"Huntsman," Regina said, turning her eyes on him for just a moment, "you failed to bring me Snow White's heart, but you did bring me her beloved daughter, when apparently, no one else could. Finally, you've proven yourself worthy."
Regina turned her attention back to Emma. Her pretty green dress, the one she had worn to her birthday party earlier that evening, was filthy and torn now, from running in the woods. Her hair was disheveled and littered with small twigs and thistles, and her skin was dirty. She wasn't crying now, though the streak lines through the dirt on her cheeks were evidence that she had been, and her eyes were still bloodshot.
And yet, she was captivating.
The huntsman had her by one arm and a knight had the other. Her wrists were shackled together, which even Regina had to admit was a little over the top. What did they think this child was going to do? The huntsman alone was twice her size.
"Emma, are you going to stand there gawking all day, or are you going to greet your Queen?"
Emma continued to gawk, speechless, her wide, watery green eyes never leaving Regina's face.
"Are you feeling shy, Little One?" Regina cooed, taking a step closer. Emma tried to step back, but it was impossible with the knights surrounding her. "Would you feel more comfortable if it were just you and me? Should I ask my knights to leave? Is that what you want?"
Emma blinked and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She just nodded.
"Out!" Regina commanded at the knights. "You, as well, Huntsman. You're making my guest feel nervous."
As ordered, the knights and the huntsman filed out of the room, the last of them closing the large, heavy wooden doors behind them. Emma jumped at the sound of the doors shutting.
"Is that better, my darling?" Regina asked, reaching a hand out, slowly, to touch Emma's cheek. She stopped just before she made contact, and reached down for the shackles around Emma's wrists instead, her fingers touching leather and metal, rather than soft skin. She pulled up on the shackles, bringing Emma's hands into view between them. "Would you like me to remove these?"
Emma turned her eyes to the shackles for a moment, tensing up as she curled her hands into fists. She didn't answer.
"What's the matter? You don't want to talk to me? Didn't you miss me? It's been so long," Regina continued, her voice dripping with forced sweetness. "Do you want these off? Yes or no? You need to answer me, because I'm fine either way."
"Yes," Emma whispered, still looking at the cuffs and not at Regina.
"See, was that so hard?" Regina smiled, waving her free hand over Emma's wrists, and vanishing the shackles in a small puff of purple smoke that made Emma gasp. "All you had to do was ask. I can give you everything you want."
With the cuff gone, Regina's hand was now gripping Emma's bare wrist, and she reveled in the first physical contact she had made with the girl who had haunted her life for fifteen years. She gripped Emma's wrist a little too tight, she thought, just to make sure she was really real.
"I sent my knights away. I took your shackles away. What else do you want, Emma?"
"I want to go home," Emma stated, her wavering voice betraying her nerves.
"Really? So soon? But you just got here," Regina said, in a mock pout.
Emma steeled her eyes, and Regina was impressed. The girl had more tenacity than she had expected. "I said, I want to go home," Emma reiterated.
"See, and here I was thinking you wanted to run away. Where ever did I get that silly notion? Very well, run along then. Run home to Mommy and Daddy and crawl into their bed and I'll just be a distant nightmare, once again. Or shall I send you straight to the Silver Kingdom to be with your betrothed? Which would you prefer, Emma?"
Of course, Emma couldn't have run if she tried, with Regina's hand still a vice grip on her slim wrist, and dozens of knights standing guard just outside the tall wooden doors. And of course, Regina knew this.
"Then again," Regina said, thoughtfully, "I can't very well send you into your waiting husband's arms looking like a common peasant, can I?"
Before Emma could react, Regina waved her hand again, and a cloud of purple smoke enveloped her. She blinked a few times as it dissipated, and Regina smiled wildly. "Much better. I like you in blue," Regina commented, as Emma looked down at her new powder blue dress. Regina still had a hold of her wrist, but her skin was clean again.
"Come, child, let's fix your hair for your prince," Regina said, moving her hand from Emma's wrist, to place it flat on Emma's back, and leading her down a long hallway, to her bedchambers. She sat the girl down in front of the vanity and perched herself beside her, absently reaching for the hairbrush. She hadn't been able to get the idea of Emma's hair out of her head ever since her dream three years ago.
She worked in silence, picking the twigs and thistles from Emma's hair, and smoothing it out with the brush. The golden locks felt like cool silk between her fingers, softer than she could have ever imagined. When she was done, she turned and smiled at the two of them reflected into the mirror. Fifteen years she had waited for them to be on the same side of that glass, and it still felt surreal.
"This must be a dream," Emma said, softly, as if she were thinking out loud.
"Does it feel like a dream?"
Emma shook her head. "No, but it must be, or else you would have killed me already. And also, you're dead."
Regina actually laughed. This poor girl was so naïve and trusting, believing everything anyone told her. That must have been the result of living as a virtual prisoner inside the palace her whole life, and being raised by Snow White, the reigning Queen of being too trusting. "What makes you think I'm dead?"
"Someone told me."
"Well, my dear, I'm afraid you've been misinformed. This is not a dream, and I'm alive and well."
"So, you will kill me then," Emma stated calmly, her voice sounding oddly braver than it should have at that moment. Regina was reminded of her own resolve whenever she was faced with her own impending demise. Emma may be naïve, but she was certainly a little spitfire as well.
"Well, to be perfectly fair, Emma, I have never issued a death threat onto you," Regina stated, simply.
"But my mother said-"
"Your mother makes a lot of baseless assumptions, unfortunately," Regina shrugged, nonchalantly. She wasn't exactly lying. She had never expressed an explicit threat onto the girl. It had more or less just gone without saying.
"My mother said you're the Evil Queen," Emma said, suddenly turning her gaze down to her own hands, apparently unable to handle Regina's piercing eyes in the mirror any longer.
"Well, I was the Queen, until she stripped my title away," Regina agreed, "but evil, Emma? Really? That seems a bit harsh, doesn't it? Have I ever said or done anything to give you that impression of me?"
"No, I suppose not," Emma replied, tentatively.
Regina smiled again. "If it weren't for your mother, Emma, you and I, we would have been family. Did you know that? You could have grown up here, happy and free. I never would have caged you in like an animal."
"That's not what they did," Emma insisted. "They were protecting me."
"If you had been here, you wouldn't have needed protection," Regina sighed. It was partially true, she supposed, since if Emma had arrived even a few years earlier, she would have been dead the moment she stepped into the palace, and corpses certainly didn't need protection. "Do you still want to go home?"
Emma nodded, solemnly, looking up to meet Regina's gaze in the mirror, again.
"Hmm… well, I want to make up for lost time. And you don't want to marry Prince Michael. Perhaps we could come up with a compromise?"
"What kind of compromise?" Emma asked, biting at her lip, nervously.
The corner of Regina's lip curled up in a smirk at the deliciously impure thoughts that watching Emma bite her lip stirred up in her decidedly deviant brain. "How about you let me worry about that? Come, it's late, time to get to bed. You'll stay the night here, in my palace, safe and sound, and we'll work out a deal in the morning."
Regina ushered Emma up to standing, and led her across the room to a door that joined Regina's bedroom to the bedroom next to it. That door hadn't always been there, but luckily for Regina, magic made it simple to change the structure of the palace to meet her needs, whenever convenient.
"There's no door out," Emma noted, slightly panicked, as her eyes took in the room before her: there was a large window with iron bars, a queen sized canopy bed, a vanity and a wardrobe, but the only doors in the room where the one that led to the small en suite powder room, and the one that led back into Regina's bed chambers.
"What do you need a door for? Where would you need to go?" Regina asked, innocently. "I can't have you wandering about the palace, now can I? It's large and unfamiliar and you could be lost for days on end. I'm trying to keep you safe. I would have thought you'd be used to being kept, well, contained."
"My parents don't lock me in my room," Emma scowled.
"You're not locked in," Regina pointed out. "You don't even have to close the door, if you don't want to."
"I think I'll want to," Emma said, quietly.
"Whatever you wish, my darling. Now, would you like me to sit with you until you fall asleep? Perhaps sing you a lullaby? Read you a bedtime story?" Regina suggested.
"No, thank you," Emma shook her head, quickly.
"Very well. You'll find a change of clothes in the wardrobe. I'll wake you when morning comes, and we'll work out our compromise," Regina promised, smiling even as Emma continued to pout. "Sleep well, my princess."
Regina stepped back into her bedchambers, allowing Emma to close the door quickly behind her. It didn't matter. She'd waited fifteen years to get Emma into her palace at all, she could wait for the girl to come around to the plan she was devising in her head now. After all, she was still a child. There was time.
She headed straight to her mirror and brought Snow White into view. Not surprisingly, she was crying, being held by her valiant prince. Regina grinned, malevolently. There was nothing Prince Charming could do now. Their good fortune had just run out, as the light of their pathetic lives was with her now, just beyond that large wooden door.
But Regina didn't want to celebrate alone. She called in her Huntsman, and drew his attention to the scene playing out on the mirror.
"Several years ago, I asked you to bring me Snow White's heart," Regina recalled, as if he would have ever forgotten. "And, now, my dear Huntsman, I can surely say you've finally succeeded, because her heart lives with that child. Do tell me, how did you manage it, when countless of my knights - and hers - couldn't?"
The huntsman swallowed, tearing his emotionless eyes away from the mirror, and onto Regina's. "I won her trust," he said, simply. "She was frightened and alone, and I offered her my protection, and refuge."
"Brilliant," Regina beamed. "And your gallant effort shall not go unrewarded. You shall remain in my employ indefinitely, however from this day forth, you are freed from any… physical… obligation to me."
"Yes, your Majesty," the Huntsman agreed, though Regina couldn't help but think he almost looked disappointed. She supposed he should be, as this particular reward could also be considered a punishment, in its own right.
But she wasn't doing it for him. Severing their sexual relationship – if you could call it a relationship – was all for Regina. She didn't need him monopolizing her time or her bed, now that she had Emma. Not that she would corrupt Emma right away. No, she would have to take her time - win her trust, as the Huntsman had.
And Snow would suffer more in the process. She wouldn't lose her daughter to death, she would lose her daughter to darkness. She would lose her daughter to Regina.
"That will be all, Huntsman," Regina said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. When he had left, she swiped away the image of Snow on her mirror, and replaced it with a view of Emma, in the next room. Emma was curled up in the bed, the covers pulled up to her ears. Regina couldn't tell if she was sleeping or just hiding, but it didn't matter. What mattered was she was here.
And Regina was going to win.