Enjoy, my lovelies and wish me luck today. I'm heading off to take the GRE again to try and get my scores higher for when I apply to Ph.D. programs. My undergraduate adviser has not stopped hounding me about becoming a teacher again, and I'm inclined to think she might be right. She's only been pushing the subject for 4 years now. She wouldn't have kept contact with me for so long if she didn't believe in me, so… here's to the mentors who won't let you quit. The song choice for this chapter has so much double meaning with the one-year anniversary of leaving the love of my life last week and the one of losing my student coming up next week. Teachers, pay attention to your students. You never know when you might lose them to depression.
It's been a helluva year. Thank you, to all of you, who have stuck with my stories and continue to support this endeavor that brings me so much joy. I really love concocting these tales for you.
Enjoy!
I can Still Feel You By Collin Raye
"Ruby, what's wrong?" Emma mumbled. She finally felt warm and semi-normal, partially due to the girl who had curled against her side hours ago and fell asleep while she lay wide awake and watched the snow fall. Now, in the stillness of night, her young friend cracked and spilled her pain in the form of tears instead of blood. It was progress. Emma rubbed at her dry, tired eyes that still refused to sleep and hugged Ruby's quivering body against her side with the other.
"Rubes?" Still, the girl cried quietly, unwilling or unable to answer the question, so Emma waited until she'd cried herself out and then some. If she were honest, she secretly wished that Ruby had crawled into bed with Granny because she felt like being alone still. They'd come for her. She'd expected nothing from these people, and they blew her away with their kindness and concern, for her as well as her child. They liked her. She'd been inducted into the Storybrooke family, and they'd come for her – everyone but Regina. Turns out, she was the person Emma expected in the sea of faces, and that disappointment sat on her chest, unmoving, expanding and contracting with each breath. It felt like grief, dull and cumbersome until it flared into an emotional conflagration.
"My whole life is a lie," finally brushed into the darkness. Glimmering brown eyes lifted, illuminated only by the streetlamp below their window.
"Whose isn't? Nobody even knows my real name."
"Are you okay, Emma? I mean, you're warm enough and stuff?" Emma nodded. "You scared us. I know you're used to being alone, but you have people who care about you now. Even Regina came to see you."
"What? Why didn't she come up?" If Emma seemed surprised, she never showed it to Ruby.
The girl rested her head on Emma's shoulder again and loosed a ragged breath, controlling emotions to the best of her ability. "Granny wouldn't let her see you, like she wouldn't let her see me."
"What?"
"After my mom died, Granny wouldn't let her see me. I overheard them arguing in the diner tonight. She lied to me about everything. Regina stayed away because I guess she thought it was best for me." She'd heard many tones from Ruby in the past month, but this moment marked the first thread of bitterness. She was a child, fragile, but only because people made her that way. A strength emanated from the wounded teen that night, something she'd obviously found in herself. It still felt sweet and kind, not jaded like Emma's, but something took hold of her and refused to let go.
"Why would she do that? How could that be better after everything that happened? I'm sure Granny had a reason." Emma's mind scrambled to absorb the influx of new information.
"I think… I think my mom and Regina had an affair," Ruby continued, but Emma's mind gave up on understanding anything beyond that. No wonder Regina clawed at anyone who attempted to get close to her. The soft hum of Ruby's voice ceased, and Emma glanced down at her watery brown eyes. It didn't matter what she'd said; her pain glowed, and Ruby allowed it to be seen, standing stalwart in the maelstrom of years-old emotion. Emma wrapped her up in another tight hug, pressed lips to her forehead, and waited for sleep to take her.
"I saw them kiss once. They thought I was asleep on the couch," Ruby confessed in that same steady voice.
"Didn't you think that was weird? You must have been pretty young."
"Yeah, but I didn't care. The only person who made her smile like that was Regina. Regina used to smile a lot, believe it or not." Emma felt the girl's cheek move against her shoulder, a smile perhaps. "She's been fighting for me. I just didn't know it until now. It makes sense. I mean, someone is paying for my therapy sessions. I know they're not cheap, and Granny couldn't afford them. And, for my birthday and Christmas, there's always something there I really want that I know we don't have the money for, too. And Regina always schedules all of her lunch meetings at the diner instead of the café across town. That's much more her style than greasy burgers, but she's always around. I thought she did it to get on Granny's nerves at first, but now… She just waited until I started hating her so that she could stay away while being there all at the same time. She called me her daughter tonight."
Emma grinned down at the goofy euphoria eclipsing her friend. She just wanted to be loved by the women she looked up to despite their mistakes. She was going to be fine, in spite of this new blow to her identity. Another long silence passed. Ruby's breathing evened, quieted. Her body relaxed and finally rolled away from the death grip she'd had on her friend for the past few hours. Poor kid needed so much more than therapy, but Emma passed that torch to a good night's sleep for her friend and slipped out of the bed. Ruby barely moved while she dressed.
"Emma," a sleepy voice called when she opened the door, and Emma glanced over her shoulder to find two sleepy brown eyes watching her, unconcerned. Ruby had no intention of persuading her to stay inside and out of the cold. "I think Regina would fight for you, too, if you let her. You don't have to be alone anymore, Emma. You and your baby are family now."
"Go to sleep, Ruby. You have school tomorrow."
"Will you help her, Emma? Regina, I mean."
"I'm gonna try," Emma whispered, more surprised than Ruby by the conviction in her quiet decree. Obviously, Ruby had already raised her to a pedestal of heroism and selflessness she never thought herself capable of achieving.
The girl nodded and nuzzled into the pillow. Emma watched until her breath evened out again, fighting against the emotions taking root in her soul. It started with Ruby, and then Granny. Regina intrigued her at first and getting under the woman's skin was funny but she cared now, and her conscience nagged at her to go. Regina probably had drunk herself to sleep by that hour, but someone needed to be there when she woke. She already felt weak and exhausted from her stint in the woods earlier, but she braved the freezing winds and molecules of biting snow, hating everything as she turned onto Mifflin Street and directly into a gale-force gust of frigid hell. Her frozen, burning hands barely stayed steady enough to pick the locks and enter the override code. Every light in the Mills mansion glowed, a beacon in the dead of night.
"Regina?" No response. She slid out of her jacket and slipped off her shoes and set them off to the side. Glossy photo paper glinted, and she knelt on one knee to reach them around her massive belly. One was old and worn with a crease on one side, like it'd been held by a strap. The name A. Jackson had been hidden beneath the indentation. The other two depicted identical sonogram pictures with E. Swan at the top and a little arrow that proudly displayed "boy" in the middle.
Movement at the top of the stairs drew her attention. Regina wobbled but hadn't drunk herself completely immobile yet. Her skirt hung crooked on her hips, camisole untucked beneath an unbuttoned blouse. Completely toasted, yes, but standing. No anger met the uninvited entry to her home. No fire sparked in those caramel eyes, no irritation at her presence. Nothing moved within the broken mayor. Regina looked defeated.
"I'm having a boy?" Emma managed, not sure what else could have possibly broken the stalemate staring contest. The mayor nodded. "Who is A. Jackson?" She asked immediately, ignoring the swell of emotions she'd desperately avoided by remaining ignorant to the details of her child's life.
"A ghost," Regina answered cryptically and finished the drink in her hand. She turned from Emma, stumbled to the side and caught herself on the wall, and then disappeared into the living room. Emma locked the door and followed. Regina hadn't asked her to leave yet.
A decanter of amber liquid set at the corner of an open photo album. Regina refilled her glass. Emma calculated the time stamp at the bottom of the pictures; Ruby would have been seven at the time, almost three years before her mother died. A much younger Regina and Ruby stared up at her from slightly grainy photos, but the current Regina made no move to hide the memories as she lounged back on sofa and sipped her drink. Emma sat near her knee at the edge of the cushion and studied the pictures. In one of them, Regina's arm held the waist of a much taller woman who touched the back of her neck and nuzzled her temple. Two smiles of people in love touched their lips. The one next to it showed Regina and the woman in the same clothes. Regina stood behind a tiny Ruby, hands on her shoulders, while the young child and the other woman blew out candles on a birthday cake that read, "Happy Birthday, Anita!" in big purple letters.
"Anita," Emma whispered and glanced back at the blurry sonogram picture in her hand. "She was Ruby's mother. It's true, then? You were in love with her?"
"We made love that night, for the first time. He stayed in Camden because of an early court date the next morning. He missed her birthday, so I stayed to keep her company. I never imagined she might love me back," Regina confessed, and Emma wondered if she actually knew what she was doing. Alcohol revealed people, it didn't cover it up, not like Regina's many masks.
"I'm so sorry, Regina. I can't imagine losing someone like that."
Regina laughed, a hollow ugly sound that made Emma flinch as it crawled up her spine. "Every woman I've ever loved has behaved exactly like you. Wild and unpredictable. I think I envied their freedom." Well, that was a bash over the head with a tire iron compared to Regina's odd, subtle intimacy she'd shared that morning. A warm hand rubbed the length of her bicep, and Emma's eyes whipped over her shoulder to Regina's. The woman only grinned and sipped, never breaking eye contact.
"You're drunk," Emma reminded her, not quite sure how to respond to the attention.
"Impeccable deduction, Miss Swan."
Emma no longer questioned Regina's need for the escape. She stayed for her family and destroyed herself with memories Storybrooke invoked. Green eyes fell to the sonogram again. The date shown was too new to have been Ruby, but it fit a different timeline. "She was pregnant when she was murdered, wasn't she?"
Regina stared into the thin layer of amber liquid coating the bottom of the glass. So long, she stared Emma thought she'd not heard her or refused to answer the question to which Emma already knew the answer. Green eyes shifted to the spread of happy memories that now haunted their possessor.
"I didn't know she intended to leave him that night," Regina murmured. She'd not meant to say a word, but someone needed to know. Someone needed to remember the life she'd lost, someone who wasn't her. Keeping the secret killed her slowly, but she had no reason yet to die. "For two years, I kissed her goodnight and watched her leave my apartment without knowing how he'd hurt her until the next day when she'd come back after he went to work. Ruby spent nights at a time with me because he wanted a romantic weekend, and I had no choice but to stay silent and imagine a thousand different ways he violated her. It was supposed to change when I became mayor. I finally had the power to match my money to help her escape."
"Why couldn't she leave before then?"
"Because he was one of the top practicing defense attorneys in Camden – The Wolf. It's why we never revealed she was pregnant with his second child. Keeping Ruby with us would have been hard enough. He would have taken custody and shipped her to a boarding school before we even said goodbye." She rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger, snapping back to reality. "Granny mustn't know. I've already hurt her enough, and knowing she'd lost a grandchild and a daughter at the same time would be too much."
"I won't say anything," Emma reassured her, maintaining the trust that kept the line of communication intact. "If you do one thing for me." Regina rolled her eyes and tipped the glass into her mouth. "Stop drinking," Emma practically begged.
"I did," Regina spat and wiggled around Emma's bulk to stand. "But you ran off to the woods and reminded me of everything I wanted to forget."
Emma observed her tight shoulders as she wobbled to the unlit fireplace and set her glass on the mantle. "You don't get to blame this on me, Regina. I didn't mean to get lost in the woods, and even if I did, I'm not the one who took her from you." Emma tried to be mad, tried to throw up a wall between them, but her voice only sounded tender, like she spoke to a child.
"I know," Regina breathed and wrapped her arms around her ribs, the physical representation of holding it together. Her head bowed to the photographs too small to see across the room, but she knew every one of them to be a happy scene, a wonderful memory.
"Regina, I'm not her."
"I know," the mayor breathed, her voice so small that Emma read her lips to hear the words. Regina snorted, an endearing smile tugging at her lips. "In the five years I knew her, she never once flinched. She fought back every single time. He couldn't break her, so he killed her." Glassy caramel eyes met stormy green. A crackle of static snapped between them. The real Regina stood before her, not the distorted image presented to the public who knew so little of her inner life. Now that Emma peeled back those layers, she didn't know what to do with the raw human being she found beneath. Cracking Regina open wasn't a game, but she'd played her perfectly.
"You've never been broken, have you, Miss Swan?"
"My life is a fucking disaster."
"And yet, here you are, saving everyone else. You ran instead of standing up to your abuser, which takes a different type of strength. You, perhaps of all of us, have most reason to lament your miserable existence, but I've not once heard you utter a word in defeat or take for granted one single moment." Regina fell into the cushion beside her charge. Emma sat perfectly still, holding her breath. A warm hand touched her still-chilled cheek, the other tucking wild blonde hair behind an ear. "How can you affect me so much in three weeks when others have failed for years?"
"Regina," came a hoarse, wavering response. "You're drunk."
"May I show you something?" Emma nodded and allowed Regina to haphazardly pull her to her feet. The mayor clutched at her hand the entire trip up the grand staircase and across the balcony to a closed room. Emma sneezed before Regina hit the light switch from the dust and must that assaulted her sensitive nose. Pregnancy did weird things to her.
A glance at Regina found the mayor with watery eyes from the pure emotion the sight invoked. A twin bed with a Princess Belle comforter, filled bookshelves with many titles Emma had seen in Ruby's room, stuffed animals and toys, a small desk with pink and blue stationary. Several small cans of paint sat in the corner. No doubt, this was meant to be Ruby's room, and they'd intended to let her pick the color of her walls. This room served as a time capsule from the life Regina never had – a tomb for her happiness.
"Why are you showing me this?"
"Don't give your son over to adoption."
Emma recoiled from the unexpected request. "It's not like I can take care of it. Trust me, it's better off. At least it will get fed."
"Your heart will be as pitiful as this room left untouched for five years in wait of a girl who will never see it. Do not allow your situation to destroy your heart. Don't wait to love those who mean the most to you because you'll lose them faster than you ever believed possible. I can barely walk upstairs in my own home, much less sleep in my own bedroom."
"Regina, my life… I've done things that…" Her heart tried to explain, she wanted Regina to understand. She wanted someone to understand, to know what she'd done, who she was.
"What if I extended our deal beyond the election? I have more than enough room and money to support the both of you until you've figured out what you'd like to do with your life. You might go to college or a trade school."
"Why would you do that?"
Burnt caramel flickered over the untouched room. "No matter what she's done, no mother should be separated from her child if she wants to care for him." She dropped the hand that still held Emma's and clasped both in front of her hips. "I'll not touch you, Miss Swan, or ask anything of you that you do not want. I simply wish to help."
"Regina, I'm gay. You touching me is definitely not the issue here," Emma sniped and swept a trembling hand over her face. It smelled sweetly of Regina's lotion, and she dropped it to her side in defeat. Coming to Regina in this state had been a bad idea.
"You're pregnant." Confusion in the drunken haze shone brightly. Particles of a whole truth danced behind those glazed caramel eyes.
"Yeah, funny how that happens." Arms crossed, Emma wished she still had the ability to cock her hip to the side in a show of sassy defiance.
"You're safe here, Miss Swan," Regina whispered. She saw. She understood, and the compassion the alcohol permitted her to display unnerved Emma to the core. She hadn't deserved it. Her own decisions led to her current state, and nothing Regina said or did changed that.
Something in Emma snapped and rebelled. "You have multiple personalities, don't you? Is this Saint Regina, patron of wayward mothers?" It contained far more levity than she'd intended but steered the conversation away from unwanted topics all the same.
Regina cracked a smile, tiny but still visible. She'd been called many names, but saint was new. "My motives are not completely altruistic. Your presence is changing things, Miss Swan, and I believe in time and with your help, I might reclaim a relationship with my child. If not, I can at least find peace in the fact she's found a friend upon which to cast her burdens. You came to Storybrooke because you thought it would be a wonderful place for your child to be reared. Let me make that a reality for you. I've been searching for a reason to live for so long that I nearly dismissed you before I realized the opportunities you created for me, personally and professionally. I've no reason to die, but I have nothing to live for, either."
"I can't be your reason to live. I've been alone my entire life, and I'm selfish. I won't stay here long enough to make a difference." Had everyone in Storybrooke lost their damn minds? She wasn't a hero or a saint or a selfless person.
"Emma, you're kindness has touched many."
"Well, it doesn't cost anything to be nice to people, so I can afford to be kind," Emma snapped. Regina saw her, not the façade, not Emma Swan, not a broke and pregnant runaway. She just saw Emma. No one had humanized her in this way before, and her instincts told her to flee before it trapped her.
"You've already made a difference," Regina continued, oblivious to the inner turmoil. "Granny and Ruby take in a lot of strays, but I've never seen them accept anyone into their hearts this way. You belong here, Miss Swan. Don't take the chance for a family for granted. I am living proof that everything can be lost in only a moment." Her words came slower, softer. The last glass finally pulled her towards the sleep so skillfully evasive. She looked so small now that her personality wasn't commandeering every inch of the room. Emma almost wished she forgot the conversation in the morning.
"You should go to bed," Emma suggested, quietly evading emotions and questions she refused to acknowledge.
Regina nodded and darkened the room, closed the door silently, reverently. With a little maneuvering, she guided Regina down the stairs and onto the sofa. She found a blanket in a closet off the foyer and laid it gingerly over the slumbering mayor. The moment she turned to leave, though, strong fingers dug into her forearm. "Will you stay with me?"
"Yeah," Emma whispered and adjusted the blanket around her shoulders. She found another blanket and settled into the love seat across the room with the T.V. remote.
Her mind wandered back to the photos still smiling up at her on the coffee table. She knew she shouldn't look at them, at Regina's private hell and most cherished moments. The next page showed her a photo of Granny with a hand on her hip smiling at Regina who sat cross-legged on the floor with Ruby playing with what looked like a mouse or a hamster. Ruby had a pet mouse? Emma smiled. On the same page, Regina and Anita gazed at each other. Regina held a bottle of red wine between them, but Anita's hand covered her glass. Emma imagined that Regina tried to get her best friend drunk for her birthday, and probably succeeded if the outcome of that evening indicated anything. On the opposite page, Regina sat on a sofa and held a sleepy Ruby in her lap, a book open between them while Granny cleaned the kitchen in the background. And then one of the mayor laying the slumbering girl in her bed. That photo ended the recounting of the birthday celebration, and the next page started a new story when Emma flipped it. A similar theme emerged despite the drastic change of scenery. The time stamp indicated that nearly a month passed after the birthday party.
A sunny day melted into existence around the cold living room. Regina wore jeans, a t-shirt, and sturdy boots, a tiny Ruby getting a piggy-back ride through a forest trail. They'd gone hiking, Emma speculated. The pictured showed Regina glancing over her shoulder at Ruby, probably answering the millionth question she'd asked that day. Gone were the harsh lines of grief the woman slumbering to her left wore, even in sleep. Life lit up her eyes, nothing like the calculated glares and hard observations Regina usually wore. At some point during the hiking trip, Ruby commandeered the camera and a series of blurry, unfocused shots of Regina and Anita followed. Having lunch on a rock overlooking the mountain scenery from a high vantage point. Regina wearing the most beautiful smile Emma had ever seen, even dripping wet in her jeans and sticking shirt. Anita was doubled over in laughter, obviously, she'd pushed Regina into the deep pool of clear water. Emma flipped, and the next page showed Anita reaching down to help Regina up and getting pulled in head first. The photos of that day stopped there, so Ruby probably jumped in after her mothers.
Emma rubbed her stinging eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Ruby said that Regina used to smile a lot. A deep, silent sigh oved her chest as her eyes wandered to the tortured woman now sleeping off her drunken stupor yet again. Regina deserved to be that happy again, so did Ruby and Granny. They'd accepted her into their family with open arms and no judgements, and if she helped alleviate that empty space where Anita used to be, then she owed it to them to try and fill it. She picked up the sonogram pictures and tucked them into the one of the pages of the album, closing it on the beautiful smiles taunting her.
Maybe she also deserved to be that happy. She'd never had a family before, no photographic evidence that she'd existed. Maybe she deserved that. Maybe she deserved to exist, to live. Maybe she deserved to have a home. Emma leaned back on the love seat and flipped through the channels again, finally settling for the one thing she and Regina shared in common. Somewhere between the late night marathon of The Golden Girls and the early morning showing of the 700 Club, she drifted off to a blissfully dreamless sleep.
Maybe she deserved to stay.