They've built a house of cards since that night, a fragile peace in them both that carries over for days after. Emma struggles to be content for the first time since she'd found herself invested in Regina, certain at last that there's genuine desire to change on the queen's part and finally able to assuage her doubts. And Regina is more difficult to read than ever, quiet and introspective and shakier when they're alone but with a warmth that eases Emma.
Still, though, there's a cynicism of decades of disappointment that Emma can't shake even when Regina's wrapped in her arms, an awareness of Regina will let you down in time that silences the blind optimism that struggles to emerge. There's something about this place that feeds the part of her that she'd kept hidden for so long by necessity, that makes her believe in happy endings and people who can change and magic, not the kind that's all purple sparks and power but the kind that can thrust a lonely woman into a castle full of lonely people and bring them all together. And it's more work than ever to warn herself that human nature is the same no matter which world she's in, no matter how much she's come to trust the people around her.
She remembers Tallahassee, remembers two years spent wandering a city that had been the source of more despair than anywhere else for her. Remembers what had drawn her to the place to begin with, remembers being seventeen and in love and believing in a future for the first time. Remembers how hard she'd fallen for that dream and how much it had injured to fall again, plummeting from hope to despair as prison bars and her own body had bound her.
She's been resisting having wholehearted faith in Regina for so long, been seeking protection for her heart in the resistance's plots and in the anger of the people and in the persistent logic in her own mind. She's been so afraid.
And now that Regina's voiced regrets, now that actions and words are piling up toward a someday redemption, Emma can feel the shuttered box that encases her heart slipping open, leaving her exposed and vulnerable and utterly terrified. She clings to her cynicism because experience has taught her that it will be right someday, and she doesn't dare to acknowledge that she might believe otherwise now.
That she might believe in Regina.
There are three guards today by Emma's insistence, situated around the children's lake and wary of danger, but the kids pay them no mind. These kids adapt better to new situations than their parents would, and though there are a few wary glances at Regina and Emma across the road, today Henry is accepted right back into their circles without any ceremony.
"I wonder if there's some kind of organized schooling for these kids," Emma says thoughtfully. "Some place Henry can go every day for a few hours to hang out with them that isn't so…open."
She glances around for what must be the fiftieth time today, and Regina presses her lips together in amusement. "You're on edge today, Emma."
Her first inclination is to lie, but she can't think of a good reason why she should. "Snow told me about what…what happened when Henry was a baby."
"Ah." Regina straightens a bit, peering around in a perfect reproduction of Emma's own motion. "Yes, that would do it." She frowns. "What exactly did she tell you?"
And because there's no sense in them both dwelling on the danger beyond reasonable caution, Emma smirks and says, "She says you hugged her."
Regina blinks, startled, and visibly composes herself. "I am certain I did nothing of the sort," she says haughtily. "Snow is living in a fantasy world, as always."
"Yeah, I'll bet."
A branch snaps off the tree above them with a puff of purple smoke and bounces down to the ground. "I really hate that woman," Regina mutters.
"Mm-hm." Emma reaches out to pick up the stick and poke Regina with it. It flares white-hot against her fingers in retaliation. "Ah!" She drops it and sticks her fingers in her mouth, sucking at the burn.
Regina takes Emma's hand in hers, pressing the burnt fingertips to her lips and easing the pain. "Have you had enough?" she asks smugly.
Emma ignores her and turns her attention back to the branch, now lying harmlessly on the ground. She touches it with her other hand, willing it to be hot again, to catch fire like the spell book had in the library. But it remains cool to the touch, still and useless.
Regina's fingers tighten around her hand. "It's about emotion," she murmurs, resignation in her tone. "You're not going to be able to access magic without anger."
"You do," Emma points out, focusing on the branch anew. "Unless you really are just furious all the time."
Sadness flits behind Regina's eyes. "For a long time, I was." She clears her throat. "I have never known someone who didn't use rage and pain to find their magical center. Emma…"
"There has to be another way." She struggles to recall how she'd been feeling the second time her magic had burst forth with abandon, remembers skin on skin and her legs tight around Regina and the intoxication of the fairy dust and Regina's magic joining together to swell within her, bringing her to-
White fire swells at the end the branch and she falls back against Regina, gasping, the magic undulating from her chest outward to her hands, sparking all over her body in little pinpricks of pain.
And then there are hands massaging her temples and Regina's voice, clear and strong through the fuzziness of pain and magic. "Focus, Emma," she urges. "Direct your power. Concentrate."
She shuts her eyes and at Regina's coaxing, imagines the magic flowing through her, smooth and energizing instead of the mess of knots it feels like now, and she's startled when it works. Her body is thrumming with power but it doesn't hurt anymore, and when Regina says gently, "Now imagine the flames rising and falling," she finds that she can with only a thought.
"Good. Good." Regina's arms are pressed against hers now, her hands loose around Emma's wrists and her lips murmuring commands against Emma's ear. "Now calm yourself. Let the magic settle down back where it came from." She brushes a kiss against Emma's neck and the flames shoot up for a moment before Emma exhales, relaxing as much as she can with Regina wrapped around her.
"I don't want you to do that again," Regina says with the command of royalty when Emma slumps in her arms.
"I know." It's not acquiescence and they both know it, and Regina stiffens against her.
It's pointless anyway when her magic only seems to work around Regina, but Emma isn't willing to make any promises regardless. She doesn't want to live her life with this gift left untouched, nor does she want to find the rage that controlled Regina for so long. In this world, where people plot to kill the ones she cares about and where the ones she cares about might be their own worst enemies, being a decent shot isn't going to protect anyone. And Emma needs to protect them, more desperately than she needs to protect herself. She needs to know that they're all safe, and if magic is power, then she'll harness it for good.
"It isn't just about anger," Regina says finally. "When you have magic, when it consumes you completely-" She pauses. "When you allow it to consume you," she corrects. "Magic is a tool, not a malicious spirit."
I wouldn't allow it, Emma thinks, but that's hubris, confidence that she hasn't earned. Magic corrupts the purehearted, and she isn't even that.
Regina leans back against their tree, bringing Emma with her. "I was empty," she says. "I'd won. I had my kingdom back, I'd defeated all my rivals and subjugated them, I had Snow White in a prison and her prince in my hall, and do you know what I felt?"
"Nothing," Emma says softly. Vengeance is empty, resentment even more so. And Regina had devoted herself so fully to it that she can't imagine what else would have been left to her then.
"Nothing," Regina agrees. "And that was intended to be my happy ending."
Emma curls up against her so they're sitting side by side and her head can rest against Regina's shoulder. "Were you ever happy?"
"Henry makes me happy," Regina says simply.
"And are you happy now?"
Their fingers touch and lock, tangling together unconsciously. "More than I've ever been," Regina confesses, and she's staring at Henry, splashing after Grace across the lake, as her hand tightens around Emma's.
When she turns to Emma, it's unexpected, as much so as the question that follows. Regina doesn't make herself vulnerable, doesn't offer herself up for disappointment, and Emma understands that better than anyone. It's why they talk in histories and codes, Henry a smokescreen they gladly hide themselves behind. And she doesn't imagine any more from Regina, not until the queen says, "Are you happy here? With Henry and…and me?"
The answer is easy, easier than it probably should be with betrayals still looming and her fears so strong, and she barely manages to keep herself from smiling blindingly and echoing Regina's words. Barely, but she manages, and privately marvels at how emotionally contained she is, that the evil queen can surrender herself first.
She shrugs out a, "You're all pretty okay," with a smile that Regina reads with all the ease of someone who understands.
They're kissing before either of them thinks about it very much, lips moving together and tongues exploring and each of them with a hand pressed to the other's cheek, steadying each other and utterly, utterly lost. Emma's throat closes up like it has every time they've kissed like this before, and she wonders why when she's at her happiest, all she wants to do is cry.
"Can I call you Mom?" Henry says, sipping on a cocoa drink that Red has ready for him this time. Word has spread that the queen is in town, and the tavern is packed with curious onlookers, people Emma's never seen at Granny's before, parents and fairies and a tiny cricket fluttering around and speaking in a helium-Disney voice. Grumpy is at his usual table, but today the woodsman is sitting beside him and the dwarf looks uneasy and tense.
"Wh-what?"
"Mom. Isn't that what children say in the other realm?" Henry asks, eyes wide and free of duplicity. Which means, of course, that he's up to something. "And you're kind of my mother too, right?" He looks to his actual mother for support. "So shouldn't I call Emma something else now?"
Regina steeples her fingers, mock thoughtful. "Yes, I do believe that would be best."
Henry beams. "Good!" He nods to them both. "Mother, Mom." The warmth in Emma's chest that surges up at his words is matched only by her panic at the same. "I'm going to get more cocoa," he says, and Regina's hand is resting on Emma's before he even clambers out of his seat to get Red.
"Emma," she murmurs, and Emma inhales a shaky breath. "Stay with me."
"I'm not going anywhere," Emma manages, and Regina's thumb drags across her palm slower and slower until her heart is back to beating in time with it. "I'm just-"
She can't explain to them why she's so panicked, why this family terrifies more than any evil. Not to Regina or Henry, who've both been so eager, so hungry for this. She knows that Regina, at least, has been damaged before, has had hopes ground into the dirt and had her future realigned against her will. And yet she's put her faith in Emma so completely, has trusted in a better future without reservation or hesitation, and Emma envies her her certainty.
Emma isn't wired that way, can't trust or love without the dread of eventual disillusionment, and maybe that's why she's still shaking, why her heart is pounding a staccato beat against her chest that even Regina can't soothe. I agreed to work with a group that wants to take you away from me, she thinks, her eyes searching a face that's all regal poise and that motherly compassion Regina does so well with the people she cares for. There are people out there who want to kill you and I helped them.
And Regina trusts her.
She hasn't been back to the resistance since that sole meeting after she'd spoken to Snow. She doesn't doubt her original decision, doesn't doubt that Regina's actions had called for dire measures. She doubts her decision to back away. She's made the call with her heart, not her mind, and while it's easy for Snow to tell her to stand with the people who'd hurt the ones she- she cares about, she doesn't have it within her to cut herself off for the good of her mission. She isn't Snow, she can't send a baby away for the good of a people. She could barely give up Henry and that had been for him, not her. And yet she's been to too many meetings, been too helpful, done too much to aid the people who would kill Regina.
And Regina trusts her, and suddenly she glances back at Grumpy and then to Regina, realizing finally that it isn't just Regina whose betrayal she fears.
It's her own.
She finds it less and less likely every day that the resistance is an actual threat to the people sequestered safely in the castle, not when Regina is so aware of their every attack and deflects them so easily. No, the threat is Emma herself, who would shatter the peace with treachery that had been reasonable at the time but could cripple her lover now. And she's been so focused on all the ways Regina might falter to focus on what could reel her most, could throw barricades up again and heat the warmth in her eyes to the murderous, irrational fire she remembers from her first days here.
She is the weapon Rumpelstiltskin would use while the rest of the resistance squabbles over laughable, trivial irritants.
"You okay?" Henry asks, cutting into her thoughts as they hollow her out. "Mom," he adds, smiling at the sound of it.
"She is fine," Regina assures them both, and Emma manages a grin for their son.
"Oh, good." Henry has something sticky and sweet in his hands, and Emma tenses until she sees Regina's guarded nod. Nothing toxic in Red's food, which is a relief as the girl in question follows Henry to the table with only one uncertain glance at Regina. "I was thinking about how you said Snow could come with us to town sometime."
"I said perhaps," Regina corrects, but now Red's sitting down next to Henry, co-conspirators unafraid of their queen.
"It'd be great for morale," she pipes up. "Seeing Snow free to move around and close to Henry."
Emma smirks into her bread. The panic is subsiding now that Regina's and Henry's attention is elsewhere, and she has the presence of mind to cut in before Red enrages the queen a bit too much. "Snow's support would be better for Henry's future reign than anything else we've done," she agrees.
Regina scowls. "And how would we ascertain Snow's loyalty when surrounded by her former constituents? How could you possibly know that she would-"
"She would," Henry and Emma chorus, their eyes widening earnestly at the same instant, and Regina's own eyes soften as they do whenever she's reminded that the two of them share blood. "She wouldn't go back on her word if she promised," Henry adds.
Regina makes a scoffing noise in the back of her throat. "You have a very different experience of Snow White than I."
Red is beginning to look concerned, wary eyes darting from Regina to the relative safety of her counter, and Emma decides it's time for extreme measures. "Regina," she wheedles, winding her fingers between the queen's. "It wouldn't do any harm, and it would make Henry and me really happy. Besides-" She leans in, murmuring some choice words into Regina's ear.
High spots of color darken Regina's cheeks, and she pauses to take a few breaths before she says, "I'll consider it. Carefully," she adds when Henry opens his mouth to protest.
"We appreciate that." Emma kisses her on the cheek and winks at Red. Behind her, Grumpy is staring at them, shaking his head slowly from side to side.
Regina and Henry head out to the reflecting pool just outside the castle when they get home, Henry eager to teach his mother the names of the constellations he's been learning about with Snow. Emma excuses herself to the castle, promising to join them later.
For now, she descends to the dungeons, keeping to the shadows and slipping past the guards, more alert than ever to the possibility of being found and her house of cards folding to the ground.
She stands outside Belle's room, a hand against the door, running through insufficient words in her mind. How is she supposed to tell one of Regina's victims- one of her current victims, like the people in the hall or the Huntsman or Hansel and Gretel's family- that she's given up on their cause? That she'd rather let them continue to suffer than bring Regina suffering? They have no reason to believe that Regina might be changing, that tyranny could fade into benevolence given a little more time. And she isn't so tactless to shrug off their cravings for vengeance because she puts Regina first.
It's selfish. It's selfish no matter what. Someone will get hurt because of Emma, someone who won't deserve it. She can't just weigh sins with her hands and choose a victim and a punishment, not when it's so much more complicated than good versus evil and dark versus light.
"I have to tell her," she whispers, but it isn't Belle she's contemplating. Regina has to know, has to hear about this betrayal from Emma herself before someone else gives her a skewed truth or uses it to hurt her. And they will after the display at the tavern, she knows that. Rumpelstiltskin will find opportunity to let Regina know that the woman she's so cozy with has been working with her worst enemies, and he'll find an opportune time for maximum damage, she's sure. And how Regina might react…
Emma shivers, imagining Regina teetering on an edge, unstable in her quest to be better and dealt a blow this glancing. No, it has to come from Emma and no one else, the sooner the better.
When Henry's asleep and the castle is quiet, and it's only the two of them. She'll do it then.
She climbs back upstairs, through the dining hall to the entrance to the reflecting pool; and she pauses at the doorway to smile at mother and son, curled up together on an ornately decorated bench as they stare up at the sky. It's a moment of peace, and maybe the last one for a long time.
She's about to announce her presence when she hears her name and freezes just behind a thickly leafed tree. "Do you think Emma will ever leave?" Henry's asking, and Emma swallows past the lump in her throat.
Regina's face is obscured by the tree, and her voice is careful and modulated. "I don't know, Henry. I should hope not. You do mean so much to her."
"She makes you better," Henry says, snuggling closer to his mother. "I like you like this." There's no trace of the boy who'd arrived at Emma's doorstep and insisted that his mother was too evil to ever love anyone. Not anymore. "She makes us happier, right?"
"She does," Regina agrees, kissing the top of Henry's head. "Emma is…Emma is special. We're fortunate that she's ours."
It's strange, the way her vision blurs and she suddenly can't quite see the figures in front of her, the way she's suddenly bracing herself against the tree just to stay upright as her knees buckle.
Or maybe it isn't so strange, not for a woman who's never mattered to anyone, who's never found a place to belong where someone would care about her enough to claim her as her own. She's spent twenty-eight years in solitude, twenty-eight years spurning ties to families who would reject her and friends who would betray her; and she'd closed her eyes one day and wished on a cupcake that she wouldn't be alone again and Henry had knocked on her door.
She's ours. We're fortunate that she's ours. She is theirs now, uncontrovertibly and immutably so, the barriers she'd crafted around her heart demolished by an evil queen and the son she'd never dreamed she could have. And it's terrifying to be this vulnerable, this close to perfect happiness and perfect despair all at once. To fear herself and to fear Regina as much as she…
"Do you love her?" Henry wants to know, and now Emma really does slide silently to the ground, her heart hammering against her chest so loudly she's amazed Regina and Henry can't hear it. Do you love her? it demands, and Emma is powerless to respond, to expose her fragile heart any further.
Regina says only what they'd agreed upon after the last time Henry had asked that question. "Of course." It's barely a whisper, and Emma slumps against the tree and blinks back the burning tears that threaten to emerge.
She gathers enough of herself to rise and slip around the tree to join them noiselessly, and Regina's eyes are wide and panicked when she sees her. She doesn't acknowledge what she's heard, nor does she speak at all, just laces her fingers with the queen's and shifts so she's sitting closer to their son.
There had been something she'd meant to say, but she can't summon up the will to do anything in this place but sit with her family, their gazes reflecting the stars gleaming still and silent above their heads, scorching hot trillions of miles away.