Chapter Fourteen
Emma thought that she was doing quite well despite her strange new reality. She'd spent so long trying to figure out how she could be pregnant that the truth should have been a relief.
What relief could be found in the truth that her daughter would be half Evil Queen? More pressing, what about the fact that she was her True Love even when they barely knew anything about one another?
Emma could think of so many things thats he wanted to ask the former mayor. Did she still have all of Henry's baby things? Could she teach her everything she would need to know in the next six months or so?
Perhaps most importantly, did Regina long to talk to her, to just be in her presence, as much as Emma wanted to be with her?
How much of that was genuine attraction though? How much of it was born from some fairytale edict that they should be together?
Why couldn't Regina have asked her on a date rather than opting to break the curse?
All of this kept her away from Milfin Street even after her talk with Ruby, but Emma was still rather proud of herself for the fact that she was still in Storybrooke at all.
The whole True Love thing may have been unfathomable but the other things that she gained were so much more far-fetched after a lifetime of disappointment.
Mary Margaret and David Nolan founded like exactly what her younger self wanted. The kind of
People who gave her up under only the most dire of conditions and were actually dedicating their lives to looking for her.
Snow White and Prince Charming on the other hand…
They sent her through a magical wardrobe in order to provide people with their saviour. It made an excellent story but the problem was that she remembered the twenty-eight years of constant dull ache to belong while the people of Storybrooke were blissfully unaware. They lived their ignorant and peaceful lives while she was alone.
How could she be expected to suddenly embrace the royalty that she was supposedly born to be? How could she fall into the role of the perfect daughter?
She could understand their instant desire to bond, she felt it every time she laid eyes on Henry, but she couldn't engage with it in any meaningful way outside of not running away.
Two weeks following her talk with Ruby, Emma decided to make a real effort with at least one of them.
Mary Margaret never made that particularly easy. Maybe it was the friendship before either of them knew what they really were to each other?
The things they'd shared in that time made every interaction simmer with at least a modicum of awkwardness, if not full blown cringe.
David was more of a blank slate, one that was adapting with remarkable speed to the modern world (naturally with a lot of assistance from Henry).
It was for this reason that Emma responded to Mary Margaret's musings that he would need a job soon with a flippant comment about needing a deputy.
A couple days later, she found herself training her father in the proper handling of a fire arm and this went about as poorly as expected.
Not only did he keep giving her the expression that she'd dubbed 'the look' (one which she was fairly confident had to mean that he was either feeling unjustified pride or was lamenting her age), but he also asked far too many questions when it came to the point of the safety function.
She switched to another aspect of his training after that.
With him sitting at the deputy's desk, Emma did her best to talk him through Storybrooke's already antiquated computer systems.
This infuriating exercise proved that she may have given him a bit too much credit when it came to his integration into the world. Maybe it was the process of growing another person or the speed with which her life had become so unrecognisable, but she was not nearly as patient as she could have been.
It was made worse by their proximity, it allowed David to not-so-covertly linger on her stomach every time he failed to follow her instructions to type his cursed name (because apparently surnames were not a thing in the Enchanted Forest?!).
It created a strengthening suspicion that things were going to be as awkward with him as they were with Mary Margaret. At the very least, he'd done well to hold in whatever personal things he wanted to ask for almost three hours.
It was so much better than anything that Mary Margaret could have managed, especially as it was the first time that they'd spent time together one-on-one.
Being sure not to engage his eye contact, Emma shifted in the hopes of obscuring the ever more obvious bump and pointed at the screen, "David, you need to click there to type in your password.:
David scrunched his eyes and leaned closer to inspect the unexplored terrain of the next fields of pixels but Emma didn't get to decide whether he would be ready for the magic that was the tab key as he turned away from the computer with a very 'Mary Margaret' look about him.
His statement felt inevitable even as Emma wished that there was something that she could do to stop him.
"You know, you could call me dad…"
"Henry still calls me Emma and he actually came looking for me," she cut him off.
"Oh…I…" David stumbled, moving the keyboard and wiping at some non-existent dust.
Emma stared briefly at the ceiling, wishing that she could escape her own station but decided that maybe she could try a little harder than just not running away from the town.
"Look, I don't mean to upset you but we just met. Give me a minute to get to know you?" Emma asked, close to pleading that historically did not work well when it came to their mother.
She carefully watched her father for either acceptance or a follow-up question. Unfortunately he went for the latter option, while refusing to look at his daughter.
"I suppose that also means that discussing Regina is off-limits?"
Emma shifted her weight against the desk.
She despised the hatred that neither of them could ever hide. It almost made her want to ask for more details about the past but not from them.
It made her want to go to Regina and demand her side of the story before she was pulled into another diatribe about the infamous Evil Queen.
She could finally find out who Daniel was?
Of course, that would involve beholding that unfairly beautiful face of the only person who had given her what she'd asked for and not get distracted by a desire to kiss her senseless.
It seemed incredibly unlikely that David would want to hear any of that about his greatest enemy so she replied, "That's…something else I need to figure out. Besides, I assumed that you wouldn't want to talk about it?"
David paused for a long time before shrugging, "I cannot see any scenario in which Regina will not remain in our lives now…"
He gestured vaguely in the direction of his developing granddaughter and Emma shifted uncomfortably again, longing to end this by just going to her office for some semblance of solitude.
Instead, she pushed through and said, "Okay, I'm not ready for this either. Can we please focus on moving the cursor?"
David appeared to be holding in a deep sigh but this expression morphed into a frown as he searched around the desk for whatever it was that she was referring to.
"The what?" he asked.
Glad that the subject had changed, Emma pointed at the out-dated mouse that could pass for brand-new in this town and David fell back into the task without another word.
S
Regina thought life in Storybrooke had reached its lowest point when she allowed a cursed cricket to tell her that there was a hole in her heart.
Meeting Henry, the tiny, innocent being who eventually accepted her as the most important person in his young life marked the first upward swing of happiness since Daniel's tragic fate.
She had someone who loved her again, that was until Snow White deigned to give him the damn book and ruin everything.
That attracted Emma Swan to the town.
Of course, it was no longer as easy for the Evil Queen to hate the saviour who broke her curse since she had played an essential role in her being able to do so.
What she did hate was the fact that she was once again alone and that, on top of the gaping hole in her heart, she was also unemployed.
Emma and Henry both wanted distance and she was determined that she would give it to them. That she would ignore all impulses to find a magical way to make them see that they could just love her now.
Being charged with the raw power that had been unavailable for twenty-eight years was more difficult than she thought it would be. As if by muscle memory that should have faded by now, she found herself raising her hand to do things she would have done manually weeks ago.
How was it that turning on lights by hand was suddenly barbaric?
It was this ridiculous thought that made her realise that she couldn't remain unemployed if she was going to keep her promise to Henry.
At some point soon, she might find herself floating things (or perhaps setting them alight) out of sheer boredom.
After some research, she discovered a solution that hopefully wouldn't result in a mob breaking out.
There was something that had to be done first, though. Another promise that she needed to keep.
At first she thought that she hadn't gone through with it yet because she couldn't do it alone, but she had no idea how long that was going to last.
There was an uncharacteristic bubble of hope within her that she wasn't set to stay like this forever, even when she found herself as the sole occupant of the mayoral mansion with only TV and wine for company.
Her vow to give them space couldn't stop her from what she told Daniel she would do.
She resisted inviting Emma over in her daily text about Henry's wellbeing. She wanted to tell her all about the stable boy and ask whether she would be willing to join her at the cemetery for the long delayed burial of her first love
Instead, the coffin was moved by means of a hefty bribe to the groundskeeper and then lowered down.
She insisted that she had to shovel the ground herself, hopefully with each stroke she could somehow make up for the years of desecration that she had justified as preservation.
The regal script chipped into the marble headstone for 'Daniel Coulter' would now let the world know that he'd existed and the acceptance that he no longer did opened the pathway for the grief that he deserved, as did the mental eulogy that she gave as she dug.
She stayed well after an hour after the work was complete, analysing what she had done and wishing that she had someone with her to tell her whether she'd done a good job.
She almost didn't go home for a shower, figuring that it would do nothing to wash away the tears marring her face along with the dirt all over her.
It wouldn't make her clean of what had just happened or the sadness that would cling to her for the foreseeable future.
Her other options were limited.
She could go to the loft, but that would risk being greeted by David or Snow, both of whom would probably use her state to prove that she had buried a body without the express permission of its owner.
There was also the Rabbit Hole, but she wasn't quite ready to be seen drinking by herself during the day. Plus, she had found that it was a toss up as to whether Storybrooke's businesses would actually serve her.
Besides, there was something that she had to do owing to her own freshly purchased business. It was a fitting place to go after the lonely funeral anyway.
She made short work of showering and changing into attire more suitable for Storybrooke's stables.
She purposefully had written it into the curse, but could never bring herself to visit it no matter how much she wanted to.
On top of her father's absence, she didn't see the point of being hit with Rocinante's as well.
Becoming the owner of the stables was the logical move for her now that she had no use for the political knowledge provided by her curse-produced college diploma.
Outside of magic and revenge, there was only one skillset that the Enchanted Forest had granted her that would help here. There was also the bonus that the stables were far enough from town that she didn't have to be worried about being accused of planning something nefarious.
While she waited to be needed again, why not take care of horses?
New tears pricked at her eyes as she entered the main stable area. The familiar sights, smells and sounds took her back to a time when she was so certain about what she was going to do with her life.
She sniffed and made to pat the mane of the brown and white Mustang, pleased to find that none of the creatures recoiled in her presence, but stopped as the door was thrown open and a tall, well built, black man entered holding a bucket in each hand.
He wore plain jeans and t-shirt covered by an open button up which did little to hide his muscles, which Regina assumed was the point. Despite how objectively impressive the physique was, her mind produced a clear image of the man dressed in an elaborate red and white number that was goofy even by Enchanted Forest standards.
He dropped the buckets, smiling in much the same way that he had decades ago, confirming that it wasn't a case of mistaken identity.
Perhaps she had lost track of exactly who she had cursed?
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
Dr Facilier released a huff of laughter and lifted a bucket to set about preparing the horses' meals.
"It would appear that I misjudged the best time for visiting your land. Despite attempts to escape the curse, I woke up as a stable hand. Perhaps if you had paid this palace a visit over the last twenty-eight years, you would have known?"
Regina crossed her arms, considering that she should have read the contract she had signed in more detail. What kind of business owner was unaware that they had an employee?
"Stables were painful," she replied, recovering from the bizarre reality of talking to another person outside of ordering a morning coffee.
The man cocked his head and asked, curiously, "Were?"
"Recent events have changed my perspective," Regina replied stiffly.
"Awfully cryptic, your majesty," Facilier hummed, abandoning the bucket so that he could regard her with undivided attention, "We were friends…more than that indeed."
Regina leaned against the gate, absently lifting her hand to touch the snout close to her face.
"A single night does not entitle you to know everything about me."
He held his hand over his heart and said, "You wound me Regina, it meant so much to me."
"And yet…" she challenged, pointing at his left hand which he raised for an even better look at the plain golden ring there.
"You always did see through me so easily," he chuckled.
"How is it that you are married?" she asked.
"Cursed identity," he replied, "As luck would have it, we are rather fond of each other even with our memories returned, so I supposed that I should say thank you."
"You may be the only one," Regina scoffed, "Does this mean that I should not expect any evil plans?"
"I could ask you the same question," he shot back.
Regina blew out a long breath through her nose but explained, "At the moment, my only plan is to prove to my son and his mother that I am worthy of their love."
"And owning the stables is the way to do that?" he said doubtfully.
"If you continue to ask questions, you may need to seek out other employment," she snapped.
He did not shrink back as others may have under the Evil Queen's wrath and quite frankly, it was annoying.
In fact, he was smiling smugly during his response, "Come now, your majesty. Threatening unemployment is not exactly 'worthy' of you."
Regina sighed again, but conceded, "I suppose not…the purpose of buying this place was to occupy my time now that I find myself stripped of the town's mayorship."
He inclined his head, "Well then, I suppose that we can work together to make sure you enjoy yourself."
Regina pushed herself from the gate and replied, "That is not something that a married man should be saying, Facilier."
"Please, call me Samdi or Baron if you prefer," he said, suddenly serious, "The curse…it has become a second chance. I would rather embrace it."
This forced Regina to soften under a wave of understanding, "In that case, it is Regina, not your majesty."
Plucking up the second bucket to thrust in her direction, he said, grinning again, "Very well, boss."
Regina rolled her eyes but took it without a word. Despite any initial irritation, she was grateful for the companionship in whatever form it came.