Chapter Thirteen
The vault was completely silent other than the tiny sounds created by Emma fiddling with the hat.
Green eyes shot over to Regina every few minutes but the woman was adamantly refusing to meet her gaze.
The anger was palpable.
Emma looked back down at the hat and ran her thumb over the rim, desperately trying to think of literally anything else that she could do to prolong this process.
As usual, Regina understood what she was trying to do and she said, "You need to say the incantation, Miss Swan."
Emma ran her tongue over her bottom lip and after a long hesitation, she pulled out Archie's 'directions' from her leather jacket.
She held the paper up to her face and glanced over the top of it to search for any sign that she had changed her mind about this.
Regina remained unmoved, so the saviour forced herself to focus back to what constituted directions in Wonderland and took in a deep and reluctant breath before she began muttering the encantation that she had been practising with Regina since they had discovered it.
On the last word, she spun the hat which proceeded to rotate of its own accord and Emma stood and stumbled over to Regina as a white mist above it got denser.
Both women stared at the mist for a few moments until words finally exploded from Regina's mouth, seemingly unbidden:
"How could you do something so idiotic!"
Emma looked away from the hat and gestured towards it in exasperation and replied, "This is what you wanted, Regina!"
"You know that is not what I mean, Emma!" Regina shot back.
"I had to tell him, Regina, you know that I couldn't lie to him about this!" Emma replied, "Especially not after the mansion."
"It wouldn't be a lie, it's not as if he would ever ask you if you could see my ghost," Regina said, completely forgetting about the hat at this point.
"There is more than one type of lie, Regina, I know that you know that," Emma replied.
"There is a reason that I didn't want him to know, especially after the mansion. He needs to be able to live his life and I don't want to only be able to watch it. You could see how confused it made him, it would have been better if he didn't know," Regina said while the hat continued to glow, searching for its target.
Emma looked down at her feet and said, "It would be less confusing for him if you stayed. I want you to stay, Regina. I can't do this without you."
The simple statement caused all sense of anger to disappear from Regina's being.
The vulnerability was unexpected and it definitely threw both of them off-guard.
"Emma…" Regina started to say even though she had no idea how she wanted to finish that sentence.
Thankfully, any attempt to speak was cut off by an explosion of light from the hat, which shot across the vault.
It wasn't the hat that either woman focused on though, something else (or more accurately, someone) also came tumbling to the other side of the vault.
He hit the marble wall with an audible crunch before he slid down and then unfocused eyes turned frantically around his new surroundings.
Emma let Jefferson look around for a few seconds before she pushed herself away from the wall (and Regina) and crossed the vault in two or three steps.
Jefferson forced himself onto his knees and swiped at his already messy overcoat and then slurred with a knife sloppily brandished, "Sheriff Swan…what are you doing in my house?"
In spite of all of the anger Emma was consumed by during the 'school incident' returning to every cell of her body, she managed to remember that she was actually an officer of the law and that she couldn't just beat the shit out of him, even if she had imagined this opportunity many times.
Rather than using her fists, she pulled out her gun and said, "Drop the knife, Jefferson, you're under arrest!"
Jefferson squinted and stumbled to his feet, "I didn't think I would see you again…"
As he said this, his feet carried him over, seemingly without permission so Emma's hand reacted.
She closed her fist and punched him across the face so that he fell unconscious to the marble ground.
Emma opened and closed her mouth a few times before she turned to Regina and said, "You saw that right? He was clearly resisting arrest?"
"Do you expect me to testify, Miss Swan?" Regina asked.
Emma rolled her eyes and pulled out her handcuffs as she turned to her mark.
S
Henry slammed his bedroom door and then slid down it, bringing a shaking hand to the wetness on his cheeks with a gasp.
He longer cared that he was crying.
He was pretty sure that there was no one who could blame him for his reaction.
After weeks of pretending to be fine, it had already been difficult to hold things together amid all of the work that Archie set him alongside his academic responsibilities.
Now every day since the school incident took on a new meaning.
There were plenty of times that he'd called her evil or a liar during her lifetime and he had no qualms about saying any of this to her face no matter how sad it made the woman who raised him.
Why was it, then, that Emma's revelation made it so much worse?
He was running through every comment he'd made about his mother while Emma was in the same room.
Regina was aware of how long it took him to cry, how often he claimed that he didn't care or the fact that her son had not attended her funeral.
She'd stepped in front of a gun, was visited by only Emma, then died and returned to a town of people who were happy or did not care about her sacrifice including the boy that she had done it for.
What level of idiotic stubbornness did it take to believe that being shot in the chest was an act of evil?
How ungrateful could he have been? Why did it make such a difference that she was there to witness it?
Then came his next frantic line of thought.
For what possible reason could she have for breaking the tether?
Even if he couldn't see her, that didn't mean that this couldn't work, right?
It would take some getting used to, but Emma could act as their medium, and he could still communicate with his mother. He could find out her thoughts on the latest issues of Marvel comics, he could ask for help with his homework, and find out the recipe for his favourite cookies.
He could go to her for advice about all of his confusing feelings. Before everything changed between them, she always knew the perfect thing to say to help him.
Of course, that was before everything had gotten so complicated.
The centre of that complication had him looking up at the bed that would never be as comfortable as the one at the mansion.
From the mattress, Isaac asked, kindly, "Does this mean that Emma has finally told you the truth?"
Henry dragged his face up and rested his chin on his knee, trying to narrow his eyes at the Author even though his vision was blurred by his abject devastation.
"You knew that she was there the whole time and you didn't tell me?!" he demanded, though he did not have the energy to stand and ball his fists.
What would be the point of being angry at the man who was the reason that Regina was not subjected to his indifference for much longer?
"Would you have believed me?" Isaac replied, leaning back against the wall with his hand to his chin and it was only then that Henry noticed the pile of folders next to him with a dictaphone atop of it.
"I guess not," Henry mumbled, "Do you at least know how the tether works?"
"I know that it is a curse, that is all that I can tell you," Isaac replied.
Henry scraped at his tears and sighed, no longer see any point in arguing with the man. He didn't want to push him too hard and be subjected to such another memory, even if he couldn't imagine what could possibly be worse than the day that Daniel died.
"If it is a curse, then it can be broken," Henry asked, dropping his knees and ever-so-slightly perking up.
"Perhaps," Isaac replied.
Henry did not expect to smile so soon after his discussion with Emma so the spreading of his lips did feel just a little foreign even as hope bubbled up inside of him.
"I do sense some reluctance, Henry," Isaac said and the boy frowned.
He was about to say that there was no doubt in his mind at all that he wanted his mom back, that it would resolve all of his problems.
That he didn't see how he could spend another day knowing that she was standing somewhere in the room without being able to hug her tightly (and preferably never let go). His suggestion seemed to spring up a couple objections to his mind, though.
"She couldn't have known what was going to happen. Why did Mr Gold have the adoption dissolution papers ready before she…before she died?" Henry asked, choking up again.
Despite all of the hours of therapy, it was still difficult to form that sentence, though he was now able to do so without his voice cracking too badly.
"How could she have given up so easily after everything that we've been through? Everything that she has been put through? She promised that she would redeem herself and then she gave up!" Henry exploded.
"Was she not redeemed when she died? Did anyone in this town fear that she would hurt them?"
Henry let out a huff, deciding that he absolutely was not in the mood for this conversation. All that mattered was that there was a chance that she wasn't dead forever!
"Why are you here?" Henry asked and Isaac sat forward, swiping up the pile of supplies that he must have appeared with.
"I have asked much of you since we first met, Henry, but I can feel that we are almost there. I have asked Dr Hopper to provide these to answer your final questions about your mother," Isaac replied.
Henry stared at the files longingly.
Archie had told him that Regina had been seeing him for over six months, but there was still a part of him that found that it was incredibly hard to believe. He just couldn't see it in his mind, he couldn't see Regina sitting on that couch every week discussing her feelings with the former cricket.
Acid scorched at the sides of his throat as he eyed the voice recorder.
Could he handle hearing her again? Surely anything that he heard would be better than the last words at the school.
"What about confidentiality?" Henry asked, resisting the urge to add that he wasn't sure how that whole deal worked after the patient side of the agreement died.
"It took some convincing, but Archie came around to my way of thinking," Isaac replied cryptically, "Once you understand this last lesson, we can discuss the next step."
Henry practically bounded over to the bed to go for the recorder first, not noticing that Isaac had disappeared before he pressed play.
He held his breath during seconds of static until Archie's voice flowed through:
"Good afternoon, Regina, I hope that you had a good week."
Henry bit his tongue steeling himself for the response that took a second to come:
"I haven't used magic if that is what you were really asking."
Henry paused it and dropped the device as if it had burned his hand, he even actually hissed.
Her voice. It ignited yet more painful guilt within him and his chin wobbled.
It was yet another reminder that he wouldn't be able to hear it again for real unless he did something.
What was the point of listening to her baring her soul in the past when he could wake her up and just ask her about them?
A light and hesitant knock at the door forced him to shove the files and recorder under his blanket and he called, "What?"
The door opened but Henry was already prepared for that look from his grandmother so he didn't make any attempt to wipe away his tears.
"Your grandfather and I were thinking…We were going to take some flowers to Re…to your mom on Wednesday, but maybe while we wait for Emma…" Mary Margaret stumbled but became progressively confused as Henry perked up.
Her suggestion sparked an idea. He may not have gone to the funeral but he had heard mention of how creepy it was that her body was preserved by magic, of course, it had been a conversation between dwarves at the diner that he had tried to ignore.
Now that he was no longer trying to pretend that he preferred a world where she was gone, he thought instantly of every True Love's Kiss he'd read about or witnessed.
Why did Isaac think that he needed to hear about her deepest feelings when the answer was right in front of him.
"Can we go right now?" he asked.