Chapter four
"Regina?!" Emma yelped and fell back in her chair with enough force that the whole thing fell back to be, thankfully, caught by the wall. She slammed both of her hands onto the arms of the chair to regain her balance.
Regina smirked and unhitched herself from the doorframe so that she could walk further into the office with her arms still crossed over her chest and said, "it's times like this that make it very hard to believe you were born to be a princess."
Emma's hands clutched the arms of the chair and stared at the woman standing across from desk. Only a week and a half ago, this would have just been a meeting between the mayor and sheriff, but the memories, funeral and the video came rushing through her mind and she shook her head.
She placed her face into her hands and muttered, "I'm going insane."
"After everything you have been through, Miss Swan, are you really telling me that you don't believe in ghosts."
Emma pushed her head back up and looked at what she could only assume was, in reality, thin air and repeated, "ghost?"
"Ghost, spirit, apparition. There's many words for it, but they all mean basically the same thing," Regina replied with a shrug.
Emma considered running but it occurred to her that a hallucination was not really something that she could run away from.
"And…you're haunting me?" the sheriff squeaked.
Regina smirked and shook her head.
Consciousness hadn't long ago returned to her when she woke standing in a hospital.
Her first instinct had been to make sure that she wasn't wearing one of those hideous hospital gowns but soon frowned when she discovered that she was wearing a tight blue dress that she hadn't worn in quite a while.
Upon exiting the room, the confused woman quickly found that not a single person would look at her, let alone talk to her. At first, she had assumed that the hospital staff had collectively decided to pretend that she no longer existed, but that theory was soon proven wrong when a nurse ran straight through her.
This triggered a phantom gunshot in her ear and she felt as though all oxygen had been stolen from her lungs and tried to take in breaths until it occurred to her that she probably no longer needed oxygen in her lungs. Or perhaps she didn't have lungs at all?
From then she made it her mission to find out the date and soon discovered that it had been a week and two days since her last memory.
Upon entering the diner to get this information, it hurt a little bit when two dwarves toasted to her death, but it didn't hurt nearly as much as the sight of Henry sat with his grandparents just reading a comic book.
It appeared that people either didn't care or were overjoyed at her death.
That was until Mary Margaret slipped out of her seat to go over to the counter to request a to-go coffee.
"Has Emma left the station yet?" Mary Margaret asked and watched Ruby make her beverage.
"She came in for a to-go breakfast," Ruby frowned as she placed the lid on the cup and slid it over to her friend, "so she technically left, for like fifteen minutes."
Snow's shoulders slumped and let out a sigh.
Regina tilted her head and tried to figure out whether it was only her reclusive daughter that was causing that pained expression.
"She's the sheriff, Snow, she has to look into Regina's…death," the waitress said and placed her hand over the other woman.
Regina could at sworn that she saw Snow flinch at the word 'death', did she actually care?
Mary Margaret gave the wolf a weak smile and took her cup back over to the table where the Charmings appeared to be finishing their lunch and preparing to leave.
Regina allowed herself to watch Henry for a few moments and then decided to go see exactly how Emma was 'looking into' a shooting she had witnessed.
She had arrived just in time to hear Gold explaining to the sheriff why she had to sign the papers and she couldn't stop herself from making a snarky comment.
Of course, she had come to expect that no one would hear her so when the saviour had all but shouted her name and almost fallen out of her chair, she had been both shocked and amused.
She couldn't help teasing the woman, even if she knew about as much about this ghost situation as she did.
The spirit brought herself out of her brief reminiscences and asked, "why would I haunt you of all of the people in this town?"
Emma bit the inside of her cheek and said, "because…you hate me, right?"
Regina unfolded her arms and tilted her head and replied, "I don't hate you, Emma."
The saviour was about to open her mouth, but was stopped from saying anything by the sound of footsteps.
"Emma?" David called.
"In here," Emma replied with her eyes still trained onto Regina.
A moment later, Prince Charming appeared at the door with a smile that was very clearly tainted by worry.
"My shift starts now," he said, "you should go home and get some rest."
Emma thought to protest, as she had every other day this week; however, her eyes drifted over to the very vivid (and life-like) image of Regina Mills and she nodded slowly.
David followed her line of vision with a frown.
When he saw that there was nothing of note in that direction, he looked back over to Emma with the intention of asking her is she was okay, but the sheriff already stood up.
"You're right, I should go and sleep," she replied before her father could question her sanity and she dashed out of the room as quickly as possible.
S
Henry sank further into the couch and continued pressing buttons on his controller, again feeling his grandmother staring at him.
It made him almost wish that he was at school even though it was a Saturday.
Snow and David had suggested that he should be allowed to take more time off considering 'the circumstances' when the school reopened the day after Regina's funeral.
Henry insisted that nothing had changed and he wanted to go to school.
He hadn't even spoken to Regina in six months.
He had, of course, noticed her around town and caught her looking at him a few times, but he tended to just ignore her like everyone else.
She wasn't doing anything evil anymore, but she hadn't been particularly heroic either.
The 'school incident' was the clear exception to that rule and Henry was having a hard time reconciling a woman who would stand in front of a gun with the Evil Queen.
If it hadn't been for those final words, he probably would have actually admitted that he missed her and that the sound of the gunshot was the most terrifying thing he had ever heard in his young life.
The most terrifying sight came a moment later when his grandmother ran over to try and stop the bleeding.
Regina had promised that she would never give up on him and then she publicly disowned him.
Now she was dead.
"Henry!" Snow called and ran over to the couch.
Henry blinked a couple of times, hoping that the tears he felt in his eyes were not on his cheeks and he glanced down to his hands which were clutching his controller. In his thoughts, he had seemingly forgotten that he was playing a game.
The sprite on the screen kept hitting a wall over and over again with a pixelated sword.
His grandmother had obviously heard the sound of his hands essentially crushing the plastic N64 controller.
He had an PS5 but when he found out that Emma had a thing for older consoles, he made it his mission to play as many retro games as possible.
Unfortunately that meant a louder controller.
"Are you okay?" Snow asked with her eyebrows pinched together as she inspected Henry's face, as if it would tell her exactly why he was upset.
Henry swallowed hard and shook his head as he leaned forward to place the controller onto the coffee table.
He shrugged and fell back into the couch and grabbed the unread book sat next to him. Not that he had any idea if it was even his.
"The game was too hard," he mumbled and started listlessly flipping through the book.
Snow opened her mouth to say that couldn't be the reason since he didn't appear to be playing at all from what she could see.
However, she was cut short by the door flying open.
The attention of both Henry and Mary Margaret was drawn to the door as the saviour walked in.
"Emma," Snow said, visibly letting out a sigh of relief, though she brought her eyebrows together when she noticed the slight gauntness of her daughter's face and the way her eyes kept flicking around as if she was checking if they could see something.
"Emma?" Snow repeated.
The saviour blinked and finally looked up at her mother before she turned to gaze back to whatever was holding her attention and she just shook her head.
"I really need to go to bed," she muttered before she dashed up the stairs with no further explanation.
S
Emma groaned and turned over onto her side.
Despite growing accustomed to small stints of sleep on the couch in her office, there was nothing quite like sleeping in your own bed.
It definitely felt like the best remedy for what happened in this station.
There was absolutely no way that Regina could be a ghost that only she could see right? It was just a sleepless-induced hallucination caused by grief.
As far as she was concerned, that explanation made complete sense.
She was about to push herself up and go back to the station (and maybe plan some actual sleep into her schedule) but that plan of action was interrupted by a sound from her dresser.
"You've only managed to worry your mother more."
Emma closed her eyes in frustration before she turned to her other side so that she could see the former mayor of Storybrooke sat atop her dresser. Despite the position, the woman still managed to look regal with one leg crossed over the other.
Emma hiked herself up onto her elbows and replied, "since when do you worry about Mary Margaret?"
It felt like definitive proof that she couldn't be the real Regina Mills.
"Don't mistake a comment for compassion. I'm just suggesting that perhaps you could have said more than seven words to your mother and your son, Miss Swan," Regina replied.
Emma swallowed hard and shook her head before she allowed her eyes to drift over to the alarm clock to see that she had only been asleep for a mere two hours, so that could explain why she could still see Regina. Hopefully?
"I need help," Emma muttered and threw the blanket aside.
"You still think that this is a hallucination, dear?" Regina asked with a raised eyebrow.
Emma's eyes roamed over Regina again.
The woman actually looked amused, it was a far cry from the despondent mayor she had seen a couple weeks ago.
Plus, there was also the fact that she was wearing the blue dress that they had laid her to rest in instead of the blood stained pant-suit or the hospital gown that she had died in.
"You have to be a hallucination…you're dead," Emma replied and looked down at her lap as tears sprang to her eyes.
"It wouldn't make much sense if I was a ghost of a living person, would it?" Regina asked and Emma looked up from her lap..
"Why me though?" Emma asked.
"What do you mean?"
Emma sighed and replied, "why am I the only one who can see you?"
Regina placed her hands at the edge of the dresser and considered this for a moment.
"Well…I suppose it takes something to tether a soul to a plane of existence. Which means that the answer to almost all of your questions is…"
"Magic," Emma sighed, "that is such a cop out Regina. It wouldn't kill you to just say that you don't know."
The former queen raised an eyebrow at the saviour's choice of words and the colour drained from the younger woman's face when she realised what she had said.
"I didn't mean…" she began but Regina held up her hand to stop her from rambling.
"Calm down, Miss Swan. I'll admit that I don't know anything about this," she said as her hand went through a balled up t-shirt.
So far, she figured she could only touch an object if there was no way that the interaction could be seen by anyone. That meant that reading to pass the time was out of the question, but she tried not to think too much about just how much time she would now have to pass in this spirit state.
"So…how can I figure out for sure if you're a hallucination?" Emma asked.
"Is my word not good enough?" Regina shot back.
"Technically…if you are a hallucination, your word is my word," Emma replied.
Regina tilted her head and allowed herself a moment to inspect the increasingly confused expression on the saviour's face before she said, "perhaps if I take you to my vault, that would prove that I'm not a hallucination?"
"Your vault?" Emma asked, perking up with interest and only a little apprehension.