Author's note: this story was written back in late 2014 but somehow, it was left unattended in a hard drive and in an email inbox just there, gathering dust. Life being what it is, it never got around to being betaed, so, apologies- profuse, heartfelt apologies for all the mistakes you are about to find. Alas, I find it hard to self edit.
Also, because this is important, I blame m sister for this: we were browsing through my old bookshelves at home and she found, hidden behind all the nicely academic and high brow tittles a bunch of Mills and Boon (if you don't know what that is, good for you, don't go looking. If you do, well... it happens in the best families, you know?) So the brat issued a challenge on whether or not I could write such a story about our two ladies being them the rules that there had to be long lost loves, misunderstandings and jealousy... you know, the staple of good literature.
What could ever go wrong?
Chapter 1
Fact: The bartender was a moron and his tool was doing all the thinking for him.
Fact: The bartender was not blind. If she had to choose between herself and the Kerry Washington lookalike the bartender was focusing on, she would definitely choose the Kerry lookalike too. She was drop dead gorgeous.
Fact: Emma was anxious, rattled, she needed a drink, and she needed it fast.
Emma set her phone on the shinny counter and discretely waved her fingers. A brief pulse of magic warmed her and presto! Tool bartender walked away from Kerry Washington and focused on her. Got her a beer on the house too while she was at it. It made her feel marginally better.
Also a fact: It was going to take more than one beer to ignore her mother's reasonable tone this time around. She sighed as she sloowly peeled the label of the beer bottle, slowly, painstakingly. The bartender, still under the harmless little spell was now showering her with attention and it was distracting and unwanted. She was brooding. She wanted time to brood. She liked her sulk uninterrupted. The Kerry Washington lookalike threw her a smile and motioned to get up from her chair and join her. Emma knew fairly well how it would go from here on in. And though at some other time she might be glad for the distraction, today… just no. She had too much on her mind: her mother and her dad. Regina. Regina alone filled it, took over her brain. She waved her fingers gently and the woman turned back to her drink. Sometimes she felt bad. She did. Magic was such a cop out.
"Nice. Living in civilisation hasn't spoiled you."
Emma's back went ramrod straight. Well, crap, her past had just caught up with her. "Ruby!"
Ruby Lucas slithered onto the stool next to Emma, a movement so fluid she could be made of water. "You were trying to hide."
"No…"
"Huh…" Ruby made a show of sniffing the air around Emma. Behind them, Kerry Washington looked on in excited interest. "That's why you apparently soaked in perfume for the last 24 hours. We both know you're not the chanel wearing type." She looked back to woman behind them, still keenly interested in Ruby's every sinuous movement. "You're doing your best to hide your scent from me… naughty!"
"It's not Chanel..."
"No, kid, it's not." The scrunch of Ruby's nose made it very clear her opinion on Emma's perfume choice. Then, she got distracted. She bumped Emma's shoulder snapping Emma out of her brood. "Is that Kerry Washington?" Because, of course, whenever life gave Emma lemons, Ruby would make Whiskey Sour.
"Sadly, no."
Ruby nodded sagely before waving at the woman behind her and doing something perfectly wicked with her tongue against her teeth and lips that made the woman squirm in her seat and stand to move towards them. Whiskey Sour every damned time. Oh no, you don't. You have somewhere else to be. Urgent. Emma subtly input the thought in the woman's head. The purpose was to get rid of Ruby not to showcase the delights of Boston and give her reasons to stick around.
"Hey!" Ruby complained while the other woman walked away from the bar in a rush and a fogy expression in her eyes. She drank from Emma's beer and oddly resigned, sat quietly in her stool. "You could have made her wait at a reasonable distance."
"She's not a puppy, Ruby. I'm sure she has better things to do."
"Well, she has now thanks to you… Spoil sport."
"Ruby! This is my day off. Spit it out. Or better yet, walk away."
"You know perfectly well what I'm here to say."
"And the reply is still the same. And that would be a No, fuck you very much."
"Emma, your mother needs you. Your dad. The shelter. They need help."
"Ruby, no one needs me in Storybrooke. I thought we had established, long ago, that I'm no saviour. This whole prophecy business was one huge misunderstanding. Besides… everybody sorts all of life's little dramas with a helping of magic. You know mine is… patchy at best. I'm sure someone else can see to the problem."
"Jesus, Emma, forget about the prophecy. You got your head so far up your anus you can't hear anything around you. Your parents need you. Not your stupid saviour ass, but you. Their daughter. Your parents need a reality check. Your mom needs a talking to and your dad needs help with the books if he even had any for that shelter of theirs. They could use a hand around the place, too, you know? Haven't you run out of world to see yet?"
"I haven't run out of memories of Storybrooke to want to voluntarily go back."
Ruby took it upon herself to finish peeling the label on Emma's beer bottle. "Was it really that bad?"
Emma snapped the bottle back and took a violent swig of her beer. "Yes." The bottle hit the bar with a thud that reverberated ominously through Emma's fingers.
"Emma, you are loved. Your mother is Snow Goddamned White, your dad is Prince Freaking Charming and you are a princess, for pity sake. You have magic in you! How many girls dream about that? What's so wrong with that?"
"Keep your voice down!" Emma admonished. "All I ever wanted was to have regular parents. The kind that are not royalty; the kind that don't speak to birds or run around with a sword in his hand at the drop of a hat. All I ever wanted was parents that would grow old. Tell me, Ruby, did my mom change at all since the day I was born?" Emma did not wait for the reply. She knew the answer like an old song: no. Time had not moved in Storybrooke. Not for anyone else but her. "Do you know what it felt like to be me? To be the kid that grew up? The only person that time touched? I was a freak! I had to change friends every year to keep up with the age gap. It was lonely."
"You had Regina."
"Don't!" Emma almost screamed. "Just don't! I'm normal here. I like it here. I like it that when a toaster breaks you have to buy a new one and that when a car breaks down you have to take it to the body shop. I like it that people hate their jobs and hate Mondays and no one breaks out in happy work songs. That's not natural."
"You are so full of it, Princess!" For a moment, Ruby's eyes went dangerously narrow reminding Emma that behind the sassy outfit was a truly formidable creature of the moon. "You sort all your little aggravations with magic. Your coffee is cold? Snap your fingers. The guy you're chasing got a head start? A handy pothole will trip him over. The bartender forgot about you? Wiggle your fingers… Isn't that the magic you despise so much? Bull. You're full of it."
"I'm no saviour, Ruby. Whatever their problem is, I guarantee I can't fix it."
"No, maybe not. But you're a daughter and your parents' animal shelter is in trouble. You need to come and help."
"I'll send some money." Emma peeled yet another strip of the bottle label.
"Money is not the issue, Emma." Ruby snatched the bottle in a way that said that Reasonable Ruby had left the building. "They are about to lose that stupid, money pit, shelter of theirs and your mother and father talk about nothing else but how you're going to come back and everything is going to be okay."
"Yeah? Well, then they better grow the hell up."
"Emma, they are heartbroken. You may not see it, you may not believe it but they are heartbroken. You've abandoned them."
Emma pushed her hair back viciously. "I'm just going to disappoint them again. I can't magic any solution for that."
"So you're just going to sit here and do it from a distance? Be a daughter and go home, Emma, give them a shoulder to cry on if that's what it comes to. And face up to Regina and what you left behind. Some stuff you can't sort with money."
"I'm not going... I can't go..."
"Take a holiday. Go see your mom. Go be a decent human being."
"I can't take a holiday now, Ruby!" Emma whined.
"I'm sure you can magic a good reason, Princess." Ruby stood with that fluid grace of hers and slapped a bill on the counter. "Your beer is on me. Just don't mess with Kerry Washington any more. I think I have a chance and I'd really like to get to know her better."
… … …
The beer she'd been craving all afternoon suddenly tasted like rusty metal after her conversation with Ruby. The pizza she ordered that night tasted like ash and she couldn't sleep. Unwilling to admit defeat so early in the game, she got up and settled in comfortably for a round at Assassins Creed. Shooting at things always made her feel better but this time around, her head was not in the game. She got her ass handed over to her by, probably, some pre-teen on-line and it smarted. And it didn't sort her problem.
Her avatar stood there on the screen, accusing her silently of being a bad daughter. "What are you lookin' at?" It was bad when her avatar turned on the accusing glare. It was really bad.
With the screen still on, she leaned back and closed her eyes. Deliberately, she controlled her breathing, deeps breaths, in and out. The urge to pack up and go there would pass. Just like the nausea.
It had to.
… … …
It was definitely an out of body experience. There she was in her flannel lounge pants, thick socks and oversized sweater, in the middle of Main Street looking at her younger self- she was some ten years old- looking thoroughly miserable. She remembered that day. She had run away from home only to find that there was no leaving Storybrooke. The town line was thin air but as insurmountable as a concrete wall. She hated it all. She hated the way they all looked at her as if she was the answer to each and every problem they had. It had been that way since the day she was born and the Evil Queen's curse had brought them all to this town.
She saw a familiar figure strutting down the empty street and recognised it immediately as much from her memory of that day as from all the memories that still made her knees wobble. Her younger self stood perfectly immobile in the middle of the fog rolling in from the Atlantic watching the Evil Queen turned mayor approach her. Her mother had told her many times to avoid the witch but she felt the rebel in her raise its head. She had stood there and waited. The Evil Queen had looked at her as if she had been a bug to be squashed. Emma had been thoroughly unimpressed by the glare in the brown eyes: the queen could not hurt her anymore than she could leave Storybrooke. The curse had trapped Emma in that town but had also covered her in a protective shield. The Queen could do nothing.
"You should be home, little bandit." The Mayor had taunted.
"And you should have cast a better curse." Ten year old Emma had riposted.
There had been something unreadable in the Mayor's face to Emma's ten year old self but that grown up Emma could interpret far better: a mix of anger and hate and fascination and longing. Young Emma had probably been the first person to ever dare the Mayor. Then again, she was the only one truly protected by the curse. Everything else had been a sort of hiatus for everyone, a status quo that neither the townsfolk nor the Queen could change.
"Oh?" The Mayor's lips formed a juicy red, impressively scary O.
"I hate this town. And your curse doesn't let anyone in or out." Emma replied unimpressed.
"I'm told that you're the one who will break it. Are you in a hurry to leave?" The Mayor asked closing her coat tighter around her form, suddenly chilled.
"Yeah! And then I'm gonna get out of here and you can keep your stupid town all to yourself."
"Why are you so desperate to leave?" The Queen queried, tilting her head to the side in keen interest.
"Because I want to see the world outside! There is a lot of world and I want to see it for myself. I want to be… normal."
The Mayor had taken a slight step back and taken in Emma's shape, skinny in her jeans and shirt, hair mussed and unruly, so childish in her white socks and mary janes.
Yes, grownup Emma thought, it was longing that she saw in Regina's face and all these years after the event, she would have sworn that it was a longing for that outside world that Emma spoke so freely of. The Mayor had walked away and Emma had stubbornly stood there in the middle of the street until her father had come charging in, riding Gofredo, the horse her mother spoke to every day, to save her as if she had been about to be devoured by a dragon.
… … …
Her avatar was still nodding sagely at her from the screen when she woke up. Emma had a sudden impulse to challenge it for a fist fight. She settled for switching off the game and screen and moving to the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. Viciously, she rubbed at her face trying to push away the dregs of the dream or whatever that had been but it was proving impossible. She hated remembering. She hated it with a passion. And yet, every memory seemed to be coming at her from a super frequency radio that she just could not tune out or switch off. She remembered growing up to be eighteen and her parents looking just about the same age as she was. She remembered magic lessons with the fairies and how poorly she had done at those, how she had become a disappointment for all those involved in her magical education. And most of all, she remembered how Regina was the only one not worshiping at her feet, praying for her to "come into her own". In the end, it was inevitable.
She had been carving out a reputation as a troublemaker, and one fine evening she had jumped Regina's garden fence with the firm intention of causing damage, some sort of payback for this inescapable prison the Queen had created for them.
She had walked in on Regina sitting in the moonlight under an apple tree, looking like one of those movie stars Emma so wanted to meet. Emma had been caught between childish impulse to lash out at the woman that had, effectively, created this hell for her from which she couldn't escape and something that started low grade in the pit of her belly, something more grown up, a sudden desire to kiss the woman, to wrap herself around her and not let go. She picked up the first thing she found- a ripe apple, wet from the night's dew- and aimed it at the mayor.
The apple froze mid air and, on command, exploded. Emma gasped and suddenly Regina materialised, looming over her. "You shouldn't be so reckless with your life, Princess."
"How did you…"
"You are not as stealthy as you think, dear."
"What are going to do?"
"Kill you, I think." The Evil Queen smirked at her as if she was trying to decide on the most appetising way to start dismembering Emma.
"You're lying." And they had this entente that meant neither lied to the other. It was all about the ugly truth. Always the truth. "You never lied to me until now. Why?" And that was a certainty in her bones, in her heart. The Mayor was not going to kill her. She looked like she might slap her silly or punch her in the face, but no, the killing was a lie.
"Queen's don't lie."
"I'd know if you're telling the truth. I always know when you're telling the truth. You're lying. "
"You're a child, princess. You're too innocent. Don't you know who I am? I am the Evil Queen. You should be afraid. You should be very afraid."
A little. She had been a little afraid. But the teenager that she was had taken it as a challenge. Emma was not afraid of anything. In the frisson of fear and excitement, she had decided was going to kiss the Mayor. Right there and then.
Her first kiss. Ever.
And it was good. Feisty and clumsy and wet and rushed, but so good.
It was the best thing ever, all tongue and teeth. All thundering heart. All of it both of them.
"I am not innocent!" She shot as she left the Mayor petrified in the middle of her darkened garden, a pulse of magic haloing out from her.
… … …
Shaking off the memories like a chill, Emma groaned into her hands and managed to spill the coffee she was still brooding over in the morning. Even thinking of Regina brought out the klutz in her. She couldn't go back. She just couldn't.
Which of course meant that she didn't pack more than an overnight bag into the bug and set out towards Storybrooke, Maine.
She was so fucked. She hoped the Kerry Washington lookalike would turn out to be a bunny boiler. Or at the very least, give Ruby the STD of a lifetime.