Chapter IX: I Want You Right Next to Me
A/N: This chapter had gone through about six or seven major re-edits since I first finished it this weekend. My poor, patient beta killer-elephants has had to endure repeated e-mails questioning it, the poor dear. But I think I'm finally happy with it, and I do hope you enjoy it, gentle readers. If you do, kindly leave a note!
~M
"Sorry, Moms," Henry just smiled at them- a huge, brilliant grin, and poured his sanguine snack out into the glass before taking a large drink from it. The glass was completely drained a few seconds later. Apparently he'd been very hungry indeed.
Regina reeled slightly at the title that had just fallen from her son's mouth, brow furrowing as she shared a glance with Emma. She wasn't entirely sure how she felt about them both being referred to as his 'moms,' no matter how true it might be.
The Hunter just shook her head and smiled, the relief that their son was actually perfectly fine still not having quite overcome the shot of adrenaline coursing through her veins.
The sound of that, however- Emma's blood pumping so deliciously near- was less of a relief for Regina. It was actually quite... distracting. So much so that it took her a long moment to realize that something was wrong. Very wrong. Her eyes widened as a very distinct smell hit her nose just as Henry began to sway on his feet.
"...I don't feel so good," he moaned. His legs buckled dangerously, the glass fell from fingers suddenly paler than normal, shattering to the floor, the remaining blood splashing in jarring relief against the white of the floor. He watched its progress as if in slow motion, his head tilting down low on his neck. "...Sorry, Moms," he slurred.
Emma watched as his legs gave out, their son promptly collapsing in a sudden folding of muscles. "Henry!"
A blur of motion and he lay cradled in Regina's arms, the Queen frantically calling his name, opening his eyes with her fingers, shaking him. He moaned faintly, eyelids fluttering open briefly before falling shut.
Emma was instantly at the Queen's side, taking a shard of the broken glass and dipping her finger in to inspect its contents. The blood shimmered slightly, the viscosity too thin for normal blood, even warm. Her eyes widened; she knew what this was, she'd used it herself once or twice. "Silver nitrate."
"What?!" Regina shouted, staring at the blood and then back to their son. Her fangs were extended, eyes going wild and furious. "Someone," she hissed, "has poisoned our son?!"
…
Emma raced through the pounding rain, barely taking note of her surroundings as she Hunted. Not for the first time, she cursed her wisdom in forcing a confrontation here, of all places. The abandoned warehouses provided about a million places for her quarry to hide, stacked crates and piles of dilapidated machinery between looming warehouses. And the rain coupled with the darkness made her usual marksmanship sub-par at best. And this particular vamp had proved particularly evasive; she was out of ammo and left with only one option, one that she did not normally prefer to use. The falling rain glimmered eerily in the time just before dawn. It would have be soon, then; her vamp was running out of time.
She was aware of these things only in the periphery of her mind. Everything else was focused completely on the chase, her senses long-since honed to detect any hints of motion in her immediate vicinity, even in the dark. She scanned the front of the nearest building, taking in the porch just above the entrance, its roof low enough to scale. Ambush planned, she tucked her one remaining weapon into the empty holster of her hip and clambered up. And waited. There; a faint blur of motion. He was coming closer, finally. She held her breath and kept her head down for the count of fifteen, knowing that he would be listening for her, assessing the surrounding area for hiding places. There was no further time to think. She rose up on all fours, then lifted to a crouch. Her feet slid a bit on the rain-slicked roof, but even that was not enough to rob her of her prey. Without second thought, she launched herself from the edge of the porch roof, landing squarely on the vamp's back.
They tumbled forward, the vamp falling to his knees, Emma wrapping her arm around his neck to support herself whilst reaching for her reaming weapon. Then they were flat on the wet ground, her body lying atop his and the syringe bearing her silver nitrate compound was jammed forcibly into the bend of his neck. It was over, though he didn't yet know it. Now, all she had to do was watch.
…
In the kitchen, Emma didn't bother to waste the time to answer the obvious question of the mayor, rushing to the blood warmer. "I've seen this before," she explained quickly. "He'll need more blood. Immediately." Henry was shaking, a pink froth foaming around his lips as trails of red began to slowly leak from his tear ducts. Regina whimpered at seeing it, feverishly trying to staunch the flow.
"Don't!" Emma ordered, glancing over her shoulder. "It's his way of expelling the poison! He has to flush it out of his system." She opened the warmer and stopped dead in her tracks, staring at the contents. With a frenzied sort of energy, she pulled the bags of blood out and dumped them onto the floor, holding each one to the light and cursing loudly when without fail each one of them shimmered. "...They're all poisoned." With wide eyes, she turned back to her son, his little body wracked with spasms as he coughed, more of the pink froth burbling around his lips.
Howling in fury, the dark eyes of the Queen were practically glowing now, her whole body tensing as she held their son. "Emma! Stay with him!" she ordered, hating herself for having to hand off her son like this but knowing the blonde was nowhere near fast enough for what she needed to do. "I'll go to the hospital and-"
Emma shook her head. "Regina, trust me, there isn't time!" She ran to her son and his mother, her mind whirling as it worked through her memories, bringing all she knew about silver poisoning to the forefront. "For it to have worked this quickly... Regina, this is a lethal dose. He needs blood now." Her own eyes widened as she realized what she was saying, and she looked down at their son, still in his adopted mother's arms. Groggily, he blinked up at her, his spasms growing more severe with each passing second. As she saw it, there was only one option. Emma brushed away the froth from Henry's lips, opening his mouth. She closed her eyes, and then pressed her wrist to the tips of his fangs.
Screaming at her, Regina grabbed the wrist, trying to force away from Henry's mouth. When Emma refused to budge, the Queen slapped her across the face. "What the hell are you doing?!"
Hissing at the sudden pain, Emma glared at the older woman, a trickle of blood falling from a newly-split lip. But she did not move, only snarling when Henry didn't either, his eyes closing from the effort it took to keep them open. "He's not drinking!"
"Of course not, he doesn't even know how!" The Queen was pushing at her shoulders, pounding on the blonde with her fists, but her strength seemed to have left her. As if she was forgetting she was the stronger of the two, forgetting she had magic. The power, normally so effortless for the Queen to summon, seemed to be just out of her reach with every passing second of seeing her son convulsing on the floor under Emma's arm.
Emma endured the punches without retaliation, though a furious growl ripped its way out her throat. "You're going to have to teach him! Right now, Regina!" She was greatly considering backhanding the woman back. The Queen hesitated, and Emma snarled at her, "He's dying!"
Red lips dropped into a perfect 'o' at the realization. Tears were spilling down from the brunette's face, twisted in agony. She looked at her son, his convulsions only growing worse, black vein lines coming up to the surface of his skin like a thousand devouring snakes. The poison was destroying him from the inside out. Sobbing, she pulled Henry into her lap, finally jerking him away from the offered wrist and pulling him so his back was to her chest. "Get a knife!" she spat at the blonde, and rocked him in her arms. Her lips came to hover beside his ear, her fingers tucking his hair back into place behind it. She took a split second to collect herself, and then spoke. "Henry," she said evenly, her voice a deadly calm. Commanding. The voice of a Queen. "I need you to listen to me very, very carefully." His shaking quieted a little, as if comforted just by the power in that voice.
After all, Emma realized as she scrambled towards the knife block on the counter, even a dying vampire must obey his Queen. Wordless, she handed the knife to Regina, who took it and gestured for Emma to kneel, facing them. She did.
"Henry, open your eyes." The shimmering, tainted blood was still leaking out of them, but they opened all the same. "Henry," Regina continued and, had the situation not been quite so dire, Emma would have wondered if repeating his name was part of the process. Holding the knife loosely in one hand, the other reached for Emma's wrist. So fast that Emma didn't even have time to scream, she sliced it open in a single fluid motion. Deeply, tantalizingly open. Regina couldn't contain the flare of her nostrils as the sweet scent of Emma's blood reached her. So close... so tempting... but not for her. "You're going to drink from Miss Swan," Regina told her son in that same even, collected voice. "Now."
This part, at least, was instinctual. Jerking forward almost automatically, Henry latched on to either side of the bleeding wound with both hands, bringing the wrist to his mouth and gulping down the life-sustaining blood. It warmed his throat as it went down, sweet and glorious- better than anything he'd ever tasted. Even orange juice.
Emma gasped at the pain of his fangs suddenly digging into her skin, tears blooming into existence down her cheeks. It was her turn to convulse, further memories shooting through her system as if they'd been injected. Her body quivered in all-too-remembered fear. It was her nightmares all over again, but a hundred times worse. She could see the glow of the neon, feel the chill of the night air in Boston. She tried to fight the sensations off, to tell herself that it was her son biting her this time, that she was doing this willingly. But her mind didn't seem to comply, bringing instead an image of grey-gold, glittering skin and a high pitched giggle.
But then the laugh was suddenly chased away; a soft, soothing voice taking its place. Warm eyes the color of honey and chocolate taking over the horrors. "Gently," Emma could hear Regina admonish their son. The pain significantly lessened and then faded entirely. There was a cool touch on Emma's brow, a command to calm down and relax more felt in her mind than heard. Emma's eyes opened to stare directly into the dark pools of the Queen's. They seemed to welcome her into them, beckoning. She almost felt she could lose herself in them, and for the first time, could think of no reason not to. So she did.
Regina's voice continued throughout, a soft hush in the ears of her son and his birth-mother. "It is a gift she is giving you, dear," she instructed Henry. "Repay it in kind and do not abuse it." The knife was long gone, now, the fingers of one hand threading through Henry's hair while the other slid in light caresses over Emma's face. The blonde leaned into the touch, a quiet moan escaping her lips.
"We do not drink to take life away, Henry," Regina murmured. "We share it. Death is never our goal, and never an option. That is what makes us what we are."
Emma could feel her tension melting away as Regina spoke, each word bringing Henry's touch to her wrist a little less rough, a little more giving. "Draw her life into yourself, Henry. Take it, but give, also. Reach inside her blood and listen to it. Find what it is that she needs, and give the best parts of yourself to her. Joy, dreams, happiness."
With every passing word of the Queen, Emma felt her mind float further and further from the images of pain and suffering, the last vestiges of her memories leaving her as Henry drank, replaced by thoughts of happier times. Laughing with her son, playing games with him in the early hours of the evening. Chatting with Ruby and the girls about their days while the buzz of alcohol burned pleasantly in their veins.
"Good," Regina was saying. Dark eyes were moving intently back and forth between her son and his birth-mother. A small, gulping sound of relief escaped her lips as the dark veins receded away from her son's face. The shiny, bloody mess of poison dripped down his face to pool on the floor, each drop making her breathe easier. Henry wasn't shuddering at all anymore. "Continue to listen to her blood, dear. Pay close attention to how her heart beats within it, how it slows with her pulse. You must always be mindful of it; you certainly don't want her pulse to slow too rapidly. When you have taken what you need and given back in kind, then pull away. Never allow what you want to be more important than what she needs."
A final suckling drag of a tongue against Emma's skin, and then the fangs were gone from her wrist. It didn't hurt. A dull warmth seemed to glow up from it, spiraling through her whole body. Emma gasped at the feeling, a low moan escaping from her, the kind she ordinarily would have striven to keep from the ears of her son. Her whole world blurred in a delirious, wonderful haze of joy. As if joy was a blanket and Henry had wrapped her in it. When she had the presence of mind to look down at her wrist, there was only the faint impression of two small holes. The slash from the knife was gone. With the slow wonder of a child, Emma reached her other hand for the wound, running the tips of her fingers over it, her mouth dropping open. She was floating. Her skin tingled when she touched it, a delighted shiver rolling up her spine. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her face, smell the clean air of a summer night rushing though her hair. She smiled; a bright, beaming happiness coursed through her body. And she sighed, glossy eyes finally looking up at her son and his other mother. "Whoa..." Her voice sounded low and relaxed, foreign to her ears.
Regina was still rocking the boy in her arms, a matching doe-eyed look on his face as he sunk happily into his mother's embrace. His color had returned, a bit, the flow of contaminated blood finally falling to a dripping stop from his eyes. His Queen waved a hand until a wet washcloth drifted into her hand, wiping his face of the mess. Nothing more came, and Regina allowed herself a sigh of relief. She pressed a kiss to his temple, "Very good, Henry. I'm so proud of you."
"Thanks, Mom," he murmured, and turned to bury his face in the comfort of her arms, completely relaxed and bonelessly content.
The same feeling was pulsing through the former Hunter, a soft, lethargic sigh falling from her lips. She blinked with slow precision when Regina shook her shoulder with a caring-sounding, "Miss Swan?"
Her center of balance was off and Emma collapsed a bit, falling back to rest on her elbows. She didn't seem to notice or care, resting comfortably on the mess of the kitchen floor and gazing up almost adoringly at the brunette. Her vision was fuzzed, the overhead light giving Regina an ethereal glow. She looked heavenly. "Hey, beautiful," Emma murmured.
Regina shook her head, trying to decide if she was amused or irritated, but decided she was more leaning towards the first. "Can you stand?" She slid her arms around her son more securely, lifting Henry easily into her arms and leaving him to curl his arms around her neck like a sloth. "Take a few deep breaths if you need to," she offered.
Emma thought about it, as if taking stock to see if she did, in fact, still possess feet. Slowly following the advice, she leaned to one side and then pushed herself up onto the rediscovered body parts in question. Once there, she faltered a little, head spinning, but she continued to remember to breathe. The euphoria cleared a little, the warm bubble that had surrounded her fading into a dull haze. "Whoa," she said again, and shook her head in an attempt to clear it. "...What the hell..?"
Regina was quirking an eyebrow at her, a smirk tugging at the edges of her lips. "I told you, dear: Intimate."
…
They (mostly Regina) got Henry back into his bed easily enough. He seemed ready to sleep the entire night away, which seemed to just be a natural side-effect of Henry's body. The same thing had happened previously during his overexposure to the sun. Both Regina and Emma (when she could finally think more clearly) told themselves this and may have even believed it, yet neither woman felt comfortable leaving his side as he slept. They lay on opposite sides of him on his tiny double bed, uncomfortable at the closeness but neither wanting to move away.
They didn't talk about what had happened in the kitchen. Regina had just waved her hand as they'd left, the bloody evidence of what had happened faded away into nothingness, the kitchen gleaming and spotless once more.
They didn't speak much at all, really. For Emma, this was probably a blessing. Her current state of mind likely wouldn't have allowed for much coherent thought. While the almost drug-like high had faded in the long minutes since her being bitten, the foggy, languid feeling of Emma's mind remained. The world seemed sharper, somehow. More crisp around the edges, and she was finding it very hard to concentrate on anything at all. Even when she tried to force the feeling to go away so she could think about something really important like why the hell someone would want to poison her son.
Just after sundown, Regina had to leave the room to make a series of extended phone calls to her office and to Sidney. And then to Granny and again to Graham, informing everyone of the situation and receiving an update on the town and its final cleanup. No one had found any evidence of rogues anywhere near the vicinity of Regina's home, so how anyone had gotten in and managed to taint her blood supply was a completely baffling mystery.
The rest of the cleanup had, apparently, gone well. As far as anyone had noticed, there had been no other attempted poisonings. Regina demanded that Sidney arrange personal calls to each vampire and werewolf in town, just to be sure, to which he immediately agreed. She told Granny to expect a meeting the following evening to discuss the attack on the town and subsequent poisoning in great detail. For tonight, she told the Alpha, she would be staying with her son. Granny understood.
When Regina had finally returned to take her place on Henry's other side, she didn't say much to Emma. Together, they just watched Henry, every twitch of his sleeping form causing a rising panic in both women. It only got worse with their own building fatigue, neither woman having gotten nearly enough sleep the day before. And Emma, of course, now significantly drained of her own energy.
Finally, they decided without words to let Henry sleep and attempt some of their own. Emma didn't want to go all the way downstairs, far away from their son, so she followed Regina back down the hall to the older woman's bedroom. Where this had all began, Emma thought to herself, amused. The doors to both Henry's and Regina's room stayed open, just in case. Emma curled up on the chaise lounge, silently accepting the blanket and pillow Regina had the courtesy to offer before slipping beneath the sheets of her own bed. Queen sized, of course.
Curling on her side, Emma idly ran her fingers over the two small marks left on the skin of her wrist. They'd faded, but the skin there was still sensitive to the point that even the light touch sent tremors racing over her spine. She sighed, feeling the last glimmers of that strange drug-like feeling finally beginning to uncloud her mind. "...We have to assume whoever tainted your blood supply is also responsible for the attack on the town," She murmured into the darkness of the room.
From her bed, Regina gave a small groan, as if Emma had actually interrupted her attempts to sleep. But her voice was completely awake when she answered, "That stands to reason. It may well be why the attack was staged in the first place."
They fell into silence again. Emma shifted on the chaise, rolling over on her stomach. After a few minutes passed, she turned back onto her side. And then her stomach. And then side again. Finally, with a frustrated noise of discomfort, she sat up and looked over at the mayor. "Why the hell would anyone want to poison our kid?"
The frustrated noise was echoed by the brunette, who rolled over to glare at the noisy blonde. "The poison wasn't meant for Henry," Regina growled, as if it were obvious.
"...Of course. It was meant for you." Emma whispered, eyes widening, visible even in the dark of the room. "Someone is trying to kill you."
Regina sat up in her bed, running a hand through her hair. She'd had a long while to think about this, while they'd been silent and Emma had worked her way through the after-effects of the bite. Since the blonde now seemed intent on not allowing her to sleep, the mayor decided that at least she could now say her thoughts aloud. "If we assume that the ultimate goal of all this was to poison me, then the attack on this town was only a means to that end. Everything else that happened- the deaths, the slaying of their rouges- it was all collateral damage. A risk that someone had assessed during planning and deemed acceptable. But what concerns me most is that whoever did this knew exactly how I would react, Miss Swan. If it is another Queen... then that Queen knew enough about me to know I'd overextend my magic repelling the rogues outside the walls. They knew I'd eventually waste too much energy and desperately need blood. So they tainted my blood supply."
Nodding, Emma considered this. Her mind cycled back to the previous evening, when Regina had lain helpless and depleted in her arms. She licked suddenly dry lips, remembering. "...But Sidney gave you blood from his supply. Not yours."
"Exactly," Regina said with a sigh that ended in a growl. "They couldn't have expected that; they'd just assume I would drink from my own. And I have to wonder if they know that supply is shared; if they know about Henry at all. If they do, then the fact that he would quite probably also drink the poisoned blood had to have also been assessed. Which means that they didn't care if they killed our son, Miss Swan."
It was Emma's turn to growl, baring her teeth at the thought. She bit her lip hard enough so that its earlier split reopened, a faint red trickle beading at the corner of her mouth.
From across the room, she heard Regina give a deep inhalation, expelling it in a slow moan of what could almost be called arousal. "Don't do that..." she groaned.
Emma's head snapped up, refocusing on the mayor with confusion in her eyes before she realized what exactly Regina was smelling. Her hand flew to her lip, stanching the blood and darting her tongue out to quell the scent of it.
Regina was trembling, her fists white-knuckled and buried in her sheets. Even in the dark of the room, Emma could see her eyes. Any sort of comfort they had offered her in the kitchen had fled, the irises gone completely black and seeming to suck what little light was available into their depths. Regina spoke quietly, listing things off in a dry tone as if going through something as benign as her daily planner. "I haven't yet fed, Miss Swan. My supply is destroyed. I just had to coach my son through drinking from the source for the first time in his life. And I suddenly find myself very, ...very hungry."