"Stop Regina, we have to stop."
Regina froze immediately, then, somewhat awkwardly due to the spatial constraints of the minivan, sat up. She surveyed her friend, flushed and dishevelled, eyes darting anywhere but Regina's face.
"I… I can't believe I'm saying this, but we can't… this is wrong, Regina."
Regina took a deep, shuddering breath.
"You're right. We're married," she said quietly as she clambered back to the passenger seat. Emma marvelled at how elegantly she executed the maneuver.
"That's not why I think it's wrong," Emma said. "I mean, it is a little, but it's not what I was thinking about just now."
Regina indicated with her eyebrow that Emma should elaborate.
"It's wrong because we're in my car, grinding like a couple of teenagers. You deserve so much better than a quickie in a parking lot."
Regina tried to hide her surprise. She'd thought Emma had come to her senses, and in her mind she had already started rationalising. She had children, a husband, a nice house, a good life. It would be utterly illogical to throw all that away.
But Emma didn't seem to be going down that road. She appeared to have an entirely different trajectory in mind, and Regina was inclined to follow her, logic be damned.
"So, now what?" Regina asked. Her car was still parked in central Boston, outside a hipster coffee shop.
Emma considered their options, focusing on the next few hours rather than anything else.
"Hey, do you think the studio's still there?" she asked suddenly.
The 'studio' to which Emma referred was a largely unused storage room on the top floor of their high school building, which Regina had been allowed to use for her art projects. It had a convenient closet for developing photos, and floor to ceiling windows which provided natural light for shoots. While artificial light was easier to control, Regina had always preferred sunlight
"I would imagine the room is still there. You'd be more familiar with any changes - your son attends the school."
"He's 15, Gina, it's not like I walk in with him. But there's a good chance… Would you like to go and find out?"
And that was how Emma found herself driving right back into Storybrooke on her day off. She took back roads once they were in the town, avoiding small town busybodies just as she was avoiding thinking about the fluttering of her heart.
They spoke very little on the journey. Regina's thoughts were divided between wondering what would have happened in the parking lot if Emma hadn't stopped it, and reminiscing about moments they'd shared in the studio nearly twenty years ago. Did Emma want to go there because she wanted to replicate them, or because she wanted to (metaphorically) put them to bed? Was there a way they could do both?
"Look to your left, down a little, perfect," Regina murmured, squinting through the viewfinder of her camera.
Emma squared her shoulders against her anxiety. She hated being on camera, but this was for Regina. For Regina, she could do it. She felt her cheeks reddening and bit the inside of her cheek.
"Are you good? You look uncomfortable."
Through that lens, Regina noticed everything.
"I'm fine," Emma lied. "Just a little warm."
She regretted the lie almost immediately, because Regina's response was obvious and entirely unwanted.
"Take the sweater off, then."
Knowing she'd seem ridiculous if she said no, Emma wriggled out of the sweater, which was Regina's, something long and black and stylish which Emma immediately missed hiding underneath.
"You have such a great profile," Regina said, looking her up and down appreciatively.
Emma took a deep breath. She liked that Regina was looking at her. But there was a reason they called it taking pictures. Because they took something of her, captured it, never gave it back. She gazed blankly out of the window, willing the tears back into their ducts as she thought about the photographers who'd come when she'd been in children's homes as a small child.
"Smile," they'd demanded. Abandoned, broken, Emma hadn't had anything to smile about. So her pictures had shown the same desolation Regina's showed now, and Emma felt exposed against her will, her feelings on show on a wall or in a file for everyone to see.
The worst part was, Regina would be so nice about it if Emma explained. Emma knew it. If she said she didn't like being photographed, there would be no questions, no issue, and Regina would find someone else. But the way she'd asked had been so kind, so complimentary, and spending time with Regina was Emma's favourite thing to do, so Emma had said yes, which meant that not only was she hurting, she had chosen to hurt like this. She was naked, exposed, in pain, and she had consented. She was doing nothing to stop it. Just like she'd done nothing to stop-
Regina gasped.
"Emma, I… This isn't what I was going for, but you look… Let me go develop this."
Regina hurried away to the closet which she used as a darkroom and left Emma standing against the white sheet they were using as a backdrop. When Regina was gone, Emma thought the tears would fall, but they didn't. Her throat ached, her nose itched, she felt a scream building in her chest, but nothing came out.
She sat down on the floor, thinking, wishing she wasn't.
In the darkroom, Regina hurried about her work, sloshing the picture in the developing liquid as if that would make it come out more quickly. Finally, the image started to appear, and Regina was transfixed, again, by the depth of feeling it showed. When it was ready to dry, she pegged it on the line and went back out, wanting to thank Emma, wanting to congratulate her - this picture would be the centre of her final portfolio, and she was going to ace it.
She found Emma curled up in a ball on the floor, rocking back and forth. She stopped as soon as she saw Regina, stumbling awkwardly to her feet.
"What happened?" Regina said quietly. She knew Emma had demons, but a few minutes ago they'd been in the zone, making artistic magic. What could have happened between then and now?
Emma wanted to tell her. Regina Mills was the only person she'd ever felt even close to trusting. But the words wouldn't come.
"I…" she stammered, trying to say something, anything, to make sense of this to her friend.
"Did I do something?" Regina asked. She knew she could be pretty one track when she was taking photographs, acutely aware of some things, but utterly oblivious to others.
"I… I started feeling… I feel like the pictures take something from me," Emma stammered.
Regina thought of the image hanging in her darkroom. She hadn't thought it would be possible to capture the desperate loneliness, the agony of isolation she felt when she was forced to put on the facade of a well adjusted seventeen year old. But it had been right there, in Emma's eyes, her shoulders, the way the light and shadows fell, down to the position of her fingers. Until that picture, Regina's project as described to her art teacher had been, "Something to do with being a teenager, I guess." But that picture tied it all together. Under the mask.
It occurred to her that maybe Emma wasn't comfortable with being unmasked to that extent.
"It was just modelling, acting," Regina said uncertainly. "It's beautiful, so real and raw and stripped, but-"
"I wasn't acting," Emma choked. "I took off your sweater and I felt, what did you say, stripped. I had nothing, and I was looking out of the window, and suddenly I was back in the foster home where the… Where he… and the next day this photographer came and yelled at me because I didn't smile and I was there, Regina, I was there, and then you gasped and went into the darkroom and I was just there all by myself."
Regina digested the information.
"When he what?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.
"He, you know…" Emma gestured vaguely to her body by way of explanation. "And ever since then I've hated people taking pictures of me. It feels like they're taking something, like what… like what he took."
Another pause.
"And you feel like that about every picture?"
Tensing her shoulders even tighter, Emma nodded. Regina pursed her lips, then reached out and took Emma's hand, leading her to the darkroom. She opened the door, wide.
"Hey, no, you'll ruin the film," Emma protested.
Regina looked around the room. It was covered with pictures of Emma, Emma posing, Emma candid, Emma, she realised, Emma in pain, every single one. Suddenly, she hated them, hated all of them, no matter how good a portfolio they made.
She started with the picture she'd just developed, tearing it down from the line. Her fingers smudged the still-wet ink. She handed it to Emma.
"I apologise," Regina said, hiding her shame with formality. "This is yours. I had no right to take it. And I won't, ever again."
Emma held the picture, hands trembling. It showed her seventeen year old frame, but she saw a child ten years younger. She looked up at Regina. Her face was hard with determination, but her eyes burned with affection.
"I don't know what to do with it," Emma confessed.
Regina looked right into her. "Follow your heart," she said, far more gently than Emma had expected.
Emma looked at the picture again, letting the pain, the anger, the hurt, burn inside her chest. She gripped it so tightly her knuckles went white, then violently tore it in half.
Regina let out a single, strangled sob.
"I'm so sorry," Emma said immediately. "Your project, all your work… This is enough, this picture is enough. I don't mind the others."
"Don't you dare lie to me, Emma Swan," Regina sobbed, tears falling freely from her eyes. "This," she motioned to her tear stained face, "is not for my project, you idiot." She reached for another picture herself and ripped it to shreds. She took another, then another.
Emma watched her, transfixed by the passion, the power, and the pain Regina seemed to be feeling. It was hypnotic, and soon Emma was tearing down pictures too.
When all the prints were destroyed, Regina grabbed a sealed black container.
"What's that?" Emma asked.
"The negatives," Regina said. She kicked open the door and marched across to the window. Emma looked at her. She was furious, still crying, and unstoppable.
Regina yanked open the box.
"Come here," she ordered.
Emma went to stand beside her.
"Help me?" Regina asked.
Emma nodded. Emma held the top of the reel, and Regina grabbed the end and pulled, stretching out the reel, exposing it all to sunlight until all the pictures were erased.
When they'd repeated this for every reel, Regina sat, exhausted, on the floor. Months of work, months, all gone in a matter of minutes.
She felt Emma sit beside her.
"You are a magnificent human being, Regina Mills," Emma whispered.
"It was the right thing to do," Regina said.
"Yeah, but not many people would've done it."
"What are you gonna do for your portfolio now?" Emma asked.
Regina smiled wryly at her. "Fail?"
"Bullshit. We'll figure something out."
"You don't have to…" Regina trailed off, trying to find the right words. "You don't have to do things for me, things you don't want to do, just because we're friends."
Emma nodded. She understood. And she would try. But she couldn't help pointing out Regina's hypocrisy. "You just did something you didn't want to do. For me."
Regina smiled, real this time, and shook her head. "No, Emma," she said. "What we just did… I wanted to do it. I promise. I wanted to do it more than I've ever wanted, well, not anything, but close."
They were silent for a long time after that.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Emma asked, shaking Regina back to the present. She'd stopped the car, they were parked on a side street near the school.
"I was thinking about when we were seventeen, when we destroyed my portfolio," Regina admitted.
Emma took a moment to consider the memory. "That was a pivotal moment for me," she said. "But I always wondered something, after something you said."
"Oh?"
"It was after we'd trashed everything and we were sitting looking out of the window. I'd been trying to say that you'd done something you didn't want to do, and you said no, you'd wanted to. That was the pivotal part. But the way you said it, you said, you'd wanted to do it, not more than anything, but close. And I always wanted to ask you, what did you want, more than anything?"
Regina remembered her relief twenty years ago, when Emma hadn't asked that. Still. Things were different now.
"I wanted… I wanted you," Regina admitted.
Emma waggled her eyebrows. "You mean, sex?"
Regina blushed, but protested. "No. I mean, yes, in a way, but it wasn't like that. I wanted a family, I wanted closeness, I wanted to have you, forever, to know that we could always be together, always be safe. I wanted to hold you, to show you that there could be good in the world. I wanted to…" she frowned, unable to say what she had realised she meant. I wanted to love you.
Emma smiled, opening the door of the car. "Well, we pretty much did all that. Apart from the sex. But the rest, we have, right?"
Regina got out, thinking. Emma was right. They had a lot. They had stability, they had closeness, they were both secure in their lives, with their families. And they'd always had each other, no matter what. Perhaps meeting their desires would only complicate things. Perhaps, as Emma had suggested in the parking lot, they were better than that. They didn't need to debase themselves, they didn't need to act on their carnal desires. They had been happy as friends for a long time. There was no reason that their friendship shouldn't continue as it had always been.
But it's never been as it should be, an angry, determined voice shouted from the back of her mind.
Regina ignored it and watched Emma instead, who had thrown her deplorable red leather jacket over the top of the fence which surrounded the high school sports field. Emma jumped up, balanced on top of the jacket, and held out a hand to Regina. "Come on."
"This is trespassing," Regina protested.
"I'm a deputy," Emma grinned, jerking the hip where her badge was clipped to her jeans. "Anyone asks, we heard a suspicious noise, okay?"
Regina rolled her eyes, but reached for the hand.
A/N: I know, it's been years. But I recieved a message about this story in July 2020, and considering it a matter of great importance, 6 months later, I replied - Vanilla97, this is for you. If you want more, inspire me, and let me know in the reviews!