A/N: Hi hi, you beautiful people! I hope you had a wonderful week. I just wanted to quickly thank you all for your lovely comments, as always, and warn you that next chapter marks the beginning of the end. Shit starts to go down, and chapters will be longer and more meaningful. Get ready.
CHAPTER 17 – Emma – Soothed
I had no idea what Ruby had meant by randomly naming a State, but she abruptly sprang to the left and ran, her figure disappearing in the darkness as it melted with the shadows of the night.
"Ruby!" I called after her. I hurried at her heel to follow her, linking a hand with Regina's to make sure I wouldn't lose her. Why the hell weren't there working lampposts along Main Street?!
"Guys!" Ruby called from somewhere to my left hand side, and I finally found her kneeling on the ground. A woman about her age was laying in front of her, completely unconscious, with her head resting on Ruby's lap. "We need to get her to a doctor…"
I didn't think twice before I channeled my magic and teleported us to the hospital, helplessly startling the nurses with our sudden materialization in the atrium.
Everything was very confused, from there. Several doctors rushed to take care of the girl, pushing Regina and I away and resigning to the fact that Ruby was going to stay with the patient until she had made sure she would be okay – her intentions emphasized by a rather persuading growl that reminded the staff just who they were dealing with.
It wasn't until Regina and I had retired to the waiting room – a plain sitting area with white walls, green plastic chairs and a coffee machine in a corner – that I realized we were still hand in hand, holding onto each other as if our lives depended on it.
"Who was that woman?" Regina took a seat after she had detangled her hand from my own, nonchalantly taking it back into her gentle grip as soon as I had sat down next to her. She started playing with my fingers, her feathery, tingly touch comforting to the mayhem that were my nerves at the moment.
"I don't know," I confessed. I automatically turned my head to look at the frenzied bustle of nurses and doctors in the corridors. "And I don't know how she managed to get here, either. By the looks of it, she came from another world."
Noticing the determination and frustration in my voice, she consoled me. "Don't lose your sleep over it, dear. We'll get to the bottom of this." She paused a second, releasing a sigh before adding, hesitantly, "Do you… do you reckon there may be a possibility that the crystals originated from another dimension as well?"
I meditated on her question for a moment. It was definitely plausible, although I couldn't begin to imagine where exactly they came from: I wasn't quite as familiar with parallel dimensions as Regina was – or used to be.
"It isn't unlikely," I replied, "but I have no clue as to where they might come from."
Regina nodded, letting us fall into a comfortable silence as the conversation came to an end. I snuggled closer to her and rested my head on her shoulder, enjoying her soft breath in my hair, her lips lightly brushing against me.
"Maybe you ought to call David. He will worry if he doesn't hear from you. I'll tell Henry why we haven't come back home yet, meanwhile."
She was right. With a heavy sigh I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and dialed my father's number. When he picked up, I quickly informed him of the situation we were having, reassuring him that I would magic the pacifier at the loft so that he could stop worrying about it.
"How's mom doing?" I asked him before hanging up. I was aware that nothing major had happened, but that knowledge didn't keep me from being concerned for my mother.
"She's alright," dad replied. "She has slept almost the whole afternoon, so now she's all hyped and making plans for the party she's throwing in a few days."
"Ugh, right! The party." I sighed. "I forgot that's really gonna happen, kinda hoped it had been a nightmare."
"Come on honey, you'll like it. Just wait and see."
I replied with a non-committal, "Mmh," and hung up before he could start rambling about how much effort my mom was putting in the organization, and how I was going to love it in the end.
When I turned around to see if Regina was done calling Henry, I found her giggling at something our son had said, and a smile reflexively sprang on my face at that beautiful sound. I watched her; her eyes were glimmering, just like they always were when she talked to our son, and her face was lit by a genuine smile. She was stunning.
"Goodbye, Henry," she said then, ending the phone call and turning her attention back to me. "I told him to call his grandparents if we weren't back by eleven, and ask them to bring him to the loft."
I felt my smile slowly fade away at her words. That thoughtful gesture was exactly what Regina – the real Regina – would have done, and as guilty as thinking of the woman I was currently facing as 'not real' made me feel, the nostalgia for my old friend spread through me, a tidal wave I couldn't stop nor avoid, that overpowered anything else I was feeling. Nonetheless, her words and her behavior were the proof that she was still there, somewhere, waiting to be set free. And with the wistfulness for Regina came also a deep, overwhelming fondness – one that pushed me forwards to meet her lips in the most desperate of kisses.
We arrived home at around ten PM. Henry was waiting for us in the lounge, so engrossed in the videogame he was playing that he didn't even notice we had entered the house until we joined him on the couch, on either side of him, and summarized to him everything that had happened during the past hour.
When Regina and I had left the hospital, it had been under Ruby's insistence. She had revealed to us the girl's identity – we had to make sure Zelena didn't find out that Dorothy Gale was in Storybrooke, by the way – after the doctors had done everything they could to make sure her vitals and her brain activity were stable, but she'd still been unconscious, by the time we had gone home. Ruby had assured us that she would call as soon as Dorothy woke up, but she had made it clear that we would talk to her only after she had recovered, afraid our pressing inquiry might startle her. Her protectiveness towards the new girl suggested to me that their relationship hovered somewhere beyond mere friendship, and I had to suppress my curiosity on the topic, out of respect for their privacy.
And now that I was finally able to relax, my head resting on top of Henry's shoulder as I watched his gameplay on the TV, the weight of that stressful evening suddenly dropped on me, leaving me weary and completely drained of any energy. Needless to say, it was a matter of seconds before I was fast asleep.
It hadn't been the best of slumbers, mostly caused by my body's exhaustion and need to recharge, rather than my mind actually being tired. I fell into a deep yet restless sleep, haunted by a feeling of emptiness – the lack of something that my subconscious couldn't quite figure out – that, eventually, woke me up.
I was still in the living room, spread on the couch. There was no sign of Regina or Henry, but I knew the blanket that was keeping me warm was their doing. A quick glance to the antique clock on the wall informed me that it was a little over midnight, hence Henry must have been asleep already, as a school day was waiting for him.
Which meant that Regina was all alone. At night.
I supposed she didn't keep me company on the sofa in order to avoid Henry's suspicion – his perceptiveness was definitely something he had developed after his other mother, just as observant as he was – but that meant exposing herself to the demons that had made her time in New York a living hell. Storybrooke wasn't nearly as noisy, especially at night, but I was still wary at the idea of her spending the night by herself.
My heartbeat started accelerating, worry filling my guts as I stumbled off the couch – no, you tripped over the blanket – and rushed up the stairs, careful not to make a noise.
The lack of screams and sobs slightly calmed me, but the thought of going back downstairs didn't even cross my mind. When I finally reached Regina's bedroom door, I suddenly felt unsure as to what I should do. Was I supposed to announce my presence? Ask if I could go in? Eventually I decided to just open the door and apologize to her if necessary.
I peeked inside, the door only ajar, and I was surprised to see Regina wide awake, her figure identifiable thanks to the dim moonlight that surrounded her as a halo, her demeanor filled with undeniable amusement.
"About time," she whispered mockingly, "you've been standing out there for no less than five minutes. I thought you had fallen back asleep on the floor."
I narrowed my eyes at her, finally making my way into the luxurious room and slipping under the covers next to her, an action I was quickly becoming familiar with. We both turned to face each other, and Regina's cheeky sneer wiped away most of the concern that had filled me before – although a considerable percentage of it still stuck with me.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I shot back, denying her assumption even though she was obviously right. Dropping our little bicker, I added, in all seriousness, "How are you?"
She understood what I was referring to without the need of a clarification. She took a deep breath and rolled on her back, staring at the ceiling with a hand tucked under her head.
"I'm fine," she said. "I didn't manage to get any sleep, but the silence that envelopes Storybrooke helps: I don't get mental breakdowns when I'm here. It's relaxing, soothing, even. I imagine what I used to experience back in New York was a natural reaction of my brain – it was hinting me that I didn't belong there, surrounded by the noise of a life that wasn't my own."
I nodded briefly in response. Her words did make sense, but I still couldn't fathom why something like that was happening. When my own memory had been modified – by none other than Regina herself – I never bumped into any traces of erased thoughts or side effects to the magic she had practiced onto me. And, knowing Regina, I highly doubted they had happened by mistake: she would never be so thoughtless, not even after the heartbreak that had supposedly led her to casting the curse. If her body and her subconscious were directing her towards Storybrooke, it was because she had meant for them to.
Regina had wanted us to find her… but then, why enact the curse in the first place?
"How come you woke up in the middle of the night?" she whispered after a while.
I shrugged in response. "Like I told you this morning, I only sleep a lot when I'm with you. Normally I'm a light sleeper: I've been scarred by too many things to be able to shut my mind off for more than a few hours at a time." My tone was light, but being that open about my feelings made me feel heavier than ever. She turned back towards me as I talked, and I looked into those brown eyes I was increasingly more drawn towards. "But you… you soothe me. It's as if I can only be in peace when I sleep with you. You manage to eclipse the demons in my head; you free me from my own mind. I'm very thankful for that." I added a smirk to that last sentence, but my tone immediately returned to its serious inclination. "I think I know why this is happening.
"When you cast that spell upon yourself, you didn't say anything to anybody. I could see why you wouldn't reveal your plans to anyone else, but you always let me know what you had in mind. This time you didn't. You left me a note, a fucking piece of paper with a few words to tell me not to go after you. Of course I didn't believe you at first, and I spent the following week looking for you all over town, hoping you were just avoiding me. When I realized you were actually gone, I felt as if the ground was crumbling beneath my feet, and I was falling deeper and deeper into a dimension of complete numbness.
"I think I can only fully rest when I'm with you because now I know how much it hurts to be without you. When you went away – it broke me. And now I can't even conceive the idea of living without you again, so your presence appeases me, when I sleep." I moved as Regina wrapped her arms around me, and I settled on top of her, my head resting on that spot of her chest that let me hear the soft and regular thumping of her heart. "Even when I'm unconscious, listening to your heartbeat reminds me that you're here with me… and I'm not letting you slip away again."
"I'm not going anywhere," she breathed out, tightening her grip around my waist to mark the truthfulness of her words.
Somewhere around my stomach a few butterflies took flight; and I believed her.