A/N: Welcome to the long-promised but almost-not-delivered Chapter 3! I won't bore you with the details on why this has been so delayed, but rather let you jump right into the first Regina PoV chapter. Hope you enjoy!
(Edited and updated as of 11/2/2015)
A Gambit in Trust
Regina I
Regina tugged the dark vest taut over her grey button down and ran her hands down its length, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles. She took comfort in the thick fabric, its weight granting a sense of comfort and security, even if it could only succeed in stopping the cold. She let out a breath, slow and measured, and kept from checking over her shoulder. The sense of someone watching her ghosted across the back of her neck, but Regina refused to give in to her paranoia.
With eyes locked forward, she left the master suite and moved toward what was doubtlessly going to be a difficult day. Her boots – flats in lieu of her typical heeled flavor – echoed through the house with each deliberate stride, and Regina ignored how empty it made her home seem in the absence of Henry's pitter-patter across the floors.
"Morning," a bleary voice greeted her as she stepped into her kitchen. The disheveled form of the town sheriff leaned against the counter, a mug of coffee in her hands. She still wore what she passed for pajamas – a tank top and ghastly multicolored sweats – Snow had delivered the night before, and her hair was a tangled mess.
Not at all ready for the day, which rankled Regina's nerves. There was too much to do.
"Coffee?" The sheriff nodded to a second mug on the countertop with a hesitant smile. Regina shook her head, for some reason unable to draw on her usual ire toward the woman. The coffee was warm and black, which suited Regina just fine.
"Passable," Regina noted and moved to sit at the kitchen's island counter. The sheriff plopped down across from her a moment later, expression light.
"Anything go bump in the night?" She asked. "Evil mother under the bed, something hiding in the closet?"
Regina spared the sheriff a bland look and sipped her coffee.
"No sense of humor," Emma said, groaning as she used the counter top as leverage to stretch her back. Regina's lip twitched in amusement. The couch in the living room did not make the best place to rest. "Well nothing happened down here either." The woman stifled a yawn. "Including sleep…"
"If my mother wanted to get to me, I doubt you could stop her." Regina repeated her argument from the night before. "I do not need a babysitter."
Emma brushed her off with a shrug. "I laid her out pretty well back in the Enchanted Forest." Regina blinked at that information, nonplussed. Emma saw her expression and grinned, swinging a fist through the air. "Knocked her right on her ass." Regina snorted at the image in both amusement and disbelief. "She might actually be afraid of me."
"Or planning a slow, painful revenge." Regina offered as a counterpoint.
"Either or," Emma said so flippantly as she drained her coffee that Regina almost believed her lack of concern. "Besides," the blonde patted something on the small of her back. "I doubt even magic would stop a bullet."
Regina frowned at the odd mix of anxiousness, anger, relief, and terror the image of Emma Swan aiming a gun at the Queen of Hearts brought up. "It's not a theory I'd like to test."
The sheriff's false confidence withered away as she sighed. "I'm sorry." The sheriff pressed her palms against her eyes, rubbing them in small circles. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that magic even exists, let alone that there's an evil witch in town." The sheriff was quiet for a moment, thoughtful as she lowered her hands back to the cool granite. "It has to be so surreal to you..."
"It's not pleasant," Regina said with a frown. She pushed her coffee away, now put off the taste. "But it doesn't matter."
"It might, though." Emma stared at her for a long moment before speaking in a careful, hesitant tone. "I didn't believe it then, but Jefferson told me what happened in Wonderland." Regina grimaced, both annoyed and feeling exposed.
"That was a long time ago." Regina dismissed. She had chosen to avoid Cora at any cost through the years. Her mother worked non-stop to be an intrinsic part of Regina's life that even after banishing the woman to another realm Regina could not stop believing that Cora would find a way back.
That her fears were proven right all this time later justified her choices, Regina believed.
"And she's had a long time to nurse a grudge." Emma pointed out.
"If it was just about me, she would be much more direct, trust me." Regina willfully did not think of how that confrontation would likely turn out. "There's a bigger picture we're not seeing."
"Then what would framing you get her?" Emma's brows furrowed in thought. "Distraction?"
"If so, it would have been aimed more for me than you and the rest of the 'heroes.'"
"You would have been in jail," Emma said, matter-of-factly. Regina raised an amused, challenging brow.
"I doubt it, dear." Emma opened her mouth to retort, appeared to think better of it, and bit off her argument with a snap of her jaw. Regina found herself wishing she wouldn't have.
"This isn't really getting us anywhere," the sheriff said, standing. "Is it?"
"No." Regina agreed. "The only way we'll figure out what my mother is after is to find her and." She hesitated. "Contain her." That was an entire problem in itself. Regina was at a complete loss on how to combat her mother without using magic.
"Then I want to take another run at Hook." Regina nodded and Emma made her way toward the guest restroom.
Regina called after her before she made it out of the kitchen. "And I want to see my son today, Sheriff." She had tried to make it sound like a command, but Regina heard how her voice lilted at the end. Emma paused in the doorway, and the former queen braced herself for rejection.
The Sheriff surprised her. "I think that's a good idea." The blonde cast a half-smile over her shoulder. "You've kind of earned it." The woman turned down the hall without another comment.
A fluttering mix of gratefulness, relief, a tinge of anxiety, and something bordering on happy bubbled in Regina's heart.
She knew then that she could persevere through the specter of her mother and the unending company of Emma Swan if it meant she could have a chance to spend time with her son.
To truly convince him she could change.
The trip to the Sheriff Station – riding in the Benz as Regina refused to step foot in the sheriff's yellow deathtrap – passed in a silence that was not entirely companionable, but not tense either. It suited Regina just fine. Emma, on the other hand, was restless the entire drive, fidgeting with anything within her reach.
"I don't like not driving," the blonde said with a shrug after Regina shot her a third annoyed glance.
"One might think you had control issues, Ms. Swan." The sheriff didn't rise to the bait, choosing to stare out the window with her fingers incessantly tapping on the center console. Regina frowned, but decided against further antagonizing the blonde.
When they pulled into the lot, they found an exhausted David leaning most of his weight against the wall by the main doors. He watched Ruby Lucas with weary amusement as the woman paced in front of him. Regina frowned at the werewolf's presence and mentally prepared herself for a confrontation.
Emma shot out of the car the moment Regina shifted it into park. "Everything alright?" She asked her father while Regina left the safety of her vehicle at a hesitant pace.
"Seems to be." David reported, pushing off the rough brick wall and stretching each of his limbs in turn. "A couple drunken disorderlies at the Rabbit Hole. Nothing major." The former shepherd yawned and spared Regina a skeptical look. "No rogue witches going bump in the night." Regina rolled her eyes, but chose not to waste her wit on the man.
"And Hook?"
"Had no idea I was anywhere close by last night. Started mouthing off about it the moment I walked in this morning." The two shared a grimace, and the likeness between father and daughter was clear for a brief moment.
"Unsurprising," Regina said, ignoring the odd pang of irritation the sight caused. "That man's gotten by on nothing more than his ability to talk his way out of situations for decades."
"Not this time," Emma said with conviction. She turned to the werewolf, who had been studying the trio with a sharpness behind her eyes that had been absent for nearly thirty years. Combined with the oversized crimson flannel shirt, dark jeans, sturdy boots, and subtle makeup, the woman seemed to have left her cursed persona behind. "What's going on, Ruby?" Emma frowned. "Red?"
"Ruby." The brunette confirmed with a decisive nod. Regina blinked. That is interesting, she mused. Ruby's lips tugged down into a frown, and she seemed to debate something in her mind before taking a breath and continuing. "Ever since the curse broke, I've been trying to figure out the best thing I could do to help the town, and I know it was only for a day before, but helping you on that case was the most useful I've felt in as long as I can remember, and I really want to give it another try."
How the werewolf managed to ramble so long on one breath escaped Regina, but Emma's smile grew with every awkward pause. "With all the crazy shit happening lately, we could definitely use the help." Ruby smiled wide, teeth gleaming white against the dull grey morning. The blonde turned to Regina, eyebrows raised. "Not exactly sure whose approval we need at the moment."
A tick of irritation prickled Regina's brow. "I'm not exactly privy to the town's budget at the moment," she said with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
"Oh, right."
Ruby's face fell, but Regina threw the wolf a bone. "But nobody stopped the shepherd from assuming the role, so by all means." She clapped her leather-gloved hands together. "Feel free to continue practicing nepotism."
The wolf's upper lip twitched, stopping just short of a sneer, but Emma just rolled her eyes. "I guess figuring out the bureaucracy can wait until we don't have a crisis to deal with."
"The town's been teetering on the edge for weeks," Regina said. "It's impossible to know when it will calm down." She considered for a moment. "If it will calm down."
"And whose fault is that?" Ruby's acidic tone should not have been surprising, Regina thought, but it still took the former queen aback after the tame start of the conversation. "Do you realize what living life as two completely different people does to someone?" The wolf took a step toward her, but the sheriff's hand shot out and caught the girl's shoulder before Regina could so much as twitch.
"Take a breath, Rubes." With a firm hand the sheriff turned the wolf away from Regina, shooting a look that was half searching and half speculating over her shoulder. Regina wondered if the judgment she saw in the sheriff's hazel eyes was real or imagined. "We're all on the same side today." The blonde spoke as she pulled the wolf into the station. Regina fell in step a half dozen paces behind them, arms crossed. "Now, we've got to figure out your paperwork."
Regina eyed Ruby's back with a frown as they entered the station proper. The wolf's gait was stiff, her shoulders held rigid. She knew Ruby's reaction, as hostile as it had been, was nowhere near the extreme anger a large portion of the community harbored for their Evil Queen.
The suddenness of the wolf's hostility– combined with it happening when she was being downright civil, thank you very much – left Regina with a stark image of the road that stood between her and redemption. These people did not want to see her as anything other than a tyrant.
She tightened her arms around her middle and focused on the image of Henry grinning his toothy smile at her.
The small comfort she found was shattered as they stepped from the main hall onto the station floor. The unnerving, grating sound of metal against stone overwhelmed her senses and set her teeth on edge. Hook paced along his cell, the metal appendage that gave him his name dug into the walls, scraping along and leaving a trail of dust whenever he took a step.
"Hook, what the hell?" Emma asked above the din, a cringe pinching her features. The racket came to an abrupt stop, and Regina heard the werewolf let out a quiet sigh of relief.
"Swan." Hook's tone was low, dangerous, and full of the promise of deadly intent that Regina would have felt unnerved had the pirate posed any threat whatsoever. With ashen skin, hair mussed with sweat, and the whites of his eyes webbed with crimson, the pirate exuded desperation rather than intimidation.
Which made him no less dangerous, Regina believed, but the sheriff's strategy to make the pirate unravel seemed to be working.
"Glad to see you've spent your time resting..." Emma remarked with a roll of her eyes. She turned from the irate pirate and guided a bemused Ruby to the desk set up outside of interrogation and farthest from the holding cells.
"Do you think this is a game, Swan?" Emma smacked the old CRT monitor on the desk and it blinked to life. "Leaving a man chained at the mercy of giant was one thing, but leaving me defenseless here? Had the Dark One discovered-"
"Then I wouldn't be dealing with this headache you're giving me," Emma interrupted while clicking through several programs on the computer. "And I would have a convenient excuse to lock Gold up for the foreseeable future." She stood and gestured from the wolf to the desk. "Fill that out and we can figure out the rest later."
"If it doesn't die on me," Ruby said with an uncertain frown. The screen flickered every few seconds.
"Wouldn't be the first thing to kick it in here," Emma said with a shrug. The expression on the captain's face as he watched the pair of them had Regina swallowing a laugh.
"Bloody wench." Frustration laced the words. "Calls herself a hero." Hook laughed, hollow and angry, before turning his attention on Regina when it was clear Emma would not rise to the bait. "And you, Regina? You know exactly what the Dark One is capable of. We need not be enemies here."
"We've been down that road once before, Captain," Regina said, baring her teeth in a grin that may have bordered on predatory. "Remind me how that went?"
The pirate bared his teeth.
"Well that explains why Cora didn't bother to bust him out of here," the sheriff said, shuffling around papers on her own desk. "Less than twelve hours and he already tried to switch sides."
"Pirates only follow the strongest wind," Ruby said without looking away from the screen, her fingers racing over the keyboard.
"I did tell you, Miss Swan. My mother didn't need Hook for her plans, no matter what they are." Emma hummed in agreement, inclining her head.
"I just know when to back the winning side, loves." Hook grinned, forced and strained. "Which could be ours if any of you would simply listen."
"Which means that she already used him for what she needs." Emma did not acknowledge the man in the cage, her head cocked to the side and eyes on Regina. "Ideas?"
"He has precious few skills of note," Regina supplied.
"So thieving, fighting, prostitutes, sailing, and stalking Gold." Emma listed off each on a raised finger. Regina smirked at the incredulity on the pirate's face.
"I never paid—"
"If nothing else, the man has travelled more realms than most." Regina spoke over the pirate's objections. He cut off his protest with a strangled growl.
"Ipso facto," Emma rolled her head back and forth on each word. "She used him to get here, probably by stealing something capable of crossing realms."
"Another portal?" Ruby asked, hitting the return key with an air of finality. She spun around in her chair. "I thought you and Snow basically had to cheat pretty much every rule of magic to get here."
"The how doesn't matter anymore," Regina noted, ignoring the glare Ruby sent her way. "We need to focus on the why."
"Does she want Gold dead?" Emma suggested.
"She was his student too, once upon a time. She would know better than to try and use Hook for the task."
"Not like she had a lot of options." Emma noted, and Regina conceded the point with a nod.
"But she wouldn't ever count on him being successful. She has a bigger plan."
"Which apparently doesn't include rescuing her lackeys." Emma tossed a droll look toward the pirate. "Tough luck, Hook."
"I'm nobody's 'lackey,' Swan." Hook let out an impatient grunt, hand gripping the bars to his cell. Regina laughed, short and sharp.
"Remind me how long you spent in Neverland again?" Hook's jaw clenched and his nostrils flared, but he bit back whatever weak retort he had in mind.
"Neverland is real? Of course Neverland is real." Emma shook her head, and Regina could almost see the woman willfully push that information out of mind.
"How did he survive?" Ruby asked in an almost whisper, shuddering. Her expression changed from contempt to speculative while looking at their prisoner.
"Back to the point," Regina said rather than answer. "Hook would be nothing more than a distraction to Rumplestiltskin." Regina considered for a moment. "A short one at that."
Hook slammed his good hand against the bars, the smacking sound reverberating through the station. Ruby jumped in her seat, Emma's head snapped around, and Regina felt the tendrils of will begin to form with her hand half raised to build a fireball. She took a shuddering breath and forced the beginnings of magic to disperse.
She tried to not enjoy the rush that came with calling her power with ease.
Hook's eyes were wide, his lips pulled into a sneer. "One day the Dark One is going to lay dead at my feet." He looked to each of them in turn. "And know. Know. I will remember you." He scraped his hook against the metal bars, the sound grating on Regina's ears. "And as Rumplestiltskin will soon learn, there is no realm I cannot find and no sea that I cannot sail." A realization sparked in Regina's mind. "And you will each regret that you stood in my path this day."
"Finally something useful comes out of your mouth, Captain." Regina gave Hook a brilliant smile. The pirate lost his swagger, a confused brow raised while the others looked at her with incredulity lined in their expressions.
"What could possibly—?" Ruby started to say, but Hook disappearing in a cloud of purple smoke brought her to a dumbfounded stop.
Regina's blood ran cold. She's close. The thought ran through her head, and the suddenness of how vulnerable she felt sent a rippling chill down her spine.
"What the hell?" Emma stared at the empty cell, jaw agape.
"Regina?" Ruby eyed her warily, every muscle tense.
"That wasn't me," she said, too distracted to be annoyed. "She has to be nearby."
Emma sprinted off with a curse the moment the words left Regina's tongue. Ruby scrambled to follow, and Regina had to force herself to willfully walk a path that led to her mother.
She has no power over you, Regina reminded herself as she broke into a jog. She felt the swirling torrent of energy building at her turbulent emotions, and only a strong focus on her promise to Henry kept her from having fire dancing in her hands.
She let the power remain a whisper on the edge of her senses, ready to be called if absolutely necessary.
"Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!" Emma's shouts brought Regina's thoughts to a narrow focus. She pushed through the door to find the savior spinning in a swift circle, gun drawn but aimed toward the ground. The blonde continued a stream of curses as her head turned to and fro, seeking their enemy.
"They're not here, Emma." Ruby's words held a sense of absolute surety. The werewolf had her eyes closed, her nose turned in the direction of wafting breeze. "They were…but I think they teleported again." Emma stared hard at Ruby for a brief moment before she clicked the safety of her gun back on and stuffed it into her belt holster.
The sheriff rounded on Regina, hair flyway, a stream of golden waves flowing with each of the woman's powerful strides. "What was that? How can she just do that?" She waved toward the station, eyes wide in frustrated anger.
"There are no magical defenses around the station." Regina stood calm on the brunt of the sheriff's aggression. "If she knew where he was, it wouldn't be difficult."
"Can she do that to anyone?" Emma ran a hand through her hair. "Could she do that to you? To Henry?" A flutter of fear shuddered Regina's heart.
"No," she said with finality trying to think of how to explain the logics behind magic to a layman. "Teleportation with a person requires a sort of… consent. Especially if you aren't right next to the person. They would feel the energy and be able to resist it." Emma let out an audible sigh of relief. "Hook must have been ready for it."
"Still, we need to get anti-magic crap set up." Emma looked toward her station with a frown, lines creasing the corners of her lips. Regina crossed her arms.
"The fairies would be able to get something together. They've got the dust now, right?" Ruby asked.
"Yeah, or we convince the kid that Regina can use magic without going Voldemort on us." Ruby eyed Regina with something ten degrees off contempt. Regina raised a brow in challenge even as she doubted that possibility herself.
"Right," the wolf said rather than arguing, disbelief transparent in her tone. Emma shot her new deputy a frustrated glance but said nothing to her.
"Before Hook was teleported away." Emma closed her eyes and shook her head, muttering something Regina could not make out. She recovered from whatever episode she experienced and looked to Regina. "You figured something out."
"Possibly. Hook reminded me of an obvious fact: He's a sailor." She received two blank looks. "And he neverleaves the Jolly Roger where he cannot get to it." Realization sparked in the other women's eyes.
"The docks," Emma said, already heading toward her squad car.
"It's assuredly hidden by magic." Regina said, falling in step with the sheriff. Ruby trailed after them, and Regina felt the wolf's eyes on the back of her neck. She brushed off her annoyance.
"I'll be able to find it," Ruby said with confidence.
"Then we'll need a fairy, I guess." Emma pulled open the driver side door, paused long enough to glance at Regina, before shaking her head and addressing her deputy. "Ruby, get Mother Superior on the line. Get someone to meet us there."
"On it." The wolf pulled out a smartphone – black but covered in red sequins – and the trio piled into the car.
It was an old thing, a relic from the eighties that the curse's magic had never bothered to update, but Emma coaxed the machine to life, and they left a trail of flying gravel behind them as the sirens blared.
"I don't like this." Regina hugged her arms around her middle. The thick fabric of her clothing did little to blunt the chill coming off the ocean at the early morning hour.
Storybrooke's port stretched along only a small portion of the town's shoreline. With only a half dozen modest-sized docks, the town could never become a nexus of shipping and trade., but the curse added the small town to many befuddled traders' routes, where the local fisherman turned the plentiful bounty of Storybrooke's waters to profit.
Thirty years of habit had kept the outsider sailors coming even after the curse broke, but most of the townsfolk did not dare to sail too far out into the cold Maine waters in fair of crossing the town line. Regina could not blame them and could not guess where at sea the magical border lay.
Though the habit several of the men had picked up in customizing their ships had become something of a worry. One man who owned a small dingy had added a harpoon gun to the rear of his vessel. What purpose that could possibly have in Maine escaped Regina.
The same people that should have been out to sea were now giving her and her odd trio of companions a wide berth. The looks they received held more curiosity than fear or anger, and Regina chalked that up to the woman with her eyes closed, face scrunched up, and nose turned into the chilling wind.
Their would-be-guide had stood like that for several long minutes, trying to pick out their targets' scents among the cacophony of smells the wharf no doubt provided.
"I'm not exactly thrilled right now, either." The sheriff bounced on her toes, head on a swivel. One gloved hand rested on her holstered weapon while the other was balled in a fist.
"You're both kind of giving off a bunch of bad energy," the newest addition to their party said with a smile on the edge of a grimace. The dull navy blue robes and habit were a far cry from the color coded wardrobe the fairies had worn back in their home realm, making it harder for Regina to differentiate among them.
Though with this one's bumbling nature and appealing, angular features, Regina did not need the girl's pink ribbon bracelet to clue her in on her identity.
Regina supposed it should not have surprised her that Blue would have sent the worst of her followers to help them.
"Risk of the job." Emma noted absentmindedly. The fairy turned nun wrung her gloved hands but did not reply. The sheriff glanced Regina's way. "I can't figure out why she waited."
"It can be a coincidence." Regina did not believe it, but felt the need to offer the suggestion. Emma hummed her acknowledgement with the same doubt.
"Got it," The werewolf said with a victorious smile. Ruby didn't wait of them to acknowledge her before she set off on a brisk pace toward the southernmost pier. Emma drew her weapon as they followed and Regina took a steadying breath.
They were a dozen feet from the dock when an odd feeling of dread swept through Regina, causing her to come up short. An urge to be anywhere else other than here dominated her senses, and on either side of her, her companions back-stepped away from their goal. She let out a shuddering breath and realized her feet were bringing her backward too. It seemed like sure a good idea to leave this place and never return…
She forced herself to stop, focusing her attention on an energy just off the edge of her perception. The familiar tinge of her mother's magic clarified, and for a moment Regina was a teenager caught in the woman's unrelenting magical grasp once again.
"Stop." The word came out a strangled order, a worrying mix of fear and authority behind them, and Regina could not be sure it had been addressed to her compatriots, who halted at the word, or herself. She shook her head, focused on the energy and identified it as an illusion in her mind, and forced herself to look past it. "It's a ward. Focus on the task. Remember why we're here."
One by one the other women's eyes cleared – Emma's first, the fairy's last – and each held a disconcerted look.
"I am entirely done with this whole thing." Emma pressed a palm to her forehead and trudged forward. Regina let out a hollow laugh. The blonde had no idea.
"They've both been here, and recently." Ruby declared with a nod, thumbing her nose. The dock before them appeared empty, but now that Regina identified the ward, she could feel her mother's magical presence permeated the air around them.
"Astrid, can you—"
"Nova," the fairy interrupted the sheriff, more bold and confident than Regina had ever heard her. "My name is Nova."
"Right, sorry," Emma said with a brief shake of her head. "Can you, I don't know, sense anything?"
Nova's valor melted away, but she nodded. The fairy toyed with a pouch tied at her waist and produced a modest sum of glimmering dust. Regina stopped herself from sneering at the crude medium, pocketing any would-be comment for later.
"Okay," Nova said, her eyes closed as she stepped toward the edge of the waterfront, and her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. She mumbled under her breath and the dust in her palm became luminescent with the pink energy of Nova's magic. The fairy blew a gentle breath at the dust, guiding it out over the water.
"Cute," Ruby noted with a wry grin while the pink mist spread itself into a large dome, glowing as it pressed itself against an invisible barrier. Nova blushed as Emma laughed softly, but Regina only shook her head.
"Release!" The fairy cried out, slamming her outstretched hand into a fist. With a grating sound that was one part crushed metal and one part shattering glass, the fairy dust cracked through her mother's ward, and the illusion melted away
Leaving a frigate straight out of the eighteenth century visible, bobbing in the water's gentle current.
The echoing feeling of dread dancing on the edge of her senses faded away, and from the way her fellows' shoulders relaxed, she was not alone in that. The fairy took it one step beyond, laughing and clapping her hands together while turning to them with wide, hopeful eyes.
"Good work Nova," Ruby told the woman with an encouraging, if bemused, grin. The wolf stepped toward the ship, her nostrils flaring. Nova trailed after her, babbling about the success of her spell, her steps bouncing with a newfound confident. Regina resisted the urge to comment.
"No skull and crossbones," Emma said. "Disappointing." Regina shot the blonde an incredulous look, but the sheriff answered only with her typical playful grin. Regina rolled her eyes and stepped along the pier toward the Jolly Roger, senses attuned for any residual magic.
"I don't think they're here." The wolf had already boarded the ship and was looking around the deck with a deep frown.
"Can't smell them?" Emma asked as she strode up the gangplank. Regina wondered how the sheriff seemed so at ease with the wolf's abilities with her developing dislike of anything magical, but filed the contradiction away to figure out at a better time.
Ruby scrunched up her nose. "This whole place reeks of Hook, but…" She gestured her arms at the entire ship.
"Oh," was all Regina could say as she followed the sheriff on bard and saw the aftermath of Cora's handiwork. Everything that had not been secured to the deck had been smashed to pieces. Wood, metal, glass, rope. It was all scattered along the deck with no semblance of rhyme or reason.
"Hurricane Cora?" Emma ventured to guess. Regina nodded.
"Oh my," Nova's tone shifted from cheerful to strained. The woman shuffled her feet and glanced around, as if Regina's mother would appear from the shadows at any moment.
Which, Regina reasoned, may not have been improbable.
"Okay," Emma said, refocusing the group's attention. "Split up and search for anything useful, but be careful. If anything looks like it belongs in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings…" She trailed off with a strained shake of her head. "Just don't touch it."
The quartet split into different directions, and Regina – ignoring the various piles of refuse – headed for the stairs leading below deck. Even at her worst moments, Regina knew her mother would never destroy anything of true value. The woman excelled at knowing just how to push things to the breaking point and stopping just before going over the edge.
If there was something to find, it would have been left untouched.
Wood creaked beneath her feet as she descended the ancient, well-worn stairs. The Jolly Roger had a certain kind of magic engrained into it. Decades upon centuries under the employ of Captain Hook had seen the vessel travel over countless oceans and realms, many of which must have been as magically-rich as the Enchanted Forest and Neverland.
Combined with being the only thing – besides his quest for vengeance – Hook gave a damn about in all the realms in the universe, and it left an impression that was as much a part of the ship as the wood that shaped it.
There was no power to it, really. Unnoticeable off the ship or above deck, the thrum of energy only tickled the edges of Regina's magical awareness the further into the ship's depths she went. It was the type of magic she knew would be common in ancestral homes back in the Enchanted forest. Built up generation after generation of the same family populating its halls. To have the same type of magic exist where but one man called the ship home spoke volumes to how much the captain valued the Jolly Roger.
And in this land where magic was a queer and unnatural occurrence, even this little pocket of energy could act as a perfect catalyst for complicated spellcraft, Regina mused.
So focused on isolating the heart of the modest power as she navigated the thin halls with her eyes closed, Regina almost missed the muffled sound of a man sobbing. Her heart skipped a beat in surprise and she found herself in an alcove toward the rear of the ship, a heavy oaken door on either side of her.
The distressed sound came again – from her left – and Regina tried the door. It was unlocked, but its weight forced her to use most of her bodyweight as leverage to get it to push inward. She grunted with the effort, but managed to get inside what amounted to a makeshift brig.
"Archie!" Regina schooled the shock from her features out of habit rather than conscious effort. The psychologist's head snapped in her direction, and he could not hide the flinch at the site of her. Regina did her best not to take it personal, but there was a brief echo of hurt that flitted through her mind before she snuffed it out.
He was in a poor state. His arms strained against ropes stained red where the rough material had chafed through the man's skin. They kept his wrists bound above his head, straining his shoulder joints at an unnatural angle. His thinning hair was wild and flyaway, his blue eyes puffy and rimmed in red. The trails of dried blood running down both his forehead and throat twisted something close to pity in Regina's stomach.
She went to him, nimble fingers working against the knots that kept him bound. As she did so, the man relaxed, slumping in relief.
"Regina." She did not remember the last time she had heard her name spoken with such a sense of relief. "It's actually you."
"Yes." She kept the odd emotions that having her appearance not being reviled brought up at bay. She managed to get one wrist free and the man immediately cradled it against his chest. "I'm glad you're not dead," she said, feeling that something needed to fill the silence.
The man laughed, wet, wry, and weary. "Me too." A fresh melancholy fell over him moments later even as Regina freed his second hand and helped get him to his feet. "Please tell me Belle is okay?" The therapist kept his gaze firmly on the wood beneath their feet.
Realization dawned on Regina at the seemingly random question, and brought with it a sense of sympathetic understanding. "She's fine. She actually managed to capture Hook." The man looked doubly relieved.
"Good." He nodded. "That's good." They left the small room behind, and Regina made to retrace her steps back to the deck, but Archie paused outside the remaining door. At her curious glance, he explained. "After Hook… left." A hand reached up to throat and rubbed it gingerly. "I heard your mother outside my door. It sounded as if she was speaking with someone."
"You think there's another prisoner?" Regina refocused her senses and once again found the trickling ebb of energy that was the Jolly Roger's magical presence. It was stronger here than anywhere else she had been on board.
"There's something." He said with a shrug.
Frowning, she crossed to the door in two quick strides. Placing her palm flat against the warm word revealed not a hint of what lay beyond. "Stand back," she told the man. Once again she found herself pushing the majority of her bodyweight against a door more stubborn than the worst of the beasts she had ridden in her lifetime.
When the old hinges gave way, she did not expect to find a rotund man kneeling in the middle of a bare chamber. Unlike Archie, this man was not bound, but rather appeared to be waking from a light slumber. He yawned, eyes bleary with sleep, and Regina marveled at the difference in how the two prisoners were treated. Where Archie had been completely disheveled, this man was dressed in fine robes in the style popular back in the Enchanted Forest. His long, dark and curly hair was held back in a neat ponytail, and a comfortable growth of beard sprouted from his neck and chin.
He seemed perfectly content until he caught site of Regina. "You!" He shouted, his voice reverberating with an unexpected power. Regina did not recognize him, but she had learned that that did not preclude her from being on the receiving end of righteous rage.
No stranger to being the brunt of such emotions, she kept her calm. "Who are you?" Regina asked, backing away as the man made a clumsy attempt to gain his feet.
"You know who I am! You murdered my family in cold blood!" The man stood on shaky legs and Regina's eyes widened when she locked eyes with the stranger. A tinge of glowing, purple energy pulsed at the edge of the whites of his eyes like a fire in the night.
Whatever the man was seeing, it was not Regina.
"Over beans!" The man bellowed a raging scream, and Regina bolted. Pushing Archie ahead of her, Regina broke out into a run toward the upper deck. The thunderous, lumbering footfalls behind her made for a wonderful motivator to keep moving.
They burst above deck without managing to be caught by the rage-blinded man, and the three surprised exclamations of "Archie!?" were cut off as Regina shouted at them to get off the ship. None of the three followed her suggestion by the time the man appeared at the top of the stairs, chest heaving with heavy breaths.
"Anton?" Emma's startled statement of recognition brought Regina up short, but Anton did not seem to hear her.
"How is this possible? How are there five of you?" The man pressed chubby fingers into his eyes, rubbing them with an aggravated vigor. "The witch warned me you would pull a stunt like this, but she made sure I was ready!" He reached into his robes, and Regina could feel the sudden release of magic.
From Nova's gasp somewhere behind her, the fairy could too.
It was only when Anton started growing to ridiculous proportions that Regina truly understood the depth of her mother's trap, and her blood ran cold.
Cora had brought a giant to Storybrooke.
E/N: So, firstly the bad news. I did not touch anything regarding this story for 10 months until two weeks ago. I recently recommitted myself to writing every day, slowly increasing the word count, and this was the first thing I decided to tackle. Rest assured, updates will be much more frequent for the foreseeable future.
Now, how did you enjoy the chapter? Regina is the most complex character on Once, and trying to get in her mindset at this point in time proved a bit difficult. I feel like she would have been teetering on the edge of rigid control and going entirely 'fuck it all' as long as her mother was in the picture like this. Adds a bit of underlying tension constantly running through her head that's never really acknowledged.
I hope it was entertaining at the least!
Next time we will be returning to our Savior's noggin, and I can guarantee she has not warmed up to magic in the slightest. Considering the fight that's coming up:
In one corner: An evil queen who refuses to use magic, a nun-fairy who is at best a novice, a werewolf who can't wolf out on demand, a savior that's more at home chasing petty criminals than doing anything else, and an injured pacifist who offers exactly as much help in a fight in human form as he would have if he was still a cricket.
In the other: A rampaging giant who's convinced he sees his worst enemy wherever he looks.
Should be good.