Author's Note: These parts just keep getting longer and longer. But the update reaches another climactic turning point. I figured keeping that from you would have been unnecessarily cruel. You'll have to tell me. Feedback is appreciated.
Taking the Reins part 3
A white carriage with gold trim, surrounded by a retinue of soldiers and a trumpeter seated next to the coachman, hurtled along the forest path. Within its richly upholstered confines a young Snow White sat next to her father, smiling widely at the idea of seeing her savior again.
"Oh, Daddy, she was wonderful. Beautiful, strong, dark hair as black as midnight, sun-kissed skin, brown eyes the color of a yearling's, lips red as the ripest apples I've ever seen."
King Leopold stroked his daughter's dark hair absently. "Indeed, she sounds like a true angel of mercy, my daughter. I look forward to meeting her."
Emma awoke to the sound of nearing hoofbeats. The ground really did vibrate with them. She'd always thought that a silly myth perpetuated by the movies. She studied Regina wrapped up in her arms. The brunette still slept peacefully, lush dark lashes fluttering softly against her ruddy cheeks.
Voices soon reached the glade along with the sounds of wheels and horses drawing closer. Emma pulled gently away from Regina's side. She crept to the tree line to determine how close they were to being discovered. When she peeked beyond it to the road roughly cutting through the forest, her gaze was drawn instantly to the familiar crest on the side of the carriage: White Kingdom!
It had to be the king's carriage, traveling to meet his daughter's savior. He would offer marriage, Cora would accept, and Regina's devastating future would be set on its path.
Emma thought furiously. What if she could just prevent the meeting? Could she sidetrack an entire royal retinue? Talk some sense into her grandfather? Emma cast her eyes over her shoulder at her lover. There would be no taking Regina with her. Daniel had already thought he was talking to this time period's Regina despite the years of difference in age. Snow White wouldn't mistake her either.
She went back to their makeshift bedding and claimed her riding coat, kissing Regina tenderly on the temple. "Love you," she murmured. "Always." Regina smiled in her sleep, just faintly, but that happiness, that peace Emma brought her. That was why she was doing this.
Emma crept down to the brush alongside the road. The royal carriage was just coming onto the woods road that ran down toward the Mills estate. Thinking quickly, Emma looked around. Rocks were too small, and probably would only net her a contingent of soldiers hunting her down.
Finally, she saw no other option and, waving her coat, she ran directly across the path of the horses, startling them into rearing and oversetting the carriage. Emma crashed into the underbrush on the far side of the road. Breaking free of the clinging vines and branches tearing at her skin and hair, Emma's heart hammered in her chest. The sound of it and the blood rushing in her ears almost blotted out the yells and crashing of the White soldiers coming after her.
Her legs churned, and she swept into a glade finally finding room to run. She glanced over her shoulder and nearly screamed at the sight of white and chainmail - a White soldier was breaking through the treeline just steps behind her.
Oh shit! She dodged out of sight to the left, and then slammed into a tree trunk. Dazed she scrambled to steady herself and found her hands closing around a thick vine. Up! her mind screamed at her.
Hand over hand, using the thick trunk to push against, she climbed the vine and threw herself into the upper boughs. The noise of that was covered somewhat by the noises of the pursuing soldiers. One hand over her mouth and the other over her pounding heart, Emma hid among the tree leaves, looking down at the soldiers convening in the middle of the clearing below her tree, discussing the situation.
"I saw her come this direction," reported one. Emma cursed her long blonde hair. They'd realized quickly she was a woman.
The other two, who had come from the left and right - a pincer tactic David had taught her insisting she needed the ability to lead the army - reported she had not run past them.
They ran off in the only direction no one had covered. Emma waited in the boughs until she could no longer hear the men crashing through the woods. What seemed like hours passed. Her legs started cramping, and the scrapes and cuts from her pell-mell run through the bushes stung with her sweat. She bit her lip to keep herself from crying out. Massaging the muscles as much as she dared, Emma finally ventured back down the tree, landing on the dry leaves covering the forest floor. She held her breath at the sound, eyes darting around for trouble.
She moved quickly and soundlessly back toward the road. The carriage still lay in the road on its side. Emma noted the broken wheel and the cut traces where the horses had been freed. The king and Snow White were on horseback she imagined and, she hoped, no longer paying a visit to the Mills home.
Hurrying further through the woods to the glade she and Regina had shared the night before, Emma nearly crashed into a tree at the incomprehensible sight. The clearing was empty. Regina was gone.
"Regina!" she called out, hoping that the woman is the only one about to hear her voice. She hesitated and listened for the signs of boots crashing through undergrowth. Silence. "Regina!" An edge of panic crept into her voice and she fell to her knees looking at the barren spot where she and her lover had last lain together. She searched the ground for signs of a struggle or clues where Regina might have gone. Finding a single set of boot prints leading out of the glade, Emma followed them.
Regina heard the commotion of soldiers and awoke abruptly, startled by the noise and the reality of being alone. Emma was nowhere to be seen. In her fright, Regina bolted to her feet and grabbed the pieces of her discarded clothing before stumbling away from the noises to avoid discovery.
The ground became uneven and she lost her footing, tumbling head over heels down the incline. Crushed bushes and branches left gouges in her back, hands, arms, and legs. But when she came to a stop and tested out her joints, she found nothing broken. A look at her surroundings though and she was not far from despair once more. She had no idea where she was. She never recalled being in this part of the land before. A dark cave opening loomed before her, and the hillside loomed above her. Somehow, she knew, she was outside the Enchanted Forest. She tried to remember the maps of the five lands, to guess which she had fallen into, but she knew only that White kingdom marched along the west boundary with the Summerlands, and to the east lay the ocean. The Infinite Forest lay north of White kingdom, but her father's lands had been on the southeast side, nestled between fingers of Stradivare where George ruled, and Midas' domain. Regina decided she had to be in Stradivare.
But the area felt too forbidding to bode any good. Light danced along the inner walls of the cavern ahead. She suspected the orange glow came from ensconced torches. So this was a domain not of beast, but of human.
Arms stinging from scratches, Regina ventured forward slowly and silently. The hewn earth and rock of the cavern smelled of decay. The opening seemed at once both the result of nature, with jagged cuts and turns, and the result of a sort of immature magic, with some surfaces smooth as polished stone or glass. She could even make out a distorted reflection of herself in one shiny black rock face. Obsidian, she thought, accessing the learning she'd undertaken during 28 years in Storybrooke with access to more knowledge than this simple world could conceive.
She missed Storybrooke in that moment. Leaning hard against the nearby cavern wall, she clasped her hand to her throat, physically restraining the sob trying to choke her on its way out. She wanted this over desperately. She wanted Emma. She hated being here, witnessing her past, helpless to do anything. She'd told Emma the truth: to change a moment would change everything. In her exile since returning to the Enchanted Forest, Regina had reconciled her life's choices. If she hadn't gone to Storybrooke, she never would have been able to find and love Henry. Or Emma.
Returning now to this time and place, she'd put her relationship with Daniel to rest. She'd lived a half-life since his death, decaying more and more with every passing year. Until Emma Swan.
Regina looked up and stared at a distorted reflection of herself in obsidian stone. For the first time in a very long time she didn't want to dash the image into shards. She was smiling; she was scraped and unkempt, but she was safe, and loved. Emma had given her that. She watched her smile widen in the reflection. She reached forward.
"I wouldn't do that, dearie."
Regina's smile instantly fell away and her face froze in a mask of implacability. "Hello?" She asked cautiously, not willing to give away that she had recognized the voice. She slowly turned around and scanned the cavern. He stepped from the shadow created by a bend in the tunnel. His skin shimmered gold-green in the light. His eyes gave off their own glow. She held her ground. She hadn't seen him in the Enchanted Forest after the whirlwind upended them all from Storybrooke. And now this was the further past. She wondered about his agenda. He wouldn't cross her path in this time for another few months, after she'd been taken to wed Leopold.
"You're staring, dearie."
"Sorry," she said, though she wasn't.
"What brings you to my humble abode?" he asked.
"Just leaving. Fell down the hill."
"Leave? You just arrived. Do I frighten you?"
"Certainly not!"
"Ah but it is apparent that I do. How interesting that you have such an opinion of me, yet we haven't been introduced."
Regina debated her options. Tell him she knew of him, tell him she distrusted strangers, or reveal herself and judge his reaction. For the time being, she decided, it was better to remain anonymous. If he knew her it wouldn't matter anyway. If he didn't, yet, then she might have another path to pursue for change.
"I was taught to be wary of strangers."
His smile faltered, but then she watched him cock his head to the side. She knew this man well enough after so many years, she realized he was amused. "You're a little old to be taking your mother's advice now... Regina."
"Rumplestiltskin," she replied evenly.
"And you are… Regina, daughter of Cora… yet. Not." He stared at her. Regina said nothing, only wincing at the mention and memory of her mother, so recently encountered. "I'll ask again: what brings you here?"
Regina recognized the question as previously asked, but he always had an agenda when she knew him. So the question was not the question. The answer was important. "This place is your home?" she asked back instead.
"Part of the plan, dearie," he replied easily.
"The plan you have for me?" she asked, and she couldn't help but let the disdain of that slip through. Regina had been appalled to discover how much of her life's path he had been responsible for carving.
"You know what happens, dearie, but not why."
"Then why don't you tell me. Seems we have…" She looked around grandiosely. "Time."
Rumpelstiltskin turned from her and was silent. She followed him. He glanced over his shoulder and flipped the tail of his coat with a flourish before sitting on what she hadn't seen before: an obsidian chair carved, it seemed, directly from the wall, so perfectly it had been invisible to the casual eye.
It galled her, this insouciance of the man, sitting in kingly style, lording it over lives.
She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms, to show her unwillingness to follow any more.
"You have indeed grown, Your Majesty," Rumple said. "But not nearly enough. Things are changing, and I cannot have that."
"Why can't you just leave it alone?"
"I have seen into the future, dearie, and you are it."
"But just this one thing? Why can't there be just this one thing?"
He scowled. "I cannot cast the curse. You must."
"So I must lose everything?" Regina shook her head. "And this is part of it."
"You are here. You are also there," he gestured upward and she knew he was referring to her younger self unwittingly already being manipulated. "That's not part of the plan." He leaned on his cane. "I can just keep you here. You and the blonde woman have been playing with fire."
"Blonde woman?" Regina frowned. He didn't know Emma. Rumple waved his hand toward one of the obsidian walls to show her a scene. The surface swirled and then coalesced into a forest scene, with Emma rather impressively running, jumping, and outmaneuvering a cadre of White soldiers. And then the woman shimmied up a tree. Regina smiled as the soldiers looked around stupidly beneath the very tree not seconds later. A few stared at a ravine, obviously convinced the woman had fallen to her death, and then, waving their unit back together, returned to the White carriage to report the results of their search.
The obsidian view returned to the tree to see Emma dropping to the forest floor. After checking over her shoulder, she ran on, safe from the White soldiers.
"She's someone important. Who is she?" Rumple asked her. "I must have her name to see her place in the story," he demanded.
"Daniela," she said quickly before she could think of something else and give away the only ace she held.
"You lie. But, never fear, I will find out her name."
Regina's spine stiffened. "Not from me."
"Your threads are intertwined, yours and this… Daniela," he added with hesitation, his eyes half-closed and the fingertips of one hand to his temple. Regina had never watched him this closely. Too eager before to learn only what he would teach her, she now had time to consider the man himself, and examine him. "The name is wrong," he added, "but your destinies do remain in step with one another." He opened his eyes and fixed her within a hard stare. "The threads cross into and out of this world. Where did you go between now and now, Regina Mills?"
"You'll find out."
He lifted a hand abruptly and Regina found herself slammed into the ceiling of the cave, the breath exploding from her lungs in surprise. She fought the magical binding, even more restrictive than any her mother had used on her. It was cutting off her breath and she struggled.
"I already know it's a land without magic, dearie. That's necessary." He frowned; the magic constriction loosened around her chest and she was lowered to the floor. "I must have a way to regain myself when we get there, but without magic…"
He seemed to drift away from the immediate moment, lost in a memory, or a plan, Regina decided. She headed for the entrance to the cave, to leave him to his madness.
But he came to himself before she could reach the threshold and she was slammed into the rocky walls but not restrained. Grunting, she stood slowly and looked around. The obsidian didn't reach here and she looked at abraded palms, before looking at him with disdain. "Whatever you've lost, or whatever you hope to find, I hope it manages to stay far away from you," she growled. "You live in fear, even with all your power. I've learned of another way to live, and if I can stop you from destroying all our lives, I swear I will find a way."
"You haven't got it in you, dearie. You love too much."
Regina walked from the cavern into the trickling sunlight and shivered. She feared she understood Rumpelstiltskin too easily. To stop him, she would have to lose everything. Again.
.