The castle is still abandoned, not a maid or guard or servant in sight as they fly down the stairs to the hospital. Something is changing- has been changing all day, perhaps, since the moment they'd stepped out to their carriage that morning and sealed their fates- and when they finally race through the main hall to the wing where the doctor has Henry for the night, Emma notices out of the corner of her eye that even the statues seem less stony, a red glow suffusing a few of the most distant ones.
There's no time to explore that now or consider its ramifications, though, not when Frankenstein has betrayed them and their son is in danger, and she bursts into the doctor's laboratory a moment before Regina, her sword out and drawn in a single motion. "Henry!"
Silence.
"Frankenstein, you fucking bastard!"
There's nothing, and Regina pulls ahead of her with fire half-trailing from her hands as she leads the way into the room where Henry had been sleeping. She lets out a low curse at the empty bed. "He has him."
"Frankenstein?"
"No." Regina holds an arm out in front of Emma, stopping her from moving any closer to the bed, and only then does Emma glimpse the small, ivory-colored card lying across Henry's pillow. It's decorated with a single ornate "R," and Emma feels her heart stop in her chest. "Don't touch it," Regina murmurs. "It's enchanted to transport only its bearer."
"Rumpelstiltskin." Her heart skips a beat, and she pushes Regina's arm aside as the other woman shakes her head and turns to face her. Regina's hand is gentle against her cheek, tracing hard lines that relax and smooth out at the queen's touch. Emma sucks in air through her nose with a sharp inhalation, turning to graze her lips against velvety fingers as she raises her own hand to cover Regina's. "Then we'll go together," she says, but the other woman is already anticipating her argument and shaking her head.
"He wants me, Emma. Not you." She manages a wan smile. "I need you to be here for Henry when he returns." When he returns, not when we return, and Emma leans into Regina's palm, stubborn denial rising in her throat. She refuses to accept that, refuses to write off any of them right now or ever. She'd rather die. She'd rather flee. For all the evil Regina has done, for all the evil she might do in the future, Emma can't imagine existing in a world without her.
And that is a problem in itself, one from which there won't be a reprieve even after this crisis is over and done with. She entertains thoughts of running again, as she has a hundred times in the past few months, escaping this town and the burdens of good and evil and saviors and queens. Once she'd thought it could be the three of them, rebuilding their family together far from the trappings of a fairytale land. Now it's Regina she yearns to flee more than anyone, Regina who's the ultimate threat to whatever future she wants to build and to the conscience she needs to assuage once more.
"Henry is…Henry is everything," Regina is saying, and Emma nods fervently. That they agree on, at least, at the core of their being. "He comes first. You both come first," she murmurs, shaking her head. "This is what I have to do, Emma. There's no other choice."
No. The same desperation that she'd felt upon being named savior resurfaces, couched in I have to save Regina again, but it's less burden now. Instead it's a raw need, sheer desire so palpable that she can taste it. "Henry needs you to be there for him too, so if this is some kind of desperate gamble where you give yourself up for him, you can take that and shove it-"
"Emma," Regina whispers, her eyes very bright, and the tips of her fingers flutter against the blonde's lips for a final moment before she's stepping forward and the same hand is on Emma's chest, shoving her back as Regina strides to the bed. Emma stumbles, catching herself a moment too late because Regina is already reaching out to touch Rumpelstiltskin's calling card with a single finger, her back straight and her elegant neck twisted just enough that her gaze is still on Emma. It's warm and it's steel, affectionate and resolute at once, and Emma grabs for her arm as a gold shimmer envelops the queen and she fades from sight.
She's scrabbling at the bed, struggling to find a second card or another clue or something, anything that will take her to her family, and she runs blindly for the castle doors before she realizes that she has no idea where Regina might have gone. Regina's back in the lion's den, and now both Henry and his mother are at the mercy of a creature who has easily manipulated them all to serve his means.
"Dammit!" She squints out into the distance, her eyes adjusting slowly to the moonlit night, but there's nothing out there. No Henry. No Regina. Nothing but stillness and the distant howl of a wolf.
She can't remember the last time she's felt this helpless, this useless- not in all the time she's spent in Regina's land, not in the past years of self-sufficiency. There are people she cares about now, people who she'd do anything to keep safe. People whose deaths would destroy her completely. And now she's alone in a castle with no way to find them and save them in time or die trying, and she blinks back new frustrated tears as she leans against the door, scrambling for ways to shut down the fears that make her weak.
Or…not alone, not even now. She stands in the main hall, catching her breath, when a voice behind her speaks quietly. "Regina has that enchanted mirror." Snow. Snow is still here, and as much as Emma doesn't know how to react to her newfound mother, she's grateful to see her all the same.
"Snow…" She turns, and Snow shrugs feebly.
"I heard you run past, and I saw…" Snow nods back toward the hospital. "I'm so sorry, Emma." There's no resentment in her eyes for Regina, no judgment or even the pleading that had made Emma so uncomfortable earlier. There's only compassion and determination and Emma walks forward, drawn to the woman who had been a friend not too long ago.
Warm arms wrap around her, a hand stroking the back of her neck, and Emma sags against Snow, the tension and the fear diminishing as Snow murmurs quiet comfort into her cheek. "You're going to save them," Snow whispers, and it's with that same certainty that she says you're the savior but now Emma clings to it, takes comfort in faith she doesn't deserve and may never live up to, because Regina is out there and she's going to try to die for Henry and Emma can't, can't lose them, can't stand by and do nothing as the two people in the universe she loves most await destruction.
The mirror. Snow's first words penetrate the fog of grief and terror that wraps around her mind and she breathes, straightening again to turn to the stairs. "Okay. Okay. Let's go find Regina."
She takes a step forward and Prince Charming's stone face blinks at her, and Emma stares, momentarily distracted. "Did he just…"
Snow nods, reaching out to squeeze her hand. "The curse is weakening." She smiles once, and it's so full of hope and promise that Emma can't look away. Snow's hope is like a drug, one Emma's never had and can't imagine. Love will be her undoing, not her strength, not in a world where True Love's Kiss doesn't work for the savior and love for a child will be the reason a mother is lost. "The savior is beginning to believe."
"Believe in what?" Her head is spinning with bitterness and uncertainty, and she inhales a gulp of air. "Myself?"
Snow tilts her head, watching as Emma flushes at the knowing attention. "Let's just go look at that mirror."
Regina is a picture of confidence from where she stands at the base of a small incline near the edge of town, glaring up at Rumpelstiltskin with scathing contempt. Behind him, higher on the knoll just before it turns back to forest, are Frankenstein and Jefferson, Henry bound and gagged between them with a glowing magical rope. His eyes are wide with terror as he struggles toward his mother, arms fighting to free themselves and reach for her. "It's all right, Henry," Regina is saying as the mirror flickers to show her to Emma and Snow. "You're going to be fine."
Jefferson snorts in response, and Regina glances to him, curling her lip with practiced disdain. "Well, this does bring back memories," she says dryly. "And clarifies quite a bit. I was naïve to have ever trusted you, Frankenstein."
"You promised me freedom in this world for my allegiance," Frankenstein calls out, and Emma smirks internally when she sees him back up as Regina's gaze sweeps over him. "But you didn't make this curse. This has all been according to Rumpelstiltskin's design, and he's the one who holds the reins of power here." He tilts his head, smug again as Regina seethes. "You've never been anything more than a pawn."
Rumpelstiltskin cackles with delight. "Indeed, Majesty. I couldn't have said it better myself."
Regina's eyes darken, and Snow twitches from her spot behind Emma at the mirror. "She's going to kill them all," she says, shaking her head.
"We can hope," Emma says grimly. Snow looks at her askance, but Emma can't muster up any guilt in response. For these three, Emma would condone murder, and Henry fighting with his bindings in the background only firms that resolution. They must have been the ones who'd been behind the original resistance and behind this one, the ones orchestrating Henry's kidnapping twice and the bomb that would have killed dozens if not for the shield Emma's magic had thrown up. Regina may be the official villain of this fairy tale, but she isn't the only one, and Emma isn't even entirely sure that she's any worse than a couple of men who would manipulate and murder and target a child.
She needs to go to them now, to somehow even the odds and snatch Henry away before Regina does something irreversible to retrieve him. Whatever Rumpelstiltskin has planned today, Emma knows instinctively that it will be the end and the culmination of all his prior plans for them. She needs to-
"This is my fault," Snow murmurs, and it's sorrowful enough to break through the shroud of panic and fury still clouding Emma's mind.
"What?"
Snow shakes her head. "I've been so focused on myself today that we all walked into a trap. First at the tavern, then again in Henry's room." She squeezes trembling hands together. "I was so glad to be free and for you to know… I should have sat by and given you the space you needed, not chased you off so Dr. Frankenstein could take Henry." She musters up a sad smile. "I was selfish again, just as I was when the curse came to be and I let you go."
In the mirror, Regina is snapping something scornful Jefferson's way, proud and unbent despite their son still bound in their hands, and Emma wonders if she can summon up enough magic to teleport away from this conversation and into that one.
Apparently not. Her magic is as unreliable as ever, of course. "It's not selfishness," she says finally. "I can't blame you for sending me away. You had no other choice." She's supposed to break this curse, and if she'd been affected by it, she'd still be a baby, trapped within it and helpless. There would have been no Henry, no Regina- or, rather, a very different Regina- and as much as she sorely regrets some of what they've been through together, she can't imagine living life without ever knowing it either.
"I was meant to come with you," Snow murmurs. "The wardrobe we sent you away in would only hold one. And then I went into labor moments after the curse was cast. Charming brought you to safety just as Regina arrived to kill you."
"That's real classy, Regina," Emma mutters, eyeing the woman in the mirror with renewed misgiving.
Snow puffs out a tiny laugh. "I'm sure the irony hasn't escaped her now." She touches tentative fingers to Emma's shoulder. "You were meant to be her undoing, Emma. No one dreamed that it would be like this."
"No." And she doesn't shift from Snow's touch this time. "I guess not." She hadn't meant to be anyone's undoing, hadn't meant to do anything here except survive and be sure that her son was safe in this ridiculous magical world. She's spent her whole life running, and now she's been brought to a halt in the last place she'd have ever expected.
And in return, she's been given things that are too much to comprehend. A family, a mother her own age who looks at her like she's going to save the world. A little boy who calls her Mom and had believed in her and in return she'd left him alone in a hospital bed with someone she should have known better than to trust. And Regina. Regina, who'd embraced her own destruction for Emma's sake, who'd murdered a man and still thinks that she's redeemable (and how can she be, how can an evil queen change entirely because of someone as unremarkable as Emma Swan, and how can Emma love her so fully even now? I don't think I could ever stop loving you, Emma, says Regina, and Emma grasps that love and returns itin full to a woman who will break her heart a hundred times over before they're done. I don't think I could ever stop loving you, Regina, she thinks in response, and wonders how resilient Regina's heart will be once broken again) and is somehow determined to keep going.
How does Snow still believe in her? How can Henry? How many people here are relying on a screwed up orphan who's never mattered before and doesn't know how to stay?
Snow's fingers are tightening on her shoulder and Emma focuses on the mirror, her mouth very dry as Rumpelstiltskin leans forward. "A trade, Regina." He licks his lips. "You alone can still leave this realm, and you will retrieve the item we send you for. And then we will discuss the terms of your son's release."
Regina cocks an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Aren't you going to say please?"
Rumpelstiltskin's smirk widens, and he glances behind him only once, waggling his own eyebrows at Henry. "I don't think we need pleasantries today, do you?"
Regina's eyes narrow, but she isn't looking at Rumpelstiltskin or his cronies as Jefferson steps forward. Her eyes are on Henry alone, and Emma can nearly feel it as Regina forces the comforting smile onto her face for his benefit, as she softens only for him.
Jefferson removes the hat from his head with a mocking bow to Regina and spins it. Magic flows from it, spinning in winding spirals around the hat, expanding with every turn until a hole is torn into space and time as magic whirls around it, unwavering.
"No," Emma whispers, and Regina leaps into the portal, her eyes never leaving Henry as he shouts a protest from beneath the magic vines wrapped around his mouth. The hat keeps spinning, the doorway to another realm still yawning open after Regina vanishes, and she's back before Emma remembers how to breathe again, quietly resigned as she proffers the item for them.
It's a gleaming red apple, a single bite taken from it, and Snow gasps in recognition. "That's…"
And even Emma can identify it. "…the poison apple," she finishes, bringing an unconscious hand up to touch Regina's form in the mirror. There's no time to go to her now, no way to save the day, but she's already moving again, already shoving past Snow to the door to the bedroom as Rumpelstiltskin speaks again.
"A life for a life." She can hear the leer in his voice. "You have a taste of forbidden fruit, and I bring your son back to the savior unharmed."
And she turns back just long enough to see Regina lift the apple to her lips and murmur, "We have a deal, then," and bite into the cursed fruit, chewing it with pursed lips as her eyes return to Henry.
He's smiling.
It's enough to stop Emma in her tracks and she stares at him, stares at the equally smug smile on Rumpelstiltskin's face as Regina falls to the ground, stares at Snow who's suddenly smiling, too. "Go to her, Emma," Snow murmurs. "I don't know what Rumpel is planning. He must know that this wouldn't be enough for long, not with you here."
True love. A kiss. It's enough to end a sleeping curse, enough to break a curse over a kingdom, enough to save the day here all the time except when it isn't, when it's two women who are too damaged to ever find true love in each other and for whom happy endings were never written. Rumpelstiltskin is counting on it, too, Emma knows suddenly, and Henry behind him as well. They all believe, but they know nothing.
She makes her way down the hall to the stairs, unable to look Snow in the eye. She's going to retrieve Henry, to find a place for Regina to be secured, and Snow can't know that that's all. Not when her eyes are still alight with faith in Emma and the victory of the ignorant. Emma can't crush her and her fragile hopes, even now.
"Wait!" Snow calls, and Emma turns back, stares at the woman standing at the base of Charming's statue again. Except it isn't a statue anymore, just a man still silvery and glowing as he rocks shakily on his platform. Snow is staring at him with such unreserved affection that Emma's breath catches in her throat, sour envy flooding her at their obvious, easy love. None of that for Regina, none for Emma. "Emma, if there's anything I can do…" She shakes her head, tearing her eyes from Charming's to study Emma's face again. "Are you okay?"
No. She smiles at Snow in response, and it strikes her at last that she won't see her again.
She's failed so many times now, fallen in love and found everything she's ever dreamed of and still failed to keep it. She hasn't been able to help Regina be good, not really, only pushed her too hard until she'd killed a man. She hasn't been able to keep Henry safe, she hasn't been able to either defeat or aid the resistance to a noble end. She's met her mother and discovered at once that she's never going to be able to live up to the image of her Snow holds in such high esteem, curse or not. She hasn't even been capable of true love, it seems.
She's never going to be enough for the people she cares about. She's spent twenty-eight years quietly dreaming of love and family, and it's proven to be nothing more than a weakness. And she's done, done trying and destroying and watching others be destroyed for their faith in her.
She's saving Henry and leaving this town tonight before anyone else suffers from the disappointment she is.
"I just need to get something before I go," she says finally. "Look…Snow… Take care of Regina, okay? Keep her safe."
She can see Snow's brow furrow in confusion, realization not quite setting in yet, and she flees before her mother understands.
The bug hadn't been made to drive on fields and dirt roads, and it sputters in complaint as she guides it down the path from the castle, listing to one side and then the other on the too-small road through the woods. She focuses on keeping the car in one piece, on making sure she doesn't wind up in a flipped-over car in the middle of the woods, on anything but the home she's driving away from with every acceleration.
There's no time to wallow in regret, no time to be weak and selfish again and return to the life she's been living here. There's only her hands tight on the steering wheel and her feet on the accelerator and her eyes watching each turn in the road as her headlights illuminate them.
She reaches the edge of town in minutes, too quickly, too soon- and how can it be so easy to leave a place that has been so necessary to her being?- and she pulls to a halt just before the town line before she steps out of the car. Frankenstein and Jefferson are gone, only Rumpelstiltskin left by the knoll, a hand on Henry's shoulder as her son squirms impatiently.
"Ah, there you are, dearie." A smile, and the bindings fall from around Henry. "We've been waiting."
"Mom!" And then Henry's in her arms, wrapped so tightly around her that she can't breathe again, tears stopping to clog her throat and mist up her eyes. "You're here."
"I'm here." Emma crouches down in his embrace to meet his eyes. "I need you to get into the car, okay? I'll be right there with your mother."
He grins gleefully, and Emma's heart pounds in her chest. "True Love's Kiss, right? You're going to save her!" He doesn't wait for a response before he's dashing off to the car, pulling open the door to clamber into the passenger seat.
"Well, then." Rumpelstiltskin rubs his palms together, his own glee dark with malice and mockery. "You do have a curse to get to breaking, don't you?"
She stares at him. "Why the hell do you want the curse broken? Didn't you make it?"
Rumpelstiltskin smiles beatifically. "That, dearie, is for me to know, not you. Suffice it to say that we have common goal here today."
His eyes gleam with hungry impatience, and he is pretty much the only one here she feels some satisfaction in telling the truth to. "Sorry to disappoint, but True Love's Kiss? Not so much in the cards for Regina and me." She dares look down at last to look at the queen.
Rumpelstiltskin must have rearranged her position with magic, because she isn't crumpled on the ground anymore. Instead, she's laid out flat on her back, her eyes closed and her hands folded over her stomach, her face serene in sleep. Emma's seen her like this countless times before, has been curled up next to her in bed as she stretches out like she runs the world (which, yes, fair point), and she can't stop herself from dropping to the grass beside her, stroking her knuckles against Regina's face. "We've tried it," she murmurs. "It doesn't work."
"Well, of course it didn't," Rumpelstiltskin says, whipping his matted hair from side to side in a shake of his head. "The curse has been flawed from the start. Casting error, not writing error, I'm sure." He laughs merrily, and Emma grits her teeth and keeps her attention on Regina and the smooth skin under her fingers. "Regina was never cursed, you see."
"What does that even mean?"
Rumpelstiltskin cocks his head. "The people were cursed to repeat each day, to be nothing more than her forced servants- until a child directly of the savior's blood arrived in town and put a crimp in that, of course," he amends. "The kingdom itself was cursed into another realm. But Regina has never been included into the curse. She's only the caster who controlled it. And True Love's Kiss wouldn't work against the one who'd cast the spell or what would ever be the purpose of casting curses, if there were someone in your life you loved?" He's laughing that awful laugh again but now Emma is frozen, her eyes on him again as she pieces through what he's saying.
"So you're saying…Regina had to be cursed, too. And that's what this is about?" She gestures to the woman sleeping beside her, frowning.
"Yes! Yes!" He claps his hands again, delighted. "The savior comprehends at last! Now…" He does a grotesque imitation of a kiss, pursed lips together blown to Emma, and pops out of view as she glowers at him.
Henry pokes his head out of the car. "Mom?" he ventures, but now her eyes are on Regina again, warmth spreading through her as hope revives within her again, stronger than ever. She's terrified, terrified of losing it again, and before she can dwell on this new, dangerous kindling of optimism, she plunges downward and kisses Regina's lips one last time.
She doesn't pull away, reluctant to end this final contact with the other woman before she runs again, reluctant to see that she's failed once more, and she closes her eyes, her lips still resting against Regina's. She doesn't budge even when magic vibrates around them and the lips beneath her part and Regina heaves a frantic gasp, even when Regina's grasping onto her and she's pulling her up back to a sitting position as they kiss again and again and again and tears finally leak from Emma's eyes.
"Emma," Regina breathes against her lips, and Emma opens her eyes at last, pulls away from Regina to gaze into eyes that already know too much only from the despair of her kiss. "You need to take Henry with you," Regina murmurs, nuzzling the crook of her neck, and then she straightens, sitting back and watching as Emma staggers to her feet, startled.
"How did you…?"
Regina smiles at her, tranquil and sad at once in the light of the streetlights above them. "I love you both."
And now Emma is stumbling across paved road to her car, not daring to look back at the woman now standing and watching them go. "Emma, you did it!" Henry says, and his hair is shorter, his shirt plaid and cotton and freshly starched, but his eyes are glowing with familiar excitement. "You broke the curse!"
"Yeah," she says, and she starts her car again and drives over the town line, away from the sounds of sirens and honking in the distance.
Just an epilogue to go, and we're home free~