The Sphinx howled with rage.
Smug in his victory, Ian smirked. "I believe you owe me a favour..."
The Sphinx's lips curled back in a snarl, revealing a row of blindingly white pointed teeth. "No, I don't think I do."
He raised a brow. "That was the agreement," he replied, decidedly unamused with the sudden reluctance to play fair.
"Yes, well, you see... The problem with that is that I don't feel like abiding by any so-called agreement." And, with that, she lunged forward at him, startling him and sending him stumbling off balance as he toppled backwards and scrabbled away on his hands and knees.
Emily was used to people doing what she asked – afterall, she'd been the Sheriff's wife and people widely regarded him (and therefore her) with a fair amount of fear. She wasn't, however, used to people doing what she asked out of reverence...as royal subjects to their Queen.
As she moved through the halls of the hospital towards Derek's room, no one made any move to stop her, in spite of the fact that visiting hours had long since been over. In fact, many of the nurses went out of their way to curtsy to her...
She supposed this would take some getting used to. Again.
She slipped into Derek's room through the slight crack in the door, trying not to wake him. Afterall, he had just woken from a coma and he needed time to properly recover...even if he stubbornly insisted he was fine. Which, if her new memories served, was nothing at all out of character for him...
Instead, she found him sitting up in bed, wide awake and leafing through an ornately embossed leather-bound book. He didn't seem to hear her enter, focused as he was on whatever the book was about.
She rolled her eyes. "Good morning," she said pointedly, given the fact that it was after midnight and he really should have been asleep.
If he knew she was annoyed, he didn't show it. "Morning," he agreed, grinning foolishly. He gestured for her to come closer and, when she obeyed, he pulled her in for a kiss.
When she pulled back, she shook her head as if in frustration, but was quite obviously trying hard not to let a grin cross her lips. "How do you feel?" she asked.
"As if I'd spent the last eighteen years in fog..." She nodded her agreement, looked as if she were about to say something, but he wasn't finished talking yet. "Guilty," he added, softer, ashamed.
"Why?" she asked, face soft as she reached out to stroke his cheek. "You have nothing to feel guilty for..."
"I forgot how much I love you," he answered, just as soft.
A tender smile tugged at the corners of her lips then. "That wasn't your fault," she assured him. Her cheeks were a faint shade of pink at his admission, the way they always were when he said he loved her. Her gaze darted away from his briefly, landing on the book sitting open on his lap. "Where did you get that?" she asked, realizing she hadn't seen it before.
He held it up so she could see the cover: Beauty and the Beast. "Clara stopped by and left it," he said with a shrug.
The name hit her like a punch to the chest. "Clara..." she breathed. "My baby girl..."
He reached over, squeezed her hand where it was hanging listlessly at her side. "We'll find her. Talk to her," he assured her. "Tell her how much we love her."
Her tongue flicked out over her bottom lip the way she tended to do when she was deep in thought. "We lost eighteen years of her life..." she whispered, let out a shaky breath. "My mother took that from us." Her eyes narrowed, gaze hardened. "I'll make her pay..."
"No," he said urgently, squeezing her hand tighter to make her look at him. "That's not who you are, Emily."
"Not who I am!?" she repeated incredulously. "How can you not be outraged? How can you not be absolutely livid? How can you not want to make her feel every bit of that pain that she caused us?"
He gave her a small sad smile. "Because I remember the gentle soul of the woman I fell in love with – the woman whose good heart changed my hardened one. We may have lost eighteen years, but we have the rest of her life to make up for that."
Ian emerged from the elevator much dishevelled and covered in blood, dragging his sword along the ground by his side. In his other hand, he clutched a glass vial.
Elizabeth raised a brow at his appearance, but he appeared to be in no mood to discuss the matter, at least, not with her. Not that she was really all that concerned either way. "Well, did you get it?" she demanded when he remained silent.
He shook the little glass vial, a glowing red liquid sloshing around inside. "No thanks to you," he muttered under his breath.
"Excuse me?" she asked, voice devoid of all emotion, the way she got just before she verbally eviscerated someone.
"You could have fucking warned me!" he snapped. "That thing almost made a meal of me! You're lucky I don't run you through with this sword as well..."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes at his histrionics. "Much as you like to think you're the brains of this operation, you wouldn't last ten minutes without me..." she scoffed.
The sword clattered to the floor as he whirled around, slamming her into the wall, forearm pressing into her neck. "Listen here, bitch," he growled, "I've put up with you thus far because we have mutual goals, but once magic is here, I can't promise to protect you from everything that's coming your way..."
If she'd had her magic, she would have incinerated him on the spot and they both knew it...as it was, though, she simply stared daggers at him as she pushed him off. "You're playing a dangerous game, Doyle..." she warned him.