A/N: Woo boy, this chapter ended up half again as long as was meant to be. I won't keep you busy up here. Dive right in!
(Edited and updated as of 11/16/2015)
A Gambit in Trust
Emma IV
There's too much happening, Emma thought as she chased after Whale toward Ruby's room, Regina right behind her. I can't keep up. Between Cora's presence (would she try to go after Regina once more? Henry), Neal coming back into her life and proceeding to end up on death's door within an hour of doing so (and who was Tamara and why was she calling dozens of times?), Ruby's injuries in the line of duty (what kept her condition from improving?), and the bullshit politics going on around everything else (what had Midas and Herman been up to the past days?), Emma longed for the time when her biggest trouble was trying to see Henry without Regina knowing.
She would not falter, Emma determined. Could not. She pressed forward.
Ruby's back arced off the bed in convulsions as they entered the room, and Whale ordered Emma to help him turn Ruby onto her side. She turned off her conscious thoughts to focus on the moment, following the doctor's orders with as much care as her shaking hands allowed.
Ruby's seizing eased as Whale jammed a needle into her IV, and the man studied her for long seconds before the frantic beeping of the machines calmed and his shoulders dropped in a sigh. He leaned his weight on Ruby's bed and bowed his head.
"Again," he said, motioning for Emma to roll Ruby onto her back. He pulled several small tubes from the inside of his white coat and moved to draw some of Ruby's blood. "Every day it's the same…"
Emma sat heavily into the room's only chair. In the rush of action in New York and its fallout, Ruby's condition had fallen to the back of her mind. She studied her deputy's pale face, her sharp features now closer to gaunt after just two days. She seemed so feeble beneath the thin hospital gown and without a splash of red on her person. She knew the risks, Emma told herself, but felt hollow.
"It's unusual for silver poisoning," Regina said, stepping to the bed. "If the initial dose did not kill her, she should be well on her way to recovery."
Whale shot Regina a look so full of irritation and contempt that had Emma standing up in a sudden rush to get between them, knocking the chair back. The doctor cut her a glance and swallowed, censoring whatever vitriol was about to come out of his mouth.
"I've never treated a werewolf before," he said instead. "In either world." He held up the vial of Ruby's blood. "The amount of silver in her blood keeps spiking. Any idea why, your majesty?" Emma held back a rebuke. Whale was an ass, but he had managed to put his patients' well-being above his own biases in the past.
Regina raised her eyebrows and her lips twisted in a sneer in an expression both annoyed and challenging as she snatched the vial away from the doctor. She held the plexiglass tube between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand and held her right beneath it, palm up and fingers held as if squeezing an invisible ball.
The new scars along her arm itched at the sight of Regina working her magic. She traced an idle finger along them through her sleeve as the former caused Ruby's blood to pulse in a chromatic array of light that meant nothing to Emma.
"It's like she's been freshly dosed," Regina said, quiet as she worked through the problem. Emma thought she saw a decent amount of silver flowing among every other color of the rainbow.
"I could have told you that," Whale said, deadpan. "We've been monitoring everything. Nobody has been in this room that we don't know about."
"And I'm sure security has been impeccable." The sarcasm in Regina's voice bristled Whale, who drew himself up and puffed out his chest, ready to argue. Regina ignored him, focusing on the vial still. She popped the vacuum seal off the vial with her thumb and brought up her right hand.
The silvery light followed the gesture. "Tracking spell?" Emma guessed. Regina frowned at her, but nodded and opened her hand from a half closed fist to splayed fingers. The wisp hovered in the air for a long second before darting toward Ruby's bedside table and the vase that sat upon it. A half dozen long stemmed, greyish blue flowers glowed as the supernatural light spread over their petals.
"The flowers?" Whale asked, incredulous. "How are they getting silver into her system?" Regina bent closer to the plants, studying them with a slight 'o' playing on her lips.
"Infused with silver and forced to grow," she said more to herself than to them. Her finger trailed along the stem of one of the flowers, prodding it. Particles of light shimmered into the air above the petals. A quick wave of her hand caused a brief wind that sent the particles out the window, and a second set the contents of the vase to flame.
It burned white.
"Who brought those?" Emma asked the doctor, ignoring his yelp as he flinched back from the smokeless fire. "Whale." His attention turned back to her, his brow furrowed and eyes wide.
"Belle," he said. Emma blinked, trying to fathom a motive. "Every day since Ruby's been in she's…" He trailed off and shook his head, watching as the magical flame burned itself out, leaving nothing behind.
"But why would she do this? Ruby saved her, it doesn't make any… sense..." Emma trailed off, realization stealing her speech. If Ruby had not stopped Cora…
She looked to Regina. The other woman had not looked away from the smoke-stained vase, both her hands held in tight fists, trembling, and Emma knew she had come to the same conclusion.
"Cora has her heart, doesn't she?" Emma asked. Regina gave a slow nod.
"Oh, God..." Whale looked stricken. Emma wondered how he knew the implications, but did not have time to run down that line of questions.
Regina shook herself from wherever she'd lost herself in her headspace, turning to Emma with the blaze of determination in her dark eyes. "She's been biding her time, but now she knows that we plan to move against her." She shook her head. "We were so careless. A werewolf fending off my mother…" She scoffed and Emma had to fight down the urge to defend her deputy.
Now was not the time.
"Get her on her feet," she told Whale with a nod toward Ruby. The doctor nodded and seemed glad as she and Regina left him to his work.
Gold's shop was tucked on a corner only several blocks away from the hospital, but the walk dragged on as Emma's mind whirled with how much information Cora could have gleaned from Belle. "She would have to still report things to Cora directly, right?" She asked the former mayor.
Regina blinked, a glaze fading from her eyes. "Possibly," she said. "But if my mother combined it with a scrying spell or something similar…" She trailed off, pursing her lips. Emma grimaced, grasping the implication.
"Gold's not going to go for this." They had already pushed their luck with him that day, and it had not even been an hour since.
"This changes the game," Regina said, a grim little smile playing at her lips after a second's pause, her eyes faraway. It was the most emotion Emma had seen from Regina one-on-one since the New York debacle. "Nothing will motivate him more than saving his precious Belle."
More than his son? "Speaking from experience?" Emma asked with a healthy dose of irony. Regina's smile disappeared in a flash and the woman regained the surly expression that had been her default in anyone else's company.
Emma bit back an irritated sigh and chose not to dwell on the implications from Regina's past, or what had earned her the cold shoulder, and kept quiet the rest of the way to Gold's shop.
They found the place ransacked, junk strewn all over the place, and Gold standing with his back toward them, rigid.
"What the hell happened here?" Regina asked as Emma diagnosed the scene. Things were thrown around haphazardly, including some items that Emma believed would be worth at least a modest sum of cash. Whoever did this was either looking for something specifically, or just trying to cause a bunch of damage in a short amount of time.
"Emma," Regina spoke sharply, drawing Emma away from her deductions. The woman nodded toward Gold with a deepening frown. The man had not moved an inch since they had arrived, save for the rhythmic flexing of his fingertips.
Cautious, Emma approached the shopkeeper with measured steps, calling his name with each. He did not acknowledge her, his fingers still gripping away at the empty air. She braced herself as she came level with him, wishing she knew what to expect.
She leaned around him and found his eyes wide and staring directly at her with a fury that urged her to flinch away. She held her ground. "What'd she do to you?" His eyes cut from her to his left and back again. Emma tried to follow his gaze, but only saw the glass display counter. Nothing appeared out of place to her.
Regina came up on Gold's other side and gave his shoulder a sharp shove. He wobbled like a human-sized bowling pin, joints unbending. He cut a glare Regina's way the best he could.
"Fairy dust," she said. Gold squeezed his eyes shut in a long blink, and Emma assumed that was a confirmation.
"Getting a lot of mileage out of that lately," Emma said. Maybe they needed to make it a controlled substance? She shook her head. Thoughts for later. "How do we fix him?"
"Nothing but time," Regina said. Her hands found her hips and she turned to look around the shop, brows raised in consideration.
"No such thing as anti-fairy dust?" Emma half joked, drawing a droll look from Regina. "How long?"
"Hard to say, but judging from that-" She nodded toward Gold's hands, now slowly flexing into fists and relaxing before repeating the process. "—it won't be long."
"Well we can't afford to waste any time." Emma considered her options. "Do you know the whole blinking thing, Gold? Once for no, twice for yes?" Gold stared at her without blinking, the muscles in his face beginning to twitch.
"We should try to figure out what was taken." Regina scanned the shelves and piles of artifacts.
"I assume Belle was going for the dagger." Regina laughed, irking Emma.
"Rumple would never be foolish enough to keep it here."
"Well why else would she reveal herself?" Emma asked, grumbling. "She had to have been going after her endgame."
"Or he figured out what was happening and my mother was prepared for that eventuality."
"She can't've thought of everything," Emma said and Regina shrugged. "You saw how Gold stormed out of the hospital." In the moment Emma had assumed he had figured out something to help Neal, but now she wondered. "Belle was right there with him. I doubt he figured out Belle wasn't Belle in the last twenty minutes."
Regina held a finger up in an "ah ha" gesture. "Whatever he was after must have been valuable enough to give up her position," she said.
"It is a wonder," Gold said, drawing both women's attention. He spoke through clenched teeth, by choice or necessity Emma could only guess. "That the town has not been torn asunder with you two in charge." He rolled his head from one side to the other, but the rest of him stood immobile.
"What did she take, Rumple?" Regina asked. Gold closed his eyes and seemed to hold his breath. A moment later Emma believed she saw the air shimmer around the man, and his mobility returned. He looked between her and Regina, an expression somewhere between contempt and annoyance on his features, and shook his head.
"The only way I had to save my son." Emma felt a resigned sadness settle in her chest as Gold's shoulders sagged the barest amount, more vulnerability than Emma had ever seen out of the man. "Both of you will stay out of this." He spoke as if it was already a foregone conclusion and moved to leave his shop..
Emma grabbed his arm. "We're in this too, Gold." He eyed her hand with a strained line setting in on his jaw. "You'll need our help." He yanked his arm free in sudden jerk.
"No," he said, quiet but firm. "I won't." Emma cursed the pride of stubborn fools and thought on her feet. She tried to stop him again, this time grabbing him high on a shoulder. Gold responded in an instant with an invisible force that clotheslined Emma in the gut, sending her skidding back against the glass counter. She grunted at the addition of a new bruise to her repertoire.
"I assure you Miss Swan." Gold's voice could have frozen fire. She blinked until the room stopped spinning. Gold stood at the door, glaring over his shoulder. Regina had gotten between him and Emma, a small fireball in her right palm. "Cora Mills will regret threatening those I hold dear for the rest of her terribly short life."
He stepped out in the light of day, adding. "As will either of you if you interfere." He poofed away in a cloud of crimson smoke.
"Why didn't he just do that in the first—?"
"Idiot." Regina whirled on her, fireball dying as she pressed her fingers against her temple. "What possessed you to provoke the Dark One when he's on a warpath?"
"Provoke? I was offering to help."
Regina barked a laugh. "And look at how much damage your help has managed to do these past few weeks." There was a bitterness to Regina's voice that struck something cold and unpleasant in Emma's chest as she realized Regina spoke of more than Gold. The woman's face registered regret in the moments after she spoke.
"I get it," Emma said, pushing off the mix of emotions to focus on the now. "It's been a shitty couple weeks. We'll deal with it later." She held up the hand she'd grabbed Gold with, opening her fingers to reveal strands of the man's hair. "Can you track him?"
Regina blinked. "Yes," she said, surprised. "If he didn't realize what you did."
"He'll be too focused on Belle and Neal." She hoped.
Emma handed the hair over with a grimace. "We're about to walk into a major magic fight, aren't we?"
"Maybe," Regina said, moving her hand in the same pattern as earlier. A hint of irony touched her voice. "But my mother most likely offered a deal."
"The dagger in exchange for Belle? Or Neal?" Gold's hair began to glow red. "Either way, think he'll go for it?"
The orb of burgundy light leapt off Regina's palm to hover at eye level. "I don't know, but we have to be ready if he does." Regina frowned, hesitated, and then continued. "Call your mother, tell her to destroy the beans."
"What beans?"
Regina seemed unperturbed by Emma's surprise, speaking with a sense of irritation. "In their infinite wisdom, your parents had the giant grow a crop of magic beans."
"He's out of jail?" Irritation of her own, verging on anger, took hold of Emma. She had not been to the station since the day Anton had nearly broken her in half. Had David and Mary Margaret forgotten?
"Second chances are their specialty, dear." Emma pressed her eyes closed and pinched the bridge of her nose. How could she protect the town if she had her own allies were letting her play with half a deck?
"How long did you…doesn't matter. Think we could use a bean to banish Cora, call it a day?"
Regina shook her head, resigned. "Even if they were ready for harvest, she would just find another way back."
"Best to get rid of them, then." Emma sighed and pulled her phone and gestured at the orb of light with it before scrolling through her contacts. Her annoyance bled into her voice. "Is there a reason you haven't gotten that moving?" Emma pressed the phone to her ear and turned away from Regina's recoil.
"Emma!" Mary Margaret said with great enthusiasm. "Did Rumplestiltskin agree to the plan?"
"Not quite," Emma said, and followed up with a summary of their current situation. She could picture how the other woman would sag with every bit of news, ending with how Emma knew they had lied to her. "So when were you going to tell me you let Anton out?"
"When you were ready to come back," Mary Margaret said without a moment's hesitation. "You weren't in any condition to-."
"I'm still Sheriff." Emma cut her off, ignoring a flash of guilt. She knew she was being petty. "You need to run these things by me." Regina tapped on her shoulder and Emma cast a look behind her to find the tracking spell drifting toward the door at a glacial place. She nodded toward the other woman and followed.
"We can't destroy the beans, Emma." There was an edge to Mary Margaret's voice bordering between regret and anger. "They're our only way home." She added a touch of desperation.
Emma held the phone away from her ear and cursed, drawing a raised brow from Regina. Why did she have to care so much? She cast her eyes upward for a long moment, trying to imagine having lost home and then being asked to destroy the only way to regain it.
She had no examples to draw from, but tried to sympathize.
"Fine," she said before realizing she still held the phone at arm's length. She put it back to her ear and repeated herself. "Go there. Guard it. If Cora or Gold shows up, you need to destroy it."
"Okay." Relief rang palpable over the line. "Emma…"
"I know," she said and hung up.
"If this goes south," Regina said without looking at her. "My mother will have Rumplestiltskin doing her bidding. They won't stand a chance." Regina's voice held no derision or contempt. She was simply stating fact.
"Then we don't let this go wrong."
Regina shook her head with a little laugh. "Any idea how to do that, Savior?"
She didn't. "We'll figure it out."
"I guess this is where the good guys always blunder in but somehow manage to come out victorious." Regina mused. Despite it all, Emma spared the woman an amused smile. Regina shared it in for a second, and the moment passed.
They followed after their snail-paced guide, and Emma tried to figure out how to stop this disaster and get everyone out of it alive.
The spell led them into woods at the southern edge of town. A half mile off the path (Emma wondered how Regina could keep pace on the uneven ground in heels without stumbling once) and the spell fluttered away, having found its target. Gold stood inside a clearing that could not have been more than two dozen feet across in any direction. He was alone, his eyes locked on the ground, and the dim light able to penetrate the treetops gleamed off the weapon in his left hand.
Regina busied herself with muttering words in a language Emma didn't recognize while pulling a tiny blue bottle from an inside pocket. There was no sudden glow of light or a burst of energy, but Emma thought she felt the air shift before Regina dropped her free hand and sip from the glass.
Regina offered it to her with a grimace and a whisper, "It should mask our magic. Just long enough…" Eyeing the tiny thing with a healthy dose of doubt, Emma tilted it against her lips and knocked back the potion.
It tasted of rubber and Emma used most of her self-control to keep from gagging and ruining the point of it. She sent an accusatory glare Regina's way.
"What'd you expect, apple juice?" Emma let the hint of mockery go for the moment.
"Warning would've been nice…" She muttered, turning her attention back toward the clearing. Gold had moved to the rough center, still staring at his dagger. Emma understood the idea behind the weapon, but found herself skeptical that such a small thing could wield so much power.
With its wavy edges alongside the engraving all over the blade that she could not make out from a distance, it seemed as if it would make a far better mantelpiece than a weapon.
"Think she'll come in guns blazing, or—" Emma shut up as a cloud of violet smoke – close enough to the color of Regina's magic to make her uncomfortable – erupted over the center of the clearing, blocking their view of Gold.
Emma drew her weapon and held it in stiff arms, pointed at the dirt. She scrutinized the fading smoke, keeping her breathing even and urging fate, God, gods, or whatever to make it so Cora had not just teleported Gold away and lost them their only chance to turn the day into a win.
She let out an inaudible breath when she spotted figures through the thinning fog of magic. Gold had gone rigid, standing at full attention and holding his dagger in a fist trembling with rage. Cora stood not a dozen feet from Emma's hiding place with a wicked grin on her face and wearing an archaically formal dress in the darkest of blacks.
At her feet was Belle in a pose of pure submission. She kneeled on the ground, sitting on her calves, with her head bowed so low her auburn hair covered her face. She held her hands in her lap, palms crossed but open, and she did not twitch a muscle.
"Belle…" Gold spoke her name on a whispered breath, his pain raw and potent, but Belle made no indication she had heard at all. Emma's gut twisted. The whole idea of how complete heart control seemed to be chilled her to her very core.
She sent a silent thanks to her parents for pulling off the whole apex of the Fairy Tale story thing.
"Oh, Rumple." Cora shook her head, admonishing Gold as if correcting a small child. "You know better than that. She's mine, in every way. Isn't that right, dear?"
"Yes, your majesty." Belle spoke with none of her typical fire. The monotone she used lacked the backing of any emotion Emma could recognize, striking her as wrong on a primal level. Inhuman.
Beside her, Regina went ashen with her eyes going faraway for a moment before she shook her head, lips pressed into a grim line.
Gold ground his teeth and held the dagger straight out, parallel to the ground with its tip aimed at the center of Cora's chest. The woman laughed and held up her off hand. A glowing red crystal in the perfect replica of a heart rested on her open palm. Tiny swirls of blackness whirled within it.
"Careful, dear." Cora still smiled, but her words took on a grave sense of gravity. She closed her grip around the heart one delicate finger at a time. "I know you're smart enough to know how this works if you attempt to do anything with that dagger." She squeezed the crystal for a moment, and Belle let out a sharp cry of pain.
Gold's arm fell as if it were dead weight.
"The candle?" He asked, and Cora's eyes flashed surprise.
"Oh?" Her jovial grin returned. "Did you hear that Belle? He's chosen his son over you. Tell him how that makes you feel, and be honest now."
"Terrified." Belle answered dutifully. Gold averted his eyes and let out a slow breath.
"Such a waste," Cora said and tightened her grip on the heart.
In the breadth of a second Belle had shouted in agony, Gold yelled for Cora to wait, and Emma had her gun pulled and trained at the sorceress' center of mass with her finger less than a hairsbreadth away from pulling the trigger.
The only thing keeping Cora from experiencing a clip's worth of lead ripping through her was that she heeded Gold's request and once again held the heart in an open palm. Her teeth showed in a predatory grin.
Emma let out a raggedy breath and felt Regina's stare burning through the side of her skull. She wondered if it were out of instinctive concern for her mother or because Emma's arms trembled as she kept aim on Cora.
She did not relish the idea of shooting a second person in as many days, but she truly did not want to strain to her fledgling trust and friendship with Regina.
Killing her mother in front of her would probably not go over well.
The lingering reminder that the woman also possessed a way to save Neal hammered the final nail in Emma's will to shoot the woman. She holstered her weapon.
"So she does come before all else." Cora mused. Her head slanted slightly to the left in thought. "I wonder if you would have come to value me more than your powers, had things gone differently." She let out a sigh Emma assumed was meant as wistful.
What? She spared a quick glance to Regina, finding the woman slack jawed and seemingly nauseated in the unmistakable expression of a child finding out far too much information about a parent. Despite the situation, Emma felt a tick of amusement.
Gold ignored the implication. "For my dagger." Gold grimaced. "You will both restore Belle's heart and provide me with the candle." He drew himself up to his full height. "Once they are both safe, then you may have it."
Cora laughed, mocking and cold. "Or I can give you five seconds to drop the blade or I crush your lover's heart."
Emma's mind raced, focus honing in on Belle's heart. She judged the distance and wondered if she would be able to grab the crystallized organ before Cora knew what was happening if she took off at a dead sprint. She would leave at least a second or two for Cora to react.
The woman's fingers began to close, and Emma's knees bent and heels dug into the ground. She knew nothing other than she needed to get Belle's heart away from the woman.
The energy burst across her perception for the span of a single breath the moment the thought occurred in her mind. Magical smoke in a shade yellower than Emma's bug encircled Belle's heart and it vanished from Cora's hand, reappearing in Emma's own with a flash of the same color.
The crystal felt heavy in her hand, solid, and she could feel the steady thump thump as it echoed the motions of the real thing.
She stared at the heart in her hand, then looked to Regina to confirm she had not just imagined doing what she'd done.
Regina held a surprised, impressed smirk, her dark eyes glittering with unspoken approval.
Emma's heart fluttered at the small victory.
"Swan!" Reality crashed back in flurry of activity. Cora snarled in Emma's direction, every expression of cheer and amusement gone from her stance and Emma felt the whole of Cora's murderous intent fall on her shoulders as the woman called burning crimson and orange power to her hands. Emma felt the energy build up for the woman to do so and sucked in a surprised breath, hesitating for a single moment.
It was long enough for Cora to unleash her fire, not toward the tree Emma took shelter behind, but straight at the still prone Belle.
Run! Emma thought in desperation, unable to gather her wit in time to even vocalize her plea. Belle jettisoned from her kneeling position and took off at a dead sprint as Emma registered the buildup and release of magical energies both to her left and from Gold's direction in the same moment Belle began to move.
Cora's flamethrower struck a thin whirlwind, flaring it up in intensity for a moment before fluttering out against the gale. The sorceress herself had been flung away by an unseen force, ass over teakettle.
Regina held her right hand out straight, perpendicular to the ground, wrist braced by her left hand, and her chest heaving in quickened breaths. Gold had been waving his hands in a flurry of motion, but now stalked toward the recovering Cora with the promise of murder in his eyes. Emma glanced at the crystalline heart in her hands, her battered psyche choosing to accept the situation rather than try to analyze it.
Get safe. Get help. She urged the thought toward Belle, hoped that's how it worked, and stuffed the thing in her jacket's inner pocket. It thrummed with energy and Emma took that as a good sign as she stepped out of her protection and drew her weapon once more, trusting it more than her ability to successfully pull off magic when actually meaning to.
"Gold!" Emma warned as they approached. He held an arm out toward Cora, magic thrusting the woman against the tree hard enough to steal the breath from her. "Gold!" She tried again, but he ignored her and shoved a hand into Cora's chest without preamble. Emma felt a pulse of power slip by inches to her left and Gold staggered several steps backward, hand empty.
Emma couldn't spare a glance at Regina and stood between Cora and Gold, eying each of them. Gold slowly closed the fist that had attempted to grab Cora's heart, annoyance and anger twisting his visage and deepening the lines on his face. Cora simply laughed.
"Did you truly think me that foolish? You ought to know better, dear." Even as Cora mocked Gold, she scanned between the three of them, searching for a way out.
"More powerful foes have been felled by simpler means," Gold said with a disappointed sigh. He flicked a brief look to Regina. "Never do that again."
"Focus." Emma meant the order for both Gold and Regina, who she sensed riling in anger behind her. She narrowed her eyes Cora, who met her gaze with a small, confident smile. Emma did not have a good enough read on the woman be sure if it was for show or if she actually had an ace up her sleeve.
"I suggest you get out of my way, Ms. Swan." Gold spoke with the harsh cadence of restrained anger. "The promise of a sliced throat can work just as well as holding someone's heart." He held up his dagger at an angle that caught the light, stepping forward only to be stopped by Emma's outstretched arm. He glared at her. She ignored it.
"Crude," Cora commented, indifferent. The woman turned her attention toward Regina. "Tell me, my lovely daughter, how standing on the same side as the Dark One is any better than helping your mother?"
"I think being away from you pretty much clinches the argument," Emma said before Regina spoke.
Cora laughed again, still staring over Emma's shoulder at Regina. "She speaks for you, too! Do you tricks for her as well?"
Emma took a half step to her left, cutting off Cora's line of site to her daughter. "You don't get to talk to her." Emma surprised herself by how cold she sounded, bleeding amusement from Cora in an instant.
"Afraid she'll see the light, dear? How long do you think the charade can last? She won't be content barking on your command just for scraps of time with her son. Not forever." The woman's lips lifted in a savage little smile, predatory and taunting. "She'll remember who she is, and take what is rightfully hers." She tilted her head slightly to the right. "Or we can skip all of that if you would just open your eyes Regina!"
Emma did not know how it happened, but she found herself almost flush against the witch with the cold steel of her gun digging into the flesh beneath the woman's chin. "Shut. Up."
Dead silence fell around the clearing save for the choked gasps Cora made as her eyes went wide in surprise. Emma realized with a start that her magic had seemingly acted of its own accord and put unrelenting pressure on Cora's throat as well.
A bruise bloomed on her neck and Emma jumped back as if shocked. Her power receded away from Cora but still swirled around her, unguided and wild and fueled by her combined anger and rising panic.
Cora spluttered and coughed, but still managed to speak. "This is who you put your faith in, Regina?" The woman let out a hacking laugh. "Do you enjoy being under her heel? You are nothing to her!"Emma risked a look toward Regina, wanting to deny Cora's claim, but she found Regina's head bowed, hair shielding her eyes so Emma could not gauge her reaction.
"Enough," Gold spoke in a snarl, stepping toward Cora with the confident stride of a predator cornering its prey. "Get me the candle Cora, or—"
Emma's neophyte sixth sense warned her a split second before the wave of force lashed out from Cora in a whip of solid power. She dug her feet in and tried to use the power at her fingertips to soften the blow, but she only managed to keep herself on her feet while sliding backwards, digging tracks through the dirt.
Gold was not so lucky, catching the brunt of the attack that sent him flying through the air until he was out of Emma's line of sight.
Before she could figure out if Regina had been hit as well, Cora swept her arms over her body in a crossing pattern that Emma recognized Regina use for teleportation. With an urgent thought, and not sure of the details, Emma pushed her magic behind her and felt as if someone had given her a swift kick in the ass as she flew forward.
Something snagged her ankle, but she still managed to latch onto Cora's wrist before the magical smoke had taken her away, and Emma found herself surrounded by violet energy.
The moment lasted less than a breath in which Emma felt a nauseated mix of weightlessness and pressure pushing down on her from all sides. Disoriented, Emma thought she was spinning and tumbling without an idea for direction until her entire body jerked to a halt provided by the soft embrace of solid stone.
"Fuck…" She grunted out her displeasure before hearing movement on either side of her and forced herself to focus. As she rolled to her knees and tried to regain her feet, she realized their tranquil forest scenery had been replaced by a dimly lit cave.
The only details she could make out were a cot in one darkened corner, and a table carved out of the rock wall holding three ornate-ish boxes – two closed, one open – and a black and white double-sided candle in another.
"Foolish child!" Cora seethed, and Emma whirled to face her. The witch's eyes almost glowed with anger in comparison to the shadows around them. She pushed out a hand held in a claw and Emma's defensive instincts took over, reminding her she still held a gun. She brought the weapon to bear only for the force Cora unleashed to hit her beneath her wrists, knocking the firearm away before Emma could let loose a single shot.
Without hesitation Emma brought her arms back and pushed, trying to unleash a concussive wave of force of her own. Cora crossed an arm across herself and the trickle of energy that Emma managed to produce only lapped against what she assumed was a shield, no more dangerous than a wave against sand.
Really wish I knew what I was doing. The thought did her little good as Cora hit her with another blast and then swiped toward the ceiling. The echoing crack of breaking stone was Emma's only warning as she dove in a roll to her left, landing hard on her recently healed shoulder.
Her arm went numb for a terrifying moment before the pain set in. She gritted her teeth against it, and found she could still move the limb.
It distracted her long enough for her to barely register Cora following up her attack with a series of fireballs. Emma threw her right arm across her face in a desperate imitation of Cora's earlier move, and, to her immense relief, the fire clashed against a solid shield in brief flares of golden light that illuminated the entire cave.
Which let Emma spot Regina slowly gaining her feet several yards behind Cora. With a victorious grin, Emma pressed forward, steps only slowed with each attack Cora pressed against the metaphysical barrier. The closer Emma made it to the woman, the more desperate and unstable the attacks became. Fire, stone, and air crashed into the magical shield, but, miraculously, it held.
In a straight magical fight coming down to skill, Emma was not in Cora's class and both women knew it.
So Emma decided to throw whatever brute force she could at the woman and hoped it would be enough.
Once she was close enough, she lowered her shoulder, waited for a brief pause in Cora's near relentless barrage, and dropped her shield, diving at Cora in a classic grapple around the midsection.
Heat seared Emma's back, but her leather jacket protected her from the worst of it as she tackled Cora to the ground, knocking the wind from the witch. She followed it up with a solid punch to the woman's gut and three vicious strikes to the side of Cora's head.
Cora proved unable to take a punch as her eyes went unfocused after the second blow, and her body went limp after the third. Emma told herself she added the fourth hit just to ensure the woman stayed down, but she could not deny the savage sense of justice the feel of her fist against the woman's skull brought her.
Panting, heart beating an insane rhythm, and adrenaline pumping through her veins, she rested back and found herself straddling Cora's thighs. Feet away, Regina had gained her feet and looked at the scene before her, her expression inscrutable.
She did not speak, choosing instead to walk in slow steps toward the table with the boxes.
"Regina," Emma tried to say, but her voice came out a croak. She realized that at some point during the fight she had inhaled enough dust and roasting air to fry her throat. She swallowed against the newfound pain as her adrenaline faded, and tried again. "Regina?" It came out as English this time, but the woman still did not acknowledge her.
"Hearts." Regina flipped the lid off one of the boxes, pulling a crystal heart from within that was much the same as the one in Emma's pocket, save for a much denser amount of darkness pulsating within.
Emma hoisted herself off the prone Cora and shuffled toward the table. "Who do suppose the extra one is?" She assumed one had to be Cora's own. Regina only shrugged, still not deigning to look at her, and Emma tried to remember that Regina had to be fighting years of mental habits that had been untested in decades.
She rested one hand against the table for balance and the other between Regina's shoulder blades to try and turn the woman toward her.
"Should be easy enough to find out," Regina mused, eyes resolute in staying on the heart as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.
"Regina." Emma added a bit of desperation in her voice. "Look at me." Regina's eyes drifted closed and she gave a little shake of her head.
"It's going to take time, Swan."
Before Emma could figure out a response, something barreled into the small of her back, crunching her gut against the side of the table and her upper body against the tabletop itself, sending everything on it flying in different directions.
"Stop!" Regina's voice echoed with the commanding poise of a queen as she held out the heart in her hands, but Cora neither flinched nor hesitated.
The twist of rage on the woman's features burned itself into Emma's memory as the busted and bleeding lips staining her teeth red were at odds with the deep purple bruise that was her nose and the right side of her face. It made her look like the monster she was, Emma thought.
The second blow caught Emma on the chin, knocking her up into the air until the back of her head smacked against the rock wall and she crashed down to earth.
The next thing Emma knew when she cobbled her thoughts together in something vaguely resembling coherence, was that Cora now held her hand within Regina's chest. The older woman was ranting at her daughter as Regina cried out in pain.
In her head, Emma sprang up and body tackled Cora again, but her body did not appear to be completely on the same page as she only managed to get on all fours before collapsing again in a wave of dizziness.
When focus returned to her on a fragile thread, she was flat on her stomach and staring at a crystal heart that was at least two thirds darkness lying next to an upturned box. It was mere feet away from her, but in her condition it may as well have been miles.
"—happening, Regina. One way or the other." Cora was saying. "Whether I have to rip out your heart or—"
Emma tuned out that unnerving dialogue out and drove every fiber of her being to focus on the heart in front of her, willing the fifty-fifty shot that was her magic today to just work. She pictured what she wanted as clearly as her mind was capable and pushed out with her power.
The heart kicked up into the air and a wave of dizziness hit her that was so strong that Emma was forced to slam her eyes shut, which did not stop the overwhelming nausea from overtaking her. She heaved up vile tasting bile and rolled over, urging her head to stop spinning.
Hours or seconds later, Emma managed to open her eyes and take in the aftermath of her desperate action. Cora had gone silent, staring at Regina's hand where it rested above the witch's left breast. Her eyes widened as her breaths came in quicker and quicker gasps in what Emma's jumbled mind registered as the start of a panic attack.
Regina was not much better, looking at her hand as if she could not fathom what she had done.
"Regina…?" Cora's voice held a plethora of emotions, confusion most prominent. Emma wondered what feeling something for the first time in thirty years would, well, feel like.
Regina shook herself from her stupor and, almost gently, called her magic to drive Cora back against the cave wall. Rock liquefied and shifted until each of the woman's four limbs were covered and she was left immobile. A second motion set the woman to sleep, and silence reigned.
Relieved beyond measure and with absolutely nothing left in the tank, Emma sighed and let her eyes drift closed to stop the world from spinning. Her date with unconsciousness was interrupted as someone jerked her to her side and started to lift her off the ground. She tried to make her displeasure known, but her annoyance melted away to gratefulness as hard stone was replaced with what had to be the most comfortable pillow in the world.
"Swan? Emma!?" Regina's voice had not annoyed Emma this much in months and she forced her eyes open into a glare the likes of which the world had never seen before. "Focus," Regina urged and Emma realized she was not glaring so much as blearily blinking.
She was also lying on Regina's thighs.
Huh.
"Can you hear me?" Regina asked.
"Glad you're safe," Emma tried to say, but it came out as gibberish. Regina's lips quirked in what might have been amusement. Faint shouts came across Emma's notice and somewhere in her head she recognized her parents' voices along with Belle's.
The crystal heart in her jacket thumped in reminder and Emma began to laugh.
Belle had gotten help after all.
Regina's amusement turned back to concern, and Emma laughed all the harder without knowing why.
E/N: Like I implied up top, this chapter was only supposed to be about 5k words or so, but it bloomed in a way only rivaled by Regina II in length, and the second half is my favorite thing I've written for this fic so far.
Concussions seem to be a common occurrence in my battles.
One thing that irked me about canon is that we never really see an all out magical clash. The closest we ever come are completely one sided affairs. Here I wanted to show how four people of vastly differing skill levels (Rumple Cora Regina Emma) could come together in a way where the levels are roughly evened by outside circumstance. Nobody in this chapter really let loose save for Cora's all out attempt to break down Emma's luck-strong shield, but I still feel like it portrayed the possibilities of a magical slugfest in an intriguing way. And I can promise that as the story goes on, magic on magic battles will become more and more commonplace, and will encompass a scope larger than just flinging elements back and forth.
It's just so much fun.
Anyway, our leading ladies have finally hurdled Major Obstacle #1 in taking down Cora, whose plans within plans were unraveled by Emma's sneaky move (note, the reason Emma was able to magically call the heart while it wasn't an option for Rumple or others will be explained and explored later).
But now we have an interesting situation. Cora has her heart and is still alive, Neal is still dying a slow and painful death, and who exactly does that third heart belong to (it was taken on screen, as I'm sure a few(or most) of you noticed)? Regina's got a buttload of Mommy issues to work out, and Emma is frankly tired of getting her ass kicked in every showdown.
Not to mention Greg is still in town and Tamara is clueing into the ongoing activities. Plus the Storybrooke politics still need to resolve.
So lots still to come, and I hope you stick around to see it all!
Please read and review!