Chapter 11
"Please don't do this." I said softly, standing in between my father and Cora. This really isn't the family reunion I was expecting. I grumbled to myself, not so much afraid as I was annoyed. A part of me had expected that I would find an older couple, still imbued with the power magic that I had remembered, but tired of vengeance and adventure, parents who would be horrified to learn about what I had been doing for the last 22 years. I suspected that if I got the chance to tell them, they would be more proud than worried, especially in regards to Darquesse.
Cora began to stalk towards us, ignoring the blade I held on her. My father started speaking weakly.
"A vision told me about you." He said, though I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or to Cora. "Told me this day would come."
Cora waved her hand at me as she grew closer, and I felt her magic weave around me, trying to force me into the chair that Neal had occupied just moments earlier. I let it, the sword clattering to the ground, curious to see where she was going with this, but ready to stab her if she got too close to murdering my father. We'd just been reunited, I wasn't going to let her get in the way of us reconnecting.
"But it didn't tell me everything." He continued on, Cora staring hatefully down at him as he spoke. "Didn't tell me what I really wanted to know." Cora sat on the edge of the bed, eyes still on him, though they flickered to me for a moment as I feigned trying to escape the magical bonds she had placed on me, before flickering back to him.
"And what's that?" she asked, voice low and menacing. Dad watched her for a moment, considering.
"Did you ever love me?" he whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear, and think about the implications of him having a child with the daughter of the woman he loved. My stomach roiled, and I decided to put a pin in that thought before it developed any more. Cora, unaware of the new concerns that were popping up for me, leaned towards him.
"Why do you think I had to rip my own heart out?" she asked in return, reaching her hand out to brush his hair out of his face in a mockingly loving way. "You were my weakness. You are the only man I ever truly loved." My father breathed out, surprised at her admission. Her hand retracted, and, as she rose the blade over him, I tensed, ready to throw myself at her when she gasped in pain, arching her back and dropping the blade, which I swiftly scooped up, standing and backing several steps away.
My mother stood behind her, a look of utter fear on her face and a hand on her mothers back. I wasn't really sure what had just happened, looking to my father for explanation, but he was wholly focused on Cora and Regina. I noticed that he looked significantly better than he had only seconds before, and I turned back to my mother and grandmother as I tried to rationalize what exactly had just happened.
Cora stumbled back, her hand over her chest, and for a moment she looked stunned, before she looked up at Regina with the most genuine, joy filled expression on her face. Tears of happiness filled her eyes as she gazed at her daughter, my mother, who breathed out a happy laugh with her.
"Mother." My mom exclaimed, positively radiating joy in a way I had never seen before, not even when I was a young girl. Cora let out a happy laugh, stepping closer to Regina, when suddenly the happiness leached from her face and she collapsed to the ground, Regina rushing to catch her as she went down. "Mother? Oh!" She exclaimed, my grandmother going limp in her arms. "Mother? What's wrong?"
My father stepped in front of me, fully healed. I gazed up at him, somehow unsurprised that he had had something to do with this, and he held out his hand. Glancing down at the strange blade, I could see his name, his true name, spelt out in a flowing script. I flipped it towards him, pressing the handle roughly into his hand, and moving around him to crouch on the other side of Cora. She glanced at me as I knelt beside her, her hand reaching out for mine. I grasped it, regret filling me as I watched my mother's face crumble.
"This would have been enough" Cora said weakly, tears beginning to travel down her cheeks. She gazed up at Regina. "You… you would have been enough." Her eyes fell closed, and I bowed my head, her grip loosening from my hand. Regina shook her lightly in her arms.
"Mother?" She breathed desperately, turning to look up at my father tearfully. "What's going on?" She cried out in a broken voice. When he refused to respond, she turned back to Cora, shaking her again. "Mother? Don't leave me, please." Regina pulled Cora to her, sobbing into the dark material of her coat. "What am I gonna do?" She whispered, and I hesitated for a moment, unsure if my comfort would be welcomed, before placing my hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently when she didn't knock my hand away.
"Your mother did you no favors." My father said over us.
Regina and I turned as one, with me shooting a death glare at him, while my mother exclaimed, "Shut up!" at him in a wretched tone. He stared back at her dispassionately as she continued on. "You stole her life! You cast some spell." She ended on a sob, and my heart wrenched at the sound.
"I did nothing." He uttered, and a terrible sense of realization came over her face as Mary-Margaret came bursting in, David on her heels.
"Regina! Stop!" She cried urgently, before noticing the scene she had walked in on. Regina glared up at her.
"You did this." She spat, tears still gathered in her eyes. Mary-Margaret's horrified gaze met mine, and I glared, furious that she resorted to hurting my mother and killing my grandmother in order to save my father. Light sparked dimly along my skin, as a mess of emotions boiled in me, anger, relief, horror, guilt, and pain all mixing together before I pushed them violently down, unwilling to lose control like that.
A haze of purple surrounded the three of us, and I found that we were no longer in Mr. Gold's Pawn Shop, but rather in the foyer of Regina's home. She stared down at the still body of her mother for a moment, before directing her tearful gaze towards me. "Did you know?" She whispered, tears still tracking down her face. I shook my head violently.
"No! No of course not. If I had known I would have stopped them." I rushed out urgently, desperate for her to believe me. "I swear, I was just trying to stop the fighting, I didn't want anyone dead, especially not Cora." She kept her eyes on me for a moment longer before her expression cracked, and a look of pure agony crossed her face.
Regina laid her mother fully down on the carpet, and opened her arms to me. I didn't hesitant to throw myself into her embrace, and as she sobbed into my coat, betrayed and in pain, it occurred to me that this was the first time I had hugged my mother since I was 6, and tears began to leak down my cheeks as well, a new pain blossomed in my chest as all the lost years pressed down on my heart.
