A/N: Hello frens! Chapter 8 is kind of a pivotal one. Brace yourselves... and enjoy!
CHAPTER 8 – Regina – Revealed
"Are you saying that this is where I'm going to stay for the next week?" I asked, puzzled. She unlocked the front door and held it open for me to enter the luxurious place.
She shook her head.
"It's much more complicated than that," she explained, as she ushered me to the wide, lavish lounge. "You're going to need a drink."
She opened a cabinet and pulled out a glass bottle full of amber liquid. She poured the scotch into two tumblers and handed one to me, which I gratefully accepted: I really needed something to soothe my nerves.
Placing the alcohol bottle onto the glass coffee table, she sank into one of the armchairs and I took a seat onto the couch, sipping onto my drink. I enjoyed its burning sensation as it gently slid down my throat, immediately feeling a bit more confident.
"Mind if I join you?" someone said behind me, making me jolt in surprise and almost spill my drink.
The first thing I noticed about the man standing in the middle of the room, his left hand resting nonchalantly on a black, gold-trimmed cane, was that he must have been Scottish: his accent was fairly uncommon. The second thing was that he was holding a glass of scotch as well, although the bottle was definitely out of his reach, so he must have already been there when we arrived.
At first, I assumed Emma had invited him, but by the look on her face I realized he wasn't supposed to be there. I tensed up. Who is this man?
"What do you want, Gold?" she asked, stern.
The man slowly approached us, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he sat down right next to me. With what I hoped was an unnoticeable movement, I slid as far away from him as I could.
"Oh, by now you should know there's only one thing I could possibly want from you, Miss Swan," he said, sugared.
"I have no intention of making a deal with you," she hissed in reply. "Now, if you don't mind…"
"Yeah, but – see, you're going to want to hear my offer," he paused for a second before adding, with a smile that was as phony as it was eerie, "dearie."
Emma glared at him, pure disgust on her face. I was getting more and more worried: who was this man? A criminal? Because I felt like he was about to threaten her, and that was unacceptable to say the least.
Interpreting her silence as a permission to continue, he went on talking. "That parcel you received? I need it," he said.
I was even more confused by his words: how could he possibly know about it?
"And what would you do for me?" she spat out.
For some reason, I knew she shouldn't have accepted the deal, regardless of what she would be offered.
"I will leave our dear Mayor alone," he replied with a fake, oddly baleful smile, looking at me shrewdly.
I gazed at Emma, trying to understand by her demeanor what was going on. She was thinking fast, I could tell; at some point, her expression changed, and I sensed she knew what to do.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Gold," she said. "I don't think I'm interested."
And with that, she raised a hand and, somehow, a cloud of white smoke surrounded us. I closed my eyes instinctively, and when I carefully opened them again, I froze.
We weren't in the same room anymore; the lounge had inexplicably turned into an office – very well decorated, in black and white forest wallpaper, patterned tiles and furniture of the same colors. There was a sitting area with couches and a fireplace, and our suitcases were laying on top of a round woven carpet.
I knew my mouth had dropped open; I was utterly staggered. I looked up at Emma, but it was fairly dark and I couldn't exactly see what she was doing: she was standing in front of the double door, her hands raised up high, and it looked as though a white, opalescent film was forming over the wooden surface.
It took her a few seconds, but she ran up to me as soon as she was done, gently leading me to the closest chair and helping me sit down.
"Are you okay?" she asked, fretting about me.
I looked at her in disbelief, managing to babble a curt, "Do I look okay, to you?" before downing the rest of the scotch in the glass I was still holding. I'm going insane. I know I am.
She let out a nervous chortle at my words, clearly relieved that I wasn't freaking out. At least, not out loud.
"What just happened?" I asked after my heartbeat had gone back to normal speed.
"I…" she hesitated, worried about my reaction. "I just teleported us to the Mayor's office."
"Because that man threatened him?" I guessed, desperate to understand what was going on. Teleportation… Insane.
She looked at me a tad confused, for a second, but then she articulated, "The Mayor's a woman."
Oh. Well, that was completely irrelevant. She continued, "She should be safe, right now."
"So, you can do magic, huh?" I asked, trying to appear confident, but my voice gained a few octaves as I pronounced… that word. "That's, uh… real?"
She nodded.
"What did you just do to the door?"
"It's called a Protection Spell. I enchanted it with Blood Magic, so that my parents and Henry can get inside here too, if they need to, but you should be safe from Gold."
Despite the shock that made it hard for me to reason, and the fact that my mind was mainly focusing on keeping my breathing regular, I managed to process her words, which left me in a spiraling vortex of 'startled' and 'panicking'.
"Why wouldn't I be safe from that man? I thought we were protecting the Mayor?"
She looked at me and, somehow, I already knew what she was about to say.
"You are the Mayor, Regina."
I looked at Emma without really seeing her, and then I put my head in my hands and took a few short breaths to keep myself from hyperventilating.
"The more time I spend with you, the more certain I am that I'm completely out of my head," I said, eventually managing to regain control. "So, if you have an explanation to all of this nonsense, I would very much like you to elaborate."
Looking both concerned and guilty, she sat on the floor, right in front of me, crossed her legs and started talking.
"All of the people in this town, including me and you, come from another world," she said slowly, evaluating my reactions as she went on, "called the Enchanted Forest. All of our lives, our past, our adventures, in this world are known as fairytales, making us 'fictional' characters. Years ago, you moved us all from the Enchanted Forest to this world.
"You might have noticed some odd things about this town – or even about yourself. For example, the fact that you don't remember anything specific about your past, that some things look oddly familiar to you, or that my parents look pretty much as young as me."
I mused over her words and, for the first time, I realized she was right: I couldn't recall my past, only the most recent events.
"Why don't I remember a thing?"
"You have been through a lot of really, really painful things in your life. A few months ago, you saw your happy ending slip away for the umpteenth time, when the man you loved, Robin Hood, died… so you decided to cast a curse on yourself, which erased your memories of the Enchanted Forest and of Storybrooke and gave you a fake life in New York, where you could be free from the pain – hell, even from the burden that our lives are. Or, at least, we think that's the reason why you did it."
"Wait, I have magic too, then? And why didn't you just… I don't know, take away the curse or something?"
"Oh, you have magic alright," she replied, a smile of admiration and respect barely touching her lips. "The problem is, there is but one thing that can break the curse: True Love's kiss."
I looked at her while arching an eyebrow, momentarily forgetting the shock.
"True Love's kiss? Seriously?" I mocked her.
"Hey, don't make fun of it! True Love is the most powerful magic of all."
I was still quite skeptical, but seeing her so passionate about the topic, I decided to indulge her.
"The problem is that, despite there being many people who do love you and care about you, none of them can give you True Love's kiss, because you don't love them – you don't even remember them."
I nodded, hinting her that I was with her.
"So, it wasn't a coincidence that I found your mother's request to furnish her apartment, was it?"
She shook her head.
"My mother's apartment was completely fine – Zelena, your sister, made all of the furniture disappear..."
"My what?" I was incredulous to say the least. "Actually, never mind. It's unquestionably not the strangest thing I've heard tonight. But then, you wanted me to come back, didn't you? You placed the file in my office."
"Actually, we didn't do anything. That wasn't us, and we don't know who did it, yet; we have a few ideas, but that's it."
We spent a few minutes in silence, while I processed the information and she patiently waited for my next question.
"The story you told me last night," I began, voicing my theory, "was about me and you, wasn't it? I was… I am… the Queen, and you're the Savior."
She nodded, confirming my assumption. Unbelievably, crazily, inexplicably, it made sense.
"So that's why your parents are so young," I questioned again, putting two and two together. "They were under that curse the Que- I put on this city. You said time stood still during that period."
"Yeah. Nobody in this town got old, during the twenty-eight years that spell was active. Well, except for Henry, but he was never hit by the curse in the first place."
"Oh, that's right – your son. He got here only after I had cast it, because you gave birth to him in Phoenix; then…"
I froze. I started feeling cold, as if the temperature had abruptly dropped; I even got a little bit dizzy, as one clear thought lingered in my mind.
"…Then you adopted him," she murmured, her voice soft, her eyes sad and caring.
I had a son.
I had a son and I didn't remember him.
A memory flashed right in front of my eyes: a few days prior, as I entered the diner and the fourteen-year-old whom I had believed to only be Emma's son let out a grieved, 'Mom.' At the time, I thought he wasn't actually looking at me; I thought it was my mind playing tricks. But he was, he was hurting because I was there and I didn't recognize him.
My eyes glazed over as a hand shot up to cover the sob escaping my mouth.
Emma immediately stood, grabbing a packet of tissues from one of the desk drawers and then hurried back to me. She kneeled down right in front of me, taking my hands and gently stroking them as a soothing gesture.
"Thank you," I managed to choke out, accepting the tissue she was handing me.
"He's okay, you know?" she reassured me. "He misses you a lot, but he's a strong kid. He knows that the greatest thing to do, during these painful situations, is to not lose hope. He believes in you – in us, probably even more than we believe in ourselves. He knows we can fix this, and I have no intention of failing him."
I nodded, proud to have grown such a brave young man.
"May I see him, tomorrow?" I requested. I needed him to know that I was going to do whatever it took to get his mother back.
"Of course," Emma consented, and my heart calmed down a bit.
I wiped away the tears that had inevitably fallen and went on with my third degree.
"You said we're all fairytale characters," I stated.
She nodded her confirmation.
"Anyone I might have heard of?"
She snorted at my question.
"Oh, yes," she replied bitterly. "Your sister is the Wicked Witch of the West; I'm the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming."
I gaped in surprise, staggered by her true identity.
"Wait, but that makes me… the Evil Queen?!" I exclaimed, loudly, connecting all the dots. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. "Did I actually turn into an old hag to give your mother the poisoned apple?"
Emma chuckled, and I felt the tension lighten, a much more cheerful atmosphere now surrounding us.
"No, you didn't," she said still giggling. It was… adorable. "I mean, you did give her a poisoned apple, but you looked like yourself. You just, you know, threatened to kill my father if she didn't eat it and stuff…"
"Gods, I must've been so resentful," I laughed. "You know, I still don't exactly like your mother. She's so kind… too nice for my taste."
"Yeah, well, not much has changed, then."
She went on telling me about Mr. Gold and how his real identity was Rumpelstiltskin; she explained his belonging to their – our – family too, as Henry's grandfather; she told me of his son, and of our adventures in Neverland, the Enchanted Forest, Oz, Camelot, the Underworld; she narrated how I had changed, through time, and all of the loved ones we had found and those we had lost.
It was a long tale – one that had me realizing how incredibly confusing our family tree must have been. It almost seemed impossible that I managed to forget it all. And yet, I had no doubt that what she was saying was the truth: it was the first and only thing that gave an actual meaning to my world; it was another piece to add to the puzzle of my life, and now the picture was finally starting to come together.
It was the middle of the night, when she finally finished her narration; a look outside the window, to the town's clock tower, informed me that it was almost two in the morning.
"We should probably hit the sheets," she said, catching my gaze, "it's been a long day."
I looked around, thinking of a way for the both of us to be able to sleep: there was only one couch, so one of us would have to settle for the floor.
Except for the fact that I forgot magic was now a thing, so she could easily materialize a bed in the room – which she did, including extra pillows and nightwear.
"I could get used to this," I muttered as I got changed.
We crawled under the sheets, both tired and emotionally drained.
"We haven't opened that package," I said at some point, remembering the reason why all this had started in the first place.
"I think we've had enough revelations for today," she replied, and I couldn't agree more. "We'll think about it tomorrow."
"Goodnight, Emma," I bid her, from my side of the bed.
"'Night, Gina."
I couldn't help but smile at the nickname.