Author's Note: 268 followers? Seriously?! I'm not going to type what I said when I saw this for fear of booting me for profanity, but WOW. You guys are just...WOW.
Chapter V
The Doctor
It didn't take long to finish getting dressed. She added stocking and heels, applied makeup and styled her hair with little conscious thought. It was a good thing she was so set in her routines, because her thoughts were a mess and she honestly couldn't spare a thought to what she was physically doing.
She and Emma had held hands and kissed. Again. There had been no impending death or unstoppable doom. Emma had just kissed her and she had kissed the other woman back. She had kissed before: Daniel, Leopold, Graham, but she had never kissed another woman. She wasn't opposed to it, of course. She appreciated the female form just as much as she did the male. She had never sought out a female companion, though. Not that she had sought Emma out, it had just happened, and she desperately wanted it to happen again.
Love is weakness, her mother's mantra echoed in her head and heart and her hands fumbled her bottle of mousse. Love? Oh definitely not. She didn't hate Emma anymore, and she enjoyed kissing her, but that was it. She was grateful that Emma loved their son and that she had helped her. That was definitly it. She just had a small case of hero-worship. It happened. It was the sort of here-then-gone attraction that happened in the movies when the gun-slinging hero swooped in to save the helpless screaming woman. An instant smoldering lust that was what it had to be.
Regina gave her hair one last fluff and looked herself over in the mirror. She was not helpless. She was a Queen, she had brought an entire realm to its knees. She certainly didn't need Emma Swan to rescue her (again). She was an independent, self-assured, confident woman who had a powerful and important career and a son that she had raised on her own for ten years. She didn't need Emma. So why did she want her so much? Why did her knees turn to jelly every time Emma was around? Why did she want to run into her arms? Why had she run into her arms? Right in the middle of her front yard where anyone could see. Where Henry had seen them.
Lust, she reminded herself. She had felt the potent punch of lust in her belly from the very beginning. Emma in her tight jeans and mannish tank top and that truly awful, yet undeniably attractive, off-the-rack red pleather jacket. She had always assumed that Henry's birth mother had been some grubby, drugged out, street walker, so when the fit and beautiful blonde had shrugged at her she had momentarily lost her ability to speak. It hadn't lasted long, of course. Emma had inserted herself into their lives. She had assaulted her apple tree, and had been so devastatingly sexy while doing so that Regina had frozen for a moment at the window. She had stolen Henry away and yet there was still something between them. No matter how hard she had denied it, and she had been vehemently denying it, shewas attracted to the woman.
It, apparently, had not been as one sided as she had assumed.
She smiled a little as she went to retrieve her purse. Emma had held her hand. No one had held her hand in years, not since Daniel. It was such a simple thing, an innocent gesture, it shouldn't have made her heart flutter. Her heart hadn't just fluttered when Emma had kissed her.
"You're not the Evil Queen anymore."
Oh her heart had momentarily soared at that. Emma believed that she had changed. Not even Henry had really believed that she had changed.
"Maybe you never were."
Oh God, she had barely contained herself at that. She had been boneless, putty in Emma's hands. Her words, sweet and beautiful, had almost broken her. No one, not a single person, had ever said anything like that to her. Most people reveled in reminding her that she had been, was and would always be evil. Even Emma had said she would always be.
No. Regina shook her head to clear away that thought. That had been before and she had a feeling that maybe Emma hadn't really meant it. Not that it hadn't hurt at the time. It was a terrifying realization, Emma could break through every single wall she had ever relied on with just a few words.
The woman was dangerous. She was an undeniable threat to Regina's already aching heart.
Love is weakness.
Yes, Regina knew that her feelings, whatever they were, for Emma were making her weak. Her heart was trying to betray her all over again.
She wasn't sure she could go through this all over again. She had barely survived her last go-round with love.
"Are you ready to go?"
She blinked away the tears that had formed in her eyes and turned to see Henry, dressed in dark blue jeans and a plaid shirt covered by a tan sweater. His book was, predictably, tucked under his arm.
"Yes, Sweetheart."
She reached out and smoothed down his cowlick and smiled when he allowed the touch.
"Let's go get breakfast."
They walked out to her Mercedes and Henry climbed in the back and buckled up without another word. He opened his book almost immediately and she didn't have to look in her rearview mirror to know that he was staring at one of the eerily accurate illustrations of her as The Evil Queen.
That was not who she was anymore. She had never wanted to be a queen, let alone an evil one. She'd had simple dreams. She and Daniel had spoken about starting a farm where they could breed and raise horses. The finest horses in the kingdom, they would have boasted. All she had wanted was to be the wife of a stable boy, and mother to his children.
She started the car and backed out automatically checking behind her despite knowing that nobody but her was ever this far up Mifflin Lane.
She and Daniel had never had a chance, she saw that now. It had been foolish to think that her mother would allow her to be anything other than a queen. She had been told, from the time she was an infant she was sure, that she was going to be a queen. So she had become a Queen, and had hated it. By the times she had killed Leopold-
Leopold, who was Emma's grandfather. Emma, who had given her Henry. Emma who had kissed her senseless, who had left her wanting so much more. Emma who had held her while the world had crashed down around them. Emma who had held her hand while she had bared her bruised and battered soul to their son. Emma-
A loud and long car horn startled her out of her thoughts. She had just breezed through the Mifflin-Main Street intersection without stopping. She had never not stopped there. The stop sign had been there for twenty-eight years and she had never missed it.
"Mom!"
Henry was in the car with her. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel, aghast. What had she been thinking? Henry could have been hurt, he could have been killed. Because his mother, the woman entrusted with his very life, had been daydreaming about her lover.
Lover? Well, that was certainly stretching things a bit. She and Emma, Miss or Sheriff Swan, she reminded herself, were not lovers. They had kissed, but that was all. She had not welcomed the other woman into her bed.
She parked at Granny's and tried to push the images of Emma Swan naked and spread across her silk sheets, out of her head. Heat enveloped her and she could feel her heartbeat pounding all over her body. She refused to acknowledge that she had added "yet" to the end of that thought.
"Are you okay?"
She could see Henry's too-serious face in her rearview mirror.
No, she was definitely not okay.
"Yes, Dear, I'm fine."
Her son did not look impressed with her reassurances. Had he inherited his birth mother's uncanny ability to know when people were lying? She heard more then saw him unbuckling and she turned off the car and unbuckled herself. She got out of the car and automatically straitened her dress. She took a moment to compose herself. The curse was back in play. No one would scowl at her, or try to form a lynch mob when she showed her face. She was their mayor again, tough but fair. She was respected and a little bit feared, but that was what power was, wasn't it? She was Regina Mills, mayor and mother, not the Evil Queen. She was going to walk in and Ruby was going to take her order and smirk when she caught Regina subtly staring at her miles of bare legs. She would drink her coffee and Henry would have cocoa and Emma would sit down with them (and stare at Ruby a little less subtly then she did), and they would have a real family breakfast.
Family, Regina felt a smile forming. When had she started to think of Emma as family and why did it make her so happy?
Henry ran ahead of her and she let him. It wasn't as if there were any danger. A cursed Storybrooke was a safe Storybrooke. A mind-numbingly boring and madness-inducing repetitive little town that held no danger for her little boy.
She smiled at the idea of Storybrooke for the first time since the beginning. It all felt fresh again, even the annoying bells above Granny's door sounded more cheerful.
"Hey Grandma!"
Regina blinked. Why would Henry call Sno-Mary Margaret Grandma if he didn't believe Emma was his mother? Not to mention Mary Margaret wouldn't think she was his grandmother.
"Hello, Dear."
Regina felt her breath catch in her chest. She knew that voice.
She looked at the counter and there was a sudden roaring in her ears.
Henry was hugging, as in his arms wrapped around, a woman. A woman with her brown hair styled in a careful bun. A woman wearing a white coat and a dark blue knee length skirt and a pale blue silk shirt. A woman whose form and posture were as familiar as her own. It was impossible, unthinkable, ridiculous and not happening. It simply was not happening. No magic could do this. Not even True Love's Kiss. Regina couldn't breathe, she couldn't think. She couldn't hear, but could read the other woman's scarlet lips as she spoke to Henry.
"Why aren't you in school, Dear?"
She couldn't see Henry's lips but knew his answer.
Then familiar dark brown eyes turned to look at her and Regina felt every bit of blood drain from her face.
No, she was dreaming or halucinating, or seeing ghosts, because there was no way she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. The dead did not come back to life. She had all but sold her sould trying to find a way to bring back Daniel only to find again and again that it was impossible. Black dots started to dance in her eyes and she felt a strange buzzing in her limbs. She could not deny what she was seeing. She could not comprehend it, but it had happened. She was sitting in the middle of the Diner as if it was her everyday routine. She had never even, Regina thought vaugly, been inside of Granny's.
"Mother?"
Cora Mills, alive and in the flesh, stood up from her stool, abandoning her tea cup and walking towards her, concern etched into her face. Regina could read, only barely, the writing on her white coat.
Cora Mills, MD. The thing that caught her attention and drew a hysterical laugh out of her lips was what was written underneath the name, though: Head of Cardiology.
This was not happening. It simply wasn't real. Henry had never met her mother, and Regina thanked whatever God would still listen to her for it. She had sworn that she would never hurt Henry, and Cora would have definitely hurt him. It was her way, her heartless approach to being a mother. She would have cut her sweet boy down with words, magic, carefully placed bruises and cuts and she had refused to let that happen. She had never, ever, wanted Henry to grow up the way she had. When she had returned to her mother's side, she had been conflicted. She hadn't been sure what she was going to do, or how she was going to protect him from his own grandmother. She loved her mother, but feared her. It had been one of the endless complexities of her life. One of the impossible problems that she hadn't discovered an answer for.
She couldn't breathe and her head was full of fast, panicked thoughts and a deafening roar. She wanted Emma. That thought, added to the already frantic mess of something too close to panic for comfort about her mother, was simply too much to process.
Evil Queens do not faint.
Mayors do not faint.
Regina Mills fell into a dead faint in the middle of Granny's Diner.
AN2: No, that is most certainly not a joke. Cora Mills is very much alive and very much a heart surgeon. Also yes, everyone stares at Ruby's legs. It's practically a law in Storybrooke. Everyone still with me?