xx. revocation

Emma is driving at a decent speed, pausing at stop signs and jerking the turn signal and all in all, it's the safest she's ever driven with Regina in the car. If not for the way that she hasn't moved at all since they'd gotten into the car and the gritted smile she has forced onto her face, Regina might've even been gratified at the effort.

Instead she's shaken and worried and tense, her own fists clenched and her heart wild and she hasn't felt like this since she'd been a teenager with an unpredictably powerful mother. Her own magic is thrumming within her, under control but with old temptations wrought into it, and she can taste it like bile in her throat.

She's gotten so far. She's never seen magic as an addiction as much as she had her desire to control hearts, real and figurative, to earn and keep love at any cost and punish those who would take it from her. And she'd picked up dozens of bad behaviors along the way, habits forming to control those around her, to force love and lash out with no thought of the people she'd hurt.

And then she'd spent over a year unlearning old behaviors, trying her hardest for Henry, and it's frightening to realize how easily she can fall back into them with a partner. She'd stayed in the house for an extra minute, gripped by regret, and made a garbled phone call to the hospital reporting George's condition and location. The idea of anyone venturing out after an enforced curfew- to Zelena's house- is unlikely; but then, George is one of the wealthiest men in town. His chances are good.

She still feels sick about it. Not about George himself, not really. She'd barely done more than squeeze his heart. But the bloodlust- the desire to unleash chaos and destruction- that had emerged as though she'd never tamped it down, gleeful and strong as ever and what the hell has she been doing all this time if it's so easy to fall again? For Henry?

For herself? She shudders and stares out the windshield into the dim night. Somewhere along the way she'd started to treasure things she never had before- the soaring sensation that accompanies the knowledge that she's making the right choice, smiles and comfort and having so many people to love, the freedom from stifling hate and rage and despair that had consumed her for so long. Somewhere along the way she'd learned to make herself whole instead of arming herself by clawing off pieces of who she could be, and she'd surrendered it all in an instant.

And Emma Swan who she…cares for…is falling into Regina's old patterns at the same time. She spares a peek at her and sees her head up, face set, smile firmly in place as though she can persuade herself that they've done something good today. As though if she pretends it doesn't matter for long enough, she can begin to believe that.

Regina had once dressed in black and tied back her hair and plastered a smile on her face and then she'd gone to Rumple and killed a woman. And she'd never looked back.

Emma stares straight ahead.

She ventures, "Emma–"

"Save it." The car turns in a perfect L, down the corner toward the docks.

She's annoyed despite herself. "I'm sorry, am I getting in the way of your pity party? Would you rather I smiled too?"

The car rolls to a stop. Emma turns the wheel robotically and parallel parks with precision before she whirls around to her. "I am trying to find Zelena. And unless you have something productive to do other than judge me for not being your fucking savior, then you can let me actually do my job." The smile returns to her face and now it looks painful, like she's moments away from cracking.

"All right. Are we planning on torturing my sister, too?" Somewhere in her mind there's a twinge of uncertainty there with the words my sister, nausea rising at just the thought of Zelena in any state like George had been. Oh, she wants to defeat Zelena, to watch her on the ground, angry and impotent and humiliated. But the idea of her so utterly destroyed makes her uneasy, like missed chances and a longing for family that doesn't have to be toxic if maybe they're both willing to try. Which is absurd and sentimental in idealistic ways and she isn't a Snow-White-style fool. She knows better than that.

She rubs bent fingers against her temples and Emma says, "Regina," and it's pained but dangerous, like a wounded animal backed against a wall. "Don't do this. We can't afford to second-guess ourselves right now. We can't. This town needs us."

"The town," Regina repeats, not without skepticism. But Emma looks exhausted now, like the weight of the town really is resting on her shoulders.

It's never been like this before. When others had threatened Storybrooke- Regina included- the fights had been swift and sacrifices had been made and then it had all been over. It's never been like this, day in and day out, a witch on the loose and taking prisoners every time they aren't quick enough. And it's wearing Emma down, forcing her into responsibilities she hasn't been able to flee.

"You wanted to run away from here."

"But I didn't." Emma stares at the dashboard. "Zelena found me in the woods that first day after Walsh, did you know that?"

"I didn't." She knows that Zelena had taunted Emma at some point, preyed on insecurities and infuriated Emma enough to send her into this singleminded vendetta. She hadn't known that Emma had stayed in town over it.

They really are sisters, aren't they?

She bites back the wistfulness and focuses on Emma. "I need to stop her," Emma says firmly, and starts the car again. "And yeah, if we need to do what we did to George to her, I have to know that you're with me in this."

Regina's eyes narrow and she's silent, helpless and angry and lost, and she doesn't know how to do any of this when Emma isn't on her side. Emma who finds her when no one else notices she's gone and Emma who runs to support her when she's attacked. Emma who'd had faith in her when she'd finally started trying and Emma who'd never seen the Evil Queen when she'd looked at her.

Emma is someone else now, possessed by her reckless determination and with the powers to support it, and she doesn't know how to guide someone as Emma had done her. Not when Emma doesn't want to be guided. (Who's guiding Regina herself now?)

"Fine." Emma's jaw tightens. "I'm not…Wait. Do you see that?" She's squinting out the windshield again, hostility gone in an instant as she focuses on what she's seeing.

Regina leans forward, making out a dark shape up ahead as it dips into their line of sight. And then out again, turning the corner with a whoosh of shadowy wings. "A flying monkey."

"It looks like it's going somewhere. Not just collecting people." The car glides forward, headlights off and Emma's foot barely on the gas. They roll forward, rounding the corner behind it.

The monkey turns and then flaps harder, speeding up but still low on the ground as though it's being weighed down. They follow, suddenly intent on their mission, and this is simpler than thinking about what might happen once they follow it to its master. They turn another corner, then another, then–

"Emma!" A cry splits the air, loud enough for Regina to hear over the sound of the car. "Emma!"

Emma hits the brakes. "We don't have time for this," she growls, but she rolls down the window and barks out, "What?"

A girl is running to the car, a crying child clutched to her. Regina recognizes the girl as…Ashley, maybe. The first to give birth in twenty-eight years and a friend of Snow White's. "Emma, she's feverish and Tylenol isn't working. I need to get her to the hospital. She has these head colds–" She shakes her head, glancing up wildly. "Dr. Whale helps. I need to get her to Dr. Whale."

"Oh." Emma breathes in, long and slow, and Regina isn't surprised when she says, "You're going to have to wait until morning. There's a curfew for a reason. We've already seen a flying monkey tonight."

Ashley stares at her for a moment, uncomprehending. "Can't you give me a ride then?"

Again, Emma's face hardens. "Ashley, we're following a lead right now. We can't stop. You'll have to go in the morning. I'm sure she'll be fine until then." She leans over and Regina leans with her, spotting the way the baby is twitching in her mother's arms, struggling to break free. She looks flushed with tears and there are spots of red high on her cheeks and Regina's hand is on the door handle before she can move.

Emma shuts the window as Ashley protests, slamming the car into drive. "What the hell are you doing?" she demands, foot on the gas.

"What are you doing?" Regina echoes. "Emma, this isn't–"

"Do not tell me that this isn't me." Emma presses her hands against the steering wheel, somewhere between petulant and defiant. "You have no idea who I am."

"All right. So we're going to let that baby…be sick? Hope for the best?"

"It's Ashley," Emma says, exasperated. "She takes Alex to the hospital when she coughs wrong. Every time. She'll get over it. Now can we please go back to Zelena?" She hits the gas again and Regina cranes her neck to stare behind them. Alex is still howling, waving tiny arms and struggling to get away from her mother, and Ashley has begun to walk the opposite way down the block.

Toward the hospital.

There's a screech above Ashley and Regina is gone to stand beside her in a puff of smoke, waving the monkey away with a purple flash from her hand. It hovers near the end of the block, looming threateningly, and Ashley gapes up at it.

There's a honk and then Emma is speeding up ahead of them, going into reverse so she can snap out the window, "Are you coming or not?"

Ashley brightens. "I'm-"

"Not you." Emma glares at Regina, irritation warring with need on her face. "Regina. Are you with me?"

It's ironic how in that moment her first thought is What would Emma do? And Emma purports that she doesn't know that at all. "We're the good guys." She repeats Emma's words from earlier tonight, before they'd both let rage overwhelm them, and she still doesn't believe them. They still sound like pretty lies to wrap up whatever crimes they commit, like the lies she'd hidden within as a queen bent on destruction. "We have to…" She waves vaguely at Ashley, who's looking from one of them to the other.

Emma's eyes harden and she waits another moment. "Regina. Come with me." Now there's pleading in Emma's voice that she can't disguise. "We've got to find Zelena. We can't finish off tonight with just what happened at…" It's the closest she's come to admitting that she isn't as okay with George as she's been trying to convince both of them, and Regina cravesin that moment to go with her, to cede and comfort and find whatever little light is left in both of them still.

And then little hands touch her arm and clutch at it and the sobbing baby looks up at her with frightened eyes and it isn't even a question. She remembers Henry at this age, toddling around and not quite talking yet and helpless and afraid when sick. And what Emma would do seems meaningless when she knows what she would do, what this child needs.

She takes the baby from Ashley and ignores the way Ashley flinches- from the Evil Queen, of course, because who else is she?- and Emma doesn't even bid her goodbye, just slams her foot down on the gas and takes off after the monkey.

Alex mumbles, "Mama," and cries again, shrinking back into Regina's arms.

"Henry was the same way when he was sick sometimes," Regina says, smiling awkwardly at the woman beside her. Ashley is staring at the way she holds the baby and she rearranges her arms, self-conscious. "He would be so angry at me for how he was feeling, like he didn't understand why I couldn't make it stop." It would kill her, sitting with Archie in her office as he'd reach chubby little arms for him and she'd cling to Henry, unwilling to cede her hold of him. It had been frustrating and infuriating and heartbreaking to be so rejected and she hadn't taken it well.

She'd thought that would be the worst of it, back then.

"It's fine," Ashley shrugs, eyes still on her. "I just–" Her hand creeps down to her pocket before she notices that Regina is watching her. She flushes and puts her hands together again.

Regina sets the pace in the opposite direction that Emma had driven, Alex silent but still clinging to her, whispering, "Mama, Mama, Mama?"

"Your mama is right here with us," Regina murmurs back. They're not close to the center of town, but that only means a ten-minute walk at best. She quickens her step and Ashley hurries to keep up with her. "You said this happens often?" The baby is cooling down now that she's stopped screaming, and she's breathing easily without congestion.

Ashley bobs her head. "Yes?" she says, almost uncertainly. Regina glances at her again. She bites her lip and falls silent, her hand sliding into her pocket again.

They walk quietly, Alex still wrapped around Regina and Ashley toying with whatever it is that's in her pocket. She looks pale, afraid, glancing up at the sky worriedly, and then warily back at Regina. Which is to be expected, no matter what thoughts of redemption Regina had once entertained. She feels a flash of irritation that she tamps down.

She doesn't require acceptance from the townspeople, nor does she believe she'll ever get it. They don't take kindly to being uprooted and imprisoned for her personal vendettas, and she's sure that she could sacrifice herself to make amends dozens of times and she'll still be the most despised person in town.

Which is fair and unfair all at once, but she grits her teeth and smiles and this still feels right, right like earlier had been so wholly wrong. And little Alex holds onto her trustingly, still mumbling her mother's name as though it's the only word she knows and glancing, frightened, back to the girl walking just behind them.

They reach the hospital and Whale is already in the waiting room just outside the emergency room doors, eyes darting from Ashley to Regina. "I got your call. Let's see the little one," he says, reaching for Alex.

Alex squirms, arms tight around Regina, and both Ashley and Whale have to pry her loose before they vanish into the hospital, wrestling with a now-screaming baby again through the double doors into the hall.

Regina watches them go, feeling an odd dread about the whole matter and thinking about Emma, somewhere out there alone and desperate to change the night from…whatever earlier had been…to a win. She fidgets with her phone, hesitates, then scrolls to Emma's name on her favorites.

There's no answer and she shuts her eyes and mutters out a low, "Fuck."

It isn't her job to be Emma's babysitter- except maybe it is now. Emma had done plenty of that in the past when it had been Regina who'd been flailing. She closes her eyes and thinks about Emma in the mines under Storybrooke with a trigger in front of her, Emma on the other side of a tree in Neverland muttering, We'll find him as the moon shines down on them through the trees, Emma seated at her table in her office admitting belief in Regina and her love for Henry.

She hits the call button again and this time it cuts to voicemail two rings in.

"Mom?" She looks up, catching sight of Henry from across the hall. He's got an ice cream sandwich in one hand and a bag of chips in the other, but she chooses not to comment on it. "Why are you here? Is everything okay with Ma?" He looks worriedly at the emergency room doors.

"It's fine," she hurries to assure him, sinking down into the closest seat. "Emma is still out hunting Zelena. I had to help someone along the way." Being in the hospital like this, sitting beside Henry in a brightly lit room as though she hadn't had someone's heart in her hand earlier that night and wanted to kill everyone in sight…it's an odd kind of cognitive dissonance, where it doesn't feel quite as uncharacteristic as it probably should.

She breathes and her lungs fill with clean air, untainted and less suffocating than Zelena's dusty house had been. "We had to do some bad things tonight to some bad people, Henry." She feels obligated to offer him her confessional, even this Henry who doesn't remember her. They've been rebuilding their relationship on honesty and trust, and Henry values both just as much now as he ever has.

He regards her thoughtfully. "Like Walsh?"

"A bit like Walsh." She closes her eyes. "I think…I'm still that villain in your book sometimes. I'm sorry."

A hand on her shoulder, and she's suddenly reminded of Henry of a year ago, red-cheeked from the alarm that the new curse had evoked in the town and his firm pronouncement. You're not a villain. You're my mom. And she hadn't had much more to cling to than that.

But this Henry says, "Okay," and he looks uncertain about it before he says, "Ma used to– I mean I know she used to hurt the bad guys too. Back at home. That was okay. I don't like seeing it, but that was okay."

"This doesn't have to be," she says gently. "I'm not sure I'm okay with it, either."

His face darkens and he says, a hopeless tinge to his voice, "What am I supposed to feel about it then? You're my moms. You're the heroes, right?" He shakes his head, like black and white are all muddled in his mind and he hasn't figured out how to understand the grey that emerges. "Isn't that what you are now?"

"Something like that," she murmurs, troubled again. "I'm not much for labels either way." She'd raised Henry, somehow, to believe in heroes and villains, to see himself as the white knight that Regina herself had given up on decades ago. And this is a Henry who'd write essays humanizing villains but now that it's close to home he's struggling again, trying to see simplicity where none exists. "I wish I could make this easier for you."

"Tell me what you were like," Henry says suddenly. "When you were my age."

She blinks at him. He stares back, lip trembling. "It doesn't change–"

"I know. Tell me anyway."

She leans back and huffs out a tiny sigh. "It was…a long time ago. I was a girl. I loved to ride, I loved to read, I'm sure I talked back to my mother a bit more than she'd have liked…" She nibbles at her lip and remembers punishments, being frozen in place at the dinner table for a day to learn what insolence brings and being attacked with magic that had felt like it had been tearing her apart and never left a mark. "I spent a lot of time learning how to eat properly and the right ways to curtsy and I'd run off into the woods and hide from it all sometimes. Mother thought I would be queen but I would watch the villagers dancing in the moonlight and that was all I truly wanted."

"To dance in the moonlight?" Henry asks, and she'd given him a very different answer the last time he'd asked about this, before he can remember. She'd told him a story laced with magic about a happy family and a neighbor boy named Daniel and true love tragically destroyed by an accident of some sort. She'd told him a fairytale then, and now he gets only her life.

She laughs. "I dreamed…I saw only their happiness and so little of starvation and tyrants and poverty. I had no idea that their lives were never so simple." She sighs, wistful. "I don't know if my mind would have been changed if I had known."

He looks so solemn, so serious that her heart pounds with dread and hope at once. "What do you dream about now?"

"You, sweetheart. Only you." She smooths his hair down where it's getting shaggy near the bottom of his forehead, brushing it to one side so she can still see his dark eyes as they watch her. "And Emma, sometimes. And maybe a world where good and simple is clearer for all of us."

"I want that too," Henry agrees, and he leans against her shoulder and closes his eyes.

She thinks about Emma, hunched over in her car and avoiding her phone calls, angry and determined and looking for demons in the dark. She thinks of Emma lashing out with a hand at Zelena's neck and a hand in George's chest and hand-over-hand on the steering wheel, that awful smile on her face.

Henry shouldn't be bearing this alone, but neither should she. Not when she's wavering just as much as Emma is these days, when it's so easy to fall into bad habits. She can't trust herself to make the right decisions here.

She swallows her pride and waits until Henry shifts before she says, "Let's go upstairs and check on your grandmother."

He gives her an odd look but he bobs his head willingly and leads the way up the stairs, their fingers tangling together somewhere along the way to the small maternity unit where Snow is sleeping. There's a faint shiver down her spine as they pass into Regina's magical wards and she tightens her grip on Henry.

Snow looks up when they enter the room, eyes brightening. "Back already? Where's Emma?" She cranes her neck to look behind them, brow wrinkling when she doesn't find her daughter.

"Henry, do you mind–?" Regina starts, and then stops helplessly as he turns knowing eyes on her. She meets them evenly, summoning up all the willpower she has not to crack and admit to him exactly why she'd wanted to see Snow.

He sighs heavily. "Yeah, I'll go see what David's up to. You have your secret…conference thing." He hugs her anyway, quick and one-armed, and flashes her a smile as he ducks out of the room.

Snow frowns, cradling her baby tighter. "Where's Emma?" she repeats, a tremor in her voice.

Regina tells her. She tells her about Emma's magic gone haywire, about Walsh, about Zelena and Emma's magical barrier and King George and even Ashley. She's careful, couching it all in words that make it lighter, less dangerous and more accidental, and she doesn't even realize until she's done that Snow's hand is on hers and her eyes are bright as she shakes her head.

"Regina, no," she says.

"I know it's a lot to take in and you have…other people on your mind right now–" And she's sympathetic except that she isn't, that this new baby is half the reason she blames Snow for what's been going on with Emma, and she can't imagine a world where she'd stop thinking about Henry for a moment no matter who else she loves. "You need to tell me what to do about it."

"Regina, no," Snow says again, and Regina blinks up at her, for the first time considering that Snow may not be exonerating her of this responsibility. And Snow looks disturbed, but her next sentence disabuses Regina of any notion that it might be about Emma. "It must be exhausting to be so…You can't always see so much darkness in others. I know you were angry for a long time, but I thought that you two were getting along."

"We are." This is confusing and infuriating and she rubs her palms hard against her blazer as though it might clear things up. "I'm not inventing darkness. I'm trying to talk to you about your daughter."

Snow frowns, clutching her other baby even more tightly and angling him away from Regina. Typical. "There's always more to the story. I know you're drawing conclusions from what you've seen, but isn't it possible that you're looking for a reason to backslide now?" Regina recoils. "That imagining Emma having these…urges…would make it easier for you to jump right in with her?" Snow looks suddenly sympathetic, and she squeezes Regina's hand. "I know that change isn't easy. But you've been doing so much good since Neverland…I know you can overcome this."

Regina wrenches her hand free. "Overcome Emma beating King George bloody? Losing control of her magic until it takes over her? Trapping you in that damned crib tornado?" she says incredulously. "Even you can't be this much of an idiot. You can't possibly believe that…believe that…"

Believe that I'm making this up, she thinks, but Snow is blinking at her like she does in fact believe that and Regina backs up, incredulous. "Regina," Snow murmurs. "I know it's hard to see the good in people– especially me and my family," she says, laughing lightly. "But you have to understand Emma's reasons for how she's keeping us safe. And you're helping her with her magic so there'll be no more accidents. There's no need to worry like this."

"I've been training her. I know–" She begins, and then she hears her name floating down the hall.

"Regina?" Ashley is asking timidly. She hasn't left the stairwell yet, and she's looking up and down the halls, arms around her stomach and looking wholly intimidated by the idea of coming any closer, and Regina stalks out of Snow's room without another word of frustrated argument ("Regina. Regina, wait," comes the voice filtering after her from Snow's room.) to join her. "Mayor Mills," Ashley says, brightening. "Alexandra is fine. Dr. Whale is keeping her overnight for observation, but he doesn't think her fever will amount to anything." She beams. "Thank you for your help."

"It was my pleasure." Regina inclines her head, a polite smile forcing its way onto her face. "I do what I can for my constituents."

Ashley grins at her, whatever tension she'd been displaying before all but gone with the baby's good health. "Would you mind walking me home?"

"Not at all." There's a part of her that's relieved to be escaping Snow's certainty and faith in Emma, another nail in Emma's coffin as she descends into whatever depths she refuses to be pulled from. "You won't stay with Alexandra tonight?"

Ashley shakes her head. "She's better off if I'm not there, I think. She'll sleep better," she clarifies. "I don't sleep very well."

"I see."

"Thank you." They descend the stairs and walk toward the exit and Ashley blushes. "I mean, you didn't have to help me. I thought you were…"

"The Evil Queen?" Regina suggests. She sighs. "As far as the town is concerned, dear, I still am."

Ashley shakes her head vigorously. "You don't seem like it to me," she says boldly. "You seemed like a mother with Alex."

"Well, I'm that too." They pick up a steady pace, faster than before, Ashley's hand still in her pocket as her other one wriggles her fingers together and rests them against her abdomen again. "I'm sure you know Henry."

She nods. "Sure. But I didn't know that…I didn't know my mother," she mumbles. "I don't really know how it works sometimes."

Regina rolls her eyes. "Sometimes no mother is preferable. Especially when you're raising a child." She remembers times when her voice had gotten low and dangerous and she'd heard her mother's voice emerging from her throat and fled from Henry in a panic. She had never learned violence from her mother- not until her magic had returned and she'd pushed Henry to David in a panic- but she'd learned control and domination and it had taken all she had to unlearn them again. "You find yourself repeating your mother's mistakes and watching your child suffer and it's…it's a trial to overcome that."

"I see." Ashley is still studying her like she's an enigma and Regina quickens their pace, self-conscious under her scrutiny. "And your son is why you aren't the Evil Queen anymore?"

The girl beside her is all wide-eyed curiosity, listening to everything she says as though she cares, and Regina warms up to the topic more than she ordinarily would around a townsperson. "Henry, yes. I found that…I didn't want to hurt him anymore. And that meant putting aside my own agendas to make peace with the rest of his family. And somewhere along the way…"

She shrugs, uncomfortable. "I didn't want to be that queen again. I never had wanted to be a queen in the first place. It had just been the only power over my life that I'd known. And one day I discovered that I had more than power, I had love and family and…" They're nearing Ashley's house but Ashley is still staring at her, hanging onto her every word with what can't possibly be longing or disdain or something in between. "And I saw another way."

"You really have changed," Ashley says. Her words are neutral but the bite to them is more like a snarl, and Regina turns just as her hand emerges from her pocket. She's holding a long, thin silver needle between her forefinger and her thumb and she seizes Regina's hand with the other hand and Regina is too startled to react, not to the needle that feels like it's imbued with her magic. Not to Ashley's face twisting into mocking hostility.

Not to the green smoke that whirls around them for a moment before settling down to the reveal the woman holding the needle.

"Bully for you," Zelena says, and buries the needle in Regina's palm.

She thinks of Emma and descends into a darkness deeper than Snow White could ever dream exists.

Or rather, one Snow White would know all too well.