chapter 7
When Zelena finally stops laughing, Emma sits at her kitchen table, grits her teeth, and says, "You poisoned her."
"I did not. You brought the poison in to kill me," Zelena points out. "It's only poetic justice that you accidentally poisoned her instead." The humor isn't gone from her face, but there's a smugness in place that has Emma prickly and annoyed.
"Yes, we're the ones who spiked a potion with Regina's blood for fun. That doesn't even make sense." Zelena hadn't been in the right place to have thrown the poison, but it had also been dark and raining and Emma's senses had been compromised by that.
Zelena's staring blankly at her now, looking perplexed. "What does Regina's blood have to do with the potion?"
"Don't you know?"
"Why would I? I've never made it. I had to design a cure from scratch." There's no lie in her voice, and Emma eyes her, still suspicious. Zelena holds up a hand, confusion set aside for the same smugness. "And now you think I'll free my sister from what I've been suffering from for half my life?" She laughs, wild and manic.
Emma says, keeping her voice even, "You will because it's poisoning her heart."
Zelena's eyes narrow. "You put her heart back in? Idiot girl."
Emma ignores the question, careful so Zelena won't suspect a lie. "You need her heart for your curse, don't you? To go…find your Dorothy in the other realm. How effective is a spell with a diseased heart going to be?" She leans forward, hands on the table. "Regina needs to be cured or you'll be trapped here forever. And you don't want that, do you?"
"You are the most irritating child I've ever had the displeasure of meeting, Swan," Zelena grumbles.
"But you're going to help me anyway," Emma presses, feeling the stirrings of victory.
"Stop talking," Zelena orders her, and Emma tries hard not to smirk. She fails miserably, and Zelena's lip curls. "Follow me."
Emma follows Zelena out of the cabin, bow raised and pointed at her. Immediately, a scroll of paper appears in Emma's hands and she jolts back, dropping it and slamming an elbow into the wall. "Fuck."
"So crass. I thought my sister would have better taste." But Zelena is smirking openly now, smug and snide again. "You'll need to find those ingredients in her private stores. Take a few drops of blood from under the infection. It'll take days before the treatment is ready- less, perhaps, if you're competent- and after that…well, it could be months before it clears up this time. Meet me here at dusk and I'll begin the potion."
She turns on her heel, arms raised as she prepares to leave, and Emma blurts out, "Don't you care?" She can't imagine it, hating the one she loves most so much that she'd have to be convinced to save her life and be so blasé about it. For all the hurt and resentment toward Regina, she'd never been capable of not caring, even when Regina had been taunting her and an arrow had been nocked in her bow.
Zelena pauses, her back to Emma, and Emma watches her. She's made of bony edges and sharp angles and she doesn't really look like Regina but they both look like Cora, carrying on a legacy that had destroyed them. Emma doesn't know if she's imagining softness in her profile suddenly, uncertainty or defeat or fury, and she waits for an answer, fists balled around her bow.
"I don't have time to care," Zelena says finally. "I have vengeance."
"So did Regina. It didn't work out," Emma says, and Zelena disappears in a puff of green smoke.
Zelena's directions are sparse and direct with no explanation or description of any of the items on the list. Fortunately, Regina's shelves are all neatly labelled in cramped handwriting. Unfortunately, Emma can't make hide or hair of any of Regina's reasoning in organizing her stores the way she has.
She's crawling around on the floor now, head ducked under the lowest shelves in an attempt to see if essence of dragon is in one of the back drawers, when there's an unpleasant voice behind her. "Ah. Emma."
She jolts and smacks her head against the shelf. Blinking away sudden dark spots, she twists around and smiles tightly. "Hello, Blue."
She knows from Tink that fairies can change shape, can take human form at the blink of an eye, but Blue never opts for that here. Instead, she manages to fill the room with her tiny, fluttering presence- never quite the commanding aura that surrounds Regina as much as something oppressive and tight and everywhere, like breathing through a tube.
"Looking for something?" Blue asks pleasantly, and the tube gets a little narrower. "Maybe I could help."
She's in no mood for the games that exist behind words, not with Zelena waiting and Regina upstairs in pain. "Essence of dragon," she says shortly.
"Third shelf to your left," Blue instructs her. "It's marked as 'dragon scale' here."
Emma opens the vial containing the scale and tips the smoke that emerges into her flask. "Thanks." She pauses. "How do I know you aren't lying to me?"
Blue purses her lips. "I don't lie."
"Yeah? How about the heart? Because everyone else I've spoken to seems to think that that would've made things worse for Regina." Emma stands up. Blue hovers a little high so she's still higher than Emma. Ass.
"Emma," Blue says kindly. She has a way of speaking that's both condescending and encouraging, Emma not Lady Swan when there's no distance between them, and Emma suddenly feels as though she's five and wishing on stars again. Her skin prickles uncomfortably. "I told you all I knew. I was very clear that my knowledge on that matter was limited."
Emma begins to nod before she catches herself, seizes her righteous anger and uses it to propel her forward. "But you want Regina sick," she accuses.
Blue's face twitches as though she's struggling to lie. "Yes," she says finally, her wings drooping. "Yes, I think we're all better off with an evil queen without magic."
Emma's fingers are wrapped so tightly around the flask that she thinks she might break it. "Why?" she demands. "Why are you so set on hurting Regina? She's good now. She's paid her dues for all of you. Why do you get to pass judgment on her when all she does is try?"
Blue flies a little lower so she's nearly at Emma's eye line. "Oh, Emma," she sighs. "I think Snow has been…misrepresenting Regina's allegiances during our time in Storybrooke."
Emma freezes, a new fear creeping into her heart. She'd taken Snow's words at face value, but Snow loves Regina. And everyone around them loves Snow enough that her decisions wouldn't be questioned. "You're lying," she says uncertainly.
"We've already established that that's impossible." Blue flutters back a few feet and Emma wraps her arms around her waist, eyes narrowed. "Ask around. Snow's experiences with Regina are quite different than the rest of ours. One sacrifice can't absolve her of everything that came before."
"I know what she's done. Where do you think I was when she was running around executing villagers?" Blue stares at her, an eyebrow cocked, and Emma loses her patience. "And where were you when people were dying? When I was chasing her around the kingdom, trying desperately to lower her body count? There's nothing you can tell me now that would–"
"She was willing to murder everyone in Storybrooke and run off with your son," Blue says, and Emma stills. "That was about a week before we came here. So you'll forgive me if I'm not in a hurry to exalt her as hero." She comes a little closer, settles onto Emma's shoulder, and when Emma shrugs hard, she stays there. "She locked poor Belle in an asylum for almost eight years. She allied with her mother and planned to murder everyone around Henry. For all Snow's purported faith in her, she was rather convinced that Regina had killed you for some time."
Blue's voice is honeyed sweetness and dangerous undertones, and Emma is frozen in place. "And Henry…your dear son…" Her voice trails off. "It isn't my place."
"None of this is your place," Emma snaps, irritated and frustrated. She knows what Blue is doing, what this is about- Regina's magic. Faith in someone the fairies will never accept- and she needs to know regardless, to be reassured that arguments against Regina's motherhood are baseless. "But that hasn't stopped you before, has it?"
Blue smoothes her hands against her puffy dress. "I suppose not." Emma's neck is beginning to strain from staring up at her, and she turns instead, running her fingers along a shelf as Blue speaks. "Regina poisoned Henry," she says, and Emma's fingers seize up against the shelf.
"The apple." She's gotten the story from Snow and the reluctant admission from Regina. I broke the curse to save Henry's life. Nothing else mattered. "It was meant for Snow."
"And Henry was collateral damage in Regina's agenda." Blue sighs again. "As all the people in her life have been, you perhaps most of all." Emma scowls silently, stubbornly keeping her back to Blue. "Tell me, Emma, what do you think it was like, growing up in a town that didn't age?" Emma doesn't answer. "How very selfish it was, for Regina to condemn a child to that world."
"I would have done the same in a heartbeat," Emma fires back, defiant. She doesn't know if it's true, if the aching need to give Henry family would be strong enough to decide that that would have been his best chance. She doesn't know if she ever would have believed herself capable of giving him the mother he'd needed at all, not without Regina with her. But she can't see the way Regina loves Henry and not believe that he'd deserved a mother like her.
Blue sniffs. "Yes, well…that doesn't surprise me." There's a note of suggestion in her voice, of words unsaid that Emma's supposed to grasp, but Emma's never been all that good with subtlety.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demands.
Blue avoids an explanation. "She cast that curse and thought nothing of your child." Her voice gentles. "Now, it's possible that she's changed since then. But this is the world he was living in before it. How can we in good conscience leave that kind of power in the hands of a woman so dark?"
She's moving behind Emma, a bright reflection in an urn on the shelf, and this time, when she lands on Emma's shoulder, it's with a wash of warmth through Emma like a mother's kiss. Fairy-kindness. That's what they call it, this surge of gentleness that has children confessing secrets and trusting strange beings.
Emma, however, is neither a child nor particularly familiar with maternal warmth, and she flicks Blue away with a snort. "Are you trying to manipulate me?"
"I'm trying to guide you to good choices," Blue says evenly. "You've met Cora. You know what mothers with magic can be, just as I do. I've spent centuries protecting children from their parents, Emma."
"Henry doesn't need to be protected. He isn't even here. Regina gave him up to save your life."
"Emma," Blue wields her name like a weapon now. "I've been here all along. I saw how much you hated Regina's magic, how it turned her into the Evil Queen. I saw her rip your heart out that day in the woods." Emma flinches. "You've been the greatest casualty of the magic you're so desperate to save right now. Why are you doing this?"
Because Regina feels weak. Because she's trying now, and Snow's faith can't be misplaced, and Emma's beginning to share that same faith. Because she loves Regina and won't take away something she holds so dear. Because she doesn't think of hearts being yanked from chests when she thinks about Regina's magic; she thinks about little bursts of light that had made Henry giggle and paw at them. Because Mulan thinks she has a code and she knows instinctively that saving Regina is right.
She doesn't respond. Blue says, "Working with Zelena won't serve you in the end," and when she twists around in surprise, the room is empty again.
Upstairs, Regina is mumbling Henry's name in her sleep, her body coiled into tight, sharp angles and her shoulders quivering, and Emma strokes her cheek and murmurs her name until her eyes open. "I need to take some blood." It's nearly dusk and Emma's going to be late, and there's no time to lose.
There's no comprehension in Regina's eyes at the request, no questions about why or how. She just lifts her head and tilts it when Emma touches her neck, eyes glued to Emma's face like it hasn't quite registered that she's there. She doesn't even blink when Emma cuts into the purple splotch, and Emma wonders for a moment how much pain she must be in not to notice it.
"What else can I do to help you?" Emma whispers, moving hair from Regina's face.
Regina closes her eyes and then opens them, new shreds of consciousness beginning to come to life and dull at once. "Emma?" she asks, her voice small. "Is that…are you…?"
"It's me." She touches Regina's cheek, presses her hand to it and lets Regina lean against it, and she's about to speak again when there's a filter of green in front of her eyes suddenly and the room vanishes from around her.
She's standing in front of the cabin a moment later with a very critical-looking Zelena eyeing her from just outside the door. "You're late."
Emma surges forward, shoving Zelena into the cabin before she can do any more magic. "You can't just do that! I was in the middle of something!"
"You can wait until later to snog my sister," Zelena says, rolling her eyes. She grows thoughtful for a moment. "Although you're right. I shouldn't be able to do that. Regina's magic is fading from her wards around the castle." She frowns, and Emma studies her face for any sign of distress. It's peeking in at the edges, Zelena too uncontrolled to hide it, but she sneers and it vanishes a moment later. "Tell me you have all the ingredients with you."
"Yeah." Emma digs into her pocket for the bag with the ingredients and Regina's blood, handing them over. "Will it still work inside the cabin?" she asks, following her inside.
"It should." The interior of the cabin has settled into the woods and aged- there are even some red-orange flowers growing beneath the kitchen table, and Zelena gives them a considering look as she responds. "The cabin blocks out active magic, but it must allow more passive magic to work." She sets up her vials and begins laying out the ingredients.
Emma watches in silence, fiddling with the lamps around the room as she begins to wander the cabin. It's been almost a decade since she'd last really seen the place she'd lived with Henry, and even now there are still hints of them around. A simple puzzle on the floor of their bedroom next to another patch of flowers, a stuffed toy covered in dust on the bed. She pulls open a drawer and finds a neatly folded stack of tiny tunics and presses one to her face, not daring to mourn too openly so close to Zelena.
"I don't know how you can forgive her," Zelena says. She's staring into the room, brow wrinkled at the sight of Emma with Henry's old undershirt. "She took everything from you, too."
"She didn't know I'd be left behind." She bites her lip, feeling defensive about the whole matter, and points out, "She didn't know you would, either."
"Don't make excuses for her. It makes her sound weak and you like a fool," Zelena says snidely.
"You're the one who still can't move on," Emma says, stung. "And it's taken over your life. I think that makes you both weak and a fool."
Zelena's eyes narrow. "You have no idea what I am."
"And you have no idea what I feel."
"Fine."
"Fine."
She feels rather like a schoolgirl during a playground scuffle, a child fighting over irrelevance, and she tries again. "She's been fighting hard to change." For a moment, Blue's words from earlier come to mind, casting a pall over her faith. "I know her. I trust her," she says, more as reassurance for herself than for Zelena.
Zelena laughs, a tinge of bitterness to it. "It's easy for her. You have no idea what it means to have no one fighting for you."
"I have a clue, actually."
"Please," Zelena retorts. "She's had you fighting for her all along, whenever she'd allow it. And now she has her son and Snow-"
Emma cuts her off, setting the shirt back down and returning to the kitchen as she speaks. "I didn't mean Regina."
Zelena pauses, studying Emma's face, and Emma stares back at her evenly. "I see."
"Yeah, I see." Emma clenches her fists against the table, too many memories returning of being alone, being on her own, even once she'd joined the Merry Men. She'd been a leader and she'd been needed but she'd kept herself- by choice, and not by choice- distant from the others. She's spent a lifetime fighting, but rarely can she remember a time when she'd been fought for. "So spare me the pity party. No one was fighting for Regina for a long, long time, okay? She learned- I learned- we learn to fight for ourselves. And we all managed. You aren't different than us except that you're still trying to lash out instead of searching for something better, and that's where you're fucking up."
Zelena sneers at her and slides Regina's blood into her glass flask, tapping the side of it for a moment before she stands. "Very well." She turns to the door.
Emma battles a surge of panic. "Wait. Where are you going? One comment and you're taking away the-"
"Don't be an idiot," Zelena snaps. "The potion isn't smoking. I'm checking it outside the cabin." She pokes the hand holding the flask through the doorway. Immediately, waves of smoke pour from it and the liquid inside the flask begins to swirl and change colors. "Hm."
"What does that mean?"
"That any magic doesn't work inside this cabin. Which doesn't make sense." Zelena steps out of the cabin and waves her hand, setting up a table outside in the clearing.
"My friend had it protected from magic when it was built."
"No, no, not that." Zelena waves an impatient hand. "The poppies."
"Poppies?"
"The flowers on the floor." Emma peers back inside to eye them. "They're all over Oz. They grow from poppyseed."
"The little black dots on bread?" Emma asks, confused.
Zelena laughs. "No, true poppyseed. It blooms flowers that contain a powerful hypnosis that can put anyone to sleep. They sprout from…" She waves her hand vaguely. "I suppose here you call it fairy dust."
"Fairy dust," Emma repeats, staring at the flowers under the table, growing straight from the dirt. "But you said that magic doesn't…that the potion wouldn't…it's impossible."
That can put anyone to sleep. She's turning on her heel and heading to the bedroom again, studying the patch of poppies peeking out from under the bed. Exactly where she'd slept the night of the curse, Henry wrapped in her arms until he…wasn't. She'd woken up and Lancelot had been asleep at the kitchen table, and to this day neither of them had known how they'd slept through Henry's kidnapping.
"I have to go," she says, and bolts from the woods toward the main road.
She doesn't make it far, not without a horse, but her memories of the woods around her home still serve her well enough to find a quiet place far from Zelena where she can find clear skies and a blue star gleaming down from above. "Blue," she hisses. "Show your face!"
Blue pops into existence a moment later, head cocked and wand waving. "Ah, Emma. Have you thought about what we discussed?"
"Poppies," she says in response. Her fists are clenched around her bow, tighter and tighter as she struggles to control the urge to punch the Blue Fairy in the face, and Blue's eyebrows rise as she takes Emma in. "There are poppies in Jasmine's cabin."
Blue's eyebrows settle again, and she smiles, long and unimpressed. "Indeed."
"How did you get in? Or did you send someone to…to…"
"The Agraban genie came to me for help. I'm the one who protected it from magic in the first place," Blue says pleasantly. Of course. Of course.
She can't contain her fury anymore, can't stop herself from charging forward at Blue and swinging at her. "You took my son!" She catches a flicker of wing and then Blue is gone, vanishing in a puff of sparkled blue and reappearing at the other end of the clearing. Emma aims her bow and whirls around and Blue dodges again, and again, and again until Emma is in the center of the clearing, bent over with her hands against her thighs and her eyes raised to glare up at the gleaming fairy. "You took…my son…" she manages, stumbling forward again.
"Of course I did." Blue's voice is hard and Emma gapes up at her, surprised at the easy admission. "It was the only way."
"But…Tink said you couldn't. That you were good." She spits out the word like the fucking lie that it is, still caught in disbelief.
Blue sniffs. "Green has always had trouble understanding just what true goodness entails. I see a larger picture, one you may never understand. But for the greater good, I will do whatever it takes. And Henry had to cross over into the other realm."
"You kidnapped my son!"
"He was our only chance! And you selfishly kept him to yourself. Tell me, Emma, how would you have fared frozen in time for an eternity? Did you want to be responsible for an entire kingdom imprisoned in Storybrooke, never to be freed again? For a son never allowed to grow up?" Blue hovers closer and Emma's hand shoots out, her palm slapping Blue's side before the fairy flutters away again.
There's a flash of light and then Blue is standing before her, full-sized, clad in an elaborate dress dotted with flowers. Emma takes a step back and Blue reaches out to grab her hand. "Emma," she says gently. "I know we haven't always gotten along. It's…difficult for you to see what I can."
Emma's frozen in place, Blue's hand on hers, and she can feel those gentle stirrings of fairy-kindness tugging at her heart. "You stole my son," she repeats yet again, clinging to that awareness. "You took him from me and I'm never going to see him–"
Blue tosses some fairy dust in the air and it coalesces into an image, Henry leaning back against a couch with David beside him, the two of them eating some sort of orange, triangular dough. Emma freezes in place, the texture of tiny undershirts still seared into her skin.
Henry's talking animatedly, gesturing ahead of them at something Emma can't see, and David is laughing, shoving him on his shoulder as he responds. Henry gives him a dirty look and snatches his orange triangle, taking a laughing bite out of it as David protests, and Emma suddenly notices that she's shaking, her arms wrapped around herself as the Blue Fairy pats her back comfortingly. "Oh, Emma," she sighs. "There are times when I wish we didn't have such strict guidelines about which children to help."
Emma remembers to recoil from Blue and the picture vanishes, leaving her hollowed out and empty inside. "What are you talking about," she croaks.
"I saw you as a child, Emma. I hear the wishes of all children. And there was a time when your wishes were loudest of all." Blue is still in human form and Emma doesn't know how to be around her, flinching back when she comes too close and feeling so young again, lonely and afraid and needy. "I couldn't grant them. I saw who you would be, the way your life would shape the thief who fed the hungry, and I couldn't alter that path."
You took my son, she tries to say, but the fairy-kindness is strong in her veins, calming her each time the fury rises and guiding her back to Blue. "We have clashed in the past," Blue acknowledges. "But I've always had a great deal of respect for you. You can still be great. It's always been your destiny, Emma." Her voice softens even more. "It's only ever been your association with the queen that's held you back."
"Like hell," Emma grits out, resentment overpowering the fairy-kindness's thrall. "Regina is–"
"Regina makes you selfish and weak," Blue says, and now her voice is like steel.
"You don't know what–"
"Just as you do her."
Emma stops midway through her sentence, taken aback. "I…what?"
Blue pats her hands again. "Oh, Emma, you must know it. Haven't you understood why it's only now that Regina has been able to change? Never because of you. Sometimes all love is is bringing out the worst in each other." She tilts her head, the cloying goodness overpowering in this volume. "I've always been watching, Emma. I saw her driven to new destruction only to get a rise out of you. I saw her a young girl who'd chosen darkness after your rejection of her. How much of who she is is because of you, I wonder? How much of her reform was about your absence from her life?"
Emma stands stock-still, frozen with outrage and denial, and Blue says comfortingly, "Cora's line has always been destined for great darkness. It isn't your fault that you've been drawn into it. You are so much more than Regina's lover, Emma. You used to be a hero, don't you remember? You had the courage to change others' destiny in ways that even fairies never could. And now…"
Emma finally punches her, hard in the gut when she doesn't expect it, and Blue squawks in outrage and transforms into fairy form again. "You stole my son," Emma snarls, the fairy-kindness overcome at last. "You expect me to stand here and listen to you when you robbed me of the one person in the universe who matters most to me?" She balls her fists and swings again, sideswiping a tiny Blue this time. "And I'm going to–"
"What? Tell Snow?" Blue smiles thinly, her affection gone in an instant. "Do you think she'll condemn me for doing what was best? Snow trusts me, as she should. Every person in this kingdom would defend my decision- if they even chose to believe the Evil Queen and her lover."
She's right and that burns nearly as much as the uncomfortable idea that Emma and Regina bring out the worst in each other. Emma has only one ally in this, and she's unconscious and sick and doesn't need to be roped into this situation right now.
"And you know they need me," Blue murmurs. "More than they'll ever need you. Would you truly be so selfish as to remove the support of the fairies from your castle under siege?"
Emma can't answer, can't do anything other than attempting another blow, and she rages silently at her own helplessness here, at how little can actually be done. She's been so focused in finding proof and catching Blue or her minions, in knowing who'd done it, and she'd never thought about what would happen after. Snow can't afford to lose the fairies. No one will attack Blue for what they'd all wanted all along. She's trapped with knowledge and nothing to do with it, not against a force as indomitable as the head fairy.
Blue says, "Do think about what I've said, child. We can still reach an accord," and fairy-kindness washes over Emma again as Blue pops out of the clearing in a shower of sparks.
Emma sinks to the ground, back against a tree and eyes unseeing. She sits for a long time until she hears the screech of a flying monkey before Zelena rides into the clearing on a broomstick, eyebrows arched at her position. "What have you been doing?"
Emma shrugs and follows her back to the cabin.
Now that the cabin as their laboratory is a bust, Zelena moves the potion to the Dark Castle while she works on it, and she conjures up a bed for Emma that Emma refuses to sleep in at first. "You'll kill me in my sleep."
"I could kill you right this instant," Zelena scoffs. She waves her hand and Emma's air supply to her throat is cut off for a moment. Emma uses the bed.
Zelena is careless with her magic, overusing it in a way that Regina never had, and she teleports them across kingdoms and conjures until she's drained of all power and turning green while she sleeps. In the morning, she's reenergized and the color is fading again, and she's back at work at a bubbling purple potion.
Emma wants to leave and is afraid to, to return to a castle while her anger toward Blue still burns hot and destructive. She has to go back to Regina, to make sure that she isn't in too much pain, but Zelena is positive that at this point, she won't be able to make a difference. "She won't even be able to feel your touch. Right now, you'll be of more help here."
Help means sitting beside Zelena, silently passing her ingredients and stirring whenever she barks out orders. Zelena takes snide satisfaction in being able to order Emma around, and Emma silently forces herself to let it wash over her. Zelena makes grand comments about killing Regina and Emma controls herself until she doesn't, until a beaker is crashing onto the floor and Emma has Zelena pinned against the wall with a hand around her neck, both of them breathing hard and with furious eyes. "You're not going to touch her."
"Do you think you can stop me?" Zelena laughs. Her magic is ebbing for the day and there's a spot of green on her jaw, spreading outward, and when she's only human she's so fragile. Emma can't help but compare her to her sister, tiny when she isn't immense, and she takes a step back.
"I would stop you," Emma says, low and dangerous. Zelena laughs again, but there's a purpling ring of fingerprints around her neck and she touches it uncomfortably. Emma bunches up her fists. "I'm not losing anyone else to that curse."
"I can make sure you die, too," Zelena offers magnanimously. Her eyes are glittering like she has a plan and Emma's nails bite into her palm. "I will cast the curse."
"You'll never get Regina's heart."
"Oh, but I will." Zelena flashes her a smirk. "I know her greatest weakness. In this realm, anyway," she hastens to clarify as Emma takes a threatening step toward her. "Regina will give it to me willingly."
"Regina doesn't have any weaknesses here," Emma shoots back, and Zelena snickers so knowingly that Emma nearly strangles her again.
They finish the potion in only two days with their combined effort. "I'm going to teleport you and the potion into Regina's quarters," Zelena instructs her. "You'll have to get her awake enough to drink the first dose. Take it twice a day for a week until it fades, then every time she sees the infection on her skin again until it stops coming. You can put her heart back in after a week."
Emma startles. "I said…I put her heart in already."
Zelena rolls her eyes. "And I'm not a fool."
"So you…" Emma stares hard at her. "You knew all along and you helped-"
Zelena cuts her off, her cheeks tinging red, and snaps, "Three months. That's how long I'll give you until the curse. You'd better hope she's better by then." Her eyes are narrowed and Emma opens her mouth and, quite suddenly, is right back in Regina's quarters.
There's a table beside her now, the whole set of the potion atop it, and Kalla and Snow are gaping at her from the other side of Regina's bed. "Where have you been?" Snow demands. "What…is this a cure?"
Emma ignores her for a moment to carefully ladle out a dose of the potion and pour it into one of Zelena's designated glasses. "Regina," she says softly. "Regina, can you wake up for me?"
"She hasn't woken up in days," Snow says. "Since you left."
"Okay." Emma parts Regina's lips and spills the liquid into them, stroking her throat until she begins swallowing. "We'll give her time." She turns around, looking properly at Snow at last. Snow is wan and tired, dark circles around her eyes and her hands pale over her distended belly. "Have you slept?"
"You disappeared," Snow says, by way of explanation. "Regina was sick. I had to…" She closes her eyes, looking very tired, and Kalla guides her from the room.
Emma thinks, selfish, Regina makes you selfish and weak. Just as you do her. Blue's voice is taunting in her mind, smug without the fairy-kindness to couch it and so intolerably right.
Emma sits down in the chair with jerky movements and waits.
Regina wakes up in the early morning the next day in the midst of a coughing fit, and Emma springs up from where she'd been slumped over in the bed and helps Regina sit up. She tips the glass of potion into Regina's mouth and Regina swallows without question, blinking around like she's fighting for awareness. "Emma." Her eyes search and settle on Emma, and then she shuts her eyes again.
She doesn't fully awaken until Emma pushes her heart into her body a week later, and then it's with a groan and a jerk and tears spilling from her eyes. She breathes in, long and cleansing, and she turns to find Emma. "I feel…better," she says. Her voice is richer now, her eyes glowing, and Emma doesn't know if it's the heart or the potion that has revived her but she's relieved either way.
"How long has it been?" Regina has already given up on sitting well, and soon she's half propped up by pillows and curled up on her side. "What did I miss?"
Emma thinks of Zelena's neck with her fingerprints on it, of crawling through the castle stores, of sleepless nights in the Dark One's castle. Emma thinks of you took my son and I saw you as a child and every person in the kingdom would defend my decision.
Emma thinks of Henry on a couch, laughing with David, and sometimes all love is is bringing out the worst in each other and Emma can't tell Regina the truth about Henry, not when she'd lose herself and her progress in vengeance again for it. Not when she has the future to worry about and the past can only hurt them, not the ones who deserve it. (Are they the ones who deserve it?)
"Nothing," Emma says, and when Regina curls her fingers around Emma's, she keeps her hand steady and still, rigid in Regina's soft grasp.