She dreams of horses without riders that night, running wild around Regina in a dervish of motion, blocking her from view and protecting and attacking her with every leap forward. She struggles to get through, to reach the queen, but the horses throw her back each time. When she finally makes it to the center, she touches her hand to Regina's outstretched fist for an instant before Regina hurls her back, far past the horses and into painful, painful wakefulness.
Fairy dust might wreak unexpected havoc with her sobriety but it still packs a hell of a punch in the morning, and Emma leans back in her bed, applying pressure to her temples and groaning. She hasn't felt this terrible in months, since the last time she'd surrendered to loneliness and oblivion one Boston night, and the hangover hurts nearly as much as it did when she'd been all alone.
An unfamiliar smell hits her as she opens her eyes, and she has just enough time to scramble across the room to the impossibly anachronistic bathroom (but this is a fairytale kingdom, and she knows better than to question the impossibilities involved) and gag into the toilet. She cups water into her palms and drinks, quelling her raging stomach, and staggers back to the tray by her bed that had set her off.
There's bread and cheese and an odd-looking fish on a plate, a folded note tucked under the glass of water beside it. She downs the cup immediately and groans again at the headache when she swallows. No more drinking here, she swears, as though the rest of the night hadn't been warning enough.
She'd made a fool of herself in front of Regina and possibly tried to…attack her, her mind supplies, remembering her head dropping instead to rest on the queen's shoulder, and she shivers at the memory of closeness and a spicy scent, heavy and tempting against the smooth curve of her neck. This breakfast must be a warning, the note her punishment, and she opens it as she nibbles on the bread and squints at the words scrawled upon it.
Bottom level, third corridor. Eight knocks. To destroy her.
To destroy her. The words are enough to start her head pounding again. There's only one her that she'd be beckoned to destroy, though the word choice is curious and discomfiting in its harshness.
Her mind wanders, remembering the sprawling bottom floor of the castle and the locked area she'd hit during her explorations. This certainly isn't a message from Regina at all, but one smuggled in by another source, an invitation she tucks away under her pillow for now. The only message here from the queen is breakfast away from her and Henry.
And in that instant of understanding she feels trapped inside the room; the walls claustrophobic, closing in around her, the closed door beckoning, and she starts hammering at it the moment it doesn't open. "Dammit, Regina, let me out!" she shouts, sending new waves of pain to her still delicate head. She's been free in the castle since that first day, even with an escort, and she can't bear the thought of even this elaborate prison narrowed down to only a single room. Not again, not like it was back then. Not again. "Regina!" she shouts again.
The door opens. "Would you keep it down?" the Huntsman pokes his head in, annoyed. "If you think Her Majesty can hear you up here, you're even more of a fool than I'd thought."
"Oh. You." The Huntsman is her guard once more, it seems. Well, it could be worse than just an escort.
He enters the room at her unenthusiastic acknowledgment, leaning comfortably against the wall next to the door. "The queen has had you confined to quarters after last night. Don't get excited, I can't take you anywhere."
Ah. So it is worse. "She was mad, huh." Emma hadn't seen her after she'd left her near the castle grounds, just hurried up to her room with the flush of embarrassment and ale still hot on her cheeks and collapsed into bed.
"Livid." The Huntsman shakes his head. "You're really terrible at escaping, aren't you? You make it into town and decide to stay around, and then stagger back to the castle. Do you even want to leave?"
"I wasn't trying to leave!" she protests. "Henry's still here, and I'm not going to…" She stops. What can she do here? She can't steal Henry away in the night, safely whisking him off to the real world. Magic and the evil queen that dominates this kingdom aside, she's no mother. And she wonders if Henry would even adjust to the world outside fairy tales, even to be free of a mother he does seem to care for.
When she looks up, the Huntsman is eyeing her dubiously. "You're sacrificing yourself for the boy. How much longer do you think Regina will keep you alive?" But he softens, just a bit, and there's compassion in his gaze. "You do have a good heart," he murmurs.
She thinks of Snow White and just how potent a good heart can be to this Huntsman-turned-hostage, and decides it best to change the tide of the conversation. "Regina actually came to the tavern to get me. So I don't think I'd have made it far anyway, huh?"
"Ha!" It's a full-fledged laugh of surprise from him, an outburst that brightens his face. "Did she? She seemed just as startled as the rest of us when she emerged from her rooms and heard that you'd returned." His eyes gleam with bitter amusement. "She does get protective over her toys."
"Not her toy," Emma tosses back, turning to glance out the window. In the distance, she can see Daniel walking with a horse, his gait unsteady in the lumpy dirt.
"I've seen how she treats you." The Huntsman counters with a shot of his own, flying straight into his intended target. "She may not have your heart, but you're her toy all the same. And one that she's punishing now." He turns to leave, pausing in front of the open door. "You're better off without any of this." His voice is gentle again for the moment, and under his brusqueness Emma hears the plea from someone who understands all too well.
She scowls morosely at his back, wondering how much longer she'll be able to take this. He's wrong. She isn't a toy, to be brought out and delighted over. She's a possession, a prisoner, something Regina will keep until it no longer suits her and Emma is discarded as easily as a lesson for Henry might cost. Emma has been too complacent until now, too readily accepting of both their fates and now, she's forgotten the threat Regina still poses.
She hurts to think of Henry losing anything, to see his earnest affection gone and him hardened as his adoptive mother had once been years before. There's too much of the mother Snow had described in Regina, too much of a need for power and control for her child's own good. And if Regina deems Emma Henry's Daniel, a sacrifice to age him into a hardened monarch, they'll all be lost.
When she stares out the window again, Daniel is gone and the other subjects of her thoughts are walking together in the gardens that surround the castle, Regina gesticulating and Henry absorbed in his thoughts. He looks at her with barely contained resentment, a child scorning his mother for a thousand evils known, and Emma can almost forget her own resentment and wariness at the way Regina reaches to embrace her son and he pulls away, snapping something angrily at her.
It might be self-absorbed to assume that this is about Emma, but her suspicions are confirmed in a moment when Regina raises her gaze unconsciously toward her window and Henry follows, the latter's face lighting up and the former darkening even more. She waves, sheepish, and manages a smile for Henry. He lifts a hand to her, less in greeting than longing. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.
And it's Regina that Emma's watching, Regina who watches Henry as Henry watches Emma and only Emma sees the bare anguish on her rival's face as Henry strains for the prodigal parent over the one beside him.
"Emma!" The voice comes as a surprise but not an unwelcome one, and Emma jerks out of her musings to smile at Snow.
She's been sitting in darkness for most of the day, pushing terrible thoughts from her mind and smoothing over the mysterious note in her hands a thousand times and watching the shadow of the castle move across the fields beyond it. The Huntsman had brought her a meal at midday but hadn't stayed for long, uncomfortable with her cell just as she is. Not that she can have much sympathy for the one tasked to stand outside her room. "How'd you get past the Huntsman?"
Snow winks. "If anyone asks, he left his position to dissolve a skirmish between some servants downstairs." She sits down beside Emma, lighting the lamp next to her bed. "I think he feels for you."
She can't resent him, either, the prisoner with a cell around his own heart. "Thank him for me when you go, will you? I thought I'd be bored to tears here all day."
She doesn't expand on that, or on just how close she's been to shutting out the world again, like she had once before. But Snow is nothing if not insightful, the gentle spirit who sees much more than Emma had meant to reveal. "You really don't like being locked in, do you?" There's an understanding in her voice, and Emma wonders just what Snow had done in the castle before Henry had needed a tutor.
She hesitates. "I…I wound up in prison once. On the outside." There aren't words to describe what had happened to a seventeen-year-old girl who'd gone from promises of love and freedom to the cold reality of a minimum-security jail cell. And yet words tumble out regardless as Snow sits silently, her face unguarded and her pain for her friend acute upon it.
She remembers the days that had dragged by alone, with the bare minimum of human interaction and the knowledge that all she'd lost was a sham of a future. And then she'd discovered that she was pregnant and there had been weeks of hopelessness in which her cell had become a nightmare, an empty cavern where a thousand dreams were all stamped out by her own realism and she'd known that she would never be suited to mother that child. Where the life growing within her had been a prison of its own in that constant reminder of a baby she was going to doom to a childhood like hers.
"I'd never even thought of adoption, did you know?" she admits. "I'd been just as willing to give Henry up to the foster system because I knew that even that would be better than me."
"Emma…"
"And then the social worker in our prison got a call from someone highly placed on the East Coast interested in my baby, and I'd jumped at the opportunity. I hadn't realized she'd be an evil queen." She smiles without mirth.
"Rumpelstiltskin engineered the whole thing, actually," Snow says softly. "He retained his power as part of the curse and I suppose he thought he owed Regina for it. And he does honor his debts."
Her skin crawls at the mention of the imp, the memories of how he'd looked at her back in the woods still unnerving. "Why me?" she wonders, leaning back against the wall. Her shoulder touches Snow's as it tenses. "Why some random prisoner across the country? That's pretty far to go from Maine."
Snow shrugs, but her face shutters for the first time, her sympathy replaced with something far more cautious. "Maybe it was easier, or he wanted someone far away so there'd be no risk of you coming to our world." She inhales, turning away to stare at the wall. "Or maybe he knew you were special."
Emma laughs. "I'm not special."
"You're…" Snow stops talking and draws in her knees to her chin, closing in on herself as though she's thought better of it. "You've been through so much," she whispers finally. "And you were so alone."
Emma shifts, uncomfortable at the pity in her friend's voice. "Not always. I did okay."
"You came out of it so strong!" And now there are tears in her eyes, and they're making Emma's own eyes water too at the fierce affection in them. "You've endured and you've lost so much and you're here and you're wonderful." Snow's voice breaks on the last word and Emma wraps an arm around her, pulling her close. She comprehends too late why this is a topic that must be just as painful for the other woman.
"You had to give up your daughter."
Snow trembles under her. "I was so selfish."
"Don't say that!" Snow had had far better reasons than Emma, far nobler than the self-doubt and fear that had guided Emma every step of the way. Until that child had been in her arms and for a split second she'd wondered- just wondered- if she could raise this fragile creature after all, keep him as her own. She'd been glad after that she'd already signed the papers and couldn't renege on the deal in that moment when anything had seemed possible.
"I was." Snow shakes her head violently. "I thought only about the curse and the savior, breaking it for us all. I thought about losing the girl I'd wanted so dearly, that I'd never thought I'd be able to have. When it all happened too soon, I never considered the life that baby would lead without parents in an alien world." She chokes back a sob. "I never thought about her!"
Emma pats her back awkwardly, struggling for something to say beyond platitudes, something that can make this right. She's never felt as guilty about giving Henry up as she has these last few weeks, seeing the world he's become a part of, loving mother- albeit evil queen- or not. Old regrets have swarmed up, old litanies of if you'd been stronger- better, ready to be a mother- he'd have been happier reproving her with his every frown, with each moment that had been less than perfect for her surrendered child. "Hey, hey. Look at me." Snow turns to stare at her, her eyes red-bruised with tears. "They found me on the side of the road when I was a newborn. And I turned out okay, right?" She forces a rueful smile onto her face. "If you forget all the stuff I just told you about prison and unplanned pregnancy and the foster system. Your daughter's going to be back someday, I'm sure."
The savior is dead. The savior is a myth. The shouts at the tavern had been of faith long gone, fairy tales robbed of their happy endings, but Snow's lips part at her assurance and she lets out a sigh, her tears stilled at last. "She'll save us all," she agrees, and there's so much blind faith in her that Emma almost believes it, too.
The Huntsman is the rude awakening to her growing confidence, later that night. "She clings to happy endings because she knows nothing else," he says when he brings in dinner. There's enough for them both there, Emma notices, and indeed he takes his seat on the single chair in the room to eat with her. "Her story was always meant for that happily ever after."
"And yours was always meant to be the casualty to ensure it." Emma doesn't mean for it to come out quite so frankly, but her words satisfy the Huntsman. She's learning that he craves the same honesty about his situation as he presents to the world, and sympathy isn't quite as well received as the truth is. "And you still don't hate her."
"We're all the queen's victims in the end," the Huntsman reminds her, and Emma remembers the note she'd found with her breakfast, the directions within. If he'd slipped it there when a servant had brought up the food, he hasn't mentioned it all day. And as much as he hates the queen, she knows he's been forced into a loyalty beyond sabotage.
Still, though… "Her, you hate."
The Huntsman shrugs, picking up a piece of chicken and shoving it into his mouth. "Being without your heart doesn't allow for passion like love or hate. I know where the blame falls."
Emma leans forward, her brow furrowing. "Wait, so are you saying that-"
The door opens and they both jerk, staring up at the intruder. "Well," Regina drawls, making her way inside to regard them. "When I'd ordered your food upstairs, Huntsman, I'd only wanted to ensure that you had no reason to leave your guard again. But this is rather cozy." Her lips are smiling but her eyes are hard as flint, flashing at whatever perceived offense they'd engaged in. "Get out."
The Huntsman rises, obedient as ordered, and Regina waves a hand and slams the door shut before he makes it fully through the doorway. Emma can hear his grunt of pain from beyond the room.
She sighs, irritation rising already. "Calm down, Regina, he was just-"
"Do not presume to tell me how to reprimand my own servants!" Regina snaps, stepping forward to glare at Emma. She's in every corner of the room, pacing with long, deceptively casual strides as she circles Emma like a cat stalking its prey. "I ordered you confined. Not open for guests, and not distracting my son when I'm speaking to him!"
"I don't even think he knew where I was until you decided to look for me," Emma counters, taking another step forward. There'd been a time not too long ago when she'd been rightfully afraid of Regina, but her careless imprisonment has galled Emma enough that she doesn't care right now. She wants to strike back at someone, to punish Regina in some way like the other woman has done so easily to her.
Regina's hand flashes out to slap her, but Emma catches her arm, tightening her grip around the muscles in Regina's wrist so the queen's hand can only flail uselessly toward her. "Let go of me," she hisses.
Emma shoves her and Regina stumbles backward, tripping over the chair and toppling down to the ground. "Don't touch me," she manages before the queen is back on her feet, a hand at Emma's throat thrusting her backward onto her bed.
"Allow me to make this clear." Regina looms over her. "You've been given far too much freedom here by virtue of the joy you brought my son, but no longer," she spits out. "You are nothing to me. Do you understand?" She punctuates the statement by tightening her grip on Emma's throat, and Emma kicks her legs out from under her in response. Regina lets go immediately, catching herself before she can crash into Emma. Her hands are splayed out on either side of Emma's torso on the bed, and unwelcome thoughts are flitting back into Emma's mind at their position and Regina's body inches from hers.
"You mean nothing," Regina repeats, her breath hot against Emma's face. The spicy scent is back, as wicked as the queen who wears it, distracting Emma even in her ire. "And if you think there's some second Regina, a kind and benevolent ruler lurking beneath the surface, you're sorely mistaken. I'm no weak soul craving redemption." She laughs cruelly at the thought of it, a hair longer than is natural. "And you, Emma Swan…" Her head dips lower, her eyes tracing the curve of Emma's lips with such heat that Emma trembles under her gaze. "You would never be the one to find that fairy tale, even if it did exist. You are nothing to me," she says again, one hand leaving the bed to rest against Emma's cheek in a facsimile of tenderness.
It's perverse and twisted and wrong. And Emma's unbearably aroused. She's breathing hard- they both are- and she can feel her face tingling wherever Regina's palm touches it, set burning alive by the nearness of this malicious, evil queen. When she's completely honest with herself, she knows that it isn't the freedom of the grounds or the time with Henry that's made her so complacent. It's the humanity she's been searching for in her son's mother, and it's been her undoing until now.
And she's suddenly certain that it isn't just her who's become overly complacent. "Then why," she whispers as Regina's hand moves from cruelty to tenderness with its prolonged contact. "Are you here now?"
Regina stares at her silently, dipping lower with every moment until Emma's words register. She jerks back as quickly as she'd swept in for the hunt, her lips curling in disgust- with herself or her quarry, Emma doesn't know- and she's gone in a cloud of smoke in the next moment, leaving Emma alone again, slumped over boneless on her bed.