HI. I am behind on reviews again (blame zimbio omg) but I didn't think it was fair to withhold this from you for any longer just because I'm the one who sucks, SO. I am reading all your responses and they're very much helpful to me, thank you! I will hopefully get to them all tonight or sometime SOON.
Trigger warning in this chapter for talk of Leopold and marital rape. Also, insects.
Snow is racing ahead of the others, Red keeping a close distance, and Emma emerges from the castle and is nearly bowled over by her. "Where is she? Where's Regina?" She staggers to a halt just as Regina comes out behind Emma. "Regina, what the hell?" Now she's waving the note Regina had written at her and Emma puts a calming hand on her shoulder. Snow shrugs it off. "Were you trying to die?"
Regina is a cross between sheepish and sulky. "I don't know what you're talking about," she mutters, and Emma clasps her hands behind her back and tries to look innocent. Snow barely spares her a look. "I'm fine."
"You promised," Snow says, breathless. "You promised David you'd stay with me. We're supposed to be a team here. You can't run off challenging witches and leaving me suicide notes!" She waves the note again and Emma chews on her lip and avoids Red's curious eyes.
Regina rolls her eyes and refuses to say any more, the both of them sullen children under Snow's reproof, stomping their way back into the castle. Well. Emma stomps. Regina stalks.
There are more people here now, a few other groups of displaced people, and they all gather together in Regina's council room. Emma hasn't been there very much. Regina tended to give orders more than seek counsel. "We'll send out as many scouts as we can to try to bring people to the castle," Snow announces to the assembled people. "We don't know when the witch will strike again and it's best that we're all safe here. Emma, Lancelot, can you two organize that?" They nod. "Sleeping arrangements are as efficient as you can handle. We need to conserve space for newcomers."
She leans back, looking very tired, and Emma works quickly, breaking up groups into teams and sending them on their way. "Zelena might be picking them off and turning them into monkeys by now, we don't know. Move fast." The hall empties, the few who remain wandering up and downstairs to find suitable corners, and Regina still sits stiffly beside Snow, avoiding Emma's eyes.
"Uh. So…I think I'll have my men rooming together in one room, and Mulan and I can take another." She'd seen the way Mulan had blanched when Princess Aurora had run to her back in the woods, and she's feeling protective. Mulan had left with Aurora's husband to search Midas's former kingdom and Aurora had spoken about finding quarters for them all. Mulan doesn't deserve that.
But Snow is shaking her head. "Emma, no. Your men and Mulan can share a suite. You have to stay with me. It's been so long." Her eyes are pleading, lonely enough without David that Emma falters. "We've missed so much of each other's lives." She puts a hand on Regina's arm. "All three of us. We'll take my father's quarters."
"No!" Emma and Regina both say at once. Regina doesn't look at her, but her face has dimmed and her fingers are pressed to her palm until they turn white.
She gathers her skirts and stands haughtily. "I will be staying in my quarters."
Snow frowns. "We need the authority that the king's quarters will give me. This isn't Storybrooke anymore. There are dozens of kingdoms that will need to cede to us."
"I managed just fine," Regina says coolly, but she's shaking, and Snow tilts her chin up, eyeing her with irritated confusion.
Emma says, "Snow, you can stay in Regina's rooms. There's plenty of space and no one's going to question you two, okay?" Anywhere but Leopold's old rooms. Even Regina doesn't deserve that kind of torture. She plays her ace. "It's there or I'll stay with my men instead."
Regina shoots her an uncertain look. Emma ignores it. Snow mutters, "Fine," and stands, Regina trailing behind her. "I don't know why you never moved–"
"Snow!" Emma snaps disbelievingly, and Snow turns to stare at her, still uncomprehending. Regina moves ahead of them, heels clipping against stone like a spooked horse's hoofbeats, and Snow glances from her to Emma and shakes her head again as she follows.
Regina's quarters still look the same when they enter them, and Emma feels a stab of nostalgia that she manages to hide a moment later. Here is the birthplace of some of her happiest memories, of Henry and Regina and the only love and family she'd ever truly had. She hesitates in the hall as Snow walks forward and Regina moves slowly, inspecting the room that Zelena had clearly made her own.
There's no dust on the table and Regina frowns and inspects the books that Zelena had left stacked on it, flipping through the pages just as Snow gasps. "Oh, no." She's staring into the nursery, a hand over her mouth, and Emma crosses the hall in quick steps. Regina remains at the table. "Oh, Emma, Regina, I'm so sorry."
The nursery is in shambles. The crib has been smashed to pieces, the hangings they'd had on the wall shredded, and Henry's old wall of stuffed elephants (he'd been so enamored with them that Regina had once talked about purchasing a real one for him with such a deadpan tone that Emma hadn't known if she was kidding or not) have been attacked, stuffing everywhere and baby clothes strewn across the room. "Zelena did this?" Emma whispers. There's so much hate and desperation behind this that she feels a thrill of terror for Henry in another world, with an enemy he's never met. Who else would have…
"No," Regina says from the table. Her eyes are fixed on the books in front of her and she hasn't met Emma's eyes once since her failed attempt to have her kill her. "Zelena didn't do that."
"Oh," Emma whispers, the air emptying from her lungs. And now she notices the dust that coats everything in the room, even animal innards and crib slats. No, Zelena hadn't been the one to succumb to that level of rage.
She sneaks a look at Regina and sees that she isn't scanning the pages of the book anymore; her eyes are unfocused and hopeless and Emma doesn't have to imagine how much it would have hurt to have Henry taken from her.
Well. She'd gotten her revenge. She stalks forward into the room and swallows the lump in her throat at the sight of Henry's mobile flung against a wall until the little glass unicorns had shattered. And she feels an odd kind of peace at being surrounded by this much destruction. "Thea had a room on the far side of these quarters," she says. "It was pretty nice, from what I remember. You think you'll be okay there if I take this one?"
"Don't you want to clean this up?" Snow asks, forehead wrinkling with confusion.
Emma sits on her old bed- the one she'd rarely used at first, when she'd come to the castle and been afraid to sleep at night. Here are reminders of kindness, more than Regina had granted anyone in this world. Here are reminders of pain and what a scorned Regina is capable of. "No," she says, and stretches out across a dusty bedspread, fully clothed, and closes her eyes.
She can sense Regina hesitate in front of the nursery- hear her steps and soft breath, smell the faintest perfume wafting in from the doorway, see the light from the hall obscured for a moment as Regina stands in front of it- but she keeps her breath even and Regina moves on to her old room.
And so life resumes into something unlike anything Emma had ever known. She'd once have battled empires for this kind of peace between Regina and Snow, but now she grits her teeth and avoids Regina in their rooms. Regina, for her part, seems content with avoiding her right back, whatever they'd worked out in their fight with Zelena replaced with stiffness and embarrassment around Emma.
So Emma is tense when approached and Regina is tense right back at her, and both of them rarely allow themselves to be alone together. Regina is alone more often than not, her bedroom sealed, and Emma leaves on scouting missions with the others and doesn't glance up at Regina's window from outside too often.
For now, they're all focused on consolidating the old kingdom and preparing for Zelena's next attack. "She's just after Regina," Emma says one evening when she's walking with Snow. They don't ride too often anymore. Snow has found that the years away from riding have meant that she's sick when she spends too long on a horse or near one. "That's what it seems like to me." She leaves the sentence open-ended and waits for Snow to understand.
Snow catches on at once, slowly shaking her head. "You aren't saying that we…"
"I have that cabin in the woods," Emma reminds her. "It's supposed to be shielded from magic. I can take her there or to the Dark Castle, and we can shift Zelena's attention from all the refugees to just Regina and me."
Snow shakes her head again. "We're not exiling her just because she has this new enemy. And the witch turned two of your men into flying monkeys long before Regina was here. This land…we can't afford to lose people here because they're inconvenient." She squeezes Emma's hand and when Emma turns, it's to see Snow studying her silently, brow furrowed.
"What?" she says, self-conscious.
"It's just…" Snow smiles, her eyes melancholy behind it. "It wasn't that bad in Storybrooke. Once we were unfrozen, we were all together, safer and more united and content than we'd ever been here. For all Regina's big threats about ending our happy endings, there wasn't much in the way of consequences once we were free. And I keep thinking that of all the suffering Regina had meant to wreak on us, it was you who was the greatest casualty."
Emma swallows and forces a smile. It wobbles and her voice emerges, equally wobbly. "I did okay here. Killed a lot of ogres. Cleaned out the Dark Castle."
Her voice wavers again and Snow says, "Oh, Emma," and she's being wrapped into Snow's warm embrace, hugged tightly until she's supported by Snow and she can cry silently for the years of loss.
She stays there for a long time. Snow doesn't speak, doesn't push her forward, and she reflects for a moment on how much Snow had changed in their missing years, because the Snow she'd left behind had been loving and compassionate but had never quite learned about what silence can be. Regina and Emma live in silences, in what is left unsaid rather than tearful confessions, and Snow has finally caught up with them like this.
Who had Mary Margaret Blanchard been? Emma doesn't know. Emma wishes she'd known. Emma wishes she'd been in this town they all seem to speak of with guilty yearning, the place that had been cursed but not a curse at all, and she closes her eyes and tries to imagine growing up with Henry in another land. "I wish I'd been there," she finally confesses in a whisper.
"I wish you'd been there, too." Snow pulls away, her hands still on Emma's shoulders, and she says- because she still is Snow- "And I know you're angry with Regina, but you'd understand each other now. You've both lost the same…I think you could take care of each other if you let yourselves."
"Snow, she took my son away. For almost nine years of his life." She sounds spent when she admits it, the exhaustion of keeping up her rage too much without a simple foe. "I don't want to play nice with her now that her own vileness has caught up with her."
"She's changed. She doesn't hurt people anymore."
"I don't care!" She doesn't care about this Regina who gathers her layers around her and hides within them, who mourns as though she has any right to… "I liked her just fine when she was still…" When she didn't hurt me, she thinks, and flushes at her own selfishness and falls silent.
"She was a good mayor," Snow says, changing the subject wisely, though her eyes are already searching Emma for answers to a question she hasn't asked yet. "I think she might do better with this kingdom than I have. I never knew how to rule, just how to fight Regina. My father was much better at…" She pauses. "My father," she repeats, her gaze fixed on Emma. Emma realizes too late that she'd flinched. "What did my father do to Regina?"
So she had been paying attention to Regina's stiffness when they'd been talking about room assignments. For a moment, Emma thinks about telling her to talk to Regina instead, and winces at her own bullishness. No, Regina shouldn't have to explain any of that to his daughter. "What do you think he did to her?" she asks wearily.
Snow shakes her head. "My father…he wouldn't…"
"I'm sure he didn't think that he was." She remembers Regina beneath her as Emma had been kissing her, muffling her own cries because she'd been taught to, to be silent and still and nothing more than a body. She hates Leopold still with all she has. And this is his daughter struggling. "He picked out a mother for you, gave her no choices, and she was to be his wife. And so she was."
Snow stares wide-eyed at her, still somehow a child in this moment. "I thought…I thought it was all about Daniel."
"It was." She shifts in place, uncomfortable with discussion of him, and adds, "But it was never just about him as much as what came next. That many years of being in that castle, left to fester in her misery… Regina became who she became."
"But you loved her." Snow has let her shoulders go but now she seizes Emma's hand in her own. "You loved her and you…you get her, don't you? Even now. You're only punishing yourselves by staying apart like this." Emma stays stubbornly silent.
Snow laughs. "You know, I was so jealous of her."
"I know."
"And you. And Henry." Snow shakes her head. "Being the apple of your parents' eye for your whole childhood kind of makes you bratty when that's taken away." She makes a face and keeps moving. They're nearing the castle now, close enough to see people walking around it in the distance. "I wanted her to be mine. I never understood that she never wanted to belong to anyone."
"Yeah." Emma hadn't understood it, either, had thought of Regina's repeated rejections of her offers to run away as cowardice or a hunger for power until she'd finally grasped the truth. Regina hadn't wanted to be hers, either, or anyone's but her own. And it still stings, especially when… "But Henry?"
Snow's face blossoms into a smile. "She loves him so much, Emma." And it's a relief and it's another sharp pain to Emma, of Regina finding a love that's enough on the ashes of Emma's love. Of Henry and Regina, forever entwined, and Emma standing on the outside.
"Good," she says, and the part of her that doesn't hurt means it. Good that Henry has been surrounded by love. Good that Regina has stopped trying to punish everyone. Good that Regina had found someone worth fighting for.
And she thinks of herself, frozen in time with a hook and a sword over her head, utterly irrelevant to the lives of everyone she loves.
They're nearly at the castle when the moon is dimmed above the castle and the air smells like dust and leather. Emma looks up and sees a swarm of lights- blue and green and yellow and red, flickering in and out- in the sky, casting no shadow and surging forward as though they have a victim in mind. "Zelena," she growls, and sets off in a run, Snow stumbling after her.
They're fireflies, she can see now, a mass of them all diving downward with an angry clipping sound, too fast to be natural insects. And Regina emerges from the castle and stands tall in the garden, her hands glowing with fire as they come close enough that Emma can't see Regina's orange flame anymore.
She fires an arrow and it…dissolves, just like that, vanishes into the swarm and never falls free. "Hey! Hey!" she shouts, terror gripping her. "Over here!" She charges to the closest lamp and lights an arrowhead on fire, firing it again at the mass. This time it shifts and she sees burnt husks falling to the ground.
She seizes the lamp and runs to Regina, directly into the whirling mass of fireflies. She can feel something being dripping onto her skin with every insect brushing against it, something that burns and has her sluggish with pain, but she heads forward anyway, watching for where she can find a faint glow of fire flickers at the center of the swarm.
Regina is there, eyes flashing when she sees Emma, and she shakes her head and continues to throw flames at the fireflies closest to her. Emma thrusts her lamp out, clearing the area as well as she can, and she can see pink spots like teardrops everywhere the fireflies attack her.
She's afraid to open her mouth and let the fireflies in so she doesn't talk to Regina, just twists so she's at her back and fighting the rear swarm. Regina is straight-backed and breathing hard through her nose and Emma's lamp is flickering, the fireflies cutting off the air it needs to remain burning, and she slumps back against Regina, wondering if they can run away from this.
And then, very suddenly, the fireflies spread out and fly away. Regina sags against her and Emma drops to her knees, panting. "What the hell?"
"I don't think…I don't know." Regina kneels down beside her, magic flickering over the irritated skin on Emma's face. Her fingers trail across Emma's eyes and down her cheekbones, tracing healing energy along Emma's neck and chin and down to her tunic. "You're all red," she murmurs.
"So are you," Emma whispers back, shivering under Regina's touch. Regina's skin is angry and irritated, beginning to swell in places it shouldn't, and Emma doesn't have any magic to help her. "You should…" She puts a hand against Regina's cheek and they stare at each other for a moment, the tense distance gone for the moment and replaced with this new awkwardness.
She almost says something else, doesn't push Regina aside and nearly speaks, but then there's a crack of energy behind them and they spring apart, standing up again and whirling around just as Snow finally reaches the castle.
"We've just received word," the Blue Fairy announces from where she's appeared, a group of brightly lit fairies trailing behind her. They look like fireflies, too, and Emma's face settles into a scowl. "We're here to help you fight the witch."
Her eyes flicker to Emma for a moment and Emma thinks she must have imagined the disappointment in them- or perhaps not; after all, they'd never gotten along- and then they move to Regina and become unreadable.
One of the fairies is dressed in green and rushes over to Regina as soon as they're back in the castle, Regina seated in the war room after healing all of Emma's and her own burns. Emma perches in the seat beside her, protective around Blue even when she's still resenting Regina. "Regina!" the green fairy says. She's in human form now, her hand on Regina's and Regina smiling at her in a way that isn't nearly as uncomfortable as she is around Snow and Emma. "I'm so sorry about Henry."
"Thank you, Tink," Regina says, and Emma darts a glance her way and sees that her smile has vanished.
Tink frowns at Emma for a moment. "I don't know you."
"Tink, don't–" Regina begins, but Emma says, "I was here. I'm Emma."
"Emma." Tink's eyes brighten and her head swivels back to Regina, quick as a flash. "Your Emma?"
"Not her anything," Emma mumbles, and she's grateful when Snow comes in and she can ignore both of the other women. Tink is whispering into Regina's ear and Regina is looking more progressively frustrated with each hushed exchange, and she responds low and sharply until Tink finally stands up and storms off to the back of the room.
Blue hasn't taken human form, instead hovering so they all have to raise their chins to acknowledge her- which Emma's pretty sure is intentional. "So this witch is…"
"From Oz. The Wicked Witch of the West," Snow offers. "And apparently Regina's sister."
"Another of Cora's." Blue sniffs. "And what did you do to her?" Her eyes are on Regina now, who's gritting her teeth and wrapping her fingers around the edge of the table.
"I did nothing," she says, but she's avoiding their eyes. You lied. You ruined my life and left me to suffer, Zelena had said, and Regina hadn't contested that. "I haven't seen her since I was ten."
"And what happened to her then? Was Cora teaching her magic?" Blue presses. "Had she been killing? Any association with the Dark One? What happened to her?"
Regina's face takes on a mulish expression and Emma knows that Blue won't get anything else from her. "Regina doesn't know anything about her," she says, keeping her eyes on Blue and sensing Regina's startled glance on her. "She didn't even know she was her sister until we went to take down the barrier."
"And we're supposed to trust you?" Blue flutters around her and Emma's fists clench. Snow puts a hand on Emma's arm. "You've proven less reliable than even the Mills women."
Emma's had enough. "I don't give a damn what you think," she says, and stands and stalks out of the room. Just like old times with the Blue Fairy.
She's sitting by Regina's tree, biting into an apple with savage frustration, when she hears a voice call out in the dark, "I don't think you helped my case very much."
"Not everything is about you, Regina." The apple tastes sour and she tosses it to the ground. It rolls a few feet before it comes to a halt under Regina's shoe. "Blue and I don't get along."
"I can see that." Regina's face is neutral and Emma doesn't know what to do with her hands.
She plucks another apple and finds her knife, peeling it in a long strip. "I spent months listening to her buzzing in my ear, demanding that I put Henry in that wardrobe. She wasn't happy with me when I refused."
"Until you couldn't anymore," Regina murmurs, and she doesn't look guilty as much as sad.
Emma shifts, annoyed and uncertain at that response. "I wouldn't sacrifice Henry for the greater good. The greater good is a crock of shit."
Regina lets out a startled laugh and Emma feels her own lips beginning to creep upward. She bites them to keep them in place. "Emma," she says, shaking her head. Just Emma. Then, "I am inclined to agree."
"Yeah? What about that noble sacrifice everyone can't shut up about?" She finishes slicing the peel off in one piece and tosses the apple to Regina. Regina bites into it. "How does that work with the whole fuck the greater good business?"
"Henry falls into the 'greater good' camp. I don't think he'd be very happy with me sacrificing everyone else for the two of us." Regina moves and the first apple rolls back to Emma.
"Henry and Snow." Emma kicks it. "You made them this way, didn't you?"
"I had nothing to do with parenting Snow," Regina says haughtily. "If anything, she did this to Henry. She was his teacher when he first found out about the curse."
Emma has a sudden, horrifying mental image of Snow seated in a classroom, teaching the students bird calls instead of numbers and reading. It's even harder not to laugh now. "What a nightmare."
"Indeed." Regina is pursing her lips like she's trying not to grin, and she lifts up the apple Emma had dropped and waves her hand over it. The dirt vanishes and she hands it off, sparkling clean, to Emma. "Do you remember when I told you about a friend I'd had in childhood?"
"Vaguely." She thinks it hadn't been far from here, the two- no, three- of them curled up together on the grass. Henry had been just learning how to move and Regina had been blowing colored puffs of magic for him to catch with chubby little fingers. Emma had loved them both more than anyone in the universe, had been so happy that it had overwhelmed the dread for a little while.
She wants to shrink into the ground now and forget everything that had come after that. Instead, she says, "So that was Zelena?"
"I never knew she was my sister. Now it makes sense. Mother would have kept her close, with that kind of power." Regina closes her eyes. "I think she was meant to be my maid, but instead she was…a friend. The only one I'd had until I met you, I suppose."
"What happened?"
Regina is gazing into the dark now, and Emma thinks she'd been forgotten until she feels Regina's hand against the tree's wall, fingers just against hers but not quite touching. "We stole my mother's ruby slippers. It had been her idea. I didn't cross Mother when it wasn't necessary. I guess she was too far gone to care."
She leans back to stare up at the moon. "And the slippers took us to Oz. I wore them, held onto Zelena, and I clicked them three times and we were there, in a strange realm, all alone. I'd been terrified. I had never meant to use magic. Zelena was ecstatic." She shakes her head. "It was nothing like the movie."
"What's a movie?"
Regina laughs again, surprised. "You don't know about movies." She launches into a description of plays on a screen and something called television that sounds like it's the same thing, and Emma's kind of confused about why you'd shrink people just to perform in someone's home? Are they only for royalty? But Regina's warm and enthusiastic when she talks about it, the morose memories of Zelena on hold for a moment, and Emma doesn't say anything.
"...And there are movies about old legends of that world," Regina adds. "Snow and I have a story. Mulan, too. Lancelot is part of an older one. There are hundreds of legends about you."
"Really? Do I charm the dresses off all the ladies?"
"Oh, you do." Regina quirks an eyebrow. "Though in most of them, you're a man."
Emma rolls her eyes heavenward. "Of course I am."
"Better a man than a terrible shrew," Regina says, sighing. "I've tried to kill poor Snow White hundreds of times throughout history because she was prettier than me."
"Well, that's just unrealistic." She flushes and looks away when Regina's eyes land back on her. "Uh…so. Zelena."
"Oz didn't take well to either of us. We were declared enemies of the realm by their leader at the time, a witch called Glinda." Regina's voice shakes. "I'd hated magic and never used it, and I was helpless against the creatures she sent against us. Magical doves, white foxes, hummingbirds. Animals that were never meant to hurt."
Emma says, "Fireflies?"
"Fireflies." Regina touches a faint pink mark still visible on Emma's arm.
"Then she–"
"I don't know. Zelena may have them under her control now. As far as I know, Glinda is still in Oz."
She polishes the apple with her thumb, her eyes dim with old memories. "We fled but the citizens of the realm were only too happy to turn us in. Glinda sent them for both of us and Zelena tried to protect me, to hand over the slippers and fight back against the animals that attacked us. Finally, she went with Glinda in exchange for my safety. I swore I'd come back for her."
"Liar," Emma echoes the word Zelena had thrown at Regina, and Regina flinches. "That's what she meant. You didn't go back?"
Regina shakes her head. "My mother came to get me. She took me from Glinda and told me she'd go back and retrieve Zelena. She lied," Regina says simply. "I don't know why. Maybe she'd decided to punish her for taking the slippers. Maybe Zelena had just become a liability, and Mother hated liabilities."
"Maybe she was just trying to torment both of you some more," Emma offers uncharitably.
Regina snorts and doesn't comment on that. "She left and returned and said that Zelena was dead and I believed her. I swore to never touch magic again and I blamed myself enough that I made a habit of being brave, of putting myself second and saving others first. Very much the opposite of what Mother wanted me to be," she admits, and Emma yearns for the girl she'd been and doesn't know the woman she is now. "And years after Zelena languished in one prison, I wound up in another for that vow."
She turns to Emma. "And then you did for seven years because of me." Her eyes are dark and not quite as rich with self-pity as they'd been on that first night in the castle. Emma could lose herself in them in an instant. "Little girls hurting little girls with Mother's help," she murmurs. "When does it stop?"
Emma wants to say something poisonous in return, wants to get her chance to fight back as Zelena has. But the words die on her tongue and instead she murmurs, "That's up to you."
"Not anymore." They're united on one side now, all of them against a vengeful witch lashing out at a woman who'd wronged her as a child, and the irony of that doesn't escape Emma. But Regina is no Snow, who's only now beginning to understand what had been inflicted. Regina had looked at Zelena as though she'd loved her and Zelena had put on a mask in response.
"Maybe still," Emma says, and their hands remain just barely touching and Emma doesn't know how to explain it, how she should hate her- she does hate her- but she's still sitting with her in the dark garden, longing quietly for a moment a decade before, when it had been Regina and Emma and Henry and no more hurt between them.