Something was very wrong. One moment, he'd been looking into Regina's eyes, and they had been swirling with color. She had been keeping eye contact with him, almost communing with him, even as she'd simultaneously formed the magic of Henry's bubble with Astrid and absorbed the shocks of her son's young magic. Then, a wall seemed to slam down behind the irises of her eyes, and she dropped to the ground, the whole circle falling with her as he kept hold of her hand and Ruby's shoulders while Astrid and Granny both tried not to lose their contact with Regina as well.
Luckily, their scrambling only lasted a moment before Astrid said, "It's done. Henry did it."
The expected jubilation that should have accompanied her statement was muted, however, at the sight of Regina's crumpled form. Astrid and Granny, her neighbors in the circle, were already kneeling beside her to examine her and take her pulse.
David glanced at Henry, who appeared to be all right, and had just been intercepted by Ruby on the way to his fallen mom. He assumed she was saying something comforting, but, seeing that Henry was in good hands for the time being, he spared a glance for Emma and Snow and verified that they appeared uninjured. Satisfied that his other family members were not in mortal danger, he moved toward Regina, who was still sprawled in the dirt. Before he could get there, however, Snow was in his arms, grasping his face between her hands, "You found me," she breathed.
He knew it was time for his line, but he didn't care. Regina was so still. "We did," he replied curtly, trying to move past her.
Snow looked at him, confused and a bit hurt, but would not be pushed aside. "Charming?" she asked. From the looks of things, James and their war council had defeated Regina and brought her and Emma back to Storybrooke. So why wasn't he happy?
"I need to check on Regina," he told her. He couldn't see Regina's face. Henry had not allowed Ruby to deter him for long and had pulled her with him to his mother's side, and Granny and Astrid hadn't moved from their posts next to her.
He needed to see her for himself.
Snow felt her world shift. Something was fundamentally wrong. Was she in another sleeping curse? A new adaptation designed by Regina that showed you what your world would look like if it moved on without you? She and Emma hadn't even been gone three weeks, and now she was watching her husband, her grandson, and her staunchest allies worry about the health of her wicked step-mother?
She turned to Emma, who was looking at her with something uncomfortably close to pity, next to a somber Grumpy. "I must have fallen back asleep," Snow told Emma. "I must be in a very convincing Netherworld." It was the pity intensifying and transforming into concern that forced Snow to admit she wasn't asleep. She wasn't unconscious. Henry was really crying over Regina's body, and her husband was frantically kissing her. Wait. What? Her husband was kissing Regina.
She threw up.
After his third attempt at administering true love's kiss, Granny pulled the prince into a more stable kneeling position.
Astrid placed her hand on David's other shoulder and said, "It's not going to work, David. She wasn't cursed."
"Wasn't cursed?" David looked at her in agitated disbelief. "Doesn't this look cursed to you?"
Astrid looked at David sympathetically, and said "It looks like unconsciousness brought on by magical exhaustion. A common side effect of using massive amounts of magic."
"Unconsciousness," David murmured, a spark of hope flaring in his chest. She wasn't dead. And she'd promised to fight. She would come back to them.
"Mom's alive?" Henry asked urgently, brushing tears off his cheeks. She looked so still and frail. Even asleep, his mom always looked strong. And bigger than her actual size. But here, she looked tiny.
Granny nodded. "She has a pulse, but it's weak. We should get her to a hospital."
"You can't take her to Dr. Whale," Henry stated firmly.
"She's not exactly in a position to argue," Ruby said, squeezing Henry's shoulder to take the sting out of her words.
"We have to take her to the hospital, Henry," David said. "But we can make sure that a nurse does the IV, and Whale stays out of her room." He looked to Granny and Astrid. "Is it safe to move her?"
Granny gave a brisk nod, and Astrid answered, "Yes, but be gentle."
David knelt by Regina's ear, "Be selfish, Regina. Come back to me. Please," and then he lifted her and cradled her like a small child. "Let's go," he told the group. Granny and Ruby took the lead down the trail, followed by Grumpy and Astrid.
David looked at Emma, who had retrieved Henry's book and taken Ruby's place by his side. "I'm glad you're home. I was so worried about you."
Emma nodded. She knew he wasn't lying, but she also knew he was breaking her mother's heart even as they stood there. Awkward was the least of their problems. She looked down at Henry, who was smiling up at her, even as he snuck pensive looks at Regina's unconscious form.
"Let's go get your grandma, kid," she said, indicating that David should follow the others. "We'll catch up."
David nodded and then added, "Please don't be too long. We only have the truck."
Emma looked at her mother, who was sitting at the base of a tree, head in her hands. "How about you take Henry in the truck, and Mary Margaret and I will start walking back. We're used to it. You can even send Ruby back with a car or something."
David looked at Snow, then Regina, and then Emma and nodded. "C'mon, kiddo," he said to Henry.
Henry nodded and hugged Emma around the waist. "Welcome back. I have so much to catch you up on. I can do magic, and my mom's good now!" He smiled, but still with a crease of worry along his forehead. "See you at the hospital," he said and started down the trail.
Emma looked back to David. She could see that she had a lot of catching up to do. "You love her?" she indicated Regina.
"I do," David replied.
"And it's real?" Emma asked. She wanted to know what they were dealing with here. "You're not under an evil curse or anything?"
"It's real," David confirmed. "I'm sorry that you, and especially Snow, had to find out this way, but I thought she was dead. I panicked."
"Yeah," Emma said. They would talk about this later. Sometime when her mom wasn't freaking out at the base of a tree and her dad wasn't cradling her son's crazy, homicidal, adoptive mother who also happened to be Emma's step-grandmother. She could feel the migraine building behind her eyeballs. "Just go. I'll get Mary Margaret back to the loft and see you later."
David nodded, giving one more regretful look at his wife, before striding down the path. Hopefully he'd given the rest of the group enough of a head start that they'd nearly be at the truck by the time he caught up to them.
Emma looked at Snow and sighed. They'd battled ogres, and she'd eaten chimera. Why did she feel like the hard part was just beginning?
"Henry," David said urgently as they hurried to catch up with the others. "I don't have time to explain now, but don't use any more magic."
Henry looked at his grandfather confused.
"I know you're going to want to show Emma and Snow what you can do, but don't," David instructed. "Henry, this is important. Don't do any magic until your mom wakes up and you can talk to her about it."
Henry's eyes were wide with fear, but he nodded his understanding. David wouldn't ask him if it wasn't important. And he didn't care about magic. Not if it couldn't make his mom better.
Emma approached her mother cautiously, not for the first time missing Mary Margaret. Mary Margaret she knew how to help. Snow, her mother, well, she was still unfamiliar—as bad-ass as she was in the Enchanted Forest. Gingerly, she sat down next to her, and she was contemplating attempting some kind of comforting gesture when Snow suddenly lifted her head from her knees, wiped her tears away, and stood.
"We have to get going," Snow declared to her daughter, a sense of mission clear in her stance.
"Yes, we do," Emma agreed, confused at her mother's sudden resolve, but inelegantly standing despite her lack of comprehension.
"Let's go," Snow said, heading down a path Emma hadn't yet noticed.
"Umm," Emma's responses were having trouble keeping up with the sudden shift in circumstances and her mother's sudden shift in mood. "Go where?" she asked as she stumbled after her roommate-turned-parent.
"To rescue Charming, of course," Snow replied.
To the admission nurse's credit, she only hesitated briefly when confronted with the identity of the new patient. Though, it wasn't really Regina's identity that gave her confusion—it didn't take long after the curse broke for a betting pool to emerge amongst the hospital staff. One of the second floor orderlies managed the enterprise, and staff members could place two bets: how long it would take for Regina to end up in the hospital, and whether she would come through the front doors of the ER or the basement entrance to the morgue.
Janet sighed. Apparently that jerk from imaging won. She wished it had been anyone but him. Oh well. She just wished they'd thought to create a pool about whether anyone would actually come in with The Evil Queen. She doubted the orderly would have been able to cover the odds on her entering the emergency room in the arms of Prince Charming and surrounded by Granny, Ruby, Grumpy, and that nice, clumsy, former nun. And, sadly, the concern and fear on young Henry's face might have been the longest bet of all. Janet wished she'd thought to place money on that.
But she never would have.
The situation in front of her was impossible.
And yet happening.
So Janet got to work. Fazed was not a look she wore for long. She handed a clipboard of forms to Ruby. "Fill these out." Then she hollered over her shoulder, "Gurney!"
"You want to rescue David?" Emma asked, trying to keep up as her mother strode purposefully through the underbrush.
"Yes," Snow replied absently, her mind already orchestrating the coming battle.
"From what?" Emma asked.
"From Regina, obviously," Snow huffed. She and Charming had true love. That didn't just go away. If he had just let her kiss him, then she could have broken Regina's curse, and they could get back to their happily ever after. She had just gotten her daughter back; she was not about to lose her husband.
"Maybe we should go to the loft first," Emma suggested. Mary Margaret was entitled to her denial—wasn't that one of the stages of grieving?—but that denial should be completed somewhere away from the prying eyes of others and preferably a somewhere that had indoor plumbing and electricity. After traipsing through the Not-So-Enchanting Forest, Emma was ready for a shower. And normal food. From a microwave.
"We're going to the hospital," Snow stated. "I have to find him," she whispered fervently to herself.
David was not happy. The moment they set foot in the hospital, Regina had been pulled from his arms and strapped onto a gurney. At least when he was touching her, he could feel, in his bones, that she was still alive. Now, separated from her by plexiglass, she looked still, small, and pale as the hospital staff buzzed around her with mystifyingly little result. The presence of Henry's scared form next to him was the only thing keeping him from bursting into the room and screaming at everyone to help her faster.
As David grasped his head between his hands, aggravatedly trying to stay out of the doctors' way, his aggravation was paused by surprise.
"Thank you," he watched Granny announce to the room of medical staff on the other side of the plexiglass. "We'll take it from here." Her tone did not permit any argument or dissension as she indicated herself and Astrid.
Astrid smiled reassuringly but with an expression that echoed Granny's authority, and the hospital workers did not need any further encouragement to leave the room. Most of them preferred the Evil Queen dead anyway.
After the last nurse filed out, David and Henry rushed into the room, followed by Grumpy and Ruby.
"Why did you make them leave?" Henry demanded. "Doesn't my mom need help?"
"They've given her all the help they can, Henry," Astrid told him gently. "They have her hooked up to monitors, so we can see how she's doing, and they gave her an IV, so she'll stay hydrated."
"But how is she going to wake up?" Henry asked. "If the doctors don't work on her, how is she going to get better?"
"The doctors can't help her, Henry," Astrid said apologetically. "Your mom's affliction is magical, not medical. So the cure is going to have to be magical as well."
Henry's resolve was frantic. "Then don't just stand there. Do something."
"I'm not sure what to do, Henry," Astrid said. "And I don't want to risk making it worse. Your mom will most likely wake up on her own, once her magical reserves replenish themselves."
"When?" David's quiet voice carried from his place by Regina's side, her small hand encased in his.
"I don't know," Astrid admitted.
"Not good enough," David said. "We have to do something. I have to do something."
"I think you're already doing it," Ruby said.
"What?" David looked at her in confusion.
"Did you see that?" Ruby asked Granny.
"I did," Granny nodded.
"What?" David asked again, aggravated. Regina was sick; he didn't have time to play guessing games.
"Let go of her hand," Ruby said.
David complied, still confused.
"Now look at her monitors," Ruby instructed.
Regina's read-outs, which had been stable moments before, were now showing signs of distress. David instinctively grabbed her hand again, and Regina relaxed, the signs of distress disappearing.
"That settles that," Granny said. "I'll talk to the nurse," she said, leaving the room.
"What?" Henry asked.
"I'm not leaving until your mom wakes up," David told his grandson.
"Good," Henry said. "Me neither."
While Henry's devotion to Regina warmed David's heart, he knew she would kill him if he let her son move into the hospital.
"Actually, Henry," David said, "Why don't you go with Astrid and Grumpy to the house and pick up some things your mom might need or want, like her hairbrush and pajamas?"
Henry didn't want to leave, but he was the only person who knew which pair of pajamas his mom liked to wear when she was sick. "Okay," he said. "But then I'm not leaving again."
"Thanks, Henry," David said. He could figure out how to convince Henry to leave again later. He just wished Regina was awake to see how much her son loved her.
Astrid smiled encouragingly at David as she walked out with Grumpy and Henry.
Ruby was about to speak when Granny re-entered with a couple of orderlies carrying chairs and cots. "Thank you," she said, dismissing them once the new furniture had been arranged.
"Thanks, Granny," David smiled at the older woman. He felt fortunate to have such wonderful friends.
Granny just nodded in acknowledgement. "Are you set? Because we should get back to the diner."
"Of course," David replied. "Go ahead. I'll be fine here."
Granny gave another quick nod to the prince and then patted the queen on the leg. "Don't keep your boys waiting too long, Your Majesty," she told the unconscious woman.
"Ruby?" Granny called for her granddaughter, who wasn't following her.
"I'll be in later, Granny," Ruby said. "I have to do something first."
With one last nod, Granny left Ruby and David alone with Regina's still form.
Ignoring the chair Granny had retrieved for him, David climbed onto Regina's hospital bed and curled himself around her, careful not to jostle the IV or other equipment.
Ruby, uncomfortable with the obvious display of affection, shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot. "I'm going to wait for Snow and Emma at the loft," she announced.
"You can take the truck and pick them up," David said, indicating his jacket containing the keys.
"They won't be walking along the road," Ruby said. "Snow will cut through the forest to get back quicker."
David nodded. There was no one better to track Snow than Ruby. The two had spent years on the run in the Enchanted Forest together.
"Please, Ruby, tell her I'm sorry," David said sincerely.
Ruby looked at the prince slightly disgusted. How much had Snow been through with Charming, and he couldn't deliver that message himself?
"I'd tell her in person, but I can't leave," David pleaded with Ruby to understand. "I just can't."
"Yeah," Ruby said, unimpressed, before she turned and went to find Snow.
David sighed and pulled Regina closer. "Thank you for not dying," her murmured into her hair. "But, if it isn't too much trouble, I'd appreciate it if you would wake up now." He kissed her temple and examined her face for the change he knew wouldn't be there. "Please come back to me," he whispered.
"Please, Mary Margaret," Emma stumbled after her mother, who was gracefully walking along the narrow path at what felt to Emma like the speed of light. "Mary Margaret, Snow," she bent over, breathing hard.
The use of her fairy tale name got Snow's attention, and she stopped in her tracks. It hadn't escaped her that, not only was Emma not calling her "Mom," but, most of the time, she didn't even use her real name. She used the name Regina cursed her with. But, she was trying not to push too hard. She knew the situation was hard on Emma; it was hard on them all. And Charming had warned her not to attack the problem as directly as she preferred. Though his phrase may have been "like a bull in a china shop." She smiled. Charming. And then she remembered. Regina. Her expression furrowed into a frown.
"I know you want to find David," Emma said, "But don't you think we should, I don't know, regroup or something?" She pulled herself gracelessly from her bent position into something resembling a proper standing posture.
"There's no time," Snow replied. "Regina has already worked some horrible magic, and we need to get to him and undo it before he's drawn in even deeper. Time is of the essence."
"Mary Margaret," Emma's voice was pitched uncomfortably close to a whine. "Why don't we go to the loft, get some food, and then get some information? You know, find out what we're dealing with. Running in blind might make it worse. Let's get a plan."
"I have a plan," Snow countered.
"Oh?" Emma asked, surprised.
"Go to the hospital, find David, and break his curse with true love's kiss," Snow informed her daughter. Really, everything would go a lot quicker if Emma would just get on board with the whole magic thing. They were wasting time.
"And if that doesn't work?" Emma kicked herself as soon as she heard her own words. They wouldn't help the situation. Just more evidence that she needed proper food—something from a package that didn't resemble anything found in nature and preferably coated in a fake cheese substance.
"Then I do something I should have done long ago," Snow replied. "I kill Regina."
.
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A/N: I am so sorry for the wait y'all. I thought I knew exactly what I was going to do with this chapter, but then the characters had a couple other ideas, so it took much longer to write than I anticipated. The next chapter is already in progress, but it will probably be a week before it gets posted due to some travel. I'll try to update quicker, but I don't want to overpromise (again). I hope you enjoyed the return of Snow and Emma, and, as always, your feedback is helpful and appreciated!