Chapter Nine – The Dreams and the Meaning
In the growing night, the traveler curled on a rug before the dying embers of the fire and felt the weariness in her bones give way to peace. Sleep did not become her lifestyle. She was used to sleeping on her horse, or under the low hanging boughs of trees. The witch had offered to share her bed, but the traveler had shaken her head no. Tonight was not the night for such pleasures. Such a time would come later, she was sure.
Her bones ached, her body was so weary, and the traveler let herself drift off towards the dream world. The specters of her childhood dreams a long-since forgotten memory.
That night, the traveler dreamed of her childhood home. Deep within the confines of her childhood room there was wardrobe that her parents sometimes would joke lead to another realm. It had been carved by the master woodcarver and his son as a gift at her birth.
Many times, the traveler dreamed of this wardrobe. In this world, wardrobes were like anything else, places to put things and forget them. They were oubliettes in all but name, a forgetting place. The traveler felt the wardrobe pull her in and lock her away in a place where her wanderings would forever be impossible. She was aimless, wandering without a destination there.
Perhaps it was her curse, that kept her grounded in these dreams, she was aimless but driven to a destination she would never know.
It was an uneasy sleep that the traveler had that night, curled in the warm heat under a pile of furs that reminded her that place she had never been quite able to call home.
The traveler felt the wardrobe draw her in again this time, but something gave her pause, standing at its arched doors. Her sword was in her hand and her eyes were straining in the darkness of the room before her.
Dust filled the air, catching on the sliver of moonlight that fills the room. It cast the traveler's face into shadow, hair falling down into her eyes almost luminescent in that half-light. Her sword felt heavy in her hands as she raised it to her defense, her feet sliding silently into a combat stance.
Cool light filled the room and the traveler squeezed her eyes shut for as long as she dared, forcing herself to adjust to the light.
A woman stood before her then, a woman much like herself.
The traveler took a step forward, sword clasped in two hand as she held it at the ready. "Who are you," she demanded. Her voice a low hiss in the silent room and her hands were shaking as she tried to hold her sword steady.
The woman before her stared down at her hands, and then up at the traveler. Her hands flew to her mouth and she allowed a single, reverent finger, to touch her lips. "She..." the woman began.
The compass that the traveler had always possessed - her mother was convinced it was part of the curse itself - floated before them, and the woman reached out to grab it before the traveler's hand could reach it.
"That is mine," the traveler growled, leveling her sword at the woman's throat and lunging.
They woke as one, grasping at their throats and struggling to breathe.
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Emma spent a good portion of the morning with her head cradled in her hands, cursing her terrible decision making skills. Granted, the headache that she'd woken up with and the crick in her neck were maddening as well. She absolutely, positively, could not believe what had happened at Regina's house the night before. Could not. Refused. Nada. Not happening.
She wasn't used to being the passive one in a moment of passion. She wasn't used to doing a lot of things that she found herself doing these days, but having the mother of her goddamn son shove her up against the wall and kiss her like the world was about to goddamn end was enough to make Emma want to throw in the towel and reason all together.
"You look like shit," Ruby commented, refilling Emma's coffee mug and stealing a cold fry off of her plate. Emma lifted her head up from her arms and blinked at Ruby.
Ruby chewed her stolen fry and cocked her hip to one side. "You wanna talk about it?"
Emma let her head fall back into her arms and shook her head. "I can't," she muttered into the crook of her elbow. Her sweater was scratchy and she really did want to talk to someone about it. She had phrased that well, honestly. The situation was just messed up and Ruby didn't deserve to have it saddled on her.
"Can't or won't?" Emma sighed and sat up properly to meet Ruby's darkly made-up eyes and red highlights with a frustrated noise growing in the back of her throat.
"I can't, Ruby," She was failing and she knew it. Ruby did to, judging from the appraising look Emma found herself on the receiving end of.
Emma sighed, sitting up and picking up her coffee mug. She took a grateful sip and tried to away the dreams and the events of the previous day. Ruby gave her an odd look and turned to leave, she apparently knew a dismissal without having to actually be dismissed.
Despite her best efforts, Emma could not be that person. She set her coffee down and reached out. Her fingers connected with Ruby's free elbow. "Ruby," she said, her voice firm. "Have you ever done something that you're so sure is wrong, but feels right?"
Ruby grinned at her. "All the time, Em," she laughed. "All the time."
Emma had never really had friends before. There had been foster brothers and sisters who were more intent on taking what she had, rather than being her friend. Those had been peers, as had the children at school. She'd never stayed in one place long enough to actually develop the sort of friendships she found herself forging in Storybrooke. Emma was honestly quite taken aback by how much she wanted to be a part of these people's lives.
It was easy, she reasoned, to dwell on her own shortcomings and not think about the fact that she'd integrated so seamlessly into this collection of oddball denizens of Maine.
Perhaps the easier option was not to fight it. this was her tactic with Regina - to the best of her ability anyway - and it had been working pretty well until the previous evening. Emma felt her cheeks color as she again allowed her mind to drift back to what had happened then to change everything.
She knew that she couldn't dwell on this in front of someone like Ruby, who could sniff out juicy gossip a mile away. At least Ruby tended to keep the gossip to herself once she learned it. That made her a bit better than most of the people in this town. Small towns, Emma reasoned, all suffered from that predilection. There was so little going on that even the smallest and mundane of circumstances became big time news. The Mirror was proof enough of that.
"You didn't piss off the Mayor again?" Ruby asked, settling down at the counter next to Emma.
Emma shook her head, "More like she did something I had not... anticipated her doing."
There was an almost canine quality to how Ruby's eyes flashed at that, realization dawning on her face as she reached forward. Her fingers closed around Emma's shoulder and she pulled them as close as she dared. Mrs. Lucas was sitting at the end of the counter filling out some sort of complicated-looking form. "Did she threaten you?" Ruby hissed. "After she..."
Emma buried her head in her hands. This was the most truly groan-worthy moment of her already groan-worthy day. Ruby being able to read through her like she wasn't even trying to hide what had happened made it even worse. She sighed, because she really couldn't hide it any more than she could pretend to hide it. "Made a pass at me? Yeah. She did."
The threat had come in the form of a snapped command in a strangled voice. Emma had been dismissed and she understood that that was all that she could do in such a situation. The power of whatever bond that the pair of them shared had forced Emma to obey.
That, unfortunately, had not been before Emma had recovered from her shock and had started responding to the kiss. Regina felt good against her, good and right. The sort of thing that Emma knew would lead to mornings and days and weeks. In the moment of that kiss, she had seen a future blossom out before her.
It was that future that Emma found herself wanting now. She could have Regina, and she could have Henry, she could have some semblance of a family for the first time in her life.
But the curse, the curse was always there. The knowledge that Regina was certainly not the good person Emma wanted her to be lurked just below the moment of passion that they'd shared.
Ruby flashed an encouraging smile as she stood up. "Well," she announced, maybe a little too loudly for Emma's taste, "I hope that you don't take that threat to be how it has to be."
"Oh?" Emma raised an eyebrow.
"I think you two are good for each other," Ruby added with a conspiratorial wink. "I'll be back with your check in a sec."
Maybe encouragement was really all that she needed. Emma paid for her coffee and asked for half a Ruben and a salad and the Mayor's usual coffee order to be added to her check. She had an appointment, after all.
Under Ruby's approving gaze, Emma left the diner and headed towards the town hall. The lunch hour was drawing to a close, but she'd started to see a pattern in how Regina worked. She threw herself behind her projects, working long hours and neglecting her personal needs.
The brown paper bag swung from her fingers as Emma made her way through the freezing cold street. Winter in Maine wasn't anything to sniff at, and it made Emma long for Tallahassee or even Boston. At least in Boston the temperatures had the decency to pretend that they were reasonable, most of the time. The wind coming in off the harbor was far harsher here than it was in Boston, and it had a wintry chill to it that froze Emma to her bones.
She was damn near shaking, her fingers numb around the coffee cup by the time she pushed the door open to the executive wing of the city offices. She paused for a moment to throw away the extra cup that Ruby had given her to help keep the coffee warm. It felt good here, but her fingers were shooting pain as they warmed in the hallway.
Regina's secretary was a stony-faced woman that frankly terrified Emma. She took one look at the bag in Emma's hands, however, and nodded towards the door. "Go ahead, Sheriff," she said, fingers clicking away over her keyboard. "She's holed up in there with some sort of report she's got to get into Augusta and hasn't come out all morning."
Emma had no idea how small town government worked. She figured that whatever she'd managed to catch on Parks and Recreation probably was not all that accurate a picture of how things really worked. She bit her lip and knocked before pushing the door open.
The office was silent, save for the sound of papers rustling as the Mayor worked her way through something incredibly mundane and boring looking. "Do you usually hide under a bunch of paper work when you don't want to deal with the consequences of your actions?"
Regina looked up sharply, her hair fluttering for just a moment before falling back into perfect place. "I was under the impression that our conversation last night had made my wishes very clear, Ms. Swan."
Emma held out the coffee, peering at the long strings of numbers on the paperwork before Regina with frown. Regina had said to get out and Emma had gone home, her head full of conflicted thoughts and the press of Regina's body against her. She had fallen into a fitful sleep and her dreams had not been pleasant.
She knew she was right when Regina's fingers brushed up against her own as the Mayor gratefully took the coffee. "I've never been much for following directions," Emma quipped, settling down across from Regina in one of the stiff-backed chairs that Emma was positive were placed there because they were incredibly uncomfortable.
"I see Ms. Lucas is as accommodating and meddlesome as ever," Regina commented, sipping the coffee gratefully. She stared at Emma, her expression closed off and not entirely unreadable. There was some trepidation there, hidden just beneath the tired-looking eyes. "I would have thought you to be half-way to Boston by now."
And she would have been. This was the sort of situation that Emma was never really good at. She knew that she had to stay because she couldn't leave. Too much was happening in Storybrooke for her to not linger.
Emma found herself shrugging, setting the bag from the diner gingerly on the edge of Regina's desk and sitting as far back as she could in the uncomfortable chair. "I shouldn't have said what I said," Emma confessed. It wasn't an apology, because she'd never asked for any of this. She did not want to be the one to apologize, but she'd gone for the kill shot when one hadn't really been needed.
"I shouldn't have done what I did," Regina muttered into the coffee cup.
"I didn't mind," Emma replied warily, not daring to look at the Mayor as she confessed this fact. She hadn't minded any of it, not really. Her cheek was still tender from the slap she'd earned, but she had deserved it. She'd gone too far and they'd both known it.
Silence fell over the room, the door was firmly shut and the only sound were the pipes creaking as the ancient radiator in the corner filled with water and began to hiss quietly. The wide bay window behind Regina's desk bathed them both in light as the sun's weak rays barely warmed the window enough to melt the frost that had accumulated over the night.
Emma dared herself to look at Regina exactly three times before she finally found herself raising her gaze. Her cheeks felt as though they were on fire and Emma found herself again forcing herself to remember that this, frankly, stunning woman before her was the cause of much of her suffering in life.
She could blame her parents - ignorant of her circumstances as she was. She was the child of two fairy tale characters, her life was supposed to be charmed and Regina had taken that all away.
But that was not truly the case. She had a theory about this curse that Henry was so positive his mother had cast, and every interaction she'd had with certain parties seemed to point to her theory being correct. She had to get to the bottom of what Gold wanted before she willingly allowed herself to think of Regina as anything other than Henry's mother.
"You assume much, Ms. Swan," Regina exhaled and leaned back in her chair. "Why would you think that I would want to do such a thing again?"
Emma shrugged. "I know passion," she began. She was talking out of her ass, she really was. "I know how to fake it like the best of them. That was organic, Regina. It felt real and good and I wanted more of it." She leveled her gaze at Regina, "I think you did too."
"And why would I allow such a thing to happen?" Regina asked. Her voice was quiet, dwarfed by the imposing window behind her.
Emma stood up, hands pressing into her knees as she pushed herself to her feet. She stood there for a minute as she unearthed her gloves from her jacket pocket. "Because that, as far as I can gather, is what it means to have the queen's favor."
Chew on that, Your Majesty Emma thought to herself, walking out the door leaving the stunned Mayor behind her.
She had some investigation of her own to do.
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With the book that Emma found herself needing to take a closer look at came Henry and a million and one questions. Emma sat him down across the kitchen island from herself as she pulled out the ingredients to make brownies. She was craving chocolate, feeling vaguely like she'd somehow fucked up along the way.
The problem was that she had absolutely no idea where to look for the answers. Regina was a closed book about the backstory that Emma so desperately needed. Emma guessed that Henry might be able to provide some of the answers – in his black and white view of how things were – but it would not be enough. She had to know what Regina's motivation was for making her the knight who would save the queen above all else.
It seemed like they were all wearing multiple hats.
"So what did you want to talk about?" Henry asked, kicking his feet against the kitchen island and watching Emma with curious eyes. "And can you put chocolate chips in?"
"Sure," Emma agreed, bending and rummaging for the pam so that she could grease the brownie pan she'd found buried at the back of the kitchen cupboard. Mary Margaret put stuff in the weirdest places. She pushed aside some cans of soup that looked about as ancient as some of the paintwork in the apartment and made a triumphant noise as she found the yellow canister. "I wanted to talk to you about some of the other stories in the book – before the Evil Queen."
Henry wrinkled his nose, but bent and tugged his backpack up and into his lap. He rummaged for a moment before pulling the book out and setting it heavily on the table. "What do you want to know," he asked, his attention turning to a table of contents that Emma had not noticed on her first perusal of its contents.
Emma set the pam down on the countertop and walked around to peer at the story titles. None of them were ones that she recognized from her own childhood, or from the anthology of Grimm's fairy tales that she'd found tucked inside one of the boxes of her things that had arrived a few days ago. Here there were stories of a land ravaged by war and a being that had made a pact with the devil to stop them. She ran her finger down the titles and tapped them, "What are these ones about?"
It was strange to see the same mildly pensive look on Henry's face that often crossed her own face as he thought was still unnerving. Emma had given up on looking for the similarities between the two of them. She'd found that the more she saw the less she wanted to see. It was too much, this whole thing was too much, and now there were other complications.
"They're about a spinner," Henry says at length, as if trying to muddle through some of the details himself as he told her. "He has a son that he doesn't want to go to war, so he tries to save the son in any way that he can."
That sounded familiar. Emma knew how Henry had found himself at the center of this story without even meaning for it to happen. She knew that he was struggling with trying to find his place in the story just as much as she was. "Did he succeed?" Emma asked. She had a sinking suspicion that she knew how this story was going to end. So many of these stories seemed to end in heartbreak and suffering, she supposed that this one would be no different.
Before fairy tales had been met with a swift children's entertainment punch to the head, they had been meant to be cautionary tales. Everyone knew the story of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, or Aladdin. Each of these stories were meant to teach a lesson to children the same way that sermons in church were supposed to provide lessons. Emma had been made to go to enough church services to know that both fairy tales and religion did not provide the answers to a hard life where only self-reliance stood a chance.
Henry shook his head. "The Blue Fairy gave his son a magic bean and offered to send them both away." His expression clouded then, and Henry looked down at the book in hands. Emma could see him biting his lip and concentrating hard on the page before him. "The spinner didn't go with his son, he was a coward." Henry looked up at Emma then, his eyes shining brightly with something akin to pride at his pronouncement and condemnation of the spinner. Emma felt something akin to bile rise up in her throat at his pride and shook her head violently to push the feeling away. Henry could not understand what it was like to be faced with an impossible situation and to not want to fall into the unknown void seemed like a pretty legitimate thing to do.
Still, she could not say something like that to Henry. He was only ten, and thought the world of her. He was not ready to know that sometimes choices were not easy to make and they were not for the good of everyone. Henry would learn that on his own in time, it was part of growing up. Emma did not be the one to have to teach him those lessons. Regina could do it, or Doctor Hopper. It was Emma's job to play the hero.
They lapsed into silence then, Emma mechanically moving through the motions of preparing the brownies. She had Henry crack the eggs, and watched as he did it effortlessly. His mother had obviously baked with him before. Emma could see it in the way he handled the eggs and beat them slowly into the batter.
She wondered what it was like for Regina, to know so acutely that every single crime Henry was accusing of her was true. Emma hated lying and hated half-truths even more, and if things were to continue, she would have to continue to do so.
It was a tough path to go down. She knew that she was far too involved, far too wrapped up in whatever it was that was going on between Regina and Gold. Between Regina and most of the people in this town, honestly. So much of the story was left untold in Henry's book – it was no small wonder that he thought her the evil queen of his nightmares.
Regina was an interesting wrinkle in her understanding of this all. Emma desperately wanted to know more about what was going on, and if there was more to the curse than the simple 'I didn't like Snow White' that Regina kept giving her. Clearly there were darker forces at work here, and Regina was probably a prominent figure chief among them. The woman was positively sinister when she wanted to be, and Emma wasn't fool enough to think her innocent.
No, no one was innocent in this situation, Regina least of all.
The worst part was that Emma felt herself fighting against that truth. She wanted Regina to be innocent in this whole thing so badly and she knew that it wasn't true. Regina was every bit as guilty and with just as much blood on her hands. She'd done something to Emma as a child to bend Emma somewhat to her will - and she wasn't afraid to use that power.
Yet the desperation that had seeped through every second of that awful, wonderful, horrible kiss was enough to give Emma more than a moment's pause. She had spent the day racking her brain, trying to figure out what it was about that kiss that was throwing her off so much. She'd lived enough to have witnessed such acts before, and she knew that Regina was beyond saving when it came to sullied souls. Yet she still wanted to try and save her.
It was the savior's duty to save everyone, Henry kept telling her that. Even the much-maligned queen.
She wondered, not for the first time, if there were other forces at work in Storybrooke. The idea that Regina had been so angry at Snow White left far more questions than answers, and Emma wasn't quite sure where she would be able to get the answers she needed.
The Blue Fairy that Henry had mentioned sounded like a promising start to the trail. A neutral force between the extreme of Regina and Gold.
Emma filled the dish she'd sprayed with pam earlier with the brownie batter she'd prepared as her mind wandered and questioned everything she knew about this town. It was crazy how she could do some things out of habit, considering Henry had pulled out a math worksheet and seemed to be content to ignore her for the time being.
"You got any ideas who the blue fairy is, kid?" Emma asked as put the brownies into the oven.
Henry shook his head, shifting his papers around and carefully drawing out a long division line as he worked his way through a problem. "Nope."
So not helpful, Emma shook her head ruefully.
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Emma slept restlessly that night. She'd dropped Henry off with a plate full of brownies and had been granted a small, closed-off smile from his mother as she shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and had turned back up the walk to where she had left the bug running. It was warm in her car, she had found one of her Queen cassettes buried under some magazines in the back seat and sang along to 'Break Free' all the way back to Mary Margaret's apartment.
The dreams plagued her. Emma found herself not wanting to drift off for fear of another encounter with the woman-she-was-not. Her neck still hurt from the previous dream and Emma had no intention of repeating the experience. She lay awake and thought about how the Mayor's lips had felt pressed against her own.
The queen's favor had to mean something. It was a promise and an oath that Emma was more than willing to follow through with if it meant more of those kisses. She wanted to be that person for Regina, to look past everything and see some spark of good in her that had gone unnoticed for so long. Emma wanted to be the one to save her.
As her hand crept downwards on her stomach, lingering on the soft skin there, Emma wondered if Regina had ever done something like this, thinking of the woman she'd doomed to be her knight. Emma wondered what she looked like, hands wandering and biting those red, red lips as she tried to stay quiet so as to not wake their son.
It was enough to drive her to distraction, her fist shoved in her mouth as she rolled onto her stomach and ground her hips into her mattress. Mary Margaret was asleep downstairs - her mother was asleep just inside ear shot and Emma could not help herself. The imagined image of her queen pressed heavy on Emma's mind and drove her to new heights.
When it was finally over, Emma fell into a dreamless sleep that found her very nearly late for work the following morning.
The normal rush of bundling up and heading down to the sheriff's station was expedited by her tardiness and Emma found herself barreling into the office exactly five minutes before she was due to phone in the weekly crime report to Sydney Glass over at The Mirror. It wasn't as though anything of note had happened, but it was a mainstay in the paper and Emma's personal conflicts with the staff of the town's newspaper were not enough for her to deprive the town of news of some asshole stealing pies out of people's windows.
Emma tugged her jacket off and shoved her scarf and had down one of the sleeves before hanging it on the hook where she'd kept Graham's jacket. It was a stark reminder of how fragile life was here, and how even the most innocent could end up in the worst sorts of situations. Emma allowed her fingers to trail over its worn leather before she turned to her desk. She missed him, because at least with him there, everything had been a lot less complicated.
"I see that your propensity for promptness extends to all aspects of your life," came a clipped voice from the hallway.
Emma jumped about three feet in the air, her heart hammering in her chest as she leaned against her desk to steady herself. "Jesus," she muttered. She looked up to see the bemused smile of Regina Mills standing in the doorway.
Her cheeks burned, thinking of what she had done the previous evening, visions of this woman in her mind. "Madame Mayor," Emma inclined her head. "You scared me."
The mayor's smile was victorious as she slid into the office proper and sidled into Emma's office. "It goes with the territory, dear," she explained, reaching for Emma's coat and tossing it back to her.
Emma caught it with a confused expression. "What's going on, Regina?"
"I need you to come with me," the mayor explained, her expression dark. "There's been an... incident that we must attend to." She turned and headed back towards the door.
Jamming her hat back on top of her head, Emma followed Regina. She was led down the back steps out of the station and to the Mayor's waiting car. Emma zipped her jacket up before sliding into the Mercedes and folding her arms across her chest. "What's this about?"
"There is a being in the woods - one that does not belong here," Regina said shortly, putting the car into gear and heading down a side street towards the forests that bordered the town. "And Henry is on a field trip today."
Emma recalled that he had mentioned it the previous night, in between their baking adventure and the discussion of who the Blue Fairy could possibly be. Henry had a theory she might be one of the nuns who ran his school, which Emma found hilarious. Mary Margaret had told her how Gold loved to lord the fact that he, rather than the town government, owned the building where the elementary school was housed over the senior staff at the school.
"I think he does it just because he likes throwing his creepy weight around," Mary Margaret had snipped as she opened a box of fundraiser cookies when Emma had asked her about it after returning from dropping Henry off at home. "We all pitch in to help with the rent; tuition simply isn't high enough to cover it."
Her blood ran cold at the idea that Henry was not indoors, but rather out in the open with whatever being had crossed over from that world. "I thought that you destroyed that world when you sent them all to this one, that's what Henry thinks at least."
Regina's lips were a thin, furious line as she jerked the car off the road and down a side access road so overgrown that Emma was convinced that the Benz was not going to make it back out again. "Does he now," Regina hissed, eyes focused on the road. "It's lovely to know my son thinks me a mass murderer."
"I-" Emma began, but slumped back in her seat. She hadn't meant for it to come out like that.
The rest of the ride was silent and Emma got out of the car as quickly as she could and waded into ankle deep snow. Regina seemed to be silently fuming in the driver's seat and while Emma knew she had no magic, she wanted no part of Regina's rage. "What are we looking for, another direwolf?" Emma waved her arms around at the wide expanse of forest around them.
The queen's fingers closed around her wrist and pulled her back towards the car, spinning her so that she was pinned against the cold metal. "Shhhh," Regina breathed, her lips hovering just above Emma's, their breath a collective fog between them. Emma felt herself tremble under the intensity of the look Regina was giving her. "I won't want to alert it to our presence," Regina added.
Emma took that as an invitation, and reached one gloved hand to the small of Regina's back. She pulled the mayor to her, their bodies firmly against each other as Emma dipped her head and pressed her lips against Regina's slightly parted ones.
This was not the place or the time for it, but it felt so good to hold Regina to her and kiss her as Emma thought she deserved. Emma worshiped those lips, lingering just long enough to be considered proper, her tongue dancing out and over their boundary before retreating when no entrance was granted.
Regina's hands were curled around her jacket, holding her in place as a warm glow of light erupted between them, emanating from somewhere deep within Regina. Emma pulled back, startled as the glow appeared, but found herself pulled back in to another, more passionate kiss.
The glow did not fate, and Emma heard, rather that saw or felt the sword that rested within the Evil Queen's heart clatter to the ground beside them. She found she did not care, her mind utterly preoccupied with how Regina's tongue was in her mouth, pressing forward again and again - simulating an act that left Emma weak at her knees.
It seemed to go on forever, and when Regina pulled away and bent to pick up the sword, Emma mourned the loss of closeness. Her breath fogged the air between them as Regina pushed her bangs away from her eyes and passed Emma the sword.
"The power of this sword rests within my heart, Ms. Swan," Regina explained as Emma reached out and took the sword. She looked uncomfortable, shifting from foot to foot as she stared out into the forest. "Your touch…" she began again as Emma adjusted her grip on the sword. "it brings out whatever limited magic there is left in this world and makes the extraction process easier."
Emma shook her head. Excuses, excuses. "And here I was thinking that you liked me, Regina."
Regina turned back to Emma and shook her head. "If you think that, Ms. Swan, you're a bigger fool than I thought." Emma looked at her solidly in the eyes and could see the hint of amusement hidden there, along with the flat-out lie.
Grinning in response, Emma inclined her head. "Touché, Madam Mayor. What are we hunting?"
"Nothing particularly special – a minotaur."
"Wait - like Greek mythology labyrinth style minotaur?" Emma's eyes widened as Regina's expression hardened. She could not handle something that magnitude. No. Fuck that.
"I do not know how it got here, or even why. I did not summon it, nor do I know how it got here. Unlike the direwolf, which was a clear attempt on both of our lives, this is different. It's presence is an unknown factor and it cannot be here." Regina's hand shot out and grabbed Emma's jacket, her face a dark and turbluant mask of emotion. "You must kill it and quickly, before it gets any closer to the town."
Emma nodded because she did agree about that. The sword felt heavy in her hands and she felt the weight of the entire world fall heavily upon her shoulders. "Why is this happening?" she asked, staring out into the forest where the beast lurked. "Is it Gold?"
Regina shook her head, arms wrapped tightly around herself. "It is not, I don't think. He has his own reasons for being here…"
That made the whole situation seem all the more scary to Emma. She gripped the sword and nodded once, before turning and heading into the woods. She knew that it would do no good to linger with questions that could not be answered through practical means. Another creature in the woods meant that something was happening, a barrier was weakening.
Magic was coming.
The winter air bit a cold chill deep into Emma's boots as she cut a steady path through the trees. She'd always been good at finding things, her mind seems well-situated to solving such problems. She'd used it to find work for most of her life, tracking down people who had run from the law. That innate sense of direction that she was so accustomed to having was not there now, and Emma felt completely alone, standing in the middle of the woods armed only with a sword.
How had Regina known that the beast was here at all? Did she have some sort of complex pseudo-magical network in place to track such things? Emma bit her lip and trudged on, looking for signs on the trees, broken branches or footprints – something to give her an idea of what direction to go in. She decided that Regina must have some sort of safeguards in place, because for such a protection to be part of the curse seemed a bit excessive.
Regina might be a planner, but she's not that good, Emma thought darkly, slashing with the sword at a branch moodily as she realized that thicker socks would have been a very good idea today. She had not anticipated the day going this way, and her mind was still full of what it had felt like to have Regina's lips on her own once more.
Something smelled foul as Emma came across a half-way frozen stream and she wrinkled her nose. A patch of yellow lingered in the snow and she raised her hand up to her face in disgust. It was piss; something had taken a big stinky leak here and had gone about its business. This was Maine; the biggest predator in these woods would be a coyote or maybe a stray dog.
Biting her tongue against the wave of bile that rose up in her throat, Emma turned and followed the smell. It couldn't be far, it smelled so putrid, worse than every dumpster and hell-hole Emma had ever dared venture into.
In true story book fashion, Emma came upon a clearing. She remembered this same place from her dreams, the low flat rock protruding out from the center of the clearing and the careful ring of toadstools around it. It smelled like it had in the dream here, like sulfur mixed with an overpowering whiff of the creature she was chasing. Emma gripped the sword tightly and stepped cautiously into the clearing. This was a place of magic, she could sense it in her very bones.
Her breath fogged before her and Emma moved in a wide spiral to the center of the clearing, careful to not cross the fairy ring. There was something unnerving about this place. Fear welled up deep within Emma, but she knew that she had to do this, to protect her queen and her son. An oath she'd sworn and intended to fulfill.
The trees off to her right shook and rattled, a roar filled the clearing, and Emma squared herself. She barely had time to realize that her quarry was charging towards her from the woods before it hit, bull's tusks against the unrelenting steel of her blade. Emma ducked under the beast's swiping arms, her blade lashing out to cut deep into the soft flesh of its stomach. She could see that it was male, that it was part human and very obviously as horrifying as the myths and legends made it out to be.
Her stomach turned as it roared, dread settling deep within her as she bent at one knee and pushed herself forward into the attack. The only offense when you had no defense and your opponent was faster than you was to use whatever speed you had to your advantage. Emma'd played enough flag football to know that.
The beast charged, but this time, Emma was ready. She ran straight towards it, sword thrusting forward, protecting herself from the onslaught of claws and fangs and doom. She knew that she could cut through its defense.
Her arms strained as the sword connected with the beast's horn and she kicked out at its shin as she fell to the ground, her balance lost as she skidded to the ground. Her shoulder connected with the frozen ground and she winced. That was going to leave a mark.
The beast spun to a halt across the clearing and in a moment that seemed to slow down time and space, Emma looked to her left and saw that she'd somehow managed to fall clear through the fairy ring. A crushed toadstool lay just beside her hand and Emma reached for it on a whim, her fingers closing around it. It felt warm in her hands, pulsating with the same power that she felt before – when Regina kissed her.
"The power…" Emma muttered to herself, picking up her sword and readying herself for another round. That power slept within her, and she fully intended to make use of it. She bit her tongue winced as her shoulder began to throb painfully.
The beast charged once more, but this time Emma was ready for him. She lunged forward, her sword extended straight ahead as she pushed it forward and up the beast's nose. The skin was soft there, and blood erupted from the wound. Emma knew as soon as she gave her sword a vicious twist that the beast was dead where he lay.
Kicking out with her foot, Emma pulled the sword from the beast and stumbled backwards, her vision blurring as the smell grew more pungent. A veritable geyser of blood erupted from the wound and she jumped backwards, struggling to avoid getting the blood all over herself.
As the beast gave its final death rattle, Emma leaned heavily on her sword, bent over and panting. The minotaur's blood dripped from her fingertips as she struggled to catch her breath. She'd fallen though a fairy ring, and her body was full of that tingly feeling of unease that had plagued her since she'd first encountered the clearing.
She shook off her hand, wiping it clean on the leg of her ruined jeans. She tugged her phone out of her pocket and dialed the number from memory. "It's done," she gasped, before collapsing backwards into the snow.
db
What does it mean to fall through a fairy ring?
To cut through such a sacred space is to disregard the power of the fairy who put it there. Such locations hold great power to ones who create them. They are made with will-power and not with fairy dust. What happens in such a place is largely unknown. Students of magic have tried for many years to understand the intricacies of such locations, but it is a secret the fae and the fairy folk keep completely guarded.
Suffice to say, it will anger such a being to destroy such a place.
A place like that is a portal, created by one of the fair folk, to bring beings across worlds.
You guys are super duper awesome, thank you so much for your kind reviews!
I am so so so so sorry about the delay in getting this up. So much as gone on since I last updated and I feel absolutely terrible about it. Most of my writing is done during my downtime at work, and my job description recently changed. It's super shitty now as I'm busy for a lot longer. Hopefully this was worth the wait.
I wanted to write Emma as really struggling with how she feels about everything because she's not about to forgive Regina for what she's done - but at the same time she desperately wants to save her. It's odd.
next: The Pawnbroker and the Fairy