xvii. centralization
"A curfew?" Granny repeats from the audience. "In Storybrooke?" There's a murmur of bewildered assent from the crowd, and Emma clears her throat to clarify again.
"Zelena's flying monkeys are out of control. They've been snatching people away- usually at night- and dragging them to the town line, and it's safer for everyone if we have an enforced curfew after sunset." It's been almost a week since her failed attempt to imprison them and they've gotten nastier since, grabbing victims in front of her and baring their teeth as though sending a message from their master.
She grits her teeth, hating Zelena just a little more for it. "I am trying to keep you all safe, but you need to trust me for that." Beside her, David is a comforting presence, looming over the crowd with the straight-backed confidence of an actual leader. Far in the back of the room, Regina and Henry are sitting together, as unobtrusively as they can be being Evil Queen and Son. Henry is whispering to a boy beside him- one Emma thinks she remembers from Neverland- but Regina stares straight ahead, capturing her gaze and offering her a barely perceptible smile.
She breathes. And flushes a tiny bit. And breathes again, catching the smile and keeping it somewhere warm and safe in her heart until the pounding within her slows to a soft beat and she can return to her audience with renewed certainty. Regina's smile widens and Emma has to bite her lip to keep a responding smile tamped down.
David is speaking now, urging the crowd on and referring to her as the Savior, and there's a new wave of acceptance from them. "I'm still bringing my crossbow out to the diner," Granny grumbles, but she's the last voice of argument in the room and people begin filtering out of the room, wandering toward the exits and the coffee table as others surge forward to ask more questions.
It's exhausting and she's not good at this- at calming people down and telling them what to do- except maybe she is because the majority of them seem to leave happy and David is patting her back when he heads out behind them. She doesn't even know what she's responded to them. It's been four days since she's slept more than a few hours in the morning after an all-night patrol, searching for Zelena and fighting flying monkeys and practicing magic with Regina until they're both collapsing together, losing themselves on the couch for more important activities.
Well. Nothing is more important than catching Zelena, but too much time with Regina has a way of making her forget that. Regina in a relationship reveals a whole fascinating new side to the other woman that she'd never dreamed existed, all dancing eyes and playful touches and she glows like there's new joy she's containing even when she's happy, smiles behind smiles behind smiles and Emma's an idiot helpless and fixated on how she can see them all at once. Regina in a relationship is prone to the same old insults but they're even more transparent now than they've ever been, affection hiding beneath sharp words. Regina in a relationship can have them both naked in an instant and is always in control, even when Emma has her pinned down and is grinding against her in that way that makes her eyes dilate for an instant before they slide shut and her nails clamp into Emma's sides.
"Emma." Regina is in front of her, a dangerous look on her face like maybe she knows exactly what Emma's thinking about. "Congratulations on a successful town meeting. I didn't know you were capable," she adds, because Regina still doesn't know how to do compliments without trying to offend her. It's as reassuring as her smile, somehow.
"You made a scene during my last one! And it was all a con!" she feels obligated to protest.
An eyebrow is raised in challenge. "Was the one where you got up and accused me of being a thief and a bully a con, too?"
"Yes! It absolutely was!"
"Only partially," Regina says haughtily. "And my con, not yours. You had no excuse. Other than being so easily manipulated," she adds, eyes glittering with amusement. Emma narrows her eyes mock-threateningly.
David steps in, mistaking the banter for something more hostile. "Emma is just trying to protect the town. I thought you were with us on this, Regina."
Regina's smile turns frosty. "Yes, a curfew sounds like something I'd have enforced when this town still obeyed me as well." Which might be a dig at Emma, but Emma ignores it. Regina hasn't been opposed to this curfew but she hasn't been encouraging her plans of it, either, which means she's probably not its biggest fan.
She can't let herself operate only on other people's plans, not when Zelena is out there taunting her with the capture of more and more of her town each day. It's like a series of personal messages, each more mocking than the next, and Emma is like a woman possessed out to send her own message right back to Zelena. So yeah, curfew. Enforced. If Zelena is attacking anyone, it's going to be her. No more casualties.
She patrols for the rest of the day, stalking Zelena's house alone and wandering through the woods with David, and the roads clear slowly at sunset as she urges people on to their houses. She pauses only a moment when she catches sight of movement in the woods. Robin Hood. The Merry Men's camp is right here, and they only have a few small cabins between them, but they walk freely between them as though she hadn't seen Friar Tuck listening attentively at the meeting earlier that day.
As though they aren't afraid of Zelena's monkeys, or are braving them for silly, reckless reasons. Or maybe Robin Hood does have reason to be unafraid.
To hell with them. She scowls deeply and walks on, heading home to eat a quick bite of dinner and cajole Regina into joining her when she heads back out.
Henry is already asleep when Emma comes inside, Regina in her study reading through paperwork. "Hey."
"Hey," Regina echoes, and Emma slides down, legs against Regina's thighs on the love seat, to lower herself to Regina's level and press a kiss to her lips. "It's only ten o'clock. Are you in for the night?" Emma hears the twinge of hope under the casual question, the suggestion of magic lessons that makes her all gooey inside.
"Nah, I thought we'd leave Henry here with some good wards and go out patrolling together. Enforcing the curfew and killing flying monkeys, right?" There's suggestion in her voice, too, and she lifts her neck as Regina's lips press against the sensitive skin there, pull, and let it go.
Regina pulls away, frowning up at her. "You don't need to do that. David offered to take nights in his truck. And we still have all that defensive magic for you to work on."
"Regina. I can't stop now. Zelena is…"
"Zelena is keeping you busy to keep me irritated and on edge," Regina interjects swiftly, and then purses her lips like she's regretting it already. But she stands by it anyway, watching Emma's face darken with no additional sign of hesitation. "That's what she's doing now. Using you as a message."
Emma's eyes narrow. "This isn't about you. Not everything is about you." Except Zelena calls Emma a toy and pet, no one worth fighting when her sister is here, and Emma is only…
No. She's going to make Zelena regret overlooking her. This isn't some fucking pissing match between sisters that she's trapped in the middle of, and she won't be manipulated and tossed aside as just another pawn.
"Not everything," Regina agrees, shifting back, and Emma climbs off of her and stands, feeling suddenly helpless in front of the other woman's ease. "But this? Yes. You're playing directly into her hands every time you overreact and run into battle with her." Her arms are laid out across the back of the sofa, open and inviting in a way that fools no one in the room. Regina spread out like this is Regina on the defensive, uncertain and guarded through her openness, and Emma folds her arms in response.
"So…what? I'm just supposed to roll over and let Zelena walk all over me? This town should be wiped out because maybe your sister is just sending you little greeting cards in the form of imprisoned flying monkeys?" Her voice is rising and she has to make a conscious effort to lower it when Regina flinches back, just a tiny bit.
And then straightens, hands curling against the edges of the love seat as her head rolls along her shoulders for a moment. "Emma," she says, and it's always a tiny bit too comforting when Regina says her name. It's an effort to keep her hackles raised until she thinks about Zelena's lips brushing against hers and mocking laughter. "I just think you need some space to breathe. You haven't slept properly in a week. Zelena running you down won't do any of us any favors."
"I'm fine." She naps on breaks and she's running on adrenaline and anger and that smile Regina gets when her tongue is sticking out just against her bottom lip in promise. "You don't think I can take her? Did you see me that night when I fought Walsh?"
"I think you're perfectly capable," Regina says blandly. From her mouth it doesn't sound like false flattery or appeasement, not a weapon or a gift but honest facts. "You have more potential than anyone I've ever seen. But you're not infallible, and you need to stop pushing yourself to your limits."
She's being careful not to get too angry, Emma sees, and that makes Emma even angrier. Regina doesn't get to be the controlled one here, the one who isn't sinking to Zelena's level or whatever the hell she thinks is going on. Regina doesn't get to sit back in her house and talk about Emma like she's some kind of distraction.
Somehow this all went wrong because all she'd wanted was to sneak kisses in the woods with Regina and make another garden of their own and instead she's on her heels, angry and defensive, and Regina's fingers are tightening against the edge of her seat again. "I'm trying to save everyone, okay? I'm trying to see the big picture here."
"You never used to see the big picture," Regina says softly, and a darkness passes over her face like it does sometimes when she thinks Emma is going too far. Like she doesn't know who she's looking at anymore. "You used to get so caught up in the little people that you'd forget all about it."
And Emma feels ugly and wrong and ashamed, like she's disappointed everyone even though her parents are always supportive and the whole town has rallied against her plans. But now there's a house on Mifflin Street where two people watch her with wariness and they destroy her every time they avert their eyes from her. And the tension grows, grows, grows within her until she can't stop the words that emerge and doesn't even want to. She wants Regina to flinch and be diminished just as she is now. "Yeah, well, sorry, but I don't really feel like being schooled by the Evil Queen."
Regina's lips part and her knees cross over each other and Emma trembles under the energy that charges the space between them now, like another flame might set this whole thing ablaze. And she wants to curl up beside her and she wants to forget monkeys and curfews and Zelena laughing in her face and she wants to be angrier and push Regina over the edge, too, so they can be on equal footing again.
And instead she pulls out her phone and dials a number and says, "Hey, Hook, want to patrol with me tonight?" and Regina's face smoothes over into something distant and unreadable.
Emma flees the house, shaking and guilty and defiant.
Hook finds her when she's already stalking down the street, sparking white-blue electricity from her fingers at a flying monkey who swoops too close. "Careful there, love. Wouldn't want you to accidentally kill one of those missing dwarves."
"Really? Are you my conscience now?" she demands, but she's careful to aim for the wings instead of the body anyway. The monkey screeches and flaps away before she makes a hit.
"Far be it from me to tell the savior what to do." When she swivels to stare at him, he's grinning boyishly, bouncing on his heels like he thinks this is some kind of happy romp through Storybrooke. "That's the queen's life mission."
"Shut up." She kicks a wad of newspaper on the street at him. "Regina doesn't tell me what to do. She just gets pissy when I don't listen…when she tells me what to do." Tonight hadn't been orders her around as much as invalidates her vendetta but that's…close enough. She grits her teeth and rounds a corner.
"It's a pleasure to get some time alone with you without the whole family hanging on, Swan." He grins with his tongue sliding along the front of his teeth, a perpetual invitation, and she looks away, annoyed and frustrated at her own spur-of-the-moment decision. She hadn't wanted to do anything other than push back against Regina and instead she's doing the one thing that Regina had very clearly objected to and tossing Hook a bone with just her presence.
And it's Hook and he understands nuance but filters it in all the wrong ways, sees her dependency on Regina and imagines it's just an obstacle instead of the entire foreseeable future. If she ever drags her ass back there to apologize, anyway. "The only thing I'm worried about right now is Zelena," she says forcefully. "I don't have time to deal with you feeling excluded or whatever because I've been working with someone else lately. Are you here to help or are you here to whine?"
Hook raises his hands. "Here to help, of course. Yo\u know how I feel about you." He shifts from seductive to earnest in an instant, puppy-dog eyes fully activated, and she squirms uncomfortably under them. "We make a good team. Remember the beanstalk?"
She'd chained him up and left him to be freed by a friendly giant, and she remembers him angry and betrayed afterwards, Dried up, dead, useless. Just like this bean, and she'd maybe felt guilty for a moment there before she'd moved on. But now they're allies and he's the one who'd brought her home and he says he's in love with her and things are…different. "Yeah. We were a good team," she says grudgingly. "Got things done."
He follows her obediently from there, swaggering in the background as she orders Gepetto inside and warns a few older teens to get back to their houses or she'll have to arrest them. A monkey screeches overhead and they don't need any more urging.
They make their way through most of the town, Emma in the lead with her gun drawn and Hook lagging behind her, and they're almost at the docks when Hook clears his throat. "I hope you don't expect me to get a room at Granny's during this curfew," he says, and there's something significant in his voice. Like he's expecting Emma to pick up on a thread he's dangling.
"Nah, you can stay underground on your boat. If they can't drag David's pickup truck away, they can't take the Jolly Roger."
"Ah. Well…" It's all very theatrical and Emma is getting annoyed again when Hook says, "You see, I don't have my ship anymore."
She blinks. Hook without his ship is…probably important, considering how cranky he'd been about it when they'd crash-landed onto Neverland. There's the thread he's pushing out to her. "Where have you been sleeping?"
Hook ignores her question. "I traded it for a magic bean. To come bring you here."
She freezes, deer-in-headlights, as that sinks in. "You traded your ship for me?" She twists to face him. "Wh…why?"
He's looking at her with soulful eyes, that sincere look he gets every time she gives an inch, and for a moment she feels obligated to give him what he wants. To kiss him and accept this relationship because no one should give up everything for her without gaining something out of it, without gaining her out of it. He has no home anymore, a pirate without a ship, and it's all for her and she should…
Should…
She closes her eyes and opens them again, pressing her lips together. "Killian," she tries. His eyes gleam hopefully and this doesn't feel quite as bad as walking out on Regina earlier but it's close. "Thank you. But…you can't do this. I can't…I can't give you what you want."
He leans back against the railing over the water, his smile so smug that she thinks about pushing him over the edge for a moment and feels instantly guilty about it. Because he gave up his ship for her. "I can wait."
"No. No, you can't." It's a day of not being who other people want her to be, but while with Regina she knows she craves being that person again when everything makes sense, with Hook it's a pipe dream. It's someone she can't be and she can't stand the idea of him standing around, waiting for her to fall in love with him when she never will. "It's not going to happen. I'm– I'm very flattered that you're interested, but I'm never going to be interested back. And I don't want you to sacrifice everything you are for that."
His face takes a mulish tint. "You kissed me. In Neverland. We were–"
"I had just seen my son and my dad almost died and you asked for it!" She touches her lips, tries to imitate his face that day and it just emerges as a pout. "It was a weird day! And it was clearly a mistake because…god, you gave up your home for me? What am I supposed to do about that, fall into your arms and suddenly develop feelings? That's not fair to me. It isn't even fair to you." His face goes darker and she breathes out shakily. "I'm trying to sort out…I can't just be your prize. I'm sorry. I'm very grateful and I can try to help you get your ship back after Zelena's gone, but I'm sorry."
He tilts his head, lips curling into a smile like he thinks she's kidding, and she watches him stone-faced and uncomfortable until anger and frustration defeat the amusement on his face. "And what am I to do now, Swan? Sashay over the town line and become a woodsman or one of those men who feed birds in your New York? Forget that I'm in love with you and make a new life for myself in an alien world?"
His voice is biting like she's in a cage again and he's standing too close with a shriveled up bean in his hands and she clenches her hands into fists and has to control herself not to snap back. "You don't have to leave, Killian." This time, his name has the opposite effect and he glowers at her in response, the air between them charged with tension. "I thought…I thought we were friends."
"I'm in love with you," he sneers, hurt and furious and she just feels guiltier and angrier for being guilty about it. "How the bloody hell am I supposed to be your friend?"
Her magic hasn't emerged often without her consent since the night with Walsh, but she can feel it edging up from her heart to her shoulders to her elbows and wrists and under her fingertips, inviting explosion. She keeps her fists tight and takes a step back. "I've already got enough on my plate being something to everyone else, okay, Hook?" She's savior and sheriff and mom and daughter and she wants to hide sometimes, to find refuge from all of it and learn how to make things easy again. "I can't also do your tragic unrequited love. I can't– you can't shove that onto me too."
Her eyes are pleading but he's unmoved. "I can't just get over it, Swan!"
"Didn't you fall in love with me in…I don't know, under a week?" He'd been ready to let her die right before Neverland and then maybe five days later they'd been in the Echo Cave and this burden had settled on her shoulders in his proclamations. "Find some new obsession!"
His face is stormy and pained and no, she's big picture girl now. She isn't going to let what she'd thought was a friendship change the outcome of this conversation no matter how much it hurts him. "How dare you."
She's angry and helpless and maybe this is about another fight from earlier, maybe it's a lot of frustrations that aren't fair except– "Did you expect that your ship was your in with me?" She hates feeling like she owes him something, hates this responsibility of being someone else's someone when it's all she is now. When she's been so stripped of choice that Hook's suddenly guilty face is enough to send her over the edge. "That if you did enough for me you'd win me over?"
Magic lights up in her hands and she turns and marches down the pier, hands in front of her so Hook can't see that she's losing control, and she sinks down onto a bench. "Oh, god. Regina was right. You are my Sidney."
"Regina. Regina's the one who's been poisoning you against me." Hook is nearing again, following her to the bench so he can grab her by the shoulder. "This is Regina's doing?"
"Poisoning–? No. Regina doesn't have anything to do with this." She tugs herself out of his grasp and shoves him back with a little spark of energy. He glances down, betrayed, and she settles back against the bench again. "Not really. Kind of. I'm a little in love with her." Her magic stops sparking and settles into a steady flow and she stares down at it and tries as hard as she can not to focus on that last admission.
It's not something she's thinking about. Not now. Not until everything is calm and she can breathe and then maybe consider all the fuzzy feelings and confusion and being in love with Regina is nothing like the last time she'd been in love, not carefree kids who'd pointed their middle fingers at the world and taken what they'd wanted until the lies had caught up with them. Regina is safe and volatile in ways she can navigate and it's less carefree and simple and more home, stumbling through layers and layers of tightly wrapped emotion like they're gifts instead of burdens.
But she's no poet, she doesn't dwell on nuance or what they mean for each other or anything so complex. She just knows that when she's in Regina's arms she doesn't want to leave them and that's about as philosophical as she gets. "I'm in love with Regina," she repeats more firmly, and there's a bitter snicker behind her.
She jerks, suddenly remembering Hook behind the bench, and he laughs again, sharp and nasty. "Many a man and woman has believed they were in love with Regina. I hope you gain less pain from it than they did, Emma." He sidles away toward the edge of the pier where it meets the beach and stalks off into the woods.
She watches him go, exhausted and frustrated and angry again; and then there's a flash of wings across the sky and she reacts instinctively, throwing a white-hot fireball up into the sky at its body. It's incinerated in an instant and she gapes, her whole body twitching as she realizes what she's done.
She doesn't know who it had been. Maybe some Munchkin or whatever from Oz. Maybe Leroy or one of the missing Lost Boys. She doesn't even know if it's really gone. Walsh had vanished in New York in the same way, hadn't he?
She swallows hard and pushes self-doubt from her mind and wonders if it's too soon to go back to Regina. It hasn't even been an hour since she'd left, Hook in tow, and coming back means too many admissions that she isn't prepared for.
She sits on the bench and stares out at the water and waits silently for sleep to take her.
It doesn't, and the silence makes her itchy as phantoms of the past few weeks float out like clouds in the sky. Her mother whirling around above her. Henry avoiding her gaze. Walsh begging for mercy. Hook's earnest eyes when he'd thought that she'd…that she'd…
She blinks and is, very abruptly, seated on Regina's bed. "Oh," she whispers, and closes her eyes and curls up and waits.
There's the sound of feet clicking up the stairs and the door creaking open and then silence. And…she'd never thought that disapproving breathing could be possible until tonight. "Hook traded his ship for me," she says, eyes still shut. Regina doesn't say anything. "I told him to back off. Permanently. And that…" Her voice trails off, unable to admit what she'd said to Hook aloud again.
She lies in cold silence for another moment before there's a creak on the bed and Regina's fingers part her hair and pull it back from her face and she gets a gentle, gentle kiss to her forehead. "Go to sleep, Emma," Regina murmurs. She doesn't sound angry about earlier, just compassionate, and Emma wishes she'd never left home at all. "You need to sleep."
Maybe it's a magical kiss- to bring slumber rather than cast it away- because she's drifting off before she can muster up enough energy to try at a half-assed apology. And Regina is around her, arms tight, and maybe that's an apology of her own, the two of them dueling in words and comforting with the spaces between them, where inside the silence are words in a language they both understand.
xviii. propagation
Henry opens the door. "Hi." He glances up at Snow's beaming face, glances back at Regina with a questioning look. Regina rolls her eyes and he turns back, satisfied and uncertain. "Uh…I have to go."
He darts past them to where Hansel and Gretel are standing at the edge of the walk with uneasy eyes on her, and she forces what she hopes is a reassuring smile as she opens the door wider. "Henry's going out with friends today." They'd argued about it. Well, Emma and Henry had argued about it, Emma adamant that it isn't safe for him to be out even if Zelena isn't specifically targeting him and Henry equally adamant that he's done being chaperoned everywhere. This Henry is already focused on his friends before family, content with only his mothers and more worried about a boring social life than an evil witch.
Sometimes Regina sees him and understands why Emma would have taken him from the truth for the ease of typical adolescence. (And she's quietly relieved that he doesn't agree, because she doesn't know how she'd bear losing them- him- again.)
They'd compromised with a spell like an electric shock in response to human contact, enough to ward off foraying monkeys, and with the added bonus of making sure Henry doesn't start anything with any of his friends. Her son is much too young to be dating.
She scowls to herself and Snow takes it as a greeting. "I wish he'd get to know us again now that he knows who we are," she sighs, waddling over to the couch and pressing her palms to the sides of her stomach.
"He's a teenage boy adjusting to the fact that he has an entire family he's never known." Emma's voice is strained. "Trust me. It takes time."
Regina watches her for a moment. She's been walking around with dark circles under her eyes, her magic even more volatile than usual now that she's barely taking care of herself, and she's been snappish and moody and consumed by Zelena. All I have to do is wait, Zelena had said, and she'd pulled enough loose threads to have Emma on a crusade.
Last night she'd slept, tossing and turning against Regina's side and mumbling names and directions with every twist into their blankets. Today she's awake enough to keep a hand hovering over Regina's back and exhausted enough not to remember that she shouldn't be doing it in front of her mother, and Regina delicately moves away to sit opposite Snow. "Right now, I think he's focused on finding friends. He isn't going anywhere."
"Yeah. We're not…we're not going anywhere." Emma takes the hint and sits a careful distance away from her on the couch, drawing a knee up to wrap her arms around and lean into it.
"I'm glad to hear that." Regina doesn't think Emma notices how Snow glows when she speaks to Emma, how her whole face lights up and she angles forward even when it makes her wince and tighten her grip on her sides. Snow- for all her actions to the contrary- really does love Emma as intensely as she's capable, but in return, Emma has a lifetime of disbelief in love behind her. "You should come back home now that Henry knows. Your room is just how you left it and David set up the trundle bed for Henry…"
"Oh. Uh…" Regina recognizes this uncomfortable look from a conversation they'd once had outside Granny's, Emma in control of her time with Henry and about to reject her. Emma's smiling but her eyes look trapped and pained and she's swaying tighter against her knee.
She steps in hastily before Snow loses that glow and Emma's face falls any more. "Has your pregnancy brain stripped away all your common sense or did you lack that to begin with? You're having a baby, Snow. Do you know how much space a baby takes up?"
"A…crib?" Snow rubs her stomach again. "We had a nursery back at home for Emma, but we also had a castle. I think we can make do in the loft." There's a faraway look on her face suddenly, her even-more-addled-mind-than-usual making new connections there. "At least for now. David told me that Hook left town?"
Emma stiffens and Regina remembers a nighttime confession that Emma hasn't brought up since morning had arrived. I told him to back off. Permanently. And that… Regina shakes her head. "What a shame. I'm sure his departure will be a devastating blow to absolutely no one. Why? Were you planning on asking him to move in too? Aren't pregnant women supposed to have heightened senses of smell?" Emma snorts and meets Regina's eyes, gratitude shining past the amusement, and Regina hazards a hand between them, her fingers brushing against Emma's side.
Snow rolls her eyes and misses Regina's hand entirely. "Yeah, maybe not with Hook, I guess. He was a pirate. But Emma, don't you think about having another?"
"Pirate?"
"Emma." Snow sighs affectionately. "I think about us raising our babies together, you know? Making a new family out of the one we've lost." She looks hopeful and misses the dark shadow across Emma's face yet again. "Don't you?"
"Not really." Emma's smile is forced and Snow's brow furrows. Regina leans back. This is the kind of chaos she might've enjoyed even a year ago in Neverland, mother and daughter with comically different visions of their relationship. But now it feels sour and she cares too much to enjoy it, both of them ripped to shreds by their own expectations of the other. "My baby is twelve and I didn't raise him."
"But you have the memories of it. Because of Regina." She gets a warm, guileless beam from Snow for that. "It's the same, isn't it? And if you wanted to–" She pauses midway through more breakdown-inducing good intentions, wincing. "Sorry. Sudden pain. If you wanted to try it for real. It could be our new family." She beams at both of them, hopeful and invulnerable to the doubt and timidity that a less confident woman might offer now. Regina stares. Emma squirms.
A long silence.
"I think I'm going to stay here for now," Emma announces. "If that's okay with you, Regina." She peers at Regina almost timidly. "It's Henry's…" Snow lets out another prolonged groan and Emma frowns. "Mary Margaret? Are you…" Her voice rises. Are you in labor?"
Snow's eyes widen with the realization and she presses her lips together, nodding vigorously until another scream tears from her lips.
"Why are they so close together?" Emma jumps up, her voice unnaturally high-pitched. "Did you just notice them now?"
"I don't know. I don't know. Call David. Where's my phone? Did I leave my phone in the car?" Regina's already halfway across the room, making a beeline for the phone in the kitchen. Because of course Snow White would go into labor in her living room. She reaches the doorway and–
She's thrown backward by a block of magic so strong that her skin is sizzling as she hurtles backward.
Emma manages to catch her, arms tight around her twitching body. She feels on fire in a familiar sensation, sparking with energy she knows, and it takes a long moment of Emma hanging onto her before she can be lowered to the ground. "The fuck?"
"Zelena." Snow is curled into a ball on the couch now, eyes fearful. "Oh, god, Zelena did something. My baby. She's going to take my baby." She moans, staggering out a pained sob as another contraction hits. "Regina, please."
"It's impossible. The wards on my house are…" She hesitates, rising again to walk to the doorway. This time she senses the magic before she touches it, and it's familiar again in ways that have her swallowing back dread.
"I can't deliver a baby!" Emma says desperately as Regina presses a hand to the barrier. The magic is static against her palm, roiling and uncontrolled and very nearly deadly for the wrong person. "We need to get you to the hospital!" She's closing her eyes and clenching her fists like she's trying to teleport and nothing is coming, nothing breaking through the barrier that cages them.
Snow leans her head back against the arm of the couch, eyes gleaming with tears and terror. "Regina, don't you dare let me lose another baby," she groans like she's heartsick already, and Emma shifts frantically beside her.
"You're not losing this baby," Regina says forcefully, detaching from the barrier. Has it been three decades since the last time they'd been here, Snow prostrate beneath her and she towering above, vicious and smug and not an idea of how important that little lost baby and this whole damned family would become to her? Sometimes when she gets to thinking about destiny (the less, the better. There are no missed chances or regrets anymore) she can't quite believe that this is her ending. That it's Snow White and her daughter and the son Emma had given her who define her now.
Snow's eyes are glassy and a shudder of pain tremors her body. "Okay. Okay." And naturally, right then, her water breaks all over Regina's several-thousand-dollar couch.
Emma slides a hand up to anxiously pull her hair away from her face. "Oh, shit. It's fine! it's fine, Mary Margaret. We're going to break through this, right?" She winds up her hand like she's going to pitch a softball and unleashes a wave of magic before Regina can stop her. Regina ducks instinctively, throwing herself in front of Snow just in time. Around them, the magic barrier surges to visible levels of white-blue, electricity sparking through the air, and Regina holds Snow against her, shielding her from the energy that suffuses the room around them as Emma stands in the center of it, face naked to the barrier but still untouched by magic as she stares, stunned.
Snow is silent and Regina lowers her back down to the couch, noting with some concern and relief that she's unconscious. She can see the clenching that rolls down Snow's stomach and the muffled moan that emerges with it, and she tears herself away, returning to where Emma's energy is still spilling from her into the barrier.
"It's not Zelena," she announces unnecessarily as Emma gapes at the barrier she'd unconsciously put up.
Emma swallows, and Regina takes her hands before any more electricity can emerge from them. "I thought I had it under control," she whispers. "I didn't even know–"
"You're not in control around Snow." Regina wants to be gentle and encouraging and all the soft things that will be as useless as shaking Emma and shouting at her. "And you need to be right now or you're going to hurt her." She keeps her voice steady, feels the surge of magic from Emma to her, and squeezes her hands. "If you're afraid, get over it."
Emma shakes her head, little quick movements that are jerky and unsure. "I'm not afraid?" It emerges as a question instead of an assertion.
Regina purses her lips together. "Of course you're afraid. Your mother is about to have a baby after twenty-eight years of you growing up without her." Emma reels and Regina presses on, desperation making her words sharp and merciless. "And she has no idea how it's affecting you but I do. Because I did this to both of you and there is no way in hell that I'm going to let it happen to you again."
The frantic energy in Emma's eyes hardens into something more still. More receptive, too. "What am I supposed to do?"
Sometimes she can't believe that she'd ever been that person before she'd had Henry, dark and cold and vengeful. Sometimes she doesn't know if she's ever been anyone else and if she's been lying to herself all along about changing.
Today she only cares about Emma and Snow being able to survive this new crisis, her past and future be damned. "Go to her." Another contraction shudders through Snow's body and she groans again. "Calm her down. Then we'll either get out of here, or…"
"Or?"
"Figure out how to deliver a baby," she says helplessly, and Emma stumbles backward and hurries to Snow.
Snow is waking up again, slipping in and out of consciousness as whatever had shorted her out in Emma's magic takes hold, and Emma sits down next to her, taking her hand. "Hey. You're going to be fine." Her voice barely quavers and there's nothing but reassurance on her face and Snow blinks up at her trustingly.
And that's Emma's gift, shutting down her emotions so they never escape and reveal themselves to the world. Regina can't do it, can't pretend without it coming out slick and false, and she's always revealed to the people around her, but Emma can have a barrier glowing with a thousand turmoiled thoughts and she's still offering her mother a comforting smile as Snow stares weakly up at her. "We're going to break through that barrier, okay? You just…focus on the giving birth part. Zelena isn't getting the kid."
"Last time…" Snow is pale and she clings to Emma's hand as another contraction seizes up her body. Emma looks down, tense again, and Snow tugs at her hand. "No, listen. You were so tiny and I knew the curse was coming and you were so tiny and I wanted to keep you. And I kept thinking about how you couldn't even roll over or crawl and I was going to send you into nothingness for your best chance." She's crying now, hand tight in Emma's, and Emma's eyes are wet and dark-rimmed and she keeps smiling as the magic beside Regina roils faster and faster still. "And I couldn't. I never had you. I just wanted to…"
The barrier shatters outward in a serious of purple bursts of light and Snow blinks out at them as Emma wrenches her hand from hers and hurtles toward the foyer table where she'd left her cell phone. "Ambulance!" she's barking out, running back to Snow's side. "I need an ambulance!"
Snow cries out another ragged scream and Regina tears herself away from the doorway, helping Emma hoist Snow up so they're standing on either side of her, supporting her to the doorway as the sirens screech a few blocks away.
David tears around the corner a moment before the ambulance does. "Snow!" He's taking her from their arms and into his own and steering Snow toward the ambulance and they're left in the doorway together, arms empty and breathing hard.
And Emma's still wet-eyed with vulnerability like no one but her mother can tug out from her and Regina doesn't even notice that she'd been crying too until she says, "Are you all right?" and her voice is scratchy and raw.
Emma says, "You took down that barrier, didn't you?"
She sounds uncertain about it and there might even be resentment there if Regina cares to look for it (she doesn't) and Regina doesn't want to think about Snow White with a tiny baby who doesn't even move yet. She doesn't want to think about Henry in her arms and the fear, the constant What if I trip and he falls, what if he slips from my arms, a dozen double-checks of carseat straps and sneaking into his room at night to touch his little belly and feel it rise and fall in response.
And Snow's daughter had been put in a wardrobe and it's easy to blame that on Snow's own idiocy until she thinks about I was going to send you out there for your best chance and she's the one who'd taken away all their best chances. And now she has Henry and Emma and Emma has deep-rooted bitterness and it's all so very wrong. Wrong enough for her thoughts to go dark enough that she could break a barrier with only her opposing energy feeding into Emma's. Emma's resentment. Her regrets.
"Regina." She turns and Emma is close enough to kiss. "Regina, stop whatever you're thinking." And there's fear in Emma's voice and it freezes her. Emma looks at her pleadingly. "You can't get caught up in the past. It doesn't change anything. We have Henry, right? That's what you said in Neverland." She kisses Regina's unresponsive lips, pressing hers to them in rapid flutters as Regina stares at her. "Regina, please. I…" Emma takes a step back and magic surges between them where they part. "I need you." Her voice is small but determined, forcefully reassuring as it had been with Snow, and she holds Regina's gaze for a moment before her cheeks darken and she looks down.
Emma needs her like Henry had needed her in Neverland- not burdened by regret, drifting in a sea of her own misdeeds and useless and wallowing. There's no good to be found in brooding over the past- not unless the remorse is enough to crash down a barrier and save Snow from a disastrous birthing scenario.
Regina closes the front door and pushes intrusive thoughts of baby Henry, baby Emma, and one more from her mind and looks instead at the woman in front of her, waiting for her response. She crosses the distance between them and kisses Emma until their magic combined sends shivers down her spine and Emma is clinging to her tighter and tighter still and she thinks that if she's still alive for any purpose, it's to take care of the ones who need her. To be able to give again like she hasn't been able to give since Daniel had died. And all her heart has ever wanted is that, and she'd been cheated of it by a forced husband and a vapid child and a kingdom and a town that would only ever despise her. Emma gives it to her with only the simple admission of I need you and her world comes to life again.
But Emma holds on just as Henry had once held onto her, sweet Emma with the darkness behind her eyes who needs her to be hers and doesn't seem to know much else about what she needs. "We need to go to the hospital," Regina murmurs, laying her head against Emma's shoulder. She's supposed to be holding Emma up but instead Emma is stroking her hair, arms wound around her still and eyes soft and solicitous.
"Yeah." She gets a kiss pressed to her neck for it and her hand slides down, unconscious, to splay against Emma's lower abdomen. The tips of her fingers dip into Emma's jeans before she remembers that Snow is having a baby right now and they're still not positive that Zelena isn't after it anymore.
She pulls away, her thumb still hooked into Emma's jeans, and they disappear and reappear in the hospital just outside Labor and Delivery.