DISCLAIMER:: do not own. just borrowing for purpose of creative expression. no profit obtained.
A/N:: an update unlike what you've seen before in this story, i think it's about time regina met herself, don't you? it's going to be an interesting reunion. the plan is to take this to 70 to 75 chapters, possibly more.
SWAN QUEEN SWAN QUEEN SWAN QUEEN
-Chapter 55: Seems A Heavy Choice To Make-
Apparently those three little words, while they hadn't broken her curse as she had suspected they would, had worked some kind of magic. They had imbued Miss Swan with a hearty sexual appetite. It was as if the woman was desperate to refrain from sleep, afraid of something that would come when she closed her eyes. Any questions from Regina had been silenced with kisses and touches. Her fingers had this distracting way of slipping between the brunette's thighs every time the mayor opened her mouth to discuss what was to come next for them. The blonde was insatiable.
But her energy had finally run out sometime in the dark hours just before dawn, unable to keep herself awake any longer. She'd had tears in her eyes as they'd finally slipped closed, a terror set deep into their swirling green depths as if scared of what sleep might bring. Quick to jump to the more obvious conclusion, Regina had brushed her fingers through the blonde's hair with a smile. "I'll be here when you wake up darling. I'm not going anywhere."
Tears had slipped from Emma's eyes. "I know. Tomorrow is going to be…. I want you to know that, I may be sad tomorrow, but I love you. You're enough, you and Henry are enough. Always know that."
The words had confused Regina in that moment and they confused her still as she tiredly watched the gloom outside their window recede in the wake of the coming dawn. She had expected the world to crumble around her when she'd finally tore down the last of the walls around her heart and let Emma Swan in. But it hadn't. There had been no storm of magic filled smoke, no outraged mob of townspeople crying for her head. It had been amidst a cleansing downpour, rain that had effectively washed away all the barriers that remained between them. She let herself become exposed, let the blonde see through it all to the Queen. And Emma had loved her still, as she had promised she would. Maybe that was a better kind of magic. But still, every curse had a conclusion, something to end it, so why hadn't this one broke? She was trying not to dwell too much on the details, knowing how easily she could become consumed with trying to puzzle it out.
Her eyes started to drift closed. They would need to discuss it all once they both had rested. Before they went to pick up their son, together, they'd need to get everything on the table. They had to go into this with open eyes; it was the only way it would ever work. They couldn't hide from each other in the disguise of who they'd once been in a different world. Emma deserved more and, honestly, Regina Mills was exhausted with keeping up the charade. Maybe it was the right time to let everyone finally see the truth. What was the point of keeping it up anymore? With Emma Swan by her side, she suddenly didn't fear the coming days. They'd figure it out… together.
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She didn't remember falling asleep but she woke not long later. The sun had barely made any progress in its ascent into the sky, a confirmation that she hadn't slept long, though she felt as if she had been out for hours. Emma still slept soundly beside her. She smiled and pressed her body closer to the blonde's, nipping softly at the woman's shoulder. Emma didn't respond. Regina nuzzled the blonde's neck, kissing her jaw. Again, no response. She huffed in frustration, her hand sliding under the duvet down to Emma's thigh, stroking her skin softly. Not even a huff, or a grunt. In fact, not even a breath.
Regina sat up, her eyes staring intensely at the woman beside her, watching for the telltale rise and fall of the girl's chest. It was nearly thirty long seconds of stillness before Regina cupped her hand over the blonde's mouth. She felt no rush of wind, no puff of breath expended from lungs. Emma wasn't breathing. Regina crawled over the blonde, straddling her. She gripped Emma's shoulder and shook her hard. "Emma! Emma!" Not again. Her panic manifested physically, bile rising up in her throat, threatening to make her retch, but she managed to hold it down. This wasn't like last time. Last time she'd just been sleeping, but at least she'd been breathing.
Despite the twenty eight years she'd spent in this world, she still leaned toward the surreal when there was something in her life she couldn't explain. It was easier to tell herself that this was all the result of a sleeping curse, rather than admit that Emma might actually be…. Had this been what Emma had meant? Had the blonde somehow known that if Regina didn't realise her feelings before the conclusion of her birthday, that she would…? It made all Emma's cryptic statements make sense, all her desperation. Had this been Regina's fault? No, she refused to think that. This couldn't be over.
CPR. That was what she needed to do. She felt for the appropriate spot on the blonde's chest and thrust five counts in. She leaned down, plugging the blonde's nose and blowing air into her lungs. Her eyes caught sight of her clock as she sat back up to continue her thrusts and her efforts ceased. The second hand was frozen, leaving the clock stuck at six. She reached for her cell on the bedside table and picked it up. She accessed the clock feature and it too was frozen. Time was frozen.
Her first response was to breathe a sigh of relief. Emma was alive. She was fine. Just frozen at a moment in time. But that begged the question of why Regina wasn't. She looked around the room. Nothing was out of place. Everything was as they left it in their lust fueled haze from that morning.
Slowly, she got off the bed, reaching for her silk robe. She pulled it on to cover her modesty and went to the door of the room. She was loathe to leave Emma, but obviously staying here was going to do nothing to make time start again. This was the work of magic, there was no other possible explanation for it. But it couldn't be the breaking of the curse, could it? She had expected storms and an apocalyptic type display, but was this what it was truly meant to be? Had time stopped for good?
She checked each of the rooms upstairs, looking for any sign of what had caused the time freeze. She found nothing. A search of the ground floor proved just as fruitless. The house was exactly as it should be. Everything was where they had left it, from the empty crystal tumbler on the piano bench to the pile of discarded wet clothes in the kitchen corridor.
She wasn't sure why she made the decision to go into the back yard. But she found herself standing in the doorway of the kitchen corridor, just as she had the night before, staring out towards her prized honey crisp apple tree. Beneath the tree, in the gloom of early morning, stood a mirror.
The surface of the glass rippled. She couldn't discern the picture on the other side, just that it wasn't a reflection of the yard. It was gloomy. She recognised the mirror instantly; it was quite like the one she'd pushed her mother through so long ago. It was a portal to another world; the only question left was, where? Her mind irrationally told her to consult Gold, after all, he'd brought the first mirror to her magically, instructing her to dispose of her mother through it. But, if everyone else was frozen, Gold would be too, he could offer no help. She only had one option. She knew that she needed to go through it, to resume time; her answers lay on the other side of the glass.
She turned and went back into the house. It wouldn't do to escape into some foreign world for an indeterminate amount of time in just her robe. She had no idea what she'd be met with on the other side of the glass. Wonderland? The Enchanted Forest? Neverland? Another of the thousand realities that she hadn't even heard of? There was no way to know until she went through.
She dressed in a long sleeved shirt and grabbed a light jacket. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. She opted for grabbing a fresh pair of jeans from Emma's duffel. She liked the way they felt on her body and she could admit that the idea of having something of the blonde's when she went through the mirror calmed her to a certain extent. It was always good to have something to tie you to your world; it made it easier to get back.
As soon as she was dressed, she sat on the edge of the bed, running her fingers gently through Emma's hair. She leaned down and placed a kiss onto still lips. "I'll find out what has happened, I promise." She stood, biting her lip. "I won't let you down."
The mirror was still there as she stepped once more into the backyard. There was no need to lock the door behind her. With time frozen, no one would attempt to break in. She crossed the yard to the apple tree for the second time in less than twelve hours. The glass of the mirror rippled the closer she came, reacting to her presence. She came to a stop before it. It roiled in tight waves like liquid mercury, urging her to step into its unknown depths.
She took a deep breath, sparing a moment to look up at the house, not knowing if she ever would see it again. She steeled herself against the consequences and stepped through the surface of the looking glass.
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She stepped out into the world on the other side of the mirror, a shot of energy crackling through her body, prickling her skin as it traversed her veins. She smirked to herself at that old familiar feeling, not felt in so long, but so fresh in her memory like a lover's touch. Magic. Wherever she was, magic existed here. She'd have an advantage over whatever she was here to face. It helped calm her uncertainty. She wasn't defenceless.
She glanced over her shoulder and was met with the surface of the mirror just as it had been on her side except now it was black and dormant. She turned and touched it. Her hand met a solid unyielding surface. She wouldn't be getting back this way. Her only option was forward.
The room around her was unfamiliar to her; she'd never been here before that she could recall. She appeared to be in a cave of some sort. It was gloomy, with stalactites and stalagmites, all the trappings of a typical cavern. For a brief moment her mind considered that she might be in the old mine, deep in it's heart where she'd stashed the remnants of the old world, but then she shook the thought away. The transport mirror could only connect worlds, not two places in the same world. This was somewhere new, but where?
A muttered word and she was cradling a heatless fireball in her hand. She used it to inspect the wall of the cavern closest to her. She was in a wide tunnel. The mirror seemed to block the way completely behind her, so she started forward, deeper into the darkness. Etchings covered the cave wall in a language she'd never heard before. Something was atypical about this cave, it seemed to hum with power. Wherever she was, it was magical.
She wasn't sure how long she walked. It could have been hours, or merely minutes. The darkness persisted, the walls unchanging. Just when she was certain she was trapped in a labyrinth of some sort, she emerged into a stone chamber. It looked like the typical receiving hall in any castle, carved ivory marble columns lined the walls, strands of blue threading through the stone like veins under porcelain skin, tapestries hung between them, depicting scenes she'd never seen before, from histories she'd never heard of, battles and love, an array of unrelated pictures, each tapestry telling an different story than the next and yet they all seemed to belong. The only furniture was three regal looking chairs arranged in a triangle, facing each other, on a rug at the center of the room, a low table between them. Torches adorned each column, lighting the chamber. She extinguished her own light source with a clench of her fist, it sizzled in its dying lament and was gone.
She walked cautiously towards the chairs, looking around her, readying herself for an attack. It could come from anywhere at any moment. She felt eyes in the darkness. She could see mouths of other tunnels, identical to the one she'd just emerged from, looming in the dark beyond the columns.
"Somehow, I knew you'd fail. You always were agonizingly stubborn."
Regina froze. She recognised the voice that spoke as her own, the octave slightly off, but just a hint, almost the voice of… but that was impossible.
The Evil Queen emerged from behind a column, her hand trailing over its marble surface. She regarded the mayor from halfway across the hall, her eyes skimming over the woman. "Somehow, I expected you to be a little… well, more. The way she talked of you, I expected to feel more intimidated." Her voice dripped with it's familiar disdain, as if she were speaking to some lowly slave.
The mayor pushed aside her ire at being talked to in such a way and frowned. "Who?"
Regina rolled her eyes as if she were regarding someone insufferably stupid. "Emma."
"You know Emma? You remember her?" The mayor took another step forward before catching herself and halting her progress. She still didn't know if this apparition was a threat. It could be a ghost, some kind of wraith meant to trick her. She had to be prepared for anything, an attack could come from any place at any time. She kept repeating that to herself.
The Evil Queen rolled her eyes. "Of course I do. She's my wife."
"Your wife?" Well that was an unexpected response. It threw the mayor off for a moment.
"Or at least she was, before you ruined everything." The woman seemed lost in her own thoughts, continuing without acknowledging the mayor's question. "I handed the answer to you on a silver platter. How could you still manage to mess it up? Well, look who I'm talking to. You always were willful and obstinate, never letting anyone in."
That wasn't true. She had let Emma in. She had spent this whole month fighting to let the woman in. She loved her. Regina felt the electricity in her system prickling just beneath the skin of her fingertips, flaring dangerously hot.
The queen didn't miss a beat. "I warned her that you were no good for her, that you would only break her heart. You're too far gone I warned. But she wouldn't listen. She thought you were redeemable." She glared for a moment at the mayor. "Because she was good, and you destroyed her like you destroy everything else in your path!"
In that moment, the mayor saw her mother in the brown eyes staring at her in hatred. And there was nothing she wanted more than to wipe that image, the mirror image of her every failure from this place. She threw out her hand instinctively, sending a bolt of violet energy careening across the space between them.
The queen raised a hand, narrowly deflecting the attack, sending it straight into one of the marble columns. Instead of splintering under the energy as it should have, it absorbed it, glowing briefly for a moment before paling again to white marble.
The mayor didn't take time to think about what she had just seen as she dodged a bolt of magic sent straight for her head. Again she shot back in retaliation. There was nowhere to hide in this empty room. The chairs and table would provide no shelter. Her only option was the columns. She dived behind one, pressing her back against it to catch her breath. She peeked around the corner just in time to see the queen disappear behind a column on the other side of the room. She waited until she saw the woman's head peek out, sending a bolt crashing at her. The column she was hiding behind absorbed it. The queen sent one right back at her, then another. Both were absorbed by the mayor's column. This obviously wasn't effective. "Where are we?" She called out, her voice echoing clearly through the chamber.
"Some version of the afterlife I would assume." Came the reply.
"We're not dead. At least, I'm not. I have no idea what you are."
The Evil Queen smirked. "Don't you recognise me dear? I am your failure. You failed to let her in and now, I'm sentenced to endure eternity here, without my love and without my daughter."
"How is your presence here my fault?"
"I see you two started the reunion without me." A new voice interrupted.
Both women turned to the head of the hall to face their newcomer, coming cautiously around their columns, switching between regarding the woman coming towards them and each other, trying to decide the bigger threat. Delicate bare feet crossed the floor attached to long legs. She was very obviously female with curves for days. Her dark brown hair fell around her shoulders in dark waves, reaching down towards the small of her back. Her skin was deeply tanned, her exotic eyes a deep gray. She was barely and simply dressed in a toga-like garment of navy roughspun. If she wasn't so clean, both Reginas would be inclined to think she was a street urchin of some sort, a courtesan. But she looked more the part of oracle. Maybe that's exactly what she was.
The woman smirked, walking into the midst of the chairs and taking a seat in one. She gestured carelessly for the two women to do the same. "As entertaining as it is to watch Regina, as you tear yourself apart, I am a busy woman, and time is against you here."
The mayor narrowed her eyes. "Where is here?"
The woman regarded her. "You are in Eternity."
"And you are?" The queen regarded the woman, her arms crossed over the ivory of her gown. Ivory? The mayor had never remembered wearing ivory as the Evil Queen.
The woman stared between them with a knowing smirk, the confidence of someone who holds all the cards. Again she gestured to the other two seats. Reluctantly, the women each took one.
"I have a name, though few know it, but many know me by title. I am Fate."
Both Regina's mirrored the same look, a look of disgust.
Fate pretended as if she didn't notice. "You." Her head swung to the right to regard Queen Regina. "Don't play fair. You broke the rules."
"We were facing death, do you think I care for rules now?"
Fate smirked. "Hardly, you never did care for them much anyway."
"I did what I had to do." Her mouth was a thin line. "It's not my fault that she is too stubborn to heed good advice." She turned her glare on her Storybrooke half for a long moment before she looked at the other woman. "Please, give me Emma back."
Fate's face fell into a sour expression. "She didn't fail. On the contrary, she succeeded quite spectacularly."
All the anger left the queen's face. "She did?" Her gaze fell once more on her other half. "You did?"
The mayor had never been so confused. "I have no idea to what either of you are referring."
"Emma!" The queen's exasperation came back. "Did you or did you not fall in love with her?"
"I don't see how it's any of your business." She glared back at her other half with just as much disdain. "But yes, I did."
"Regardless of your interference in the matter…" Fate look displeased.
The mayor narrowed her eyes. "What interference?" And then it hit her like a ton of bricks. "The time transverse spell… that was you?"
"Oh look, she's finally catching on." Queen Regina rolled her eyes. She knew she was being more than a little hostile towards her other half, but it was more difficult than she had ever imagined sitting in the room with everything she never wanted to be again. This woman was the reason why she didn't get Emma all to herself. Regina did not like to share.
"The fact remains that the prophecy has been fulfilled."
Queen Regina sat forward in her chair. "So what happens now?"
"That is up for you both to decide." Fate gave the barest twitch of a finger and an hourglass appeared on the small table between them, the navy sand cascading down. Another flick and a large mirror, similar to the one the mayor had traveled through to get to this place, appeared. "You have until the last grain falls to make a decision. One day. The mirror will be your guide. All you need to do is think of Emma and step through and it will show you all you need to know. Plead your case to each other and come to the best conclusion for both." Fate stood and turned from them. "At the conclusion of your day, you will be transported back here, regardless of where you are. Then you must make your decision. Choose carefully, for there is no changing your fate once it has been determined." She started up the hall.
"Wait." The mayor stood as well. "What will happen to the one we don't choose? Are we condemning all those people to die?" How was that fair? No matter what they chose to do, they'd lose.
"The souls will be returned to whichever world you choose. They will lose all their memories of the lives their other halves have lived. The world you choose not to save will have never existed." Fate let the implications of that hang between them as she retreated once more into the darkness and was gone.
The mayor glanced over at the other woman, this imposter who was a mirror image of the woman she used to be. "Well that's settled then. You forfeit your world; it's as simple as that."
The queen's eyes widened in anger. She practically launched herself out of her chair, stepping up to the mayor threateningly. "No, you forfeit yours!"
The mayor examined her nails as if she found this line of conversation exceedingly tiresome. "And why should I do that dear?"
"Because I loved her first."
The weight of that statement hung heavily in the air between them, crackling with an energy of its own. One Regina had nothing to fire back with while the other felt her desperation slowly consuming her, the words she just uttered taking her anger with them.
"She is everything to me. She is my wife. We have a daughter."
"And we have a son! Don't you see? This is an impossible choice!"
Queen Regina's eyes swung to the mirror. No matter what it showed them it wasn't like to change either of their minds, but they had nothing to lose. "Show me. Show me who she is when she's not with me."
They each moved to the mirror. Just as before, the glass began to ripple the closer they got. The mayor took a deep breath. She felt something touch her hand and looked down. The queen's fingers slipped through hers as she grabbed hold of her hand. She looked into brown eyes that were a reflection of her own. They both gave each other a nod and closed their eyes. Both thought of the moment the blonde had entered their lives. Mayor Regina thought of Emma's eyes, filled with wonder that night they'd first met when Emma had returned Henry to Storybrooke. Queen Regina thought of Emma that night she had awoken her from her slumber in the crystal coffin, the blonde's smile just moments before she'd fallen asleep. Together, they stepped through the looking glass.