Double Trouble 12
A/N: My never-ending love and gratitude goes to the amazingly talented artist marynesq who has posted some gorgeous fanart of Em and Ri on tumblr. Make sure you check out her stuff because it's awesome! Thanks for the amazing response, readers! My inbox exploded with alerts and I broke 500 reviews for the first time :). Enjoy!
'Two-timing'
Emma was at the Sheriff's station when Regina turned up in the middle of the day, reminding her of how in the past the Mayor would randomly drop in to give her shit about how she was doing her job. Of course right now like so many times before, she was caught eating a donut with her boots propped up on the desk looking like an idiot in front of Regina.
Situation normal, Emma thought sarcastically.
She put down her feet and swiveled to face the brunette standing in the doorway to her office. Hiding a sigh of resignation, she tried not to gawk at Regina who was dressed as usual in her impeccable corporate style despite lacking an actual job. The woman could probably make pyjamas look regal. Damn.
"Sheriff Swan. Working hard?" said Regina.
Emma rolled her eyes. "It's lunchtime. Gimme a break."
"Crime doesn't stop to have lunch," said Regina facetiously. "Nor does Evil."
"Do you, Regina? Because if you're not plotting anything there's not much for me to do around here is there. How many days has it been since you tried to kill someone... like, three?"
"It's about to be zero," said Regina darkly.
"Aw I've missed your death threats, I really have, but if you don't follow through it's only making me think that y-... hey, wait a minute. You're supposed to be with the girls!"
"They're fine."
"No, that wasn't the deal. They're not supposed to be wandering around Storybrooke by themselves. Where are they?"
"Em asked me if she could take Ri on a date."
"A date." Emma raised an eyebrow. "And you bought that?"
Regina looked away in annoyance. "I don't see the problem. She just wanted to get milkshakes at the diner."
"Huh," Emma snorted. "By that I'm sure Em didn't mean 'destroy the milkshake machine just for kicks' or 'lick Ri's naked body'."
"Both of those do sound rather fun don't they?"
Emma didn't take her seriously at all. "Regina. Em is not to be trusted. How many times do I have to tell everyone that?"
"She's a teenager who doesn't trust anyone. You can't earn someone's trust if you don't give them a little yourself."
Emma thought that maybe Regina wasn't just talking about Em here, and she smirked triumphantly when the other woman realised what she'd just said. Regina wasn't as amused by the parallels to themselves but she still managed to keep the challenging eye contact without breaking it.
"Wait a sec," said Emma, suddenly realising. "What are you even doing here."
"There's something you should see," said Regina cryptically. She turned to leave, indicating that Emma should follow her.
"What is this, Em?" said Ri, eyeing the foreign-looking food on the plate in front of her.
Em groaned, mouth watering. "It's a cheeseburger. Oh! I have so much to teach you, young Padawan."
"I don't know what that means."
"Exactly!"
"Here we go, girls," said one of the waitresses appearing at their booth. She was balancing three milkshakes in her fingers and set them down on the table.
"Why do we have three, Em? There's only two of us," said Ri.
"Yep, there should only be one cos this is a date... but I got us chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla so you could try 'em all."
Instead of sitting across from each other Em and Ri were sitting side-by-side in their booth. Em plonked two straws into the choc shake and held the tall steel tumbler between them, showing Ri what she intended.
"See? We share. Gives us an excuse to be really close to each other."
"Oh." Ri blushed, realising their faces were indeed really close. Her gaze switched alternately from Em's green eyes to her lips as they took their first sips.
"Like it?" asked Em.
Ri mm'ed at the taste of the sweet milky drink. "It's very cold and delicious."
"This is my second favourite kind of chocolate and this..." Em grinned and quickly pressed a kiss in Ri's hair near her temple. "Is my first."
They talked about everything and nothing while they ate their way through the burgers and shared the milkshakes. Em told Ri funny stories about the different homes she'd lived in and close calls she'd had when getting into mischief and how she couldn't wait till she was an adult so she could find a proper place in the world and how she had always intended to track down her birth parents one day no matter what...
Ri told Em about what it was like living in a land with magic and unicorns and how she longed to be brave enough to leave the estate one day and see more of it. She was a little wistful talking about her family but she spoke of how she took after her father in personality and her mother in looks. Father taught her to ride when she was small and acquired Rocinante for her. He would do anything for her but it was her mother who set the rules...
Em complained of something called an 'ice-cream headache' so she started dunking her fries into the gooey chocolate and eating them that way instead. By that time Ri had evaluated all of the milkshake flavours carefully before settling on her favourite.
"Sooo what's the verdict, princess?"
"I think I like this one best."
"Vanilla? Boring," teased Em.
"It's blonde. Like you."
Em laughed. "Aw that's cute ... but I hope you're not calling me boring. If I dye my hair pink does that mean you'll like the strawberry one better?"
Ri scrunched an embarrassed smile and shoved her with her shoulder. All that did was encourage Em to squish up closer to her.
"So, this is like courting isn't it?" said Ri. "This 'date'? Except that you didn't ask my parents for permission... and we're not being chaperoned... and I got to say yes or no for myself... and we're both girls..."
Em cut off her list wryly. "Uh yeah, except for those ten reasons it sounds exactly the same."
"And this is what is done in this world when two people like each other?" asked Ri curiously.
"Yeah." Em shrugged happily. "It's nice though, huh?"
"Em," said Ri quietly. "I'm fairly certain being courted isn't like this. Is this how everyone feels on a date?"
"Sometimes but maybe not everyone I guess. How does it feel to you?"
Ri smiled shyly. "Like I don't want it to end."
"Well, that's what the second date is for..." Em winked playfully, but inside her heart was leaping at Ri's words.
"Uh, what am I looking for, Regina?" asked Emma, looking around Main Street aimlessly. It was pretty cold out and as she bounced on her toes a little to keep warm she could see her breath cloud in front of her.
"It's gone. Can't you see that?"
"No." Emma rubbed her shivering arms, distracted by the cold. "Seriously, what is gone?"
"That!" Regina gestured to the sky above the library, losing patience with the blonde's dim-wittedness. "The town clock. It's gone."
"Oh!" said Emma, realising she was right with a comical start. "Ok, now I see. Calm down."
The clocktower that normally rose above the library had completely disappeared. Emma remembered noticing it when she first came to Storybrooke. Henry said it had never worked his whole life but it started ticking again when 'the Saviour' arrived. Emma herself had only ever seen it telling the correct time so she didn't quite believe his connecting it to her arrival, dismissing it back then as the kid's overactive imagination.
Now the clock had disappeared.
"But how?" said Emma, squinting into the glaring overcast sky. "Half of me thinks this is Em's work but even this is beyond her magical ability."
"What about yours?" asked Regina pointedly.
"I didn't do it."
"What does it mean?" said Regina. "It never worked until you came and now it's disappeared completely. It's obviously you, whether you know it or not."
"Hey." Emma wasn't sure why but she took offense to that.
Regina frowned, noticing she was still doing her shivering 'I'm cold' dance. "Where's your jacket, Emma?"
Emma hardly heard it because Marco and Archie approached them to say good day. They had Pongo panting on a leash beside them, taking him for one of his many daily walks. Emma reached down to pat the dog's head but it was Regina that he went to, sniffing her shoes curiously.
"Good afternoon, Sheriff Emma," said Marco in his thick accented voice. He nodded slightly to acknowledge Regina.
"Hey guys," said Emma. "Taking Pongo for a walk?"
"Yes," said Archie in his friendly but humble manner. "Not too many patients anymore I'm afraid. Now that everyone knows my degree came from the curse..."
"Oh well, um," Emma shrugged awkwardly. "Regina's still driving everyone crazy so perhaps business will pick up?"
"The morgue's will," muttered Regina under her breath.
"Hey guys, do you two know what happened to the clocktower?" Emma pointed up at the library roof and they looked up.
"What clocktower?" asked Archie blankly.
"There is no clocktower," said Marco.
"Yes," Emma said impatiently. "I know it's gone now, but what happened to it? The town clock above the library."
Marco shrugged and shook his head with certainty. "There has never been a clock there."
"Of course there has! It was there um … last time I looked. But now it's gone. Archie tell him."
"Emma, I don't know what to tell you," Archie shrugged helplessly. "I don't remember any clock."
Emma sent a worried glance to Regina. Not only had the clocktower apparently disappeared, it seemed that the two men didn't even recall that there ever had been a clock above the library in the first place. Were they the crazy ones or were the guys? It definitely had been there before, right?
"Well, anyway, we'd best be off. Have a nice day, Emma. Regina." Archie smiled and nodded his head politely in farewell.
"Yes! Time's disappearing on us no?" joked Marco, tapping his wrist where a watch should have been.
Once they were gone, Regina grabbed Emma's elbow and hissed at her. "Did you hear what he said?"
"Yes," said Emma patronisingly. "It was just an expression, Regina. Time can't literally disappear."
"So you think this is just some coincidence. Time disappears mere days after our teenage selves inexplicably get transported from the past - through time - to Storybrooke? A place that has a history of losing time?"
"It's just a clock. It doesn't mean time itself is gone. That doesn't even make sense, in fact it's stupid."
"Something is going on here!"
"Hey," Emma's mouth dropped open in realisation. "This is exactly what I said would happen, remember? You thought I was just being an idiot. Stuff is starting to randomly disappear."
"It's not random. It's one thing and it's specifically related to the circumstances."
"Whatever! I was right. We changed something in the past and now it's affecting the present... but what did we change? Was it Ri finding out about the curse? It's gotta be that."
"No." Regina disagreed. "We can't assume it was that. It could've been anything either of the girls found out. Even something small. Or maybe something inconsequential happened that ended up causing a chain reaction leading to a bigger event... it could be anything."
Emma raised a sarcastic eyebrow. "'It could be anything'? Well that should make it easy to figure out then huh. Meanwhile time is frozen again, just like when everyone was cursed."
Regina's eyes unfocused for a minute and she went through her thoughts aloud. "No. It's not like before when time was stuck on the same day, your birthday... And time hasn't disappeared completely... otherwise we wouldn't have day and night... Em's back wouldn't heal... fruit wouldn't rot..."
"It's always apples with you, isn't it," teased Emma, breaking her train of thought.
When Regina stalked away, Emma was left watching after her happily. Her teeth were no longer chattering from cold.
Emma pounced on Mary Margaret as soon as her mother got home that afternoon. The schoolteacher hadn't even had time to take off her scarf and coat or put down her bag of school things when her daughter accosted her.
"Mary Margaret! Tell us we're not crazy!" pleaded Emma, tugging at her mother's arm.
Mary Margaret looked like she wasn't very convinced of it given Emma's behaviour right now. She sent a side glance to Regina who was standing nearby with her arms crossed in irritation like she'd had to put up with this for a while already.
"Um, you're not crazy?"
Emma groaned in frustration. "Me and Regina! Everyone we ask can't see what the problem is, they can't even remember, everyone denies it was ever there, and now it's making me question whether it was there in the first place and I don't know what to think."
"Emma, are you talking about... you and Regina?" said Mary Margaret slowly.
"No-oo! The clocktower above the library. There was one - right?!"
Mary Margaret gave her daughter a sympathetic face. "Emma, I can see that you're frustrated. But I don't know what you're talking about."
"Argh!" Emma growled. She put her hands to her temples and spun around.
"Miss Blanchard, do you remember if there was ever a clocktower above the Public Library," asked Regina clearly, trying to get to the bottom of this.
"No." Mary Margaret shook her head. "Nothing like that. The library's been closed for as long as I can remember."
Emma froze in shock at the exact words the townspeople used to say before the curse was broken.
"What the hell is going on here," said Emma worriedly. "Mary Margaret, do you remember that you're Snow White, that you're my mother, and how after the curse broke we went to Fairytale land...? Do you remember Em and Ri?"
"Yes, I remember all of that. Of course. Why are you asking?"
Emma sighed in relief. "So you remember everything then."
"She could hardly tell you what she's forgotten," said Regina, rolling her eyes. She stopped herself from adding "idiot" to the end of it.
The front door to the apartment opened and Henry and David returned carrying brown paper bags full of groceries.
"Lucky we went to the store, buddy! The Emma's are eating us out of house and home," said David, holding the door open with his foot.
Emma pounced on her father next. "David, where's the clocktower?!"
"You're certainly doing a fine job of convincing them you're not crazy," mumbled Regina.
"Um, what clocktower?" asked David blankly.
"Above the library?" said Henry. "Where it's always been?"
"YES!" Emma pointed to the boy. "See! Not crazy! He remembers too. There was definitely a clock."
"You're kinda acting crazy, Emma," laughed Henry. "What's going on?"
Regina went over to the boy and took the heavy groceries from him so he could take off his cold-weather gear. She put her hand to his cheeks, noticing they were a little pinkened by wind burn.
"We're not sure, Henry," said Regina, trying to smile like it wasn't worrying her.
"Where's Em and Ri?" asked Henry.
"They went to the diner for a little while," said Regina. "I told Em they had to be back by four... which means they'll be back by five."
Regina explained to him what they'd found that day and how every Storybrooker they'd asked couldn't recall the town clock ever existing.
"So something got changed in the past and it's affecting the present and now everyone's memories are changing because of that?" summarised Henry.
"Not everyone's," said Regina. "Only you, me, and Emma remember the way it was the first time around."
"That's obvious then," said Henry.
"Kid, do you know something?" said Emma eagerly.
Henry shrugged casually, giving both his mothers a smile. "Sure. We're the only three who were never cursed."