-The Night Before-
Regina was cold, seconds away from shivering violently, and trying her damndest not to show it. She and Emma may be close now, both in a watching movies on the couch and accidently falling asleep there way and in a trust one another with their lives way, but that didn't mean she had to give her the satisfaction of knowing that for once Regina had forgotten to plan ahead and bring actual outerwear appropriate for the windy nights of a small coastal town in Maine. Though she was loathe to admit it, Emma was actually the one of the two of them better dressed for the weather with her black turtle neck, leather coat, her favorite (and annoyingly endearing) grey beanie, and the sleek yet incredibly warm black gloves that Regina had given her for Christmas the previous year. Regina, on the other hand, was wearing her sleeveless dress and a stylish but absolutely not-insulated jacket. Emma had offered her the hat and gloves when they first stepped out into the night and realized that it held a biting chill, but she'd declined claiming she was perfectly fine as she was ("I wasn't intending to have to escort you home on foot, I thought I'd be taking my car back from the bar." "Escort me home? Come on Regina, you've had at least as much to drink as I have! What kind of Sherriff would I be if I let you drive home drunk?").
Of course, Emma had noticed how cold Regina was. She saw it in the way her fists were clenched so tightly at her sides that she was sure her perfectly manicured nails were leaving indents in her palms. She saw it in the way Regina's lips were pressed together in a thin line and how her jaw muscles were twitching with the strain of keeping her teething from chattering. Emma gave her head a little shake, a fond smile gracing her lips. In the past she might have taken this opportunity to rib the other woman, give her grief for all the grief she'd taken from her over the years, but they were past that now...at least most of the time...and after what Regina had done for her tonight to get her mind off of him she felt no need to antagonize but rather only to offer care and support. As they passed by her bug where she'd left it at the station she'd run over to it, digging around the backseat, and returned with a ridiculously oversized sweatshirt in hand, wordlessly holding it out to Regina. Both of Regina's eyebrows migrated so high on her forehead as she looked down at the maroon cotton before her that Emma wondered, not for the first time, if Regina had extra muscles in her forehead that the rest of them lacked. Regina simply looked mildly offended before she continued walking, leaving Emma to catch up.
Five minutes later and another couple of blocks down the road saw Regina snatching the sweatshirt from her hands without so much as looking at her and tugging it over her body, the length of it coming nearly to her mid-thigh. Emma smiled. Regina smiled. They walked the rest of the way to the mansion in comfortable silence.
By the time they'd arrived they had both sobered up just enough for Regina to decide that a night cap was what they'd need to warm up before bed. A quick sweep of first floor showed no sign of the Queen, but just as she was about to check upstairs she realized that she knew exactly where her counterpart was. Glad for the sweatshirt, she stepped through the back door and out into the cold to find the Queen on her porch swing with a forgotten martini on the nearby table and a steaming mug of tea in her hand. She was dressed too formally for the solitude of the back yard at this late hour, but that had always been her style. Regina recognized the dress and couldn't help the roll of her eyes when she realized it's crushed velvet was exactly the same shade as Emma's damned sweatshirt. The Queen spoke without looking at her, knowing already what Regina was going to say.
"I'm ok, Regina. We'll talk tomorrow. Go help your Savior forget her handless moron."
Your. It hung there in the air between them like it had matter and weight. The Queen blew on her tea to cool it, pulling it closer to her body.
"Tomorrow." Regina spoke so softly that, if she wasn't fairly certain she didn't need to actually speak for the Queen to hear her, she knew it would have been too quiet to be audible at all.
She returned to the kitchen and began preparing two hot toddies, the perfect drink to calm her sudden nervous energy and chase the last of the chill from her body. She knew Emma had a soft spot for them, having made them for her while they were in hell and earning herself a near purr of contentment in response.
"Hey Gina, where's your other half? She ok?" Emma had entered the room behind her, and when she turned to look at her over her shoulder she found that she had shed her leather jacket and exchanged it for the deep, blood red cashmere blanket from the couch in Regina's study, wrapping it around herself like a cape.
"She's out back. She's fi-she will be fine. We'll deal with all of-" she waved her left hand in the air between herself and the door to the backyard, "-with everything tomorrow."
Emma glanced towards the door but didn't say anything, didn't question her or go check to verify that the Queen was, in fact, where Regina said she was. She did however sniff the air and then rush to Regina's side, breathing deeply just over her shoulder, so close that Regina could feel the warmth coming off of her body and an exhale tickle her ear.
"Oh my god, are you making those sinfully delicious whatever-you-call-ems that you made that night?"
That night...the night after Emma had begged Regina to split her heart in two and give half of it to Hook. The night after it hadn't worked. The night Emma had crawled into the hell-copy of her bed in the hell-copy of the loft, the bed that Regina had been sleeping in, and silently cried and cried and cried until Regina had wrapped her arms around her from behind and pulled her body flush against her own, placing her arms over Emma's and holding them crossed over Emma's heart until the tears dried and they both drifted into a profoundly deep sleep. It was a night they'd never addressed and something they had never, ever repeated. In the moments before Regina hummed in response to Emma's excited question about the hot drinks now being poured carefully into two glass mugs, they each held their breath, feeling the tension of the unacknowledged thickening the air between their bodies. And then Regina "Mmmhmm'd" in confirmation, and Emma cleared her throat, and the spell, so to speak, was broken.
They retired to the study, Regina flicking her hand in the direction of the fireplace, illuminating it instantly and bathing the room in a gentle, flickering glow. Everything was quiet, save for the crackling flames, as they each settled on their preferred sides of the sofa. Sometime later, though how long could only be judged by the amount their drinks had cooled, Emma spoke.
"I think he's really gone, Regina." Regina pulled her eyes from the fire and gazed at Emma, not responding but simply allowing her time to process her next words. Emma wasn't looking at her, didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular.
"It's strange. I know how I should feel. I know I should be sad, or mad, or maybe even both. And I am, I guess. But right now I just feel sort of...You know the way your head feels after you've taken a long flight seated too close to the engines? The way it sort of, buzzes? Like you can still hear the engines even hours later when you're trying to sleep?"
When Regina didn't answer Emma turned to look at her and saw her head tilted to one side and her eyebrows pinched like she was trying to puzzle out Emma's analogy. Emma blushed, realizing her error.
"No, I guess you wouldn't know how that feels, huh? Anyway...I just feel sort of, numb. Or something. I don't know. I'm no good at this."
Regina reached out a hand, partially covered by the cuff of the sweatshirt that she pulled down over it while she listened, and gently placed in on Emma's knee.
"I understand perfectly. I felt like that. After Robin. At least, if I'm interpreting what you're getting at correctly, I believe it was much the same for me. Sitting at Granny's, after the funeral, it was like all the sounds were muted, were further away, and yet my head was pounding with this noise, rather like when you hold a seashell to your ear to hear the ocean, except so all encompassing that it was utterly claustrophobic." Emma's surprised and sympathetic expression told her that she'd hit the nail on the head and that, perhaps, she did know how your head felt after being a plane for too long despite never having been on one at all.
"Right. Like that." Emma attempted a half smile but it fell short, her lips pulling downward again. "I'm sorry Regina. I must seem like such an ass, comparing Hook leaving me to your true love being killed."
"Soul mate." Regina corrected, though she wasn't sure why she felt the need to make the distinction, then shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose with her free hand for a second before tucking her hair behind her ear and squeezing Emma's knee once more, "But that is neither here nor there, and you are allowed to feel however you feel about that fool and his idiotic decisions."
Emma was back to staring at nothing and things were quiet again. Finally, and so quietly Regina might have missed it were she not paying so much attention to the other woman, she murmured,
"Under all that, under the buzzing and the hurt, I think...I think a part of me is relieved. It was just...I don't know. Not easy?" Shame flood Emma's feature as soon as the words were out, but Regina didn't move, didn't release the gentle pressure of her hand on Emma's leg. She couldn't say it was what she'd expected Emma to say, but she had noticed that the Emma had been struggling for months now under the weight of her destiny and she suspected it wasn't just the prophecy of her death that had been causing that strain. She didn't respond, not sure what Emma needed to hear, or if she was ready to hear anything. It became clear after several moments that that was all Emma was going to say on the matter for the night when, just after swallowing down the last sip of her drink, she was overwhelmed by a yawn. She turned to look at Regina, smirking when Regina was overcome by a yawn of her own, and then patted the hand still resting on her leg.
"I'm beat. Let's go to bed. The kid's got that thing in the morning which at this point is really not nearly enough hours from now, so we should probably try to get some sleep." She rose to her feet, offering a hand to pull Regina up as well. When Regina reached to scoop up their mugs, no doubt intending to wash and return them to their proper places, Emma chuckled and tugged on the hand she was holding, "Leave 'em, they'll still be there in the morning."
"Yes, dear, that's the problem." Despite her protest, Regina acquiesced and followed Emma from the study, glancing down at their still-intertwined fingers as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. They were close but they were never touchy-feely, except for that night, in fact it seemed that in the past 48 hours they had touched more than in the all the years they had known each other. It was just Emma's need to know someone was there after having the man she thought she'd spend her life with vanish without so much as a goodbye, or at least that was what Regina told herself as she diligently ignored the way her stomach sank unpleasantly when Emma loosened her grip and dropped her hand at the door to the guest room. Emma stopped, her hand on the doorknob and back to Regina, so Regina waited.
"Thank you, Regina. Again. For, for all of this. For letting me stay here. I know you're going through a lot right now and you really don't need to be dealing with my love life drama. I just...can't go back to that house right now."
"It's no trouble, truly. To be quite honest, I've appreciated the distraction from," Regina shrugged slightly, her hand gesturing into the air around them despite the fact that Emma was still facing away from her and couldn't see the motion, "everything. So I suppose you could say that my motives for helping you are not entirely selfless."
Emma looked over her shoulder, her bottom lip between her teeth as she raised an eyebrow, "Are they ever, Madame Mayor?" her words were teasing and her tone had no bite as she used the title they'd long since moved past and Regina couldn't help but cross her arms and chuckle in response.
"Perhaps not, Miss Swan." They grinned at each other, smiles far wider than the topic of conversation warranted, Regina's growing impossibly fond the longer she looked at the other woman. Taking a deep breath and tossing her head to move the hair that had fallen in front of her eyes, she leaned in to rub a hand down Emma's shoulder and gave her forearm a light squeeze. "Goodnight Emma."
"Goodnight Regina."
Regina was exiting her bathroom, having brushed her teeth, washed the make up from her face, and deposited her dress in the hamper, when she heard the crash from the other room. Immediately she rushed for the door, only just realizing she was naked save for her underwear and grabbing the nearest thing to her bedroom door-the Harvard hoody-to pull over her bare skin. She was down the hall and through the guest room door in a flash, not stopping to think or knock, knowing as soon as she heard the crash that something was wrong with Emma.
Emma was kneeling down on one knee, one hand clutching desperately to the bedside table, the lamp that usually sat atop it shattered on the floor, her eyes squeezed shut and her other hand shaking violently in front of her.
"Emma?!" Regina rushed to her side, crouching beside her and just barely stopping herself from reaching out, unsure how the physical contact would be received. It was a vision, she'd seen the signs before, though the only time it had seemed anywhere near this debilitating had been when Emma had nearly allowed her to be strangled by Hyde. She was wearing nothing more than her bra and underwear, her skinny jeans on the floor nearby and shirt tossed across the bed showed she'd been midway through undressing for sleep when the vision had hit. After what felt like hours but was more likely only seconds Emma's eyes sprang open, tear spilling from them and dropping from her cheeks to the floor as she released her grip on the table, grabbed onto her still twitching arm, and slid gracelessly the rest of the way to the floor, gasping as she attempted to catch her breath. Emma's eyes slowly focused, turning to meet Regina's gaze with pain and fear so great held within them that it ripped the air from Regina's lungs. The careful control Emma held over her emotions, the way she'd always managed to compartmentalize them away and pull herself together, broke at the concern she saw in the amber-brown eyes before her. A heart wrenching sob tore its way from her throat and she toppled forward into Regina's waiting arms that wrapped around her and held her close, pulling her head to her chest and tucking it beneath her chin like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"I don't want to die. I don't want to leave Henry, my parents...you." Her hand grasped on to Regina's bicep, fingers curling so tightly that if it weren't for the thick cotton between them they would surely have left bruises. "Please, Regina. Please." She was begging, pleading though for what she wasn't sure, and the ache that blossomed in Regina's chest in response caused her own tears to fall unnoticed into the blonde hair below.
Eventually they found their way to the bed, sobs calming to sniffles and slow trickling tears. Regina pulled the covers back, wordlessly encouraging Emma to slide beneath them before she joined, turning on her side and moving to pull Emma to her. She stroked Emma's hair, now slightly damp from a combination of tears and stress-induced sweat, pulling it away from her face and smoothing it back against the pillow.
"Regina-"
'Shh, Emma. It's alright. Just sleep. I won't let you go, not tonight." Gentle kisses tumbled from her lips, placed reverently to the back of Emma's head. "You're safe with me."
When they awoke to the sounds of shouting the next morning they were still in each other's arms, Emma having rolled over in her sleep so that she could use Regina as something like a body pillow, her head on Regina's chest, one arm slung over her waist, one leg tangled with her own. With Henry's frightened yet angry tone echoing through the house they had no time to consider how overly intimate this all was, instead only sharing a knowing glance before they both jumped out of bed and rushed to his aid. On the way down the stairs Regina remembered Emma's near nakedness and twirled her hand in the air, conjuring one of her robes in a puff of purple smoke and tossing it to Emma who wrapped it around herself, just in time it seemed as she slipped on her socked feet and went sliding across the slick wood floors, steadying herself by grabbing the doorframe to the study and skidding inside the room where the shouting had come from. Regina had knocked herself a bit off balance when she'd thrown the robe, as a result finding herself struggling to maintain some semblance of grace as she too skidded around the corner to find her son, brave as ever, threatening the Queen on her behalf.