A/N: As with the previous chapter, you can avoid the triggering section by skipping the part in italics. Again, this is taken from what is implied in canon. I hope you can appreciate the necessity of its inclusion in the story, even though it is not enjoyable to read.
Trigger Warning: Child abuse.
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"Where is Emma?"
Regina should have known Hook and the two idiots would catch up with her sooner rather than later. The demand, from the pirate Regina liked to call Captain Guyliner, was accompanied by a generous helping of spittle which she was forced to wipe away on her sleeve.
"I do not know," she said formally. "And even if I did, I would not tell you. As I said last night, Miss Swan is incredibly powerful, and we must assume that her absence is by her own choice. She will return to us when she is ready."
"How can you be sure?" Snow wheedled.
Snow had always been a whiny child. When she was ten, Regina remembered, she had been almost sweet, spoilt and bratty but only in the way all princesses were. Most princesses, though, managed to grow out of the whining.
"I cannot be sure. But, Snow White, you would do well to consider what your beloved daughter has been going through these past few years, especially in the months since the birth of your son."
"What do you mean?" Snow asked, this question even more high pitched than the first.
Regina glanced sideways at Charming, who looked uncomfortable. It had been his go-to demeanor around her ever since he'd admitted to preferring her lasagne.
"She suffered, alone, for the first 28 years of her life. She felt abandoned and unloved. And then, when she finally found her parents, she was not enough for them - they felt the need to have another baby. A replacement baby."
"We put her in that wardrobe because of you, Regina," Charming defended.
"Exactly! And Neal isn't a replacement baby."
"Not to you, maybe. But have you talked about it with her? Have you reassured her? Have you, really, truly, included her in his life? She had a family until she was three, you know?"
"Yes, and then they gave her back! She does tell me these things, I am her mother!"
"And why did they give her back?" Regina spat. How could a woman who was supposed to rule a kingdom be so pathetically dense?
"Because they got pregnant with a baby of their own… Oh."
"Oh, indeed."
"But she knows it isn't like that with Neal," Snow said, trying to sound confident.
"Does she really?" Regina taunted. Sometimes Snow was too easy a mark to resist. She'd have to talk about this in therapy now. But no one could be perfect all the time.
"She said she loves me," Hook cut in. "Why wouldn't she come back for me?"
Regina rolled her eyes. These people. Did good really have to be synonymous with stupid?
"Did it ever cross your alcohol-addled mind that maybe she just told you what she knew you wanted to hear?"
"No, she wouldn't do that, she…"
"I am sure she will explain herself upon her return," Regina said.
"Then allow me to summon her!" Hook cried. Regina wasn't sure if he was begging or commanding.
"No. She should not be summoned."
For once, Charming spoke up when he saw sense. "Regina's right, Killian," he said, placing a hand on the pirate's shoulder. "Emma needs to know that she's free, that we won't try to control her or her magic."
"Thank you," Regina said. "Now, if you will all excuse me?"
They let her pass and she stifled a groan. They were so boring, so stupidly dull. At least Emma had been interesting, even when they were at each other's throats. She had been quick and witty and strong, she had thought about things, she'd had imperfections. She still had them, Regina reminded herself. She was not gone. She was just… Away.
Her phone buzzed. She checked it, smiling when she saw that the message was from Henry.
Are you still at the diner? Let me know if you need me to kick his ass for you.
Regina rolled her eyes, then called her son.
"There will be no ass kicking!" she told him as soon as he answered the phone.
"Fine. But if you ever change your mind-"
"Then I am perfectly capable of kicking ass myself."
"Touche. So I was thinking…"
"What is it, dear? Do you want to wait to tell me when I get home? I'll only be a few minutes."
She heard Henry sigh. "I just… Okay. I'll tell you when you get here."
Regina ended the call and walked more quickly, wondering what was bothering him. He opened the door for her when she reached the mansion, not even waiting for her to be fully inside before he blurted,
"Do you think we could find a way to talk to Emma?"
Regina paused, using the time it took to close the door and hang up her coat to properly consider her answer.
"Communicating across or between realms is definitely possible, though it requires a great deal of magic and skill," Regina said carefully.
"Magic and skill that you have?"
"Yes, dear. But…"
"I know, I know, we have to leave her to it and I get that. I just… I just want to know she's okay." Henry's voice had become terribly small, and Regina had to resist the temptation to pull him into a hug.
"I am sure that she is fine. But I think… Yes, I think she would understand if we sent her a message."
Henry grinned. "You're the best, Mom. Well, maybe tied for first place…"
"I suppose I will accept that. Grudgingly. Very well, follow me."
Regina led the way to her study and found the book she was looking for.
"Is that a magic book?" Henry asked, excited.
"No. It is an atlas of sorts." Regina leafed through it, showing him. "It depicts all the realms known to the sorcerer who compiled it in enough detail for reasonable accuracy. I plan to perform a kind of locator spell, which will be possible because you and your birth mother share true love. It, ah, it requires a drop of your blood."
Henry blanched, but only for a moment. He held out his hand. "Yeah, okay, go for it," he said, trying not to wince.
Regina stroked his hand in hers; he gasped as she magically pricked one of his fingers and withdrew a drop of blood. It wafted into the air in a red mist. Regina muttered an incantation, directing the mist towards the book with a sweep of her hand. The pages began to turn of their own accord as the mist hovered above them. They stopped, open at the Enchanted Forest, then the mist spiralled down towards the book, landing in a small but unmistakable red dot.
Henry and Regina both hurried to see where the dot was. It meant a lot more to Regina than it did to her son. She blinked. How was this possible.
"It can't be," she murmured.
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Emma was in a stable, and it smelled like death. There were no horses, no workers, no corpses… But death. Definitely death. She hurried out into the open, strangely aware of the easy grace her new magic gave her. She wondered briefly if this meant she was no longer clumsy. That might be handy. She already owed Regina three cider glasses.
Outside, she met Enchanted Forest countryside; sprawling fields bordered by seemingly endless woodland, with ragged mountains looming out of it in the distance. It was beautiful, if you liked that sort of thing. She did a kind of pirouette (entirely by accident) as she turned to see the house. She wasn't sure what to call it - a manor? A fortress? Even a small castle? It was far smaller than the palace, and mostly made of wood, with thatched roofs, and a high, spiked fence around the main buildings.
Emma materialised within the fence. As she expected, the place was deserted. She kicked at some dirt; it was dry and dusty, as if even the rain had been cursed away.
So this was where you grew up, she mused. She went inside, exploring, imagining…
There would have been servants, dozens at least, cooking and cleaning, attending to her every need. And tutors, she would have had tutors. Her speech held clear evidence of elocution lessons, her back was always ramrod straight… And she seemed to know everything.
"So, how does one come to know everything?" Emma asked the musty hallway. Regina's schooling interested her. Emma herself had been educated in a far more developed world, but she got the feeling she knew far less. While she and Regina were of well matched intelligence, Regina knew enough to win wars, to rule kingdoms - Emma was even impressed by her mayoral abilities.
Emma pretended that this interest was why she was here. She pretended that she didn't recognise the desperation in Regina's eyes when she was restrained - the resigned, accepting desperation. The desperation ground so deep into her being, into her very soul, that she didn't even fight it any more. Emma pretended she didn't know what she would see when she took herself back in time. She pretended, forced herself to ignore the obvious, because if she had admitted that she even suspected what she was about to see, she would never have gone.
And she had to go. She had to make it real. She had to have proof, she had to know that not only did Regina understand her darkness, she understood the cause. She understood the pain.
It had taken Emma a while to realise that even real, biological parents could abuse their kids. But growing up in the system, she had seen the evidence, and eventually, she'd given up on her dreams and accepted it.
She pushed away the memories. Now was not the time. She'd reached the end of the hallway and was in front of a surprisingly sturdy door. For a moment it made her think of a prison cell. She pushed it open; it was heavy. Without her magic she would have had to exert herself.
Magic came much more easily in this realm. It belonged here. Though, Emma realised, now she was the Dark One, magic probably felt comfortable everywhere.
If the stables had smelled like death, this room smelled like torture. There were no vicious instruments, the floors were polished wood without a blood stain in sight, but Emma would have bet her life on it. This was a torture chamber. She shuddered as she spurred her magic into action, transporting her back in time.
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Emma looked into the stoic eyes of a beautiful little girl, perhaps about seven years old. She knew she was in a mirror; she forced herself not to reach out. The helpless feeling would only intensify if she did.
"Regina," Emma whispered softly. The girl's eyes snapped up. For a moment Emma thought she had heard her and wondered how horrific the butterfly effect would be if she simply pulled the girl away with her, but she realised the girl was not looking at her, but at the doorway. The scene was eerily familiar. Emma wondered how long it would be before she was sick again.
"Regina," said a much lower, sterner voice.
"Good day, mother," the girl trilled, slipping off her chair to stand, then curtsey.
"You did not bow your head."
"Uh, yeah she did!" Emma could not help but defend. She remembered something, a particularly brutal day in a foster home, but she pushed the thoughts aside.
Tiny Regina curtsied again, this time bowing her head even lower, and remaining that way. She knew what was coming, Emma realised. She was seven and she knew what was coming.
Cora moved her daughter's hair aside and struck her upper back and the back of her neck with a cane that seemed to materialise in her hand. Ten strikes. Cora seemed to relish in them. Emma added to the list of people she wanted to bring back from the dead so she could properly torture them before killing them again. Repeatedly.
"Thank you, mother," Regina whispered when she was allowed to stand again. Cora placed a hand on her shoulder almost gently.
"I am helping you to better yourself, my dear. You are an ugly, evil child. You must be punished if there is any hope for you at all."
"Yes, mother."
Cora left the room. Emma heard the lock click. Regina returned to sit in front of the mirror. She stared into it again. Emma had a feeling this was a punishment, too. There were no toys, no books, not even a doll or stuffed animal. There was a bed, perfectly made, a closet, and the vanity where Regina sat.
"I am an ugly, evil child," Regina whispered.
Emma gasped.
"No you're not. You're beautiful, you're lovely, you're good and important and kind-"
"I am an ugly, evil child." Regina spoke over her. It was worse than watching the beating.
Emma knew there was more, so much more, but she was shaking and crying and exploding with magic and she had to get out of there before she blew a hole in the space-time continuum or whatever it was they had in these weird ass magical realms.
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Emma poofed herself out of the house. She couldn't be in there, she couldn't be near it. Suddenly she was back in the basement when she was eight years old, locked in a closet when she was nine, pinned to a bed when she was twelve… She threw up blood, as if her insides really had been churning. She felt her magic heal what it had broken, but in a way she wished it wouldn't. She wanted to feel that pain again, she wanted to take it - as if taking it herself would somehow take it away from those dark chocolate eyes that were already so impassive.
Emma looked back at the house. It didn't even deserve to be burned. She wanted to annihilate it, but something stopped her. The darkness took away most of her inhibitions, she was happy to note she had very little conscience. But this was not her past to destroy. These were not her memories. She had invaded them without permission, but that was far enough.
She flopped down beside a stream and magicked some heavy rock music to lull her pain away. After a moment, she summoned a bottle of whiskey too.
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"Mom? What's the matter? Is she somewhere bad?"
Henry was panicked. Regina seemed to be in shock after learning Emma's location. She did her best to recover herself.
"No, Henry, she… I am sure she's fine. I just… I don't understand why she would be there."
"Why? Where is she?"
Regina bit her lip. "She is… She is at the place where I grew up."
Henry could feel the tension in the air, the raw pain his mother was doing a terrible job of hiding.
"Oh, okay… Well, I guess if we talk to her, she can tell us why she went there?"
Regina took Henry's hand. "You're right. It's probably a coincidence, she may have stumbled upon it and been interested for some reason. The Enchanted Forest is not huge, perhaps she sought some familiarity there. I suppose she will have heard some stories about it, and darkness often brings with it a kind of morbid curiosity."
Henry pulled Regina into a hug. "It's okay, Mom. You're not there any more."
"True. But in a moment, part of me will be."
"What are we going to do?"
Regina fetched the dagger, and the ingredients she needed from her vault. She created the potion in the kitchen - the microwave was especially superior to her medieval equipment.
"After I drink this, I will appear to be asleep," Regina told Henry. "I must be holding the dagger at all times, or I will not be tethered to anything, and I will fall into something akin to a sleeping curse."
"Where will you be when you're there? I mean, your body is still here…"
"I will be… It's difficult to explain, but I will be in Miss Swan's mind. Only a part of it, sort of like… A vision? She will be able to see me, as one sees a daydream, or something they imagine."
"Will you be safe?"
"As long as I hold the dagger." And as long as I made the potion correctly, Regina added in her head. She tried to reassure herself. Worst case scenario, she would be rather sick, and Miss Swan's magic would almost certainly be able to restore her. But it was foolish to worry about this, anyway. The potion was perfect. She had no need to doubt her abilities.
"And she… She can't hurt you, can she?"
Regina admired her son more every day, though she hated that he had to consider the possibility of the blonde mother he idolised ever causing harm to anything. "You are… Thank you for asking, Henry. And no. She would not, for one thing. But even if she wanted to, my physical body will not be there to hurt, and I will be able to leave at any time. Even if she just annoys me."
"If you leave when she annoys you, you won't be there for very long," Henry teased.
Regina chuckled. "Is there anything in particular you would like me to say?"
"Just that I love her, no matter what. And I hope she's okay. And that I want her to come back, but only when she's ready."
"I'm sure she will be glad to hear those things. If you could make sure no one enters the house while I am gone? This will drain too much of my magic to sustain wards."
"How can I wake you, if people come in?"
Regina frowned. "There is no way to reliably wake me. But I suppose the normal methods might work."
"What, shaking, shouting, pouring a jug of water over your head?"
"If you pour water over me, the situation had better be dire," Regina said with a glare. Henry cackled, but became very serious when Regina held the vial of potion to her lips.
"I should be back in a few hours at most."
"I love you, Mom. Be safe."
"I love you too, Henry."
And with that, Regina drank the potion and collapsed backwards onto the couch. Henry arranged her as comfortably as he could, went to get his laptop and some snacks, then locked them both in the study. He wondered how long this thing would take…
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A/N: I can't wait for you to read the next chapter, but for now, what did you think of this one?