Wow. I really didn't think I would get this up tonight, but I wrote a lot this afternoon and evening so here it is. :) Enjoy, and don't hate me, remember, this isn't the end.
Chapter 18
Emotions swirl through her, climb and scurry under her skin, twisting her mind into a blurred mess. The camp is eerily quiet, the men and few women that are present are somber, despondent, and Regina finds it funny how only a day earlier most of the camp would have been rejoicing at being rid of her, being rid of the evil queen, but now, they will only be rid of the protection she has offered, their memories, and the last few days. It will all be yanked away from them along with her and the others-so desperately out of place and time.
A sigh leaves her lips, and she finds herself pensively searching the ground, as if the dirt beneath her feet could provide her with the comfort and certainty she seeks. The plan is simple, remove the cloaking spell from the camp, just in case the protective magic would also provide protection from a shift in time, that would be very inconvenient. Then Rumple will place himself, her, Emma, Henry, David and Robin all back to the location in the woods where they came through the original time portal. Once there, Regina can use the wand, conjure a time portal that will carry them all to a point just before her original arrival, and repair everything by conjuring a return portal for her past self immediately.
Hypothetically, once the previous version of herself is sent back through the time portal, she should be the only one that remains in the woods. The others should all be returned to the original timeline, the magic in the wand will only protect her from the alteration in time and no one else. None of them would have ever felt the need to come rescue her, and therefore, they should return unharmed, while she remains and conjures a new portal for herself, a portal to take her home, that will restore her own presence in time.
It all sounds so clear, so simple, but she can't seem to shake this feeling of foreboding, the air heavy around her, stifling. A hand lightly touches her bicep, a gentle brush of fingers to her arm, and she knows without looking that it is Henry. Meeting his eyes, he smiles at her, a warm reassuring expression, something she needs, she uses for strength, and she returns his smile with a grateful look of her own.
"Are you ready, Mom?" He questions, Emma coming up behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder, sympathetic eyes finding her own.
"Yes." Then her smile falters, her lips slip into a determined line. "Come Miss Swan. Removing the cloaking spell is far easier than casting it." She guides the blonde toward the edge of the camp, halting inches from the shimmering cloak, letting her hand pass through it before pulling back.
"Give me your hand, then just concentrate on taking deep breaths as we bring our joined hands up to the cloak, understand?" Regina questions, grasping the woman's fingers in her own.
"Yes." Emma states, a look of determination and strength in her eyes Regina has recognized in her own son's face, and it is peculiar seeing the familiarity between the two, makes her think that perhaps it won't be so hard to continue getting along with Emma, as long as she sees Henry in the blonde's expressions.
Their hands meet the cloak a moment later, a tingling sensation creeping from the shimmery brightness up their flesh, traveling into their skin, flowing like blood through their veins. It doesn't particularly hurt, removing the cloak, but it also is not pleasant, but luckily, the tingling only lasts for a few seconds. The cloak, a protective barrier that took all of her energy to conjure, even with help, has vanished from existence in a matter of seconds. How curious it is that protecting something is so difficult, but leaving something unprotected is so simple.
Dropping their joined hands, Emma looks confused for a moment, most likely also shocked by the simplicity of removing something that was so challenging to conjure.
"Well, I guess that's it." The blonde states, and Regina bites her tongue, wants to tell the woman that she does not need to state the obvious, but she won't, holds the attitude back, at least for today, for right now.
Emma turns, walking the same short path that brought them to the edge of camp, and Regina gives the trees one last glance before spinning on her heel, finding their group complete in the middle of camp, waiting on her, and 'past' Robin holding his son only a couple yards away. Regina's feet move beneath her slowly, quiet against the soft dirt and grass of the clearing until she stands in front of the man and his boy.
"Goodbye Robin," she tentatively lifts her hand to his, squeezing lightly as she turns her face to the boy secured at his hip, "and goodbye, Roland."
"Bye." The boy says with a wave of his hand and a smile on his face. He is so innocent, does not understand that saying goodbye, in this case, really means goodbye.
An arm wraps around her waist, two smaller ones grip at her neck and hair, and it takes her a moment, just an instant, to grasp what is happening, to understand that she is being held in a tight embrace by her soulmate and his son. She breathes in deeply, absorbing every sensation from this contact; the way it feels, the way it smells, she swears it even tastes like happiness, and she revels in this as her own arms find their way around two of the greatest loves of her life, two people who will creep into her heart without permission and save her from the grief of losing her son, from the fear and insecurity in herself, in her goodness and light.
"Until we meet again, Milady." Robin whispers in her ear, his breath moistening the skin at her neck and fluttering her hair, causing a shiver to run down her spine.
She pulls away, smiles, and tries to ignore the sadness, the longing present in Robin's eyes, turns to 'her' Robin to seek solace in his contentment, and she finds faith that his pain will not be long, they will find one another again, as sickenly 'charming' as it makes her feel, she knows they will always find their way to each other.
She begins closing the distance between them, 'her' Robin holds his hand out to her, waits patiently for her to join him and the others, an empathetic gaze glued to her face, and as soon as she grips his fingers, as soon as she turns her head for one last look at Robin and Roland, her eyes spotting Snow and Charming standing beside him, a 'good luck' leaving the other woman's lips, a suffocating cloud of magic surrounds her, fills her senses with the dark one's power, whisks her up and around, pulls at her, until she lands on her feet again with the others, the camp no longer present.
"Alright, deary," Rumple is the first to speak, his eyes pinned to Regina in expectation, "no sense in wasting time." They have returned to the location where she first entered this time, the trees and plants oddly familiar, fuzzy in her memory from the moment she passed out surrounded by Robin and his merry men of the past.
She takes a step forward, letting Robin's hand fall back from hers, a comforting squeeze before he releases. Rumple pulls the wand from inside his jacket, passing it to her, and she pretends the ominous atmosphere that swallowed her whole the moment she was pulled through Zelena's original time portal, she pretends it does not engulf her entire being.
"Well, well, well," a voice comes from behind them all, a deep chuckle filling the air, "what do we have here?"
Regina knows that voice, recognizes that voice, has used that voice herself, because after all, she was this woman, she was the evil queen. Her lips open with a gasp, and her lungs won't function, won't breathe in the air she desperately needs, and when she turns, she sees that the others are already facing the woman.
"Some imbecile told me a fascinating story, something about," the evil queen takes a step forward, searching for words, "time travel, but we both know that is impossible. Don't we Rumple." Now the queen focuses only on the dark one, like they are the only two present, at least the only two that matter.
"But when, this man," the queen's face contorts with disgust just mentioning the peasant, "mentioned the dark one, I didn't need to hear anything else." The queen continues, taking another step, eyes locked on Rumple, "I wondered what you could possibly have planned. Why you would have a woman impersonating me." Now the queen's empty brown eyes find Regina, scrutinize her from head to toe. "She is not a very good fake if I say so myself. You could have done better."
The insult does not phase Regina. She assumes the 'imbecile' that went to the queen is Roger, the missing merry man. After all, he is the only one who would have known of their plan, the only one who could have told the queen where to find them. He stayed for breakfast, listened to their strategy, before slipping away through the cloak to betray them. Regina vaguely wonders why, why this man would do such a thing, but she does not need to wonder. She knows the greedy and malicious side of human nature far too well.
"No one asked you, dear." Rumplestiltskin responds, moving even closer to the woman, to the woman she used to be, and Regina watches, amazed at how the man seems to slip into his enchanted forest counterpart, his behaviour and demeanor much more like the dark one than Mr. Gold.
"Of course not," The queen's eyes find Regina again, considering her, "and what is this, a wand?" The younger woman's eyes brighten as they catch sight of what Regina holds in her hand, an expression full of excitement and envy.
Regina conjures a fire ball in her free hand, more for intimidation than actual use. Killing her past self, well she isn't sure how that would affect them all right now, if she would just poof out of existence immediately, along with the evil queen version of herself, or if she would be able to go back and repair time, and never kill herself to begin with…ugh, this all seems so ridiculous to her, she really finds it quite annoying, ludicrous.
"I don't think so," Her former self declares with a chuckle, reaching out a hand, striding toward Regina, "what kind of cheap imitation are you?" A scowl covers the queen's expression, and Regina can feel her neck tightening, her trachea clenching, air straining to get through causing a sickening whistling sound. The fire in her hand extinguishes, and the wand falls as she lifts both of her palms, fingers splayed, to her neck, helplessly grasping at nothing but her own skin. Her mind is muddled, but she knows she can stop this, knows she has the power, but she doesn't get the chance before she sees an arrow soar past her body, aiming to hit the queen.
"Unhand her." It is a warning, words flowing past her from Robin to the queen, and the tightening on her neck subsides as the arrow sticks through the flesh and muscle of the queen's hand.
A scream travels through the air, and Regina is once again reminded of how much she hates her own scream, but she does not let the noise pull her to unwanted memories, rather, she rejoices in the fact that this time, it is not actually her screaming, but the woman she used to be. The noise not so much a scream of pain as it is annoyance.
Regina takes advantage of the distraction Robin offered, summons forth her magic, and tosses the evil queen to a nearby tree. She figures if they can just knock her out, bind her magic somehow, then they can buy themselves enough time to escape through the time portal. The woman hits the bark with a cracking sound, tree limbs and bark snapping at the unwelcome weight and force, but it only takes a moment for the queen's silhouette to disappear in a swirl of purple smoke. Regina searches their surroundings, spins herself around, looking to see if any of them spot the younger version of her.
It is Regina who sees the woman first. The evil queen appears behind Robin, in a cloud of purple, smirks over his shoulder at Regina before lifting one hand, clenching her fingers, and Regina knows what she is doing, has done this many times, and the plea leaving her mouth makes no difference, only causes the smile on the younger woman's face to widen as she twists her wrist, a cracking noise echoing through the forest while Robin's neck bends at an unnatural angle. Regina can feel her heart plummet, along with Robin's body, and she drops to her knees, only a few feet from her soulmate laying lifeless on the ground.
She hears a scream, doesn't even realize it is her own this time, the sound seems so foreign. She has always hated her scream. The unfamiliarity of this one is disappointing to her, it does not bring forth her past horrors, instead leaving her firmly in this moment, staring into Robin's lifeless blue eyes, and for once she wishes the horrible memories of her past would drown her, pull her away from the moment. Robin's eyes, how dull they seem now, only gone for an instant, and yet, his eyes seem like he was never there.
Her state of shock does not lift until hands grip at both of her arms, until she finds herself being lifted and pulled away from Robin, pulled from the man she loves, from her soulmate, from his lifeless eyes.
"Regina, Regina!" It is David speaking in her ear. He holds one of her arms, while Henry is holding her other, squeezing her bicep, trying to give comfort to his mother, but it only makes Regina cringe and sink further into despair, knowing that she cannot be strong for him right now, she cannot be the mother he needs, the mother he deserves when her heart feels like it has been crushed to dust inside her chest.
Looking up, her former mentor stands before her, alongside Emma. Between the two of them, stands herself, her former self, the evil queen. They conjured some sort of bind, and the woman seems to be a prisoner in her own body, staring, frozen at all of them, her eyes looking almost as lifeless as Robin's. The urge to torture this woman, the urge to destroy her, to see her burn up at her own hand, she is actually considering killing her younger self because the urge to submit to the darkness is overwhelming.
"Regina," Rumple interrupts her fantasy, and she debates sending him into a pile of ashes as well, "this won't have to happen. When we go back, and send you through the time portal, none of this will happen. The outlaw," he states, her eyes glinting with fire at the moniker, "Robin," Rumple corrects, "he will be fine." The imp's words have her swallowing down the homicidal tendency bubbling at the surface.
The smothering feeling, the foreboding from earlier, it all led to this moment, all led to the loss of her soulmate, and she wishes she would have paid more attention, wishes she would have left them at the camp and traveled here herself. At the time it seemed better to stay together, not separate, not send her alone, but now, well now Robin would be safe, he would not be dead, his body cold and empty on the ground of this forest.
Her body shakes, almost convulsing as she bends to retrieve the fallen wand, holding it tightly in her grasp to hide the trembling of her limb.
"Let's get on with this." She states, her voice flat.
There it is. Please don't hate me. I promise things will get better. I hope you liked it! Please review :)