Chapter twenty-nine

"Exactly what did she say?" Neal asked again.

Being convinced that Kronos was their only chance to really end Zelena's claim to the throne, he was sure that there must be some hidden meaning to something that came from his mother's mouth.

Unfortunately, the 'Hera' thing seemed to be the only utterance even remotely open to interpretation and he had no idea what it could mean so there simply had to be something else, even if Emma had recounted what happened at least three times since they started walking back through Tartarus.

She didn't know what the next step in finding another way was, but not being in the depths of hell seemed like a good first step; unfortunately, Poseidon wasn't helping with her need to figure out what their next action should be.

For someone who was so afraid of his mother, he had been so certain that the Titan would offer them real help.

Now that she had officially met her mother-in-law, Emma would have to say that hope was wholly unfounded.

With the sound of Phoebus's whispers in her mind, they passed through the finally gate, cutting it off and Emma replied, "she wouldn't tell me anything unless I released her chains."

Neal sighed deeply and crossed the distance to place his hand against the exit.

Before he released the door, he looked over his shoulder at the princess.

Her tunic was dirty and she was clearly exhausted, but somehow still determined.

Even if Kronos hadn't helped in the slightest, he almost believed that she would actually find another way.

That determined expression turned to a mix of confusion and annoyance when she saw that he wasn't moving.

Before she could ask what he was doing, Neal turned back to release the door and stepped out into the Underworld.

Emma followed behind him and squinted as the darkness turned into something approximating twilight.

She didn't get a chance to enjoy the momentary relief of returning to her home though because a young woman was on her as soon as she crossed the threshold.

"My lady," she breathed out but her eyes widened when she saw who was next to her and she bowed deeply, "and Lord Poseidon."

Neal quirked an eyebrow and looked over to Emma who finally registered that this was one of the demon servants from the palace.

She rolled her eyes at Neal's clear distaste and asked, "is something wrong, Penelope?"

Penelope turned her gaze back up and rushed out, "Graham sent me to find you…two days ago…it's Dawn, my lady…she's back but she's injured."

"Two days?" Emma repeated, incredulously scowling at her companion.

"Time works differently in Tartarus," Neal confirmed, as if it were no big deal.

Emma blew out a loud huff through her nose.

It felt like something the should have mentioned before launching into this plan, especially now that she knew that it didn't work anyway.

Arguing about the value of time with a god seemed an unproductive task though, so she just returned her attention back to the terrified demon.

"Injured how?" Emma asked.

"She has been stabbed with some blade, my lady," Penelope replied, "Graham has tried everything he can to help but nothing is working."

This was all the information that the princess needed.

White smoke encircled the group to take them to her stepdaughter.

S

Rationally, Graham understood that time moved differently in Tartarus, but with each tortured breath that Dawn took, he couldn't help but silently curse Kronos for being so many gates down in hell.

Frankly, with the green tint to the wound that he had been obsessively cleaning since he had placed the demi-goddess to her bed, he was shocked that she was even breathing at all still.

Then again, if it was Ares who did this as he suspected, making her suffer was definitely in his wheelhouse.

Apparently, there was no honour in war, at least not anymore.

Several times an hour, he considered that he should go to Tartarus himself and drag Emma away from Kronos so that she could magically heal her stepdaughter but each time he decided against it.

Strangely, it wasn't out of fear that he stayed though.

If he had followed through with this plan, he wasn't entirely sure how long he would be gone and he didn't want to pull Emma along to find that Dawn had already passed on.

That thought was perhaps even more terrifying than anything that he had ever been nervous about in the past, not even just because Regina would definitely find a way to kill him if she found out that he hadn't protected her daughter.

Dawn took in a particularly wheezing breath and Graham pulled his seat closer to the bed and squeezed her hand until she managed to breathe relatively better, for a moment at least.

He brought her knuckles to his lips and muttered, "come on, Emma."

As if he actually summoned her, smoke billowed around the chamber, revealing Poseidon, Emma and Penelope.

Emma fell down to her knees next to the bed, Penelope leaned forward to check on Dawn's condition and Neal just rolled his eyes and went over to lean against the wall, suddenly interested in the patterns on his trident.

He wanted to say that a mortal was not important enough to derail their plan and he might have said it if they actually had a plan in place.

Even if that were the case, though, he could practically see Emma's disapproving stare if he said those words, it would probably be very similar to Regina's face if she was aware that he was thinking about how unimportant her daughter was.

Emma ignored whatever the god was doing and turned to Graham who had released Dawn's hand and was looking at his friend with so much gratitude that he could hardly hold it in.

Emma placed her hand onto her stepdaughter's head and pulled it back with a sigh when she felt the inferno underneath her palm.

"What happened?" Emma asked, when it became clear that Dawn was firmly unconscious and wouldn't be answering any of her questions.

Graham shook his head and replied hoarsely, "she appeared in red smoke so I have assume that it was Ares?"

Emma nodded and swallowed hard before she leaned back on her elbows, which were resting on the mattress as she opened he palm and the leather bound wedding gift appeared upon it. Graham didn't react at all, keeping his eyes on Dawn as Emma found the right page and the correct spell appeared on it.

Her eyes ran over it a few times before she snapped the book shut and it disappeared in a white cloud the moment that the pages met with a snap.

"I can heal her wound," Emma confirmed and Graham shot to his feet and gestured for Emma to take his seat.

The moment she did, she leaned over the wound that was covered by an already soiled bandage that had become a mix of crimson and green even though Graham had changed it only thirty minutes ago.

The sickly colour made Emma want to leave it alone, but that wasn't really an option, so she pulled it aside to reveal that it was just as deep as she feared.

It would definitely leave a scar akin to the one that Ares had given her.

As instructed by the book, Emma held her hand over the gash and muttered the words with her eyes scrunched together.

Penelope craned her neck to see, Graham watched intently and Neal lightly tapped his head against the chamber wall before it lolled to the side.

Emma finished the enchantation that she sincerely wished she had read and recited correctly.

Reluctantly, she placed her hand down and opened her eyes to see that Dawn's olive skin had in fact began to heal itself and she smiled up at Graham who fell to his knees and placed his hand onto the Demi-goddess's damp hair.

"Is it working?" Graham asked, relief clear in the three words and Emma leaned forward to inspect her magical handiwork.

"I…I'm not sure," she admitted.

From what she understood in what she read, the wound should have just healed, leaving a scar to prove that it happened, but it definitely wasn't responding exactly as it was supposed to.

The wound had shrunk but the green tinge was still there and then there were the other symptoms.

Her breathing seemed to come a little easier, but it was still not as it should be.

Her face had un-scrunched, but there were still beads of sweat running down her temple.

There was also no sign that she was leaving unconsciousness, even if she was now resting more comfortably than when she arrived.

It was progress but definitely not what Graham had imagined when he thought about what would happen when Emma finally made an appearance.

Graham picked up on the worry and he asked, desperately and pleadingly, "is there anything else you can do?"

Emma was about to open her palm to recall Hecate's gift but the attempt was interrupted by a new voice:

"I'm afraid there is nothing in that book that will help you."

Emma and Graham shot to their feet at the same time as all eyes fell onto a young, nervous woman stood at the door to the chamber.

She was clutching the door tightly, but appeared to be forcing herself to remain there in spite of a clear desire to run away.

Poseidon finally removed his back from the wall.

His mouth hung open when he registered that his sister had been the one to make the interruption.

"Marian?" Neal asked, taking a step closer but he faltered when she just gripped the door more tightly.

Emma glanced between them and repeated, "Marian?"

Poseidon didn't take his eyes from his older sibling as he replied, "Hestia."

"I do not know what that means," Emma said, frustration taking hold of every muscle in her body.

Marian ran her tongue over her lips and released the door so that she could close it behind her and make eye contact with her sister-in-law.

"I am the oldest of Kronos's children, Zelena in-prisioned me because I saw her take what was not hers," Marian explained.

"All this time," Neal said with a heavy sigh before a thought occurred to him and he asked, "how did you escape?"

"Dawn," Hestia replied.

When she realised that Dawn had succeeded in preventing the gate from locking completely, she had been too afraid to actually do anything about it. Hecate's unwillingness to move didn't help. However, when she saw that her saviour could not be healed, she knew that she had no choice but to come and help.

There was also the fact that it was so pathetic to spend two days in an open prison cell, even if the outside world had become so different over her forced absence.

Things fell into place for Emma though and she asked, "Zelena in-prisoned Dawn with you?"

"And with Hecate, but she refuses to leave until her daughter is safe," Marian added.

Emma briefly placed her fingers to her temple as she let out the strongest sigh yet.

Was there no limit to what Zelena would do to mess with her sister? Lily had hardly done anything to deserve becoming involved in this mess.

She had more questions about what exactly Zelena had done, but she had a priority to focus on here.

Thankfully, Neal seemed too shell-shocked to say anything, so Emma asked, "why can't I heal Dawn?"

"As you could probably guess the blade Ares used was poisoned, it is designed to cause a slow painful death and there is no antidote for this," Hestia explained.

Emma drew her mouth into a thin line.

Her first instinct was that she wanted to go and punch Ares squarely in the face, but that would hardly give her an antidote that literally did not exist.

"So you're saying there's nothing we can do?" Emma asked, falling down against the back of the chair.

Hestia shook her head and replied, "no that's why I'm here, you can simply return her immortality and the wound will heal itself."

Graham perked up but Emma was still looking back sceptically.

"Well…go on then," Emma said, gesturing towards Dawn as she looked between the two Divine beings.

Poseidon had finally overcome his shock enough to respond, "we cannot undo another gods gift or curse. Zelena forced Artemis to remove her immortality, there is nothing any of us can do about that."

"What if we convinced Artemis to…" Graham began, but Hestia was already shaking her head.

"Artemis has too much to lose, but there is another way," Marian said, "an apple of the Hesperides will return what was taken from her."

"Then we'll go and get one," Graham replied and grabbed Emma's arm to pull her up, and she displayed no resistance to this.

"There's one more thing," Hestia interjected, cutting off the pairs' attempt to embark on a mission that they had no idea how to start, "this place is also the home to the stolen master bolt, you will need to retrieve it if you have any hope of returning Regina to her full strength."

"The master bolt," Neal sighed, understanding passing over his face. It had been so many thousands of years that he hadn't even considered that he had never seen Zelena wielding the weapon forged for the leader of the Olympians, "but how did Zelena move something that she couldn't touch?"

"She commanded the cyclopes to take the bolt to the Hesperides," Hestia said and her brother pinched the bridge of his nose.

"What are you talking about?" Emma asked, though she really wanted to ask why everything had to be so complicated with the gods! And why it meant that she had to deal with a kidnapped wife and a dying stepdaughter?! It hardly seemed fair.

"She's saying that we need to retrieve a bolt that only Regina can touch," Neal replied.

Emma was about to suggest that they could get the apple first and deal with this later once Dawn was out of the woods (as much as it pained her to leave Regina for any longer, she knew that her wife would want their first priority to be her daughter) however, another voice joined the unlikely ensemble:

"Perhaps you could recruit a cyclopes if they received a message from 'Zelena' that she wants the bolt to be moved."

All eyes in the chamber moved over to the corner of the room, where the owner of the voice had tucked himself away for the last few minutes to listen.

The man stepped forward, somehow both unsure of himself and determined at the same time.

Emma didn't get a chance to ask who the newcomer was because Neal said, sounding relieved for the first time in a while, "Hermes."

S

Emma yawned as she took another step along the yellow cobbles under her feet and she swung her hand back and forth, which was entwined with another.

Regina turned head to raise an eyebrow at her yawning wife, "is something wrong, dear?"

Emma finished her yawn and shook her head as she replied, "everything's fine it's just…how long is this road?"

Regina pulled Emma to a stop with a smirk on her face and said, "this is the yellow brick road, I thought you would be excited by it."

The princess shrugged and replied, "it's beautiful but…I've never heard of it."

"You've never read the Wizard of Oz?" Regina asked and when Emma shook her head, she added, "perhaps we should come back after you've read it?"

The younger woman nodded and stepped closer to the goddess as she replied, "what's it about?"

"Well…it's been some time since I read it myself, all I really remember is that one of the characters reminded me of Zelena."

Regina didn't look at her as she said this off-handedly as she was preparing to summon smoke to take them back to the Underworld where they could decide where to go next, however, Emma took her hand back and looked back with a tilted head and the goddess sighed deeply.

Even if she enjoyed calling her sister the Wicked Witch of the West, she wasn't sure that satisfaction was worth the ensuing conversation.

Since the tournament, Regina had suspected that her wife was looking for an opening to bring up Zelena and there was no way that she was going to pass up Regina directly saying her sister's name.

Regina scratched her neck and said, "I know what you're about to say Emma and I would really rather not talk about my sister."

Emma bit the inside of her cheek.

She could simply drop the subject and return to the Underworld so that she could read the Wizard of Oz and try and figure out which character could be Zelena.

However, there was one burning question that Regina had kind of answered in the past, but now that Emma knew more about the current Zeus, she kind of wanted to press for more information.

"Can I ask one question before we leave?" Emma asked and took Regina's hand back into her own.

Regina was exasperated but still replied, "of course, Emma."

"If you had known from the beginning that Zelena had stolen your title, would you have tried to reclaim it?"

Regina took a moment to consider this before and said, "perhaps."

"So you could have stayed with Persephone?" Emma replied staring at their joined fingers.

Despite the subject, Regina couldn't help but smile at the younger woman.

She was so adorably jealous.

Regina reached up with her free hand so that she could tilt her wife's face back up as she said softly, "but if I had known at the time what was to come I would happily have taken the title of Hades," Emma's face split into a grin as she moved yet closer to Regina who continued, "besides, it was never the title that concerned me, all I ever wanted was to right my mother's wrongs and well…I suppose that Zelena is not as bad as she was. And the Olympians would not follow me now, anyway, so it does not really matter anymore."

Emma reached up and placed her palm against the goddess's face who leaned into the touch.

She truly did not care whether Regina was Hades or Zeus, but if there was any hint that her wife would be happier in the role that she was always supposed to have, then Emma would have gladly done anything to help with that.

However, she had decided that Regina's words proved that she really was not interested in any of the Olympian politics.

"If I had the choice, I wouldn't change anything either," Emma replied, figuring that Regina would rather stay on the topic rather than on the 'title' business.

Regina's smile matched her wife's as she leaned into a languid kiss and smoke actually surrounded them this time, to take them home.

Walking up a mountain with the messenger of the gods, Emma couldn't help but think that there was perhaps one thing that she would change about her marriage to Regina.

If the woman was always supposed to be Hades, then at least they could have spent their marriage together without Zelena's insane jealousy following them everywhere they went. Always lurking over them, ready to ruin everything just when they were at their happiest.

This did lead her to wonder though, was it the qualities about Regina that made her Zeus the things she loved about her the most?

Her kindness and compassion, the things that Zelena sorely missed.

If the flashback that Kronos showed her was any indication as well, the version of Regina who had recently defeated the Titans was certainly never supposed to have her seat of power in the Underworld.

Thousands of years in isolation may have taken away that spark of power that made her so suited to that armour but she would always be closer to what Olympus needed than Zelena could ever be.

Surely it was selfish to wish that her wife could remain Hades just to avoid a fight and because she wanted time with Regina to herself for a while?

She and Hermes had walked in silence as she thought all of this over towards the forge atop the mountain with smoke billowing out of it.

The silence seemed to become too much for Hermes, who couldn't stop thinking about Regina and what that bird was for and he said, "after I deliver the message, I can take you to your wife."

This firmly took hold of Emma's attention.

She hadn't really considered why it was that Hermes had agreed to help with this, it hadn't seemed important since he was offering a solution to an impossible situation, but it made sense that it had been Regina who had sent him.

And that meant that he knew where she was and exactly what kind of perverse 'punishment' Zelena was inflicting upon her for her imagined crimes.

Emma very nearly kept quiet, because she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to know the answer, but the words still escaped her mouth in spite of this reluctance, "where is she? What is Zelena…"

She trailed off but Hermes understood what she was asking, so he replied, "she has been chained in the ruins of Mount Othrys, I don't know exactly what Zeus is…doing, but there was an eagle…have you heard of Prometheus?"

Emma stopped walking, her face paling significantly.

Hermes also came to a stop, from the pinch in her face, he knew that she was aware of the Titan's face.

"For immortals…organs grow back," Hermes said, trying his best to sound comforting.

He failed miserably.

Regina must be in unbelievable amounts of pain and it had already been two days, so that meant that it had happened twice?

If only she hadn't wasted so much time on a fruitless endeavour into Tartarus, then Regina wouldn't have been in pain for so long.

It didn't help that they still had so much to do before they could release her.

"I can take you to see her if you want?" Hermes asked tentatively.

Emma cleared her throat, stopping herself from imagining Regina in pure agony and she started walking again, towards her goal.

"Not until Dawn is safe," Emma replied, staring straight ahead as she mentally added, not until I have found another way,

Hermes followed her without any further questions.