Chapter 35: Silver Frost
The blonde started sobbing as she remembered all the times she had yelled at Artz, demanding the truth, wanting answers and the ginger simply smiled and went full on sass...even quoting Edward Cullen's lines from Twilight during his impromptu date with Bella. The fact that both Bella and Emma's last name was Swan...well poetic justice or just some serious irony...probably both.
The blonde savior remembered when the things the ginger had been telling her turned out to be true. How eery it had been when the red head had basically picked apart her personality, her mask, and her feelings. At the time, she had been scared so she lashed out, actually slapping the ginger...but looking back she could see what Artz was trying to do.
The Crimson haired woman was nothing if not kind, commonly putting herself in the line of fire just to help someone even if they hated her for it and that was what she had been doing. She was forcing Emma to confront herself, to acknowledge her flaws and mistakes, her fears and doubts, but to also accept what made her strong, powerful...a force of nature was what she had called her.
She would always say that she put the Humanoid Typhoon to shame, meanwhile Artz made The Oncoming Storm look like a water sprinkler. When the red head went full out, there was no force in creation that could stop her. It had happened only a few times and that was only because it scared the living daylights out of her.
The ginger was terrified by how dark, how furious she had become during those times. Apparently, the red head had never known what hatred felt like and very rarely lost her temper with two very different results; the ice queen of logic, an emotionless persona generated when her rage had become too great for her to handle, essentially turning off her heart to contend with the problem.
Then there was the silver phoenix. This side of her had not actually appeared until she came to Storybrooke though she had been told that her eyes sometimes shifted to silver when she was mad. This state of fury was very different from its rational counterpart for it combined the power of emotion with Artz's god-like imagination.
This was a very dangerous combination. Artz normally resolved matters through diplomacy. Something she was quite good at...when people actually acknowledged her existence. When her eyes turn pure silver, glowing with a light from within and making them look like raging flames… thus the name silver phoenix… Everyone should run away, hide, barricade themselves somewhere, or just flee into the woods.
Two times… there were two times when the silver phoenix rose and both times involved Graham… well he was the reason behind her drive… the target… Regina Mills. At the time, Emma didn't know what had triggered the ginger's fury. It was only after the curse was broken that she found out the why of those times.
Artz had flat out laid into Regina before Graham had broken up with the mayor… thus the reason why the evil queen completely loathed the fiery red head… forcing her to confront herself… which resulted in the mayor bashing the ginger over the head… with what she did not know, but it had been enough to knock Artz out cold and leaving a gash across the ginger's right eye; from above the eye brow, across the eye lid, to just below the upper cheek bone.
It was a fucking miracle that Artz's right eye was undamaged, but when the gash was healed, there was a scar...not overly apparent but a slight line of barely raised skin from where it had healed over. It was something the ginger wore proudly because by pissing the evil queen off, it had distracted her from Graham and Emma, long enough to find the heart and hide it away.
The second time the silver phoenix rose was about two weeks later when Regina nearly hit the ex sheriff with her car. Now this actually had been a genuine accident. Someone had cut the break lines in the mayor's car...the fact that she nearly killed Graham was entirely circumstantial but that did not stop Artz.
Even with one eye covered with gauze and an eye patch, she was still fucking terrifying. She actually grabbed the mayor and threw her into several objects, a few walls, and eventually the floor where she was holding one arm at an unhealthy angle while pinning the other under the brunette. She then placed one foot on Regina's back and the other against her neck.
No one could get through to Artz, not even Henry. Hell she wouldn't even listen to Mr. Gold and that man was practically like a father to her, but then something happened that the blonde couldn't comprehend. The temperature in the hallway where they were dropped over twenty degrees, going from the standard seventy four degrees to a little under fifty degrees.
Everyone was shivering and shaking from the cold except Artz who appeared to be coming out of a daze, her left eye blinking rapidly. She suddenly released Mayor Mills who wisely stayed on the floor and the silver flowed back into sapphire. She still remembered the look on the ginger's face...she had been appalled by what she had done, tears flowing from her uncovered eye.
The Crimson haired woman bolted away and out of sight. The temperature slowly raised back up to the normal setting and it was Regina that made the first move and absolutely shocking the blonde and the ex sheriff...how...with two words barely spoken above a whisper...I'm sorry. She then limped away, shooing the doctors and nurses away from trying to help her.
The blonde savior then searched all over town for the Crimson haired woman becoming more and more worried as her search became longer and longer. She finally took a break and entered her son's favorite ice cream shop. The owner, Ingrid, greeted her warmly and Emma didn't know why but she just spilled everything out about the whole clusterfuck of a situation.
When finished, the older blonde gave her a kind smile and glanced down behind the counter. She then looked back at Emma and it clicked. As quietly as she could, the savior walked around the counter and spotted the red head curled underneath the counter on some kind of small futon and covered with a blanket.
The Crimson haired woman was sound asleep but the blonde savior saw the tear tracks that had dried on her face and it broke her heart. She looked back up at Ingrid who explained that Artz was her daughter, unofficially adopted of course, but it didn't change how they felt about one another.
The older woman revealed that the ginger spent a great deal of time here and if she wasn't here then she was at the pawn shop. Emma told her the details of what happened at the hospital and Ingrid had smiled. Due to Artz's near constant environment, the ice cream shop, the cold acted as a trigger of sorts which explained why the ginger had suddenly calmed down.
The frigid cold temperature was associated with safety, serenity, and ironically warmth… the love of a mother. It still didn't explain how it had dropped over twenty degrees in less than two minutes but Emma was relieved. The knowledge that despite how everybody else had treated her, Artz had found a family; Ingrid, Gold...even Graham and Regina to a certain extent...and herself.
Looking back at those times, it made her feel so guilty because most of the time, Emma barely remembered that the ginger existed on most days and even when she did, about seventy percent of the time, she was either using her as a sounding board or pumping her for information.
So few were the times when her feelings were genuine and she was ashamed. She had said that Artz was her Doctor, acknowledging her as family and now, in her heart, that was true but their so called friendship was shallow, fake, a masked manipulation...the blonde wrapped her arms around the silent pirate, letting the scent of the Sea calm her but it didn't change the past.
