A/N: Half a day late, but still more or less on schedule.
More stuff happening! And more Swan Queen. And me trying to figure out american units of volume. And a barely even namedropped guy who had way more backstory and a whole scene at one point during the outlining of all this. Aaaaanywho thanks, as always for all the comments! I love all of them and it's part of why I can keep up the decently regular update schedule tbh. So thanks, and please enjoy :)
It was a quiet morning at the station, the next day. Emma was sitting at her usual desk with a hot cup of mediocre coffee, going through a pile of paperwork. During days like these she could almost forget she wasn't the sheriff of some unremarkable, sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, rifling through mundane police reports about suburb break-ins and lost cats.
She took a sip of her coffee, wincing as much from the taste as from the paper in front of her.
Description of crime: theft of approximately 25 . fairy dust, destruction of public property, assault–
Nope, she definitely wasn't in a normal town.
On the brighter side, Mulan certainly had a knack for writing professional-looking reports, even if she did it by hand and not on a computer. Not only had she compiled the chaos in the harbor into a neatly typed police report, she had included photos of the damaged street, Ruby's injuries, the pouch of fairy dust Hook had carried and an even bigger bag Mulan had found in his hideout, among several other papers.
Frowning, Emma stopped at a paper with some scrawled notes and a couple of signatures on it.
"This is from the guy who owned the boat?" she asked, looking up at Mulan across the desk.
"Which one?" Mulan craned her neck to see the paper in question, then nodded. "Yeah, he was more than happy to give us permission to search it. He even suggested we take the boat from him, but I wasn't sure what we'd do with it."
"He's not a boat guy?"
"Apparently he gets seasick even looking at water, so no."
Emma chuckled. "Sounds about right. The curse really had a knack for screwing people over."
"Anyway, I wasn't sure if it was needed, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to get the permission in writing."
Nodding, Emma took another sip of her coffee as she flipped through the rest of the papers. "Yeah, looks good to me. Did you find any clues to how he managed to get hold of that much fairy dust? Anything you didn't put in the report?"
Mulan leaned over and pulled out a few old-looking pages. "No, but I asked Belle about the these pages too. From what she could tell, they were just some simple spell instructions. Or at least as simple as spell instructions get."
"'Simple', huh." The pages were filled with elaborate text in some language Emma didn't event begin to recognize. "I'll bet Hook just tried to follow the instructional pictures."
"Unless whoever gave him the fairy dust told him how to use it."
The station's phone rang out, bringing the conversation to an abrupt halt.
"Sheriff's station," Emma answered.
"Hey, Sheriff, it's Dr. Whale." He sounded awfully tired, even through the raspy phone. "I was meaning to get back to you earlier but, you know, some other things kind of came up. Do you remember that ash you had me pick up from the old lady's house?"
"Oh yeah," Emma said, immediately straightening up. "Did you find something?"
"Yeah... it's just regular cigarette ash. Sorry about that. She had the body to match, too. Practically had to wear a hazmat suit just to do the autopsy. Anyway, the funeral is tomorrow, if you feel like going."
"Wait, there's a funeral? Who's handling it?"
"The fairies. I wrote it down, actually..." There was some brief rustling before Whale returned. "Nova's taking care of it. Tomorrow morning at nine, in the graveyard. Just thought I'd let you know."
Emma hastily jotted down the time. "Okay. Thanks."
Having ended the call, Emma leaned back in her chair and sighed. That ash had been a long shot, but still, it was a bit disappointing.
"Was it about Vickers' funeral?" Mulan asked.
Emma nodded and quickly recapped the call.
"At least we don't have to look for a murderer as well as an arsonist," Mulan noted with a faint smile.
"Good point." She left her chair to refill her coffee cup, continuing, "and we've still got Vickers' floppy disk." The coffee was barely even lukewarm. "Hell, we've got a lot more things than that, even. The informant, Hook's fairy dust–"
"The books stolen from the library," Mulan filled in.
Emma nodded absentmindedly as she made her way back to her desk. "Oh yeah, those, I remember. Did I even put that in the report?" she muttered, mostly to herself.
Mulan's smile faded a little. "I heard it from Belle, and she said you had been... skeptical."
"And I'm guessing you're not?"
"If she says those books were stolen, they were stolen."
Emma pursed her lips in thought, wrapping her hands around the warm coffee cup. Although she hadn't outright dismissed Belle's claims, she hadn't really acted on them either. A couple of stolen books just didn't fit neatly into any kind of theory she had regarding the library case, and she had figured they would get solved together with everything else when they finally caught the arsonist. Seeing how the case was still far from solved and she was following leads as strange as some old lady's writing projects, maybe it was time to reevaluate it.
"Alright. Lets put the stolen books on the list too, then. I'm guessing stolen by the same person who set the library on fire."
"And we don't know how Hook got that magic bean, either."
That last point was especially unsettling, too. Magic was difficult enough to control on its own without portals being involved.
There was a light drizzle in the air that afternoon, tinting the world gray and giving an extra chilly bite to any gust of wind that passed by. Emma reluctantly stepped out of her car onto the sidewalk of Mifflin Street, squinting up at Regina's house.
As the day had worn on, more and more of her thoughts had been taken up by endless reruns of her confrontation with Regina the day before, to the point that Mulan had noticed it. It wasn't long before Emma had found herself practically shooed out of the station.
"Trust me, Emma, I know that look." Mulan didn't quite smile, but something close. "You need to go talk to her and try to sort things out."
"I don't have a 'look'," Emma tried to argue.
"I don't know what's going on between you two, but she was obviously worried about you after she got you to the hospital."
Emma lit up. "She was?" Seeing Mulan's pointed look, she sighed. "Fine, okay. I'll go."
With her hands shoved deep into her pockets, she made her way up to Regina's porch. She was here to get some clarifications, first and foremost. The details she'd just have to figure out as she went along.
"Hey," she said with a cautious smile when Regina opened.
"Hey." Regina looked past her towards the Bug. "Since you came in that rolling traffic hazard, I assume you're not here to arrest me."
"Nope. Still not."
Regina seemed to consider her for a second, then stepped aside and let her in without a word.
"Don't worry," Emma said, trailing behind Regina. "I'm not here for a fight or anything. I just want to clear some things up."
"Fine." Regina headed off towards the kitchen. "But Henry will be home in about an hour, so we'll have to finish this by then."
Emma plopped down on a stool next to the kitchen island with a sigh. "Yeah, yeah." She rubbed her hands together, trying to get the cold out while she looked around the kitchen. Apparently Regina was cooking something, wearing an apron and having some cups and other kitchen stuff laid out on one of the benches.
Looking over her shoulder, Regina sent her a less than impressed look. "You can start asking whenever you're ready, you know. I'm perfectly capable of listening while I'm baking."
"Alright. You said you needed time. That I should hold off on looking into the missing month for a while. I want specifics. Another week? A month?"
Regina let out a halfhearted chuckle. "If it takes months, we'll have bigger problems," she muttered. She continued in her normal tone, "I'm not sure. A few weeks, maybe."
"Okay." It was something, at least, and not just some vague promise of "later". "What if I regain my memory before that?"
Regina pulled out some bowls and ingredients from the cupboards. "Then it's out of my hands anyway, isn't it?"
"Who else knows we joined our magics? My parents?"
"Unless you told them before all this, your parents don't know. The people I'm aware of are you, me, Tinker Bell, and Nova. But I would appreciate if you'd keep it to yourself, for now."
"Until you're done with... whatever it is you doing?"
"Yes." Regina scoffed. "Besides, I doubt either of us needs the chaos that would ensue if this became common knowledge."
As much as she had to agree with that, Emma still replied, "it'll come out eventually, you know."
"Yes, and hopefully we'll be better prepared when it does."
"So what do I tell Snow?"
There was a pause before Regina replied. "I spoke with her briefly at the hospital."
"Yeah, I heard. You told her about the bracelet and my magic bleeding, right?"
Regina sighed, washing her hands and then drying them off before moving pulling out more ingredients and more bowls. "Frankly, I'm surprised she hasn't come after me more. She's usually more of a bloodhound when it comes to strange magical things happening around here."
Chuckling, Emma thought back on her and Snow's conversation the day before, on their way out from the hospital. "I think she sees it as relationship stuff between us, mostly. Apparently she trusts you enough to deal with this without her breathing down your neck," she said with a mild smile.
The expression that flashed across Regina's face was a mix of surprise and vague horror. Emma wasn't sure whether Snow's trust or her breathing down Regina's neck was the reason for it, though.
Neither of them said anything for a while, with Regina mixing ingredients and prepare whatever it is she was making, and Emma watching in silence. It was soothing in a way, yet unfortunately completely overshadowed by the last question that was stewing in Emma's mind. She wasn't sure if she wanted to ask it and she wasn't sure if she wanted to know the answer, but still, it kept bugging her. At some point, she needed to know, and why not now?
"You know, about that." She licked her lips, trying to figure out a good way of phrasing it. "I remember a few things from that month. With us. Together."
Regina's movements stopped, but she still kept her back towards Emma.
"And I don't know when most of it happened or what happened at the end of the month to blow all of this up, but..." She let out a soft sigh. "Do you think we can fix it?"
A chuckle. Regina just sounded tired. "Fix which part?"
"I don't know! I just know we had something. I mean, I'd say we were friends, kind of, before all this, and we definitely got closer at some point during that month."
"We did." Regina turned towards her, leaning against the counter with a ghost of a smile.
The space between them seemed to shrink.
"We must have been through worse things before, right?" Emma tried. "Trying to kill each other, taking away Henry, all that shit. Unless you actually meant what you said just after I lost my memory. Never wanting to see me again..."
Regina's face fell, just a little. "No, that's..." She rubbed her forehead, brows furrowed. "Maybe I meant it then, but obviously not now, or you wouldn't be here."
"I'll take it, I guess." Emma shifted slightly on the stool, not sure what to do with her hands. "If you could do this all over again, though – that whole month and everything afterwards", she added, "would you?"
"Are we playing truth and dare now?" Regina huffed and turned back to the counter, picking up where she left off. "I'm not sure. As bad as things turned out, I don't know what I could have done differently. Mostly, it was just a string of bad options and I had to pick one." She shrugged. "Maybe I'd pick a different one, and maybe it would turn out better. Or worse. I can't get lost in what-ifs and regrets like that or I'd question my entirely life, including Henry."
"Do you miss it?" Emma asked. She was deep enough she might as well go all the way, and although she all but knew the answer already, she wanted to hear it. She wanted to know her memories were actual memories. She wanted some kind of solid ground to stand on. "Us?"
"Emma..." Regina sighed.
"Considering you told me our relationship was fake just to piss off Hook, I'd say it's a valid question." She couldn't quite hold back the sharp edge in her voice. Maybe she still hadn't quite gotten it all out of her system.
Again, Regina turned around to face her. "Fine. Yes, I miss it. Us. If you already remember some of it, you know I wasn't pretending." Then her expression hardened. "But there is a lot more to fixing things between us than just not hating each other and having a long talk. A lot of things happened during that month. We both did a lot of things."
"It's never easy between the two of us, Regina." She shrugged. "That has never stopped us before."
"I suppose not."
An awkward silence filled the room. Both of them just stood there, staring at nothing particular.
"So, are you ready to go?" Emma said, hoping her forced casualness didn't come through. She had to actively keep herself from nervously bouncing on her feet as she waited in the doorway.
"I just need to finish the dishes."
"Can't you just magic them away?"
"I'm almost done."
Leaning against the door frame, Emma shoved her hands down her pockets and tried to calm down. There was nothing to be worried about, no reason for her to be this jittery.
Although, was that really true? She could tell something was up – not particularly surprising, either – but she couldn't figure out what it was and Regina had been avoiding her all morning, including even physically keeping her back to Emma for the better part of fifteen minutes now.
Her fingers brushed against the little box in her pocket and she shifted uncomfortably against the door frame. She probably shouldn't have brought it; what was she even going to do with it? Curling her fingers up, she did her best to push it out of her mind.
Finally, the sound of pouring water stopped and Regina turned around.
"There, all done." Regina smiled and hung up her apron. "Let's go."
Something warm against her cheek pulled Emma back to the present, and she blinked in confusion. She was still in the kitchen, but now Regina was right in front of her, eyes wide and talking to her. It took a few more moments for Emma to realize that the warmth against her cheek was Regina's hand.
"Uh," Emma tried, failing to come up with anything meaningful to say.
Pulling her hand away as if it had been burnt, Regina quickly took a step back and crossed her arms. "You had another of your flashbacks, didn't you?" Her frown deepened. "You just... sat there. Didn't react to anything I did."
"Yeah, that's usually how it is. I was here, in the kitchen, and we were about to go meet Snow and David."
Regina's eyes widened even further and she stiffened, wrapping her arms tighter. "I see."
"So it was that time? The last one, before..." She ended her sentence with a vague gesture.
"We only had lunch with them once," Regina said quietly.
"Well, I didn't really learn anything new, so you don't have to worry about it."
Regina didn't even attempt a smile.
"I should probably get going now, thought," Emma said before the silence had time to get awkward again. She slid off the stool and headed for the door. "Tell Henry I said hi."
"Of course."
Emma could still feel the ghost of Regina's hand against her cheek as she walked off the porch to her car.