Early chapter before the holiday distractions begin! We're nearly at the home stretch, so hang tight~
"This is it," Regina says, white-faced with her fingers clenched into the sides of her seat. "After all this time…I'd thought it would be Rumpelstiltskin and his cohorts who'd do me in. But it's you, Emma." She shakes her head, eyes terrified and defiant still. "I trusted you, and you're going to kill me."
"You asked for this!" Emma points out, outraged. "You had plenty of chances to change your mind and back out, but you insisted-"
Regina scowls. "I did it for Henry!"
"Uh-uh." Emma swivels in her own seat to stare straight ahead, her hand sliding into her pocket to retrieve the key. "That isn't going to cut it this time."
"It's true!" Regina protests, and now she's testing her restraints, yanking at them and wincing when they tighten in response. "His enthusiasm for his studies should be rewarded. And if this…car-" She spits out the word with distaste. "-is what he's interested in, then I would have been remiss not to agree to test it out with you."
"He saw a Pixar movie," Emma says, rolling her eyes. "I think 'studies' is taking it a little far." She curls a finger between Regina's hand and her seatbelt, prying her off of it. "Admit it, you wanted to try on my world for a change."
Regina sniffs with distaste, but she gives up her grip on the seat and folds her hands across her lap primly, curling one leg behind the other as she focuses her gaze out the windshield instead. Her breath slows at last and she stops fidgeting, her eyes settling into catlike slits as she surveys her kingdom instead of the dashboard.
And naturally, that's when Emma finally starts the car.
"Shit!" she yelps as they both disappear and reappear on the ground outside in a puff of purple magic, Emma still in a sitting position. She falls backwards inelegantly, banging her rear against a tree root. "Regina! That was supposed to happen."
Regina stares down at her, nonplussed. Somehow, she'd remembered to poof herself upright and stable while she'd forgotten with Emma, and she doesn't offer her hand as Emma pulls herself off the ground. "You didn't say. I thought you'd exploded the carriage."
"I've been driving this car for eleven years! I'm not going to explode it." Emma rubs her backside, grimacing at the tenderness there. That's going to be sore for days. "Do you know how many people safely get into cars every day without them blowing up? Most of them! And unless you've done some kind of weird mojo to my car while you've had it hidden out here in the woods-" She blinks, the possibility just occurring to her then. "Wait. Did you?"
Regina arches an eyebrow. "I certainly did not. But Rumpelstiltskin took an interest in you, if you'll recall, and I won't have either of us an object in his manipulations."
"Oh," Emma breathes, her stomach sinking unpleasantly as reality comes rushing back with mention of the imp.
The other woman gives her a sharp look. "He hasn't…approached you at all, has he?" There's nothing but possessiveness and concern on her face, no suspicion, and this is so the wrong place to tell Regina about the resistance, out in the woods at the start of a day that had begun so promisingly. Yesterday hadn't been right but today isn't either, and she wonders if there's ever going to be a right time to admit it to Regina.
Tonight. When they're at peace and alone, with nothing else between them.
"I've seen him around," Emma says finally, unwilling to lie. Avoidance isn't untruth technically, right? Not as long as she still fully intends to tell Regina everything. "He hasn't threatened me or anything though." When she shudders, it's not by fabrication at all. "I try to stay away from him." And that's true now more than ever.
Regina exhales. "Good." She's brushing her lips somewhere just behind Emma's ear and heading back toward the castle before Emma can lodge a protest.
Sighing, she opens the door to grab her keys back. Regina had moved her car to the far end of the kingdom early on in her imprisonment, far from the village at the center of the lands and tucked just behind the furthest edge of the castle grounds, near the fields where Henry rides. Today he's indoors, though, catching up on his studies after their day out, and the fields are empty but for a few horses grazing near the stables.
Regina is already making her way to the dirt path at the border of the castle grounds when Emma catches up to her. "So that's it?" she demands of the queen. "This is you running scared from my car?"
"I'm not running scared," Regina says with disdain, but she's glancing back at the Bug as though it might come to life and hurl itself at them without warning. "I simply require a day or two to inspect your machine and judge its safety on my own."
"Right." Emma narrows her eyes at the queen disbelievingly. Regina will do what she likes at her own pace, and though there's a part of Emma that rebels at compromise now (and maybe she'd been looking forward to the opportunity to bring Regina to her world, to take her out driving past the kingdom border and toward the closest small town, to grab a bite in a diner without any hostile stares and to maybe give Regina a taste of what they could have, if they dared to leave the broken fairy tales behind), Regina's done nothing but compromise of late. It isn't fair to pressure her into Emma's secret fantasies.
Regina pauses, her hands on her hips and her head cocked, and lets out a low whistle that startles Emma out of her reverie. "Huh?"
She gets a dismissive wave for her confusion, and as the queen whistles again, Emma finally sees where she's looking. One of the stallions is making its way out of the paddock and toward them in the outer fields, summoned by Regina's call, and as he nears Emma can see the saddle already affixed to his back.
"Come riding with me," Regina says, and there's a flush in her cheeks that hasn't been there before and a hitch in her voice that could be excitement or apprehension, Emma doesn't know.
She hasn't seen this particular stallion ridden before. In fact, she doesn't think she's ever seen it anywhere near the stables. It runs free in the distant fields that Emma never quite makes it to, occasionally sprinting alongside Henry's steed as he gallops past Snow and Emma like the pro he is. She's certainly never seen it saddled and docile, patiently waiting for them to mount it.
"You planned this," Emma realizes aloud. "You were never going to go for a drive with me."
"Don't be ridiculous, Miss Swan," Regina retorts, but she's calling Emma by her surname and her fingers are twisting through the stallion's main and the ruddiness in her cheeks has only gotten darker as she turns her attention to the horse. She sighs. "I did intend to try out your carriage," she permits.
But this had also been on the agenda for today, and Regina's plans had been equally significant as Emma's, two women who don't dare to dream anymore indulging themselves for just one afternoon.
Regina doesn't join them for Henry's riding lessons. She doesn't go near the stables and she never, ever rides in anything more personal than a carriage. Henry is certain that it's always been about Daniel and Snow has suggested that it may be connected to Regina's less apparent past than just the stable boy whom she'd once loved, but everyone is in agreement that Regina has reason to never ride again and probably never will.
And here she is, mounting a stallion as though this isn't the first time she's ridden in decades, and her hand is only a bit unsteady as she reaches out to help Emma up. "Have you ridden with anyone before?"
"Nope." Emma grips Regina's hand and throws her leg over the side of the saddle, landing snugly behind Regina and grimacing only a little at the reminder of her sore posterior. "Hopefully I'll be better at it than I am on my own." She rests her chin on Regina's shoulder, feeling the woman still vibrating with disquiet against her.
"Wrap your arms around me," Regina instructs, gently shrugging Emma off of her, and Emma slides her arms around Regina's waist obligingly. "Ready?"
"Regina-" she starts, and maybe it's to probe for answers about what summoned this urge or maybe it's just to offer encouragement, but she's saved from figuring out which when Regina urges the stallion on and suddenly they're running.
Wisps of Regina's hair are whipping free in the wind and tickling against her face, the horse is flexing muscles against her legs that she's never felt from her docile mounts, and she's wrapped so tightly around Regina that she's moving with her, rising and falling at the same tempo and feeling Regina's exhilarated panting as her own. Whatever uneasiness there'd been is gone now that they're in motion, wind and horse and rider all wrapped together in a whirl of natural vibrancy that's impossible not to be drawn into.
Regina was born to ride in ways that she's never seen before, and Emma laughs aloud with the sheer joy that Regina pulsates with, the unbridled freedom of a woman doing what she loves best. She's still sore and shaky on the horse but it's easy to ignore both when she's wrapped around Regina, her eyes half-closed as the world blurs around them.
"Hold tight!" Regina calls, and abruptly they're on the path at the other end of the castle border, trees rushing past them and the dirt road adding an extra thump to each gallop. They hurtle down the road past the village and back around it again, over a bridge and through the brush, and Emma ducks down to avoid the tree branches that reach out into the path, dangerously close to their faces. They bend away from the women as they near with an instinctive white-gold magic that she doesn't recognize as Regina's at all.
She thinks she might understand Regina out here, understand why she's denied herself the fierce freedom that imbues their movements now. Regina is caged, caged by misery and self-loathing and vacant vengeance, and by her own admission she's sought to cage herself further even after cursing her way into her so-called happy ending. And it is of course about the stable boy they're racing past right now and likely also about her past, but Regina has rejected this ecstasy first and foremost because it is ecstasy, unguarded and intimate and everything she's drawn a curtain over in accepting the title of evil queen.
And with their every motion today, she casts off that yoke a little more, ceding more of the label that's defined her. Today is a rebirth, the stirrings of change for Regina, and when she slows to a halt in Emma's arms she feels- different, somehow, less stiffness in her posture, and she dismounts with lazy grace that's more casual than regal.
For her part, Emma nearly tumbles off the horse, unsteady on the ground and soreness gripping her whole body at once. She checks the area around her to make sure it's clean of horse droppings before she falls to a prone position on the ground, possibly permanently.
"Hey." She tugs at the riding pants that Regina's wearing today under a long coat- and that should have been enough to tip her off that the queen had something else planned for today than the usual. "Come down here."
Regina's lip curls with something between amusement and distaste. "I seem to spend more time on the ground around you than I have since I married a king." But she sinks into the grass considerably more elegantly than Emma, stretching her legs out in front of her and reaching out to smooth down the blonde's hair.
Emma blows out a puff of air, flexing aching muscles and groaning at the pain that sparks through her in response. Wordlessly, Regina reaches out to massage her thighs with slow, soothing strokes. "Ungh," Emma offers.
Regina doesn't respond or stray from her ministrations beyond commenting, "You rode well today."
"So did you." It's a vast understatement, but Regina smiles anyway, a twitch of her lips as she focuses on Emma's thighs. And because she has little patience for the subtleties that everyone else seems to operate on around Regina, she barges on, "When was the last time you were on a horse, anyway?"
Regina pauses, a warm palm pressed against her inner thigh. "I rode on occasion as queen in the Enchanted Forest. Not here. And not like this in a long time." She rubs the heel of her hand against the padded muscle there. "Perhaps not since Daniel was killed."
Emma freezes, uncertain, and Regina graces her with an eyeroll of superlatively disdainful proportions. "Oh, don't play the fool, I know that girl told you all about him. If there's one thing I can count on in this life, it's that Snow White still can't keep a secret."
"Yeah." Emma shakes her head, her own indiscretions still weighing on her. "Life's probably simpler that way."
"Maybe when you're a privileged princess with no worries in the world." Regina's hands climb lower along her body, focusing on ankles she hasn't realized were in pain until now. "I know my life would have been simpler without Snow White's interference."
Snow is the villain of the story, as far as Regina is concerned, and Emma does sympathize with that as much as she's uncomfortable with the loathing still so strong in Regina's voice. Snow isn't perfect, but she's kind and she's loyal and a stranger could see that she still feels compassion and regret for what she'd done to Regina. "She didn't kill Daniel," she says, and Regina hesitates at her feet. "She was a kid. An idiot, sure. Naïve, definitely. But she didn't mean to-" Regina makes a noise at the back of her throat and Emma throws up a hand, pressing forward. "Your mother meant to."
"You know nothing about my mother." It emerges as a hoarse bark more than a growl, both women reluctant to break the placid serenity of the moment anymore than it already has shattered.
Emma curls her hand around Regina's upper arm. "Then tell me."
"I'd rather not." Regina turns away from her, tilting her face toward the sun.
Emma gets it, though. She hasn't had a family before, hasn't had parents who'd raised her from childhood like Regina had; but she imagines that if she'd found those people sometime in her life, she might have been equally reluctant to face the reality of a mother whose love was as dangerous and painful as Regina's mother's love. Who would kill her daughter's lover and force her into a marriage she'd railed against for reasons that are at best out of some twisted form of love that isn't love at all.
It would be easier for Regina to loathe a pampered princess than to acknowledge that her mother didn't love her, and easier to dwell on hatred and revenge than consider the absence of the love she'd craved in her life. It's immature and it's selfish and it's ridiculous, but it's all Regina's had for all this time, and Emma can't dismiss her so readily for it.
"It no longer matters," Regina says quietly, and when she looks down again she won't quite meet Emma's eyes. "I've spent so long clinging to the past that I've hurt…so many people." She's contemplating the stables when she speaks, and Emma follows her gaze to where Daniel is lumbering clumsily toward one of the horses, a slight light-haired man in a long white coat observing him with folded arms and a scowl. "And it's past time to lay the damaged to rest."
Then that's really why they're here today, and Emma's heart wrenches at the pain on her lover's face. "Regina…"
But Regina is already rising, making her way toward the stables with her stallion trotting behind her, and Emma can only pull herself to her feet and follow them to where Frankenstein is standing, sulky and dissatisfied. "If you would just let me take care of the dissection-" he begins. Regina glares at him and he falls silent.
"What do I need to do?" she asks, and the gloss of regal scorn in her voice is slipping away with every word, fading into smallness and apprehension.
Dr. Frankenstein heaves a sigh. "Just removing the substitute heart should be sufficient. He isn't a man, just reanimated flesh, and with nothing left to animate him-"
"Silence," Regina orders, and she sweeps over to Daniel, ignoring her audience completely. Emma glances at the progressively crankier-looking Frankenstein and follows the queen. This isn't her mountain to climb, but it's one she can't imagine allowing Regina to conquer alone. So she hovers, uncomfortable and sick to her stomach with displaced grief and shared sympathy for the woman in front of her.
Daniel is staring at Regina with eyes that don't seem to recognize her at all, docile when she presses trembling fingers against his chest. "Daniel…" she's whispering in a broken voice, over and over again. "Daniel…"
Emma watches them from a few feet away, her own hands twitching at her inability to do anything. She wants to pull Regina away, to take her hand, to bring her back to the outer fields and reclaim that peace they'd shared moments before. This is Regina healing, leaving the past behind and giving Daniel the peace he should have gotten decades ago, but it's raw and it's cruel to have her let go like this.
Maybe she deserves it, after all the evil she's done. (No one deserves to watch the one she loved die twice, and Emma is even queasier at the idea that she could entertain any other judgment for a single moment.)
Regina bows her head, her hand slipping into Daniel's chest in the next moment as she whispers, "I love you."
Emma sees what Regina can't, sees recognition dawn at once in Daniel's eyes and his gaze shift downward to his former fiancé as she pulls the borrowed heart from his chest. She opens her mouth to speak, to say something, because Daniel is looking more aware and alert than he ever has before-
-But it's too late, and Daniel crumbles into dust as Regina holds his heart in her outstretched arm, staring at it instead of the man disappearing before their eyes, tears streaming down her face unchecked.
Emma crosses the distance between them in two steps and has an arm halfway around Regina's back before she freezes up. She doesn't know what her place is here, doesn't know what she can do or what Regina wants from her or really anything at all beyond the fact that Regina needs her, needs support now more than ever.
Regina doesn't fold into her arms, doesn't allow herself that weakness even now, but she's still crying in gasping sobs and holding Daniel's heart to her, heedless of Emma's eyes on her or Emma's hand still awkwardly extended toward her shoulders. She holds the heart closer, touches it to her own chest as though she can feel it beating against her own, matching in time and unstoppable.
And then she's turning to Emma at last, wet-faced and red-eyed, and captures her gaze with eyes that are grief-stricken with a second, fathomless emotion swimming within their depths. She doesn't speak, but she takes Emma's hand with her free one and passes the heart to Emma before she walks alone into the stables, her stallion trailing behind her obediently.
It's still warm and pulsating in her grasp, but it isn't slimy or bloody like non-magical guts tend to be, just smooth and glowing and alive. Still, though, she shudders at the sensation of it in her palm and she doesn't protest when Frankenstein retrieves it, scowling still. "What a waste of a successful experiment," he mutters, scoffing "Sentimentality!" as he puts the heart into a small wooden box.
"Oh, shut up," Emma mumbles back, her eyes still on the stable where Regina had vanished. Five minutes. She'll give her five minutes, and then she's going in after her and making sure that the queen isn't doing anything drastic.
But Regina emerges only a few moments later, a grooming brush in her hand. Her eyes are still rimmed with red but her gait is steady, and she begins to comb her horse's mane with meticulous attention. "Emma," she says, so abruptly that both Emma and Frankenstein jump. "Tell Henry we'll go back to town tomorrow." She pauses to untangle a particularly tricky knot. "And that girl might as well join us too or I'll never hear the end of it."
She doesn't look back at them, and Emma can feel the smile bubbling up through the sadness, the promise of a better day to come.