Chapter Forty-Seven

Just as his fist slammed into the side of her face, she woke up. She could hear her own raspy breathing, and tasted metal in her mouth. Her jaw was throbbing. She sat herself upright, her hair sticking to her damp neck, and pressed a hand against her face. It was burning, and she'd bitten down on her tongue.

Turning her head to the side, she checked the time: 6:57am. She would have woken up soon anyway – but just once, waking up without a pounding headache and the sound of her own pathetic whimpers still scratching at the inside of her skull would have made a nice change.

She swallowed, wiping the sweat from her face.

'Emma?'

She jumped and turned to her left. She hadn't noticed the sounds of stirring from behind her.

'Hey.'

Regina's eyes were still half-closed and pillow creases ran down her cheek. She squinted up at Emma, forcing herself up onto one elbow.

'Are you okay?'

'I'm fine,' Emma said, reaching out to brush her dark hair away from her face. 'Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you.'

'You're very hot,' Regina mumbled, feeling Emma's hand against her cheek. 'Did you have a nightmare?'

'Yeah,' Emma said quietly, continuing to stroke her hair. 'It's okay. It was the same as all the others.'

Regina frowned. 'I suppose that if I told you to go and see Dr Hopper again, it wouldn't do much good?'

'Go and see the guy who not only used to be a bug, but also counsels our son?' Emma laughed. 'No, thanks. This town really needs to employ some new mental health professionals.'

'But Emma,' Regina scrubbed a hand over her tired eyes. 'You should really consider it. You're suffering.'

'I'm fine.'

'You have PTSD.'

'Well, I've probably had that since I was a kid,' Emma scoffed, removing her hand from Regina's hair and turning away. 'Let's not give Moe all the credit.'

'Wow,' Regina said dryly. 'What a compelling argument for why you don't need to see a therapist.'

Emma threw a filthy look over her shoulder, but then, seeing Regina's half smile, lost most of her venom.

Regina lay back down and gestured to the empty space next to her. 'Come here?'

There was a moment's hesitation, and then Emma flopped back down beside her, wriggling her body into the curve of Regina's.

'Your t-shirt is wet,' Regina murmured into her damp curls. Emma sat back up, peeling the shirt off of her sticky body, and lay back down again. She felt Regina smile against her shoulder as her hands slid around her body to cup her naked breasts. 'Much better.'

'You're such a pervert.'

'I much prefer the term "sexual deviant".'

'Whatever, your majesty.'

Regina snorted, too tired to respond, and kissed Emma's burning shoulder.

'I've missed arguing with you,' she murmured.

Emma grinned into her pillow. 'You've said that every day for the past two weeks.'

'True,' Regina conceded – the last fortnight, since Emma had taken Henry to school and then come back to the mansion, had seen a new routine falling into place: both women went to work, waiting and waiting for 5 o'clock to roll around. When it did, they both tore across town and arrived at Regina's house, where Henry was already waiting and doing his homework. When Regina started to cook dinner, Emma would help him. It had come as a surprise to both of the Millses that Emma had a completely unexpected love for science. She and Henry breezed through his homework, and they all had dinner together as a family.

One night in bed – where Emma now spent every night – Regina had tentatively broached the subject.

'What?' Emma had said, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. 'I liked chemistry class. You got to make things explode. And physics… I don't know. Space and stuff, it was interesting.'

Regina had fallen silent, one eyebrow raised. Emma glanced across at her.

'Science was the only thing I was good at at school,' she murmured after a moment. 'I've never been good with words, and numbers are just… I don't know, who the hell needs trigonometry in daily life? But science is daily life. And it's going on all the time and that's crazy. I was moving around and jumping from family to family and school to school, but wherever I was, the world kept on going by as normal. Plants will still photosynthesise, and the planets didn't just stop rotating because things were going shitty with me. I kind of like that. It reminded me that things were a lot bigger than the bad day I was having.'

Regina hadn't said a word, but had leaned over and kissed the sad smile off of her lips.

Now, she smiled into the hot, damp skin of Emma's neck and quietly said, 'It's true. I think our pointless bickering is one of the things that makes us so great.'

Emma shrugged. 'We don't really seem to argue about anything big anymore, I guess.'

'It's all already out in the open,' Regina said. Her stomach gave that familiar lurch of terror that it did whenever they broached the subject of what she had told Emma in her vault. 'I guess… it sort of worked out for the best.'

There was a pause, and then Emma softly said, 'You don't have to do that, you know.'

'Do what?'

'Tense up like that. Any time we come close to talking about you and the Evil Queen and the storybook, you freeze. I know that neither of us wants to talk about it really, but you still can. You don't have to act like I'm suddenly going to up and leave because you mentioned the words "enchanted forest".'

Regina's smile was shaky. 'It seems like dangerous ground to be treading on.'

'Regina,' Emma said, turning over so that she could face her. Regina's face was tight with worry, and her normally pillowy lips were thinly pressed together. 'I know the worst of you. I hated you, I got over it, and now I'm here. I'm back. If you need to talk about it, then talk about it. I really don't mind.'

'But I do,' Regina sighed, brushing her thumb over Emma's warm cheek. 'That's not who I am anymore. If I keep talking about it, maybe I'll start to…'

'Miss it?' Emma finished for her.

Regina nodded. 'Or at least, you'll start to think I miss it.'

'Regina,' Emma smiled. 'You can't even mention it without turning into a board. The guilt just ebbs out of you. I have absolutely zero worries about you going back to that life – there's nothing in it for you anymore. You already told me – you were the Evil Queen because you were unhappy. You were alone. Now you have me, and you have Henry, and going back to who you were would only make things worse again. And I know you know that.'

Regina swallowed. 'I do. Objectively, at least.'

She watched Emma's face creasing into a sad little smile, and she sighed.

'I don't know why you have such faith in me.'

Emma closed her eyes and shuffled forward, nuzzling her face into the crook of Regina's neck. It was her favourite place in the world.

'It's pretty simple, really,' she said quietly. 'It's because I love you.'

Regina's heart thudded painfully. It was the first time she'd said that since the day at the vault – sure, there had been fights and shouting and a whole barrage of "I love you and you betrayed me". But this was the first time the words had slipped from Emma's mouth so freely and simply and without even a sliver of doubt. Regina couldn't feel anything in the whole world then, except the almost burning warmth of the woman she loved pressed against her and the painful feeling of her heart hammering against her ribs. Her throat tightened.

She slid her arms around Emma's waist and pressed her palms against her back, pulling her more firmly against her than she had done in a long time.

'I love you too,' she murmured. And it felt so damn good to say it that she wasn't even embarrassed when a tear leaked from her eye.

There was a split second of overwhelming happiness – of feeling like nothing in the whole world could ever go wrong again. She could feel Emma smiling against the silk of her pyjamas, and she could smell her vanilla her and taste the salt of her own happy tears in her mouth. And then Emma flinched violently, flinging herself away.

'What?' Regina asked, sitting herself upright. Emma was twisting around, trying and failing to look at the blind spot that was her own lower back.

'I don't know…' she muttered, looking back over one shoulder and then the other. There was a stinging pain seeping through her skin, right at the spot where both of Regina's hands had been pressed against it. It reminded her of when she'd been in her fourth foster home, and the other kids had deliberately knocked a wasps' nest off of one of the trees in the garden. She had been stung nine times, but the other children had laughed so hard at her that when the adults came running out to see what all the noise was about, she hadn't even mentioned it to them.

Eventually she caught sight of a small red patch of skin.

'Weird,' she said. The pain was beginning to fade. 'Sorry. It was probably just static electricity or something. I don't know why I acted like I'd been shot.'

She laughed and turned herself back around with an easy smile, the prickling feeling all but gone. But she took one look at Regina's face and immediately her good mood slipped again.

'Regina?' she asked slowly, trying to reach out for her hand. 'Are you okay? Did you feel it too?'

Regina was grey. Not pale – her skin had turned a sickly shade of just-poured concrete, and she was staring down at her own upturned hands like they had grown overnight. As soon as Emma reached out for her, she snatched them away, crossing them over her chest with terrified tears shining in her eyes.

'Regina?' Emma repeated, slowly retracting her hand. 'What happened? Are you hurt?'

Regina's mouth opened and she tried to speak, but only the smallest croak came out. Her face crumbled. She shook her head.

Before she could pull away again, Emma scooted forward and grabbed her wrists.

'What happened, Regina?' she asked. Her voice was firm, and her fingers were even more so. 'Tell me. What's wrong?'

She felt movement against her hands, and slowly Regina started to hold her palms back out. Emma released her wrists, never tearing her gaze away from Regina's watery brown eyes, and waited until she had stopped moving. Then she looked down.

It was just her hands. She blinked.

'What am I supposed to be seeing here?'

A familiar groan of impatience gurgled from Regina's throat.

'Touch them,' she muttered. Emma did as she said.

'Holy shit,' she gasped, immediately pulling her hands back again. 'Why are you so hot?!'

She reached out for Regina's arm again, but it was the same, almost disturbingly cool temperature that appeared to be her normal state of being. So were her shoulders. Emma reached up and pressed the back of her hand to Regina's forehead and frowned when it was even colder. She looked back down at her hands, which were so burningly hot that she could feel the heat radiating off of them, but were somehow not even sweating.

'Regina?' she asked slowly. She sounded like a lost little girl, and Regina couldn't help but whimper. 'What's happening?'

Regina swallowed. She couldn't bear to look into Emma's anxious green eyes as she said it.

'I think it was magic.'

Emma paused.

'You think it was magic?'

Rolling her eyes, Regina snapped, 'Well, I don't know! I'm not meant to have magic here! And I wasn't exactly trying to turn you into a frog when you told me you loved me for the first time in months. I felt… happy. Happier than I've ever felt. And then… this.'

Emma looked back down at Regina's hands, which were upturned and resting on the tops of her thighs. She reached out to touch one – it was still hot, but no longer burning. She clasped her own fingers around them and squeezed.

'How sure are you?' she asked quietly.

'Fairly sure,' Regina choked out, turning her teary eyes up to the ceiling. This is it. This is what makes everything fall apart. After everything that we've—

'Regina,' Emma said, shaking her arm. 'Come back to me.'

'What?'

'Look at me.'

Regina did as she was told, and found Emma's green gaze waiting patiently for her.

'I'm not running,' Emma said, slowly and calmly. 'I'm here. Right where I've always been. Okay?'

Inexplicably, Regina found herself believing her. She forced herself to nod.

'Okay.'

'What makes you think it was magic?'

'I don't know… it's been so long since I…' Regina stuttered, shaking her head. 'I was holding you, and I felt so happy, and I had this rush that felt like… like I was invincible. And then I hurt you. I didn't mean to, I'm so—'

'Be quiet,' Emma said firmly, squeezing her hands. 'I never thought that for a second. And I'm fine – look at me. Everything is okay.'

Regina frowned. 'Is it?'

'Yeah. This is… okay, this is not ideal. But it was kind of inevitable. We were both expecting the curse to break at some point and I guess this is… the first crack beginning to show.'

'Like when you kissed Graham.'

Emma blinked. 'What?'

Ignoring the pain in her chest, Regina forced herself to say, 'You once said that when you kissed him, right before he… you know. You told me that he said that he remembered. He said thank you. You didn't get why.'

The realisation dawned over Emma like a cold shower. 'Oh. God.'

'Magic didn't come back to the rest of the town then either,' Regina carried on, her eyes on their interlocked hands. 'But it did to him. It wasn't true love's kiss, but it was… something. Something that chipped away at the curse just enough to let some magic through.'

Emma nodded to herself. 'So can you do magic now? Right now?'

'Do you want me to be able to?'

'No, but it would help to know exactly what we're dealing with.'

Regina swallowed, turning her gaze over to a vase that was sitting on the nearby dresser. She let go of one of Emma's hands and reached out to it, forming a spherical shape within her palm that she remembered all too well. A rush of something old and far too familiar filled her.

She looked down – there was nothing there.

Emma blinked. 'What were you hoping would happen?'

'A fire ball,' Regina said, trying again. 'It was kind of my "move".'

'Very subtle, your majesty.'

Regina looked back at Emma to find that she was smiling. Almost.

'What can I say,' she sighed, dropping both of her hands into the cradle of her crossed legs. 'I've always loved blending in.'

Emma snorted, and then shuffled closer.

'Okay,' she said softly. 'So, no magic. Not just yet. That's good, right?'

'I guess. But, this is just the start of it, Emma. Things aren't going to miraculously get easier from now on – this is the beginning of probably the worst time of our lives.'

'You're being dramatic.'

'Am I?' Regina snapped. 'The curse is going to break. We both know it. But this means it's going to break soon – if we plan on staying together then we can't stop it anymore. And then what? When it breaks, and the town comes after me, what happens then? You're going to just ride it out? You're going to stick by me? Henry is going to stick by me?'

'We both will, Regina,' Emma said quietly. 'You know that.'

'If that's true, then maybe you're stupider than I thought,' Regina spat the words out. She had meant for them to hurt, although she didn't quite know why, but Emma didn't even flinch.

'I'm stupid for staying with the woman I love?' she asked.

'You'll be in danger,' Regina said, her words rushing out faster and faster now that the dam had finally been broken. She could hear the tears bubbling up behind each and every one of them and the humiliation of it all only made her heart hurt more. 'You'll be putting our son in danger too – the people of this town are going to try and kill me, and if you stand in their way then they won't take any prisoners. They'll be bloodthirsty, and rightly so, and just because you're the sheriff and the Saviour doesn't mean that it'll stop them from cutting you down too. And Henry… he's just a child. What's to stop them from hurting him? Or, better yet, from assuming that I've cast one of my famously wicked spells on him to make him love me again? After all, he was fairly vocal about his hatred of me until quite recently. Things changed ever so quickly and I doubt that the tiny minds of this ridiculous town will ever be able to comprehend why.'

'You don't think they'll understand that I love you?' Emma asked softly. 'That we love you?'

'No,' Regina bit out, scrubbing at her eyes with still-hot hands. 'Not in a million years.'

Emma considered this for a moment. 'Well. They've had 28 years. That's a start.'

'This isn't a joke, Emma!'

'I know it's not, Regina,' Emma said with a sigh. 'Everything you're saying is true. This could all go to shit pretty quickly. All of it.'

She didn't continue, and Regina gaped at her. 'And?!'

'And… I don't really care,' she shrugged. Her fingers were tangling nervously in her lap, and Regina knew that it was because she was desperate to reach out to try and touch her again. The fact that she was resisting - not because of the magic, or because she was afraid, but because she knew without a doubt that Regina wouldn't want to be touched right then - only made everything hurt all the worse.

'How can you not care about this?' Regina asked, her voice throbbing.

'Regina… no one loves you more than I do, expect possibly Henry. The two of us together would do anything for you – and that includes standing up to an entire town. And obviously I would prefer to keep Henry out of harm's way, but we both know that that won't work. If he gets even a hint of you being in danger, he'll be the first in line to protect you. He's got the saviour gene way stronger than I have. There's no way the town will keep him away from you.'

Regina pressed her lips together. 'You can't guarantee that.'

'No,' Emma admitted. 'But I think it's true, and I bet Henry does too.'

'Well, Henry isn't here,' Regina sniffed; swivelling around and throwing herself back down onto the bed. She stared straight up at the ceiling, her eyes unblinking. 'Maybe you're putting words in his mouth.'

Emma conceded, 'That's a fair point.'

'It is?'

'Yes,' Emma said, suddenly grinning wickedly. 'Let's find out, shall we?'

'What?' Regina asked, sitting bolt upright. 'Emma, please don't—'

'Henry!' Emma bellowed loud enough to wake the dead. Even so, Regina found herself praying that he was close enough to puberty to be able to sleep through it.

To her dismay, she heard a door open at the other end of the hallway.

'I'm going to kill you,' she snapped, flopping back down onto her pillows.

Emma grinned round at her. 'I'm sure you won't.'

'And you're naked, you idiot.'

Looking down at her own bare breasts, Emma sighed. 'Oh. Right.'

She grabbed her damp t-shirt off of the floor and shrugged it on just as the door began to edge open.

Henry's sleepy face poked through the gap and, seeing Emma's messy hair and Regina's tear-streaked face, collapsed slightly.

'Oh,' he said, hesitating. 'Do I want to hear this?'

'Of course you do,' Emma said, patting the space between her and Regina. 'Come here.'

Henry padded into the room and clambered up onto the bed. It always surprised Emma just how quickly he was growing.

'Ugh,' he said as he brushed against Emma's shoulder. 'You're all sweaty.'

'Sorry,' she said, 'Ignore that. We have something more important that we need to talk to you about.'

Henry's face immediately scrunched up with panic. 'You're not breaking up again, are you?'

Emma blinked.

'Would that be bad?' she asked. Regina kept her eyes on the ceiling, but her ears were straining.

'It would be really bad,' Henry said, looking back and forth between them both. 'I love having you two together – I have two parents and they're both happy. It's great. I don't want things to change.'

Emma grinned, but didn't say anything. She looked pointedly at Regina, waiting.

Regina sighed, laboriously forcing herself to sit back up again.

'We're not splitting up,' she said to Henry. She almost reached out to rest her hand on his shoulder, but stopped herself. 'But I'm afraid things are about to change, and there's not much we can do to stop that.'

'Why?' Henry asked. 'What's happened?'

Emma often let herself forget that their son was only eleven, and was still nothing more than a child – but in his blue checked pyjamas he looked too much like a young boy to ignore. It was almost painful to tell him the truth.

'Henry,' she said softly, grasping his knee. 'We think your mom's magic is coming back.'

At once, his pale face flushed around the cheeks. 'What? Why? What happened?'

'There was an… incident,' Emma said as vaguely as possible, her face scrunching up into such an haphazard mess that it forced even Regina to smile. 'It's not really important. But the fact is, it's going to happen eventually. And the curse is going to break. Sometime soon.'

Henry waited for her to continue, and when she didn't, he blinked slowly. 'I know,' he said, looking round at the seriousness of Regina's expression and frowning. 'I thought we all knew that? I thought we wanted it?'

'We do,' Regina said softly. 'But… have you really considered what that will mean?'

Henry paused, his hair wobbling on top of his head like a baby bird's as he looked back and forth between them. 'Why do you both look so worried? I know what it means. It means everyone's going to be super mad. I'm not stupid.'

Ignoring the smug look on Emma's face, Regina said, 'Yes, but the reality might be significantly more frightening than what you are imagining. People will be out for my blood.'

'Regina,' Emma snapped. Regina glared back at her.

'It's true,' she said. 'There's no point in sugar coating it. It's not going to make it any easier when they come to our house with torches.'

A warm glow spread through Emma's extremities at the words 'our house', but she forced herself to push it down. 'Right. But it's also not going to help lift your spirits either.'

'My spirits don't need lifting,' Regina said firmly. 'It is the way it is. The curse needs to be broken and I am aware of that – but it doesn't mean things will actually be better when it does.'

Both Emma and Henry visibly jolted at that. It was a blow; one that perhaps neither of them had considered before. Things weren't exactly thriving in Storybrooke, all things considered – and while Emma's destiny was to break the curse that was holding the townspeople hostage there, neither she nor her son had ever really considered that maybe they wouldn't thank her for it when she did.

'Exactly,' Regina said, watching their expressions darken. 'It's going to be ugly.'

'Okay, but ignoring that,' Emma interrupted, waiting for Henry to look at her before she continued. 'Kid, your mom is worried that when the curse breaks, we won't be able to stick around. Not because we don't want to, but because we can't.'

'Why wouldn't we be able to?' Henry asked.

'Because once these people get their memories back, they're going to find it rather hard to believe that either of you actually want to be near me,' Regina sighed. 'I have magic, and they all know I'd do whatever it takes to get what I want. If that meant bewitching the Saviour and her son in order to get myself some support, then obviously that's exactly what I'd do.'

'But you never did anything to us,' Henry said. 'We love you – both of us. When they come, we'll tell them that.'

'I think your mom has a point, kid,' Emma sighed. 'It won't be that simple.'

Regina pressed her lips together, looking at the two people in the whole world that she'd given her heart to a hundred times over. 'I'm just concerned what they might do. If they took you away from me… I wouldn't survive.'

Henry caught the glimmer of tears in her eyes before she could wipe them away, and he threw himself onto her. Regina jolted with surprise, feeling his small arms wrapped tightly around her, and without thinking held him in return. His head smelled exactly like it always had done, even on that day eleven years ago when she'd held him for the very first time. Even though he was growing so quickly now, he was still nothing more than her baby wearing checked pyjamas.

'Mom,' he murmured into her shoulder. 'Nothing can take me away from you. Ever. Okay?'

He looked up at her, his eyes so full of intent, and she felt herself shuddering under the weight of a sob. 'I can't lose you.'

'You won't,' he said so firmly that she almost believed him. 'If it comes to it, Emma will keep me safe. Right?'

'Right,' Emma said without a moment's hesitation. 'If you tell us to leave, we will leave. We will stay safe. And then, when you ask us to, we will come back for you.'

Regina swallowed, her throat aching. 'You can't just say that now, and then when the time comes and I'm begging you two to go, you refuse. I know myself – I won't have the power to make you. And I know you - you're the only two people in the world more stubborn than I am. If you get hurt, I'll never forgive myself.'

'I promise,' Emma said. Regina met her gaze over the top of Henry's dark hair, and she saw the determination in her eyes. 'I won't like it, but I'll do it. I'm the Saviour, and to be honest the whole town can go to hell, for all I care. Right now the only people I care about saving are you two.'

Regina squeezed Henry tighter and nodded, closing her eyes as she kissed the top of his head. 'I love you both very much.'

Henry pulled away and smiled up at her. 'We love you too. And everything will be okay – we promise.'

Regina nodded once more and finally released him, letting him lie down in the gap between his two mothers. They both slid down to join him, and for a moment no one spoke. Three pairs of eyes, all different colours, looked up at the same ceiling, and in the silence Regina felt her heart filling up again. Her whole world was there - her whole family. It was something that she'd never had before, and even until that very moment it was something she'd never thought that she'd be lucky enough to find.

She closed her eyes and felt her heart, blackened by darkness and patched together again by light, throb happily inside her chest.

All of a sudden Henry piped up, 'Emma. You are so sweaty. You really need to shower.'

Emma giggled, grabbing him around the waist with a pair of sticky arms, and for one more moment Regina let herself believe that everything was going to be okay.