, you're worrying me."
Dawn sighed, she wanted to tell the other woman not to partake, that she would be risking her life for nothin, but she knew it would take more than that to convince her. She was frustratingly stubborn but if she wasn't, she was sure that she and Regina would have never fallen in love.
The demi-goddess grabbed her arm and pulled her the rest of the way to the princess's chamber.
"A few days ago, Poseidon visited to give me a warning about the tournament and you need to know the there is no way that you will be able to win," Dawn said frantically.
Emma's eyebrows pinched together as she tried to take in all of what was being said, she was sure that she had never seen her step-daughter so afraid.
"Why won't I be able to win?" Emma asked.
"Zeus has instructed Ares to partake, you learned a lot but you won't defeat him," Dawn replied and waited for the blonde to deny that she would lose. She was so naturally brave that she was sure she would also fall into the category of idiotic.
"Zeus wants me dead?" Emma asked, "how could I possibly be a threat to her?"
"My mother finding her Persephone is a threat to her, she's been too miserable for thousands of years to fight back, but Zelena probably thinks that with you at her side she would be more willing to go after her throne."
"Does your mother want to be Zeus?" Emma asked, she figured that Regina didn't care too much since she'd had thousands of years to fight back against her sister's duplicity. Plus she currently seemed more interested in their relationship than power struggles.
"Not even a little bit," Dawn replied, "but Zelena cannot faith that she doesn't want to take everything from her, so naturally she thinks that she needs to take everything from her first."
Emma frowned, did Zelena not realise that she wasn't immortal? If a handful of decades was really a blink of an eye to these gods, was it really necessary to end her life so prematurely?
"Surely, I can't compete?" Emma said.
It wasn't that she was afraid of dying, it was more that she wanted to spend more time with Regina. She wanted to eventually be her wife in every sense of the word. In particular, she didn't want to be the reason for a war between Hades and Zeus. It didn't really seem like anyone would come out as a winner in such a scenario.
Dawn quirked an eyebrow at the princess, that was certainly not what she was expecting.
"I thought so too, but if Zelena knows you're alive she'll only find a new way to end your life which will have the same effect."
Emma nodded in understanding, that unfortunately made sense, "am I to assume that you have a plan?"
Dawn nodded and reached into her pocket to pull out a phial of bright blue liquid, "whilst you and mother visited the land without magic, I went to talk to the Blue Fairy. I though she owed you a debt after all of those years of imprisonment," Emma nodded and took the phial with her brows pinched together as she tried to figure out what it was that she was looking at.
"The moment your heart stops, this will preserve your body for an hour."
"And after an hour?" Emma asked.
"Do you trust me, princess?" Dawn shot back.
The blonde nodded slowly and pulled the stopped off the potion before she downed it with no hesitation.
She figured that Zelena believing her to be dead couldn't be a bad thing, at least for a while.
s
"Truly impressive," Zelena called, "Neal bet that she wouldn't last a minute, I bet thirty seconds, I suppose she proved us both wrong."
Regina shot to her feet and fireballs ignited in both of her hands.
Dawn shared a look with Graham who looked perhaps the most terrified that she had ever seen him, but she looked down to Emma, the hour had already started so she needed to make sure that whatever was about to happen didn't last longer than that.
Zelena laughed and didn't even bother to enter a defensive stance.
"Come now, sister, she was only going to die anyway. I thought Would save you the heartbreak by speeding up the process," Zeus said, "you should be thanking me."
Regina didn't hesitate to throw the fire in her hands and Zelena easily waved it way with an infuriatingly smug smirk.
A split second later a bolt of lightening flew across the space before Zelena could react. The red-head stumbled back as the electricity grazed her cheek. She blinked as she brought her hand up to her face and ran it across the stinging area. She could already feel that the rough skin was going to become a scar.
She knew that she should be angry, but the only thing that her body seemed capable of feeling was pure fear. She had always known that her sister was capable of the kind of power required to mark another immortal, but she had never thought that the miserable woman would try anything of the sort.
She looked over her shoulder to find that Neal was looking at her with wide eyes, as if he was truly terrified of what was going to happen next, Ares, on the other hand, just looked very much disinterested in the scene.
She swallowed hard and schooled her features. The point of this was not to start a fight that she wasn't sure that she could win, she was sure that once the fact that the princess was dead sank in, Regina would revert to the pathetic woman she had been following her banishment to the Underworld.
"I will leave you to mourn," Zelena sneered, "lets not take so long to get together again, sister."
With that, Zeus flicked her writs to engulf herself, Neal and James in a cloud of smoke. Regina stepped forward as if she was about to go after them but she felt someone grab her hand and she turned to see Dawn looking at her with a rather urgent expression on her face.
"We really don't have time for that right now, mother," the demi-goddess said.
Regina pinched her eyebrows together and forced herself to look down at her blood stained wife again. Instantly, all the anger that she had felt a moment ago vanished and was replaced with a certain emptiness that she couldn't explain. There had always been a part of her that had known that Emma would not live forever, but she couldn't help but think that had been holding her back from truly enjoying time with the other woman.
Hades just nodded, completely unable to form words and black smoke engulfed the four of them too take them back to the palace.
They appeared in Emma's chamber with the blonde laid out on the bed and Regina took a deep breath as she began to consider what she should do next. She was pretty sure that Emma's parents would like the body for burial rites and they would also need to announce to the White Kingdom that their princess had come to an untimely end.
However, before she could try and push her emotions down to try and put any of those plans into motion, she felt Dawn grab her hand and she realised that the younger brunette was trying to talk to her.
She swallowed hard and asked, "what?"
"You need to kiss Emma," Dawn repeated.
The goddess furrowed her brow, she was sure that didn't make any sense, she opened her mouth to protest, but Dawn went on to explain:
"We knew that Ares would be competing so Emma drank a potion that would preserve her body the moment her heart stopped for exactly a hour. True Love's Kiss is the only thing that will return life to her body, I've already healed her wounds…"
"True Love's Kiss," Regina repeated unsurely. It made absolutely no sense that her True Love would be a mortal, that seemed like some kind of cruel cosmic joke. But at the same time, there was a part of her that couldn't help but think that her love for the princess in the short few months she had known her was already greater than what she had felt for Ruby.
"Please mother, you have to try," Dawn insisted.
Regina swallowed hard and shook her head, she knew that she was stalling but she wasn't sure that she wouldn't be able to take it.
"You knew that Ares was going to compete?" she asked accusatorially.
Dawn rolled her eyes, she knew that her mother had a tendency to deflect but they didn't have a lot of time.
"Poseidon warned me and it occurred to me that this would be the best way to protect Emma. If Zeus believes that she is dead then she can't try to kill her and she wouldn't have believed it without your reaction…"
Hades was certainly angry but it was more because she was left out of the decision making that made so much sense, but Zelena knew her so well so she could imagine that if her reaction hadn't been correct then she would know what was going on.
She blew out a breath, there was so many things that she wanted to shout, but she also didn't want Emma to be dead. When the woman had failed to say 'I love you' she had no doubt that she would never hear the words uttered by her wife, but now there was a chance, even if her mind was screaming that it was a very slim chance.
Before she could change her mind, she walked over to the bed and leaned down to connect their lips and she felt a tear fall down her cheek when she felt how cold the other woman's lips were.
She stood up and looked expectantly at the unmoving princess. For a couple seconds, nothing happened and Regina felt her heart sink, she knew that there was no way that the sweet and innocent Emma White could possibly be destined to be with the ruler the Underworld.
She was about to turn around to se the anguish on her daughter's face, but the action was cut short by the sound of someone taking a deep, gasping breath.
She turned back to Emma to see her looking frantically around the room as she propped herself up on her elbows. She was only disorientated for a couple moments though, as when her eyes landed on Regina, everything came rushing back and she forced herself to calm down as she fell back down to the bed.
"You saved me," she sighed in relief, with a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, though she was too exhausted to fully smile.