"Appetizer?" Mal asks, taking a hit off a freshly lit joint and handing it to Emma. Emma pauses, but accepts.
She feels clouds begin to creep in, a calming and satisfying feeling. She sits on one of the stone benches, Regina standing behind her, still looking uneasy. "You can go," she whispers, tucking her hair behind her ears.
Emma shakes her head, giving her a slight smile. She figures she's come this far with this insane bunch of weirdos, she might as well see it through.
Ursula appears with a brown paper bag, Mal's face lights up. "Ah, Chinese. Good choice." She's handed a white container and some chopsticks and takes a seat across from Emma. She smiles wryly. "Rice?" she offers.
Emma shakes her head, holding up a hand. "No, I'm good, thanks."
"Oh, come on. You two said you were going to eat. Who doesn't like rice?" Mal asks, looking directly at Regina.
Sighing, Emma takes the bait. "Okay," she says using the plastic spoon Mal hands her. She takes a bite of rice and is unsure why the rest of them are laughing. Except Regina, her face is still stone.
"How are those maggots, Emma?"
Emma rolls her eyes. "What?"
"You're eating maggots."
Emma looks into the container and sees thousands of wiggling maggots. She throws the container and spits out her mouthful, gagging. The laughter intensifies. She looks down at the ground and sees the tipped container, with nothing but white rice spilled out onto the ground.
"Leave her alone," Regina says sternly.
Mal's face falls. "Sorry, Emma. Just having a little fun. Have some noodles," she offers, handing Emma another container.
Feeling like she is in some kind of bizarre nightmare, Emma tries to regain her composure. Maybe it was bad weed. She shakes her head and looks into the box of noodles. Instead of noodles, she sees wriggling earthworms and stands in horror. "They're worms," she says, panic rising in her throat.
Mal laughs and uses her chopsticks to bring a few to her mouth. "Don't!" Emma yells, but it's too late. Mal sucks up the last of them, just regular lo-mein noodles, still smiling. "Just noodles, Emma. Just noodles."
"Yeah," Emma says, feeling a pit in her stomach. "I'm gonna go. This is too fucked up for my taste."
Mal cocks her head, a challenging smirk on her lips. "I'm sorry, Emma. Obviously we're not used to guests. Please, have a drink."
"Enough. She said she's leaving," Regina spits, stepping toward Mal. Something makes her stop.
Mal looks away from Regina and raises her eyebrows, handing the bottle of wine to Emma, who takes it cautiously. "I'm sorry I don't have a glass to offer you. We weren't planning on company."
"Emma, don't. It's blood." Regina's quickly next to Emma, palm up, asking her for the bottle.
Thoroughly disbelieving anything that has taken place over the last few hours, Emma laughs bitterly. "Sure, it is. Funny," she says, pissed off that Regina is now going along with the group. If nothing else, she felt that Regina was almost, if not as much, of an outsider as she is. She shakes her head and takes a long drink, an unfamiliar texture and mildly unpleasant taste sliding down her throat.
Regina closes her eyes while time seems to stop around them. She opens them slowly, backing away from the group into the blackness that the cavern offers, breathing heavily.
Suddenly, Emma feels like the walls are closing in on her, and she has to get out of there. The last thing she wants is to have an anxiety attack in front of these people. She mumbles some variation of thanks and makes her way up the ladder thing leading outside. She hears Zelena say something about being "one of us" now, but ignores her and keeps going. Once in the cool night air, Emma sucks in breaths as though she were drowning for the last hour. She fumbles with her cell phone to ask one of her friends to come find her, pick her up, get her out of here. But before she can even unlock her home screen, she falls to her knees and then blacks out.
…
Emma opens her eyes slowly, the sun bearing down on her from the cracks in her blinds. She fumbles for the sunglasses on her nightstand and clumsily puts them on. She looks down to see she is still fully dressed, lying on top of the covers of her new bed.
The door slams open and Mary Margaret stalks in. "Emma! It's two o'clock in the afternoon. What is going on with you?"
Ruby slinks up behind her, filing her nails in the doorway. "I take it you found the little minx you were after?" she asks, wiggling her eyebrows.
Emma coughs, her chest feeling tight and her stomach feeling hollow. "It was seriously the most fucked up night in my entire life. She was there, her name's Regina, but there was this like, motorcycle gang or whatever that she hangs with. I really don't feel good, can you kill the light?"
Mary Margaret obliges, and sits on the edge of Emma's bed while she recalls the events of the previous night. "How did you get home?" she asks, crossing her legs at the ankle.
Emma thinks for a minute. "I don't actually…know. One of them must have taken me home, though I don't remember giving them the address. I guess I could have. I don't know," she repeats, fighting off a shiver.
"Are you going to see her again?" Ruby asks, moving closer.
"I seriously doubt it. Although if I do, and she asks, I probably wouldn't say no," Emma chuckles.
Mary Margaret shakes her head. "I have to go work. While you were out getting high and eating worms, I got a job."
Ruby snickers. "I met a few…interesting people too. So, are we in agreement? We'll give this a few months, and then maybe think about moving on?"
"I don't know," Mary Margaret shrugs. "We should give it a chance, at least."
"Ha! Our little friend has a boyfriend already."
Emma perks up, but Mary Margaret slaps Ruby on the arm. "I do not. Victor does seem very nice though."
"His last name is Whale," Ruby tells Emma, bright smile on her face.
Mary Margaret frowns. "So?"
Ruby laughs, and Emma lays back down covering her face with a pillow.
…
Emma sits on the top of a rickety picnic table, looking out into the darkness. Mary Margaret is working, Ruby is out at the boardwalk, and Granny is off somewhere with the Widower Johnson. She's alone, but she doesn't feel alone. She also knows something's wrong. She's fidgety and irritable and empty. Since the night in the cave, she's wondered numerous times if they drugged her. But wouldn't it have worn off by now? She knows her friends have noticed something's different, but they can't seem to place it either. In all honesty, she just wants to go home.
"I never should have spoken to you that night," a voice, face obscured by a sagging tree, whispers into the night.
Emma jumps off the table, knowing it's Regina before seeing her face. She looks back at the table which she realizes now stands about twenty feet behind her. Not possible, she thinks, on the brink of tears for the hundredth time that day.
Regina walks out of the shadows, her dark hair framing her face like a demonic angel. "I knew better than to test the balance. I knew I should have left well enough alone. I'm sorry."
Emma stares at her, searching for answers. "What did they do to me?"
"I told you what they did. She made you drink blood."
"That's – insane. Do I have some sort of disease now? I don't feel right."
"In a manner of speaking. I wasn't always this weak-willed, spineless ragdoll. I drank it too. Mal's powerful, and very hard to resist. It's my fault she got to you too," Regina says, her lip curled in disgust.
"Okay, thank you. I forgive you for letting her get to me. But I'm not really interested in blaming anyone right now. Can you please tell me what the fuck is going on?"
Regina runs a hand through her hair. "You won't believe me."
"Try me."
"They're vampires. All of them."
Emma just stares at her.
"Okay. Okay, you know what? Fuck you. Fuck you all. Your stupid lady-gang or whatever the hell it is seems to get off on screwing with people and you're all just pathetic. You can go now," Emma says bitterly, turning back toward the house.
Before she knows what's happening, Regina is in front of her. Her eyes are reddish-gold, like a wild animal. "I'm telling you the truth," she says slowly, the words dripping with gravel.
Emma scurries backward, nearly tripping on a rock. "What's wrong with you? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?"
Regina's eyes go back to normal, deep brown filled with regret. "The same thing that's wrong with you. The yearning. The need. I feel it too."
"I'm having an episode," Emma rationalizes, rolling her neck back and forth. "I obviously have a brain tumor, or some sort of mental affliction. This is not real. This is not real," she says again, closing her eyes.
"Welcome to Santa Carla," Regina scoffs. "Murder capital of the world."
Emma looks to the sky, breathing out a mix of disbelief and panic. "I just thought you were pretty. I just wanted to say hello to you, maybe ask you out for drink. You could have been straight. You could have been married. You could have thought I was unattractive. But you're saying…that you're a vampire, and maybe I'm one now too because I had to prove I had a bigger dick than Mal and went to some hole in the ground where I drank fucking blood. Does that sound about right? Regina?" Emma could feel tears pricking her eyes but she didn't care. She let them come.
Regina breathes out softly. "I'm sorry, Emma. I felt it too. When I saw you looking at me, there was this…electricity between us and I thought I could handle it. I didn't know she was going to show up. Honestly, I didn't."
"Does this mean that I'm…dead?" Emma asks, wanting to laugh at the stupidity of her question.
"No. Things happen in stages. The blood is mixing with your own. Once a certain…craving is satisfied, another transformation begins."
"So if I don't give in to that craving, then I'm not actually a motherfucking vampire?"
Regina winces at the crass description. "It's complicated, but you are still in the early stage of the change. So far." She reaches out for Emma's hand, her thumb grazing the top of Emma's wrist.
Emma pulls her hand back like she's being burned. Regina looks crestfallen for a moment, then masks her face with haughtiness. "I am sorry, Emma. But next time you want to flirt with someone don't be so quick to sell your soul."
"Are you fucking kidding me right-" Emma starts, appalled at the nerve of this woman to place any sort of blame on her for this violent insanity. Before she can finish her sentence, Regina is gone.
"Regina?" she calls quietly. She's really gone. Not walking away gone, but gone-gone. "I need to get drunk," Emma whispers to no one, before sitting on the picnic table bench and sobbing into her sleeve.
