Flu Love's Kiss 12
A/N: I was a bit sad after last chapter cos I thought I didn't get any reviews and everyone hated it... but it turns out the site ate all the email alerts and a bunch of lovely reviews were there waiting on the actual page! Thankyou :). Btw if you think you may have missed the alert for the previous chapter, check you've read it or this one won't make much sense.
Chapter 12 - I love you
Emma pushed the vegetables around her plate with her fork, leaning her chin on her hand and staring rather morosely. The conversation at the dinner table went on without her as Mary Margaret and David discussed the tail-end of the Love Flu epidemic which had finally reached it's peak infection rate.
"So how many people were infected with Love Flu?" asked Mary Margaret.
"Over three hundred," said David, nodding seriously. "Most of the earlier cases have resolved one way or another but there are many couples who are still stuck together. It's only been a few weeks but the epidemic will probably die out soon."
"How's Whale doing now that he's locked up?"
"Being a pain in my ass," grumbled David, and then checked his language remembering that Henry was at the table seemingly engrossed in a comic book while he ate.
Whale's vigilantes had been disbanded and warned and none of them posed a threat any longer. Whale himself was locked up at the Sheriff's station, they didn't know what to do with him since technically his only crime had been threatening Henry and his mental state at the time was still in question. He had been spending his hours behind bars alternately bringing up his one-night stand with Mary Margaret in David's earshot and correcting a copy of Shelley's Frankenstein with a red pen.
"It's a relief that the panic has eased too," said Mary Margaret, keen to get back off the topic of Dr Whale.
David agreed. "The looting and misdemeanours have stopped, thankfully. Probably because everyone knows Emma's back on the job."
"Storybrooke finally has a fair and gentle ruler," said Mary Margaret proudly, but the smile faded at seeing her daughter so despondent.
"Emma, how was work?" asked Mary Margaret with forced brightness.
"Fine," she muttered.
Emma had gone back to work straight away after recovering from the illness. She'd been going a bit stir crazy cooped up at home with nothing to do. Not being able to help with the various situations in Storybrooke which were demanding her attention had driven her crazy. She hadn't been able to get her mind off everything that had happened with Regina either. She hadn't stopped thinking about her... since she left. It was frustrating waiting but there was nothing she could do.
There'd been no word from Regina. None that Emma had received anyway. She knew Henry had seen his mother at some point though. For the first few days she'd heard "When's Mom coming home?" about fifty times a day until the pestering abruptly stopped. Emma was glad that their son had seen her, even if she hadn't.
"Any word on the hearts?" asked Mary Margaret hopefully.
The hearts had disappeared from the hospital before they could get to them. There was no record on the security footage tapes and nobody saw or heard anything but the hearts were long gone. Hospital security had no idea who had stolen them mere hours after Whale had deposited them there but David and Mary Margaret knew who it must've been. And since nobody had seen anything of Regina, they were slightly concerned about what she might be up to.
"Don't worry. They're back," Henry piped up, barely raising his eyes from the comic.
David looked at the boy earnestly trying to get his full attention. "Henry, do you know something?"
The boy shrugged. "Yeah. Mom's been giving the hearts back. Don't you feel yours?"
"Henry, when did you see Regina?" asked Mary Margaret urgently.
"A while ago. She said I could tell you if I wanted to but I don't think she wanted anyone to know what she was doing."
Emma worried her thumbnail with her teeth and spoke quietly without looking at any of them. "Did she say anything else?"
"Not really," said Henry vaguely. "She said she'd be home when she's finished."
Mary Margaret and David exchanged hopeful glances that it was true, for their daughter's sake at least.
"She said to tell you she hadn't been sleeping well," Henry told Emma, frowning because he didn't understand why his mother had sent that particular message.
Emma knew what it meant and her face crumpled. Her chair scraped the floor as she leapt up from the table and went into the bathroom.
David knocked on the bathroom door in their small apartment and called softly. "Emma?"
He went in and crouched in front of Emma who was sitting on the edge of the bath with a splotchy wet face. He pulled her into his arms, letting her bury her head in his shoulder.
"It's going to be ok," David soothed, placing his hand protectively on the back of her head. "She said she'd be back. I know it's hard but you have to have faith that you'll see her again. You know the story with your mother and me right? I always knew I'd find her again no matter what. But that doesn't help while everything looks like it's never going to get better does it?"
"Yeah," Emma agreed in a watery voice.
David released her and brushed her blonde hair back off her face. "So. I've known Regina for a long time, not very well, but there's one thing I do know..."
"What's that?"
"She doesn't usually let anyone stand in the way of what she wants," David said wryly. He was pleased to see that Emma cracked a small smile.
"You wanna sleep here tonight?"
Emma shook her head. "No, I think we'll go home. Henry has school tomorrow."
It was close to midnight but Emma sat on the lounge still awake, biting at her thumbnail again. They'd gotten back to the house late so she'd sent Henry off to sleep straight away but couldn't bear to go to bed herself, remembering Regina's message. She crashed on the lounge downstairs in her pyjamas, hugging a pillow that still had some mascara on it.
Regina walked into the room without making a sound. She was dressed in a black suit and white blouse, impeccable as ever. Emma raised her eyes once at her before looking away to stare blankly again.
"Where've you been." Emma's voice was monotone, making it sound more like Regina had only been gone for a few hours without telling her, rather than the few weeks it actually had been.
"I had something to do," said Regina stiffly.
Emma nodded. "Right."
Regina came over to sit beside Emma on the lounge, perching on the edge primly but she didn't say anything further.
Emma propped her socked feet up on the coffee table, a move which she knew irritated Regina, and she almost knocked the pizza boxes and ice-cream containers off onto the carpet.
Regina's nose crinkled at the state of the place. On her way in she hadn't missed seeing the dishes piled up in the kitchen nor Henry's toys cluttering the floor everywhere. It looked like Emma and Henry had been staying at the house rather than the apartment since she'd left... and hadn't cleaned up in that whole time either.
"What have you done to my house."
Emma shrugged. "I figured if I made enough mess you'd know about it and come home just to yell at me."
Regina frowned. "Are we fighting?"
"Dunno, kinda feels like we are doesn't it?" said Emma and then mused to herself. "You and me are always fighting about something."
"You seem upset," Regina observed.
Emma exhaled roughly. "Last time I felt like this I was in jail with Henry's feet sticking into my ribs."
She couldn't eat. She couldn't sleep. Emma could barely concentrate on work and Henry was the only thing that distracted her from what she was feeling. It bothered her to know why she was acting like this. If her heart was so strong that it was a lump of stone in her chest- if her heart was so strong that she could never fall in love again- then why was she going around like a lovesick idiot? Hadn't she been cured of the sickness? She and Regina had been stuck together like magnets for days but once the Love Flu broke shouldn't the attraction have faded as well?
But it hadn't. It had only made her yearn more.
"So are you going to tell me what you've been doing?" asked Emma, breaking the silence.
"The hearts I took in the other land," began Regina. "I've returned them to their rightful owners. Secretly of course, most people didn't know what they were missing. They don't know that I could have used their hearts to control them or kill them at any time."
"What'd you do - sneak into bedrooms at night and shove em back in."
Regina nodded wryly at her obnoxious sarcasm. "Something like that, yes."
"So you're like Santa Claus but with hearts... Why'd you do it anyway? Why'd you take everyone's hearts in the first place?"
Regina looked down before answering. "The curse - I thought that if I could control everything and everyone around me then I'd never lose again. I wanted a life where there were no surprises, where no-one could control me. By taking the hearts I thought I was trying to protect them, but the only heart I was really protecting was my own ... I now know that hearts are given, not taken."
Emma let out a huff and shook her head as though she disagreed. "I don't know about that."
"You can't force love where there is none."
Emma felt a wave of sympathy at the hopeless statement, now that she knew some of what had been going on in Regina's head all this time. She was always so closed off and she'd hidden her secret well. Actually, Emma thought, Regina was an epic secret keeper. She'd kept Snow hidden from an entire Kingdom for a decade. She'd kept the truth about the curse and the triumph of her revenge under wraps for 28 years without telling a single soul. She would've taken the truth of her love for Emma to the grave if it hadn't been forced out of her.
"Why didn't you tell me," asked Emma, entreating her to answer this most important of questions.
"I didn't want to love you," said Regina stiffly.
Emma's jaw almost fell of it's hinge and she felt a pang of hurt. Well she had asked for honesty hadn't she. "Thanks a lot."
"Emma, it can never happen. You must see how this is."
"No, I don't see how this is," said Emma snippily. "All I see is you, yet again, refusing to tell me the truth to my face."
"I-" Regina broke off straight away.
Emma waited for her to answer but she had a feeling she was going to be waiting a long time and that irritated her. After all they'd been through, after everything that'd happened between them, and all the secrets that were now out, how hard was it to be honest with the person you supposedly loved? She herself was only waiting for a single cue from Regina, just a hint and the dam would burst for her.
But no answer was forthcoming.
Emma rolled her eyes impatiently and got up off the lounge. "I'm going to bed."
Emma lay on the side of the bed she'd always slept on when they were joined together, but she had her back to the door. She knew Regina had followed her upstairs and could feel her standing in the doorway but she wasn't going to make it easy for her.
"Are you asleep?" she heard Regina say.
"Yes."
The silence rang deafeningly for so long that Emma assumed Regina must've given up and gone until she heard a voice so soft it cracked it's own shell.
"I love the way your curls fall on my pillow."
The words made Emma's heart leap with the promise of hope she'd thought would never come. She forced herself to lay there and listen instead of throwing herself at the brunette. Emma felt Regina sit behind her on the bed before going on in a thick voice.
"I love the way you and Henry think you're getting away with something I already know about. I love the way," Regina's voice hitched, "you hold me."
Emma rolled over, searching the brunette's face as though seeing the words would make the truth more true.
"I'm sorry for loving you. The last person I loved was killed because of it. My mother ripped his heart out and crushed it to dust. I never wanted to love again. Anyone I love is in danger because of me and from me. That is why I didn't tell you... And it's also why we can never be together."
Emma sighed dramatically and raised an eyebrow. "Regina. Get in the damn bed."