DISCLAIMER:: do not own. just borrowing for purpose of creative expression. no profit obtained.
A/N:: this chapter starts flashbacks. they will be a common occurance in the fairytale land chapters, since there's so much life that we missed. thank you for the continued support and i hope this story continues to deliver. next update will be posted sometime tomorrow. until then, enjoy.
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-Chapter 14: There Are Precious Few At Ease With Moral Ambiguities-
When Emma opened her eyes the first thing she saw was the woman curled up on the sleeping roll next to her, her head resting on Emma's chest. Emma smiled to herself. It wasn't the first time she had woken up next to the brunette, but it felt different today. They were free.
It was just after sunrise; she could tell by the position of the sun. They would need to leave soon if they were to have any hope of maintaining their lead. The guards would be setting out from wherever they had made camp soon, if they hadn't already.
"We can let her sleep a few more minutes. We'll be fine."
She glanced over to where her father was resting, his back against a tree and his sword across his lap. She looked back to the woman sleeping beside her, her hand coming up to run her fingers through the long dark locks.
"She was up over half the night, afraid to go to sleep when there's people out there hunting you."
Emma smiled. "I'd feel the same way if it were her they were after." She bit her lip. "I would have stayed up… if I could have." She shook her head sadly. "Is it futile to run? What if we get into a situation where we need to continue riding through the night?"
"Then we'll put you on the horse in front of Regina." He looked at her intensely. "We'll make this work. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure you get your happy ending Emma. I wasn't there to stop you marrying that despicable man, but I'm here for you now."
The brunette stirred against her and Emma's fingers stroking through her hair halted their movements. Regina lifted her head and gave Emma a lazy smile. "Morning."
Emma placed a kiss on her forehead. "Morning."
Regina hummed in contentment at the kiss, before slowly turning to regard James. "Charming." She sat up and stretched, giving a small yawn. She hadn't got more than a couple hours rest at most and she knew James wasn't likely to have slept any. They'd have to break themselves of the habit and establish a watch schedule for nights that they spent outside. They couldn't continually function on these long days when they weren't getting adequate rest. They needed to be at full strength to protect Emma.
Emma sat up too, her hand seeking out the brunette's instinctually. She was amazed at how she didn't even have to think about the contact here, it was merely second nature.
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They had avoided the central road out of sheer necessity for the better half of the morning, choosing instead to run parallel to it about a league into the trees. It made the journey slower and more cumbersome but it kept them away from the prying eyes of travelers and the pursuit of the guards.
"Are you feeling alright?"
Emma snapped out of her own private musings and glanced over at the brunette riding beside her. James had rode ahead to scout. She offered up a small smile. "I am fine. I was merely thinking of an old friend of mine."
"What friend might that be?"
Emma smiled fondly to herself. "Pinocchio."
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Lake Berryetta spread out before them, a rolling expanse of crystalline water. The other shore was so distant they could make out nothing but the largest trees that dotted the shoreline.
Emma dismounted from her horse and gaped at the sight of it. "How'd you find it?" She glanced over her shoulder at Pinocchio.
"It was shown to me by the Blue Fairy. You know she's a friend of my father's."
"Oh her." Emma all of a sudden looked rather reluctant to be here. It was no secret that she wasn't the biggest fan of the fairies. They were pompous and prissy, with a superiority complex and a bad sense of style.
"She's really nice if you'd just give her a chance." Pinocchio slid off his mount and looped the reins around a low hanging branch. "They are sources of good magic you know."
Emma shrugged. "They also have annoyingly high voices and they get glitter everywhere."
"Are you ever going to tell me why you despise them so much?" He raised an eyebrow as he came to stand beside her.
Emma closed her eyes and shook her head. "They broke a promise to me once."
They were quiet for several long minutes. He didn't push; he never did. Maybe that was why the Princess liked spending so much time with him. There were others closer to her age, sure. Alexandra was less than a year older for one, and the children of the other royals were only a couple years difference give or take. No one quite understood why she was content to hang out with a peasant boy nearly seven years her senior. But they gave her quaint smiles and polite nods even when she was brash and impolite herself. They were fake and they put up a mask every time they were in the company of others. Pinocchio told it to her straight and he deserved respect for that. But he also knew the loss of her mother was a sensitive subject. He knew when to be quiet and not ask intrusive questions. He was blunt but he often exercised discretion. She'd take that over the fake smiles and nauseating protocol any day.
Pinocchio reached out and smoothed a hand down her hair. She shivered easily at the contact. His hand lingered for a moment longer than was proper, crossing the line from friendship into the unknown as easily as if it had never been there.
She glance over at him, her face vulnerable and open. There was no denying he was a good looking man. Twenty one and quite strapping for someone in the beginning years of young adulthood. She could easily see why not only the servant girls, but also her Ladies, swooned over him so.
The silence stretched between them, both waiting for the other to say something, to make a move. His hand was still tangled in her hair and she didn't object when he tightened it and drew their faces together. Their lips met.
There were no fireworks, for which the Princess was slightly disappointed. But she had never expected any so her disappointment was not great. She wanted to be in love with Pinocchio. She wanted her promised fairytale romance. She was the golden child, the chosen saviour, the pure product of true love, untainted in the innocence of her heart. She deserved a happy ending. But she wasn't in love with Pinocchio. She did love him, and if he were royalty, that would be enough for her to take him as her husband. He'd rule the kingdom fairly by her side. She knew he longed for just that. She saw it in his eyes every time he looked at her, his lust for her beauty and his desire for her spirit, but the lines between peasant and royal were so bold and imposing. Her kingdom was already weak; she couldn't risk it. And it was that knowledge that made her pull from the embrace. She bit her bottom lip and tilted her head to the side. "You know this can never go beyond this day." She glanced out at the beautiful lake. "It can never go beyond this place."
He nodded sadly.
She met his sad eyed gaze and began to undo the laces of her dress.
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Emma let the memory recede back into her consciousness. She didn't want to think about her first time, did not want to remember Pinocchio inside her. She didn't want to remember the moment when she'd thought, for the briefest of seconds, that if she just tried a little harder, maybe she could fall in love with him.
"You look sad."
Emma's eyes slid to the brunette beside her. "Just wishing I had met you sooner, before I got married."
Regina nodded. "Would it really have made much difference? My deeds would have been fresher still. No one would have agreed to bless our union. I would have been killed, you would have been purified and still made to find a husband."
Emma sighed. It was a hard truth to face, but it was the truth nonetheless. If they found her to have been bedded by the Evil Queen of old, they would publicly execute Regina for the treasonous deeds of her past as well as for violating the Queen. And Emma would be subjected to the purification ritual, to cleanse her of the hold Regina had on her mind and her body. It was a painful process, one she'd been through once before and never wanted to ever repeat. "It shouldn't be this hard."
Regina smirked. "Such is the way of this world. There is good, and there is evil. We fall on different sides of what has always been a blurry line. But the good side will continue to insist the line's there until they draw their dying breath."
"Because to admit that it's not there, is to admit that everyone is capable of both, given the right circumstances."
Regina nodded. "You see much more of the world than your people give you credit for."
"I have seen much of evil, in this world, and in the next, and it's face is ever changing. Evil lies dormant in all of us, waiting to be triggered. My people would see you killed, and they would name it justice. But for you to see anyone of them killed, they'd name it revenge and condemn you further for it. Who makes up the definitions of one and the other? Who decides?" Her face scrunched in anger. "I'd like to meet this individual who decides that which is moral and that which is not. Because I just don't see the difference so clearly."
"This world could do with a few more who have eyes such as yours my Queen."
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James came through the trees just ahead of them. "It's there, just as you said Regina."
Regina smirked. "Excellent. We shall wrap around through the forest and approach from the west, the better to evade our captors and so as not to startle our unsuspecting host."
They spent the next hour angling west and then turning back east once they had put enough distance between them and the trail they'd been following for the better part of the day.
As they neared the cabin, Regina glanced over at Emma. "This may require… a different side of me to come out, a side you have not seen before. I do not wish to alarm you, but certain pretenses must be followed if we are to gain the aid of my old subjects. You do understand?"
Emma nodded slowly. She had a feeling she was about to see flashes of the Evil Queen, of the part of Regina that existed in Storybrooke. It wasn't a part of her that she particularly favoured, but she loved all of Regina, not just the innocent part.
They were met by a woman and man who looked to be about ten years older than Emma when they finally broke through the tree line. The man was tall with shaggy brown hair and light hazel eyes. His wife, for that's what Emma assumed she was, had platinum blonde hair and light blue eyes.
"What business brings you to our home travelers?" It was the man who spoke.
Regina held a hand up to halt James and Emma's progress and rode forward. She dismounted. Her posture had straightened to almost a board-like rigidity and there was a commanding air about her. It left little doubt in Emma's mind that she was once again in the presence of the Evil Queen. "We arrive at the front of the Royal Army. We will have shelter here."
The man shook his head. "My wife and I want no business with fugitives. Please, ride on."
As if yanked by an invisible force, he flew sideways, landing ungracefully but also unharmed in a bush. That same thread of invisible magic dragged his wife forward, her reluctance to move evident from her feet dragging across the ground. She looked frightened, but in an intrigued way. The expression baffled Emma.
"You remember me, don't you?" The Evil Queen caressed the woman's cheek, almost as one would a child or a pet, though the woman she was holding was now older than her. "Your mother used to push you into the cupboard to keep you hidden when I'd come calling, always wanting to keep you to herself, but you'd sneak out to see me, wouldn't you?"
The woman, still held in place by the magic, could only nod.
"That was foolish of you, foolish, but also brave. To defy direct orders from your mother. Such a pretty young thing you were."
"Let go of her!" The husband had regained his feet and was storming across the yard, but the Evil Queen sent him flying once more with an absentminded flick of her wrist, her eyes never leaving the woman.
"Tell me dear… what did your mother do when she found out you'd snuck out to see me?"
"She punished me."
"So I punished her. Isn't that right?" The Evil Queen was practically cooing at the woman now, as if she were still that young child, sneaking out of her cupboard hiding place to see the magic sorceress.
The woman nodded again.
"Do you remember the spell I put on her?"
The woman had stopped trying to fight the magic and seemed to relax in its hold. "For every lash she gave me, she'd get three the same."
The Evil Queen smiled victoriously and nodded, obviously pleased with the woman's memory. "And I'll bet she stopped hurting you."
The woman shook her head, but there was a smirk on her face. "She tried to drown me in the wash basin, hoping to end the spell, but she drowned before I'd been under long."
The Evil Queen smiled predatorily. She released the hold of the magic. "Serves her right. How dare she touch something so precious?"
The woman stared at the brunette for a long moment and then put two fingers over her lips and then pressed them to her heart. "My Queen. You have returned."
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Emma sat in the dimness of the room. She would have to retire soon. The other life would be calling for her. They'd dined in the company of the woman, Rhea, and her reluctant husband Phinn. It had been awkward, with Phinn's dirty looks that Regina just ignored and Emma's permanent scowl as Regina had been fawned over by Rhea. It was a toss up between the two who was more enraged by the woman's affection for the Evil Queen. Emma had broken first, excusing herself and storming from the room. She just hadn't been able to stomach it any further.
She had bathed as best she could with the assistance of the wash basin, disgusted the whole time by the thought that Rhea's mother might have once tried to drown her in the very same basin. As soon as she was adequately clean, she retired to the room that had been lent to her and Regina for the night.
The sun had sunken well beneath the horizon by the time Regina came into the room. She silently closed the door behind her.
Emma couldn't look at her. Not because she'd done anything wrong. For all Rhea's affections, she'd rebuffed any and all of them. But she didn't want the brunette to see the jealousy that was written plainly across her face.
"You're cross with me."
Emma shook her head. "No."
"Yet you can't bring yourself to look at me." She heard Regina sit down on the bed. "Are you seeing what they do now? Are you starting to see with their eyes?" There was a melancholy resignation in the brunette's tone that broke Emma's jealousy instantly.
She got up from her perch by the window and went to the brunette, crouching before her so she could meet her eyes. "Never." Her face coloured briefly with shame. "She was looking at you as if having you would give her power."
Regina bit her lip. "That is what she believes."
Emma nodded. "I know." Her hand slid up Regina's arm, across her collarbone, down between her breasts and across her abdomen, veering off down her thigh. "I don't like her eyeing what I consider…" Emma trailed off, a blush colouring her cheeks once more.
"Yours?"
Emma nodded.
Regina put a finger under the blonde's chin and lifted her gaze. "You needn't worry. I am you know, yours." She leaned down and captured the younger woman's lips, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her up into her lap.
They spent the next hour letting claims be made on both sides, declarations of possession signed by the burning heat of mouths on flesh, neither one stopping until the other world called Emma back.