chapter eleven ~ the price one pays for magic
Though she could feel her joints quaking in true apprehension, making her knees feel almost liquid with the fear pumping through her system, Belle French continued to stand her ground, pulled up to her full, if rather small, height and staring the Evil Queen, in her polished mayoral guise, down with a fierce glare all her own. This woman had jailed her, held her prisoner for years on end for the mere possibility she might prove useful against Rumple at some point in the future. Never mind the fact that as it turned out, Rumple was more concerned with is own devious plans and desires than he had ever been for her well-being, the issue remained that she had been treated as a thing, an object, and a means to an end for far too long...and she wouldn't stand for it anymore. Nor could she bear to see her sheriff, the both strong but also exceedingly kind and gentle man who had freed her from her prison and taken her under his care, hurt anymore by this evil woman.
"We aren't starting anything at all," Belle insisted, trying hard not to dwell on the fact that the last two decades of both she and Graham's lives were a testament to the fact that she only had so much control over the situation, whatever she might hope or intend. Mentally shaking that foreboding away, she tried to inject a steely resolve into her spine, hoping that refusing to bow down, to bend to the two women's whims, would somehow manifest itself into the strength to see her through.
Regina pulled back in surprise, merely a couple inches, but Belle took heart at the woman's nonplussed reaction all the same.
Graham, however, seemed only more alarmed. "Belle, please stop this. Don't antagonize her," he urged quietly, an intense plea in the rough, low timbre of his voice that made her painfully aware just how well he must know the pain resistance brought when it was crushed in failure. His noble soul, the kindness and the regard for others that somehow remained despite the mistreatment and abuse to which he had been subjected, staggered her. Even now, she knew he was trying to pull her back, not out of cowardice or self-interest, but because he knew what she faced for challenging Regina or standing in her way. "We can't fight her - not to mention her mother - without magic. We have to stay on their good side until we can get away."
Though he had been speaking so softly Belle had barely made out his words at her ear, so close in fact that his whiskered cheeks brushed a pleasant tickle at her neck, one that at any other time she would have loved to take a moment to savor and experience fully, the thrill of the unfamiliar sensation giving her goosebumps of anticipation. Though his voice had been almost impossibly quiet and Regina had pulled back slightly as if formulating how she wanted to proceed after encountering such staunch refusal, the Queen's eyes narrowed with a dangerous glimmer, clearly somehow having caught his words.
"Perhaps you should heed his warning, Miss French," Regina purred silkily, stalking forward again slowly and circling Huntsman and maid as if looking for the weakest point to strike. The elder Mills woman merely stood back, watching her daughter work as if proud of the command and fear she could instill where any decent parent would have been appalled. "You have just re-entered the world outside your cell, found a place to belong, regained your wits and your memories. It would be a shame to have it all locked away again, with no chance of a second daring rescue."
The dark-haired sorceress shot an equally dark, warning look at Graham for a moment, breaking the stare she had leveled at Belle. "Things don't have to become unpleasant here...unless you force my hand. But I'm sure your loyal Huntsman," and here the wrongful regent's gaze flicked between her two former victims as they stood up against her, the knowing and self-satisfaction in her expression making Belle feel soiled in spite of the fact that she had no reason to, "much more loyal to you than I could ever coerce him to be to me, I must admit," she continued suggestively, making bile rise in Belle's throat and causing Graham to stiffen more tensely yet at her side. "Despite how his loyalty may be bought or swayed," Regina concluded, "I know he can attest to the forcefulness I can employ when necessary. It's not something a sweet innocent like you wants to test, no matter how persuasive it has proved."
Belle clenched her teeth tight enough together to keep from yelling her condemnation for the other woman's vile assaults on both Graham and herself in one way or another, though it was a near thing and she couldn't be absolutely sure she hadn't chipped at least one tooth in the process. Much as she hated it, Graham was right. They couldn't afford to push two dangerous villains far enough that they would exact some sort of irredeemable penance.
She could feel Graham's trembling fingers reaching for her hand at her side and twining their together once more. Even shaky with his own fear and anger, they gave her further strength; she was no longer locked away, forgotten, and alone. He may have been trying to caution her, to keep her from foolishly flying at a foe who could curse or kill her with the flick of a single, well-manicured finger, but Belle found it steadied and bolstered her to feel the press of his palm warm against her own all the same. She could play the longer, smarter game for the moment, at least until they knew how to resist successfully.
Steadying her voice with a Herculean effort, she arched a brow at Regina in a concerted bid for calm. "I haven't the slightest idea what it is you want from me, your Majesty, even if I were inclined to help you at all."
Graham's hand gave hers an encouraging squeeze, clearly picking up on the fact that she had gotten his message.
Unfortunately, it wasn't Regina who spoke up then, but Cora, who had until that moment hung back, observing and biding her time. "I don't believe that for a second," she stated baldly, eyeing Belle up and down and giving her the distinct impression that she could somehow read her thoughts and see through her, right down to the bone. "If there is anyone in the world beyond his long lost son whom Rumplestiltskin cares for, it's her. He must have mentioned it, slipped up and revealed where it could be found. Perhaps she even holds it her possession. Don't let her fool you, Regina darling."
Belle shook her head, having no idea at all what the two of them might be talking about, what secret item of Rumple's the two assumed she held the key to, but she was no more impressed or cowed by the Queen of Hearts than she was by the Evil Queen herself. "Not only do you not know me, 'your Majesty'," Belle shot back bravely, giving the honorific title a scalding, sarcastic inflection, "but you must not know Rumplestiltskin as well as you think either. If there truly were some magical object which could be his undoing, he most certainly wouldn't tell me about it...nor anyone else. He wouldn't trust a soul with that sort of secret. Plus, in case you've forgotten, up until a couple of days ago, I was locked in your dungeon. How would I now know all of his secrets?"
The older woman, her regally purple cloak swishing over the floor of the otherwise silent library and her high, flawlessly coiffed hair, made her all the more intimidating somehow as she came to stand just before the smaller, younger woman, looking down her nose at Belle's determined face. "You do know that those who cross me often learn my particular method of persuasion firsthand, do you not?" she murmured silkily, the threat all the more chilling for its polite veneer.
Her properly gloved hand rose to hover between herself and her prey, and, as repetitive and expectedly overdramatic as it would be, Graham looking on knew without doubt what was about to happen, even before the villainess made her move. Regina might have learned how to wield dark magic from the Dark One and have conspired with him to cast his dark curse, but her methods and her cold-hearted dispassionate focus came straight from her mother's traumatizing example and her strict resolve to triumph at all cost. Seeing the formidable woman behind the horrifying rumors of Wonderland in the flesh, he could no longer question how Regina had come by her preferred method of physical coercion and torture that he had suffered firsthand.
Before Cora could actually make contact with Belle's chest, Graham pushed her aside with a yell of "No, don't!" escaping him as he darted in front of her. He did not wish to hurt her or manhandle the woman he had come to treasure and felt the need to protect, but a panicked sense of urgency took over. Both despicable queens halted; Cora aiming to bypass him, simply step around his momentary blockade and go after Belle again, while Regina smirked with a sick sort of pleasure as she drew near his side.
"What's the matter, Sheriff?" she purred, her lips painted a deep wine red that looked almost predatory on her hungry smile, ready to devour. "Could it be you miss the definitive guidance you once had?" She practically cooed the words in his ear, freezing Graham within himself, a protective retreat his mind and body had employed out of necessity all the time he'd spent in her clutches. So much so that he barely flinched, almost seeming deaf to her words when she added rapaciously "Would you like to offer your heart up again for another innocent?"
A few feet away, where his last ditch attempt at rescue had put her, Belle was struggling to right herself when she heard Regina's threat. Looking up, her eyes found Regina's long, red nail taloned hand hovering over her protector's chest cavity as her mother's had been inching toward Belle's minutes before. She was just floundering forward, desperate to reach them, not sure what she could do against their powers or how she could stop the terror unfurling before her eyes - but determined all the same to try - when the doors to the library were flung open so hard they swung wide and crashed against the wall behind as Emma, Killian, Snow, Charming, Ruby, and Henry (though the latter was shielded behind his family and Granny with her crossbow) charged through.
Emma's flashing green eyes took in the scene in an instant and her voice snapped like a whip as she called out harshly, "Hey, what do you two witches think you're doing?" He golden hair shone and glinted in the sunlight pouring through the door from behind her, and she looked so confident - feet planted firmly, brows drawn in righteous anger - that for a moment how formidable her foes were and the fact that Emma didn't even precisely know how her magic worked flew from everyone else's minds.
Cora narrowed her eyes at this annoyance, this "Savior" who had already evaded her grasp and ruined her plans once. She attempted the unconcerned simper she had used on many others as she replied, "Nothing you can do anything about," but there was the slightest note of uncertainty behind the taunt, a hint of remembrance that while Emma Swan might not have full command over her abilities, she was indeed strong, and the witch had already felt just how much raw power Snow and Charming's daughter possessed.
"We'll see about that," Emma countered, desperate anxiety mixing with anger in her voice. She too had had enough of these power hungry tyrants thinking they could manipulate other people's lives like pawns on a chessboard with no regard for consequences or the pain they might cause. She flung her arms forward, hands outstretched as if hoping her sheer need and emotion would call forth the stunning blast of light that had saved her, and those she loved, twice before. At the same moment, Cora unleashed her own magic in a much more practiced and concentrated burst, even as Regina turned back to Graham and Belle with a wicked gleam in her eye.
In a stunning collision, Emma's blinding white magic shot from her hands and crashed into the plume of darkly billowing amethyst smoke that poured from Cora's fingers. The impact seemed to rock the entire building, and everyone was frozen in place - as if time had been stopped still. No one moved or breathed, until suddenly the very atmosphere seemed to shimmer, heave, and the jerk back into motion again. For a moment, everyone inside the tiny library blinked, shell shocked, but before anything else could be done, it was Henry who stepped forward and spoke beseechingly.
"Mom, stop this!...Please!" The heartwrenching quaver in his voice gave Emma pause, but when she looked back over her shoulder to find her son's earnestly pleading face, it was Regina on whom his big, brown eyes were focused.
Drawing in a tense breath, Emma forced herself to hold still, rather than immediately putting herself between her son and the woman who'd had the opportunity to raise him for the first ten years of his life. She willed herself to stay in place as Henry took two, then three, tentative steps forward, more clearly into Regina's line of sight. She wouldn't hesitate for a second to use her own body to shield Henry if curses began flying, but she could also see the disappointment and heartbreak emblazoned across his face. It was clear that she need to give him a chance. He needed to see for himself whether or not Regina cared enough about him to pull back from her villainous purposes, or if she would push forward with her plans whether it hurt him or not. Though Mayor Mills, the Evil Queen, however it was most fitting to refer to her, might have mislead him, isolated him, ignored or pushed him aside, she had also given Henry a house to in live in, clothes to wear, food to eat, and been all the mother he'd ever known until he found Emma. She could understand that her son must be torn right now, and needing to find out if he could reach this woman who'd raised him - whatever her faults - or if the good he had hoped and believed might be hidden deep within her was completely gone.
"Mom?" Henry asked again, his voice even more plaintive as time passed and it looked as though she truly wouldn't stop, even for him. He took a hesitant step forward, Emma's eyes flickering anxiously between Regina and her mother and Henry, muscles tensing even further in preparation for whatever rash movement she might have to spring into.
For several interminable seconds, it seemed as though Henry's plea was going to fall on deaf ears, that the Evil Queen was going to force her hand, and the library very well might come down around all of their ears in the aftermath. But then slowly, even as Emma was still holding her breath, hardly daring to hope, Regina relented.
The mayor's shoulders sagged as she hung her head, quite possibly remembering the promise she had made Henry not so very long ago - that she would try to change, to stop abusing magic, and to seek love honestly rather than take it. Her whole posture was altered as she backed several steps away from where she had stood nearly toe-to-toe with Graham, and pulled her mother reluctantly along with her.
Relieved, but not taken in, Emma didn't drop her guard when her adversary turned to face the newcomers at the entrance. A film of unshed tears welled in her dark eyes visibly as she sought out Henry's face, knowing better than to look for sympathy or understanding anywhere else. Shaking her head, she reached out an empty hand, palm up as if asking Henry to take it. Regina began to flounder through a weak excuse. "Henry...I'm sorry honey, but...you have to understand. They were going to try to keep you from me. This was the only way that I could be sure…"
But Henry cut her off, shaking his head vigorously and squinching his eyes closed, as if he needed to not even see her in order to shut her out. "You don't know that!" he countered, his voice distraught, harsh with a volatile mix of emotions - anger, confusion, fear and hurt. "You were losing control, and you didn't like it! But you promised me you'd do better and here you are, about to take my friends' hearts!" He drug in a ragged breath that hitched on a sob, and that made Emma, Regina, and even Snow, all nearly reach out to hold him almost reflexively, and then just manage to pull their hands back to let him finish. "And for what?" he finally continued. "How could you?!"
It was clear that the woman facing them now, head bowed and eyes that had been flashing with devious mocking and insidious intent when they'd burst in, was at least ashamed at failing Henry, if nothing else. Emma had only seen the mayor as poised, cool, and in control of every situation; nothing breaking her smooth, icy exterior, and it made it hard to believe the rapid shift or the vulnerability she was suddenly exposing.
That was at least until Cora took the moment to reassert her dominance over the situation. Her voice was a harsh, grating warning over the silence that had fallen in the book-filled space as she pushed forward toward her momentarily neutralized daughter. "Regina, pull yourself together!" she ordered. "Don't lose sight of the prize!" She clutched at Regina's arm with grasping fingers that clenched so hard that Emma could see whitened skin on her foe's arm.
"Stand down, Mother!" Regina snapped back, pulling from Cora's grip and away. "It's over! We're not going to do this in front of Henry."
The Queen of Hearts flushed red at the shut down, her gaze darkening until a howl of rage rose up her throat in a terrifying eruption. "You ungrateful wretch!" she spat at her daughter, startling everyone else looking on with the violence of her attack. "You honestly intend to turn your back on me?! That dagger is nearly in our reach and you're going to let the Savior's brat make you hesitate? I'll take care of that!"
The threat clicked in Emma's mind even as it must have in Regina's. Henry was still standing in the open, and Emma suddenly felt all too far away to reach him in time. Cora was drawing herself up, already releasing her deadly strike aimed at the so-called distraction keeping her daughter from acting as she saw fit. Though Emma was already moving, calling out for Henry to duck, to cover his head, anything to spare him, she realized that his adoptive mother had gone into action as well.
Just before Cora's curse could strike Henry square in the chest, Regina dove in front of him with a desperate plea of his name on her tongue. Henry stumbled as the adult form now strangely limp and quiet made contact and then crumpled against him. A grown woman's weight easily sent him to the floor with a thump, the queen's head and shoulders ending up cradled weakly in his jeans-clad lap.
The purple magic cloud sparked as if angry lightning were encased within, thwarted from reaching its target, the deadly curse ricocheted back as the rest of them looked on paralyzed and entranced. Belle just barely had enough foresight in her muddled head to grip Graham's forearm and pull him back toward her own body, sending both of them stumbling to lean against the study table behind them, but far to the side enough to avoid the spell's bounce back on its caster. Cora's horrible banshee wail of shocked pain reverberated through the air around them for a moment, echoing off the library walls and then, with a deep, resounding 'boom', she was gone; a dark pile of ashy dust where she had stood all that was left of the Queen of Hearts.
Mind reeling, not certain if it could truly be possible that such a cunning foe would be dispatched so completely without her having to have paid some horrible price or twisted herself somehow to accomplish it, Emma glanced to Killian for assurance, confirmation, some sign that her eyes weren't deceiving her and that the woman whose wiles he admittedly understood much better than she, was really gone. He had already drawn closer to her, right at her elbow, his body's warmth running the length of her side, his somewhat stunted left hand pressed to the small of her back in steady support. She gave a flicker of a half-smile to him, drinking in the comfort it was meant to be and sinking into his presence slightly, relieved beyond measure she was no longer forced to deal with such earth-shattering moments on her own.
They didn't have long to savor their relief, however, as Henry's choked voice caught their attention once more, even as the hesitant whisper it was. "Wait, hold on… You're going to be fine… A-aren't you?"
Regina's voice when it answered him from where she lay looking up into his innocent, sweet face was a bare, soft rasp, a mere shadow of the commanding tone it had once been. She reached a feeble hand up to cup the side of Henry's cheek for a moment before it fell weakly to the floor beside her once more. With what seemed a monumental effort, she gave the tiniest shake of her head before replying, with a sort of near-calm acceptance, "No, I don't think I will, Henry…. This is...r-really...no more than I deserve. At least….at least I was able to do s-something to….save you…" Her voice grew more labored, and long spaces were staggered between the words as she struggled to take in breaths. His whole family had gathered in solidarity around Henry; Emma coming to kneel just behind her son with a bracing hand on his back to reassure him she was there.
Emma noticed, taken aback once more, that as Regina uttered just a few more words a hazy blue glow began to surround her, making the lines and planes of her face less distinct as she seemed to fade before their eyes. "You're the one good thing I managed to find, Henry," she breathed out. "A-adopting you was at least… s-something I got right. I'm sorry I h-hurt you...that I k-kept letting you down…" Her chest heaved with a last valiant effort, "Henry… I love you…"
Shaking his head against the truth before his eyes, Henry fought the sobs climbing up his throat to bend over Regina just before her eyes flicked closed completely. Placing a kiss on her forehead, he barely managed his stricken, "I love you too."
The blue light that had engulfed the mayor's entire body flared brighter for an instant, and then it - and she - were gone. She had vanished as if never there at all, leaving the rest of them speechless and stunned.
Henry turned his head into Emma's chest and gave himself over to his tears in earnest in his mother's arms. Emma's heart ached for him as she gathered him tightly into her embrace, rocking gently as they sat there in a heap on the library floor, otherwise feeling almost numb and unclear what had just happened.
Two of their foes were dead. The Evil Queen was no more - and in the end she had shown that some small remainder of the young noblewoman who had known how to love fully and deeply, a sliver of the true heart that had saved Snow White's life long ago, was still buried within her. It had been too little perhaps, and too late to save her life, but in the end as well as dark and treacherous villain, she had simply been Regina Mills - deeply flawed perhaps but painfully human as well.
Emma continued to hold Henry close, hoping to soothe him in even the slightest degree, but looking over his head at, first Ruby and Granny, then her parents, and finally Killian, with pressing questions in her eyes. They were safer than they had been, that much was sure. But what had they just witnessed? What dagger was Cora talking about? And how would the Dark One react to the loss of both his accomplices?
Right now, her first priority was her son, making sure he could grieve his loss and heal. She could practically read Killian's agreement in his deep, sympathetic eyes as he nodded to her in confirmation - as if they had communicated it all without words. Still, they needed those answers, and they needed to know them before Rumplestiltskin came calling.