Part 6 of Vengeance
The cart reached the next town by nightfall, though for the last several miles Taliesin fretted at the quick pace of the setting sun. He never articulated what he expected to happen in this town at nightfall, but it became clear to Regina that the young man was listening to some instinct in his head.
Shortly after he drew up the cart in the center of a quiet town square, he leaned back, grabbed a book, and lifted his pen from its pouch. He cocked his head, listening. Regina noted crickets and the whoosh of prey birds, and the snick of rodents along the ground. A sudden cry, toward which both she and Taliesin jerked their gazes, preceded the screech of a hawk flying fast out of some bushes, a small rabbit in its talons.
About an hour ago she and Emma had switched positions and the blonde slept deeply in Regina's arms, not awakening to the sounds, exhausted. When she looked up from brushing a lock of Emma's hair from her face, Regina caught Taliesin studying them. His pen was poised over the page. Without a word he moved it slowly left to right. She could see ink darkly seeping into the thick parchment, but could not make out any of the words. Her head grew heavy and her eyes closed when her temple pressed against Emma's shoulder.
Another hawk screeching rattled Regina's nerves awake. She clutched instinctively and felt Emma still in her arms. She turned her head, pressed her face into the woman's shoulder, which twitched.
Taliesin still sat on the driving plank, a book open on his lap, the pen moving across the page, line after line. Regina looked around to see what he might be recording. A door to one of the crofts around them in the town creaked inward and Regina suddenly realized that a lot of doors to the homes were creaking inward, dark figures mostly cloaked in shadow, doing the pushing. They were bulky these shadows and Regina blinked, making her eyes adjust more quickly to the low light.
When she realized that they were armed men, she jerked upright, dislodging Emma and startling the blonde awake as well.
Soon the air filled with screams and a fire had been started in a hay pile, then caught a home. "It's a raiding party!"
"Angles," Taliesin said matter of factly, quietly, still writing.
Emma bolted to her feet at the sound of a woman's screams.
Regina grabbed her. "Where are you going?"
"To stop this," Emma said.
"We can't interfere!" Regina said.
"I can't stand here and do nothing," Emma snapped back.
Regina exhaled. The screams were coming from more than one home now. She closed her eyes. She'd known this treatment. She felt Emma's hand grabbing hers.
Looking up, she found green eyes searching hers. "All right," she said. "But let's try not to be seen."
"Magic then?" Emma asked.
"Can you poof in and out of any place yet?" Regina asked. She shook her head. "We'll have to walk in, assess each situation, and then use magic."
"No! No time! These women are being raped, Regina! You know what that's like!"
Dragged by Emma, Regina stumbled out of the cart; Taliesin's voice called after them. She looked again to Emma and bit her lip, nodding tightly. They were really going to do this.
She stepped toward the nearest croft and into the broken doorway. On a hay stuffed mattress, a huge man in black mail and a helmet over his features, had already tossed the pale woman onto her back, ignoring her screams as he rutted.
Regina lifted her hands, grabbed him with her magic and flung him backward out of the doorway. He flew through the air, passing right through the cart as if it wasn't there and landing in a heap on the far side of the clearing. Emma had done something similar with a different attacker. Regina saw his body arcing into the air before coming down. She winced, seeing his windpipe was crushed, his face covered in blood.
She swallowed as the woman she had just unburdened stumbled to the doorway of the croft, not seeing Regina, only seeing the two fallen men - and another flying through the air, blood flowing from his abdomen as his entrails fell free of his body.
Regina rushed toward the house she'd seen that man emerge from only to see the faint white poof of smoke of Emma vanishing. "Emma!" Damn it, where did she go! She turned around in place, looking for another sign of Emma's presence in a croft.
There was a scuffling in the darkness of another broken doorway across the way. Regina snapped her fingers and grabbed hold of Emma's hands as she raised them. The woman wasn't touching anything, but the moment their hands touched, she felt the magic pulsating in them and then saw the body ripping apart on the ground, lurching away from another pale nearly naked young woman.
"Emma! Stop!"
Emma turned and Regina gasped. The woman's green eyes were gone black as pitch, swirling. The Darkness!
"No! Emma!" Regina was flung backward.
"Either help me or get out of the way!"
Regina got quickly to her knees and then her feet. More bodies of men were flung out of the homes onto a growing pile in the middle of the square. Emma emerged from the croft, stepping through a trail of the spreading fire. A hand lifted and she flung a thick line of the flames at the pile of bodies, incinerating them.
Regina lifted her hands, the men had been stopped, but Emma was still creating thick black smoke as the bodies burned. She saw it begin to take a shape. Swirls, ribbons, rising into the air, rising from the bodies, joining with the fire from Emma's magic. She'd never seen anything like it.
"And vengeance gave succor to the darkness," Taliesin said. "Giving it shape and purpose."
Regina saw Emma faltering. Something was wrong. "What do you mean? Stop it!"
"This is where it starts."
"So stop it!" Regina demanded. She hurried toward Emma who had dropped to her knees, grabbing the woman around the shoulders to prevent her falling face first into the hard packed dirt to be consumed by the fire she had created. "Emma! Emma, don't. You have to stop this."
Emma's eyes blinked open, a vague stupor showing in graying green eyes. Her pallor was sickly. "R'gina." She cracked a smile, showing teeth blackened and writhing with the seething energy of The Darkness. Regina jerked in revulsion and Emma fell back against the hard packed earth.
She looked at her hands, then at Emma on the ground in the grips of The Darkness. She was shaking, but she pushed everything she had into grabbing Emma's arms, willing her magic to find Emma's. The Darkness swirled angrily around both of them. She felt it pulling at her skin, her hair, her very bones. She gripped Emma more tightly, falling supine to hug their whole bodies together.
She couldn't let Emma go dark; she just couldn't. Henry and Emma had shown Regina there was another way. She could not let Emma lose her way now. Not when they were so close...
Regina awoke, panting on the bed. Hair scattered across her lips and caught on her teeth. She coughed and shook, sobbing as she realized she held Emma in her arms. Emma wriggled and screamed. Regina buried her face in Emma's shoulder and squeezed harder.
"What the fuck?" Emma blinked. "Where the hell are we?"
Lifting up her head, Regina found Emma's gaze and smiled through her tears. The woman's eyes were bright green. "I promised. No darkness," she sobbed out the words.
"You kept your promise," Emma said. The few words told Regina that they had experienced everything together. "Thank you."
Mindlessly Regina brushed at the flyaway hair around Emma's face, smiled through her tears and kissed Emma's forehead. She was still shaking with her terror. Emma's arms moved around her back. Then Regina felt Emma tuck her face into Regina's shoulder, lips caressing her collarbone.
Emma rolled them onto their sides, nose to nose. Maintaining her contact with green eyes, Regina sighed; her heart thundered so hard in her chest she was unable to catch more than a few shallow breaths for a long time. But under her hands, she felt Emma's heart, pounding as loud and hard as horse's hooves at full run, gradually begin to slow.
When Emma looked away, Regina followed her gaze upward. The sight of the dreamcatcher over the bed made them understand they were in the small cabin.
"Was it a dream?" Emma asked. "Or was it real?"
It certainly had felt real, Regina thought. But she saw no signs around the small cabin of the turbulent portal that she had felt taking them away. The fire was blown out, but the rest of the cabin didn't appear to be out of sorts. "A dream," Regina thought aloud. "What else could it be?"
Emma pulled away from Regina and stumbled as she sorted through clothing on the floor, dressing. "I don't care what time it is. We are leaving now. I want to be back in Storybrooke before another night passes."
"We have to go to Boston, find Lily for Maleficent," Regina said, unmoving from the bed.
Emma dropped her pants and sighed. "And we have to go to New York and tell Robin he's got Zelena on his hands."
Together they said, "It's the right thing to do." Emma's shoulders sagged.
"I think the dream was a warning, too," Regina said.
"Do you remember reading anything about this Taliesin?" Emma asked. "Or a town being incinerated during a raid?"
"No, but we haven't been through every story, and we can't be sure that some of the stories weren't lost since then."
"So, what's the lesson?"
"Vengeance gives succor to the Darkness," Regina repeated Taliesin's words.
"So the way to avoid going dark is to avoid vengeance."
"It might be." Regina sat up. The more she pondered it, it fit. Her own darkness was a quiescent ember, because she had given up her vengeance on Emma, on Snow, on life in general, learning to live with herself as she was: imperfect.
Emma sat down on the bed. She stopped in the middle of putting on her socks.
"What is it?" Regina asked.
"I still owe you a happy ending," Emma said.
Regina remembered her panicked thoughts as she clung to Emma in the other realm. "No, already you brought it."
"But Robin's -"
"Not my happy ending," Regina said. "He is something that was decided for me. My happy ending is in this world."
"It's a big place. You think your happiness is out there somewhere? I'll help you, you know, any way I can." Emma looked away, looking anything but happy that she was offering such help.
Regina shook her head and grabbed Emma's hand, lifting it. "Why did you come with me? You told me you knew I was asking only to keep my promise to your parents about keeping you out of Rumple's plans."
"You wanted me to. For protection."
"You had already given me your gun."
"Would you have been able to shoot it?"
"Not the point."
Emma looked away from Regina's face to their joined hands. "We're friends."
"That means something to you?"
"That means everything to me," Emma admitted, lifting her gaze back up to Regina's.
"Because you want to make up for Lily?"
"No! Yes. No! You matter to me."
Regina smiled. "You matter to me, too."
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
"So, did you just promise my parents to protect me from the Darkness because they asked?"
Regina shook her head. "It may have been reason three or four down the line."
"What were reasons one and two?" Emma asked.
"Well, reason number two...is Henry. He'd be devastated if he lost you."
"And the first reason?" Emma's green eyes glinted in the vague light.
Lifting her chin and swallowing, Regina searched Emma's gaze as she spoke, trying to for a light exasperated tone, but failing miserably. "Well, I'm afraid I'm rather selfish still, Miss Swan. The first reason I wanted to protect you from the darkness is I'd be devastated if I lost you."
"Why?" Emma's lips quirked up in a half-knowing smile. She was going to make Regina say it.
Regina's annoyance was brief, however, because she remembered too clearly, too viscerally, the sight of Emma's dark, dead eyes and the Darkness tearing her apart from inside. She gasped, feeling the devastation begin to take hold anew. "Because, you idiot, I love you!"
"That's a start." Emma leaned forward, tugging on Regina's hands and Regina closed her eyes as their lips met. Emma tenderly brushed their mouths together then pulled away. "That's why I came with you," she murmured, leaning forward to press soft lips to Regina's mouth again.
THE END