Upon walking into the diner, Emma's jade green eyes immediately sought out the chocolate brown she had been searching for. It didn't surprise her that Regina had gotten there first, it was typical, and even though she had seen her that morning, the sight of her still took her breath away. It almost caught her off guard, even though she had been feeling this way about the brunette for years.
She walked quickly over to the brunette before hesitating at the side of the table. Part of her wanted to lean down and kiss her in greeting as she would if they were at home, but the other part didn't know how Regina would react if she gave into her impulse in public. Surprisingly, it was Regina who leant up to kiss her cheek in greeting.
"I could see you thinking," she revealed with a smile. "You're on time. I'm impressed."
Emma chuckled as she sat down at the other side of the table. "I'm on a first date, got to make a good first impression." She winked making Regina roll her eyes.
"Well, I'm now going to hold you to it," she said, mockingly stern. "You've been on time once, so I'll expect it all the time. If you're late again, you'll be in trouble."
The phrase stirred something deep within Emma's soul and she had to suppress her moan at the implication. The brunette could tell where the blonde's mind had gone and simply winked before she picked up the menu to change the subject, but her foot slipped forward to slide against the blonde's making her bite her lip again.
"What are you thinking of getting?" Regina asked casually as if she wasn't playing footsie with the blonde under the table. "And don't you dare say a grilled cheese." She looked pointedly over the top of the menu with a raised eyebrow making the blonde blush nervously. "You won't be that skinny forever."
"Umm a turkey burger?" Emma replied quickly. She had definitely been intending to order a grilled cheese as usual, but quickly changed her mind at the brunette's look, despite how sexy it was.
Ruby then headed over to take their orders. She grinned happily in greeting, enquiring after their drinks order and noting down the request for two root beers. After so many years as a waitress, she'd gotten used to what people normally ordered and could tell when they were going to change their mind. Since being friends with the two and working with them for Operation Dots, she had gotten close to both and could read them even better.
"I'll take the Chicken Caesar salad with the dressing on the side," Regina requested, "and Emma will take the turkey burger with half of the fries replaced by a salad," she added before Emma could sneak in a different request.
The wolf bit her lip to stop herself from laughing at their antics. She could read that they were on a date and didn't want to point it out in front of the others in the diner. They weren't too full but there were other Town Hall officials in who could cause issues for Regina if they wanted to.
"Gotcha," Ruby said as she wrote down the order before she turned to Emma. "So, have you filed the report?"
Emma nodded. "Yes, I'll be finding Lily this afternoon to have a word with her about it. Although I hate to admit it, in this case my father may be right; it will probably be best to issue a warning for now. We don't want to trigger a massive collapse."
She didn't look happy, but Ruby nodded, accepting the decision. "I'll take these to the kitchen."
And with that, she turned on her heel and walked towards the kitchen, passing over the order to Granny before going to take more orders.
Regina turned to look at Emma with an eyebrow raised. "What happened?"
Emma sighed before filling the brunette in on what happened. Once Emma had finished the story, the first thing Regina did was glance around diner, noting if she could see Elsa's handywork.
As she looked at the windows, one hit her with a slight frosty hue which would be invisible to everyone except the people who were magical. Everyone had their own hue and the more familiar you were with a person, the quicker you could recognise theirs. With her friendship to Emma, Regina had spent a lot of time with Elsa to recognise hers easily.
With that said, she could see the singe where Lily had vanished. There was a slightly red hue to the magic that she didn't recognise as she'd never witnessed Lily's magic before. The only way she knew it was hers was because she'd been told so. However, something about the hue worried her. It held the crack of someone who was using their magic without knowledge or intent. She had witnessed it when she experienced Emma's the first time.
"I agree with you, we need to speak to Lily," Regina said. "She needs help to controlling her magic. She didn't vanish from here intentionally."
Emma nodded before sighing. "I know, we will have to deal with it eventually, but I don't want to talk about Lily anymore. This is our date, it's meant to be about us, not the mess that's our family tree. How has your day been so far?"
Regina smiled softly and allowed Emma to change the subject. The two discussed their days with Regina chuckling at Pongo's antics but she agreed with the blonde that charming Pongo's leash was the best idea. They only paused their chatter when Ruby brought over their lunches.
Unable to help it, Emma groaned at the amount of salad that was on her plate in comparison to the fries. It seemed Ruby had taken Regina's request to swap the fries for salad and had gone to the extreme to wind up the blonde.
"I hate you," Emma muttered to the wolf who just snickered and disappeared.
Moments later, Ruby returned with another smaller plate of fries which made Emma grin happily.
"I just wanted to see your reaction," she snickered which made Emma laugh and stick her tongue out at the wolf who just walked away again, this time laughing loudly.
However, Emma's laughter soon disappeared when Regina mentioned the Storybrooke meeting the next week that Emma would have to attend as the Sheriff.
"I'll make sure to keep you entertained," Regina promised with a saucy wink and suddenly, Emma was looking forward to their next meeting in a way she never had before.
Once their food was finished, they decided they would take a stroll through the town as Emma still had half an hour of her lunch left and Regina now had Friday afternoons off so she had nowhere she needed to be. It was a nice day, perfect for ambling along the quiet streets of Storybrooke.
As they walked, they talked easily and flirtatiously. They were unable to stop smiling and giggling. When Emma would poke fun at the brunette, she would just nudge her and roll her eyes affectionately.
By the time they approached the docks, Regina's hand had slipped into Emma's as if it was the most natural thing that could had happened.
"This is nice," Emma murmured as they walked past the few boats that were in the harbour, bobbing slightly with the waves.
"It is," Regina agreed. She leant over and snuck a kiss while no one was there to watch.
As they reached the spot where the Jolly Roger had once docked, instead of the gap that had been there for months, it was now filled with a slightly smaller version of Hook's ship.
"Where the hell did this come from?" Emma asked, more rhetorically than anything as she knew Regina wouldn't know.
"It hasn't been registered at the Town Hall," Regina replied as they stopped by it. "I say we check it out."
"Gina!" Emma cried but it was too late, the mayor had let go of her hand and was walking towards the ship.
With a wave of her hand, Regina checked for any warning spells but came up empty. She walked up to the hatch and opened it with another nifty spell. It fell open and she entered without hesitation.
Not wanting to leave her girlfriend, or whatever they were calling each other, to explore alone, Emma rushed after her and entered. One sniff was enough to know that Hook was living here. It smelt just like the stale sweat and alcohol she had smelt a few days before. She shuddered slightly at the dank air smell that mixed with the scent of Hook.
Looking around the room, she tried to find Regina who was nowhere to be found. Panicking slightly, Emma listened out for any signs of her but she didn't have to wait long.
"Em, come look at this!" Regina called from the room beside where Emma was standing.
The blonde quickly made her way to were Regina was rifling through pages and pages of scruffy handwriting.
Slowly, Regina ran her finger down the top page and the handwriting neatened up so it was now legible for them to read.
"They're all notes about you," Regina murmured as she scanned the page. She glanced up at the blonde.
"He really was sent to tail me," Emma whispered. It was creepy to think that Hook was actually cataloguing her movements.
As much as she detested the man now, she had cared for him at one point and wasn't completely against a future with him. However, here she saw that he'd written down everything they had done together from climbing the beanstalk to the first time they'd slept together!
Her face flushed deep pink as she saw Regina reading the intimate way Hook had described their times together. It was revolting to know that she had been objectified like that. There was no way Cruella had required that in their bargain.
"Gina–"
However, before Emma could say anything about it, the brunette's hand that was holding the page suddenly burst into flames and all that was left in mere moments, were cinders.
"That's what I think of that," Regina said as she looked up to the blonde. "There is no need for that vulgarity. Are you alright?"
Emma was taken aback. "Am I alright? You just had to read about your girlfriend sleeping with that scumbag."
Regina raised her eyebrow and smirked. A reaction that Emma thought did not fit the situation.
"Girlfriend?" She didn't sound angry, merely curious.
The blonde bit her lip nervously. "Umm, well, I was speaking to Archie and he suggested that actually defining what was going on would help you more than you think and then I was also thinking of you that way anyway because I love you and–"
"You love me?" Regina echoed, cutting off the blonde's rambling.
"I…umm…what?"
Emma hadn't meant to say those three little words while trying to explain why she had called Regina her girlfriend. They had just slipped out and now she had said the words she'd been thinking for a very long time but hadn't intended on saying for a while yet.
"You said you loved me," Regina repeated as she slowly took a step towards the blonde. "Do you?"
"Would you run if I said yes?" Emma asked. She could feel her heart pumping quickly and loudly in her chest as she panicked.
"No," Regina replied honestly as she took hold of Emma's hands. She could feel the speed of her pulse, but she chose not to comment on it. "Because I love you too."
As soon as the confession left Regina's lips, they were kissing, softly but passionately now that their love had been declared. It felt like a weight had been removed and they could breathe more easily. The only negative about it all was where they were, they certainly never expected to proclaim their love in the filthy bunk of the new Jolly Roger.
Reluctantly, Emma pulled back. "I should get back to work."
Regina shook her head. "Play hookie, say you are sick," she insisted. "I want to spend the afternoon with my girlfriend."
Emma grinned at the term. "Are you sure it's okay to refer to each other as such?"
"I wouldn't have repeated it if I didn't want to," Regina assured her, still holding Emma's hand tightly. "Besides, you're right, defining it is easier than I thought it was going to be. Besides, we just said we love each other. It feels right." She leant forward and stole a quick kiss. "Now we should get going before the cretin returns."
With a wave of her hand, Regina returned the handwriting back to how it was, but it would be obvious when the pages of Emma and Hook's encounters had been removed. She then took hold of Emma's hand and they excited the boat, returning back to the docks.
Their walk took them back towards town, still hand in hand but it was still pretty empty compared to usual. Every few minutes, Regina would ask the blonde to ditch work for the afternoon, but Emma would just laugh and not answer.
However, as they made their way back into the centre of town, Emma made up her mind. "I shall text my dad now to say I'm not going back in the office because you need me. I just need to get my car."
Regina flicked her wrist and grinned. "It's back home already."
Emma rolled her eyes but laughed. "I've never known you to break the rules before."
"You bring it out of me," Regina said with a salacious wink.
A moan escaped Emma's lips before she could control herself. She pulled Regina to her and kissed her passionately.
They were rudely pulled out of the moment when they heard screams before them which grew in volume the closer they got to the Clock Tower. However, they were too far away at that moment to be able to decipher who the voices belonged to. Emma and Regina glanced at each other worriedly before running over to the library.
They were met with the most unusual scene. Snow and Hook were standing below the Clock Tower, a few steps back from the library door so that they could see up to the roof. However, Lily wasn't standing simply on the roof of the building, she was standing on the edge of the dome as if it was the most natural place to be. Cruella, who was just a few feet away from Emma's half-sister, looked half terrified at being so high up and furious at the brunette above her for being the reason she was up there in the first place. Emma wasn't sure how she'd managed to get there in the first place but now wasn't the time to ask.
However, the most unusual part of the scene was the fact that Neal was nowhere to be seen. Fear flushed through Emma's body for her little brother. She pulled out her phone, about to text her father, only to see that, once again, he'd text her first, but she'd not seen the message while she'd been with Regina. He'd advised her that he had Neal at the office with him but didn't explain why. It was just a heads up that her brother was there too.
"Lily, will you please come down!" Snow cried, pulling Emma out of her worry. The former Princess hadn't noticed that Emma and Regina were making their way over. "We just want to talk to you calmly and rationally! You're behaving like an insolent child!"
"What's going on?" Emma demanded as she finally reached her possible mother, Regina hot on her heels.
"This has nothing to do with you, Emma," Snow replied with a bite in her voice. "You didn't want my help so I went to find your father's other daughter to see if she wanted to be on our side but she barely heard one thing Cruella said before she poofed herself to the top of the Clock Tower in a ball of fire. At least that proves that you are my daughter."
She smiled almost wickedly at the blonde who shivered at the thought.
"That doesn't mean anything, Snow," Regina sighed. Despite her best attempts, she had never been able to teach Snow anything while she was her stepmother. Not that she hadn't tried, but nothing got through to the child unless she cared about it, and there just wasn't anything that Regina said that has made the princess care. She had never even bothered to listen to her stepmother's best advice about life, even if it was often given maliciously by the Evil Queen. "Magic isn't as clear cut as that." She turned to Emma. "Go help her."
Emma glared at the brunette, as helping Lily was not what she wanted to do right now when Regina had promised a very satisfying afternoon, before flicking her wrist and transporting herself to the roof, just beside the Clock Tower. She approached the two slowly and carefully on the uneven slates.
If it had been any other time and literally any other reason for her to be scaling the roof of the library, she would have reported to the Mayor about the leaky roof. It would need fixing soon, or Belle would find herself afloat amongst the precious books come the next rainfall. However, now was probably not the time to report it, but she made a mental note to tell Regina a bit later, so that the problem could be fixed.
"Come here, you brat!" Cruella cried, again pulling Emma out of her thoughts. "We need your magic!"
So, it seemed that Cruella had yet to notice that they were no longer alone. She was making her way towards the Clock Tower. She started to climb, unable to poof herself to the top as Lily had.
"Get away from her!" Emma called, making Cruella jump as she almost slipped of the slates.
She started sliding down before Emma managed to catch her with her magic and return her to the flat surface of the roof. Cruella didn't turn to thank her, instead she flattened down her dress and returned to the task at hand.
"You can trust us, Lily," Cruella continued as if nothing had happened, as if she had not nearly fallen to her very gristly death. "Snow, Hook and I can show you how to control your magic and how to thrive. All we ask is for you to fulfil the prophecy. It's easy!"
Emma tried not to think of what it meant to fulfil the prophecy, or even how three people without magic could possibly help Lily control hers. She wasn't sure if Cruella meant the fulfilment of the prophecy, as in Lily must sacrifice herself for them to get their share of her magic or to kill Emma for the same reason.
"Ignore her," Emma cried. She flicked her wrist, casting a surefooted spell so that she could walk easily over the rickety surface without worrying about falling. She was rather clumsy after all. "You need to come down with me and I can help you with your magic. Forget the prophecy."
Lily was clinging to the top of the Clock Tower, just above where Emma and Cruella were trying to join her. Cruella nudged Emma in an attempt to make her slip but her spell prevented that from happening. Above them, Lily noted Emma's skill, but she couldn't concentrate on that.
Instead, she jumped down from the dome, landing easily in front of them. "I don't want to go with either of you." Glancing down, she glared at Snow. "She is not my mother so she can stay the fuck away from me." She looked at Cruella. "You are the reason that I didn't grow up with my real mom and you," she turned to Emma, her eyes lit with a fire that Emma had never seen before. She took a step back in fear. "You are the reason I am as dark as they come."
"That is not my fault," Emma snapped. "I didn't force anyone to do anything. I was just a baby!"
"If your mother hadn't forced our father to go back to her, I could have had a happy life with my parents!" Lily cried.
"She might be your mother!" Emma yelled, gesturing irately toward Snow, getting fed up with everything going on. She'd never been a fan of heights and this wasn't helping. There was also the fact she wasn't sure how long the surefooted spell would last for. "Yelling up here won't help anything. Look, if you don't want my help, be my guest. I won't force you, but you need to get your magic under control." She nodded to where Lily's hand was engulfed in flames that were slowly growing up her arm. The alarm in her eyes showed that she wasn't doing it intentionally. "You're a hazard to yourself."
However, with the fear and anger growing inside her, the flames were not just getting higher but were widening. Suddenly, the fear turned to glee as the flames hit the clocktower, setting it alight. The destruction seemed to bring out the darkness in her which spurred her on.
Cruella shrieked but Lily just laughed. She flicked her wrist and Cruella was suddenly in front of the flames. "Don't you like it hot, Cruella? Don't you think you should pay for what you did to me?"
"Lily, stop it!" Emma cried. She flicked her wrist, hoping it would dampen the flames, but it didn't work. It only reduced it a fraction but with Lily's new determination, they just returned.
"No!" Lily lashed out, throwing a fireball at the blonde who managed to put it out with a quick flick of the wrist. Lily shot again and again, but each time, Emma either put out the fireball or redirected it to the distance so no one got hurt. However, the flames behind the brunette were now starting to grow and Cruella seemed to be stuck where she stood.
Emma waved her wrist and Cruella was able to run from where she was standing but that seemed to infuriate Lily further. She shot forward and shoved Cruella so forcefully, that she crashed into Emma, but with her spell, the blonde remained where she stood.
Unfortunately, Cruella slipped and Emma was unable to catch her a second time. Her magic was weakening from the battling Lily's fireballs and trying to dampen the flames still engulfing the Clock Tower. Cruella toppled over the edge and fell directly into of Hook's outstretched arms. It seemed it was an attempt to catch her, but instead, his misshapen hook went straight into Cruella's chest, blood forming around it immediately.
To make the situation worse, the power of which Cruella fell, hit Hook straight in the chest and as he fell, he hit his head on the cracked pavement, the force of the blow killing him instantly.
Emma looked at the situation below, where suddenly Snow and Regina who had been screaming at one another suddenly jumped away from the gristly sight. Although Emma had been concentrating too much on her situation to know what they had been yelling at each other. They had now rushed over to the two, but Emma saw Regina shake her head at Snow who looked furious.
Turning back to the brunette, the fire had now gone on her arms but the roof was still ablaze, where the flames were still growing.
"What did you do!" Emma cried. "She didn't deserve that. You killed them both!"
Lily fake pouted and mocked the blonde. "Are you sad that I killed your boyfriend? Yes, I know about that, he wouldn't stop talking about you. It was revolting. I didn't mean to kill him really, I just wanted to hurt her." She shrugged. "But they're gone," she smirked, "and that felt really good. I guess that I really am the dark kid. I take back what I said about it ruining my life. I could get used to this. Thanks!"
She made to walk away but Emma pulled her back. "You can't just walk away. You murdered them in cold blood! You can't even use your magic as a defence when you pushed her."
"And what are you going to do about it, Emma?" Lily sneered. "You're too weak and pure to hurt anyone. You can't stop me."
As Emma went to grab the brunette again, Lily simply flashed her a wicked smile and disappeared in a burst of flames. However, Emma couldn't stand in shock as the fire around her grew and she felt the surefooted spell wearing off. Turning around, she blasted the roof with as much water as she could muster. The fire was extinguished but the damage of it remained. She tried to fix it, but she didn't have enough power at that moment, in fact she felt rather faint.
Glancing over the edge, she saw that Regina was now alone aside from the dead bodies on the ground just beside her. Snow was nowhere to be seen and there was a sound of sirens approaching.
"Can you help me down please?" Emma cried over the roof and she was immediately caught up in a swirl of purple. As soon as the cloud disappeared, Emma fell into Regina's arms.
Regina immediately started checking her over for any injury. "Are you alright? What happened? As soon as you went up, Snow ran at me and I couldn't gather my magic to get her off me. Stupid bitch doesn't know when to quit unless there's a dead body. That's when she ran." She looked at the ground. "Should we move her off him?"
Emma shook her head. "It's crime scene but I've not actually had to deal with a legitimate murder before. I've no idea what to do. We need to find Lily and lock her up. I want her out of this town and now my dad can't say no."
"He's on his way," Regina murmured. "Along with an ambulance. We need to move the bodies before people see."
"Impaled by a hook," Emma said, unable to keep a hint of amusement out of her voice. "That's one way to go."
"And being squashed by Cruella De Vil, that's another way," Regina replied, just as amused as Emma. "You couldn't write this stuff."
Emma shook her head. "Only in Storybrooke."