v. fabrication
Fingers slide out to wrap around her arm as she summons her magic and it's like a surge of strength she's never known before, cool against her heat and oddly comforting, heightening her every sense until she notices the fingers at last and jerks away. Because she has known this before, and…
"I won't be your crutch," she says warningly, taking a step back so Emma's at a safe distance. With this much magic within her, she feels alive, on fire, and Emma is dangerous in so many ways when she can't dull herself to think of consequences. She's spent far too long training herself to care again to lose it now. "You need to find your own center, not mimic mine."
"I'm trying." Emma's shoulders drop and she looks suddenly weary, defeated and uncomfortable as she's been all day. Regina doesn't know what had brought on this change since yesterday's peaceful dinner, but she does know better than to ask and try to get a straight answer from Emma. "I don't mean to keep ruining it."
It's a simple protection spell for Snow's apartment, put together with a few ingredients and some very specific concentration, and this is the third time it's shattered mid-spell from Emma's disruptive thoughts. "What are you thinking about?" she prods finally, struggling to keep the impatience out of her voice.
She fails miserably and earns an annoyed glare from Emma. "What are you thinking about?"
She colors. "Nothing you need to hear." Snow, eyes wet with tears as she stares up at her and the curse begins. Emma, snapping out truths about her time in the foster system in Neverland. I made a wish…I didn't want to be alone on my birthday. And all she's left with is overwhelming…not regret, it can't be regret when there's Henry, even a Henry who doesn't remember her…but a sense of never again. Snow will have this baby and Zelena will not take it from her. "You love your family. You don't want them to be hurt."
"Of course not."
And there's an easy, if inadvisable, way to keep Emma moving forward. "Think about Zelena sitting with your mother at that table right inside. Think about how close she got to Mary Margaret." She chooses the name with care, avoids all mention of the baby itself, and watches Emma's eyebrows settle into a low, dangerous line. "Think about what she could do to her."
Emma's magic explodes from her and Regina barely catches it in time, guides it until they're wrapping layers and layers of invisible shields around the space of the apartment, building higher in a spiral until it closes in a dome around the loft. It solidifies and doesn't fall, permanent at last, and only then does Regina turn back to Emma. "It's done."
Emma is twitching as though her magic is still being strained out of her. Or…the opposite, like she's containing so much that even that release isn't enough. Regina reaches for her and Emma croaks, "Don't."
"You're going to…"
"I'm going to do something if you touch me and it won't be good." She drops to the floor, palms spread out to catch her, and she remains curled into herself as she keeps twitching. There's no magic this time, nothing but sheer control, and Regina is mildly impressed at Emma's determination. Say what you may about her lack of willpower sometimes, but Emma is just stubborn enough that there's hope for her eventual mastery of magic.
And then full minutes pass and Emma's still on the ground, bent low enough that it recalls Regina's throne room, and the delight at that wears off and Regina crouches beside her and waits. She can feel the heat emanating from her, see sweat dripping along her neck and falling to her bowed chin, hitting the ground in droplets. Whatever exertion she's going through is more than Regina's ever seen with magic, and she'd once had to excise a death curse in a matter of moments.
She'd never wished to be more powerful, not even when she'd seen the vastness of Emma's potential, and now she's glad that she isn't. Her magic fits her like a glove, easy to maneuver and tame into a tool of her own shaping. Emma's magic is too much, too wild, and it's only Emma's supreme control over her own emotions that has kept it small until now. And now that Emma's run out of coping mechanisms, a dozen traumas hitting her at once with the return of her memories and death and future birth, she's enslaved by her own power.
Emma finally stops shaking and Regina puts an arm out again. There's still electricity there, enough to give Regina a shock at contact, but Emma looks up with eyes that glow with victory and Regina can't repress a responding grin. "I did it!"
"This time," she feels obligated to respond, and Emma sags against her arm, quite unexpectedly, and glares up at her until she says grudgingly, "Good job."
"I didn't even collapse this time." Emma stretches and climbs to her feet, pushing open the apartment door. "That's it. I'm all done with magic less–" Her voice trails off.
Regina follows her inside. "What is it?" She doesn't see anything different at first. David is on the couch, Snow seated opposite him with her baby book in hand, and both turn around as they enter the apartment.
"Spell all done?" Snow asks. She frowns. "Did you do something to the apartment?"
And it's only then that Regina turns and sees what Emma's still staring at. Or what sheisn't staring at. Somehow, between the time they'd left for the protection spell and the moment they'd returned, the staircase leading up to Emma's room has vanished completely, as though it had never been there.
This time she doesn't pull away when Emma reaches for her arm, just focuses with her until the stairs return. She can feel Emma's emotions roiling beneath the surface, confusion and despair and new defeat and her heart clenches in response. Emma's eyes flick to hers and there's a wash of comfort from both of them that reacts to thatas Snow says, puzzled, "Was that part of the protection spell?"
"An unforeseen consequence," she says smoothly, and Emma's hand squeezes around her arm until it aches. "It seems to be all right now."
Emma nods, still looking dazed. The high from her success before has faded as quickly as it had come, and she says, "I'm going to go take a quick shower then go pick up Henry from Granny's."
"So early today?" David asks.
She nods. "I…uh…I haven't seen much of him since I brought him to town and it's not fair to him." She looks even more spooked now, and Regina thinks she sees guilt flickering at the corners of her eyes. Odd.
"Maybe we can all meet at the diner later for dinner," Snow suggests, and there's a flash of something dark and frustrated in Emma's eyes before she nods and smiles and vanishes upstairs. Regina knows what's hidden behind her gaze, remembers the desperate desire for her son to be hers, not Emma's or the Charmings' or Neal's, the unwillingness to share because she's stumbled into a universe where motherhood is fleeting and family is twisted and broken away from her.
But Emma will have Henry to herself again soon. Emma is going back to New York and leaving them all, and she's tired of fighting the resentment that emerges whenever she thinks of it. Her son is a stranger and her presence in his life is nonexistent, there but for the grace of Emma Swan, and she has every right to be angry about that.
Even if she's so tired of being angry.
She pours herself a cold glass of water and sits down beside David on the couch, rubbing her temples in an attempt to stave off the incoming headache. "You're all set," she says, sipping at the water as it cools her dry lips. "Zelena can't break through both our magic, or we're in more trouble than we'd thought."
"Thank you." Snow leans forward, eyes drooping a bit as she does. "Emma seems to be embracing the magic lately, doesn't she?"
"She's coming to terms with her potential, yes." She has the oddest sensation of deja vu. It's almost as though it's two years ago again, and she's the mother and Mary Margaret Blanchard is spouting out the same words at parent-teacher conferences. "She's very determined to stop Zelena."
"Still, magic is a commitment," Snow presses. "That's what you said earlier. She can't learn magic and then leave for New York again." Her mouth widens in those distinct Snow-White-Told-A-Secret stylings and Regina blinks.
"You know she's planning on going back?"
"She might've mentioned it to me," David says, and both look apologetic. It's almost as though the two idiots have finally remembered that Henry is her son, too. Almost. "I don't think she'll follow through on it."
"Her home is here," Snow agrees, but she, at least, has the decency to look vaguely worried about it. "She's an adult and we can't stop her, but I know she'll understand that soon."
She doesn't care about Emma changing her mind, she cares about Henry, her son in the hands of a woman who's been known to run at the chance of pain and whose parents are leaving her to work it out on her own. "And if not, maybe she'll come by with Henry on holiday weekends," she says, scowling into her glass.
Snow opens her mouth, then closes it. "Let's talk about cribs! Did you know that the ones with sliding sides aren't safe anymore? What do you do if your arms aren't long enough, just drop the baby in and hope for the best?"
She sighs and purses her lips, putting aside a conversation that isn't any of her business to begin with. "Henry survived just fine with a sliding crib wall." Last night she'd been roped into a phone call about Back to Sleep and its benefits, and she's horrified to discover that she enjoys discussing babies with Snow White. It calls back to a time when Henry had been hers and she'd finally found peace, and now her mortal enemy thinks they're…gal pals. "Why don't you talk to your friend Ella about this? Didn't she have twenty-eight years to read up on babies?"
Snow cocks her head at her, unimpressed, and she's never looked more like Emma than in that moment. "Okay, but look at this study," she says, ignoring Regina's reminder of mortal enemies not gal pals, and beckoning her over to her seat.
They're halfway into a spirited debate on the carelessness of new mothers when Emma appears at the bottom of the stairs, wet hair tied back, her red jacket over her arm, and a pair of plaid pants on under an admittedly nice dark turtleneck. Regina stares at her. "Are you going out or going to bed?"
"What?" She glances down. "Oh, shut up. You coming?" She heads for the door as though that had always been the plan, and Regina blinks in surprise and follows, oddly gratified by the invitation.
Which makes her even more annoyed, because she shouldn't be subject to Emma's whims around her son. Still. "Those pants are atrocious," she says, mostly to stave off both gratitude and resentment that will take her nowhere but in the same circles, over and over again.
"Yeah, like your outfit is any…" Emma pauses for long enough to cast a lingering gaze on Regina's pants and jacket, and Regina waits patiently. "Well," she says, licking her lips.
Her eyes are lidded over just a touch too long, and Regina says, heat rising at the look in Emma's eyes, "Did I write a preference for women into your memories or were you always like this?" They'd always stood too close and stared too long like some goddamned song from the nineties, but she doesn't remember quite so much complacency about it before. Not since Zelena and magic and Emma's lips tearing into hers against the wall of her living room.
Emma brushes her ponytail back over her shoulder. "I don't know," she says, the stirrings of mischief in her voice. "Maybe you did. Maybe this is some agenda of yours."
"Maybe I just saw all the plaid and got the wrong idea," Regina retorts, wincing at the pants again. Emma pulls on her jacket and she shudders.
"Wrong idea," Emma echoes. They emerge onto the street and Emma bypasses her car, quickening her pace so she's already ahead of Regina when she says, voice low and amused, "Right."
Regina's eyebrows shoot up. "What?" But Emma is turning the corner toward Main Street, a smirk her only proffered response.
She lets out an irritated huff and follows, stalking behind Emma and glaring down at her pants. Which aren't doing her ass any favors, mind. This is a woman who belongs in skintight jeans and–
Said ass turns away from her, and when she looks up it's into Emma's knowing eyes. She quirks her lips in response and moves ahead, adding an extra swish to her hips as she walks past Emma. Emma grins and matches her step, the two of them walking together now.
"You didn't have to bring me along if you wanted some alone time with Henry," Regina says finally. It still hurts to give Emma all the power there, but it's a little less painful every time today. Maybe she's adapting. It's been less than a month of memories since the curse, and just over half a year of them since she'd stood in her doorway and watched David walk off with Henry the first time. And she's barely seen him since. No. No, the minute she accepts that Henry is gone is the moment she loses him forever, and she clings to her bitterness as best as she can, as forced as she can.
"No, I don't mind if…" Emma shakes her head, like there's too much rocking around within it and she needs to free it. "I'm just trying to do right by everyone, okay? And I know there's no way I can make it up to you when I go, but while we're here…" She tucks her thumbs into the inside of her jacket. "I'm sorry. I know this is a crap deal for you and I know you didn't want to see him to begin with. If you want to go home or come back for dinner–"
She's babbling, looking nervous and tired and stretched too thin, and Regina interjects, "Emma." Her voice is softer than she'd meant for it to be, and maybe she's done too good a job of pushing that resentment out of her system. Or maybe it's seeing Emma like this, trying to be everything everyone wants her to be, obedient daughter and magical savior and loving mother, and Regina still isn't an afterthought to her.
She hasn't been anything but an afterthought to anyone since the first curse had broken, and she's alarmed to discover how unbalanced it makes her to hear Emma so earnest about her needs. "This is fine," she says to the other woman's intent eyes, and Emma visibly relaxes.
"Okay. I…that's good. I think this is good for you, too." She sighs, hands sliding to the bottom of the jacket so she can fiddle at the ends. "I hate this. I hate lying to him."
"It doesn't get easier," Regina says, because she can remember how Henry's face had gotten more and more thunderous with every truth she'd dismissed. She remembers insistences that she didn't love him, that she was evil, that she wasn't his mother at all. And she'd been frustrated and angry and helpless, because the truth had been so much more toxic than the lie and she'd been determined to keep him for as long as she could cling to their false lives. "And you do have purer motives than I did," she says reluctantly.
"Do I?" Emma asks, kicking at a stone on the road. They're nearly at the center of town now, and they slow their stride as a unit. "We both know that if he remembered- if he knew any of it- he wouldn't want to go. If he ever got his memories back, he'd never forgive me." She clenches her fists tighter on the jacket and when Regina glances over at her, she's startled at the absolute devastation on Emma's face.
Whatever this is runs deeper than just fear, and she narrows her eyes. "What are you keeping from me?"
Emma startles visibly, hands dropping flat to her sides. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
She doesn't look up at her. "It's between me and Henry."
"If it's about Henry, I have a right to–"
"It's between me and Henry!" Emma snaps out, magic crashing in her eyes, and then looks stunned at her own loss of temper. Regina is taken aback, too. For all Emma's headstrong stupidity, it's rare that she ever loses control like that. She can count on one hand the number of times she'd provoked Emma enough for that kind of sudden outburst. But everything is close to the surface now, too easy to awaken and bring Emma to fury as she had the week before, and Emma sags and Regina immediately regrets pushing it.
"I understand," she says, and her voice is still doing that odd gentle thing. "I shouldn't have pried."
"Yeah." They're not friends. They're barely allies. They don't open up to each other over girl talk and anything other than their shared love for Henry, and Regina doesn't expect–
"Just…sometimes I wish you'd never given us those memories." Regina stares at her. Emma shakes her head. "No. I don't wish that. I just…" She looks down again. "I gave Henry up for his best chance. I was this useless eighteen-year-old kid without any money or home or future beyond a doofy car and I knew, I knew that if I was the one to raise him he'd be taken away from me. He'd be back in the foster system, just like me, and I couldn't do that to him. So I gave him up."
They've stopped walking somewhere along the way, just across the street from Granny's, and Emma leans back against a tree and stares into the windows of the diner. And Regina understands at last. "But now you have memories of the two of you being together all along without losing him."
"What am I supposed to tell him, Regina?" Emma demands, and the magic churns on behind her eyes, the air around her like static. "How am I supposed to explain to him that I never had to abandon him? That our memories could have been real?"
She tries talking and it's all so damnably sympathetic that she starts again, voice as hard as she can make it. Because she has no sympathy for Emma Swan. None. Not even when she's naked-eyed and desolate and all of Regina's instincts are to comfort her. No. "You tell him what I'm going to tell you now. That it's a fairytale." Her hands are on Emma's before she can stop herself, and the magic is calming and flowing between them as she points out, "Your memories before last year are all smoke and mirrors. You know they happened but when you try to think of how, you're left with nothing."
"That's not…" Emma shakes her head. "I remember some kind of…some program took us in after I got out?" But she sounds unsure, and there's more than a little relief in her voice.
"It didn't happen, Emma." She squeezes her hands and forces herself to ignore the warmth in her belly when Emma squeezes back. "You couldn't have taken care of Henry like that. What you could- and did- do was give Henry a home where he was–" Not safe, not even happy after a while. Not what he'd have in New York, but she'd given him a home where he'd believed in heroes and goodness even when she'd privately lost all faith in them. "Where he was loved," she says finally. "With all my heart. Maybe it wasn't what you wanted–"
"It was all I wanted." Emma's heart is in her eyes in that moment, the magic faded and nothing left but a gaze that means everything and Regina can't pretend that Emma is the enemy anymore. Not even over Henry. Their hands are still together, Emma clasping hers now, and she murmurs, "Thanks," and her eyes shine again as she drops them.
"You're welcome," Regina says, equally quiet, and it's something they've never talked about before but it feels all-encompassing in that moment, a leap forward that she wouldn't have imagined they'd take. And Emma moves forward in those ridiculous plaid pants and that horribly matching jacket and all she wants is for this walk to keep going forever, until they've exhausted every secret dream about Henry and all that's left is the two of them.
But Granny's is right across the street and she's dwelling on emotions that she hasn't felt since she was a teenager, and instead she follows Emma as the other woman says, "You know, you've really changed a lot since your Mayor Mills days."
"Yes, well." She flushes, suddenly flustered at the acknowledgement. "I had motivation." Henry, Henry. Her whole world begins and ends with him, no matter where he is or who she is to him now.
They make their way into the outside area and up the stairs into Granny's. "You didn't last year."
"We don't know what happened last year. I might not have cast a curse that would have required the heart of the thing I love most, but that's all we know," she reminds her. "Nothing to throw a parade over."
Emma grins. "Do you expect a parade every year of good behavior? Just a bunch of giant apple floats and you sitting in the center of them."
She sniffs. "Of course not." The smile creeps onto her face, unbidden. "I would ride. I'm very skilled."
"Oh, I'll bet you are." Emma's voice takes on another cadence, low and promising, and Regina's eyebrows spike up in response.
She's opening her mouth to respond again when the door to the diner opens just as Emma's about to open it and a man glares down at her. "Mayor Mills," he says coldly.
Albert Spencer. King George in another world. And less than pleased to see her. "District Attorney," she says, nodding curtly. "If you don't mind moving aside…"
"Actually, I do mind." She hears the threat in his tone and Emma tenses beside her. "I mind a lot about the liberties you've taken with me and mine with your curses and this town." He sneers at her and she sees Henry on the far side of the diner, just beside the counter, scooting off his seat. No. "And if you think you can walk freely through the streets–"
"Hey!" Emma objects, raising a hand. "You saw the bulletins. We've discovered that it was the Wicked Witch, not Regina this time."
"Same difference," George says, and he shoves Regina, that proper little sneer still on his face.
She catches herself on the railing and twists around in fury and it's just in time to see George doubled over in sudden agony, clutching onto his heart as though he's having a heart attack, and Emma's staring at him with such fierce hatred that there's no doubt in her mind exactly what's causing it. "Help…me…" he grunts out an order. A man behind him- small and obeisant, and she hadn't noticed him before at all- reaches for his phone and begins dialing paramedics, speaking frantically.
And Emma is still glaring at him, barely perceptible magic moving through her with a focus that Regina's never seen before during her losses of control. Almost as though it's intentional, not just wild power but Emma herself, angry enough on her behalf to inflict injury. Angry enough to forget to catch Regina altogether.
Regina seizes her hand and nearly falls again from the force of the fury. "Emma," she hisses through gritted teeth, and the magic is buzzing through her again, hot and tempting and suddenly absolutely necessary. She can feel Emma's desire, strong and insistent, and it's too close to her own for her to deny it.
It takes the sight of Henry, now bent over King George as well with polite concern, for her to remember herself, and she forces calmness with that memory, lets it seep through her until it touches Emma where they're connected and George's hand leaves his chest again. Emma chews hard on her lip and Regina can feel the rage still simmering within her, seeking to lash out again.
But no one in this diner needs to know that their savior is so volatile, hanging by a thread and sometimes not even that. Emma doesn't need anyone to know that, to see into her and judge her for her anger, and the surge of protectiveness that accompanies that thought is unnecessary, probably unwanted, but patently present all the same.
"I–" Emma starts, and Regina squeezes her fingers and takes a step forward imperiously. "You'd do well to stay out of my way," she orders, and flicks a finger at George and watches him flinch. "Or I'll do worse than that next time."
George growls a particularly offensive response but she ignores it as easily as she does Emma's panicked relief and turns to Henry, a disarming smile on her face. "Terrible man," she says casually. "I've never seen him so afraid before."
"That was just fear?" He's frowning at her like he's ten again and about to run to his secret walkie talkie conferences with Emma.
And she won't lie to him, never again, so she spreads her hands and says with absolute honesty, "Well, I certainly had nothing to do with it."
"Duh." They laugh and Emma adds her own weak laugh to theirs, hand still trembling in Regina's grasp. But it's warm and it's comfortable and if there's reason to end it, it's getting more and more difficult to consider that now.
This needs to be addressed- all of Emma's magic needs to be addressed, now more than ever- but not with Henry around and not in public like this. They'll talk about it later.
Later.
vi. perforation
In one of the later group homes, there had been a little girl with night terrors who had lain in her bed at night and shrieked at an imaginary foe, fought him off and cried so loudly that no one had been able to sleep. Emma had sat with her some nights, stroking her hair and whispering calming platitudes she hadn't believed until the girl would quiet, and they'd all been exhausted in the mornings. Their house mother had never asked about it when they'd fall asleep at the table at midday or when the dark circles under their eyes grew darker and darker, just warbled in what might have been an attempt at a song, "Count sheep, sweetheart, and sleep will follow."
Emma had never counted sheep, but now she counts people as she stares at the ceiling in her dark room at Granny's. People she has, people who know her name- and there are so many now, more than ever before- people she's determined to protect. And it's not just one little girl anymore but tiers and tiers of fairytale refugees, this town that has taken her on to be their savior.
Ava and Nicholas Tillman. Jefferson's daughter Grace. Ashley Boyd and Alexandra. The Lost Boys she'd promised a home to. Kathryn Nolan. Marco and not-August. Leroy. Tiny.
Gold had been the one to tell her about this as a way to access her magic, and she can feel it most potently like this, the world still and silent around her but for for the rhythm of her breath. It's simmering below the surface, always at the ready, and while she'd once willfully ignored it as simple adrenaline, now she recognizes it for what it is. It moves, sluggish with her peaceful thoughts, and intensifies as she ups a tier.
Ruby and Granny. Hook. Even Gold, as Neal's father, and Belle. Archie. The energy picks up, strong enough that she can see it behind her eyelids when she blinks.
Her family. David and Mary Margaret. The magic is coursing through her now, faster and faster as her heart rate speeds up and she clenches her fists. Henry. All she sees is blue now, light and glowing like a visible aura as white races around within it, faster and faster and–
Regina. The magic intensifies, so fast it's almost white, and she realizes suddenly that her breath is ragged and unsteady and her hand is pressed against her abdomen, struggling to contain a heaving in her stomach she can't name. Regina is…Reginacan't be her family. Regina exists outside these lists because she's something utterly unquantifiable.
She'd left her down at the diner with Henry tucked under her arm, because apparently now her son wants to ride horses and sail ships and Regina has a surprising depth of knowledge of both. (The latter sounds more like an eHow page than actual life experience, and she'd treated herself to the image of Regina stalking home the first time Henry had called Hook awesome and doing research on pirates for the next thirty hours.) She'd ducked out when Mary Margaret had started asking her about what Neal had been called in the Enchanted Forest in the middle of a conversation about baby names and had accidentally caught Regina's troubled eyes halfway out the door.
She knows she's due a lecture for what she'd done to DA Spencer but she thinks she should probably muster up some false regret before Regina starts in on her. Because hurting him? Not really an issue. Her fists clench again at the image, Regina startled and falling backward, and oh god she'd tried to kill Spencer instead of grabbing Regina.
She sits up, the magic gone in a flash, and her head is spinning at the possibility there, of Regina crumpled on the ground because she'd been careless and angry. And maybe Regina isn't family but the devastation of that, of failing her and watching her hurt and helpless, is as painful in hypothetical as seeing Mary Margaret in the same position.
She breathes hard, controls her oxygen intake so it's in through her nostrils and out through her mouth and her heart quiets a beat, and then someone says, "Too bad. I was enjoying the light show."
She recognizes the voice and is across the room in the next instant, gun in hand and pointed at the window where Walsh is crouched, mouth in a smirk just behind the place where it's cracked open. He slides long fingers under it and yanks it up, ducking into the room as she wavers in place.
And he still looks so normal, like he's about to walk into her house and ask Henry about the book he's reading and pull a half-dozen roses out from behind his back. He'd always treated Henry like an equal but never pretended to be one of the boys to ingratiate himself with him, and she'd…loved that about him, she thinks, her stomach twisting with revulsion. He'd never pretended to be doing anything other than winning her over and keeping her to him like a Hook-in-training, and he'd…
He'd never done anything other than pretending. She'd put up a thousand guards around her heart and made a career out of seeding out the liars and she'd fallen for him, hook, line, and sinker. "Get out or I'll shoot you, you fucking animal."
She gets a disarming smile for that, the kind he'd put on when she'd told him that she didn't date seriously. He'd said, Let me show you what you're missing and had taken her out to the harbor the next afternoon with no warning and she'd laughed against the wind and admitted it wasn't that bad. "You know, I wasn't always a flying monkey. I was just a normal guy from Nebraska who wound up in Oz and might have led Zelena astray on a few tiny things." He spreads his hands. "She didn't like it."
"Oh my god." She takes a step back, her elbows slackening as her grip weakens on her gun. "Oh, god, I fucked the Wizard of Oz." She has a thing for the Evil Queen, Captain Hook is supposedly in love with her, and she'd nearly been engaged to theWizard of Oz.
Of course. Only another con artist could run a con like that on her. And this is her fucking life now, where she can't even think who are you when the answer always requires a what. Because this damned town is a disease that follows her no matter where she runs, violates her trust and her peace and everything she tries so desperately to keep to herself. "I can't believe I let you near my son."
"Oh, don't worry. I have no interest in him."
"Right. Now you don't need Henry anymore." She tightens her grip again, swinging her arms to follow Walsh as he circles the room.
"Zelena needs Henry." Walsh sits on her bed like he owns it and she feels her magic and her gut both screaming out to her to shoot, to finish him off right now and to hell with whatever information he might spill. He's always been a talker, and now she knows that his stories were all lies, yarns spun just enough to paint the picture of a good guy, self-deprecating but undoubtedly a treasure. "I had one job, and I screwed it up the minute your boy toy came into the picture." He grins at her. "So now I'm just having fun."
"Yeah? This is fun." She cocks her pistol. "Got anything worth keeping you alive for?"
"You'll kill me?" He laughs. "Emma, you're not a killer. Your pretty little pirate and the queen are killers. Snow White is a killer. You're just like me- a normal American kid who was brought into a world that needed us to be more."
Her grip stays steady, and she sees a dozen memories of him in a haze, a memory of love so tentative she'd been afraid to nurture it into more than it was. She'd trusted, believed in him, dared to imagine a life with someone else in it for the first time since Neal, and he'd been a hustler who'd known all the right words to keep her dreaming. "You have no idea what I'd be willing to do to you."
"Yeah, but see–" Walsh drops back on her bed, back against her pillows and knees up. She tenses but her fingers can't quite pull the trigger. "Here's the thing, Emma. You've got your real memories back now. Twelve years of them. And in those twelve years after that asshole abandoned you, how many people had you had?" He lifts his fingers, counts them off almost casually, like the gun in her hand means nothing to him. "Anyone? Nah?" His thumb and pointer come together into a zero. "And the only guy you loved- who you thought loved you- that was me."
She refuses to react, to give him any more material than he already has, and her magic is whirling in frenzied circles around her heart and spine and stomach, winding tighter and tighter until she doesn't think she can be contained by it anymore without bursting right now. Without collapsing under the weight of deceit- another man she'd loved with a life she'd never known, but this one so much more malicious than the last, and now Neal is dead and gone and Walsh is laughing at her for her trusting stupidity.
She'd been pregnant in prison with no visitors, insisting she'd been framed by a guy to anyone who would listen until no one listened anymore, and she's no stranger to this wave of mockery, to feeling like an idiot for the sin of trusting too easily. And she'd sworn then to never do it again, only to be rewritten and cast out of her own life into another where she'd let her defenses go.
And it still hurts, hurts like the foolishness of hopes she was never made to have. It hurts like smashing into Neal in Manhattan. It hurts like the Echo Cave and but she's all grown up. It hurts like waking up one morning in the infirmary with her hand on her stomach and nothing kicking against it.
And yet she can hate Albert Spencer enough to nearly kill him over hurting her…Regina…and all she can do against Walsh on her own behalf is squeeze the grip of her gun with all the fingers but the ones on the trigger and will herself not to tremble. Her magic won't leave her, won't strike out as it has even Regina for prodding the wrong buttons, and she feels weak and tiny in front of this creature who's been made famous for being weak and tiny himself.
They stand in limbo, Walsh unworried on her bed and she reeling and helpless in ways beyond her grasp and she wants to fire, to make him pay, and she can't. Her magic can lash out at threats to Regina or Henry or whatever parenthood Mary Margaret and David can claim but for herself she's–
She recalls old mottos, determinations she'd developed over years of being nobody to anyone, even herself. You just gotta punch back and say no. This is who I am.
And she doesn't know who she is anymore. Not orphan. Not daughter. Not savior. Not runaway. Just a lost girl with too many memories and regrets and responsibilities she's struggling to juggle all at the same time, and she's never enough for any of them.
"Catch you later, lover," Walsh says, hands clasped behind his head, and then he throws himself forward and she's firing on instinct, a moment too late, as a winged monkey shoots past her and out the window with a loud screech.
She sets her gun down and hurls herself toward the bed, claws at the sheets until they're on the floor and yanks off the comforter cover and shakes out the pillows until the bed is bare and she's on her knees on the floor surrounded by bedding, hands buried in the mess and her teeth caught hard on her lip until a single fat drop of blood wells up and spots the white sheet.
She doesn't hear the knocking. Or maybe she ignores it altogether until the door slides open behind her and Hook says, "Swan? Are you all right?"
And all she hears is the staccato clipping of heels on linoleum behind him. "Henry's out again," Regina says, and Emma turns. "Emma, Zelena–" She stops as her eyes land on Emma and then she's hurrying past Hook to crouch beside her. "What happened to you?"
"Oh." Emma stands up, and today putting on her face feels almost like a paint-by-numbers portrait. Eyes rolling in irritation. Lips curled down in a half-frown. Nose scrunched in disgust. "I saw a spider. I might have overreacted." She laughs, forced and halfhearted, and two sets of dark eyes blink at her, then turn to the wide open window in tandem.
Regina is the one to speak, Hook still gazing at Emma with blatant concern that she dodges. "We have other problems than your bedmates," she says, and it's such a specific ambiguous statement that Emma twitches and glares up at her. "Zelena came to see us in the diner."
That's enough to push all thoughts of Walsh from her mind and Emma stands up, letting the sheets pool down around her. "Henry was there." She twitches again, dark memories returning of the night before. She's been doing her best to suppress them, to think as little as she can of the moment Henry's eyes had glazed over and she'd accidentally taken a tiny piece of his memories from him.
Accidentally. She'd never meant to do it, and she'd have no idea how to return them, not when there are so many other memories he's still lost. There's no use in dwelling on something she can't change, even when there's a taste like tar in her mouth when she thinks of it. It's just a…fortunate accident. For Henry's sake. (For her sake, she won't admit, though she knows it with every excuse she finds.)
"Henry was asleep," Regina informs her. "It's been a long day. He and Snow both passed out at the table before Zelena walked in." A ghost of a smile plays on her lips, a tiny touch of fondness for both that Emma is discreet enough not to comment on. "And Zelena didn't say anything incriminating, just waved the Dark One's dagger around and made threats at me."
For that her magic rises and she takes a step forward, gripping Regina's arm. "At you?"
"It seems Regina's the one she's here for," Hook says dryly. "Claims she's her sister. Cora never mentioned."
"Sister?" Emma squeezes her forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "What did you do to her?"
"Nothing." Regina sounds irritated, as though she's already been asked this question a dozen times. "I don't even know if she's telling the truth. She was grandstanding and demanded I fight with her outside and then she threw me into the clock tower."
"She…" Regina doesn't look injured, just annoyed, and Emma has no idea how she'd missed the sounds of a fight outside. Walsh had had her narrowed into a tiny little world of the two of them, and she'd been unable to look beyond it for long, agonizing moments. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Regina grits her teeth. "She wants my heart." But she's staring at the wall to the room beside Emma's when she says it, her meaning clear.
"Henry," Emma breathes, and at once she's pulling out the spare key she has for his room and moving past both of her visitors, unlocking his door and peering inside. His window is shut, the protection spell they'd put on his room still intact and glowing faintly at the edges of the walls, and he's snoring lightly in the bed. She falls back against the doorpost, staring worriedly at him.
Regina is standing behind her a moment later, her head against the wall just above Emma's shoulder. "He's safe. Hook looked after him in the diner when Zelena had me distracted." Emma turns to watch her at she talks, their faces millimeters apart, and she notes that Regina's lip doesn't even give its customary curl at Hook's name this time. She must have been terrified. She rubs her hands against Regina's arms, comforting and tentative, and Regina's eyes don't leave hers until she pulls away.
"Thank you," she murmurs, shifting back to smile at Hook.
He's watching them as though he's never seen either of them before, puppy eyes fully activated, but he musters up a smirk for her. "Aye, it was the least I could do. I arrived with a message from Robin Hood- activity at Zelena's home- just moments too late for that."
"Huh. Convenient." Hook looks insulted and she hastens to clarify, "Not you." She trusts Hook. She doesn't know this Robin Hood, who hadn't made a great first impression and now has curious timing. Regina is looking at Henry now with fierce focus and suspicion stirs somewhere deep within Emma. "Something to look into."
"Aye," Hook says again, and he shifts from side to side, eyes moving from her room to Regina- who shows no sign of moving- to Henry, and then he says, "I'll be going, then," and Emma flashes him another smile as he heads for the door to the stairs.
When he's gone, Regina slides a stray wisp of hair behind Emma's ear and mutters, "You're sleeping in here tonight, aren't you?"
Emma nods, flushing at the whisper of a touch at her cheek. "I know he's getting too old to share a bed with. It's…"
"Terrifying," Regina finishes, and there's so much sorrow in her voice that Emma knows it's for the time she's lost, the time she isn't getting back. The time she might not have when Emma leaves again. "You go to him," she says in a bare whisper. "I don't think even a flying monkey can break through our protection spell."
Emma twists around again. Regina's eyes are close and very, very brown, so shiny she can almost see her own face in them. "He's trying to unbalance you."
"It's working," she admits, licking her lips. She'd spent nine months coming to terms with the fact that she'd been lovable- not as a daughter or mother or whatever weird fixation Hook has on her but as something wholly different, and now Walsh holds her heart in his hands.
Regina touches her hands lightly. It's barely any contact, the tips of fingers against the tips of fingers, and Emma wonders what it would be like to kiss her like that, just a brush of her lips against hers, and to watch Regina's eyes darken in response.
Maybe her heart is in pieces, after all, and Walsh only possesses one jagged part of it.
"Go to sleep," Regina whispers, guiding her into the room. Emma climbs over Henry onto the bed, sandwiched between him and the wall and on top of the blankets with an arm tight around him.
She can still see Regina even as exhaustion returns to blur her gaze, hovering over both of them with unreadable eyes. "Sister?" she says again.
Regina shrugs. "Another enemy," she corrects, a shadow of something below the surface. "We'll talk in the morning."
"You sure you're okay?"
"I'm sure, Emma." She says Emma's name like a lullaby, soft and so slow it's nearly lilting. "You go to sleep. Take care of Henry."
But she doesn't move yet and Emma doesn't want her to. She's in that place between sleep and wakefulness where thoughts flow freely, where her mind makes connections that slide through the cracks in her protective walls and seem suddenly so simple. "I thought that this was how we'd leave Neverland," she says drowsily. She'd lain awake at night in the woods, watching over the camp as Regina had tossed and turned in her bedroll, and she'd imagined the three of them stretched out in a too-small bunk together, Henry between them and neither one willing to move from his side. She'd imagined peaceful murmurs and hands clasped over him and more of those smiles like the ones after they'd stopped the trigger together.
She doesn't elaborate but Regina says, "So did I," and her voice is scratchy and a little hoarse and Emma knows that she's going to retreat soon, too, return to her empty mansion and curl up in Henry's old bed and hold his pillow like Emma's holding Henry himself. But Regina doesn't have Henry anymore.
And she's small and selfish and weak and she doesn't know why she always runs, runs, runs when all she wants is that bed in the Jolly Roger, Emma-Henry-Regina and Regina's fingers on hers as they sail away to freedom.
much thanks to all of you for reading and your feedback, y'all are amazing. :)