Previously:

The hat came to life in her hands. It was the only explanation, nothing else would do. It was the magic of life and hope and it felt at home in her hands. She looked at Jefferson, something between a grimace and a smile in her features. A knowing deep in her flesh and bones that she did not belong to this, but desperately wanting to.

"That will do, Ms Swan. That will do just fine". And there was incredible sadness in his eyes. "Now off you go, the day's a wasting"

Chapter 4

Emma panicked a little and she was not too proud to admit it. She had a magic hat in her hands and no clue what to do with it. Were you supposed to wear it? Jefferson had not shared the particulars when he had told her his tale of woe. Nor had she been paying attention if he had.

"What do I do? How do you operate this thing?"

"You don't 'operate' it, Ms Swan, it is not heavy machinery." Jefferson took the hat in his hand and felt the soft waves of magic exuding from it. As a hat it was ugly and rudimentary. As magic, as a portal? It was exquisite. "What does it want you to do?"

Emma's patience wore thin when she was unsure or scared. "It's a hat, Jefferson." She was spoiling for fight because at least that she knew how to do well, but Jefferson did not indulge her and simply gave a condescending smile tempered by sadness which defused her. "I don't know."

"Then I can't help you." It was so final as a statement she tossed the hat on the floor just so that she could have her hands free to better pummel him into a bloody pulp, but as soon as it hit the floor, the hat did a curious little spin like a topple, except it did not stop and it picked up speed and soon it was a blur of movement and through it she could see light seeping through. Jefferson smiled and it was a sad smile. He bowed to her. "This is you, Sheriff"

"Where does this go?" She grabbed him then by the lapels of his military cut coat.

"Where you need to go. It will take you where you need to go."

There was a moment of hesitation. Even Emma had preservation instincts. "Have you been there before?" Jefferson merely pulled at the scarf around his neck and showed her his incongruent scar. "Please, you need to help me." He pulled the scarf back into place with sad fingers.
"Sheriff, don't take this the wrong way, but I would not take a breath if it favored Regina in the slightest."

"And me?"

Jefferson studied her for a moment. He had no reason to help or hinder Emma. "Don't eat. Don't drink. You'll know what you're looking for when you get there. You'll feel the pull. And leave anything you feel here. Don't go in there carrying any feelings with you. It will weaken you… Make you lose your head…" And then Jefferson was no longer there, his eyes were wild and tortured.

Emma braced herself. She was not a coward and she did not fear going in alone. Much. But there was an urgency that would not be denied. "HELP ME, Jefferson. Not Regina."

"An eye for an eye, Sheriff."

"And everybody ends up blind." Emma held his face in her hands and tried to get through the man. "Please!"

"She took my Grace. She took my Grace. The best I can wish for her is a quick death…"

She could have pushed him into the hat. If nothing happened, she didn't need to worry, and if they went through that thing, she would probably have bigger problems to worry about, but some things you just do not do. And yet, she found herself making him a promise she could not keep- which was fighting dirty and did not sit quite right in her. "I'll make her give Grace back to you."

It was a mistake, Jefferson knew. He had been here before, with Regina promising things and then leaving him behind where he was helpless. This time would probably be no different. The Sheriff would probably leave him behind but he had to try. He had to. There was nothing that he would not risk to get Grace back.

"I will not leave you behind. Trust me, Jefferson. We both go in and we both come back out. No one stays behind. I swear it to you."

It didn't matter, in the end, because sometimes you walk into hell with your eyes wide open- or wide shut if you're coward as he himself was. But you didn't have to be stupid about it. He opened the cupboard under the shelved hats and retrieved the small vial he hadn't though about in almost 30 years for lack of where to use it. Some magic was just too dangerous and unpredictable to unleash in this magicless world.

"It doesn't matter, Sheriff." He regarded Emma has he tucked the vial carefully in his breast pocket. "A father does what he has to do." And with that he grabbed her hand and moved them into the vortex of the hat. It was like being pulled into the eye of a hurricane and her body felt like it was going to disassemble. Until it all stopped and it seemed like time had pulled back and then catapulted her forward and it gave her a dizzying sensation. They landed- or stopped or whatever it was that had happened no longer was in Jefferson's living room. They were in a garden, ruthlessly manicured of trimmed hedges and mathematically distributed red roses. Emma took a second to try to get her bearings though, unsure of where to go, she could hardly make an informed decision. She looked at the hat and there it was, quietly innocent in the grass.

It was like every color was in high definition, the grass of a sharp green, the roses of a suffocating red and the sky of an infinite blue she couldn't have even imagined existed in real life. It felt as if she had been experiencing the word through an amplifying lens, everything so sharp it hurt her eyes.

Jefferson stood next to her frozen in place. If she'd had time, her heart would have broken because she had forced him into this. Clearly, whatever this place was, it terrified Jefferson in a way akin to what it did to Regina. But there was no time for heartbreak. Time was absolutely of the essence. She pulled on his sleeve and forced him to look at her.

"Jefferson, we need to go." He nodded in agreement but did not move. "Jefferson!" Out of the corner of her eye she spotted the second indication that she was no longer in Maine. "I guess we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." Perched in a mushroom, a caterpillar smoked a nargile pipe and puffed smoke lazily (or stonedly, quite possibly) into the sky. She approached the caterpillar- as you do in dreams- unsure of what to expect of a nargile smoking caterpillar. Had Emma had anyone to read bedtime stories when she was a child, she could have perhaps been able to process this in a different way. She could have perhaps avoided approaching a stoned nargile smoking caterpillar that was roughly the size of her bug.

When Emma had made believe it was never about princesses, dragons or talking animals nor even aliens. It had always been about how dad was perhaps the inventor of a time machine or how mom wove flying carpets, but those flights of fancy had dried up with each new family. She was not prepared for anything that was not the stark reality she carved out for herself, so it may have been the enticing smoke rising from the pipe or just the absurd of the situation or it may have been the simply stunning red of the mushroom but she walked towards the cloud of smoke dragging Jefferson behind her.

It did not feel like a mistake, not then anyway. And after a few seconds of studying the caterpillar, it spoke. It spoke with an Alan Rickman voice, a low drawl with an English accent. In the beginning it did not quite make sense, it was like hearing a foreign language, but as the smoke got denser and more intense smelling, the words began to make sense. And the caterpillar was speaking to Jefferson.

"Hatter, you came back. Did you miss us? I can't say that I'm not surprised." One more cloud of smoke mushroomed in the air. No wisp of wind dissipated it. "How was it that you left?" Jefferson took the hat from where it rested harmless now. He placed it on Emma's head with a tap on the flat top.

"Let's go"

"Be of a care, Hatter. She is not ever so pleased you left without so much a by your leave." Jefferson pulled Emma who had stopped feeling any urgency in the task at hand. Jefferson forced a brisk walk towards more and more green, as if the whole world had become a sea of bushes and grass with nothing to relieve the greenness but the red of the mathematical roses.

"Take a deep breath, Sheriff, the fog will wear out soon enough. Did you pack your weapon?" But Emma was in a state of bliss where nothing mattered except that she had never felt so unworried, so untired, so unconcerned and she wanted to make it last. "Deep breath, Ms Swan. You must clear your head."

"What does he… it…. he mean by that?"

"Not important. Did you bring your weapon?" With each step they took, Emma's sense of well being dissipated and her head cleared. She patted her hip holster. "Yep!"

"Good. Use it if you feel the need. Don't hesitate. When in doubt, just shoot."
"It's not like I wouldn't do it, you know…" Jefferson actually stopped.

"Ms Swan, this may come as a surprise to you, but you are not the type to just shoot and damn the consequences, otherwise you would have just pushed me through the hat" Emma actually flinched at the mention of the hat. This magic thing was going to take some getting used to, but as she started to feel the need to get with the program, she saved the snarky remarks.

"What's that in your pocket?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean." Emma did a quick step and stood in front of him effectively blocking the passage. He hadn't even had the chance to see it coming and Emma already had the vial in her hand. Jefferson made a desperate grab for it that only made Emma more committed to keep it out of his reach. In the end, Jefferson was a gentleman. "Please, Ms Swan."

Emma almost relented. Where she had learnt the pocket picking skill, no one would have asked politely for its return.

"What's in it, Jefferson? Or should I say 'Hatter'?"

"It's a weapon. You have your gun. I have… that." Emma turned it in her hand, studying it carefully. She was going to regret asking, but she did it anyway.

"Is it magic?"

"Yes."

She was right: she regretted asking. "Was that so hard?" She placed it back in his pocket with the same brevity of motion and lightness of fingers with which she had first removed it. She wanted to lighten the mood because she felt sorry for the man. He had eyes almost as empty as Regina's, as if they had lived through the same heartbreaks.

"Don't touch it without my permission. It holds great power."

Jesus, so many phallic jokes, so little time. "Well, there goes my plan for selling it on eBay,"
"Selling it where?"
Emma sighed dramatically. "A magical place of great power." It seemed fitting, what with them travelling through hats and talking to nargile smoking caterpillars. "Come on, Hatter, the day is a wasting."

.

Her spine tingled as if trouble had arrived but not yet announced itself. They had arrived at a wall made entirely of bushes, high as the outer wall of a castle. A gap in the greenery the size of a door stood invitingly. Obviously, Emma's first instinct was to charge straight ahead.

Jefferson held her back with one hand. "If you go in, there is no turning back. She knows we're here already. She knows everything, at all times. There are no surprises for her. But we can still leave." He looked at the hat perched on her head. No one will think less of you."

What chilled Emma was not what had been said, but the look of pure torment in Jefferson's gaze which told her, more than anything, that they might well be entering his version of hell.

"What am I going to find in there? Who is 'She'?"

"The one who has what you've been looking for."

"Regina's heart…"

"If you're sure it ever existed."

Emma had no evidence at all. But such was the nature of faith. "I am." It was said to reassure Jefferson as much as herself. Jefferson pulled her to the ground and sat beside her.

"This is the kingdom of the Queen of Hearts." It sounded nice. How bad could it be? Better than The Evil Queen. But somehow, Emma reasoned, The Evil Queen might not hold a candle to this one. "There is a room which is the heart of her kingdom. What you are looking for is there."

"Sounds simple enough."

"The difficulty is not going in." OK. OK. That should save half the trouble, Emma cheered herself up.

Sure enough, it presented no challenge getting into something akin to the crypt Regina kept her father's remains in. The way was all but laid out in a red carpet. The bushes made corridors and polished black tiles paved it smooth and clean as if dust did not exist in this place. There was nothing and no one stopping them from moving about freely in it but she could not shake the sensation- not that she was being watched- but that her movements, her whereabouts, her intentions were known as well as she knew them herself. She could not hide or avoid.

She hadn't been quite sure of what to expect when she walked into the room. Perhaps a sudden difference in temperature at the very least, like what you get when you go into a cemetery. But there was nothing. Not a feeling, not a smell, not a sound. As if nothing was quite real. The clean feel and look of the place made her want to roll around in mud just to counteract the effect of the extreme polish of every surface.

Jefferson pulled her back into herself. "Do you know where's the one you are looking for?" Is there more than one? Emma stared wildly at the walls of cubby holes. This was a lot like a cemetery, but of hopes and loves and dreams. This was, judging by the sheer number of cubby holes, where all love came to die.

"No." It took physical effort to approach the wall as if her own horror was pushing her away from it. Her brow was pearled with sweat. She hoped for name tags on the compartments, or at least in Regina's one, but there was nothing. She supposed it would have been too easy. But there were hundreds of boxes placed geometrically. Unidentifiable.

"We'll take them all." How? And then what? But she honestly could think of nothing else except for the laughter at the back of her mind, a mocking non sound that seemed to tell her how hopeless that course of action actually was.

"This is not a cash and carry, Sheriff. You need to get the one you came for. You cannot leave this place until you do. The impossible part is to leave."

Emma felt sick now. Like she was going to throw up at any time, the bile churning in her stomach and her upper lip sweating cold. She walked closer to the wall, her hand running through the marble partitions. How could she leave any of these behind? She had no idea what was so bad about this place, about the queen of hearts. Some of these hearts could have been volunteered for all she knew. Regina had. People had all sorts of reasons for not wanting a heart. But it seemed obscene to leave them here, in a place that felt like the end of all hope. It broke her heart. But she had come for Regina. She had come because, even though she did not understand why, she was drawn to her. Felt a compulsion to make her smile. To make it better. And then a box slid out of the hole it was in and stopped in Emma's hand. The laughter in the backdrop of her mind stopped then. The absence of that non sound was unnerving. As if all the fire alarms in the whole world had gone off at the same time. Trouble had arrived.

Jefferson touched the breast pocket of his coat seeking reassurance. Emma palmed the box, which was too large to fit in any of her pockets. She opened it, a compulsion, even though the need to run and get out was now an almost physical pain. Inside, something much like a stone rested in the wood box, gray and lifeless. How could this be a heart? She pocked at it with her finger, horrified and mesmerized and then she was sure: it was a heart because as sure as the tides, it pulsed against her finger. It pulsed cold and dry, dusty and week, but it pulsed. She touched it again and the heart pulsed again, red embers strengthening against the stony outside.

Behind her, Jefferson chocked out a scream and feet shuffled outside, heavy and menacing. She closed the lid on the box and held it against her own heart, feeling the pulsing inside, drawing something from it that only later she would have described as courage. She palmed her gun and moved towards Jefferson.

"The Queen?" Emma feared Jefferson would freeze on her again. "How did you get out of here the first time?" The steps were growing ever closer, slowly, steady and deafening. She had to yell to make herself heard.

"I don't know." No one would hold any expletives against her then. She drew her gun and held the box tighter in her hand, but when the crypt would have filled with shuffling feet, she felt like she was at the eye of the hurricane: everything stopped and she was pulled as if by invisible fingers and her body was seized by a force that squeezed and squashed her until all air had come out of her lungs. She lost the fight to stay conscious.

.

She regained consciousness held 3 feet above the floor but no longer in the crypt. She was in a throne room and this she knew not because anyone had told her but because she was staring at a woman sitting on a throne. The binds that held her were tight enough that she could not move and draw only short shallow breaths. The non sound was back. It was a mean laughter, filled with glee and threat. Jefferson was in the same position, held above the floor by invisible binds, but his head was slumped over his shoulder, his expression contorted in agony.

When the queen spoke it was inside her head. There was no sound in the room. I don't like to be taken advantage of, Emma Swan. Emma shivered. She knew in her heart that the fact that the queen knew her name gave her power, a power that you could not measure in anything else but the capacity for evil. This was not good. Why do you need that pathetic old thing? She remembered it then, Jefferson's words. And she closed her heart, her mind. She thought of nothing and no one. She cleared everything from herself. Oh, you are a smart one, aren't you? Industrious, too. I like that.

Emma was not a high concept girl, so she simply said, out loud "Screw you!" The vise around her tightened then, slowly, in circles like giant snakes in bad films, starting at her feet and squeezing the life out of her. Her fight for consciousness was lost.

.

I want it back, Emma Swan. I want my box back. I do not tolerate thievery. There was not a millimeter for Emma to move, nor to fill her lungs or to empty them. Her body was ready to give up, seemingly expanding in little explosions at each of the extremities, at each of her cells. With the last possible movement of her brain, she clung tighter to the box containing Regina's heart. The Queen would have to pry it from her cold dead fingers.

The Queen's voice inside her head was a shout of victory. Ah, Regina's heart! Tell, me Ms Swan, did you perchance think that she would thank you for this fool's errand? The suffocating hold on Emma's body eased a fraction allowing her a breath before it squeezed again. It became a rhythmic motion, squeeze and release, squeeze and release. Possibly made to keep her alive, to prolong the torture. But you must tell me. What did Regina promise you? Did she tell you that you'd never get out of here live?

It was the way the woman- the thing, really, because there was no face, just a veil- repeated Regina's name. Like she owned it and could use it in whatever fashion she wanted. It gave Emma the certainty that she had used the person as she used the name now, to wound and penalize. To hurt. She flinched. She couldn't help herself and the movement wasn't physical because the binds would not give a fraction of an inch, but her heart flinched. The Queen needed nothing else to feel the victory. Ah, look at that, my daughter got herself a champion. Did she promise you her heart? Emma tightened her hold. The tone was the sickly sweet tone of Regina's threats. Because, you see, it isn't worth the box it is in.

The squeeze and release motion continued as if the queen had forgotten all about her. It seemed she had found a new play thing in Jefferson. Like a cat with a yarn ball, the Queen played with the suspended body. His head lolled with the pendulum motion she had going on. It was gratuitously cruel because she seemed to want nothing from him but his agonized cries of pain. The non laugh remained in Emma's mind, as clear as if it had been carried by air.

However did you leave my house, Hatter? There was a whispering quality to the voice inside Emma's head. There was no shrill voice or maniacal laughter. Emma was no expert in fairy tales but weren't villains supposed to have an evil cackle so that they announced their intentions ahead of the game?

Cora Mills looked like a harmless doll, propped immobile in her throne, with the opaque veil hiding her features. And yet, Emma felt not just the life leaving her body, but the hope too- of escaping, of surviving, of ever being so much as able to smile. With each squeeze, it was like she was being drained of her vital force, of all that made her a valid human being, of all the good memories that stitched together what she was after her life so far, leaving only the misery.

Cora Mills, the Queen of Hearts, was killing her starting from the inside, like a poison.

Except, she decided, she was not going to die here, she was not going to give the Queen what she wanted. Hell would freeze over first.

She opened herself then. It was a stupid move because it looked a lot like giving up, but she opened herself to Henry and Regina, to Mary Margaret and David, to the possibility that all along she had been loved. She opened herself to the magic with which she had made a ratty old hat bring her here. That got the Queen's full attention. She released Jefferson who slumped to the floor like an old rag.

Emma fought the invisible binds. She expanded her chest taking a lungful of air. She wiggled her toes, testing them out and then her fingers and then her neck. It was like trying to move, she imagined, in a pool quick sand, each movement dragging her further down, each costing her her last ounce of energy. But she had magic. Need was the greatest of the motivators. She had magic and she was going to fight magic with magic.

The response was immediate. The binds tightened more and more and guards surrounded her as if they too heard her voice inside their heads, her command to Emma clear: Give in.

"What's wrong, Your Highness, afraid I might succeed?" The guards tightened the ring around her still suspended form. The Queen changed tactics then. The binds relented only to be replaced by crippling pain, as if each bone in her body was breaking. Probably it was. But she refused to believe. Penn & Teller would tell you magic is just a slight of hand. A willingness to believe. And she wouldn't. She would not believe she would die in pain. Not here and not now, not holding on a box with a beating heart inside. She had made a promise and she dam well was going to keep it. She had fought the binds and she was fighting the pain. Inch by inch, she released her body of it. Inch by inch she reclaimed possession over her body, her perceptions.

Extraordinary, Emma Swan. Extraordinary. May I say this: I wish I had birthed you instead of the weakling I nursed and raised. She used to beg, you know? The voice was smooth, inviting. So alluring. It was all that Emma had wanted to hear when she had grown up alone and unwanted. Not a moment of training and look at what you can do. The words were a caress, but the pain did not subside to match the cruel tenderness in the voice. Ah the things we could do, you and I, Emma Swan.

"Fuck you!" Emma grunted out.

And that broke the spell. The pain ended as it had begun, without preamble. The Queen lifted from her throne. It was not a walk, it was a sliding or a levitation, whatever the word was, but she was in Emma's space in a blink.

Give me the heart, dear. You have no use for that. And I am not mad. I promise. It was such a sweet cajoling tone. It made you want to do anything it required you to do. Even after the pain, you wanted nothing but to please it.

Emma stood, ready to fall again. "Come and get it." The sound in her head became a hiss. It was threatening and dangerous, but it went a long way to give Emma a semblance of control. She tightened her fingers around the box, because her whole body hurt and she was shaking and there wasn't much more she had the strength to do but to keep standing and to keep holding on. Give it to me, Emma Swan.

Emma's eye caught Jefferson moving on the floor beyond the ring of guards surrounding her. Hope began as a pulse of light, a reflection of the vial Jefferson was painfully removing from his breast pocket. And hope fanned out into a flame when neither the Queen nor her guards made a move to take the box from her.

"No. And if that's all, it's getting a bit late and need I to get going." She wanted to turn on her heal and walk out but Jefferson was not yet up and she had promised him that she would not leave him behind.

That box and its contents are my property, Emma Swan. I will have it back now. The sweet tone compelled her to do it, to just release the box and hand it over. Her muscles strained to execute the command.

"No". It was like a realization of sorts. Cora's tone was sweet and enticing, a honey trap all on its own because she could not take it from her any other way. It was a flash of inspiration she did not often feel. Usually she felt bowled over by events, but it was like she knew, at that very moment, what was the worst that could happen and was prepared for it. "No. I don't think you can't take it from me. Why is that, Cora Mills? Is it because I must be willing to give it to you?" Emma was a good reader of body language, of expressions. Cora's was stiff even hidden behind the body long veil. Emma read her nonetheless. There was nothing but absolute hatred. It chilled her to the marrow of her bones.

But Jefferson was now on his feet and if that was not a signal from her to get going, she would have to come back for him, but she turned on her heel with what little movement she could still command, not without a final "By your leave, Highness" that was her version of an extended middle finger which she was pretty sure Cora Mills would not have understood fully.

The guards did not open their circle as she had expected them to do. She'd had a silly little hope that they might part ranks to offer her the way out, but she was corrected of her misconception soon enough. The Queen might not be able to remove the box from her fingers, but she could command the guards to kill her. And she did not hesitate to give the command. Off with her head.

.

Survival instinct is what bridges humans with wild beasts. When cornered, an animal or a human, by that matter, will fight. It is what fuels that instinct that provides the gap: whilst animals fear not surviving, humans conceive of something worse than death: loss. It was not death that Emma feared- though she did. It was the meaning of this particular failure. Her hand reached out for her weapon, her finger gripped the trigger and she fired as if the bullets would not run out. It would not have been enough, in the end, even if she'd wielded an automatic weapon. Not when those who fall are replaced tenfold by advancing bodies behind them, not when their swords advanced on her and left gashes running down her shoulders and arms and severed pieces of her hair. No, a weapon would not have been enough, not here, not in this kingdom where all hope came to die.

When the chamber of the weapon was empty, she turned it and used it to defend whatever she could of the blind advance of the guards. She did not mean to give up, but holding on was a matter of losing by increments. And then Jefferson was behind the Queen and the vial was in his hand and, alerted by a sixth sense or a magic sense, the Queen turned to Jefferson binding him again.

Emma thought of her promises and how it had come to it that she would die keeping them and that, in the end, that would mean nothing. She charged the Queen because at least she could give Jefferson a fighting chance. Something like an invisible barrier stood between them, the malicious intent permeating through it, like a certainty of victory.

Bound as he was, Jefferson spilled whatever liquid or dust or air or whatever it was in that vial and the Queen paralyzed, all movement arrested. The guards stopped then, like a beast without its head, except there was no movement, no chaos, no sound. They just stopped, exactly as she had. Swords collapsed on the floor, the clattering like thunder.

Around Emma, the Queen of Hearts, her army and their immobile swords. And Jefferson, still suspended mid air, the vial in his hand. "Jefferson!"

Except he would- could not move. The Queen's quick reaction spell. She laughed then, a sound at last. An ugly, ugly sound, of happiness turned on its inside. "Tell my daughter that she owed me a Hatter. She does not get to take anything from me. Not even that decrepit old heart."

There was another thing Emma could not explain: how her hand that had been limp and useless rose from her side to push light into Cora Mills, push until there was nothing standing in front of her and only remains discarded on the dais. She did not know either how that same hand reached out to Jefferson across the litter of soldier's bodies on the ground and released him from the Queen's hold.

She was not concerned about any of it then. Only with running. She had not made it yet to the exit of the throne room, when Cora spoke one final time: "Regina is my work. She does not love, Emma Swan. She has no need of a heart because she will never be free. And my words bind my magic: if she does not desire your kiss, that heart will not set her free." And that was her very last spell before Jefferson's potion dried it out of her forever.

As parting shots went, saying "Go fuck yourself" was not spectacularly imaginative. It was however, effective when accompanied by a wave of magic so powerful that, even uneducated, was bone and soul crushing.

Cora Mills got to have a taste of her own medicine at the hands of the White Knight.