Chapter Text
My dear reader, it’s going to be rough.
Picture, if you will, Regina Mills, fresh from the new trauma of losing her son and burying her mother. She teeters, unstable, on the verge of doing something rash, something unforgivable.
Enter, stage right, Emma Swan, who is mostly just trying to do her best. There is no father of her son who appears, no strangers with plots to torture an evil queen, no added complications beyond a grieving woman who shares her son. Beyond her son, who is learning to be good and caring again, and who misses the mother who had raised him more than he’d admitted until now.
And Henry’s needs, she knows, will always come first– as distasteful as they might be.
The flowers, dear reader, will bloom when they come. First: I only ask for patience.
It is Regina who will begin this story.
She doesn’t expect anything, and isn’t that just a f*cking joke? Twenty-eight years of dominance, of power and control, and now she expects nothing. She lives in her large house, as quiet as a tomb, and she goes to work as the mayor because no one has bothered to re-fire her, and she expects nothing else.
She has no real power here, nothing but the trappings of leadership without benefit, and yet, it feels much like it had when she’d reigned over a kingdom. Then, too, she’d had almost nothing to live for (except revenge, whispers a voice in her mind that will never fully quiet), and she had subsisted purely out of spite.
Now, she will do the same.
It would be so neat for her to roll over and die now, to go out in a blaze of glory or flee this damned prison of a town. It would be so easy for her enemies, who watch her with wary, pitying eyes now. Henry could be raised with only vague memories of a mother who had loved him first and most, with rose-colored glasses that recognize how hard she’d been trying before she tragically left his life. Like an old Disney movie, the villainess toppling off a cliff so no one has to kill her– how distasteful– or see her face every day.
Regina will not disappear of her own free will, no matter how dizzy or weak she feels these days. She strides into Granny’s every weekday morning, nods coolly to her before she sits, and she drinks her coffee and waits. Ten minutes later, Henry scrambles into the diner, lighting up when he spots her and turning to whisper to That Woman.
That Woman always hesitates, and she gets that strained, vaguely constipated look on her face. Then comes the smile, like stretching a rubber band that might snap back at any time, and the slow walk to her table. “Hey,” That Woman says, uncertain and wary.
Once, That Woman had been Emma, and they had been bound together by Henry, by a curse, by loathing so strong that it had brought them alive. Once, Emma had been thrown into another world to protect Regina, had emerged from that world and smiled at her like the sun, had knocked on Regina’s door and stumbled over her words as she’d invited her to a party at this very diner.
Once, Emma had immediately assumed the worst of Regina, had accused her of murdering the only person in this town who’d listened to Regina, had left her to her mother’s manipulations and then faced her as an enemy. Once, when Henry had been so overwhelmed after Mother’s death that he’d tried to wipe out all magic, Emma had said, magic isn’t the problem, kid. It’s her.
Emma is not Regina’s friend. Emma will never be Regina’s friend. She is only That Woman, who doles out Regina’s access to Henry as though she carries Regina’s entire heart in a careless dangle of her fingers.
And Regina has no choice but to say tightly, “Good morning.”
Emma twists to Henry. “Kid, want to order us some cocoa and muffins? Blueberry,” she adds quickly, as though Regina might be appeased by that. “And a banana for each of us.”
Regina and Henry arch their brows in unison, twin sets of dubious expressions that see right through Emma, but Henry scrambles off and Emma remains. “Uh,” she says, wetting her lips with a familiar, nervous tic. “Henry misses you.”
“I haven’t moved.” Regina taps her fingers against the table. “He knows where to find me.”
“Yeah. I just…I don’t know how comfortable I am with him hanging out with you unsupervised when things are so…unstable.” Emma shifts from foot to foot, the words a little sheepish. Ha-ha, I’m so awkward, don’t mind my words when they’re sharp as needles digging into your skin–
“Unstable?” Regina echoes acidly. Typical. Regina can come in every morning at the exact same time for weeks, on her way to a thankless job where she keeps this entire town running, and Emma has the temerity to call her unstable. “Strong words for the woman who cuts and runs whenever she’s uncomfortable.”
Emma’s face hardens, the uncertainty replaced with hostility. “If I didn’t leave when you tried to run me out of town, I’m not going anywhere again. I’m Henry’s mother.” Regina’s hand tightens on her coffee, fault lines spidering across the mug. “And you’re…you are, too,” Emma adds swiftly, her eyes flickering down to the mug. “But you’re not always good for him. I thought you knew that. David said–”
Oh, Regina is not going to allow That Woman to use her admissions to Henry against her. “I’m better for him than you’d ever be,” she spits out. “I’m his mother. Everything he is now is because of me.” In spite of you, says a dark voice at the back of her mind, but she refuses to share that with Emma. It sounds very much like her mother, like Rumple. “What have you done for him? Encouraged him to skip school? To disobey me? To run off and throw himself in danger?”
“You made him believe that he’d lost his mind,” Emma says, eyes narrowed. “That everything he believed was a lie.”
“And you thought it was a lie and still let him believe it so you could get close to him,” Regina shoots back. Her head aches, and she sees spots when she stares at Emma for too long. “So which of us is worse?”
It is so much easier to stay calm when it’s someone else, when she can make slick comments and laugh at their helpless, flapping fury. It’s far more difficult with Emma, who always manages to grate at every nerve that Regina has, hitting vulnerabilities and pushing, always pushing–
“Stop it,” cuts in another voice, and it sounds frightened enough that it jerks Regina from her rage. “Stop it, both of you!” Henry has made his order and returned to them, looking between them with wide, unhappy eyes. “Mom,” he says.
“Yes?” they both say, and Regina thrums with fury again for an instant before she averts her eyes, staring down at her mug.
“Mom,” Henry repeats, looking up at Emma. Regina’s mug is leaking watery brown coffee. “You said you were going to try.” He sounds disappointed, and Emma hangs her head, sheepish and declawed again.
“Sorry, kid. I was trying.” Regina snorts. Henry’s disappointed face turns to her, and she hastily arranges her face into an expression of regret. Emma says, terse, “Do you want to have Henry and me over tomorrow night or not?”
Maybe she had imagined a pleasant conversation which would have ended in an invitation. Maybe this is exactly how Emma had wanted this to go. Gone are the sweet, tentative eyes, the stuttered Archie made a cake– from the days before Mother had come when the impossible had been so tangible.
God, Regina had felt it like a clenching in her chest when Emma had smiled at her that night. Like the first evening when she’d met Emma, like that moment at the mines when she’d first trusted her with Henry, like Emma carrying her from a burning building all aflame with righteous stubbornness.
She has never been able to fully excise the idealist from under her skin. Emma Swan might do it for her. “Henry, I would love to have you over for dinner tomorrow,” she says, and it takes no effort at all for her eyes to find warmth and her smile to go soft. Henry beams at her like a spark of light in the darkness.
She raises her face to the stony expression of That Woman, and she says, her voice like steel, “And I suppose your chaperone can attend, too.”
Emma stares at her from the far end of the table. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t offer to serve the food or help set the table. She just watches Regina with Henry, her face unreadable, passing judgment upon every word that slips from Regina’s mouth.
It stings, thinking about when Emma hadn’t hated her. Not because it had been like a waterfall, a rush, something that Regina could drink in forever as it had brought her back to life– never that– but because Regina hadn’t done anything to earn it this time. Because Regina had been desperately trying to prove herself, and Emma had been so encouraging until it had all shattered. The unfairness of it all eats away at her, makes her resent the woman watching her even more.
She doesn’t show it to Henry, who is eager and happy to be at home. “I know where the spoons are!” he throws over his shoulder when she suggests that he gets them. He bounces into the kitchen, opens extra drawers once the spoons are in hand as though reassuring himself that everything is as it should be. After that, he peers into the fridge, finds an orange, and eats it as though this is just an ordinary afternoon instead of a day that will keep Regina going for another month.
She wants to sob. She laughs lightly and says, “Henry, I’m about to serve dinner.”
“This is my appetizer,” Henry says, and there is a note to his voice, a test that isn’t exactly hostile as much as it is curious. What will you do, Mom? Are you still afraid of my unhappiness?
She is terrified, even more so because of the woman sitting silently at the table, taking stock of all the ways that Regina is a failure to her son. She clears her throat. Finds a compromise. “Save it for dessert,” she says at last. She hasn’t baked him anything for dessert. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever bake him a dessert again.
Henry pouts, then shrugs it off with a grin, pulling out a dessert plate and setting his orange down on it on the counter. He peers at the pot on the stove, then twists around to run to Emma. “Mom made chili gnocchi!” he pronounces as though she knows that it’s his favorite. “Usually, I only get that for my birthday.” His face falls, the veneer of cheerfulness faltering. “I guess we missed my birthday this year.”
Emma looks away. It’s just an instant of guilt, but Regina sees it, and it sends a juddering vibration through her chest. She glances around, finds the closest tissue box, just in case. When Emma looks back, Regina keeps her eyes fixed on her, and Emma takes a breath and says, “Hey, there’s no law against celebrating your birthday a month late.”
“Certainly not,” Regina says, and she’s talking to Henry, not Emma, except for the way that she can’t quite tear her eyes from her. There is a battle being fought in their stares, and Regina remembers now how good it had felt last year, when Emma had waged war against her. How vibrant she’d felt, how her skin buzzes with it now.
She takes a step back. Emma still watches her. Another step, until she is finally safe in the kitchen, torn from Emma’s gaze. She spoons out the chili into three bowls and brings them to the table. Henry takes his, bright-eyed and eager. “It might be a little too hot for you,” he tells Emma. “Grandma’s food is a little…well, you know, it tastes really good!” he says hastily, glancing over at Regina. “It just doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor.”
“I remember,” Regina says dryly. One of her first actions as emancipated queen was to replace the cook with one from her father’s native land. The heat of the food had tasted like freedom even when Snow White had still been at large.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Emma says to Henry, her eyes locked on Regina again. “I’ve eaten plenty of Mexican takeout over the years, and that’s pretty intense.” But she doesn’t eat, not yet, and Regina sighs.
She moves around the table, her spoon in hand, and she digs into Emma’s bowl and takes a spoonful of her chili, licking off the spoon in front of her guest. Emma gapes at her, her pupils large and her lips parted in shock, and Regina says, “See? I haven’t poisoned it.”
Emma’s eyes dart to Henry, who is ignoring them both in favor of his food. “I didn’t think–”
“Didn’t you?” Regina breathes, and Emma swallows hard and jabs her spoon into her bowl, her eyes narrowing. She emerges with a large heap of chili, and she shovels the entire thing into her mouth.
A moment later, she’s gasping for breath, her face flushed and her eyes bulging. And Regina had, perhaps, meant for this to happen, had cooked this for Henry’s birthday and out of sheer spite for his hanger-on. It takes all she can manage not to smirk, to keep her face wiped clean as Emma gasps, “Water! Please!”
Henry passes the pitcher of water to her, his face screwed up with concern. “I don’t think water really helps,” he says as Emma downs a glass. “It usually just kind of spreads the heat around.”
“There’s some rice on the stove,” Regina says helpfully. “I was giving it a few more minutes to sit before I served it.” She takes her time in the kitchen, humming to herself as she fluffs the rice and brings it out. By the time she returns, Emma is sitting stiff in her chair, eating more of the chili as though it is an enemy she has to vanquish.
It’s painfully endearing. No, she tells herself, something rising in her throat. No.
Henry is grinning, and Regina can’t help the smile that crosses her face at his joy, the lightness when she says, “If the chili is too much for you, I won’t be offended if you skip it.”
Emma glowers at her. She might be on to Regina. “It’s delicious,” she grinds out, and she eats the rice between bites, but she does finish all of her chili and says yes to seconds. By the end of the meal, Regina isn’t entirely sure who’s won this round.
After dinner, Emma lays a possessive hand on Henry’s shoulder and says, “We should really head home soon. Tomorrow is a school day and you have homework.”
Henry hesitates, and that is enough to make Regina’s heart sing. “You can do your homework here, if you prefer,” she says.
Henry looks at Emma. Regina can’t see his expression, can’t tell if it’s pity or guilt or real desire, but it has Emma wavering. “I guess you could,” she says at last. “Is your backpack in the car?”
Henry slumps with disappointment. “No, it’s back at the loft.” Regina’s heart thuds, and she is an open book, can feel the plaintive despondency that will come with Henry leaving.
It’s Emma who says, “Well, I bet Regina can just snap her fingers and bring it here, right?” She glances up at Regina, casual and questioning, and Regina stares at her, her face darkening.
Is this a trap? She has avoided magic all evening, has been careful not to mention it at all, and here is Emma, inviting her to use it. Henry looks just as perplexed, but Emma shrugs. “It’s fine, isn’t it?”
It hasn’t been fine in months, since they had first decided that Regina has a magic problem, that this is the root of all ills in Storybrooke. Regina has been letting her magic atrophy since Mother’s death, has been trying desperately to be worthy of Henry again, to prove that she can go without it. It’s fine, isn’t it?
Maybe it is better to keep her interactions with Henry to a minimum, to avoid moments like these. To step back, if only to give herself space from Emma Swan, who can say a few words and reduce Regina to a frenzy of fear and despair. “I don’t know what you want from me,” she says, her words wet and afraid, and Henry chews on his lip and says that he’d rather just go back to the loft, after all.
He hugs her before he departs, affection freely offered that she holds onto tightly, and then they are gone and Regina sinks to the floor and chokes sobs into her knees.
There is no delayed reaction from Emma, no recognition of that strange, tense night when Regina next sees her with Henry in the morning. Emma nods to her, a single acknowledgement that effort is being made, and Henry is the one who runs to her, who tells her about a mishap with his laundry (“Everything is pink, Mom, it’s a nightmare!”) and then bounds off to get his breakfast from Granny.
Regina’s chest is tight, and she swallows hard and nods back to Emma when they leave the diner together, her son and his chosen mother. She coughs into a napkin once they’re gone and drinks some coffee to soothe her throat, and then she sits back and contemplates going to work while she’s an emotional wreck.
It wouldn’t be anything new.
The next day, Emma nods again, and Regina nods back this time. The day after, Emma doesn’t notice her at all, engrossed in conversation with Ruby, and the day after that, they’re running late and even Henry doesn’t greet Regina. Regina still arrives each morning because what else can she do but steal glimpses of her son, isolated moments that will keep her enduring for just a little longer? Who is she anymore if she doesn’t have Henry?
She is certain that she’s failed some test. That Emma had brought Henry to her that one time with some arbitrary criteria for Regina to fill, and no one had told her what it was. But she’d done something wrong, because there had been no more dinners, no more invitations, no more admissions that Henry misses you.
She loathes the power that Emma Swan holds over her. She loathes Emma Swan. But still, she runs through that night over and over again, struggles to understand how she’d failed to measure up. Had she been too hostile toward Emma? Had she not been effusive enough with Henry?
Had she reacted wrong to Emma’s invitation for her to do magic? Maybe she should have recoiled, immediately refused. Maybe her confusion had been taken as guilt. Maybe…
Maybe Emma is just drunk on power, savoring her control over Regina’s happiness, and making her suffer out of some sad*stic desire to punish Regina.
It never feels more like that when, on one Sunday morning, there’s a knock at Regina’s door and Emma and Henry are standing behind it. “Hey,” Emma says, offering her a nod. It’s the first nod in days, not that Regina is counting. “Uh.”
Regina is wearing a long dress, floral and casual, because she hasn’t had the energy to do the laundry in weeks and she hadn’t planned to leave the house today. Emma glances at it– at her, her gaze as startled as Regina feels– and Regina’s throat closes up. With humiliation, maybe. Shame. Stupid. She hadn’t expected visitors.
“We were going to the park,” Henry adds, and his smile is genuine, makes Regina’s breath come more easily. “Do you want to come?”
There is no answer but one. Regina doesn’t think to change her shoes, to put on something more severe that will exude mayoral poise. She doesn’t dare to do anything more than nod, of course, lest Henry and Emma leave without her.
She tugs at her dress as Henry chatters alongside her, suddenly self-conscious at how simple it is. How the long skirt of it softens her edges, makes her seem approachable. Weak. She can’t afford to be weak. She should have been wearing heels. It’s a beautiful day, and there will be so many people around.
Emma trails behind them, and Regina can feel her stare on her, always hot and challenging. When they near the park playground and Henry races ahead, to grab a swing before another kid can, Emma murmurs, so close to her ear that Regina startles, “If you’d wanted to change, we could have waited for you.”
Regina scoffs, unwilling to give Emma more of herself. “This is fine. It’s just…a little casual, I think, for a public servant to be seen this way.” She makes it pointed, turning to rake her eyes over Emma’s thin tee, the tight jeans molded to her skin.
A flush warms Emma’s cheeks, and her eyes drift across Regina’s frame. “It’s nice,” she says. “You look nice in it. Which I guess is why you hate it.” Regina inclines her head in acquiescence, and Emma rolls her eyes at her. “Look, you can’t always be the big bad scary evil queen. I thought you wanted to move on from that. Henry says–”
Regina cuts her off, her stomach roiling. “You talk about me with Henry?”
Emma shrugs. “You come up sometimes. He really does care about you. And I think you care about him.”
“You think?” Regina demands, and her fists tighten. “You think?”
Emma turns away from her, focuses on Henry on his swing. Regina follows suit, letting the sight of him calm her. He’s going higher and higher, and he kicks off his shoes when he’s at the top of the swing, sending them flying across the playground. It’s so normal, so much like a scene from a year ago, before everything had fallen apart. “I wasn’t sure,” she says. “I didn’t know if you…if you saw him as something to have. Or if you really loved him.”
Regina seethes. Something in her chest withers and dies. She’s furious. She isn’t hurt, because she will never give Emma Swan the power to hurt her again. “This town still stands only because Henry is inside of it. And you think that I don’t love him?”
Emma doesn’t respond to the threat, which had been stupid and will set Regina’s time with Henry back again, she’s sure. “You didn’t kiss him. When he was…after he ate that turnover. You didn’t even try to kiss him awake.”
Regina had sat in the hospital room and wept, had felt the world falling apart around her, and no, she had not kissed Henry as Emma had. How arrogant it is, to believe that a kiss can work magic. How privileged it is for the laws of the world to break only for you. “I am no Charming,” she spits. “I don’t get beautiful fairytales, and I don’t expect them. Forgive me for being a realist.”
Emma is silent. When Regina turns, Emma is watching her again, and there is a lingering something in her eyes. Not quite pity, not quite sorrow. But understanding, and Regina hates seeing it more than anything else. Hates the way that her heart leaps, and the next few breaths hitch and don’t emerge right.
Finally, Emma says, “David told me about…about that guy. The one Whale brought back to life.”
Screaming panic turns Regina’s vision red. “Please stop talking.”
“He’s the one your mom–”
“Please stop.” She can’t speak about this. Not with Emma. Maybe not with anyone anymore. She had tried to speak to Archie about it, but that had been a terrible mistake. She has locked away that horror, those terrible memories, and Emma prods at them, pushes unrelentingly, and Regina can’t–
She is interrupted by a shriek, and then a scream. She knows that scream. Her head whips around, and she catches sight of Henry, crumpled on the ground.
She runs, heedless of any of the irritations of before, and drops down beside him. He moans, and she reaches for him, holds him to her chest in an instinctive move. “What happened?” she says breathlessly, arms wrapped around him.
He is eleven now, and he squirms free, too big to be seen in his mother’s arms. “It’s fine,” he says, but he’s breathing hard, clenching his jaw to stop tears from blooming at the edges of his eyes. “I just…slipped off the swing. Banged my knee a little.”
“Can you move your leg?” Emma is in front of them, on the ground, too, her eyes wide and concerned for Henry. Henry moves it obligingly, and Regina nearly breathes a sigh of relief before she spots the other side of his leg.
There’s a long gash across it, oozing viscous blood, and Regina sucks in a sharp breath. “Henry,” she says hopelessly, and he leans back for just a moment, resting his head against her shoulder. She raises her face, looks at Emma. “He’s going to need stitches. Call for an ambulance.”
Emma looks pale. “That’s a lot of stitches.” The cut is long and nasty, his knee torn open and his calf streaked with blood. She catches Regina’s gaze, her own pleading. “You can heal it, can’t you?”
Again, Regina is stunned, bewildered. Furious. Emma is testing her now? Emma is pushing her to her limits while Henry is bleeding out on the ground?
“Regina, please. It’s fine.” Emma’s voice is low, her hand on Henry’s leg, her face limned with fear. “Please, hurry.”
Henry’s breathing is quickening, and there is no choice, not really, when it comes to Henry suffering or not. Regina lays a hand on Henry’s knee, just below Emma’s hand, and she closes her eyes and calls her magic to her.
It floods her, washing through her like the first drink on a hot day. Her head feels clear, her heart feels light, and an eternity of agony and loss are washed away in an instant, made so much less with the warmth of the magic moving through her. For the first time in weeks, Regina feels alive, strong, present. She lets her magic run over Henry’s cut, cleaning it and then healing it. And then she is overloaded, overwhelmed, and it feels so good, so bright, as though it is as necessary as the blood rushing through her veins.
A voice says, “Thank you.” It is Emma, and her soft words send ice dripping through Regina’s warmth, remind her that she is being tested, that she has failed. Henry is safe, is healthy, and Regina tingles with magic, with color that she has been struggling to dull for weeks.
She’s supposed to show Henry that she can be good. That she can stay away from magic. And one fall– one coaxing from That Woman– and she has lost him again.
Ah, my dear reader. There you are again. And what, you might be wondering, is going through Emma Swan’s mind as she navigates this strange new relationship with her son’s mother?
I can tell you only what I know, which might be just a bit more than she allows herself to know. I can tell you that whenever Emma sees Regina, she is stricken by the reminder that she had offered Regina a chance, that she had reached out and made overtures and then crushed them all to dust on the testimony of a Dalmatian. I can tell you that Emma is desperate to find some evidence that she had been right all along, that she hadn’t been the one to shatter Regina Mills, that Regina had been sour from the start.
(I can tell you that Regina’s smile haunts her sometimes, that tentative hope in her eyes when Emma had made her promises on the day that the curse had broken. That Emma makes a point of walking into Granny’s every weekday morning because Regina looks a little worse each day– more wan, waxy-skinned and slow-moving– and no one else seems to notice.
Sometimes Emma wonders if she’s going to be the one to race to Regina’s house when the other woman isn’t at Granny’s one morning to find her collapsed on the floor, sapped of all energy for good.)
I can tell you that when Henry had said Mom loves the park with that wistful tone that makes Emma gratefulresentful, then what if we invited her along?, Emma hadn’t known what to say.
You don’t have to invite her along because you feel guilty, she had assured Henry, only for Henry to stare at her in bewilderment.
Mary Margaret had said, serenely flipping through a book, I don’t think he’s the one who feels guilty, and Emma had mashed her fist into the counter and ignored her for the rest of the morning.
Regina wants to tear things apart. She wants to set things on fire, to tackle the things that she can’t understand and rip them to shreds. She wants to scream, to let out her fury and frustration, to let streams of purple smoke flood her house until it’s all she has in her lungs.
Instead, she cleans. She scrubs the walls and the counters and the table, the acrid smell of ammonia like a poison she wants to savor, and she’s on her knees on the floor, scraping at a black rose petal stuck to the floor as though it is a usurper to her throne, when there is a knock at the door.
It has been hours since the park, and she knows that there’s only one person who it can be. She doesn’t want to answer it. She has no choice but to answer it if she wants to see Henry again.
She throws out her hand, defiant, because Emma says it’s fine and so she should have no problem with the front door unlocking itself and sliding open. Then she returns to the floor, glaring at white tile until Emma says, “I should have talked to you about this.”
Regina scrubs more. Emma says, “We just…we haven’t been great at talking. I guess I thought it would end badly. Ruin the park. I don’t know.” She crouches down in front of Regina, and Regina looks up just enough to see a bottle of wine in Emma’s hand. A peace offering. “Can we talk now?”
Regina has learned her lesson. She changes from her cleaning clothes first. She looks at the last few clean mayoral pantsuits, sharp and intimidating, but it is so late at night and she has no energy left to be powerful right now. Instead, she pulls on a cardigan and a pair of leggings, and Emma looks startled when she sees her. “You look good,” she blurts out. “I mean. I’ve never really seen you in…” Regina meets her gaze evenly. Emma swallows. “Can we talk?” she says again.
Regina pours the wine. Emma sits on the couch of her study, as uncomfortable in her own skin as she’d been on the night when they’d met. “I’ve just…I’ve been thinking about this whole magic addiction thing, and it’s kind of stupid, isn’t it? Like a really hackneyed way to explain why you went off the deep end. You were kind of off the deep end when there was no magic in Storybrooke in the first place.”
“And you thought this conversation would end badly,” Regina says dryly. But it’s easier to be calm now, to raise her eyebrows without spinning into a bitter spiral. Without Henry here, floating between them like a sword at Regina’s neck, she finds that she can allow for some awkwardness from Emma.
Emma chews on her lip. “I mean it, though. It’s not magic. And I met your mom, and she’s…well, you know.”
Your mom…she’s a piece of work, you know? Emma, wide-eyed and windswept, staring at Regina as though she can’t believe that she’s there. Regina forcefully quashes the choking cough that rises. “She was gone long before I became the Evil Queen,” she reminds Emma.
“Right. I know. But I don’t think your issue is magic,” she adds hastily. “I think it’s control. You probably didn’t have a lot of power around her, growing up. I mean, she did everything she could to keep control over you when she was here. With Archie and…” Emma twists her fingers, looks down, the lightest of flushes high on her cheeks. “It really did look like you,” she says quickly, defensively. “I had no way of knowing that she wasn’t the one who–”
Regina trembles. “Leave,” she says. She can’t bear to listen to Emma justify it, to shrug off her betrayal as though it was no betrayal at all. As though it hadn’t shattered Regina and left her in pieces for Mother to mend. “Get out.”
Emma winces. “Mary Margaret said that I should have just come over and apologized.” She sits back on the couch, and Regina wants her to go, to leave Regina to this strange limbo again where the one thing that makes her feel all right is evil and untouchable. Emma says, it’s kind of stupid, isn’t it? and Regina wants nothing more than to believe her.
She can’t allow herself the vulnerability to admit it. Instead, she says coldly, “When your mother came here to apologize, I tore out her heart and showed it to her.”
“Yeah. She mentioned that, too.” Emma offers her a wry smile. “I think it kind of made her feel better, honestly. I didn’t really feel like I got to feel better.”
It’s so earnest that Regina feels a self-destructive urge to deny Emma’s shame. “Don’t tell me you’ve had a sudden guilty conscience. I might not have killed Archie, but I’ve killed plenty of others. You know what I am.”
“I know who you are,” Emma echoes. She stares at her feet. “I wanted to go to you. When we found Archie. And then there was some complication– Gold’s girlfriend pushed him over the town line, you know that, and we had to get him set up in the ward because he couldn’t remember a thing…and then, by the time I went to find you, you’d chosen your mother.”
“Chosen,” Regina echoes bitterly. As though she’d had a choice.
Emma chews her lip. “I thought you were like me. When…when someone lets me down, I’m done, you know? It doesn’t matter if they apologize. I’m never going to trust them again. I’m never going to forgive them. I didn’t think there was anything to salvage.” She looks up again, imploring, and Regina’s breath catches in her throat.
Her words emerge hoarse, wet. “No. I’m not like you.” Regina will forgive, again and again, when it’s the right person. When it is someone who holds her heart in the palm of their hand, someone who has wormed their way in despite being enraging, irritating, confounding–
“Okay,” Emma says quietly, and she squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them again, they are glimmering with determination. Regina half-expects an apology, as late and useless as it might feel, but Emma surprises her. Emma always surprises her. “I don’t think you should keep yourself from magic,” she says, tentative. “You looked…I didn’t even realize how sick you’ve been until I saw you doing magic again.”
I haven’t been sick, Regina wants to say, except that she has, sick of mind and spirit and heart and lung, and the magic thrumming in her veins had given her a tiny reprieve. “And how do you know that I won’t use it in all the ways that you’re afraid of? For control,” because that’s what Emma claims is her problem, the thing that has made her evil. The thing that had devastated an entire realm and left her the queen of nothing, because she’d only wanted control.
Emma might grasp her a little too well.
“I don’t,” Emma admits. “But it’s not like I’ve been…I haven’t been checking up on you until now. And you haven’t tried anything, right? No dastardly plans or secret plots to take over Storybrooke?” She peers at Regina, a little dubious, as though she isn’t positive that the answer to that is no. Regina shouldn’t find it as endearing as she does.
She clears her throat. “Only the one where I reinstated myself as mayor. And most of Town Hall seemed fairly relieved about that, so I don’t think it was sufficiently evil to set off the savior.”
Emma laughs. “Oh, I’ve heard. The station got so many calls on your first day back. The queen is about to stage a hostile takeover. The queen gave me a stack of files that seem suspicious. The queen ate a chicken salad for lunch. I told them that it was only going to get worse. If they weren’t careful, you’d give them paperwork.”
Regina wants to laugh, to make a snide comment, to do anything other than stare at Emma, who keeps redefining all the ways that Regina understands her. Emma stops laughing, shifts in her seat, suddenly uncertain. “Anyway,” she says quickly, standing up. “I just came it to say that it’s okay, isn’t it? If you use magic.”
“Magic isn’t the problem,” Regina echoes, because Emma’s outburst still stings. “It’s me.”
Emma hesitates. Regina wants…an apology, an acknowledgement, something to cling to instead of those callous, cruel words. Instead, she gets Emma, frozen in place, her arms stiff at her sides.
Emma has already told her the truth. When someone lets me down, I’m never going to trust them again. I’m never going to forgive them.
But then, she steps closer to Regina, and she reaches out in a sudden movement and grasps Regina’s hands, one in each of hers. She holds them, her eyes unreadable, and Regina wonders if Emma can feel the pulse racing through her veins, can hear the energy of Regina’s magic thrumming through her chest, can smell the scent of camellias in each breath that escapes from Regina’s mouth.
Emma sets Regina’s hands down again, onto Regina’s knees, and she shakes her head as though she’s jerking herself from a dream and strides from the room. The front door opens and closes footsteps, a creak, a click, and Regina is alone again.
She takes a strained breath, and then she coughs. She is prepared for it– there’s a tissue box within a hand’s reach now, always– and she holds a tissue to her mouth as she coughs vigorously, hacks against it. Her lungs strain. Her windpipe burns as she coughs again, again, until, at last, something dislodges from her throat and emerges onto the tissue.
It is a single marigold petal, golden and tinged with a few spots of blood.
