Magic is real here. Here is a fairytale land. The boy I gave birth to is being raised by an evil queen. It's been her mantra all night, the last words she'd thought last night and the first she contemplates this morning.
She's always been quick to adapt- her childhood and pregnancy in prison allowed nothing less- but today she's still reeling from last night, shaking and staring at stone walls and wondering how any of this can be true.
She awakens in a spare room that's probably only a step up from a dungeon, the walls bare and her blanket thin and smelling vaguely of sheep. The doors are locked from the outside and when the Huntsman comes to collect her, she's still sitting up in her cot dressed in the grey shift she'd been given, staring out the window in a sort of dazed bemusement.
"Snow gave me clothing for you," he says, holding a pile out to her.
Emma looks at him- really looks, for the first time, since last night she'd barely seen more than his back leading her up corridors higher and higher in the castle until she hadn't been entirely sure that she wasn't about to be pushed out of a tower. He's tall, bearded, and seems vaguely irritated.
"Sorry you got stuck with babysitting duty," she ventures, accepting the clothing. Snow has given her a dress that she stares at with horror before moving it to find an overlong tunic and a pair of pants similar to Henry's from last night. Much more acceptable. "You'd probably rather be…hunting, I guess."
He lets out a raspy laugh from deep in his throat. "What I'd rather isn't relevant anymore. I belong to the queen. And I failed both her and her son last night, so I pay the price."
He turns brusquely. "Get dressed if you want to leave this room today."
The door slams behind him and Emma regards the clothing again, repeating her mantra in a whisper as she sniffs the tunic and catches another farm animal scent. But the cloth is cool against her skin and surprisingly soft, and when she's fully dressed she feels like maybe she wouldn't be terrible in a fight in this outfit. The queen might have magic that can overpower Emma with a command, but she's still determined to be ready if it ever comes down to fists and kicks again.
She's stretching her limbs, testing her reach with semi-restrictive material holding her knees and shoulders back, when she hears the door open behind her. She keeps stretching, waiting for the Huntsman to speak and feeling his eyes on her as she punches outward again and again.
He doesn't say anything, and after a few minutes she's feeling bold enough to ask, "So, can I have a tour of the castle today?" Armories, escape routes, wherever Henry is hidden away today- those are her priorities, though she isn't naive enough to tell this to the man who's said so frankly that he belongs to the queen.
He snorts. "I'm not a guide. Tour it yourself."
Well.
She walks down every hallway, checks every open door that the Huntsman doesn't stop her from entering, and climbs every staircase she can, memorizing the layout of the castle as she does. She isn't ready to leave yet, not until she sees Henry again, but she's also cautious enough to plan her escape route in advance. Regina doesn't seem the kind of queen who'd let her go with a wave and a goodbye.
The bottommost floors are more like catacombs than a basement, and she wonders how much of the town they snake out under. She doesn't explore them in depth, not when she hits a closed door in the hall and the Huntsman gives her a knowing look and suggests that they return upstairs.
She returns to the library in hopes of seeing Henry there, but neither he nor Snow are sitting at the table today. Instead, a blond man is leaning over the laptop, his brow furrowed as he types.
"I didn't know the queen lets anyone use her computer." It's meant to be a murmur to the Huntsman, but it's loud and accusing in the silence of the library.
The man looks up with a sneer. "I am not merely anyone," he snaps, straightening. "I am the palace physician and Her Majesty requires that I be educated in all matters of illness and health." He eyes her. "And you are…"
"An outsider," the Huntsman cuts in, putting a hand on Emma's arm to steer her out of the room. The last thing she sees when she follows his lead is the doctor's face turned suddenly thoughtful, and the whisper of a response.
"Then we have that in common."
She asks the Huntsman for clarification, but he shrugs uncomfortably. "She crosses worlds and finds new men to do her bidding. I won't be the one to ask her about it." He raises an eyebrow, his eyes sparkling with what she can only describe after seeing it all morning as morbid amusement. "Why don't you try?"
She narrows her eyes, unimpressed. "And you? She got you from around here, didn't she?"
"I was given an mission I couldn't carry out. She took my…she took me."
This she remembers, vague as her knowledge of fairytales is. "She sent you to kill Snow White."
He startles, something in his face closing and his expression guarded again. "Yes." He quickens his pace, and she trails after him, not ready to cap this discussion just yet. The Huntsman is her only guide to this world now, no matter what he says, and she needs all the help she can get. Knowledge, in this case, might be the only thing that'll help her survive.
"You said the queen took you. What does that mean?" The Huntsman moves even faster, and she hurries behind him, matching his pace as he storms on. "How could she force you to work for her?"
He stops at last, so quickly that she nearly crashes into him. "She took my heart from my chest," he says. "She took it captive, and as long as it is hers, so am I." He walks to the railing that overlooks the main hall where she'd entered the castle a day before. "I gave Snow her life and the queen took mine in revenge." Emma moves to stand beside him, and watches his eyes soften. "But Snow still lives."
Emma stares down at the statues that dot the room below, at the guard who stands at the door and the elaborate decorations on the wall. "Are you two…uh…?"
He laughs, acerbic again. "No. But she was good and selfless, and as long as she lives my sacrifice was not in vain." Then he's silent again, and nothing she says can prompt him to speak.
She walks down the staircase and he doesn't follow, though she can feel his gaze on her from above and she wonders at his motivations. He isn't a willing servant to the queen- does Regina have any, really? The doctor, maybe, whom she trusts with their only connection to the outside world. Certainly not Snow, whose story mirrors the one she knows up until the victory over the queen.
And how then did this all end, with the Huntsman a servant and Snow a tutor, with the queen established in her little kingdom with no other contenders? And more pressing, how does Henry tie in to all this? What kind of plan must she have for him?
She wanders the hall, rolling her eyes at the guard who draws a sword every time she nears. She wonders if he'd been punished for letting her in yesterday, and almost immediately feels a pang, thinking of the Huntsman and wondering if this guard, too, is as caged as the rest of them.
Though they seem innocuous from far, the statues are the most unnerving decorations in the room. The first one she sees is a man dressed in tight pants and a shirt that looks almost modern in comparison with what she's seen here so far, his mouth open in a scream and his eyes wide in terror. The next looks nearly as terrified, a woman with sunglasses perched at the top of her head and a…tank top?
She swallows, a dark suspicion chilling her, and hurries to the next. It's a stone statue of what must be only a teenager, his eyes tightly shut and his lips pressed together, and the detail is fine enough to make her stiffen, eyes narrowed and her heart pounding as she reads the name of the band on his t-shirt.
"You will be quite the addition to my hall." She remembers Regina's eyes, dark and threatening as she had prepared to do…something? Something Emma understands now, looking at all these relics of the past years that Storybrooke has been in Maine, at all these people who had stumbled across the town and been petrified to stone for their misstep. She would have been installed in this hall by now too had it not been for Henry and Snow's intervention. She might still be.
She moves from statue to statue, suddenly desperate to memorize their faces, to envision their impotent struggle as Regina moved ever closer, to imagine their terror and confusion in that moment. She can't afford to feel for them but she can't seem to stop, either, can't keep herself from aching for these poor people who probably had so much more to live for than she ever had and now have nothing at all.
She pauses at the last statue, standing tall in the space between the two staircases upstairs, and sees the differences there at once. This one is dressed in armor and holds a sword out, a vision from a fairytale rather than a hapless tourist. And while the others are all terrified, crying out for help or surrendered to despair, the final statue's face is almost satisfied, as though whatever comes next is meaningless. He stares straight ahead and there's a tiny smile curving his lips, and Emma is drawn to him in ways she can't explain.
"His name is Charming," comes a soft voice from her left, and when Emma turns, Snow is approaching, her eyes on the statue's face.
"What happened?" There's no mistaking the love with which Snow regards the statue, in the way she traces its features with one cupped palm.
Snow shakes her head. "He fell…Regina took him in those last minutes before the curse set in." She smiles, half-hearted. "I suppose it was a relief to see him here, once I recovered from the shock of it. I'd feared he was dead."
"I'm sorry." There's nothing more she can say, and she feels more and more distant and invested in this world at the same time. Prince Charming, a stone sculpture of final defiance within a town that shouldn't exist. Had it only been a day since she'd been sitting in her apartment, alone in the world on her birthday? She's still alone, but here there are people who've cared- who care about each other and the greater good more than the cynic in her would have accepted ever before. But this is a land with magic, and now she can believe in a huntsman or a prince who would choose to fight for what he believed in. "This curse…it's why you're here, right? Here in Maine."
"Here in the castle," Snow adds, stepping away from the statue. "We were…we had won. She was exiled, we were all safe at last, I was expecting a child…" She touches her stomach for a moment, almost unconsciously. "She took away our happy endings and built a world around herself. And we've been frozen in time for almost three decades since, locked into this castle or the woods and living under her thumb." She sighs heavily, and Emma's afraid to ask what had happened to the child.
Snow offers the information anyway. "The baby… we sent her away from Regina, out of this eternal hell. Rumpelstiltskin had claimed that she was the savior, that she could break the curse once she came back."
"But she didn't," Emma guesses, and Snow stares at her, inscrutable.
"That remains to be seen."
Then the baby hadn't returned yet, might never return, and Emma swallows, more acquainted with that particular level of pain today than she had ever been before. "How is Henry today?" she asks, glancing up at the Huntsman to see if he's on guard at the question. He's looking past them, out the long rectangular windows that look out on the castle grounds.
Snow smiles, old tragedy replaced with understanding. "He's happy you're here. His mother has forbidden that he leave his room today, but his spirits are high and he can't stop talking about you."
Emma shakes her head. "Is he even aware of what he's brought on both of us?"
Snow reaches out, laying a hand on her arm. "He's still young, and he believes in happy endings so fervently. He doesn't understand the risk in bringing you here."
"No, I guess not." And she can't begrudge him for seeking her out, now that she's met his mother and knows just a fraction of what he must know about her. She remembers huddled in assorted foster homes as a child, dreaming about her parents coming back at last and sweeping her away to somewhere where she belonged. She'd been naïve and optimistic, and it had taken the world knocking her down time and again before she stopped believing.
Even now, there's a part of her that's equally determined that Henry should never suffer that.
She's sitting in the library at sunset, flipping through a book without focusing on the words. She eyes the computer for what must be the third time in the past half hour, but this time she ventures, "If I use it, will you stop me?"
The Huntsman ignores her, which she takes as permission. She considers her situation. Her phone had died last night when she'd tried to make a call, and this is her only connection to the outside world. On the other hand, who's out there that she can contact, anyway? There had been a statue of a state trooper in the main hall, taunting her with the reminder that magic is beyond the law. No one's waiting for her, no one's going to come after her. She's on her own, and the Internet won't spare her.
She slumps in her seat at that realization, freed from her to hover mockingly at the edge of her consciousness, a constant reminder of how little she matters. Of how alone she is in the world.
Here, at least, there's a little boy who can't stop talking about her, who she can't stop thinking about. Maybe I'm better off as a prisoner of an evil queen, she muses, and smirks at the idea.
Said evil queen comes striding into the library a half hour later in a whirl of purple velvet and lace, and when she sees Emma, her smile widens into something dark and predatory. "Well, well, well. Hello, Miss Swan. I hope you've been enjoying my palace and its…amenities." Her eyes glitter, and Emma is suddenly certain that the queen has heard all about her time in the hall.
She forces herself to smile. "It's a nice castle," she agrees, smiling back coolly. "I'm glad Henry's grown up with so much…space."
"Indeed." Regina walks closer, and Emma tenses, but instead the other woman reclines on the seat opposite the one where Emma's sitting, the queen a picture of confident superiority and grace. "He has lacked for nothing. He's been given an education fit for a prince, he trains with the best instructors with his bow, and I've also ensured that he be prepared in the event that we ever find ourselves leaving the kingdom." She nods to the laptop, almost casual. "Although it doesn't seem like I'll be run out of town by an angry mob anytime soon." She laughs. It sounds cold and artificial and makes Emma's hair stand on end.
"What about other kids?" she asks when it seems apparent that Regina has nothing more to say.
"Hm?"
"Other kids. Friends," Emma clarifies. "Someone his own age to play with. Does he have anyone?" Regina stares at her blankly, and Emma can't stop herself from continuing. "Look, you can go through the motions of whatever you think a kid needs, but Henry's going to have some needs that you can't fulfill by keeping him inside and away from everyone else."
Regina's face darkens. "Miss Swan, I love my son. I give him everything his heart desires, and if you're trying to undermine me-"
"You locked him in his room and tried to turn his birth mother to stone in front of him!" she says, incredulous. "If that's how love works, I'm glad no one ever loved me!"
Regina sits up, leaning forward. "Do not presume to tell me how to love my son," she hisses. "You know nothing." Her lip curls. "Did you think you could meet him for a few hours and know him? How much do you think he knows about you? He talks about you as though you're some kind of savior, come here to rescue him from the monotony of princehood, but he knows nothing about you." She stands, bending forward to look Emma in the eye. "I have done my research, Miss Swan. I know enough about you to crush Henry's faith in you in an instant."
Emma remembers a young girl, staring at a pregnancy test in a prison deep in Arizona, and she's afraid for the boy with fragile dreams and a cruel mother. "You wouldn't do that to him."
It's a wild hope more than anything, an optimism that nothing about Regina deserves, but it's only a moment before Regina blinks and shakes her head, stepping back so Emma can rise. "I suppose there are simpler ways to keep you under control," the queen agrees.
She strikes so swiftly that Emma doesn't have a chance to defend herself before Regina's fingers are sinking into her chest. And then she feels…
Different, something dark and intimate within her, and it's cruel and painful but there's something almost like warmth under the icy cold of the queen's touch, a perverse sense of being needed, being penetrated for her pure essence by another, and her head drops forward against Regina's forehead, overcome by the sensation as her heart is stolen.
Is this how this should feel? she wonders, inane in the face of destruction. Her heart is throbbing in Regina's grasp and she can feel the hand contracting and expanding, in-out-in-out-in-out with every nerve in her body. Should it last this long? There's a sheen of sweat covering Regina's forehead now and the other woman's hand is still inside her, pulling, pulling, as the warmth grows stronger and overcomes them both-
-And Regina is thrown backward by the force of it as something white and pure erupts from Emma, taking them both by surprise, and Emma clutches her chest and gasps for breath as Regina smashes against a glass window headfirst and lands in a heap on the ground in a shower of glass.
She's torn between What the hell was that? and Oh god, I killed Henry's mother before she can move again, the white energy still an afterimage in her eyes as she charges forward. "Regina!" The other woman is moaning, still out of it, and Emma drops down to inspect the damage. "Get the doctor!" she barks out to the Huntsman, kneeling over the woman.
"You're a fool," Regina mumbles, her eyes opening. There's a piece of glass embedded in her forehead that has sliced a trail across one eyelid, and the blood is running down into them. Emma dabs at it with the edge of her tunic, trying to stop the flow. "I'm going to kill you, and you spend your last few moments alive here instead of running?"
Emma stares at her. "So, what, this is your plan? Pretend that I tried to hurt you and call it self-defense so Henry won't hate you?"
"Push that cloth harder," the queen orders. "And take the glass out. What, were you just going to keep it in there? And now I know that you're one of Rumpelstiltskin's agents, of course I'm going to kill you." She grabs Emma's wrist, flattening it against the side of her face. "Tell me, how did he find you? What did he promise you to betray Henry? What was that magic you used?"
"What?" She focuses on the wound, rather than the woman threatening her. "I didn't do that magic thing! And you were trying to take my heart!"
"Well, I didn't stop myself," Regina retorts, and Emma would have laughed had the situation not been so dire. The queen is almost humanized like this, still regal and commanding but more snippy than genuinely terrifying. "What enchantment do you have there that your heart is so protected?"
"Enchantment," Emma repeats. She presses one hand over Regina's face and yanks the glass with the other. "I made it into Crazy Town last night. No way I'm already all enchanted!"
Regina runs a hand over the cut, and it fades away to smooth skin in an instant. "Don't play the fool, Miss Swan. It's hardly becoming."
"I didn't do anything," Emma protests. "Which is more than I can say for you!" She rubs her forehead, frustration and confusion and adrenaline combining into a doozy of a headache. When she looks up, Regina's sitting up, reaching for her heart again.
"Ah!" The queen sags in the next moment, and only then can Emma see the shards of glass sticking out of her dress like spikes, some deep enough that they must be injuring her with every movement.
She's about to order the queen onto her back (and there's a part of her that's vaguely enthralled by that concept, but she attributes it more to the dark corset teasing her than any genuine attraction to the paragon of cruelty in front of her) when the doctor arrives, the Huntsman behind him looking very amused at the two women glaring at each other on the floor.
"I will receive you in my quarters," Regina says, and she somehow gathers herself and rises while Emma watches her dark gown darken further as the glass draws more blood. She tosses a single scathing glance backward before she leaves, and Emma glowers back. "You, I will deal with tomorrow. Take her back to her quarters, Huntsman."
The doors to the library slam closed behind her, and when she voices the one question she still can, the Huntsman has no response.
"What did I do?"