Double dose of Regina ficlets, it's been a while. :)
Please be warned that there's some violence in this chapter- and specifically, there is some (magical) violence between Emma and Regina. I'm out of time rn so I'm just going to post the chapter now, but I'll respond to feedback later. Thank you so much for all your comments! They are wonderful to read and are both thought-provoking and motivating. :)
xi. elimination
She has Emma backed against the china closet in the dining room and she's kissing her, Emma's fingers teasing at the skin of her waist and little flashes of magic turning her stomach in wholly unexpected ways as she does. "How's this?" Emma whispers, rotating her fingers, and the magic pulls lower.
She gasps out a half response and pulls Emma up, propping her against the side of the china closet, and Emma's legs hike up her dress as she wraps them around her. Another spurt of magic, now much more focused. "I'm going to destroy you," she manages through gritted teeth.
"I thought you'd appreciate–" Emma sinks blunt teeth into her shoulder. "–my extracurricular work."
"If you think I'm going to cater to some cheap student/teacher fantasy, Miss Swan…" She gets a very loud moan in response to that and smirks, spreading her hand across Emma's abdomen and letting her own magic take hold, winding tendrils directly toward Emma's core, tugging hard and feeling blood surge to her energy in response. Emma lets out a very un-Emma-like yelp and crashes forward, the two of them landing in a tangle of limbs with a chair on top of them.
Regina rubs at her back where it had hit the chair and Emma winces. "Sorry about that." She's still squirming, but the hunger has faded from her eyes and has been replaced with the same weight that had been in them until Regina had kissed her.
She casts her own eyes downward, suddenly embarrassed. She doesn't know what had possessed her to kiss Emma in the first place except that she'd known Emma had needed it in that moment, needed grounding that Regina had been desperate to give to her.
And maybe she'd wanted it, too, but she doesn't dare have that discussion with herself just yet. There's too much going on to worry about kissing. "We should work out what's going on with your magic," she says, as smoothly as she can. "What happened earlier that had you so spooked?" Emma had mentioned a crib tornado and now every worst case scenario is flashing through her mind, each one more horrific than the last.
"Are we really doing this?" Emma blurts out in response, and there's still denim pressed against her leg and they're still on the floor and Regina knows that Emma isn't talking about magic right now.
She stands up, tugging her dress back down where it belongs, and Emma holds her arms tight around herself when she rises, her eyes turning flinty hard with every moment Regina hesitates. It's something they've been dancing around for weeks now (maybe years, maybe longer, maybe since the moment Emma had arrived at her door with their son under her hand) and it's terrifying to contemplate it. "We're not playing out any more of your fantasies," she says instead, lip curling with what really shouldn't be amusement.
Emma catches it anyway, and she rolls her eyes in response, the new hostility fading away. "Really? Because I have this one where we get some of your old Evil Queen dresses from your mausoleum and…" She stops, drawling out, "Well. You said no more fantasies."
Regina does not gulp. It would take a lot more than Emma's clumsy seduction to make her… She swallows hard and turns away from Emma's dancing eyes. "Magic, Emma. What happened at the apartment?"
Emma avoids her gaze and damn it all, she's found something that Emma is more afraid of discussing than their romantic life. "Hook is going to be so devast– Hey, wait. This isn't some vengeance rivalry thing with Hook, is it?"
She takes the bait, immediately sour. "No, you idiot. Hook isn't worth that inconvenience."
"Inconvenience." Emma slides her fingers down Regina's arm, watching goosebumps break out at her touch. "So wait, you just like me for me." She wiggles her eyebrows and smiles with just her eyes and oh, it's enough to twist something inside Regina that longs for everything, things she doesn't dare believe in anymore.
She sighs heavily and retorts, "Well, it's definitely not for your abysmal flirting," and Emma's lips quirk in response. "Or your inability to distract me. What happened earlier?"
Emma sits on the chair they'd knocked over before, flipping it back up and sliding one leg under her body. "I was ready to ask you to run away with me and now you want to talk details?"
"I wanted to talk details then, too," Regina points out. She wants…she doesn't want to talk details. She wants this whole situation to disappear, for Emma to be back to the Emma she'd been before Neal's death had sent her spiraling. Emma under control, Emma who supports her when she can barely stand with the heaviness of loss of Henry, Emma who she doesn't have to worry might snap at any moment and take with her all they've managed to claw for together.
She wants to be in the front seat of Emma's atrocious death trap right now, driving out of town with the potential of family, of light and happiness and none of the weight that all of them carry around with them now. She hadn't known how intensely she'd craved it until Emma had ducked her head in front of her and needed someone to understand and this is who they could have been after Neverland, without curses that steal away children and saviors and change everything.
She closes her eyes, lets selfish, childish desires for simplicity (she hasn't craved simplicity since Daniel, oh gods, what is happening with Emma now) fade away in favor of focusing on the topic at hand. "Something went wrong with your crib building?"
"It doesn't matter." Except it does, quite clearly, and that's evident all over Emma's face. "There's just…there's all this magic in me and it feels like it's all going to explode out of me if I don't stop it. And I don't know what I'll do when that happens."
And this is familiar. Familiar like mirrors and mothers and wedding days, and Regina feels a thrill of dread pass through her. "Snow was pushing you," she guesses. "And you pushed back. How did it feel?"
Emma stares at the china closet, lips pressed together and chin set. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"How did it feel, Emma?" she persists. She'd been young and afraid and corruptible when Rumple had started on her, and she'd made an easy target. Emma is…older, already weathered and worn by a world that doesn't subscribe to simple notions of good and evil, and there's no way that she…
"It felt bad enough to want to get out of here, okay?" Emma snaps, and Regina's quiet fear is mirrored on her face in swathes of desperation and horror that she can't quite hide from Regina. "That's it."
And Regina sees a second reflection on her face, a new story of because I loved it and another tale of a daughter afraid of both her power and how good it feels. And Snow is no Cora but just as potent for Emma, just as dangerous to what happens next. She should have run, have fled the castle and never returned until the king's men had brought her back with only her head. She should have fled before she'd fallen.
Emma will not fall. Emma will never become her. She rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand and says, "I'm going to check on Henry. We can talk about leaving after."
She nearly runs up the stairs, Emma trailing behind her. "Now you want to leave?"
"I want you to leave." She turns around and sees Emma behind her, jaw working like she's trying to hold back a response, and this had been so much easier when they'd been kissing.
"So, what, you're going to keep Henry here and send me away before I screw up anything else?" Emma's eyes are defiant, raring for a fight, but Regina is alarmed at the defeat she can already see in her eyes. Emma would leave, would leave Henry behind and go in this moment if Regina had ordered her to.
She's spent years waiting for this moment and now all she can say is, "Didn't we just talk about this? We go together." Her heart had stopped at Emma's announcement and she might've kissed her then, for the promise of family as it should be, and now she can't imagine this going any other way.
"Regina…" She can hear the gentle surprise in Emma's murmur, a confirmation in just the pronouncement of her name. Of what, they don't know yet, but there's something thrumming within her like promises of happy endings and a future that seems only natural now. And Regina wonders if she could dare dream of a world past two missed chances that's the only one she can imagine now. "…Is Henry's window open?" Emma finishes, suddenly abrupt, and Regina notices just then the sound of the wind whipping at the shades in Henry's room.
Oh, no. Oh, no. They throw open the door, racing into the room as one, and come to a halt in front of the bed. "He ran," Emma whispers.
"He always runs," Regina says grimly. She remembers the wildness of the last time he'd been in danger, of shouting at Emma in a cave in Neverland as the other woman had listened in silence, and there's no reason to shout now. Henry is everything to both of them now, and she forces down the desperation that threatens to bubble up and finds determination instead.
"When he's being lied to." They stare at each other and Emma's face twists first, her teeth clamping over her lip. "You had no choice," Regina offers, and she'd kept enough from him this time, too. No one is blameless in this situation (Henry perhaps least of all, she concedes with a grimace).
"There's always a choice," Emma mutters, sitting down on the bed. Regina's about to snap at her that Henry's gone and now isn't the time to be settling down, but then she sees what Emma's leafing through. "And look what found him to give him another one."
"The book." There it is, mocking them with its presence as it had her so long. "He saw something in it that made him leave." She reaches for the pajamas on his bed, closing her eyes and calling forth her magic.
"What are you– Oh." Emma blinks at the yellow lines that extend from it, through the room and out the window to the street.
"Locator spell," she explains, transporting them down to the street with a puff of smoke.
She moves to her car, Emma climbing into the passenger seat and rolling down the window so she can watch the lines properly. "Yellow brick road?"
She twists to glare at Emma. "Are you really cracking jokeswhen our son is missing?"
"No, I…" And then she notices the strain on Emma's face. Emma excels at hiding away from inconvenient truths, compartmentalizing pain when there's work to be done, and now she's struggling more than she ever has before. "I thought that might be a sign that Zelena had gotten to him." She holds a hand up to her heart, fisting it into her shirt, and she seems so fragile and afraid in this moment that Regina feels a surge of maternal instinct in response, a desire to look after Emma when no one else seems to.
She reaches out to touch Emma's hand, sliding her fingers into her fist as she drives with the other hand and gently prying the hand loose. "We'll find him." The car swerves but Regina keeps control, following the path closer and closer to the edge of town.
"He should never have been in danger again." Emma's hand untangles from hers and she hangs onto the seat, jaw clenched. "We shouldn't be going through this. Again."
The lines grow brighter and deeper at the bus stop just before the road to the town line, and Regina frowns. "He was here. For a while."
"But there are no busses out of town." Emma frowns. "He had to walk for over an hour just to get to me back in Boston."
"Maybe he gave up and went back." She can make out lines, fainter and pale against the dark street, moving back toward town. They arc off to the left, the least occupied area in town just outside the woods, and then they fade in the distance. "Henry doesn't give up," she amends, her heart clenching and unclenching with the thought of him.
"No. And if he wanted to leave, he'd have a plan in place or he would've probably stolen one of our cars."
"He's twelve!"
Emma squints at her. "Didn't he once try blowing up magic with a stick of dynamite? Have you met our son?" She bites her lip. "He'd get help. From…" She pales. "Oh, god."
"What? What?" Emma opens her mouth and then there's blue smoke everywhere and Regina waves it away, coughing. When it drifts away they're right outside Zelena's barn.
"Walsh," Emma finishes unnecessarily, because he's standing right there, sneering at them from where he has an arm wrapped around Henry. They're all there, Zelena in the center of the barn with the dagger and Rumple in the back, eyes unfathomable as he glares at Zelena, and Emma snaps out a dark, "Shit," that Regina agrees with too heartily to reprove her for it.
"Mom! Mayor Mills! Mom!" Henry shouts, and Regina sees the circle under him, the lines that trace back to Zelena. A spell in its early stages, still missing a core element. And Henry looks pale and terrified but thus far unharmed.
"What have you done to the boy's heart, Sis?" Zelena drawls. "It's been most inconvenient."
Henry is the two of them in miniature, eyes narrowed and fierce with defiance, and Regina doesn't want to imagine Zelena seizing his heart, passing her hand into his chest as Henry- who doesn't believe in magic, who would never have imagined such violation- quakes with fear. "It's going to be all right, Henry," she says, but the rage is building, red-hot and reckless, and all she can think of is murder.
"How do you want to do this?" Emma mutters under her breath. Her magic is already flowing, returning from where it had dissipated to waft around her as her hands light up. Her eyes are glinting cold like steel- colder than Regina's ever seen them, because Emma has always been fire and fury around her- and she looks like she wants to…
"Kill them all," Regina growls, and zeroes in on Zelena's heart as the witch laughs and Emma hisses with approval and Zelena sends a lazy insult her way.
It takes a moment of discipline before she's responding on automatic, eyes shifting to Henry as she tosses out whatever witty repartee is expected of her. Her thoughts are murky with kill, kill, kill and the image of Zelena's heart in her hand and she has to focus hard on Henry- on love, peace, the instincts of a mother- before she's calm enough to send him a clear thought. "Henry, it's me."
His eyes flash to hers once and then he looks away, struggling against Walsh's grip again as though he'd never heard her. "Clever boy." A faint smile. "When I tell you to move, I need you to shove Walsh as best as you can, and then run to Emma. Don't stop moving until you're there."
She smirks at Zelena, glances at Henry again, and sees that he's shaking his head very slightly, eyes on Emma behind her. And for the first time, she turns back to her side and Zelena follows her gaze and they're both startled into silence.
Emma is on fire, burning with blue flames that surround her like she's an angel of death. Her skin is so pale it's nearly translucent blue and her eyes are all Regina can see of her, dark and cold and furious. "What have you brought to me?" Zelena says in a voice pitched just too high to be unafraid, and Regina seizes her chance, hurtles toward Walsh and shouts "Now!" in Henry's mind as she draws a fireball.
Walsh is still staring at Emma when Henry stamps hard on his instep and smashes his head into the man's chin, dazing him for just long enough that Emma moves in a blur and emerges with her hand at Walsh's neck.
She'd had a nightmare once (and a few dreams that weren't) of Emma in the same position in front of her, eyes filled with murder and she helpless in her grasp. That had been thrilling and terrifying, like a twisted fantasy she'd known better than to want outside her dreamworld, and now, on Emma here, it's as though an alien creature has possessed her.
Henry slips out from under Emma's arm and then he's running to Regina, throwing his arms around her and holding tight. She hugs him close to her as her head swivels back to Zelena. "Good job, sweetheart," she murmurs, and jerks them both out of the way as a green blast of energy is leveled at them.
"Is this some sort of deception?" Zelena demands, approaching while they're hurled through the air, Henry's head ducked against her as she throws up her shields around them before they crash into the barn wall.
They both stumble to their feet and Henry immediately stands in front of her, protective. She wraps an arm around him and lights a fireball with the other hand, letting it grow until it's big enough that Henry is squinting in the heat. "First tip to being a villain in Storybrooke- antagonizing Emma Swan will get you nowhere." She throws the fireball and Zelena catches it in midair, closing her hand around it until it shrinks into nothingness.
"Failed villain," Zelena corrects her. "I'm far beyond your caliber."
She smirks through bared teeth. "I'm sure our mother thought so, too."
Zelena lets out another scream that indicates what Regina's already fairly certain of- that this is a woman who's lost enough of her mind to hatred and jealousy that she's just barely teetering on the brink of insanity. Deep within her, she mourns, as the rest of her hates without mercy. "You know nothing about that!" Zelena howls, and she flies toward them just as another scream sounds.
Emma. But it's a masculine shout, frantic and terrified, and it's Walsh who's screaming instead, panicked even though he's managed to put some distance between himself and Emma. No, he's been shoved backward, and Emma is watching from a few feet away, fists clenched and her whole body tremoring as though she can't contain her own hatred anymore. "His heart," Henry whispers, clutching more tightly to her arm. "Oh my god, what's Mom doing?"
Kill them all. And what had seemed so simple moments before, with Henry in their enemies' hands, is suddenly infinitely more complicated when it's Emma who's attacking, when Emma is surging with power and hatred and it was never supposed to be Emma like this. It's what Regina's here for, it's who Regina is, dancing on the lines between dark and light so the Charmings can keep their vaunted purity.
This could be a loss of control. She wishes it desperately, searches for that wildness in Emma's eyes, but all she sees is self-possessed calculation, as focused and controlled as Emma had been when she'd clenched invisible fingers around King George's heard. And Walsh's chest is heaving now- real heaves as though something's trying to escape from it- and then a glowing red heart pops out of his chest and lands in Emma's hands, blue fire crackling around it, and Emma holds it and squeezes hard.
Walsh falls to the ground, crying out again. Regina is frozen in place, Henry held to her. "Magnificent," murmurs a soft voice to their left. Rumple is gazing at Emma with nothing less than sheer desire, the way he'd once looked at her, too. Lust. Power. Darkness.
Emma squeezes the heart again, and she's growling out words now. "You don't touch Henry!" she growls, and she isn't on the same edge as Zelena, she's fierce and stunning and terrible. And she doesn't seem to care that Henry's here, Regina has him, he isn't in Walsh's grasp anymore. Henry is shouting her name and she seems to hear nothing.
Regina wants to see this man suffer, wants to make him suffer the moment Henry is safe and sound again, but not through Emma. Not like this, where Emma's crossing lines and Henry is here to see it and she's too tense to even muster up her own deadly hate. Walsh rocks on the floor, holding onto his chest as he curls up in agony. "Not enough," Emma says, an odd hollow echo to her voice as she speaks. "It's not–"
There's a year of betrayal there, a year of lies and deceit that has plagued Emma until now, and Regina understands. Regina would do the same in her position, most likely, and has taken more than her fair share of hearts. But this can't be Emma. Henry is crying silently now, and she turns him carefully to hide his face against her shoulder. He doesn't turn back, doesn't look to see what his other mother is doing, and she's glad for that small mercy for them all.
"It's not enough," Emma says again, and then it's like she implodes, like there's too much energy inside her and she releases it all in a blur of motion.
Regina had never cared much for physical battles. She'd left them to her knights and had little interest in watching them, and she'd never seen this much blood before. Emma is rage and power and strength all at once, the ultimate in physicality who never shies away from a fight, and there's magic flying everywhere like a mad scientist's lab and Walsh is screaming again, and Emma is red with his blood as it pours from his chest and his mouth and nose. She strikes out again and again and no one else dares come close, dares look away, Zelena and Rumple and Regina all transfixed by the horror in front of them.
And then Emma opens her hand again and there's Walsh's heart in it again. Walsh blinks up at her, his face unrecognizable, and he croaks out a weak, "I did love you," as slimy and false as anything else he must have said to her.
"Liar," Emma says, and hurls the heart at the ground with such force that it shatters to dust with only that. And Walsh twitches wildly for a moment and then lies still.
There's silence in the air for only a moment before Zelena is screeching in fury and rushing recklessly toward Emma, her own magic surging to her in waves, and an instant later there's a burst of energy in response and she's tumbling back in a sea of battling green and blue. Her face takes on a desperate, spiteful cast. "Rumplestiltskin! Take the boy!" she orders, waving the dagger.
Emma is a maelstrom of power, eyes shadowed and ugly and desperately lost, and she's glorious in a way that appeals to Regina's basest desires, to the queen within her who wants only to possess such magnificent things. She dreams for a moment of this Emma by her side in the Enchanted Forest, deadly and uncontrolled and beautiful, a princess worthy of a queen, and she shudders at the want that suffuses her body.
A stifled sob reminds her of where she is and she holds tight to Henry, hurling a fireball at Rumple as he walks toward them. His gait is slow, choppy in his reluctance, and he says, "I apologize," like he means it.
Then he's whirling toward them and Regina throws a wave of magic at him in desperation, art he's taught her and she's made her own, and he blows it aside with sheer power as she hisses out a curse of frustration. This is a room of giants and she's the tiny David below their Goliaths, her five-stoned slingshot running out rapidly.
And yet, with all the rage and force that suffuses the room, it's only she who has someone to protect. She feels every inch of her straining, every muscle worn out with only her force of will, and the magic she draws forth is lethal enough to send Rumple spinning across the barn right into Zelena. He stumbles back toward her and she gathers her strength again, focuses on Henry and true love is the most powerful magic of all and something purple-white bursts from her fingers and keeps him at bay.
She gapes at her hands for a moment and the magic fades as quickly as it had come, her internal reserves all but exhausted, and Rumple lurches closer. "Get the dagger," he says, face pale and drawn, and it sounds like defeat from him. She's never seen him like this, so powerless even with all the dark forces he holds in his grasp, and she thinks she might have enjoyed it in another life, when they'd been rivals with power struggles and he'd been yet another to take advantage of her back when she'd been soft enough to allow it.
But today all she can think about is Henry and Emma, both in danger from wholly different sources. "Emma!" she calls, and there's a blur of action behind her and then Emma, still moving too quickly but now she's wrestling with Zelena again, being thrown back against the wall by a burst of green, and Zelena laughs gleefully and turns away.
"You aren't worth my time," she sneers, walking from Emma with her hands outstretched toward Regina. "Call off your puppy, Sis. She's nothing against my…"
But Rumple is stopping and Zelena stares down at hands that had been holding the dagger and Regina realizes in an instant what's changed. She pushes Henry toward the barn exit and races toward Rumple in one swift motion, reaching him just as Emma reaches Rumple with new intent, so much rage in her eyes that Regina can think of it as a living thing still not sated. She remembers days like that, when darkness had wound through her and she'd wanted only to hurt until she'd stopped caring who it was she'd targeted.
Rumple looks alarmed. "Miss Swan, I assure you that you don't want to use that," he says urgently, and Regina's mouth goes dry at the realization. If Emma stabs the Dark One with the dagger…
"Emma."
"Regina, stay back," Emma says. It's the first time she's spoken since Walsh's murder and there are a dozen tones of darkness laid upon each other within her words. "Don't you feel it calling?" She's staring down at the dagger in her grasp, Rumple still rooted in place, and there's hunger on her face that makes Regina queasy.
Rumple shakes his head, a shadow crossing his face. "You never had what it wanted," he murmurs to Regina, and she feels a ridiculous surge of jealousy amidst frustrated confusion.
There's no time for this. Not now. "Emma," she says urgently. "Emma, you need to stop."
"Don't tell me what to do," Emma snaps, eyes still glued to the dagger. She touches it to Rumple's chest and he stands very still. "Don't you get it? This is what I need to save everyone. This is how we keep the darkness out of Henry's life. Him gone. Her gone. No more crises."
"No more," she repeats dubiously, and Emma glares at her with- ah, now she's looking more like Zelena, on the brink of mass destruction. The dagger digs into Rumple's ribs and they're running out of time to reason with her. "If you kill him, you'll become that darkness. Do we need to keep him out of your life, too?"
It's exactly the right thing to say to have Emma turn around, eyes wild and dangerous, her target forgotten. "I'll kill you."
She sneers, less out of habit than to conceal her own trepidation. "You can try." The first blow is expected but she staggers under it anyway. It's like being punched with a sledgehammer and she's thrown backward as Henry shouts and Emma looms closer, hands still extended toward her. "Closer, closer," she taunts Emma, her voice hoarse with the exertion of keeping up her shields when she's so drained. "What, are you afraid of me?"
Emma takes another step closer, blasting her with energy nearly midnight blue, and she's terrifying, more hatred on her face than there'd been even after Henry had eaten the poison apple. "Regina, I swear to god…" She presses in, just a few feet away, and Regina springs to action.
She seizes Emma's hand hard enough that the dagger falls from their joined grasps and she feels magic surging into her almost instantly, magic Emma doesn't know how not to share with her even now. It flows between them and Emma struggles to break free but it's too late, Regina can feel the power singing through her like a concertato come to life within her, and she isn't quite so raw as Emma. She directs this new outpouring of magic with practiced skill, hurling Emma back and away from them until she's on the floor and Regina is standing tall, aflame with magic she can hardly contain.
Emma's eyes widen like she might finally have remembered herself and Regina's about to speak when someone else does and the blood drains from Emma's face. "Mom?" Henry asks tentatively from behind them, and Emma disappears.
xii. amplification
Henry's grown almost to her height but now he's shrinking back, tiny and pale with terror, and Regina tightens her grip on him and wishes she could enjoy this embrace more. Her skin is buzzing with power, magic angry and seductive and turning her stomach, and it's impossible to feel even Henry's arms around her with this much power straining to be free.
Rumple and Zelena have vanished again with the dagger during her fight with Emma and there's only a faint signature of magic where Emma had been. The barn is all but empty now, all traces of the spell gone and David's sword on the floor, the magic that had surrounded it twisted and broken. Zelena's spell had failed, and from the looks of it, it's so tightly tied to her essence that it can't get a repeat performance.
"Is she going to be back?" Henry whispers.
"Zelena?"
"Mom." He says it with so much longing that it hurts, makes her bitter like it had when he'd first said it about someone other than her, and the magic hums approvingly. No. No, she has herself under control, and she won't let this magic let her feel so free that she'll fall too far again. "Did she really do that to…to Walsh?" He's staring at the man on the ground with wide-eyed, fearful fascination and Regina bites her lip and struggles hard to let the words come out properly.
"She was protecting you from him. She'd do anything to protect you. Don't look at him."
He turns obediently. "I thought he was the only one I could trust." She feels a flash of pain at that admission, one she wholly deserves. "But he was from here too."
"I'm sorry." Her words are still strained and she can barely think straight. She isn't a vessel like Emma, laden with pure magic that flows so easily through her that it's a part of who she is now- so much so that it only sometimes answers to its own receptacle. She's a magic user who's given years of her life to the discipline of her magic, molding it into the perfect tool for her, and this is like being offered a sword thrice the size of her own and being expected to wield it effortlessly. And instead she's inundated with the dark temptation of power, of control over everything around her if she only wills it, and she takes a long, shuddery breath that has Henry looking up at her with sudden renewed fear.
"Mom hurt you, too. But you're…you saved me."
He shakes his head like he doesn't know what he's supposed to be thinking about any of them and Regina angles downward to face him, her knees quaking with the movement. "We'll tell you everything. All of it, I swear. No more secrets." His eyes are suddenly hopeful, earnest and hungry and maybe there should be punishment but there's so much confusion on his face. He's been languishing in lies for too long now, and he's suffered enough for their secrecy until now. "But I have to go find…your mom first." She says words she's avoided until now and they scrape like nails on a chalkboard to her ears, the new magic still within her pressing at her skin with frenzied need. "And I need to get you somewhere safe in the meantime." Safe from Zelena. Safe from Rumple. Safe from his mothers, both overwhelmed with more than they can handle.
Henry's eyes narrow. "No more secrets?"
"None," she agrees.
His brow crinkles in response and his lips press together in a challenge she doesn't understand until he presents his final question. "What was your son's name?"
She recognizes it for the test it is, that somehow Henry's picked up on truths beyond him and he's done being misled. "Henry," she answers evenly. "His name is Henry." She says is not was and Henry's mouth thins further and his brow furrows more and he doesn't understand exactly, not yet. "Hold tight," she says, and they vanish in a puff of smoke and reappear on a boat.
It isn't the boat she expects, nor is it the room that she'd sat in with Henry on the trip back to Neverland, but the man sprawled across the bed is the one she requires. And said man is very much in the nude. "Get up," she orders.
Hook twitches and rolls over. Instinctively, she covers Henry's eyes. "Cover yourself, you nimrod."
"R-Regina?" An eye opens, a brow quirks.
Too slow, she thinks, irritated. She waves her hand again and they're at the edge of town, Hook on the ground with his backside in the dirt. He yelps and she stands over him, arms crossed. "We don't have time for you to wake up. Where the hell is your ship?"
Hook shuffles to his feet, a hand scratching the back of his neck modestly. "I had to trade it for a magic bean to bring Swan and her lad here. You know she always comes first with me."
"Don't pat yourself on the back too hard. You might impale yourself with that hook," Regina says dryly, and her magic screams murder at the expression on Hook's face, moon-eyed and noble and so very infatuated with the woman she shouldn't be thinking of as hers after one heated makeout session in her dining room.
Jealousy is rarely so sensible, and even less so when there's this much power to accompany the emotion. She focuses on Henry, reminds herself of his hand on her shoulder- You're not a villain. You're my mom- and the magic falls again, sated for a precious moment before it clamors for release again.
It's too easy to make a pair of boxers appear on Hook- a hideous color and far too large, enough that Hook makes a sound in his throat that sounds almost like a protest before he sees the dangerous look in her eyes and falls silent at once- and a gun in his hand. "Cross the line," she instructs him. "Neither of you move until I get back here with Emma. Shoot anyone who gets too close."
They both nod and she crouches again so she's level with Henry's vision. "Stay with Killian. He may be incompetent–"
"Oi!"
"–But Zelena can't hurt you across the town line. Not with her magic."
His eyes squint out at her. "Is that why Mom wanted to leave town?"
Her clever, clever boy, so quick to understand even the most convoluted of stories. She kisses him, quick lips against the top of his head in acquiescence, and there's a stirring between them that quiets her magic for a moment. Then he backs across the town line with a grumbling Hook's only hand on his shoulder and there's a new gulf spreading between them.
She keeps that moment in her heart as she vanishes and reappears in the barn again. Her own technique is more flashy, impetuous and mercurial as she is, but Emma's magic within her is different. It reacts swiftly in flashes of emotion, blink-and-you'll-miss-it and she's where she needs to be, and it's gone back inside her as quickly as it had come. It interacts with her own energy into something so powerful that they'd opened portals together and so quick that she steps forward and she's in the sheriff's station, in Emma's room at the inn, in her own living room, everywhere at once as she searches for her target.
And when she closes her eyes and surrenders herself to the magic for an instant, it feels like coming home, like being fulfilled, like this is everything she'll ever need. This magic- their magic- it's something unique, something she'd never shared with Rumple or her mother or Maleficent. She could get lost in it. She could die in it.
Her eyes fly open and she sees that she's in the woods, in a clearing far from Zelena's home, and there's a blonde woman crouched down on the opposite side of it, forehead against her bent knees and magic in blues and whites escaping from her hands and being drawn back into her body as she convulses. "Emma," she murmurs.
Emma's head jerks up and she glares at Regina with such fire in her eyes that Regina takes a step forward, drawn to Emma's anger like a moth to a flame. "Get away from me or I'll kill you too."
"Don't be ridiculous." Her borrowed magic lances out just as Emma's does, meeting her halfway and pressing back. They're stronger combined, always have been, and something wavers and explodes outward when their magic locks. "This is no time."
"No time?" Emma demands, and this time her magic is like whiplash, jerking back at Regina as the first explosion settles. Regina throws up a shield just as she's thrown into a tree, her hair tangling in an outthrust of bark and her head spinning. "Did you miss the part where I murdered my boyfriend?"
"Spare me the pity party, Miss Swan," Regina grits out, shoving to her feet and off the tree to stalk toward the other woman. Emma's attacks are unpredictable and it makes it even harder to deflect them, harder to throw her own back at her. And none of this is how she'd imagined the night would end, Emma like a spooked animal lashing out at her. "He was trying to hurt our son."
"That doesn't change anything!" She doesn't even know if Emma knows what she's doing, slamming Regina against another tree with nothing but brute force and no awareness of what's going on. "I don't have some kind of lengthy body count, okay? I'm not a killer like you. I can't–"
That's a directed attack, though it's just as careless with its need to hurt as any of the magical bursts, and Regina reels back and feels her own combined magic emerge again. "I think you'd be surprised at what you're capable of," she says coldly, and there's something dark and furious about it that allows the magic roiling inside her break free, pouring toward Emma, so swift that she doesn't think to stop it until Emma is slamming against a cluster of trees with a cry.
"Emma!" Emma doesn't have shields, hasn't learned defensive magic, and she can see the scrapes and the blood already, the way Emma's eyes are clouding over and her magic is swirling out around her in defense.
Regina runs through the mist of blue, feeling it attack and react and absorb, and her heart is pounding wildly in a rhythm that has nothing to do with magic. "Emma, Emma," she chants, dropping down in front of the other woman to press her hands to purple-black bruises that are already beginning to bloom across the sides of her face. "Emma, stay with me, Emma."
Somewhere in the wildness that is all this magic, tempting like the night after too many days in the sun, she finds healing energy, lets it seep into Emma's skin until Emma blinks up at her dazedly. "We need to stop…all of this," Regina says, nodding vaguely to the energy flowing around them. Purple is fading into blue is fading into white and it's beginning to hurt, keeping it within, letting it rupture them from the inside out. "To find a release."
It's making them angry and volatile and reacting in all the wrong ways, and maybe she shouldn't be surprised when Emma mumbles, "Okay," and pulls her against her mouth.
She kisses hard now, almost angry, biting and sucking hard at Regina's lips and down her jaw to her neck, and Regina tilts her head back and lets the sensations wash over her. Magic flows in-out-in-out-in-out and her pulse is racing and Emma is everywhere at once, arching her back as Regina's fingers move to scrape at it and pressing open-mouthed kisses down the open lines of the front of her dress.
She's still on her knees over Emma and there's some fumbling before she's backed against a tree in a haze of magical energy, and all she can see is Emma in front of her, eyes very blue and dilated and her hands tugging at Regina's dress. "We're not doing this in the middle of the woods," she manages to protest, halfhearted at best, and Emma laughs roughly and slides down her body with her dress.
"You sure?" Emma's nipping at the skin at the hollow of her stomach, firm if not quite as toned at Emma's own, and Regina growls, "Shut up," and shoves her against the apex of her legs.
There are flashes everywhere, heat that rises from within and around them until she's sticky with sweat and barely notices it amidst the dropping sensation in her stomach and from her core. And she knows that they've flipped positions somewhere along the way, that she's sucking greedily at Emma's clit and they're both grinding against each other and kissing and it's all happening in a blur, it's all muffled cries and fuck, fuck, fuck and she might have offered some colorful insults toward Emma's parentage along the way (always a perk, really), and there's magic everywhere, quickening their movements and leaving Regina's senses so heightened that she can feel Emma's reactions to her as they come.
They come like their magic. She comes in a swell of overwhelming power, like riding waves that crest and crash to the ground so hard that she's seeing stars after. Emma comes in tiny bursts, jolt after jolt after jolt until they're both shaking against each other and clinging together, holding on for balance as they sink to the ground.
"It's quiet," Emma whispers, and she doesn't understand until she closes her eyes and feels the turmoil of all the magic they'd been swamped in faded at last. Her magic is still there, but it's returned to a comfortable thrum as controlled as her heartbeat, finally free of Emma's power. The exhilaration of total control is gone, and she breathes more easily with its departure and misses it all the same.
"It is," she agrees, and Emma holds onto her more tightly, Regina's head pillowed against her breast and her arms around Emma's waist. "That's one way of dealing with your magic."
"I'm sorry I…" Emma shudders against her. "I killed Walsh," she says helplessly as an excuse that isn't an excuse at all. "I shouldn't have attacked you. I don't even know…I don't know what I'm doing anymore."
She isn't angry, not really, knowing firsthand how much magic can overwhelm the uninitiated. "You were keeping our son safe. I don't think I'm one to criticize when that goes too far," she says finally, pulling away from Emma just enough that Emma can lean against her instead, wrapped in her arms and pressing a kiss to her shoulder. They're sitting on a bed of purplish moss that Regina is almost certain hadn't been there before, the clearing around them bright with flowers and bushes, a vibrant garden that replaces the underbrush that had been there before.
Emma follows her gaze, and her own eyes widen with wonder. "Oh," she breathes, a finger tracing circles around Regina's areola as she stares. "We did this? Our magic did this?"
She hears the second question, layered under the first. "Magic isn't malicious by nature, Emma. You can use it to kill. You can use it to create." She touches the ground beside them and a little purple flower springs up from the moss. "You do what you do with it."
Emma doesn't respond, just stares at the flower, and it wilts and grows and wilts again under her gaze.
They dress slowly and Emma's still silent, watching the flower as her wonder settles back into more familiar brooding, and she only looks away when Regina presses a kiss to her cheek. It's instinctive, gentle, and she still doesn't know exactly what they are now, but Emma's arm slides around her waist with the kiss and she finally turns to smile wanly at her. "Where's Henry now? With my parents?"
"Over the town line with Hook." Regina touches her cheek. "I didn't know where else he'd be safe."
"From me," Emma mutters, and Regina can't refute that without lying, so instead she kisses her again and they vanish and reappear at the town line where Henry is waiting.