I'll be better next time, I promise. Lots of technical difficulties last week.

We're about...midway through the fic right now, I think. Making headway!

xv. hesitation

Ma, Henry decides, watching them as they stand together and then take uneasy steps apart while Killian squints at them. Ma and Mom. In this impossible world where magic is real and his memories are a lie, somehow this is what he's hanging onto for dear life. Coping with the fact that now he has two moms. Or…a Ma and a Mom.

It feels sacrilegious to strip away Mayor Mills's title when he doesn't even remember her, when Mom is all he knows of this childhood in Storybrooke within a fairytale, and Mo- Ma can totally pass as a Ma instead. It sounds kind of like Emma and it's kind of casual and he's always (always? for the last year?) felt like they're more of a team than Mom-and-son-and-nothing-else. So Ma it is.

He blinks down at the storybook that enumerates Mayor Mi– that enumerates Mom's evils, one after the other, and sinks back down to the bottom of the steps, flipping through the pages again to stare at the gloating queen with an uncanny resemblance to Mom. It all seems impossible, knowing her as he does, and yet…it's real. They both have admitted as much, M- Mom with so much tension as she'd said it that Ma had leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder, casual but calming.

They've been weird since that night, stumbling around each other while they speak openly about Zelena and the year they'd missed and him, coming to blows over tiny decisions and sneaking around corners to make out like a couple of gross teenagers when they think he isn't watching. Henry had rolled his eyes and read his book and waited until they'd finally agreed that Zelena isn't after him anymore so he can have some time alone.

When he had succeeded to convince them, it had been with wide, sad eyes and his very best puppy face and I just want to be free to wander around again, okay?, and Ma had shaken her head and smirked but Mom's whole face had softened and the supposed evil queen is apparently the weak link and the one who makes the decisions in this new family unit. Excellent.

He flips through the pages of the book again, frowning at the descriptions of some of the pictures. The queen's guards execute a village. The queen curses the kingdom. The queen plans to kill Snow White. It's not Mayor Mills. Mom. It can't be her. The book never even calls her by name, how can it possibly be Mom who's so…evil?

He rubs his eyes and sighs, shutting the book to glance up to where Ma is talking in a wheedling tone at an unimpressed Killian. "I have a way to flush out Zelena's monkeys and I need Regina for it. It's just one afternoon."

"It's been just one afternoon for days now with you two alone." Killian puts on a face, outthrust-lip and lidded eyes, like he thinks Ma might be sympathetic now. She stares at him. "It's nothing personal- I do like you, lad-" He gives Henry a grin and Mom's hand moves to his shoulder. He looks up to share a long-suffering look with her, but she's instead staring at his book, something unreadable on her face, and she carefully removes her hand a moment later. Henry chews on his lip.

"I'm a pirate, not a chaperone!" Killian is still insisting, and Henry blinks with recognition. A pirate with one hand. Ma's been sending him out with Captain Hook? But Killian doesn't look much like the scourge of children everywhere, just a cranky thirty-something who isn't aware that Ma's taken.

Killian's voice lowers and he reaches for Ma's arm. "I'm willing to be here for you, however you need me, Swan. But there's only so much I can-"

Mom heaves a loud sigh, enough to cut Killian off, and he blinks at her with sudden alarm. Henry looks up and sees her eyes glinting with impatience and...well, murder. For the first time he can see the evil queen in them, dangerous enough to smite villages, and he glances toward Ma nervously.

She's shrugging off Killian's arm and smirking at Mom. "Let's talk in the kitchen, okay?" She virtually drags Killian into the next room, Mom glowering behind them and Killian looking perplexed. Mom shifts, angling herself exactly to the spot in the foyer where she can see into the far part of the kitchen.

Henry opens the book, skipping to a close-up of the evil queen's face, and he stares down at it. "She's just getting him to do what she wants," he says, eyes running across the text on the opposite page. "She doesn't mean it."

Mom sighs again. "She can do whatever she wants," she says, voice frosty. "And I'm sure she will."

"She's crazy about you. It's pretty gross." They're always touching, grazing hands against arms and pressing up against each other, side-to-side, whenever they're sitting on the couch or standing at the counter. Ma isn't really demonstrative with her affections but she hovers in Mom's orbit all the time like a bodyguard or maybe a puppy, close where she'd only ever been distant with Walsh.

Don't think about Walsh. It's a struggle not to remember that moment, eyes shut tight but the screaming still loud in his ears, and then the body he'd seen as he'd clutched Mom's arm and they'd staggered from the barn.

He'd seen the same danger in Ma's eyes as he sees now in Mom's, like they're containing something dark and powerful until it bursts into a hail of destruction, and he swallows hard and stares down at the queen again. "This was you, right?"

Mom's jaw tightens and she moves from her spot to sit beside him on the steps, arms stiff at her side. "It's a poor artistic rendering."

He swallows, not quite sure he wants the answer from her, and whispers, "Is it true?" She's so still behind him, face sad and tired, and he tries, tentative and aloud for the second time, as though this one might give him a new answer. "M-Mom. Is it true?"

Her eyes gleam at the name, startled and wet and afraid, and she says, "It's heavily biased. But not...not entirely inaccurate."

"Oh." He swallows. "Why did you do it?"

"I was...grieving and trapped for a long time. Then angry for even longer." She laughs, self-deprecating. "A lot of it seemed just at the time. I think I lost myself for a while there." There are stirrings of frustration and regret in her voice, and he wonders if the frustration is stronger than the regret. He wonders if she's really found herself again. He wonders if Ma got lost that night with Walsh, too, and if it's something you can ever really break free from.

Ma comes back as though summoned by his thoughts, leading Killian and looking smug, and Mom's eyebrows settle into a scowl. "Thank you, Killian. We'll all meet up here later, okay?" She's back to her position beside Mom, standing close enough to the staircase that the bottom of her leg is up against Mom's, and Mom leans forward, mollified. "Henry, text us every half hour or we'll come charging in to your rescue and embarrass you in front of Ruby, got it?"

"Mo- Maaa!" he whines, and Ma's eyebrows rise at the name. He licks his lips, suddenly unsure that today is the best day to introduce a new name to her. They're still uncertain when Mom isn't there as a buffer, too much between them with Henry's false memories and Walsh and Ma's attempt to take him away from Storybrooke. He doesn't know where they're going to be after all this. He doesn't know where he wants them to be, when he's still angry and scared and Ma had lied so much that it still hurts to think about what he could have lost.

He follows Killian from the room, glancing back for just long enough to see Ma sink down beside Mom on the stairs and bury her face in her hands. Mom touches her knee, tentative but still with dark eyes, and she's beginning to speak as Henry shuts the door.

Ma's in trouble, he decides, and grins to himself for a moment before the worry seeps in. He doesn't know Mom, doesn't know what she's capable of, and he doesn't know how she'd react to–

No, he decides firmly. He does know Mom, even if he didn't know the person she'd been before. He knows the Mom who helps him with his homework and talked to him about her mom and his dad and who'd held him close when things had gone wrong. This is Mom. Whoever the Evil Queen had been, it isn't Mom anymore.

But he still bites his lip and asks Killian, "How did you meet my mom?"

"We met in the Enchan-" He stops. "We met on a voyage," he corrects himself. No one had bothered to apprise Killian of the change in Henry's memories, and Henry smirks to himself and listens to Killian fumbling to rewrite history. "She chained me all up."

He waggles his eyebrows suggestively. Henry wrinkles his nose. "Gross."

"You'll understand someday, lad." Killian pats his shoulder. "She was stunning. Dangerous. A bit unstable. Absolutely striking."

"Wait, so do you have a thing for both my moms?" He thinks Killian would have a harder time winning Mom over than even Ma, but it'd be funny to watch. Especially Ma. He's never seen Ma jealous before but he bets that she'd break things over it.

"Have a thing?" he asks indignantly. Then, "Both your…" Comprehension filters onto his face. "Ah, no. I was talking about Swan there. When I first met Regina, she was…stunning. Dangerous. A bit unstable." Killian's brow furrows. "Do you have your memories back, lad?"

"Do you get chased by crocodiles and kill Lost Boys?" Henry challenges in return.

"Only the naughty ones." Killian gives him a smile that's supposed to be creepy, maybe. He looks a little constipated though and Henry snickers to himself.

Killian looks pleased with it, missing the sentiment altogether. "In all fairness, Regina was never all that vicious to me. But I'm sure you know the tales in that book of yours. She was quite the tyrant in her hunt for Snow White."

"But now Snow White is her friend," Henry says uncertainly.

Killian shrugs. "I don't track the womanly dynamics there. I'm here for one thing only." He pats Henry on the shoulder again, a little rougher.

"Ma. Emma."

"That's right."

Henry steers them around a corner toward the beach. "You think you have a shot with her?"

"I know I do." Killian's all swagger and confidence, like he genuinely believes what he's saying, and Henry thinks about Ma watching Mom cook, leaning over the counter and trying to swipe sauce out of a stew while it boils on the stove. Ow! and a burnt finger in her mouth and Mom smacking her with a wooden spoon, stop contaminating my stew, and Ma's eyes sparkling defiantly when she goes back for another swipe.

"Have you seen anyone else in her orbit she gives the time of day to?" Killian points out.

Henry shrugs, nonchalant. "Just her family, I guess."

They're getting closer to the beach, and he takes a shortcut in the woods to the right of it to follow the path. Killian frowns. "Where are you off to?"

"There's a park here." He breaks through the woods and spots it. It's small, a few structures arrayed around a tall jungle gym, but there are kids everywhere, gathered on benches and sitting on top of the jungle gym and hanging out on tree branches. He's watched them from afar, envious of how they'd been able to hang around town without adults breathing down their backs, and now he knows that he'd once been one of them.

He smiles at Killian. "Listen, I'm going to be fine here. Promise. Ma needs you, right? You should go to her." It's sneaky and Ma will probably freak out at him later but maybe she'll get it, too. He can't live in a cage. And god, he misses having friends so much.

Killian doesn't need any more convincing, and he's off before Henry sees the girl who'd called him by name once looking down at him curiously from the top of the jungle gym. He climbs up it to join her. "Hi."

"Hi," she says cautiously.

"I don't have my memories back," he says quickly. "But I know that I'm…I know about this town now. And my mom. And fairytales."

The girl relaxes in a moment, the boy beside her nudging her and grinning at him. "Cool. I'm Hansel."

"And you're Gretel," Henry guesses.

"We're Ava and Nick," the girl corrects, glancing at what must be her brother. "In this world, anyway. You can call us whatever you want to." She nods to the two boys crouched at her feet, one closer to Henry's age and the other much younger. "That's Adi. He was a Lost Boy before Snow White brought them all here. And Roland is from this curse."

Adi glances up, recognition in his eyes when they scan over Henry. "Emma Swan brought us here, not Snow White. She promised us mothers."

"Sorry about that, dude." Ava gives him a little kick in the back. "My papa adopted Adi," she explains. "There wasn't much of a choice, when we were all sent back to the Enchanted Forest and everyone was split up. You found yourself new parents or no one took care of you."

It sounds kind of dire to Henry, but all four kids look pretty uninterested in the implications there, and he tries instead to ask, "So what fairytale were you from?"

"Fairytale?" Adi shakes his head. "I wasn't a fairytale. Peter Pan's shadow took me, just like you."

"Like me? I haven't gotten all the explanations yet," Henry adds swiftly, watching suspicion dawn in Ava's eyes. "Just about Zelena and my…and Regina. My mom. Do you know her?" He keeps his expression neutral, thinking back to pages in the storybook that he'd only skimmed.

Ava looks guarded again. "The Evil Queen? She sent us away from our father in the Enchanted Forest. We didn't see him again until the curse and Emma." Henry stomach roils, like these are conversations that will only hurt him more. But he needs to know the truth, even if it's unpleasant. Even if Mom is exactly as bad as the book says. Ava goes on. "But she also found us again after the second curse." She shrugs. "She and Snow White's prince stumbled upon us and brought us back to Papa."

"I like Regina," says the boy they'd called Roland. He's absorbed in his lollipop and seems unaware of the rest of their conversation. "She tells me stories about her castle. And Henry. Are you Henry?"

"I'm–" He's caught by sudden confusion. "Wait. The second curse? But Mom said that no one remembered that."

Adi puts a finger to his forehead. "Some of the kids started remembering things a few days ago. No one knows why."

The curse is straining at its seams somehow, and he feels a fierce desire that it free him, too, that somehow he can break out of it all on his own and remember. Remember his past, remember his family, remember the mother Emma is sure he'd forgiven. And all he has now is hearsay and a book that Mom calls biased. "Did you say Mom found you after the second curse?"

Ava shakes her head. "Snow White's prince found us. The Queen was only with him."

"That's not true," Nicholas objects. "I remember when they came to us. David said that Mayor Mills went looking for us on her own when she heard that Papa had been separated from us again."

Ava looks uncertain. Henry says, "I'm still trying to figure out how I felt about her."

"You talked about her in Neverland," Adi says. "When you spoke. You talked about your mothers and how they were going to save you. Everyone wanted…well. When your mothers came, we saw why you'd leave Peter Pan." He sighs, low and wistful, and Ava kicks him again.

"Shut up. You love us." She turns back to Henry. "We didn't really know her as your mother. But she seemed like an okay mom. And she didn't go around trying to kill people too much after the first curse broke." She shrugs. "I don't like her," she announces, and looks guilty about it. "Sorry."

"It's okay." If he'd thought that he'd been confused before, it's even worse now. Maybe she's the villain. Maybe she's the hero. Whatever it is, the only thing he's sure of is that she loves him.

And he loves her, too. Maybe. He doesn't really know yet. He doesn't even know her.

"My other mom, though. Emma. She's a hero, right?" He gets three sets of enthusiastic nods from that, vigorous enough that even Roland looks up at them in perplexment.

He doesn't think that heroes kill people like Ma had, and he wonders about how easily the other kids seem to accept her like this. They don't know. They can't know, he understands suddenly, watching the way that Ava's eyes shine as she tells him about Ma finding her father and breaking the curse and fighting against someone named Cora. These people count on Ma to be a force for good in the town. And he's the only one aside from Mom who knows what had happened that night.

He manages a smile and says, "I think so, too," and hopes very hard that he has nothing to hide.

xvi. operation

"I had to get him alone." Emma is following behind her, half pleading as they climb into the station's patrol car. "Stop being so…"

"So?" Regina slams the car door behind Emma and swings around to her side. "So what?"

"I had to get him away from you because you'd probably have killed him if he'd looked at me the wrong way! And then who'd look after Henry?" Emma sounds exasperated and Regina starts the car, jerking it down the road with a little less finesse than she would normally.

Emma crashes against her. "Did you forget a seatbelt?" Regina demands. "Is this the example you've been setting for my son?"

She gets an outraged glare for that and suspects she may be a teensy bit irrational right now. They'd sent Henry out with that…that miscreant, and she can't erase the smugness on both Emma's and Hook's faces from her mind. It's not…this is something real, something they're supposed to keep. And Emma would dismiss it as nothing for a favor from the man who purports to be in love with her.

But now Emma is staring straight ahead, hurt and silent and probably just as angry as she is. "Buckle up," Regina snaps, because she doesn't know how else to mend things between them. "We can't afford to have you die now."

It's clumsy and a backhanded apology, we and the statement of don't die, and Emma huffs and buckles her seatbelt. "Why are you driving? Do you even know how to drive?"

"I've been driving longer than you've been alive!" She swerves hard to miss Archie, who's walking Pongo across the street and waving at them.

Emma's eyebrows knit together. "Okay, we both know that isn't true. By…at least one day."

She grumbles something incoherent and probably insulting so Emma will read her tone, no effort required, and the tension levels in the car remains dangerously high even with that. "I don't see why we need him, anyway," she says sulkily.

"We need him to keep Henry safe. And he does do that, even if he thinks it'll…" Emma hesitates. "It doesn't matter what he thinks. The important thing is that Henry is safe."

"The werewolf is just as capable of ensuring that. And she doesn't require nearly as much…mutual interest from you." She's running over fewer corners now, which means that she's calming down. That, or they're getting closer to the edge of town where there are no sidewalks at all.

"Ruby isn't as good a shot as Hook."

"Ah, yes." She smiles dangerously. "I remember how efficiently he shot Belle last year."

"Really? That's what you're going with? That he hurt Belle?" Emma sounds disbelieving and Regina's about to point out that Belle had been well taken care of in her castle, that she'd only ever held her prisoner and hadn't tried killing her, but she suspects that Emma will take that about as well as Rumple had when she'd mentioned it in Neverland. She rolls her eyes internally as Emma slumps. "Regina, can we just…not? Please? We got what we wanted. I don't need some jealousy crap from you when you know all I want is…" She shifts, uncomfortable, and doesn't finish the sentence.

Regina pulls the car to a halt just behind Leroy's truck. "And what? You want your own personal Sidney?" She doesn't care about Hook, doesn't care about what he thinks or what he believes Emma owes him. Emma owes him nothing no matter how many times he watches Henry or Emma takes him along on missions. It's not as though she has any problems with using Hook for their purposes. But an Emma who would carelessly manipulate someone who supposedly loves her into doing what she wants is…

Too much like Regina herself. She sighs and leaves the car as Emma slouches down lower into the passenger seat. She looks…angry. Stubborn. Frustrated. Vaguely guilty.

By the time she falls into step beside Regina, though, she only looks determined. "You guys set?"

There are four dwarves arrayed around the town line. Regina squints at them, trying to recall which is which based on their Enchanted Forest names. Leroy is Grumpy, of course. Sneezy the pharmacist. Doc. Happy. "We're ready for this," Leroy says.

Sneezy sniffles into his handkerchief. "If it's the only way," he says, twitching a little.

Four brave little dwarves, and Emma hasn't even told her what the plan is yet. She hadn't wanted to talk about it in front of Henry and they'd been distracted on the way here, and now she smiles tightly at Happy (whose ever-present smile falters at the Evil Queen's eyes on him) and waits for Emma to explain herself.

But Emma's focus is on the dwarves, her eyes hard and dangerous, and she says, "We need to stop Zelena. And that means getting rid of her messengers."

"Not the Dark One, though. Right?" Sneezy looks nervous again.

Leroy slaps him. "We're loyal to Snow White and her family! We'll do whatever it takes, Emma," he says, and he's turning around and walking to the town line before Regina can process.

"What are they doing?" she hisses.

Emma looks startled. "Oh, crap. Throw up a shield!" she orders, just as the other dwarves join Grumpy. There's a loud screeching noise and Regina's magic emerges automatically, blocking a swarm of flying monkeys as the dwarves step over the line. Again, again, again. The monkeys remain as new ones appear, screeching protests and scraping at the bottom of her barrier as the dwarves stare up at them.

She'd disregarded the dwarves long ago as just a few more Snow White sycophantic traitors, but watching them now is almost chilling. They step over the line with no regard for themselves, nothing but terror on three of their faces, and they don't hesitate. And all Emma had had to do was ask.

It's a terrifying power, that degree of love for a ruler, and she had shamelessly longed for it for so long that she'd hated Snow for having it. She thinks she could have hated Emma for being born into it as well if she wasn't so busy watching Emma with alarm. Emma looks fierce and driven, the wind from the monkeys' wings surging against her as she stands back and lets the dwarves risk themselves for her, and there's not a shred of concern on her face.

"What are you doing?" Regina asks finally.

"Bringing the fight to Zelena." Emma's teeth are gritted together against the wind. "Whatever it takes, right? We make the town safe again. And Leroy volunteered himself and his brothers. Can you get the monkeys into the station cells?"

"Don't you think–"

"I think I should do what works best. This whole town is counting on us." Emma refuses to look at her and Regina focuses, thinks of the cells beside each other that David must be watching- does David know about this?- and concentrates until the monkeys pop out of existence above the dwarves.

"We did it!" Leroy shouts, clapping one of the dwarves on the back. Doc, Regina thinks, as he stumbles backwards, crossing the town line again.

The monkey appears from nowhere, shooting so quickly over their heads that Regina can't even throw up a shield before it's grabbing Doc, yanking him up through the trees. "No!" Leroy shouts, and Emma's eyes go wide, the focus in them gone and replaced with panic. She fumbles for her gun and Leroy shouts again. "Don't! That could be my brother too!"

"What am I supposed to do then?" And Emma's eyes are suddenly on Regina, pleading and panicked.

Regina holds up a hand. "Don't look at me. I'm not playing 'Pick the Prettiest Dwarf' and saving one over the other. You got yourself into this mess, you get out of it." And maybe she's a little crankier than she'd thought from the incident earlier. She winces internally at how Emma's face falls and Emma turns on her heel, running after the flying monkey.

Sneezy looks furious. "She can't just…leave one of us to be turned into another of Zelena's prisoners!" Regina turns to affix him with an Evil Queen glare, and his voice rises and squeaks midway through the sentence. He buries his nose in his handkerchief again.

"You were willing to die for her up until now. What, no follow-through?" She sneers with disdain and sighs, Emma's panic still burning uncomfortable holes in her chest. Emma hadn't been prepared for this, no matter how extreme her plan had been, and she…doesn't want Emma to suffer through the aftermath of it.

Ugh. She tracks the monkey, flapping over the tops of the trees while Doc waves wildly for help and Emma runs somewhere below them, and stretches out her hands, sending the least murderous electricity at it that she can manage. It squawks and jerks but keeps flying, and Regina pops away from the town line and to where Doc is being dragged through the woods.

"Regina!" Emma calls her name, panting as she catches up, and Regina focuses again when the monkey swoops down, letting a new flash of energy crash into the spot where Doc is being held by monkey feet. The creature drops Doc and Regina twists to watch it but there are suddenly flapping feathers in her face and then a jerk on her shoulders and dammit, the monkey has her.

"Regina!" Emma is shouting now, face taut as she struggles with her gun, and she looks terrified suddenly, more than she'd been when it had been Doc. "Regina, they bite!"

Right. Thats the speculation on why Little John had been turned into one. But the monkey isn't biting her, just scraping its clawed feet along her skin to hang onto her, and she growls at the indignity of this whole situation and twists as much as she can in the air, reaching behind her to grab the monkey's leg where it holds her and summoning flames to her palm. Scree-eee-eech! and she's dropped from his feet, magically slowing her fall just in time before she lands on the ground.

"Hiya, Sis." She isn't surprised to see Zelena there, leaning back against a post as she regards Regina. They're down by the docks, looking out over the water. The monkey lands on the bars of the rail with two front legs and only one of its back ones, baring its teeth at her.

Regina glances around. For all the monkeys they'd captured, there are still half a dozen arrayed around the dock. Rumple is nowhere to be found at least. "A couple of apes and my sister. How could I miss a family reunion with my mother's family?" She smiles, tight and dangerous. "Though I suppose you never knew them. Lovely folk. Mother despised them."

There's a glint of curiosity in Zelena's eyes, bright and impossible for her to hide, and Regina wonders for a moment what they could have been if Mother had kept her, had let them be sisters scampering around and whispering secrets about the world to each other instead of bearing them in silence.

But then Zelena says, "I thought it'd be your pet my monkey brought back to me," and the curiosity is replaced by cold amusement. "My pets playing with your pet. They can be gentle…if I let." She bites out the let like it's an indication in itself, and Regina's eyes narrow.

"Emma isn't a pet," she snarls out, protective as Zelena's tongue curls in front of her teeth lasciviously. The fireball is as automatic as its ever been and Zelena waves it away with ease.

"You're more interesting here." Her lips press together into a lazy smile. "Little town. Little boys and little girls." She opens her hands and green energy slams into Regina, throwing her back against the outer wall of the cannery. She steadies herself, head still throbbing from the blow. "More to lose. And you will lose it all."

Regina blinks back stars at the edges of her vision and stalks back forward, unleashing purple lightning of her own. Henry. Emma, she reminds herself. They're the ones Zelena would threaten, and she'll kill her before she touches them. Electricity surges purple-white and Zelena reels for a moment before she vanishes and reappears a few feet over, still smiling, and Regina straightens, her confidence returning. "Somehow I doubt it," she says, calm again. Her brow knits together. "Is that what recasting the curse was about? Taking my place here?"

Zelena's eyebrow quirks but she says nothing in response, crosses her arms and stands tall like…like a stubborn big sister. And Regina longs for it to be true with such fierce desire that she takes a step back, suddenly uncertain. "You don't…you don't know much about Mother, do you?" she says. "That you would want to live my life."

"I know you were spoiled enough not to appreciate what you'd gotten. Married to a king! The apple of Mother's eye." Zelena sneers at her, stalking closer. "You had everything, and I lived as a peasant with parents who never told me the truth about who I truly was."

Her mouth is open to explain just what kind of sacrifices she'd made to be queen, to be Mother's prized possession, but she's distracted an instant later. "You had a mother," she says slowly. "You had a mother and you wanted Cora?"

Zelena's lip curls. "She wasn't my real mother," she says, and Regina slaps her hard, enough that Zelena jerks back and there's blood on her mouth and Regina stares at it, feeling dazed and disconnected at the fury that had awakened and died with that assertion.

Zelena puts a hand to her lip, an unpleasant smile on her face, and her pendant glows bright green as she waves a lazy hand at Regina. Regina's flung backward and unleashes a burst of power in return, but it's swallowed by howling winds of green magic and she's helpless to do anything but protect herself as she falls toward the water.

She navigates the wind, twisting just enough to the side that she lands on the deck of a small motorboat, and she stands on it as the green energy dies down and she spots, in the distance, a small blonde figure racing toward the docks. And then closer, a redhead who glares at her still. "You're a fool," Zelena hisses. "I thought that I would manipulate the past to live your life, but you would never be there to appreciate it. Instead I'll take them all from you so you can see what you have and never touch it again."

Her voice is smooth again, composed and regal, and she can see Zelena hate her for it. "And how will you do that?" she asks silkily. "Threaten my son again?"

"Oh, I don't need to threaten anyone." Zelena licks her lips. "All I have to do is wait."

Emma is nearly at the docks by now, wild-eyed and terrified until she catches sight of Regina, and Regina can see palpable calm as she registers her. Zelena cocks her head. "Emma Swan, I see you never did deliver my message to my sister. Bad girl." She says it loudly enough that Regina can hear and Regina knows that that's intentional, and she can see on Emma's face that there's something Emma has been keeping from her.

Emma's magic glows around her like she's aflame and Regina suddenly understands what had gotten her angry enough to be risking dwarf lives to inconvenience Zelena. "I'll–" she starts, and Zelena puffs out of existence.

Emma lets out a frustrated shout and punches the rail with a magically charged fist, sending a large chunk of it into the ocean. "Fuck this." She kicks a bench and it detaches and flips over and she doesn't seem to notice. "Fuck Zelena."

"Please don't," Regina says, appearing behind Emma to clasp a warning hand on her wrist before she can set the whole dock on fire. Emma's magic skips into her as though it had been summoned, curling into her stomach with a warmth that feels almost nurturing.

Emma shudders. "Regina." There's still guilt in her eyes for whatever had gone on between her and Zelena, not unlike how she'd looked that day when they'd found her and known that Walsh had been there. Shattered like long fault lines through her body, still whole but with the scars that could break her apart if she moves the wrong way. Zelena had found vulnerability and Emma thrums with it now, is hostile and fragile and powered by it, and she says, "They're all monkeys."

"What?"

"The dwarves. They all…stepping over the line may not make you lose your memories anymore, but that's what makes you one of Zelena's…" Regina moves around her so she can stare at her and Emma offers her a wan smile. "At least I'm not dating another flying monkey."

She's taken aback by the deadness in Emma's eyes. "Emma…"

The glass splinters just a bit more deeply, and Emma's head falls forward as though it's too heavy to keep up anymore. "I fucked up, Regina. Zelena fucked me up. I wanted to…I wanted to fight back and now Leroy and the– oh god, my parents are going to find out. And I failed again."

As though summoned, there's a sudden black smoke in the distance and the sound of gunshots. No. Not black smoke. Monkeys flapping their way up from the station while someone fires impotently at them. "No," Emma hisses, eyes a darker green than Regina thinks she's ever seen them before. "No, no, no. It worked!" She turns to Regina in sudden desperation. "Didn't you put them into the cells? I–"

The last monkey flies away in the direction of the town line and Emma's phone rings a moment later. "David," she says, staring down at the screen, and sags. "Hi."

She speaks on the phone and Regina considers teleporting back to Zelena's house to take them on again, but she's just as swiftly seized by trepidation at the thought of challenging Zelena again, drained of power and so much weaker than the witch. She can barely hold her own for just minutes against her, and now…now isn't a good time to die.

So she waits until Emma hangs up her phone, looking stricken. "I lost them all. They pushed the bars apart and made a break for it. Everything we did today was a waste."

"What do you want to do now?" Regina asks, and she expects Emma to say, Take on Zelena. Or to head to the station. An angry Emma is an indefatigable one, driven by righteous fury and hatred and unstoppable.

Except Emma isn't angry today, she's weary and defeated, and that's the Emma who runs away instead of standing her ground and fighting back. Regina tenses, annoyed before it even begins, but Emma raises her eyes to stare at her…jaw. And a tentative finger traces a line from it to her ear that stings.

She touches the spot and her hand comes back bloody. She hadn't even noticed that she'd been nicked by the flying monkey until she thinks about when the stinging sensation had begun. "It doesn't hurt?" Emma says, reading her face as easily as Regina reads hers.

Regina shrugs uncomfortably. "I don't feel pain as strongly as I did before Owen– before Greg and Tamara tried to electrocute my brain to oblivion. Nerve damage, maybe." She doesn't think about it very often, considers it a gift rather than a weakness, but Emma's eyes are soft and worried like they hadn't been about the dwarves as she strokes the skin along the cut. "What do you want to do now?" Regina says again.

"I want to make sure you're okay." Emma swallows. "Okay?"

She's averting her eyes like she's embarrassed to want it, to try to take care of someone else for a moment, and Regina whispers, "Okay."

They don't stop at the station or anywhere but the town line to get the car, and Emma makes no mention of the dwarves again. Regina's eyes darken at the memory of them, charging forward again and again as Emma keeps a safe distance. Emma had never reminded her of Snow until that moment, a kingdom ready to die for her.

She sweeps away her automatic dislike of it by the time they're back home and she's found a first-aid kit in a kitchen cabinet. Emma presses a wet cloth to her neck, cleaning it with gentle strokes and keeping her eyes fixed on it, and she's finally beginning to look content.

Regina's done this a hundred times over the years before she'd gotten her magic back. Little strokes against little Henry's skin, murmured songs in her father's native tongue that her Henry would echo with her in his tiny voice when the tears had stopped. Butterfly kisses and something Henry had called a dragon kiss that had just been him licking the side of her face and looking pleased with himself when she'd made faces about it.

She's never been on the receiving end of this kind of care. Mother had never left marks and the king's servants had been rough and careless with her, and she'd learned quickly that she would only receive tenderness from her own hands (or Snow's, but she'd done her best not to think of that). She'd never thought of herself as the one to be cared for until now.

But Emma is delicate and careful as though she's doing this for a child and Regina remembers that Emma also knows dragon kisses and Henry shivering beneath her and songs she's never learned emerging from her lips. Emma knows everything now, the quiet and the joyful and their little boy in her arms, except she also knows that it's a lie. It had never been real for her.

And maybe Emma needs this and Regina needs this, to try something new and trade places for a moment. Emma needs to give and Regina needs to accept and for a moment, Regina can forget Emma with fires blazing around her and this Emma who would sacrifice others for her fury and Emma who isn't quite the Emma she'd come to trust to be better. This is still the Emma she knows, giving of herself even when she's struggling with her own insecurities, always trying to help even when she isn't needed. No matter what she's fighting with now, this is still Emma.

Emma removes the cloth and replaces it with her fingers. There's a warmth on her neck like a sunbeam and Emma smiles as Regina touches her jaw and feels only smooth skin.