I posted the first half of this chapter on Tumblr last week, so you can scroll on down to xiv. improvisation if you've already seen it.
I am slowly making my way through reviews (THANK YOU FOR THEM I LOVE THEM AND I LOVE YOU) but I wanted to get something out to you already so here it is! Two Emma ficlets, and next chapter is one Henry and one Regina. Hopefully I'll be done by next week, this is a busy time of year for me but I should definitely be back on a normal writing schedule after this week (and enough so to get back to SMBTS too). :)
xiii. recuperation
"Tell me something true," Henry says when they're all back at Regina's, Henry in pajamas in his old bed and Regina cross-legged opposite him. Emma is on the floor, tracing patterns on faint woodgrain and staring at it as the other two wait expectantly. Regina's hand dangles against her shoulder, knuckles brushing along the curve of her neck.
"You lived here," she admits, and she cradles her hands together, struggles to remember the feel of baby Henry in her arms. Instead she remembers huddling in a cell with a hospital-issued blue cap that she'd smuggled out of the birthing room and tucked into her own baby blanket for storage. She'd thrown it out on Henry's first birthday and refused to think any more of the past.
She can almost hear the frown in Henry's voice. "When I was a baby?"
"Yeah." It's like pulling teeth, these stilted admissions, and each one tugs the people on the bed a little farther away from her, a little closer to a truth that is only theirs. Regina's fingers curl into her hair and up her jawline, to her cheek and the spot where she'd kissed her before. "And after."
"That doesn't make sense." She peeks up at him, sees his brow furrowed and lips in a scowl that is all Regina, all ten-year-old Henry struggling to force the truth from everyone around him and his mother most of all.
Regina finally steps in, and Emma's never been more grateful for her. Well. Maybe not never. "One year ago, this whole town was cursed and the only way for me to stop it was to…to give up the one I loved most." She steals a glance at Henry and there's so much unfiltered adoration in it that Emma pulls her knees against her chest to quiet her pounding heartbeat.
"Me?" Henry sounds small, disbelieving, and Emma shuts her eyes. Opens them. Turns to watch him again. "I'm…but then…" He meets Emma's eyes. "You're not my real mom?" he asks, and it slices her into ribbons of pain and regret and terror and she wants to vomit, to stop feeling so much because she's going to fall apart if she stays in here any longer.
She pulls away from Henry's gaze and keeps her face still and listens as Regina- Regina, whom she'd first met with a shout of I found my real mom! from Henry himself- says sharply, "Don't talk like that."
Henry jerks, taken aback, and Regina softens. "You chose her, do you understand?" She talks about Henry's past, about adoption and curses and birth mothers, and it's rapid and she isn't finishing all her sentences but Henry's nodding and pushing forward and they both talk the same way when they're engaged, short sentences and quick pauses and emotions that lift Henry's voice and lower Regina's. And again, just as urgent, "I chose you to be my family. And you chose Emma to be yours. It took me a long time to accept it, but we're both real. We're both yours, as long as you're happy."
Henry chews on his lip and when Emma looks up, he's watching her. "Tell me something true," he says again, and this time she says, "I love you," and climbs up to the bed and hugs him to her, so tight that it squeezes tears from the corners of her eyes and she shakes and shakes around him.
He stays in her arms, limp and silent, and then he says, "You always said you couldn't imagine giving me up after you saw my eyes for the first time."
"I couldn't," she says truthfully. In lying dreams, they'd been barely open and green-brown and she'd wondered what they'd look like when he'd be able to focus on her. In the real world, he'd looked up at her from outside her door in Boston and in barely an instant her entire life had been irrevocably altered.
And this Henry who can't compartmentalize in favor of finding a savior and magic, this Henry who knows their history together in a universe where his best chance had been right with her– he closes his eyes and slips from her grasp and says, "I'm tired."
"It's very late," Regina murmurs in immediate acquiescence. Emma had forgotten how easily Regina cedes to Henry's every request since the curse, how somehow for all her discipline and hardassery, Regina is the one more likely to spoil Henry rotten, too.
"You can't leave again," Emma puts in warningly. Henry bobs his head, his back already to her. She can see his reflection in the window opposite him, eyes wide open and as emotionless as her own. That he's gotten from her. "Do you…do you want me to stay with you tonight?"
He shakes his head and Regina murmurs, "Come, Emma. I'll show you to the guest room."
She pads after Regina and waits patiently as Regina shows her the en suite bathroom and closet, and then she pads after Regina as Regina walks to her own room, feeling more like a lost puppy than like she's trying to seduce anyone, to push anything more than what's happened tonight. Regina glances at her, strips off her clothes and changes into pajamas under her gaze, and Emma stands in the doorway and watches and thinks about lying in a garden of their own making with Regina's skin sticky against hers.
She takes a step forward and Regina closes the door behind them, peels off Emma's jacket and shirt for her, eases down her pants until she's in her underwear. And her clothing is in a suitcase just down the stairs but she doesn't protest when Regina takes her hand and leads her to the big bed in her room, brushes a kiss behind her ear and curls around her, and neither of them speak for a long time as the light of sunrise begins to seep into the room.
She thinks about Walsh's eyes when she'd crushed his heart, desperate and terrified, and she shivers at the thrill of satisfaction that passes through her at the memory. She'd never seen him like that before, never with anything to fear. He'd been so…quintessentially normal, back in New York.
She'd craved normal and its simplicity, and now she's tucked into a former evil queen's arms after killing that final symbol of normalcy. And she should be horrified but she's all wrung out instead, as though there's no more horror left within her to expend on Walsh. She'd killed someone, and all she can think about is facing Henry in the morning and holding onto Regina. She doesn't want to sink into worry and self-hatred and despair, to wallow in the emotions she should be having when they're this taxing.
She rolls over in Regina's arms, pulling her against her, and Regina mumbles something cranky at the switch but burrows into her embrace anyway, nuzzling against a spot just below her collarbone. "I'm sorry," she says again, because for this she can dwell. "For attacking you earlier." More poor impulse control, the kind that had let her lash out without the presence of mind to consider what she'd been doing.
Regina's shoulders rise and drop in a shrug, and Emma slides her hands over them, touching sheer satin and stroking down her shoulder blades. Regina with magic and corporate dresses and Henry by her side has the presence of a queen, but this is closer to the Regina she'd gotten to see on that night she'd fled to her, barefoot and soft-eyed, only a woman first. Mayor Mills is impressive and glows with vitality, but Regina like this steals her breath away. She'd forgotten how tiny- how almost fragile- Regina can be when they're both still.
"How are you feeling?" she murmurs against soft hair, so long that it's past Regina's shoulders.
She'd asked because Zelena and she both had tossed Regina around a few times and Regina shows no sign of injury, but Regina takes it otherwise. "He knows I'm his mother," she says. Her eyes are glittering up at Emma now, tears unshed and savored. "I have Henry back. It's been…it's been years."
She sounds awed, amazed at the idea of it as though she'd never expected for Henry to be hers again, and Emma feels a stab of unease at the memory of keeping Henry from Regina before Neverland. It had been the necessary decision when she'd thought that Regina had killed Archie; and by the time she'd returned from Manhattan, Regina had been even more unstable and unsafe for him.
But she'd never really had the right to make those decisions, and she'd known it in the back of her mind and pushed the knowledge aside in favor of more convenient truths about Regina's past that would justify Emma's selfish desires.
She blinks down at Regina, feeling as though she should say something now that they're at peace and Regina had handed Henry off to her with a decade of happy memories to boot. But Regina is watching her, eyes still shining but more somber as though she's remembering the same details as Emma. They stare at each other for a moment, defiance muddled with apology and uncertainty, and Emma mumbles, "Maybe it's time you thought about branching out."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. Have…other people. More people. Than just Henry." She flushes and looks away, rolling so she's facing the ceiling, but her arms still pull Regina tighter until the other woman is curled into her again, her forehead nestled in the crook of Emma's neck. "I don't know what you did in the missing year, but…it would be good for you, yeah?"
"Mm." She hears something like a smile in Regina's voice and then they both shift again, awkward in their vulnerability, and Regina says, "If you ever attack me again like you did today, I'll kill you."
It doesn't have much bite to it, and she grins to herself and agrees, "I'd expect nothing less from you." Her hand dips under Regina's pajama shirt to feel the warmth of her back against her palm. "Teach me how to heal you," she whispers. She remembers being thrown back against a tree, exquisite pain that had jolted her from her overload of power, and then sweet relief like water in a parched man's throat. She'd been kissing Regina a moment later, overwhelmed at her own desire to close every distance between them, and when they'd come crashing down, there had been a garden and nothing had hurt anymore.
"I'm fine," Regina says, but she snuggles in closer to Emma and Emma thinks that maybe it's nothing physical that hurts now. Regina is safe. "I might have to sleep a while for my magic to recharge, but I'm fine."
She's always been seized by this impossible desire to take care of Regina that had made no sense. Maybe she'd been caught up in the first image of Regina she'd ever seen, terrified single mother who'd brought her inside and made herself so vulnerable so early that Emma had nearly reciprocated (before Regina had done a one-eighty and told her that she'd destroy her, anyway). Maybe it's only seeing this woman who'd had no one in her camp for so long that it had all gone bad and knowing that Emma herself had once been the same.
Maybe it's because she's the only one whom Regina seems to let take care of her, and she recognizes it for the privilege of intimacy that it is. And now that they've reached new intimacy, Emma feels at ease in the comfort of it, Regina looking after her as industriously as she does the same to her. "Okay," Emma says, and closes her eyes. "Okay."
She's drifting off, thoughts of Walsh and Henry and Zelena fading away, when Regina says, very quietly, "What did the dagger call to you?"
She stiffens and Regina stills against her. She doesn't know how to answer that, not when she's still not entirely sure that she'd meant to stab Gold in the first place. She'd wanted…she'd wanted to win, to save Regina and Henry and stop Zelena and be the fucking savior she's supposed to be for a change instead of running in circles waiting for the big guns. She'd wanted to be strong and unafraid and unstoppable, and the dagger in her hand had felt like clarity when she'd looked at it.
Regina wouldn't understand it, of course. Regina doesn't need power to take away her fears and make her unstoppable. She'd be charging into battles with the same recklessness even if she had been only an ordinary woman with not an iota of magic to her. Regina is charged by her heart- for better or for worse- and no dagger that would dull that heart would have any use for her without it.
Emma's heart feels like a gaping wound, bleeding out and bandaged up so it does everything all wrong, the only one she loves right is Henry and she doesn't even know if she has him anymore. She takes weapons into fights and she doesn't trust her heart to be enough, prefers guns and muscles and even daggers that whisper new truths into her ears.
She forces her body to relax and her breath to even out and she's asleep before she answers the question.
Regina is still asleep in the morning, but Emma notices now how sallow her skin had been the night before, her magic drained and her face with an unhealthy pallor. Now there are warm brown undertones beginning to color her cheeks and Emma doesn't dare be sentimental enough to brush a kiss to them. Nope. They're not domestic like that.
Instead she closes the shades to block out some of the light and covers Regina with her comforter, fingers trailing up the sides of Regina's legs in the process. Regina smiles in her sleep and Emma jerks away, flushing, and heads to the shower.
She sees Henry in the dining room when she comes down the stairs, eating cereal and reading through the book. She's pantsless and in one of Regina's blouses as she digs through her suitcase for a pair of jeans, and he looks up from his book once her pants are on. "Hi," she says, suddenly awkward like they've barely met again.
He watches her as she walks in, his face still and expressionless. "I found breakfast," he says, tapping his bowl. "I thought I should wait until Mayor…until…she…" His face cracks like a shell, something lost and confused beneath the surface, and Emma swallows hard and walks toward him. "But this is my house anyway, right?"
"Yes," she says, and tries to smile at him. It's small and probably unconvincing.
Henry doesn't smile back, but he does push the cereal toward her. She takes one of the bowls he'd set out for the three of them, sitting down across from him at the table. "Regina might be sleeping for a while. Something about replenishing her magic supply."
"Oh." Henry looks a little dazed under his stubbornness. "Magic supply. Right. Did…did last night really happen?"
She foregoes the milk, eyeing cereal so sugary that she can't believe Regina's been hoarding that in her house without Henry there. "Unfortunately."
"Did you really…?"
She knows what he's asking, sharp-eyed and tense, this boy who'd almost had the man she'd murdered as his stepdad. "Yeah. I…I really hate this town," she says, laughing with no humor in it.
"I'm not leaving," Henry says at once, and her heart hurts at the I instead of we. "You were going to take me away from here and you knew that this was our home. My home. I would have spent my whole life feeling like…like it was all wrong." His voice is accusing and his gaze doesn't waver from hers, and she struggles to meet his eyes.
"Are you beginning to understand why I would take us away from here?" she asks, feeling helpless at it. "You were nearly killed last night. This isn't the kind of place I want for you."
"I want it." Henry digs back into his cereal. "What do I call her?"
He switches tacks so quickly that she startles, not tracking the question. "What?"
"Mayor Mills. What do I call her?" He seems disinterested, focused on eating, but she sees the crease of his brow and recognizes his uncertainty. He's never been this reticent around her- maybe when he'd found out that she'd lied about Neal, but even that had been all snark and lashing out, Regina's son through and through. This Henry takes after her in all the worst ways.
"Mom," she murmurs. "You call her Mom."
"What did I call you?"
"Mom. Or Emma," she adds, feeling obligated to tell the whole truth. "For a while when we first met. You only started calling me Mom once you'd moved in after the curse."
"Because she was the Evil Queen." He pronounces the title like they're foreign and they sound foreign from this Henry's mouth, without fear or anger or anything other than simple confusion at the term. "My…mom. Was she evil?"
Emma chooses her words carefully. "She'd hurt a lot of people in the past. And I think she'd been angry for a very long time. But now she's…she's been trying so hard. Because of you. For you. She loves you more than anything." For this she can find her confidence again to venture, "You forgave her, I think. You loved her very much."
Henry's eyes are intent on her again, little lips firmed together and wobbling just a bit, and he says very quickly, "I wanted her to be my mom. Before I knew."
Her hands crash down into her cereal and her heart is pounding furiously and she forces an abrupt nod in response. Henry doesn't seem to notice what he'd implied with that, my mom and not one of my moms and this is the moment she's been dreading since that fucking potion. "She'll be thrilled to know that." Her voice is strangled and it hurts to speak and she doesn't know what she's supposed to be feeling except that maybe she's had this coming. She's been lying to him for weeks and he never takes kindly to that and she's been so, so afraid, afraid all the time because Henry is the only good thing she's ever had and she can't lose him. Not now. Not to someone else who might be a good thing, too.
She sags in her chair and Henry wiggles his shoulders and smirks at her, the tension fading from the room. "You two together could work out okay, too."
It's never been harder to pretend to be unaffected by him, by what he isn't even aware that he's admitted, and she starts. "What-"
"I saw you kissing." He looks half-fascinated, half-disgusted. "And you didn't even shut the guest room door to pretend you were in there last night."
"And you are much too nosy," she says, sticking out a finger to poke him on his nose. For a minute it feels like the old days, memories that aren't hers anymore where it's them against the world and they're uncomplicated and together. Where she's enough for him and he isn't dreaming about his real mother even when he doesn't know her.
But he flinches away at the last moment, the uncertainty back on his face, and she drops her hand and tries to smile. "Listen, I need to head out now for a bit. You don't leave this house, okay?" she says sternly. "No running off. We can't do last night again."
He scowls at her and she purses her lips together in response. "You mean kill someone again. That's what you did. Right?"
"Right." Her face feels hard and stiff and she isn't sure which betrayal it is that has Henry so on edge around her. Time, the part of her that knows how to mother reminds her. Give him time. He's been hit with shock after shock over the past twenty-four hours, and somewhere between magic is real and your life is a lie is the fact that the closest thing he'd had to a father figure had kidnapped him and she'd killed him in response. "Look, I know it's…a tough situation, but that's what I had to do, okay? And I'd do it again if I had to keep you safe. The rules are different here."
His face is impassive and he glances down at the table again, this time to the book open beside his cereal bowl. His fingers shudder against his spoon.
She straightens. "I'm going to head out to your grandparents' now. Catch them up on what they've missed. I'll be back in a little while." Henry frowns up at her with new curiosity at grandparents and then shrugs in sullen dismissal, and she stumbles for the door before despair overwhelms her.
xiv. improvisation
"Emma!" Mary Margaret throws the door open and gapes at her. "Oh, Emma, we thought you'd gone!"
There are arms around her before she can step back and she feels her own hands tighten around Mary Margaret's back, her eyes drifting shut as she inhales a familiar scent like love and trust and all the things that she shouldn't be letting herself feel around her mother. There's no hesitation in Mary Margaret's hug, no hesitation when taller, stronger arms close around both of them and David is there, too, the two of them still so comforting even when she knows that comfort is an illusion.
She'd been hurling Mary Margaret around in circles while the other woman had screamed for help not twenty-four hours ago, and now it's forgotten, ignored in favor of family togetherness that's only a glittering sham to Emma. She can feel magic that had been dormant for blessed few hours tonight churning in her belly now with the promise of more pent-up resentment, and she bites her lip and shoves it away and pulls out of the two-way hug with the same movement. "Hi."
"We've been calling all night. David even went to your room at Granny's and it was abandoned. Like you'd picked up and gone." Mary Margaret still looks tearful. "Oh, Emma."
"I…uh. I don't know where my phone is." It's dead somewhere in her car, probably. She doesn't think she'd remembered to bring it into the mayoral mansion. "I guess we're staying at Regina's now."
Mary Margaret slaps her forehead. "I didn't even think about asking Regina for help until it was nearly midnight and she wasn't picking up, either." She shakes her head. "I should have known that you'd never take Henry out of town without stopping there first."
"Yeah." Emma manages to squeeze past them into the house, perching on one of the bar stools by the kitchen island. "It was… a lot happened last night." She doesn't talk about running out of town or trying to bring Regina with them, even if Mary Margaret is probably putting the pieces together somewhere past the haze of pregnancy brain. Instead she tells them about Henry running and the two of them giving chase, about Rumple and Zelena and Walsh, and then she takes a deep breath and makes a confession she knows she has to.
It's easy to hide secrets behind Regina and Henry, but she's supposed to be better than hidden evil impulses, she's supposed to own up to what she's done before it becomes too easy to ignore it. "And I…I killed him. Walsh. I dated him for nine months in New York and he was working for Zelena and he had Henry." It all comes out in a jumble. "So I had to get rid of him."
Mary Margaret and David exchange glances and then David says carefully, "We aren't going to jump on Regina for saving Henry's life, no matter what she had to do."
Emma stares at them, uncomprehending, and Mary Margaret says, "She's family. We know her methods aren't always…"
Her voice trails off and Emma finally figures out what they're dancing around. "I'm not covering for Regina!" she says, irritated. "Me. I did it. I took Walsh out."
"Oh." They glance at each other again, whatever unspoken communication they share continuing, and Mary Margaret ventures, "So…more magic you couldn't control?"
"Sometimes we try to keep everyone alive and we can't," David says knowingly. "There are those who would rather push us away and die rather than cooperate. You can't blame yourself."
"I can't…" She looks from one of them to the other, half taken aback, half frustrated. They smile back patiently, so absolutely serene in their confidence that she is good, that she would never let them down with a cold-blooded murder like the one she's pretty sure that she'd committed the night before. Walsh had been smirking and she'd known in the back of her mind that Henry had already been safe but she hadn't cared, she'd just wanted him to hurt and be afraid like she's been afraid since she'd gotten here.
And that isn't Charming family behavior, so her parents can't comprehend it at all. Because they're the heroes. (The victors, something within her mind corrects her, and the victors write the storybooks where they are heroes. She quashes that thought immediately because Regina was a fucking sociopath before Henry demanded her to be more, wasn't she?) And their stories are meant to be heroic.
"We've all had to slay an enemy or two," Mary Margaret says gently. "When we stormed Regina's castle, we must've taken down dozens of knights. It's what you do at war."
"You killed people?" Emma repeats. She hadn't really thought about battles between people, imagined ogres or demons doing Regina's bidding while actual human beings fought with the good guys. It had all seemed very childlike, like a scene from Narnia instead of a real body count, not her simple and idealistic parents actually spilling blood.
"We saved people. Sometimes there's no choice in how you do it." David puts a hand on her shoulder. "We're proud of you, Emma, you know that, right? We love you."
"She's the savior." Mary Margaret sits back in her chair, still smiling, and Emma doesn't understand how they've gotten to this, how she'd killed someone last night and they're deeming it praiseworthy. "This is what she does."
And it's easy to see their warmth and pride and wonder if maybe that's all last night had been, protecting the people she loves at any cost. Mary Margaret and David are good and they believe in her, they believe in what she's done and they would so quickly accept her for it. And what does she know about good and evil when there's a war on? Different world, different standards. This town counts on her to protect them, and yesterday she'd gotten rid of Zelena's right-hand man. That's the important detail, not how she'd done it or why.
Bullshit, says a voice deep down, the one of Emma Swan who'd had no one to guide her through her darkest decisions. But that's an Emma Swan who hadn't been a savior loaded with power and on a mission to keep more people safe than she'd known in her entire adult life. That Emma Swan can't speak for her anymore. "Yeah, it is," she says, grinning at her parents, and she doesn't know how it had been more complicated than that. "Every now and then I do have my moments."
And honestly? She doesn't know if what she'd done was right or wrong but she knows it had been necessary, and that's what matters, not recriminations for whatever had been motivating her at that moment. And Mary Margaret and David need to look at her and be proud, need to believe that she's the savior they want and not so unstable that she'd nearly become the Dark One last night. She can fight with herself again and again about what had happened last night- about hurting Regina and doing it all in front of Henry, and that's the only part that should matter- but for the people who have faith in her, she only needs to be strong.
She stands up, stretching against the counter. "Hey, come by Regina's later, okay? So Henry can meet you properly. I've got to head out again now. There's someone else I need to talk to about this."
"Hook?" Mary Margaret asks, and she's got that glint in her eye that she'd walked around with from the moment Neal had come to town until he'd died in her arms. "You two have been getting closer lately, haven't you?"
"Physically? No. Romantically?" She keeps her face straight as Mary Margaret perks up. "No." Hook is…very interested, yeah, but not the kind of person who'd appeal to her after her body-parts-in-the-freezer bad boy stage. Maybe she has a bad girl thing now. Regina must have some leather somewhere in her closet, doesn't she ride horses? Maybe some high-heeled boots. Or those Evil Queen dresses. And her freezer has frozen vegetables and pizza in it because Emma's somehow managed to win over the only bad girl out there who's equally as much of a mom as she is scourge of thousands.
"I know that look," comes the teasing voice. Mary Margaret has already bounced back and she's grinning at Emma as though Emma's given something more away than absolute disinterest. "You're thinking about him, aren't you?"
She straightens, noticing suddenly that there's a smile playing at her mouth. "Right. Him. Sure." She licks at her lips and leans back again. "I actually have to go talk to someone else. Another man."
"Oh?"
"Single dad, good with a bow, has this kind of woodsy odor about…" She wiggles her fingers. "Was supposed to be keeping an eye on Zelena's house last night and never called?"
"Robin Hood."
"That's the guy." Whatever smile there'd been on her face evaporates at that name, and she feels even more suspicion niggling at her. When she'd awakened this morning she'd remembered their agreement and remembered no backup, no warning that Zelena had been up to something, nothing at all.
And there's something about the guy that rubs her the wrong way, sets her on edge even when she knows he isn't lying and there isn't any reason to distrust him. Maybe it's just because Regina's so cagey about him and Emma hates that most of all. Who the hell is this guy?
"Much," Robin says, and she blinks at him.
"That's an answer?" She'd charged into his camp three minutes ago and demanded to see him, and he'd pulled her into a cabin and closed the door behind them. Her fingers tap a tense beat against the butt of her gun as she waits.
"It's a name," he corrects her. "Much was our sentry last night. Alas, he brought some…ah, sustenance for the long night ahead."
"So he was too drunk to see a witch attempt some pretty suspicious behavior. Convenient," she mutters.
Robin's brow furrows. "For Zelena, perhaps. Not for us." He sounds genuinely confused, and she pushes her lower lip between her teeth and then frees it twice as she waits for him to offer more. He doesn't disappoint. "And what he did tell me…he must have been too deep in his cups to have seen anything useful."
His eyes are wary and there's something else there, too. He's standing two steps back from a polite distance and his fingers are running along the edge of his crossbow, cautious as she is with her gun. "It's odd, actually. He babbled on about smoke and a scuffle and he seemed to think that he'd seen the sheriff of this town tearing out hearts and attacking her allies." She stiffens. He offers her a genial, loaded smile. "I told him to sober up and stop spreading tales."
Her jaw works under her skin. "Good."
He's still smiling at her and she says, "Did anyone else hear about this?"
"Just me." He places his bow down on the table beside them, a gesture of goodwill that she doesn't mirror. "I assure you, I won't be spreading around any information a halfwit drunkard offered me." He pauses for a moment. "The queen? Really?"
She's moving lightning-quick across the distance between them before he says another word, pressing her fingers to his temples and focusing hard. She doesn't remember how she'd taken Henry's memories the first time- she'd just willed it, desired it so until suddenly Henry had been staring at her in confusion and the crisis had been averted. Now she draws forth all her fear and anger and resentment and it's as though Robin Hood's mind falls open in front of her, hers to manipulate as she sees fit.
"Much remembered nothing," she whispers at him, and his eyes are glazed. He has to forget this, can't be thinking of her as anything but reliable. She thinks of David and Mary Margaret's pride, of a whole town counting on her to be everything they need, and she can't let them down. Not with this. It doesn't matter to anyone but Regina and Henry and Zelena and it's no one else's business.
"Nothing," he echoes, and she feels the allure of this power tingling at her skin, the potential for answers at last.
"Tell me what happened when you met Regina for the first time," she murmurs.
His eyes shift from side to side, like he's having a waking dream. "I saved her life. From a flying monkey."
Her eyebrows shoot up. "What?"
He continues as though he's in a trance. "She saved Roland from another one. We journeyed together into her castle to lower the shields around her kingdom so Snow White and her people could enter. She mixed a potion–"
"This is the missing year," she whispers, awed. "You remember the missing year?" He stares blankly at her, the faintest awareness beginning to return to his eyes, and she seizes another opportunity and says quickly, verbalizing suspicions she hasn't fully formed yet on a whim, "Are you working for Zelena?"
"I…" He blinks for the first time since she'd wiped his memory and she backs up, dropping her hands to her side. "Sorry, what was the question?"
She smiles. It's sharp-edged and uncomfortable. "Just about what you were doing during the missing year."
"I wish I could tell you," he says, and there's no deceit in his voice. Whatever she'd uncovered, it isn't something he has any access to. "I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for."
"Yeah. Thanks." She turns to leave and then pauses as though struck by an idea. One year back in the bounty hunting business and she's relearned her disarming smile like a pro. "Hey, do you mind sending Much in, just so I can ask him about last night?"
"He didn't remember anything when we spoke, but maybe you can get some more out of him," Robin says, genial now without the edge. "You are skilled at this, from what I've heard."
"Maybe I can," she says, smiling back at him without a hint of malice, and as long as she can think of this as a simple con, it's the easiest thing in the world. The con to prove to the town that Emma Swan has this covered.
That's what everyone needs from her. Stable Emma the Savior who doesn't slip up and murder the bad guys because they fucked with her emotions one time too many. Sheriff Swan who's mastering magic and keeping the evil queen under control and is certainly not snuggling up next to her at night. Their rulers' daughter who is as pure and noble as they believe the Charmings to be and definitely not harboring more terrifyingly acute resentment than can be healthy.
Maybe if she can keep up the lie for long enough, she might even believe it.
Much proves to be a quick study, hungover and all too eager to block out the night before, and she heads off with only a final dark glare at Robin where he's bouncing his son on his lap across the camp. Something about him is wrong in a way that she can't describe, and she's uneasy whenever she thinks about him. Especially when she thinks about him going on some mission with Regina in a year they can't remember, just the two of them, and him saving Regina's life.
She narrows her eyes and vows to return to the camp another time to get the answers she needs from Robin. It had been all too easy to pry answers from his mind, so simple that she has no idea why Regina wouldn't have done that with all the villagers who'd hidden Mary Margaret from her over the years.
Unless she couldn't. The thought strikes her and she remembers that she's supposed to be stronger than Regina, even if the other woman had easily knocked her back every time she'd tried to fight her. There are some things she can do that Regina can't.
It feels wrong, somehow, being gratified at that knowledge, but Emma chews her lip and kicks her way through the underbrush and tries not to think about it. She and Regina are a team. Anything new she can do might be something new that they can do, and even Emma's own magic seems as drawn to Regina as it is to her.
And what they can do together… She perks up, spotting soft lavender between two trees ahead, and she moves between them to take in the garden from the night before. She knows that her magic is supposed to be blue but this is almost all purples even though it had been her magic they'd been shedding. Regina. Regina everywhere. Soft moss and tall flowers and little purple-blue berries peeking out from bushes around her.
She sinks back against the tree she'd been thrown into just hours before and closes her eyes, sniffing a distinct smell like apples because of fucking course Regina's magic would smell like apples. She smirks to herself and before she knows it, that now-familiar smile is tugging at her lips.
She's too old and cynical to be lovestruck over some new…thing, even if it's with the mother of her son and she thinks she might've moved into Regina's house last night. Living the cliche, apparently. But there's a peace to their moments together like quiet conversations in Neverland and sitting in the Bug at a stakeout and she thinks that's all she needs, really. Peace. Serenity in this quiet garden they'd made together with their magic.
Henry and Regina and whatever they manage to build as a family. They're her tiny garden in the middle of the woods, her oasis from all the demands and hurt that have been layered onto her with every day spent in this town. They're hers, a secret comfort that remains with her even as she blunders through saviorhood and the town's expectations of her.
I'll tell you something true, Henry. This. This is the only truth I've got now. She wiggles her feet out of her boots and socks until they're perched on the moss, the magic that brushes against the soles of her feet warm and safe to her skin.
"I thought I'd find you here," says a smooth voice, and it jerks her out of her reverie even as she recognizes it.
"Regina."
Regina smiles at her, and it's…different than usual, not quite guarded but not with the unconcealed affection that she's grown accustomed to. Emma shifts on her bare feet, wondering if she shouldn't have left Regina alone in bed this morning. Maybe she'd fucked this up already. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine. I told my parents about last night. They were…" She pauses, feeling suddenly guilty about explaining just how supportive they'd been when they're usually one step away from mass hysteria whenever Regina steps out of line. "They're coping well. Hey, where's Henry?"
Regina swoops closer, seemingly unbothered by her uncertainty about her parents. "He's back at my house. My spells are still up to keep him away from Zelena, and I don't think he'll be calling Walsh again anytime soon." She barks out a shaky laugh and Emma flushes and stares down at the moss below her.
"Oh, no," Regina croons, and suddenly she's right in front of Emma, her eyes not quite loving but very hungry. "You have nothing to be ashamed of. Walsh was only a road bump, inconsequential to me. And Zelena," she adds, almost as an afterthought. "We're hardly at the main event."
There's something off about Regina, something that doesn't quite click right in her mind, and maybe it's just the creepy concept of a Regina who sleeps in in the morning and nothing more but it has Emma uneasy.
She contemplates the moss and two gentle fingers move to lift her chin. "No need to worry, pet," Regina whispers, millimeters away, and it all connects in a shining moment of realization.
Regina would never leave Henry alone in her house so soon after she'd gotten him back.
She shoves Regina away just as their lips touch and the other woman's eyes go wide as she stumbles back against a thorny bush. And her eyes grow wider still until there's laughter in her gaze and a puff of green smoke and now it's Zelena opposite her, batting away the bush and smirking at Emma's glare. "Well, now. You're not quite as stupid as you look, are you?"
"You're not as smart as you think," she shoots back, reaching for her gun.
Zelena's nose wrinkles. "That again?" She waves her hand and the weapon is sailing from Emma's hands into her own, and she examines it disinterestedly and drops it on the ground. "Where's that intoxicating magic you had last night?"
She gathers it as best as she can, feels it spring to attention and hover within her, waiting to emerge as she challenges, "You really want to see it?"
But Zelena only laughs, unintimidated. "Come now, pet. You must know that you're meaningless to me. Only another toy for Regina to use against me." She twirls her hand, the dagger appearing in it. So Gold hadn't escaped last night, not in time. "I use this dagger to command my weapon. What does Regina use for you, I wonder?" But she's leering suggestively at Emma, the implication clear on her face.
Emma wipes savagely at her lips where they'd touched Zelena's. "What the fuck is your problem? Why are you even here in this town other than to be a pain in my ass?"
"That spell can't be replicated." Zelena sighs, theatric. "I'm no longer interested in Regina's boy."
"Our boy."
"Well." Zelena tosses her hair over her shoulder, turning away. "You're so very irrelevant, though." It cuts when it shouldn't, when she doesn't give a damn what Zelena thinks about her when she has an entire town that thinks of her as their hero. So what if the enemy she's supposed to be saving them from doesn't think she's worthy?
I'm going to destroy you, she thinks, and her magic springs to her hands, slashing out at the trees on either side of the gap that Zelena is walking toward. And Emma snaps after her, "Then why are you following me around?"
"Tell my sister that I will take her little town from her and have her annihilated for it," Zelena says instead of responding. "If this is all the kingdom she's left for me, I will have it."
Emma grits her teeth. "I'm not your message girl."
Zelena shakes her head, a glowing green shield reflecting Emma's magic back at her. "Well, you're not much use beyond that, are you?" She turns around, seizing a flash of blue and opening her hand around it. "All that power," she says silkily, eyes hungry as Regina's gets around her magic sometimes. "Yet so unimpressive. Regina's pet project with nothing to offer beyond that."
Emma can feel redness climbing its way up her neck, frustration and fury at being dismissed so easily burning hot under her skin. "I'm the savior," she says, and it had seemed so vital when she'd thought it earlier but now it's just impotence, a child lashing out at being deemed inconsequential. And she has a dozen memories of being three and five and ten and fifteen and standing in doorways, watching cars of parents driving off, and the same frustration and fury carrying her until the next time.
It never stops. It's never enough. And her muscles are taut and her mouth is bared and she won't let Zelena toss her aside so easily. No more.
Zelena turns once to sneer at her. "Lovely garden," she says mockingly, and disappears.
Blue energy hums around Emma, spreading down her spine and to her legs and flat to the ground, whirling around her against the soft moss and flowers until thorny blue weeds emerge from the dirt, growing higher and higher around her until she's in the midst of a forest of weeds, trapping her feet in place and scratching at her arms and some so high that she can't see any of the purple that had been there before. Something within her is savagely pleased at that and she shudders at the resentment that builds there from Regina's pet project and she won't give in to Zelena, won't let her prod at any more sore spots until they blossom.
Regina is not her enemy. Zelena is. And she's going to protect Regina, protect Henry and this town and bring Zelena to her knees as easily as she did Walsh. She feels cold satisfaction at the thought of him weak in front of her, pleading for his life, and when she imagines Zelena in the same position, she smiles hard and walks away, the weeds sinking back into the ground with every step toward Regina's.
Her good mood doesn't abate when she comes inside and sees Henry in front of a TV she hadn't known existed, playing video games that she'd thought were theirs before she'd taken that potion. "Hey, kid."
He glances at her, and there's that tension she'd forgotten about from earlier, thick with strain and words they're still not ready for. "Grandparents?" he repeats as though they've been talking all along, and she says, "Yeah. Uh…Mary Margaret and David. It's complicated."
She rambles for a while about them and Henry doesn't stop wrestling lizard-men and he doesn't look at her again, but he doesn't interrupt, either, and she knows he's listening even when he doesn't respond. "So anyway, I guess it's kind of screwed up, and oh yeah- that guy from last night with the dagger? He's also your grandfather. Neal's dad, anyway. He was really helpful rescuing you from Pan, he didn't have a choice last…" Her voice trails off when Henry pauses his game, and he twists so quickly that she thinks it might be Zelena behind them until she follows his gaze to Regina, descending the stairs at last.
"I heard you come in," Regina murmurs when she joins them. She's wearing the kind of suit that she hasn't worn since her Madam Mayor days and a tall pair of heels, armor that Emma recognizes, and for a moment she indulges in the thought of Regina hiding in her room, too terrified to leave it and face Henry until she has backup. "Hello."
They stare at each other, Regina's eyes communicating gratitude and whatever last resentment had remained within Emma evaporating at the trust in Regina's eyes. "Hi," she says, and her hand slides over to where Regina's hand lies across the back of the couch.
"Hi," another voice echoes. Henry is watching Regina with undisguised curiosity and Regina is drawn to him at once, eyes lighting up and smile springing onto her face as Henry blushes and smiles back, tentative like the shyness of a new beginning. And Emma's always warm when she thinks about them, rebuilding their relationship one step at a time.
It's what she'd dreamed of for years when she'd thought of adoption and mothers and home for herself. It's what she'd dreamed of for years when it had been all she'd known about her son's future. It's what she still dreams about even now and she feels guilty for still longing for that, to be Regina or Henry and not Emma, not a Charming, and that eyes that swim with that kind of love for her don't feel weighted with expectations of who she can't become.