xxvii. palpitation
"Your magic is gone," Regina says when they're seated on the couches downstairs. Zelena glares at her. "Which…I'm sure you were already aware of."
"I'm mentally eviscerating you right now," Zelena mutters. "It isn't quite as satisfying as the real thing."
Regina says dubiously, "Have you ever even eviscerated anyone? Or did you just turn anyone you didn't like into monkeys?" Zelena scowls. Which is answer enough. "For a member of Mother's family, you're surprisingly tame." The scowl deepens.
Regina sighs. "As I was saying, your magic seems to be gone for the time being. From what I've been able to glean–" from a furious Rumple, who'd demanded vengeance and she'd snapped back threats and reminders of what else he'd taken from her. Not that Zelena is anywhere near hers. She's as sulky as Henry had been at ten when he'd hated her and Regina's patience had never been all that strong even with him. But Regina had checked on the wards around Zelena's room anyway until she'd been satisfied that they'd keep Rumple out and now Zelena is sitting in her living room with a chip on her shoulder. "Your magic is trapped in your focusing brooch. So you're harmless to us."
"Lovely. May I go back to my room now, or is the small talk required as well for my rehabilitation?" Zelena offers her a tight-lipped smile, hostile and annoyed. She rises when there's no answer and turns to the staircase, and she's halfway out of the room when Regina speaks again, throwing caution to hell.
"Mother would have had you trussed up and floating in midair for that kind of insolence," she says casually, and Zelena stops.
"Mother prepared you for greatness," she retorts. "And now you're living this dreadfully inane existence in this meaningless little village and I'm sure you're an even greater disappointment than I would ever have been." She bites out the words like she knows, somehow she knows that they'll grasp onto Regina and scar like hot iron.
"Greater disappointment than you?" she shoots back, patience leaving her again. "You, living in my house, defeated and weak? What are you?"
Zelena laughs unpleasantly. "You know, the man who raised me–"
"Your father."
"The man who raised me thought I was a monster because of my magic. But I suppose I'm not even that anymore." She tilts her head, smiles self-deprecatingly, and Regina's breath is momentarily stolen at the loneliness in her eyes.
It's like looking into a mirror every time, seeing herself in this sister she'd never known. Seeing pain and defiance that she recognizes so well and had only barely broken free of, seeing a connection there that Zelena refuses to acknowledge even though Regina is certain she yearns for it just as urgently as Regina herself does.
She says, "Funny," and Zelena's head snaps up, startled. "I thought my mother was a monster for the same reason."
"And she kept you." Zelena's tone is scathing but she can't quite hide the sudden uncertainty that tempers it. They connect again and this time Zelena freezes, flushing at something she must see within Regina's gaze. "So she could marry a prince after I botched that up for her the first time."
Regina frowns. "The first time? How do you…how were you abandoned? I never knew you existed until now."
Zelena sits back down, the forced smile on her face not quite enough to conceal her enjoyment at Regina's sudden curiosity. "I have- had powerful friends. I knew everything about you." She preens and begins a story about Mother that Regina had never known, a false prince and an unwanted pregnancy and a true prince who'd fallen in love with her.
"The prince would have been my father," Zelena says, wistful. She's animated as she speaks now, still guarded but not as prickly anymore, and Regina's guard is dropping until Zelena says, "I could have been the daughter of Queen Cora and King Leopold and instead I grew up like–"
The air leaves Regina's lungs with force as though she'd punctured them and she doubles over, presses her arms to her stomach and folds her body over her arms and breathes in, pushes away years of memories as they fly back-back-back and her story becomes ever more perverse. She's lightheaded and dizzy and nausea is rising and there's an urgent demand, "Regina! What the hell is wrong with you? Regina!"
She lifts her head, banishing away the new memories and sitting straight again, recapturing the poise that had been inculcated into her her entire life. For that. For… Zelena is staring at her, on edge and angry and borderline concerned, and she breathes in and forces the smile. "Well, if Mother had kept you, maybe you'd have just been Queen Zelena to his King Leopold." Zelena sucks in a breath, brow furrowing as though she's certain she's being mocked, and Regina says, "You didn't know everything about me, did you?"
"Mother…the king you married…" Zelena's lips part, then snap shut. "No. That's impossible. He could have been our father."
"The age difference isn't uncommon in the Enchanted Forest," Regina allows, heart pounding with the memories of grief and terror- of the king, of a future in that castle, yes, but of Mother most of all. "Young girls are married off to ancient nobles for the promise of their sons inheriting their titles. It's not the norm, but not unheard of. Mother was thrilled that I would have the chance to marry a king. She told me…" Because this is your happy ending.
She'd called Henry her happy ending the day before, had seen Emma's bright eyes and heard her own pronouncement with warmth curling in her belly and Mother would have had to be heartless to see happiness in power when there's love. When there are second changes and bright futures of joy and simplicity and the life she'd craved before Daniel had lain dead before her.
And now Zelena opposite her, still stricken, struggling for the contemptuous arrogance she wraps around herself as a shield. "I really am done believing in Mother's happy endings," Regina murmurs.
"But here you…" Zelena's voice trails off, bare of the condescension Regina had expected. Instead there's curiosity that's almost childlike, the first stirrings of peace between them. "What do you have here?"
"Love, Zelena. I have my son…I have a family." She shrugs her shoulders. It's an Emma gesture and she feels more secure when she mimics it, a tiny piece of Emma still hers.
"I told her that family was really important to you," Henry says from the foyer, and he's smiling at both of them, wary but not horrified at Zelena in their living room. Behind him, Emma looks far less amused, her eyes boring into Zelena with hostility. "Hi."
"Hi?" Zelena echoes, pulling too hard on the end of the word so it emerges a question. "Keep your knickers on, Emma.I don't have my magic anymore." The scorn is back in full force when she sneers at the blonde. "You're the only ticking time bomb in this room."
Emma starts forward, eyes narrowing dangerously, and Regina hastily steps up to greet her. "Emma," she says, taking her hands. The other woman's heart is still throbbing, latching onto Regina's magic as a power source the moment they make contact. "We're…"
"Making nice to the psychopath so she doesn't kill you in your sleep?"
Zelena's lip curls but she remains silent, hands twitching in familiar frustration. Regina knows the sensation, calling magic to yourself and finding nothing there, like kicking at rocks and reaching only air. "I'm glad you're here," she says, stroking Emma's hands as she turns away from Zelena.
Dinner last night had been a tense affair at the Charmings. Emma had been dully quiet beside her, her ankle hooked over Regina's, and she'd barely eaten while Snow's voice had gotten higher and higher with every moment of tense silence. Henry- sweet, perceptive Henry- had broken in midway through the meal to interrogate them on the missing year and they'd all jumped gladly into that distraction.
Emma had followed them out the door and kissed Regina on the stairs when Henry had run ahead to the car, Regina flattened against the wall and Emma needy and her hands under Regina's dress- let me feel you please let me please- and then she'd jerked away abruptly when Regina had come and fled back to the apartment. And Regina hadn't seen her again until now. "How's…?"
"Snow?" Emma finishes, glancing at Henry. He rolls his eyes and scoots around them to the couch where Regina had been sitting, pretending to be interested in his backpack while he sneaks peeks at Zelena and she sneaks them right back at him. "Oh, you know. It's fine. We hugged it out when I got there and everything's better now." She grins humorlessly. "Then she offered me cocoa after you left and I drank it and went to sleep at eight PM to the dulcet tones of Baelfire's screams.Then Henry came to work today to tell me that you were stalking me in your magic mirror and-" She lifts her fingers to form air quotes. "'Could I please come back here before Mom got any creepier.'"
Traitor. Regina gives Henry a dark look and he smirks and buries his head back in his math book. Zelena hides a smirk of her own behind her hand. "I wasn't stalking you. I was just…making sure you'd made it home all right."
"Right." But Emma is grinning up at her and her gaze is uncertain but almost…relieved, as though she hadn't been sure she'd been wanted until then. Regina shivers beneath it and Emma bumps against her as she heads into the living room. "So…magic lessons again?"
"Are you sure you want to do those with–"
"Yes, Regina." Emma narrows her eyes at her. "And don't tell me that you failed me there and that crap. You were a good teacher."
"Oh, I know." She quirks an eyebrow. "I don't think there's anyone else here who can teach you, anyway." And she's determined to make up her negligence until now to Emma, be as careful as she can and more alert for Emma's sake. "I meant if you wanted to do them with company, since too many of those ended with you…ah. Losing control."
"Oh!" Emma says, cheeks reddening, and Regina had meant the occasional blasts of accidental magic but now she's instead remembering the day after Neal's wake and their first magic lesson here, remembering Emma focusing on levitating a vase and Regina bringing out her own magic to demonstrate. Their magic had met and Emma had looked up with lidded eyes and seen Regina staring at her and then suddenly she'd been backed against a wall, being kissed breathless by a woman she'd despised a year before.
Henry says, "Stop that. Stop looking at each other like that. We're in the room, too."
"It's revolting," Zelena agrees.
"No one is making you stay here," Emma says sharply. "Why is she out of her room at all?" She sets her jaw stubbornly. "Let's do it here. I don't care who else is in here."
Henry sighs heavily and when Emma stomps over, he switches couches, settling down beside Zelena. Zelena stares at Henry. Henry stares back. Zelena looks befuddled at the whole exchange.
Regina joins Emma on the other couch, taking her hands again. Magic flows easily between them, as natural as it's been since the day Emma had seized her arm and brought a magic hat to life. "Teach me," Emma says, determined. "How do I stop myself from losing control?"
Stop getting angry doesn't work, Regina knows that from experience. "Do you remember when I absorbed that death curse in the well? When you and Snow came back from the Enchanted Forest?"
"I do." Emma's squinting at her with dawning suspicion and Regina sighs irritably.
"Stop that. I didn't do it for you. Henry asked me to."
"Uh-huh."
"Emma, I hated you. I wasn't saving your life out of warm fuzzies."
Emma's eyes dance. "Sure you weren't just…thinking about my nightstick?"
"What is this preoccupation with your nightstick?" Henry is scrawling homework answers in his notebook, thankfully oblivious. Zelena is hiding her mouth with her hand again. Regina lowers her voice. "If you have some internalized obsession with phallic symbols, there are far more hygienic–" She pauses with effort. "The death curse."
"The one when you saved my life." Emma ducks under her glare. "Right."
She sighs heavily, the smile still creeping up onto her face beneath her frown. "The magic in that curse was toxic, and I had to push it all out of me at once. I want you to focus on something that makes you feel…helpless. Angry. Any of the emotions that make your magic take control of you." She pretends not to notice the way that Emma's eyes shift to zero in on Zelena as a blue glow appears around her hands. "Now don't concentrate on the magic. Stop that," she orders as Emma's eyes immediately turn to her hands.
Emma looks back at Zelena. Her magic flares up more. Regina says, "Focus on your emotions. How are you feeling?"
"Furious," Emma says, eyes drifting shut.
"How else?"
Her eyes open again on Regina and she sounds strained when she says, "Betrayed?"
Oh. Regina's heart thumps drumbeats against her ribcage and Emma looks down. "Your…your emotions power your magic. It's why you're so susceptible to them when you're already using it. And the more you feel, the harder it's going to be to control them. You can try focusing on positive emotions, on love and joy and the like, but that doesn't work as well when your primary objective is punching someone in the face."
"So what do I do? Do I get to punch them in the face?"
"No, you idiot," she says fondly. "You take a breath. You step back. I put on a smile after that curse and focused on Henry, on you, on everything around me instead of what was going on inside of me and I was able to hold off until I got home to release it. No explosions, nothing set on fire, just the magic dying. You've been talking to me. Try imagining that magic in your hands dissolving into the air."
Emma does, shaking her head as it fades away. "So that's your big trick? Counting to ten? How do I stop it from coming at all?"
"Practice?" She sees Emma scowling at her and sighs. "There's no easy fix for controlling your magic. Just a lot of gradual training until you're doing all of this instinctively."
"I counted by fours," Zelena says suddenly. They both turn. She presses her lips together and straightens. "When I would use magic around my…around the man who raised me. I counted by fours until the magic stopped coming."
Emma's lip curls. "Forgive me if I don't take the advice of the psychopath who's been terrorizing everyone I love for the past few months."
Regina is silent, trapped between the sister who'd just begun to open up and Emma, Emma, who feels betrayed and has lost so much because of Zelena, and Henry catches her eye and she doesn't know how to respond. Zelena snaps, "You don't seem to have a problem with the Evil Queen, do you?"
She stalks out of the room and up the stairs in a dignified kind of stomp, her steps ringing through the whole floor as she returns to her room. Emma glares at Regina as though she's daring her to say something in response, but it's Henry who speaks up. "Ma…" He shrugs when she stares at him, wild and lost. "Doesn't she get a second chance, too?"
"Does she have to do it here?" Emma demands. "Can't she have her second chance in a jail cell far away from…" She sags. "I don't know why you'd want her around, Regina. Aren't you supposed to be the queen of holding grudges?"
"I've found that it's easier to hold grudges when the subject of your grudge has everything. Zelena is…" She turns her hands over, holds them out palms-up, and finds that she still can't explain it.
"Family?" Emma guesses. "Because you shared a mom? She doesn't have to be a sister."
Her eyes are stubborn and Henry is wearing the same face right now, like he's about to start a fight with Emma on Zelena's behalf- why, she can't imagine, except that he'd said over the breakfast table, I think she could be okay if we're okay around her, and he somehow understands how she feels without her having to express it. And she bursts out, "She's us, Emma. She's me."
"Regina–"
"She's…she's been alone with her bitterness for a long time. And I know what that does to people. What it did to me. You know it too, don't you?" Emma slumps, her head dropping in acquiescence, and Regina reaches a hand to her knee. "I can't leave her alone. I've been alone. I've had a castle to myself and all it made me do was hate more. And she's…" Her throat hurts and Emma's face hurts when it won't meet hers and she's trying to do the right thing. She's trying to follow instincts she'd rebuilt from scratch. "I don't want to see any more casualties of my mother's."
Emma is still silent and Regina thinks of Zelena who'd never done more than turn people into monkeys. Zelena who'd helped orchestrate Neal's death and sent Walsh to make Emma fall in love and who'd nearly taken Henry from them both. Zelena who'd been taunting Emma and meddling with her mind and… "You fought for me, Emma. You…you campaigned for a second chance for me. You had faith in me when the world had given up on me." After the curse, in Neverland, even after Archie's apparent murder until she'd been faced with incontrovertible evidence.
"Yeah, but I…" Emma glances at Henry. "We had Henry. And you know now that I had…" Feelings for you, she doesn't say, but Regina hears it nonetheless.
Regina's heart still jackhammers against her ribs and she manages, "If you want me to make a choice, I'll choose you. I'll send her to my crypt and let her live underground there. I don't want you to feel so betrayed by me. Especially not now." She surrenders in a moment, mourns what could have been and casts it aside and waits for Emma's judgment.
But Emma is gaping at her, shaking her head, and she's still so impossibly Emma, so empathetic at the most unexpected times, and there's something shining in her eyes that steals Regina's breath away. "You're already…you're already going to love her aren't you?"
"I don't…" She doesn't know. She barely knows Zelena at all except that she looks trapped all the time and Regina dreads prisons and what they can do to scared little girls who don't believe they'll ever have anything more. Except that Zelena had covered her mouth and smiled and she sits straight when she feels threatened and that her eyes are always inquisitive when they aren't angry.
Emma's shoulders rise and then fall as though they've been loaded with new weight and her hands are curling and uncurling and her magic is barely visible, ghosting along the edges of her skin. Regina takes a hand in hers, lifts it to her lips and kisses Emma's palm, and Emma admits in a low tone, "Ninety-two."
"What?"
"I counted by fours." She scoots forward on the couch and Regina leans against her, her head nestling against Emma's shoulder and her body curled into her with Emma's arm around her waist like she's been made to fit her. Emma presses a kiss into her hair. "I hate her. I really do."
"No one would blame you for that."
"I think this is probably the worst idea you've ever had. And you once tried to curse me into eternal sleep with a turnover."
"I thought that was a good idea. Your greatest weakness is food."
"Not my greatest." Emma's fingers trace letters of words unspoken into her arm, trailing down to the crook of her elbow. "I'm also a big fan of alcohol."
"Mm. And…nightsticks?"
"Now who's obsessing?" Emma grins belligerently, and it lasts a long moment before her eyes drift back to the stairs and her smile vanishes.
And it would be so easy to take this, to surrender to a peace where Henry is curled up on one couch and they're on the other and there are no more demons left to conquer. To hide away from darkness by living only in the light, and Emma can never go back to her mother and Regina can forget about the possibilities that lie upstairs.
Haven't they earned some rest by now? Even if she's to spend the rest of her life doing penance for her sins, hasn't Emma?
No. Emma struggles because she refuses rest, because she doesn't give up. And she'd been overwhelmed and lost herself but someday soon she's going to start fighting again and Regina can't bear the thought of Emma so constrained to their tiny little corner of the universe when she can seek the world instead. And Regina wants…
"I have to try, Emma." She has to because Zelena is still a child in so many ways- in all the ways that Emma herself is, wary of a world that's burned her and quick to burst into flames- and there's still promise in her smile. "I have to."
Emma says nothing in response, but her heart tugs magic from Regina in uneven beats.
xxviii. reconciliation
"Good to see you, Emma," Archie is smiling at her from down the sidewalk, Pongo tugging at his leash to reach Henry, and Emma smiles back automatically. "How have you been?"
"I've…" She blinks at him. "I've been okay." She'd scheduled an appointment with him and had skipped out on it to work late at the station, but he looks at her with compassion and understanding and absolutely no resentment.
Well. It is Archie.
Henry pulls ahead and she follows him, nodding to Doc as he greets her pleasantly and forgetting even to smile when Granny waves at her from just outside the diner. It's a marked difference from the last time she'd ventured out into town, enduring suspicious glares and wary glances, and she doesn't understand at all.
Snow had fed them her story, she's sure, but she can't imagine why they would all accept it, not after the havoc she'd wreaked in town. She can't imagine that she could have let so many people get hurt and never have to pay any consequences for it.
"They need a hero, Ma," Henry says, reading the disbelief on her face. "They want to believe in you. So they trust you. You're still our hero." He leads the way into the diner and she sits heavily, managing a smile at Ruby when she comes to their table.
"How have you been?" Ruby asks, setting down the cocoa before they'd even ordered it.
"I'm…I'm fine." She clears her throat. "Sorry I've been so…away lately."
"You've been busy," Ruby says sympathetically. "Zelena really did a number on you, huh?" She lowers her voice. "I can't believe that Regina's really letting her stay in her house. There are some people worried that she's falling back to old habits." She stares significantly at Emma, warning conveyed, and Emma sighs.
"You know that's bullcrap, right?"
"I know. But keep an eye out for her, okay?" Ruby straightens and returns to the counter, and Emma buries her face in her cocoa.
This is the status quo, the one the town eternally clings to. The savior is good, the queen is evil, and as long as they can rewrite the stories to put them into the proper roles, the story remains the same. Emma becomes a victim. Regina's light magic victory becomes a sign of corruption. The narrative is a crock, the people are blind, and Emma could conceivably do anything with no consequence.
It's tempting. It's so tempting, when even Henry is adamant that she's still a hero. She can fall back into the habits that had gotten her into this mess, force Regina's hand with Zelena, skip more appointments with Archie and leave Snow's apartment for good. She doesn't have to make anything right again when there's nobody expecting it of her.
She shakes her head, clearing her thoughts of that. "How was your night?" She'd left Regina's after dinner, wandered around town for an hour, and then slid into bed with no more than a quick nod to her parents. It's getting easier to be a stranger in her own home as the days go by.
Henry shrugs. "It was okay. Zelena came downstairs and I taught her how to play Bananagrams. She's fast but she makes up words."
"Why are you so okay with her?" Emma blurts out, then winces. She isn't supposed to be causing more trouble in their shaky little family. Definitely not anything that might cause friction between Henry and Regina, and not after Regina and Henry both had been so adamant that Zelena deserves a second chance.
But Henry stares at her like she's lost her mind. "Are you nuts? She poisoned Mom. And I was under the crypt with you, remember? I know the stuff she said to you. How could I be okay with her?"
"But you…" He'd sat next to Zelena, bold and unafraid, and he'd treated her like family. "Why…"
Henry shrugs, looking down. "She's important to Mom. And Mom needs someone who's…" He sips at his cocoa. "She has you and Gram and Gramps and me, but she doesn't really have anyone who's just hers."
"We're hers."
"But we're also each other's, right?" Henry shrugs again, self-conscious. "I don't know. I think it's good for Mom to get to help someone like her. And Zelena's not that bad."
He's staring into his cocoa still, looking guilty at even that last admission, and she's struck by the fact that he's only twelve. He's always determined to take care of both of them and he's been doing nothing but that lately and he's insightful and sensitive and just twelve years old. "Henry," she murmurs.
He looks up and she isn't good with feelings in the same way that Regina is. She can't just…open up and explain the love that overwhelms her at what a good kid they've gotten. She can nudge him with her knee under the table and smile at him and hope that he understands it, though, and Henry flushes and a little grin pokes at the edges of his lips.
"Last year feels kind of like a dream, doesn't it?" he says. "I'm forgetting a lot of the stuff from us before it, but we still had last year. Like a dream."
She nods slowly. "But it was nice." They hadn't known what they'd been missing, hadn't been aware of what emptiness had remained under the veil, and they'd built a home with no foundation and loved it until it had sunk into the ground.
Henry brightens. "Yeah! It was awesome. New York was awesome. The pizza was…awesome." He talks about it like it had been a vacation away from home instead of a new life. She's glad for him. She wishes she could feel the same.
"It really was," she says wistfully, thinking about pizza instead. Her eyes narrow. "Don't you dare tell your mother about Pizza Week. She'll kill me."
Henry pouts. "I was just thinking we could get her to do it with us! It was nutritious. There were mushrooms on Tuesday and Friday!"
"She. Will. Kill. Me." She stands up. "C'mon. You're going to be late for school."
"Fine. Bye, Ma." He pauses halfway through slinging his backpack over his shoulder. "Hey, Ma? Is it okay that I've been calling you that?"
It hadn't been for a long time, another sign of rejection from an angry boy, but she finds now that it's…settled. That Regina is Mom now and she's Ma and nothing else seems more natural than that. "I love you, kid," she says in response, and gives him a little shove toward the door.
When he leaves, she thinks again of no consequences and makes her way toward the hospital, asking for directions before she climbs up the stairs to a glass-encased room she remembers well. Henry had died on that hospital bed, died and come back to life with a kiss, and now she'd put someone else onto it.
She hesitates outside the door as the Merry Man sitting beside the bed looks up and sees her. His eyes darken.
She steels herself, pulls open the door, walks inside. Comes face-to-arrow with the sentry's bow. "Get out."
"I'm better at healing magic than Regina is," she says, pushing the arrow aside. "Though I'd understand if you didn't want to trust me."
He hesitates, glaring at her with suspicion, and she meets his eyes evenly. "I'm staying here."
"That's fine." She looks down at Robin Hood for the first time, sees bubbled skin pockmarked with burns, and she's nauseous at what she'd done. Now that she has distance, she can see so clearly how much she'd extrapolated to get them to this place. She'd been desperate that he be gone, that he be wrong, that this man who Regina could have loved be more unlovable than she'd…
Than she'd thought herself to be.
She grits her teeth, more than done with this new facing-her-feelings thing, and places a hand against a burn mark in Robin's cheek. Her magic flows, biting at the open wound at her heart as it moves through her, and she pushes aside her resentments and focuses on healing.
She stands over him for hours, all but oblivious to the changing of the guard, to whispers from one man to the next and distrustful looks from both and Whale making snide comments about magic behind her. All she sees is burn after burn that she'd caused, some down to the bone, and her limitless magic finally feels like a gift and keeps her standing even when her heart is in agony and her feet are exhausted.
When she's finished, she doesn't stop to look at her handiwork. She focuses hard on her bed in the loft and returns there in a puff of blue energy, eyes shut before she can contemplate changing into pajamas or anything else about what she'd just spent the day doing.
No consequences. None except harm to people she protects by instinct, out of duty and love and determination. And it can't be who she is anymore.
For a moment when she awakens, she's lost in a memory, a moment that had never happened. There's a baby crying and she thinks sleepily, Henry, and stumbles down the stairs to the crib before she sees her parents asleep a few feet from the squalling child.
Baelfire is letting out mewling wails, growing in volume every time he breathes out, and she hastens to the crib and reaches for him on automatic, cradling him in her arms. "Hey, little guy," she murmurs, wrapping his blanket back around him.
He's a week old. Even in her false memories, she'd only had staggered visits with Henry in prison at that age. She's never curled up on the couch with a newborn like this, humming an old tune to him until he quiets, eyes closing again. And he's tiny and fragile and so warm, nestled against her and absolutely trusting and she can feel her scarred heart burn at the emotion it brings.
She rocks him for long minutes until his eyes open again, lightly focusing on her face, and he gurgles. "Hi," she says again, stroking his cheek with her thumb. "I'm…I'm your big sister. I know we haven't really met before." He opens his mouth and she absentmindedly dips a finger into it for him to suck. "I've been…preoccupied."
"I'm sure he'd understand," says a voice just in front of them, and Emma jolts. Snow stands over them, two mugs of cocoa in her hands. "I'm sorry I startled you." Snow sets Emma's mug down on the coffee table and takes her own to the seat next to the couch. "You were so absorbed in Baelfire, I didn't want to interrupt."
"It's fine." Snow doesn't ask for the baby. Emma should probably hand him over anyway and flee back into her room, but his eyes are still open and he's watching her and it's impossible to tear her eyes away.
Then Snow asks, "How are you feeling?" and Emma regrets sticking around.
"I'm fine. Just…tired."
Snow nods. "Of course. I heard what you did for Robin Hood."
"After what I did to him. You heard about that part, too, right?"
Her mother twitches. "Emma…"
"Please tell me you're not pretending like the rest of this town." Snow had been down in the crypt with her, had gotten the reports and lost faith in her when the others had begun to doubt. Snow must know. She can't be burying her head in the sand, too.
"No," Snow says, her voice strained. "I know what happened. Regina called me from the woods to summon an ambulance because she didn't think that the dispatcher would send one for her. I saw Robin before the Blue Fairy healed most of the damage."
Emma presses her lips together and stares down at Baelfire. "Good."
Snow says, "I don't know why–" and then stops.
Emma feels the tension ratcheting up around them, higher and higher with words unsaid, and she's so tired of pretending all the time when Snow knows. Snow's seen all of this and Snow has heard her snapping at her and Snow's just going to continue to pretend they're okay when there's no way they're ever going to be again. "Why I hurt him?" she demands. "Why I hurt myself? Why I turned this town into some kind of police state and terrorized everyone? Why we don't talk to each other anymore? Which one is it, Snow?"
She sees the other woman reel, curiously only at that last moment when she'd called her Snow. Snow sits forward again, hands creeping up to clutch at the quilt she'd draped over herself. "Why you want me to think the worst of you," she murmurs. "I was in that crypt. I heard what Zelena said."
"It was true. All of it." Emma's voice stays low, mindful of Baelfire drifting off again on her lap. "I don't know how you've twisted it to handle me being–"
"She called you a monster," Snow says, visibly horrified. "And you think it's true?" She buries her face in her hands. Emma watches, stone-faced. "Emma…"
"I killed someone." She hadn't wanted to move Baelfire but suddenly he looks so tiny again and her hands are glowing with magic. She focuses instead on his little chin- their chin, hers and Snow's, god- and the way his lips part like a little smile reflex and her magic doesn't dissipate but it doesn't seem to be hurting him, either. "You gave me excuses and I took them but I killed him because he…because he broke my heart and tricked me and I was angry and humiliated. It was never about Henry, no matter how much I try to tell myself it was. It was about me. It was always about me."
Snow doesn't move, just watches her with wide eyes, and she dares to continue. "I was playing god with the people in town, deciding what was best for everyone when it suited me. I sent the dwarves on a suicidal mission to one-up Zelena. I wiped Henry's memories so he wouldn't want to stay in town. I screwed with Robin Hood's mind a long time before I ever tried to kill him and I convinced myself that he deserved the treatment I'd given Spencer and Barker and that Keith asshole so I could get away with it. Me. I did that. Not Zelena. And not because of Zelena." She's pouring out a confessional, things she hasn't even told Regina, and Snow is sitting stiffly as though she's afraid to flinch. "So yeah, I'd say I was a monster."
Snow inhales, long and slow, cautious when she looks at Emma as though she's afraid she's going to spook her. "You've made mistakes," she allows.
Emma laughs bitterly. "Mistakes? That's what you're going to call it? Is that the easiest way to deal with it?"
"Yes!" Snow snaps. "Yes, it is. What do you want me to do, write you off forever?" Her eyes widen, her voice getting shriller with every breath she heaves. "You do, don't you? Am I that unbearable a mother?"
Bae twitches and Emma cradles him closer. "Can we not– do this now?"
"Sure," Snow says, smile back on her face like a pained grimace, and Emma stands with relief, turning back to the crib. "We can just hug it out and pretend it's all okay until the next time it gets to be too much," she finishes, and Emma stops in place.
"Snow…"
"Stop it." Emma turns and Snow is clenching her quilt so tightly that her knuckles are turning white. "Stop calling me that."
"It's your name!"
"Not to you!" It emerges as a pained shriek and Baelfire begins to cry again, pitiful little wails that hurt Emma's heart as much as any magical attack. She turns him to press him against her shoulder, rocking with him as Snow claps a hand to her mouth and sinks back into the cushions. "Emma, I'm sorry."
"Not now, Snow."
It sounds like Snow's grinding her teeth together, words emerging almost painfully. "When, then?" She opens her mouth with some effort. "Regina says…Regina tells me to listen to you. That that's how I fix this." Emma's eyebrows shoot up at the image of Regina offering Snow parenting advice- about her, do they also swap recipes and chat about their sex lives because Emma's pretty sure that Regina would get some sadistic pleasure out of that one- and she hesitates again as Snow continues. "But you won't even talk to me anymore. You'd rather be an orphan than have me as your mother," she accuses, face flushed with emotions Emma can only guess at, and she sighs and sits down.
"Of course I don't want…" She can feel the lie rising again and rebels. "Oh, fuck it. I'm the one who'd rather be an orphan? You didn't even know about me. I spent twenty-eight years dreaming about you and you knew I was gone for thirty seconds before the curse came. So don't you dare tell me what I want."
Snow watches her, red-faced and silent, and she can't stand the quiet anymore and holds Baelfire tight as she lurches on. "You told me. In Neverland you told me you weren't going to make me feel like that, remember? And then ten seconds in a truth cave and you launched into an 'Oh, Emma's so wonderful and shit but I never got to change her diapers so I guess your dad and I can just live in Neverland together and raise forest babies.'" Snow is shaking her head and Emma feels tears threatening to emerge and fuck this, fuck this all. "How long did it take you to get started on a replacement baby in the Enchanted Forest? Did you wave goodbye to me and then get on with life? With someone more convenient? With someone easier?"
Snow cries before she does and she's savagely glad about it even as the tears cloud her vision and begin to spill. "I spent my whole childhood being sent back from new homes because I was too old, too difficult. No one wants a six-year-old with abandonment issues or a bitter teenager. No one wants a thirty-year-old who isn't the picture-perfect savior."
"I wanted you! Of course I want you!" Snow shakes her head, eyes frantic and bewildered. "I wanted you when I didn't even know who you were, Emma. I used to wonder…sometimes I'd believe Henry's stories just because it meant we were family. Don't you know how much I love you?"
Snow is expectant and Emma just wants to hide, to shout her piece and then run away where she never has to hear a retort. "I know you love everyone. And I'm a part of everyone, but…"
"No. Not a part of everyone." Snow sinks deeper into the couch. "You're so much more than that. And you've decided that it's because you're the savior, but I don't…" She smiles through her tears, pleading with Emma even now, and Emma's arms tremble around Baelfire. Her magic is still there and Regina's advice hasn't worked at all because now her whole arm is glowing with it and Snow doesn't seem to care. "I don't need that from you. I love the Evil Queen, haven't you noticed? You never needed to be the savior for me to be proud of you. You only needed to be Emma."
She shrugs helplessly. "I saw you last year, too. Wearing my clothes. Going along with every decision I made even when you didn't agree and being so quiet about what you wanted. It took Henry in danger before you stopped trying to be someone else. Emma, why?"
She thinks about magic beans and ogres and Regina in an interrogation room at the station. "I don't know. I don't know. I just…" Her voice cracks. "I wanted to be what you wanted."
Emma tightens her grip on Bae and he snuffles against her neck. Snow watches them, shaking her head. "I had no choice in the Echo Cave. What I said…it never meant I didn't want you. But it was selfish and cruel and I did it all wrong, Emma. I did it so wrong. I lost you the moment you knew that I was your mother." Her eyes still shine with tears and she says between sniffles. "I knew. I knew you wanted Mary Margaret. I thought if we…if there was another baby, we could go back to being friends again." She looks drawn and small against the couch suddenly, curled up and white-faced and so unthreatening in her penitence that Emma wants to protect her and lash out at the same time. "I wanted it all. I was so selfish," she whispers again.
Baelfire has quieted again and Emma returns him to his crib, careful not to rouse David in the process. He closes his eyes and looks so much like Henry that her throat closes up and she can't speak for a moment. "You're allowed to be selfish," she says finally, making her way back to the couch. "It'd just be nice if you…if you acknowledged it sometimes."
Snow starts in a high voice, "I didn't–" and Bae shifts in his crib, feet kicking their way out of his swaddle. By silent agreement, they file upstairs, Emma settling down on the floor opposite her bed and Snow sitting down on it. Snow begins again in a lower tone. "I didn't just get on with my life in the Enchanted Forest after you were taken from us again. I was heartbroken. And there were wicked witches and a castle to retake and new threats every day and people missed Storybrooke so much. And they looked to me to be the one to give them what they needed."
"A new heir?" Now she's being flippant, and Snow looks pained about it. She ducks her head and forces the bitterness to remain at bay.
"Hope," Snow corrects her. "They needed hope. And I've been their symbol of it and I can't falter in that, Emma. Regina tried to pull out her heart an hour into our return and I understood. I know how tempting it is to give up. And I know that I can't do that."
"No one…" Her voice is getting scratchy again and this whole argument feels useless when Snow is so firm about it. "No one expects you not to falter, Snow. You can be weak sometimes. You can mourn. You can be afraid."
Snow leans forward, eyes glinting with sudden life. "Why should I? You don't." Emma blinks up at her. Snow almost smiles. "You grouch around a lot but it doesn't mean you aren't trying just as hard to be strong. We're not so different, you and I. We just couch it in our own ways."
Snow couches it in hope and happiness and all the optimism she'd gotten as a spoiled princess and Emma locks it deep inside so it can only hurt herself because she'd only ever had herself to hurt. She feels her magic rising again, back before she'd noticed that it had dissipated. "Yeah, and it wrecked me. What do you think has been going on?"
Snow says, "Tell me," and she scoots over on the bed, lies down against the far side of it like they're still Mary Margaret and Emma and they're going to lie awake talking about boys all night. And Emma- still longing, no matter how often she'd struggled to push her away- climbs into the bed and rolls over to face her.
"My magic," she admits, and Snow reaches through the glowing sphere of energy without a second thought to hold onto her hand. "It's tougher to keep things bottled up when you turn into a human firefly every time you can't contain it. And it…it makes it harder to hide from bad feelings. And easier to act on them. That's what happens when you pretend. I was so lost, Snow."
She's crying again, remembering that damned crib tornado and blasting Regina and her hands on Henry's face and she loves them all and had caused them nothing but pain. She'd tried to hide away for so long, terrified that they'd see her for what she is- more trouble than she's worth when she isn't the savior, when she's helpless and bitter and only a lost girl craving things she's never deserved.
And then Snow's hand on hers, tight enough to break through the fog that surrounds her. "I wish I could have found you. I wish I'd seen that you were–" She reaches up to touch Emma's face, tentative as she brushes away a tear and Emma's afraid to move. "Regina saw and I didn't. Regina."
"Regina's…" She feels the smile creep onto her tearstained face and chases it away. Not the time, not the time. "Regina's a good teacher," she says finally. "And she warned me to stop sucking it up and talk about things and she's right. Sometimes you can't be strong. Sometimes people need to see that they…that they matter enough to make you weak." She thinks of Henry with his eyes wide as he offers to help her and Regina with her eyes closed as Emma cleans a wound and… "Sometimes that's all that hope is. It isn't something to hold onto. It's something to give away."
Snow cups her cheek, eyes dark with tears again as she smiles. "Oh, Emma. My brave, wise Emma." She leans forward on the bed to kiss Emma's forehead and Emma closes her eyes and feels it like returning home again for the first time. "You are everything I could have ever dreamed of."
She's whispering a new apology at Emma now, about the Echo Cave and Neverland and- "We should have never named Bae after Neal," she murmurs. "I should have asked you before…I'd thought you were still in love. I wanted to blame a lot of the things I couldn't understand about you on you being in love."
And maybe it's exactly the time, when all is being told and Snow is beginning to be something like a mother today. And something like a friend. "Actually, I have been…" She hesitates.
Snow lights up, pulling away from her to meet her eyes. "You're in love? Who is he? Is it because Hook left?"
"My god." She groans, the atmosphere of the room settling into something far more comfortable. "It isn't Hook. It isn't even… I'm kind of a lesbian, Snow." She holds her breath and waits. Somehow the admission seems nearly as daunting as telling her mother that she'd killed a man, even after all of Snow's assurances of her love tonight.
Snow's eyes widen. "Oh. Oh." She smiles again, hesitant. "You know you don't have to be a lesbian, right?"
…And somehow it's even worse than she'd thought. "Excuse me?"
Snow's brow furrows. "Well, I mean, bisexual erasure is a real issue nowadays. I know the Enchanted Forest is a bit old-fashioned, but…" She drops her hand from Emma's cheek to press it to her own forehead. "We don't even have a PFLAG chapter here. I was going to organize one but I thought it might be too pushy and then the curse broke."
Emma stares at her, caught somewhere between relief and more tears. "How do you know any of that?"
Snow quirks a smile. "It's funny now, considering how close you two have gotten, but back during the curse when you were a little too obsessed with Regina, I did some research. I wanted to be supportive." She brightens even more. "So who is the lucky lady?"
Now Emma laughs, the tears spilling out with hilarity instead of frustration. Even with whatever soul-searching Snow has done over the past few days, she's still so wholly oblivious. And Emma thinks this might be their forever and it might be bearable, after all.
Snow looks miffed for a moment and then her eyes round with understanding. "Oh," she says again, pinching at the bridge of her nose. "Well." She takes a breath and Emma stops laughing, trepidation rising again as she waits. "Good."
"Good?"
"Good." Snow doesn't elaborate any more than that, just smiles enigmatically and reaches for Emma's hand again with a whispered I love you, I swear I love you, and they hold each other's gaze in the dimness until Emma's eyelids are heavy again and her magic is all but faded from around her, settling faintly over their joined hands at the center of the bed.