Turns out traveling by shadow sail takes a bit longer than traveling via magic bean, so everyone settles in for a few hours rest wherever they can find a comfortable patch of ship on their way back to Storybrooke and the Land Without Magic that's somehow become more home than their home ever was. Mary Margaret leans her forearms on the rail at the head of the ship, wrists crossed, fingers hanging limp from her hands. The wind cuts through her cardigan, slides icy fingers along her scalp. It's a welcome change from Neverland's oppressive humidity, she thinks, even though periodic shivers erupt from her chest and skitter down her limbs.
She'd convinced David to rest his eyes for a few minutes in the crew quarters, left him swaying gently in a hammock sound asleep, and then come above deck for air and space to breathe, space to think. Her mind rocks with the casting of the ship, flits from Emma's magic to David's deception to Regina's confession to—
Footsteps from below deck knock her thoughts off course. She turns, recognizing the cadence of her stride before she appears. "Regina," she calls softly, once she emerges. The older woman pauses for just a moment, shoulders raised mid-roll, and then she's moving again, cracking her neck and turning to face her at the head of the ship, eyebrows raised. "How's Henry?"
Regina deflates a little, seems to shrink at least an inch or so as she walks up the steps to join her. "Sleeping, for now. Emma's with him."
"But he'll be okay?"
"He's been kidnapped, ripped his own heart out, spent an hour in a magically induced coma, and just now almost had his shadow torn from his body. He's going to be a little worse for the wear for a day or two."
"Of course," Mary Margaret says, picking at the wood grain. She glances up at Regina. "And you? How are you doing?"
"I'm alive."
"Good. That's good."
There's an awkward finality to her words, a gap wide enough for Regina to squeeze through and dismiss her and her attempts to connect, but her erstwhile stepmother remains at the bow with her hands resting lightly on the rail, hips pressed to the wall as she leans into the wind. She doesn't shiver in the cold as Mary Margaret does; she tips her head back and allows the wind to sluice through her hair, eyes closed, and it's funny how Regina can look all of nineteen years old, all poise and control hiding the seeds of darkness within, and yet still thirty-three years old, the darkness more apparent through the cracks in her veneer left by time and things said and things unsaid.
"Did you mean it?" Mary Margaret asks, turning so that Regina is in her periphery.
"When?"
"What you said at the tree. With Pan. About having no regrets."
Because I agreed with him. Of the three women lashed to the tree, by all accounts Regina should have had the most regrets. The most lives destroyed in her name (or was it Snow White's name, she wonders, a flicker of a thought extinguishing nearly before it's been formed), the families ripped apart, the murdering and torturing, the ceaseless tide of revenge and pain. How was it possible this woman had no regrets when she herself had so many?
"I broke free, didn't I?"
"How do you do it?"
"Be specific or silent," Regina snaps, then softens. "Just… say whatever it is that's on your mind."
Mary Margaret clicks her teeth together. "How do you keep your past from eating you alive?"
"Regret is not the same thing as remorse. Pan wasn't all crazy. The former will kill you, eventually, but the latter…"
"I'm sorry," Mary Margaret blurts. "For that night you came to my door. When you asked if you made the wrong decision siding with your mother."
Regina retreats, her hands slipping away from the rail and curling tight at her sides, but Mary Margaret can't stop, not now, not when she's said it aloud for the first time. "It was wrong of me to deny you the second chance I offered earlier. And," she swallows, "It was wrong of me to assume you weren't sincere regarding Henry."
"There is nothing I wouldn't do for my son."
"I know."
They stare at one another, silent.
What are you thinking, Regina? What are you seeing in me right now? Am I the girl you saved from a runaway horse, the oblivious, frivolous princess? Or the bandit hiding in hollow trees with holes in my boots and leaves matting my hair? Or maybe I'm not any of those people anymore. Maybe I'm just Mary Margaret, the school teacher who had an affair with a married man, whose family can't help but fall apart and then fall back together, who killed a woman and used her own daughter as the murder weapon.
Whatever it is, Regina breaks the silence first with a sharp shrug and a pointed look over the bow of the ship. "I should have known better," she says, shaking her head.
"No, Regina, I—"
"Mary Margaret, stop. I knew that look the moment you opened the door."
"What look?"
"Someone who's been pushed until they can't see reason anymore."
"And you wouldn't know anything about that," Mary Margaret says, leaning forward on the rail again, tilting her head back to offer a dry smile. They can joke about this now, right?
"Of course not, dear," Regina says, a feral smirk brushing her lips before exhaustion eclipses her face. "Don't live in the past. You'll only ruin your future."
Regina turns away, walks the length of the ship, rotating her wrists every now and then, her attention divided between the brightening horizon, the shadow, and the passengers milling about on the deck. Mary Margaret watches her for a long moment, and then leans over the railing, hands dangling loosely once more, and keeps a weather eye for the harbor.
