A/N: An ongoing search, internalized guilt, and the blame game are abound.
A Gambit in Trust
Regina V
Fear was an emotion Regina had believed herself to be well versed in throughout her life. It had driven her childhood from obeying her mother's every whim to finding the courage within to rebel in small ways. Fueled her in her desire to master magic as it bred into anger, resentment, and hate. Rumplestiltskin had nurtured the toxic emotion within Regina as surely as Cora had, but she had never balked in all her time as Evil Queen. Fear became a tool. One she readily used in her never ending quest.
Her perception of the depth one could feel it had shattered in a single moment when she learned Henry had eaten the cursed turnover that had been meant for his birth mother.
That fear; true fear; had been a feral thing. A lion locked in a cage, clawing at the walls in a desperate bid to escape. Full of rage and hollow despair, unable to do anything. Paralyzed to inaction. Regina never wished to feel it again.
It was a weaker moment, she knew, but she wanted to kill the one who brought that despair back to her. Her hands trembled, energy crackling beneath the surface but dying before it could manifest.
He's been taken.
Emma Swan stood on Regina's porch, and she could see the match to her fright in Emma's watery eyes that refused to shed tears. The savior's magic flared in time with her frayed emotions, just shy of a visible aura surrounding the woman.
Regina coughed, realized she'd forgotten how to breathe, and took several steadying breaths. She pushed away the instinctive, reactionary thoughts of harming the messenger and stepped aside. The blonde strode into the mayoral mansion and made a beeline for the stairs, Regina hot on her heels.
She moved with confident steps into Henry's bathroom, emerging moments later with Henry's comb held in a white knuckled fist.
"We need a tracking spell," she said, her voice hoarse with the promise of emotion.
"We need to get to the vault, then." Regina ignored the presence of the same lilt in her tone.
"We just have to do it again," Regina said, refusing to believe the results her spell had given her. Across the low table, Emma sank to a stone stool with a soft thud. The air let out of her as her shoulders sagged, and Regina recognized the telltale signs. "Magic isn't foolproof, Emma," Regina said.
Because if Emma Swan lost faith, Regina did not think she could muster enough for both of them.
The blonde watched through desperate eyes as Regina went through the motions for a fourth time. Mixing ingredients that would appear random to the unlearned, adding energy at the right points, muttering gibberish that guided the forces under her will. She released the spell and a strand of Henry's hair lit up to a brilliant gold, raised several inches off the table, and promptly flickered out and fell victim to gravity.
Another failure.
Regina's fists rammed into the stone table, the pain of it barely registering as she let out a snarl of defiance.
Her son was not dead. He was not.
The silence stretching between them could circle Storybrooke twice over.
Emma's breathing grew shakier, and Regina could read the thoughts behind her eyes. My fault, my fault, my fault. The guilt shined clear as day, and Regina could not offer her comfort. A niggling, darker corner of her mind agreed with the assessment and the former queen made an effort not to let it show. All the simmering anger in the world would offer no help to her now.
"We need a new plan," Regina said, idly noting her voice had gone raw. Emma opened her mouth to speak, but a blaring ringtone sang from her pocket. The sheriff scrambled for it with all the grace of a drunken toddler.
"Tell me you have something, Rubes." Regina held her breath, hearing the werewolf's voice from the other end of the line, but unable to make out coherent words. She studied Emma instead, and for a brief moment the woman glowed with the hope and confidence one could expect from someone titled Savior, but it was snuffed out a moment later.
Ice grasped Regina's heart in a vice.
"Alright, just." She shook her head. "Just stay there. We'll be right over." Emma brought the phone down and Regina heard plastic protesting the sheriff's white knuckled grip.
"Plan B?" Emma nodded.
"Ruby picked up a trail, but it ends at the town line." Emma grimaced, raised her fist into the air as if she were about to throw her phone to the ground, but caught herself. She averted her gaze to the side and shoved the device into her pocket
Regina nodded, absorbing the new knowledge and trying to look at it objectively. Being over the town line would explain the inability for tracking magic to function, and suggested that whoever had taken Henry had known such.
And it cut the pool of possible suspects to the handful who could cross the town line without repercussion.
Herself, Emma, Gold, the missing Captain Hook, Emma's ex, his fiancé, and…
Regina blinked, a cold sense of being correct struck her.
"We need to get there," Emma said, but Regina was already digging through her inner coat pockets. "Pick up a trail the old fashioned way. Regina?"
Emma was already halfway toward the hall when Regina pulled out the coin and repeated the tracking spell on the small disc of metal. The spell played out the same as with Henry's hair. As far as the magic was concerned, the SD card Regina had paired the coin with did not exist.
Which meant it was over the town line. Which could very well be a coincidence, but…
Regina's instincts shouted that she was right.
"Magic's not working Regina," Emma said with no small amount of regret bleeding through her voice. "We need to get to the line." Regina brought herself back to the present and followed the blonde out to the yellow bug. She slid into the passenger seat and tried not to remember that Henry had been sitting there less than an hour before.
Glass crunched beneath her feet and freezing wind whipped at her through the shattered window, making it impossible to do so.
She wracked her brain as Emma weaved through Storybrooke. The blonde's hectic pace bringing comfort rather than terror now that it matched the urgency Regina felt to her very core. She knew that David had never officially processed the man into the system, but there had to be some way of finding some information about him. He had to have interacted with someone other than her and the deputy.
A thought struck her and she brought her phone to her ear. It rang twice before an aged, harried voice answered. "Granny's."
"I need information," Regina said without preamble. "A man may have stayed with you recently named Greg Mendel. I need to know any details he left with you."
Granny let out a sound that may have been a snort. "I don't make a habit of invading my guest's privacy, your majesty." The contempt slithered through the receiver and Regina's lip curled in distaste.
"He may have taken Henry," she said rather than rise to the old woman's bait. She might not ever change people's mind about her, but her son was well loved. Granny was a hard woman to read, but her gruff voice gained a soft edge when she spoke again.
"Ruby said something happened when she ran out of here, hang on." She could hear the woman shuffling around and felt Emma glance her way every few seconds. Regina kept her eyes closed and head lowered, praying that Granny would have something. "Let's see, address out in Portland. Generic email address, ah! He left a cell number." Regina's eyes snapped open and she pulled a pen out of her pocket, writing on her hand for lack of better option.
"Thank you," Regina said after the old woman rattled off the ten digits. "I won't forget this."
"Didn't do it for you," Granny said and the line clicked dead. Regina took no offense, pulled the phone off her ear and stared at the numbers stenciled on her palm. It was a weak lead, but it was something.
"Regina?" Emma questioned as she took another sharp turn.
"Tell me you have a way to track cell phones." Regina heart sunk as Emma straight laughed at the prospect.
"I barely have a computer that runs on paperclips and hope." Emma reminded her with a bitter hint of regret. Regina let out a breath.
"Just get us to the line."
An eclectic group waited for them at the edge of town as Emma pulled up behind another pair of cars.
Snow White sat on the hood of David's patrol car, her face set in a mask of calm determination that Regina recognized from the war. Nothing but serenity rolled off the woman, which did little to calm her husband. Charming stood just in front of his wife, arms crossed, and glared at the town line. He bounced on the balls of his feet and every one of his muscles strained, ready to move at a moment's notice.
Emma's ex stood off to the side, hands stuffed in his pockets and expression locked into a stoic neutrality. If not for the prominent jut of his jawbone against his cheek as he clenched his teeth, Regina would have assumed him emotionless. His fiancé loitered over his shoulder, fidgeting with his jacket and her own. Regina found little evidence of the hardline poise the woman had shown earlier in her nervous motions.
Inches from the town line, Ruby paced. Her boots echoed off the pavement as she moved back and forth, a sound stuck halfway between a growl and a whine flowing from her throat in a low rumble. "The trail is right here," she said once she spotted them. She gestured to a point over the line. She dropped her hand, muscles going slack as she bowed her head. "I'm sorry," she said mostly to Emma, but glanced to Regina with genuine regret as well.
"Did you have your wolf senses during the curse?" Regina asked, struck by a thought. Ruby blinked at the question that had to seem out of left field, considered, and shrugged.
"I don't remember." She frowned. "I never noticed it, but I never looked for it either." She shook her head, focusing back on the present. "Why does it matter?" Regina called it Plan C and looked toward Rumplestiltskin's son.
"Baelfire." Using his given name struck the man from his melancholy introspection and he snapped a look her way. "Call your father, get him here." She ensured her tone brooked no arguments. He looked as if he might object nonetheless. "Have him bring his potion for crossing the line." She eyed Ruby once more. "And we'll hope that you can still follow your nose over the line."
The werewolf's jaw set in pure determination and she nodded.
"Are you sure that will work?" Emma asked in a low voice. Snow and Charming still caught it and looked to her with guarded hope as well.
Truly Regina did not know. If the changes to the woman's senses were physical as well as magical, there was a chance they could be maintained outside Storybrooke's magic bubble, but even that was a longshot.
"I hope so." She repeated, and pulled her phone. She punched the numbers under Emma's questioning gaze and, as the phone rang, Regina wondered if she wanted her suspicions to be proven or not.
"Who are you-?" Emma started to ask but Regina held up a hand as the line picked up.
"Madame Mayor!" The voice of Greg Mendell greeted her, cheerful and sounding winded. Regina's stomach dropped. If he already knew she was calling before she had a chance to speak, she doubted it would bode well. "I'm impressed. I expected you to figure it out, but nowhere near this quickly."
"Where is my son?" Six pairs of eyes locked onto her, questioning. Regina put the phone on speaker and gestured for quiet.
"With me of course," Greg said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Say hello to your dear mother, Henry." A muffled shout answered the man and every one of Regina's maternal instincts roared at her to take action. She clenched her jaw against the rage threatening to spill forth.
"The boy's not much of a hiker," Greg said with a hint of condescension. "You should have taken him camping once or twice."
"If you harm one hair on his head, I swear to every god that can hear me that I will end you." Emma spoke so low and with such hate that Regina had not thought the blonde capable of.
It chilled her even as the instinctive part of her rallied to her cause.
"Sheriff? Good, I won't need to repeat myself." Greg did not even falter. "I wanted to press the point of how little power you hold right now, Madame Mayor, but I suppose the sheriff can use a reality check too."
The unmistakable sound of a firearm's safety clicking off sounded over the line and Regina was introduced to another new level of fear she would never have imagined.
"It would be nothing for me to shoot him now. Bury him here, little better than a beast." She heard Henry's struggles renew with vigor, and Regina did not hesitate.
"Please," she said, closing her eyes but unashamed at the desperation she conveyed. "What do you want?"
"The truth," Greg said. A heavy silence hung in the air for a moment before the click of the gun's safety turning back on sounded. "Henry won't come to harm quite yet, but I should warn you that he'll be sharing space with our mutual friend, Captain Hook." Regina's brows flicked up in surprise.
How had Hook ended up in Mendell's clutches, of all places?
"And you know what they say about pirates. I'll be in touch." The line clicked dead. Emma stared at the phone with an intensity that Regina felt surprised the device had not caught flame. She reached out a hand to squeeze the other woman's shoulder, snapping her out of her headspace. She couldn't offer Emma a reassuring smile, but they shared grim look of understanding and the sheriff visibly gathered her wits.
"Get your father," Regina spoke the order at a whisper, but her voice carried on the quiet wind. Neal already had his phone to his ear, his free hand running circles on his fiancée's back. The woman stared into the middle distance, seemingly unsettled. Regina held back a tick of irritation at the site and made a concerted effort not to make more enemies.
"Papa…" Regina sighed and leaned back on the sheriff's car, hating that they were forced into the waiting game. She felt the weight of someone's stare and found herself locking eyes with Snow White while her husband spoke to Emma. The former princess' brows were furrowed as if she were solving a troublesome riddle.
Regina chose to ignore that as well, and waited for Rumplestiltskin to come running to his son's distress call.
"It's… harder," Ruby said, actively sniffing the air rather than relying on her passive abilities. "But I think I can follow the trail."
A surge of vicious hope urged Regina to move. "We can't waste time then," Emma said, on the same wavelength as Regina. Ruby gave an emphatic nod, clutched her crimson hood in a white knuckled grip, and set off at a steady pace.
"Good luck," Rumplestiltskin spoke from behind the town line, sounding as genuine as the man ever did. Regina paid him little mind, her issues with the Dark One firmly placed on the back burner.
"Be careful." Snow added, and Charming echoed her sentiment. Neither held the artifact dearest to them, and Regina had refused to wait longer than necessary to set off. Mendell already had several hours of a head start and had still been moving during their call.
The quintet did not stay on the road long. Less than a mile away from Storybrooke they came across a car pulled off the side of the road, and Ruby led them into the woods. Unlike those surrounding her town, there were no paths through the trees and the group's progress faltered as they had to fight through underbrush the entire way.
It was a grueling, exhaustive process, and they lacked all the tools to make it easier, but Regina pushed forward with a sense of singular purpose she had never known before.
Emma matched her stride for stride and dragged, pushed, or encouraged any of the others that began to lag.
They were rewarded every so often by a broken branch or a discarded piece of outerwear. Regina could not make out most of the trail, but the clear signs of Henry actively leaving a series of breadcrumbs built a well of hope within her.
The sun had long since set when they came to a stop. At the apex of a small hill, Greg Mendell leaned against a waist-high boulder, fingers idly tracing over his gun. The portable lantern set on the rock illuminated little more than his face, and caught the white of his teeth as he grinned.
Regina's heart sank. He had been expecting them. Waiting for them.
How?
She did not have time to contemplate it before she found herself staring down the blackened barrel of his weapon. Emma moved in a flash, bringing her own weapon to bear, aiming at the man's center mass.
"I would think twice about that sheriff," Greg said without taking his eyes off Regina. "Isn't that right, Captain?"
"Aye." The unenthusiastic voice of Captain Hook filtered over a phone Regina only just noticed resting next to the lantern. "The boy's life depends on your cooperation Swan. I suggest you listen to the man." The man's speech lacked the pirate's typical swagger, reminding Regina of a man reading scripted lines.
"Where is he?" Neal moved up to Regina's side, glaring down at Mendell.
"Not here." He swept a quick glance around and swallowed, realizing his odds. He could get a shot off on Regina, but the others would close on him before he could fire another.
Regina did not relish the idea of taking a bullet. Not before knowing Henry was safe.
"Here's how this works." Mendell squared his shoulders and nodded behind him toward his right. Regina could make out a rough path carved through the brush if she squinted. "You four follow your werewolf to Henry and the good captain will hand him over peaceably. Only catch is you leave the Evil Queen with me."
Both Ruby and Emma sucked in sharp breaths and Regina could not contain her surprise either. The man knew far too much. More than anyone in this world had a right to know.
"Who are you?" Regina asked at the same moment Emma said, "Not going to happen."
Mendell wore a wicked grin. "Plan B is I shoot her royal majesty in the face, and Captain Hook introduces poor Henry whole new world of pain before he'll join his mother."
"You can't." Tamara surprised Regina by speaking up, looking both shocked and affronted.
"I can," Mendell snapped back without glancing toward the woman. "Do not test me." Regina looked the man dead in the eye and recognized the quiet desperation of a man pushed to the breaking point.
She took a silent, steadying breath, and wished she could understand the man enough to turn the situation around. As it stood…
"Go," she said and became the center of attention once again as her four compatriots stared at her in various shades of incredulity.
"Regina." Emma said her name in a strained, desperate sort of way that sent a chill down Regina's spine. It offered her objection, looked for assurance that Regina knew what she was doing, and expressed a guilt around the edges. Doubtlessly the blonde would blame herself for the turn of events, and while Regina could not deny the sheriff did deserve a portion of it, she held her tongue.
It didn't feel right to say it.
"Go." She repeated.
"And what's to stop him from pulling the trigger as soon as we're all away?" Ruby glared a Greg, who only shrugged.
"Nothing," he offered with a smile.
"Neal," Emma said, still staring down Regina as if she hoped to break her resolve. "Stay here until we get to Henry."
"Emma, I—"
"I don't—"
Emma didn't let either Greg or Neal finish. "And then we'll do the trade." She stood emphatic, and Mendell did not object further, keeping his head on a swivel as Ruby, Tamara, and a reluctant Emma moved down the opposite side of the hill back into the bush.
"If you try anything and Henry gets hurt," Neal said to the man as the others moved away, drawing himself to his full height. "I will kill you." He did not boast or threaten, but said it as a simple point of fact. Greg shrugged one shoulder.
"I'm good on my word, which is better than either of you can claim."
"You don't know me," Neal said, not arguing the point on how Mendell seemed to know her.
"Baelfire," Mendell said with a hint of haughty dismissal as Neal flinched at the moniker. "Son of Rumplestiltskin, son of a man who became disillusioned to the world." His lip curled. "Your entire line is nothing but waste after waste. The same story told again and again." Disconcerting thoughts of what Rumple's father could be like aside, Regina took insult with the implication that her son could be compared to these men.
"I am not my father." Neal had paled after Greg's nonchalant answer, but his fists still clenched at his sides. Quick to anger when his father was involved, Regina had surmised and found it ironic how similar Rumple could react to a word against his son.
"You're well informed," Regina said, trying to adopt an expression that was not angry or a glare. It proved difficult.
"Have to be." Greg took the lead in. "When assholes like you get to make the rules, the only real defense we can have is knowledge."
Her nostrils flared at the insult, but there was a smugness in his tone that Regina honed in on. "Impressive that you're able to gather intelligence between realms." The only explanation Regina could reason was that there had to be some source of magical potential somewhere in this world, or another realm was crossing planes into the Land Without Magic, which should have been impossible…
Greg's eyebrows flicked n amusement and Regina knew she'd lost him. "Do you think I'm that stupid?" Regina made a noncommittal gesture and Greg's hand began to tremble. "You b—"
"They're here." Hook's deadpan voice cut off his current ally.
"Get that thing away from my son!" Emma's shout quickly followed alongside a growl of agreement from Ruby.
"Not my choice, love," Hook replied and Regina could picture the careless shrug. Her teeth grinded together.
"Hey hey hey!" Mendell yelled, cutting off all protests before they could approach coherency. "Here is how this is going to work," he said, hand steadying and a smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. Regina's instincts flared. "Tamara, take him." Scuffling sounds came over the line and Regina's heart froze.
"Wait, what?" Neal hesitated for a split moment and it was enough for Greg to flick his weapon to the left and pull the trigger. A soft puff of air sounded rather than the bang of a bullet, and Neal's hand flew to his neck even as he fell to his knees.
Regina shook off her own stupor and sprinted toward the man, but he recovered quickly and trained his weapon on her and fired just as she managed to drive a shoulder into his abdomen. A burning pinprick of stinging pain flared from her shoulder as she rolled to the ground.
She found she could not gather the strength to push herself off her back and blackness crept at the edges of her vision.
Mendell appeared above her, face covered in scrapes and scratches from the underbrush. She imagined she looked much the same, but felt none of it.
"Rest well, your highness." His smirk sickened her. "We've got a long night ahead." The world went topsy-turvy as he picked her up in a fireman's carry, and whatever poison he had shot her with took its toll as the darkness won.
E/N: Shortish chapter this time, I'm afraid, but it sets us up for the continuing climax of the shortish Greg/Tamara arc. Next up will be a Henry chapter that I've been looking forward to writing, so it should be fun.
Please let me know what you thought in a comment/review!