The room is packed like Zelena's never seen before. Lady Cora has hosted parties but never any so extravagant as this one, never so wholly joyous as this. The people at Lady Cora's balls are fearful and snide, and Lady Cora seems to loathe them as much as they loathe her. Regina is the darling of the room at those parties, though, and Zelena's never been allowed to leave the kitchen until the guests are gone.
She doesn't know why Lady Cora had invited her to this one but she clutches Regina's hand anyway, mindful of her friend's unsteadiness as she gapes at the crowd, and Lady Cora says with a snake-sly smile, "Ah, Eva. What a lovely affair. I nearly did think you would never have the opportunity to celebrate a child."
"Well, we don't all marry to hide away our bellies," Lady Eva shoots back, the same smile on her face. She tucks her hand into Lady Cora's. Lady Cora raises it to her lips, gallant and mocking at once, and Zelena doesn't understand either of them. "The bastard has your look about her."
Regina huffs with boredom and tugs Zelena away from her mother and the other lady. "A ball, Zelena!" she says, eyes shining. "I'm so glad Mother said you could come as well!" She's five years old and very precocious, beloved by her estate and her father and however Lady Cora defines love, and Zelena would lay down her life for her best friend.
Today, though, all Regina wants to do is explore this castle, duck into nooks and crannies and side rooms and babble all the way through it. "Do you think there are secret passages?" she wonders. "I shall live in a castle like this someday! Oh, Zelena, look!" The smile has vanished from her face, and Zelena cranes her neck and spots what she's pointing at.
There's a little blonde girl huddled in a corner, her knees bent and her arms around them. She doesn't look much younger than Regina, and she's glaring up at a boy standing over her with ferocious defiance. He looks enough like the girl that Zelena thinks they must be siblings. Twins, maybe. "It's true!" she snarls at him. "I know it's true! Sir Edward said it was so!"
The boy laughs at her. "That's stupid," he says, kicking at her knee.
Regina is in front of them at once, grabbing the boy and pulling him away from the girl, and Zelena watches in consternation as she rounds on him. "That's not nice!" she says, imperious, and the boy laughs at her, too, yanks his arm away, and swaggers off.
"I hate him," the girl says gloomily.
"He's a…" Regina's brow furrows as she struggles to come up with an appropriate word. "Pen-dejjja."
The girl giggles up at her. "Is that a word?"
Regina's face turns pink with pleasure. "It's what cook calls Mother when I'm not supposed to be listening," she informs the girl, and the girl giggles again. "Wanna come find a secret passageway with me?"
"Okay!" The blonde girl jumps up and Zelena takes a step forward, mindful of Regina's tendency to vanish on her. In fact, Regina turns a corner the next moment and she and the girl are racing up the main stairs of the castle together, the girl one step ahead of Regina, and she does a little victory dance at the top of the stairs before Regina bowls her over.
"I won!" the girl protests.
"I won better," Regina retorts, her eyes gleaming with the same energy as Lady Cora gets sometimes. The girl pouts at her and Regina melts a little. "But you won good."
"Yeah!" The girl cheers and they grab each other's hands again, gleeful fast friends, and Zelena heaves a long-suffering sigh and heads after them as they round another corner.
"What do you think this place is?" Regina is wondering when Zelena catches up to them. They're in royal quarters– not the king's quarters, Zelena's relieved to note from the decorations, but a nursery that must be for the tiny reason this ball is happening.
"These are Snow White's quarters," Zelena hisses at them. "You can't just storm in!"
"But no one's here!" Regina protests. "Who's looking after the baby? She shouldn't be alone!"
The other girl bobs her head, taking a step into the room, and Regina is right at her side in an instant. "Look," she says, frowning. "She's fussing."
Zelena takes a grudging step into the room to see. The baby is fussing, whining in a low tone and completely unsupervised, and the girls all step forward to her crib. "What do we do?"
The blonde girl picks up a rattle from the crib, shaking it in front of the baby's face, and the baby's fussing builds up to full-blown tears. "Oh, no," the girl says, stricken.
"It's okay! I can do it," Regina says confidently. She reaches into the crib, rubbing the baby's stomach and singing in a lilting voice, but the baby just cries harder. "Zelena, help," she begs. "Use your magic."
"Magic," the other girl says, awed. "You have magic?"
"Zelena does. Mother says I'm no good at it." Lady Cora had sealed Regina's powers the first time she'd used her own magic on Regina and Regina had blasted her backward. Zelena had watched through the keyhole of her door and Lady Cora had threatened to kill Zelena if she ever told Regina what Lady Cora had done.
Now, though, Zelena can close her eyes and let shiny greenish bubbles sprout from her fingers, filling the room with tiny reflective balls. The baby gurgles interestedly and Regina and the other girl bounce with delight.
"More!" Regina demands, twirling the girl in a circle and seizing Zelena's hand as well. Zelena focuses on making them multicolored, filling the room as the baby makes peaceful noises and the girl and Regina spin around and around and around with her. The room is glowing with light and Zelena releases Regina's hand so she can spin into the blonde girl's arms, trying to dip like they'd seen women do on the ballroom floor.
They land in a giggling pile on the ground, and none of them hear the gasp until all the bubbles pop at once. "Dark magic around the child!" a tinny voice demands in horror. "What are you children doing?"
The blonde girl scurries back as quickly as Regina and Zelena do, no stranger to punishment, either, and Zelena stands above the younger girls while the two of them huddle against the wall. "Who's there?" she demands.
"Cora's daughters," the voice says darkly. "Of course." There's a flash of light before Zelena can correct her– daughter, just daughter, Zelena is only a servant– and then a blue fairy is hovering above the crib, staring down at all of them.
"Lady Cora is not my mother," she says at once, fearful of consequences. "This is my fault, not hers."
"Cora has been lying to you," the fairy says, dismissive, and flutters to the other two girls. "You shouldn't be here."
"We were just looking," the blonde girl whispers. She has a protective arm around Regina, and Regina leans close to her.
"What are you doing here?" the fairy asks, her tiny lip curling. "You're no princess." The girl cowers and shakes her head. "And you–" She rounds on Regina. "You are poison."
"Hey!" The girl says hotly, regaining her courage at the threat to her friend. "You don't talk to her like that!" Regina gives her a toothy smile, already besotted with her. Zelena stares down at them, still processing what the fairy had said to her.
Cora has been lying to you. Cora's daughters. It's impossible– except she does look oddly like Lady Cora, the same eyes and smile and magic– but why wouldn't she–
It can't be.
But fairies always tell the truth, don't they?
Regina could be her sister, and she aches with desire for it to be real.
The baby begins to cry again and the fairy says, "Leave this room. This child is mine." She flutters down to hover just above the baby, distracting tiny Snow White from her lost bubbles, and they all stare at them. "Leave!" the fairy says sharply, and they all exit the room, their eyes glued to the fairy.
Regina is the first to speak. "I don't like her. She's mean." The blonde girl nods her head vigorously. "I bet you are a princess."
"I'm not anyone," the girl mumbles, smoothing down a dress that looks like a hand-me-down of cheap nobility, even more removed from royalty than even Lady Cora's– no, Mother, maybe, if the fairy is right– family is.
Zelena stares back at the crib, watches as the fairy looks up again and their eyes lock.
"You're my friend," Regina says loyally. "Someday Mother says I'll be a queen, and I'll make you a queen too." The girl giggles and Regina presses a smacking kiss on her cheek, and Zelena sees it only out of the corner of her eye, caught in the fairy's gaze.
There's a connection between them, undeniable, and the fairy smiles at her with something that might be disgust, but might be hunger instead, the same brand of it that has Lady Cora cooing over Regina. The same brand of it that the fairy has on her face when she looks down at Snow White. Uncertain, Zelena smiles back.
PART IV
One moment, Emma's riding Rocinante into a purple cloud and cursing Regina's name, the next she's bolting awake with a gasp.
What the hell? She struggles to open her eyes. The air smells…wrong, different, and the bed she's lying on is soft and luxurious in a way that no bed she's been on since leaving Regina's castle had been. Wherever she is, it feels quiet and still, sterile of life in a way that Emma's never experienced before.
Her body feels sluggish, calm and relaxed like it hasn't been in a long, long time. And there's someone in her arms, smooth skin beneath her fingers, and she knows the scent and feel of her intimately.
Now her eyes finally do pop open and a strained sound emerges from her mouth, desperate and terrified as she finally sees where she is. Naked. Wrapped around a sleeping and equally naked Regina. "Oh, my…fuck," she finally spits out, kicking away from her and off the bed.
She's shaking with horror, her heart pounding erratically, and Regina blinks twice blearily and says in a voice husky with sleep, "Emma?" She squints out at Emma as though she isn't quite sure that she's real. "How…?"
"What the fuck did you do to me?" Emma demands, her voice high and shrill. "What have you done? What is this–" She glances around a room she's never seen before, out a window that overlooks a place that doesn't look real, flat rooftops and dirtless grounds and sparse trees. "What have you done?"
"I don't know." Regina's eyes linger on her torso for a moment before looking up at her with shining hope and disbelief and Emma is unsteady under her gaze, furious and helpless and trapped, and her heart is still beating wildly like there's something wrong with it. She feels…different, coldness sliding through her veins like it's stopping the heat of her reaction, and she bolts from the room into a hallway.
"Emma, wait!" She finds a staircase and runs down it, still stark naked, and she twists to the side to find what looks like a kitchen. Good. There's a knife block on the counter and she yanks out a boning knife, flips it in her hand to test its weight, and waits behind a cool, two-doored closet near the entrance of the room. It hums with energy a moment later and she leaps away from it, eyes wide.
"Emma?" Regina's voice sounds plaintive, as though she's already resigned herself to Emma being only an illusion. Emma flattens herself against the cold closet again, hearing barefooted steps against a wooden staircase.
Regina has donned a satin robe, and Emma sees blue fabric on her knee before Regina comes into view. She spins around, slamming Regina into a counter and shoving the tip of the knife into her neck. "If I see even a hint of a flame in your palms I'm going to stick this into you and twist," she snarls.
Regina raises her chin, baring it even more. "I…" Her eyes flicker to an odd armband around her right wrist. "My magic is being blocked," she whispers, her eyes pained.
"Good." Emma's heart gives a dangerous heave and it's still wild and unstable, beating every other beat as Regina's pulse fills in the blanks. "Good, I'm going to kill you," she hisses, jabbing the knife in deeper, and demands the one thought always on her mind. "Where is Henry?"
Tears leak from Regina's eyes, sliding down onto the shiny metal of the knife. "You're really Emma, aren't you?" She's breathing hard, the thin satin of her robe cool against Emma's skin. Like this, standing pressed to each other with only that between them, nipples rough and scraping and Regina's leg between Emma's, Emma doesn't know if she wants to kiss Regina or kill her. "Henry is– The last I remember–" She shakes her head, shivering in the cold of the kitchen.
Emma tightens her grip on her knife and holds onto her determination, her other hand on Regina's thigh. Regina's eyes dilate as she bears still closer, their bodies flush against each other like a simulacrum of lovemaking. "Tell me now, you evil–"
There's a ringing in her ears at once, loud and dangerous and endless like the entire house is shaking with it, and Emma stumbles back, clapping her hands against her ears. "What are you doing to me?" she shouts over the noise. It stops and then begins again, strident and vicious, and Emma ducks, the knife hanging between the backs of her fingers as she shields herself from this new attack.
Regina blinks away the despair from her eyes to roll them at Emma, undisturbed by her panic. As though she hasn't lied and used her magic to incapacitate Emma without a second thought. "It's a telephone," she says, and snatches up a long white rectangle from the counter, pressing buttons on it. The ringing stops immediately. "Hello?"
A tinny voice comes from the other end, loud and frantic but still unmistakably Snow. "Regina," she sobs into the phone. "Regina, what's going on?"
Emma stares in silence, clutching onto her knife like a lifeline. Regina says, "Pan's curse must have succeeded. I can't remember anything after Henry at the town line." Henry! Emma raises her knife with new energy but Regina ignores it.
"No, that isn't what…" Snow takes in a ragged breath. "Something happened in between. Something I can't remember."
"Is that why Emma is in my kitchen trying to kill me?" Regina asks wryly.
"Emma!" Snow's sobs cut off for a moment. "Emma's here?"
"You're on speaker."
"Yeah," Emma says grudgingly, eyes flickering from the…telephone to Regina. "I'm here." It does sound like Snow, even if Regina doesn't sound much like Regina around Snow. Still, though, she's seen Neverland in the Dark One's crystal ball and the two of them not quite despising each other, so maybe–
"Emma, stop trying to kill Regina," Snow says reprovingly.
"You have no idea what she's done to– where am I?" Emma demands, hopelessly lost.
"Storybrooke, Maine," Regina says softly.
Snow says from the other end of the telephone, "I'm coming right over." There's a click and Regina replaces the white rectangle into its seat.
"Storybrooke, Maine," Emma repeats, setting the knife down with reluctance.
"This is where my first curse took us," Regina says calmly. "I raised Henry in this house. Most recently that I can remember, Peter Pan attempted to curse us to destroy this whole town. I was able to cast a counter-curse, but it was supposed to take us back to the Enchanted Forest." She casts a calculating eye on Emma. "Which it's possible it did. What's the last thing you remember?"
Emma says instead, "Henry?"
Regina looks pained again. "We sent him over the town line so he'd be spared the curse. It was the price for casting the counter-curse. I had to say goodbye to the one I love most."
"Did you–"
Regina cuts her off, looking horrified before Emma can even get the question out. "No, I didn't hurt him. Of course I didn't–" She takes a deep breath. "Let's get you clothes, shall we? I don't think Snow needs to know the details of how we woke up here."
She scratches unconsciously at the wristband she still wears, and Emma eyes it with misgiving. "What is that?"
"It's…it's been used on me before. It suppresses my magic. I have no idea how it got on me today."
"So you were being held captive before this curse." Emma's eyes narrow. "This mysterious curse that only you have ever cast before. And someone viewed you as a threat."
Regina heaves a sigh, leading the way upstairs. "I didn't cast the curse, Emma. I have no memories–"
"Maybe you didn't want to remember. Maybe you had a rough year." Her own heart thumps wildly in response, half-finished beats that don't quite finish. Something is wrong with her heart and Regina would have needed a heart to complete the curse. It's all adding up to make horrifying sense. "And I woke up naked in your bed."
Regina pauses in front of her dresser, twisting to stare at her. "What are you implying?" she says in a low tone, aghast. "You think I…cast a curse to rape you?" She takes a step back from Emma and Emma takes a step back from her, yanking open a drawer and suddenly desperate to find clothing.
Inside the drawer are folded shirts, neatly organized and a good fit for Emma, and she doesn't understand why Regina looks just as horrified at her clothing as she does Emma's suggestion. "What is it?"
Regina yanks open the next drawer, and then the next, and then she crosses the room to fling open closet doors and stare at the interior. One side is all dresses, dark and dull and simple in comparison to what she'd worn as the Evil Queen, and the other– Now even Emma understands.
The other is different, tight jackets made of soft leather, and Emma tries one on over her shirt and is equally stricken when it's a perfect fit. "These aren't your clothes," she says dully.
"Half of all of it is," Regina whispers, meeting her eyes. Emma's caught within them as they burn with confusion and fear and guilt, and she takes a step back, struggling to tamp down her fury as Regina speaks. "I didn't– I wouldn't have done this to you, Emma."
"Wouldn't have cast a curse for me to be…what? Your wife?" Emma chokes on the word, snarls it out louder, and Regina shakes her head wildly. "You're a fucking piece of work."
She snatches a pair of long, dark blue pants, staring at the underwear proffered in another drawer for a moment. Regina closes her eyes and turns, her fists clenched, and she walks into a room that Emma hadn't seen before and slams the door shut, locking it. A moment later, Emma can hear the sound of water rushing in the room.
She finds another room like it down the hall and figures out how to make hot water pour from a spout above her, scalding her skin until she can't feel the sensation of Regina's skin against hers anymore.
She bathes in a hurry, fearful of Regina emerging before she does, and she dresses quickly and searches the rooms upstairs for any other clues. Instead, she finds an empty room with a plaid bedcover and too many clocks, and with a photo on the nightstand of the boy from Neverland wrapped in Regina's arms. She inhales sharply, stretching out onto the bed and staring at the photo, and only when she hears the water stop in Regina's– their, oh god– room does she stand up again and make her way down the stairs.
She sees the intruder's back first, short hair and protruding belly and her hands clasped behind her, and she clears her throat. "Uh."
Snow turns, her eyes dark and terrified, and Emma manages to hold her before she bursts into tears. "Emma," she whispers. "Oh, Emma."
"Snow." Emma shuts her eyes and inhales the unfamiliar scent of Snow in this world, feeling her shaking against her.
"The last thing I remember was saying goodbye to David at the town line," Snow sobs against her. "I don't know how…how long it was…"
She's pregnant, Emma realizes a moment too late, and she feels a surge of compassion for her. Waking up naked in Regina's bed had been violation enough; but waking up what looks like nine months pregnant with her husband in a different realm? "It must have been before," she whispers, patting Snow's back as soothingly as she can manage. "We'll figure it out. Whatever Regina did–"
"Regina?" Snow shakes her head, brow furrowing. "You think Regina cast this curse?"
"Who else?"
"Regina's different now," Snow says, sounding very uncertain about it. "She wouldn't have cast a curse again. Even if Henry is in this realm and…"
"She's wearing a cuff on her wrist," Emma says. "She says it stops her from using magic. And…" She hesitates, unsure of how to explain whatever it is that's making her heart beat wrong. "I think she might have used my heart to cast it."
Snow stares at her uncomprehendingly. "But you're right here."
"It's…" Emma presses a hand to her heart. Her heartbeat is irregular, harsh and then soft and then harsh again, and she shivers. "I don't know. It hurts. Maybe it was your pregnancy that was the last straw of whatever alliance you had before this. She says she doesn't remember anything, but I'm sure she's lying."
"I'm not," Regina says irritably from the top of the stairs. She's emerged from the shower wet-haired and clad in a tight, short dress, two empty vials in her hands. "As convenient as it is to paint me as the villain of every piece, I didn't cast this curse."
A flicker of doubt flashes across Snow's face, and she asks reasonably, "But if you don't remember, how can you know that?"
"She needs to be locked up until we figure this out," Emma says, glaring up at Regina with more distrust. She doesn't know how she feels about her, about any of this– had they slept together in another realm? She'd awakened with her body loose and sated but she has no idea if that had been a curse or something more– Regina wouldn't. Would she?
She has no idea what Regina is capable of anymore. "That cuff isn't enough."
"I can't even get it off without cutting off my hand," Regina snaps. The frustration is acute on her face, and she's beginning to look just as trapped as Emma had felt earlier. Which…good. "I'm just as clueless as you." She laughs, a choked little laugh that sounds a bit too close to a sob. "I've been dreaming of seeing you again for a long time, Emma. I didn't expect it to be like this."
"In my dreams, I dug the knife a little deeper," Emma fires back, fierce and unmoved by the despair in Regina's eyes. Regina, who'd fucking stolen away her son for seven years and dreams of…what? Love? She deserves none of that anymore. She doesn't deserve anything but a death sentence. "Now, where the hell is my son?"
"Gone," Snow says, putting a cautioning hand on her wrist. "David with him. We sent him away to protect him."
Emma twists around, betrayed at Snow's apparent compliance with Regina's horseshit. "And you've been waiting nine years to do that, haven't you?" she demands, watching the hurt cross Snow's face at her attack. "You think nothing of taking children from their mothers and–"
"Well, you're the one who did it in the end, aren't you?" Regina says sharply. "You can't blame her for putting Henry in that wardrobe."
"I didn't put Henry in the wardrobe! You did!" Emma accuses, twisting back to her. "You stole him from me for nearly a decade! And yet somehow I didn't play god with an entire kingdom over it. Twice!"
Regina shifts the vials to one hand and strides down the stairs, placing a hand against Emma's chest before she can recoil. "I don't know if I can take it out with this cuff on. It suppresses my magic, but the magic of the heart itself can be channeled if done properly." She shrugs helplessly. "You aren't the only one whose heart feels…unmatched. I can try to see what's wrong with it."
"No!" Emma says, outraged. "Absolutely not! You think I would ever, ever let you touch my heart again?" She remembers the last time, sobbing against a young Regina and nausea and the end of whatever good they'd ever been able to build together.
Or is it even the last time? She imagines for a moment being trapped in Regina's castle, chained up in her bed, oh god, naked and helpless, and Regina with empty eyes digging her hand into Emma's chest. Taking her heart, replacing it with some cheap facsimile–
She's backing up before she can think about it, turning around as Snow says her name and Regina sucks in a ragged breath, and she sees only the door to outside in front of her and the doorknob that can free her from this nightmare. She has to get out, get away from Regina and whatever new horrors she's wrought, and she closes her hand around the doorknob and yanks it open.
A boy stands in front of her, his fist out as though he'd been about to knock. He blinks up at her and she blinks down at him, stunned.
She's only ever seen him like this once before, in a crystal ball, tracing out the letters of his name into the Neverland ground. She's longed for him for every waking moment since the curse- the first curse– had been broken, and now he's standing before her, craning his neck to look curiously into the house behind her and then up at her. "Are you Regina Mills?" he guesses.
She shakes her head faintly. There's a cry from behind her, Snow calling another name, and then the sound of two glass vials shattering onto the floor. "I'm…Emma."
"Emma Swan." He says, bobbing his head in sudden comprehension. "I'm Henry Swan-Mills. I'm your son."