Content warning for a paragraph of blood and graphic surgical goings-on.
Regina knows that she's wasting her time, that as soon as her mother returns on the new moon she'll kill the woman where she lies in Regina's bed or have her thrown into the sea to let the island's cursed enchantments do her work for her. And she wars with herself, deliberating on whether it was more selfish or self-righteous, to drag the woman - the first living, speaking person to wash up on her island in at least a century - in from the broken remnants of her boat and take care of her knowing full well it would be for nothing.
But it's not as if, realistically, she could have convinced herself to do anything different. Even now, at her potions table, she was mixing a healing confection and boiling needles to stitch the woman's wound closed with, singing a lullaby under her breath in some vague idea of soothing the stranger's otherwise restless sleep.
A groan breaks the air and she almost tips over the entire table in fright, so unused to a voice other than her own. She twists around to look at her bed and rises to her feet to stop the stranger from sitting up any further than she already has.
"No, no. Sit back." she says, putting a firm hand to the woman's collarbone and gently pushing her back to the pillow. The woman is looking at her blearily, uncomprehending. Regina holds the back of her hand against the woman's forehead, is troubled at how much hotter its gotten in the past hour. What was the adage her nursery maid had used to say? Feed a fever, starve a cold? Starve a fever, feed a cold? Gods, she was bad at this. "Sit back." she says again, putting magic into the words so as not to brook any argument.
Hurrying a ways back into the cave she's grown to call her home, she filled a bowl with water from a small, narrow river and brought it back to the woman's side. Tilting the woman's head up with one hand, she held the bowl to her lips, and as the woman sipped, Regina talked. "You lost a lot of blood, dear, and need to lie still."
The woman did as she was told until the bowl was mostly empty and Regina drew it away. "Who are you?" she croaked.
"I'm Regina. You washed up on my island."
"Black sand?" the woman asked for confirmation.
"Yes, that's the one."
"That's nice." she said before trying to sit up again. "Owww."
Regina pushed her back down. "Did you not understand that you need to lie still?"
"Look… my lady, you're gorgeous and I had a great time last night and I would very much like to see you again..." Emma began, clearly mistaking Regina for someone else and sometime other than now. "But I have to go."
""Miss…"
"Emma." Emma provided.
"Miss Emma-"
"Emma."
"Miss Emma-" Regina tried again.
"Just Emma."
"... Miss Emma-"
"Just-"
"- you're on an island in the middle of nowhere with a bullet wound that I've yet to stitch up and a pallor like that of snow."
"Snow!" Emma yelled, and began struggling anew against Regina's weight. It could hardly be called a struggle though, as Emma was both dehydrated and wounded and Regina was in the peak of health.
"Um, yes..." Regina said. She held Emma down with one arm and looked behind her to check the healing confection. From where she sat, it seemed to have developed the clear, thick consistency she needed. She tucked Emma's arms under the blanket and put a seal to hold her inside of it before standing. She put a crate by the head of the bed and laid on it the bowl of confection and a knife, threaded a couple of the clean needles and put them beside the knife, refilled the other bowl with water and put another empty bowl beside it. She paced to the line of drying clothes and ripped a few strips off of a sheet.
"Now," she said, dropping to her knees in front of Emma's wounded shoulder. "I'm going to run this confection through the wound to clean it of sea and dirt and quicken the healing process, and it's going to be reasonably painful."
"Um..." said Emma, frowning. "That's not what you're supposed to say to patients."
"And then I'll stitch you up, okay?"
"You don't have anything to… numb me? Or anything?"
"No, sorry. Healing magic demands that everything be felt, otherwise it doesn't work. That's the price, I'm afraid."
Emma shrugged, immediately wincing and whining at the jolt to her shoulder. Regina peeled the cloth from the woman's shoulder and removed the magical seal she had put over the hole before dragging Emma back to her home half an hour ago. Dark, thick blood spurted out onto the mattress and floor as Emma gasped and fought against the sheet. Placing a soothing hand to Emma's chest, Regina held the other over the confection. A glob of thick, clear liquid with bits of herb floating within rose into the air, stopping an inch from her palm. It followed under her palm as she moved her hand directly over the wound. After a beat it oozed and worked into the wound from the front of her shoulder to where the bullet had entered in her back. Drawing it back out, the witch dropped the used confection into the empty bowl before gathering a fresh glob and repeating the motions.
Five times more until the wound was clean. Regina spread a small amount of the potion on the surface before stitching it closed, and sat Emma up to do the same to the entry wound and tie strips of cloth around her chest and shoulder. While the woman still sat up, Regina gently removed her soiled shirt and buttoned on her a new one from among her own things. "There," Regina said finally. "Done."
She went to the back of her cave to wash her hands in the river before coming back to give Emma more water. The woman sipped at it, finished half before pushing it away and lying back against the pillow.
"You know, I read a myth once during my schooling about a Regina on an island." Emma croaked, voice thick and eyelids heavy. "With… with 'lovely tresses down her back which turned like spools of night'. Ha ha. She was exiled by the gods for… for helping her mother take control of the heavens. The daughter… she ate the hearts of the spirits? And was caught but… the mother escaped? Yeah, yeah."
"Shh. Rest." Regina said, patting her sea-soaked hair.
"... and the mother found another world to rule, and left the daughter in her exile. Yeah..."
After a while it became clear that Emma has fallen back asleep. "That's not how the story goes." Regina said, more to herself than to the woman in front of her. At least, she thought to herself, that's not how it should go. That's not how it had went when it was happening to her.
"Yes it does." Emma's eyes fluttered back open, but they were glazed over and clouded. "She… shh… and her mom… but your hair is short, so... "
A snore rumbled out of the pause. Regina stood to gather the used ingredients.
"The lesson!" Emma yelled, fighting deliriously against her own exhaustion. "The lesson of the myth was… "
Regina turned her back to the woman and pressed her palms to her ears, but even still the words came through.
"...that - it was my science tutor, I remember now! - that evil, much like energy and mass, cannot be destroyed, but only contained, and that inside all of us is a potential for it that can either be acted upon or watched closely, less we fall to it."
Regina had actually been expecting something much worse and more personal.
"What a prick. You know he wore velvet tights? My tutor?"
"I did not." Regina replied softly, sitting back on the edge of the bed. "You should go to sleep."
"He did. It looked ridiculous and he smelled awful." Emma continued. "Velvet just doesn't breathe, you know?"
"Yes. Sleep."
"He'd stand up from his chair and his stench would just - waft."
Regina rested her palms on Emma's cheeks. "Sleep." she urged again, with magic in the words this time, rubbing salt and sand from where it was still caked under the woman's eyes and in the creases of her nostrils.
"And… and… he was a science tutor. Why was he talking about myths?" Emma whispered. "Your hands are cold." Regina eased the pressure, but Emma put her right hand over one of Regina's own. "No, no. It's nice."
"Sleep."
"I'm a princess, you know." Emma said, and Regina simply could not understand where that statement had come from or how this woman was fighting her magic with sheer stubbornness.
"Sleep, princess." And finally, after five minutes more of grumbling, Emma did.
Heads up that I'm leaving for AFROTC field training later on this week and that this and "It Comes to Claim" won't be updated until I get back in mid-July at the earliest. Hope you enjoyed reading cause I enjoyed writing it and where it's going so yeah bye wish me luck :)