Chapter Text
First.
First is sitting on the floor beside the fireplace in the back room of the tavern, the innkeeper ducking in to offer them each a warm drink that Emma takes gratefully. “It’s cocoa,” she says, passing the second to Regina. “Try it.”
The innkeeper tilts her head, watching Emma with the gentle fondness that everyone who meets Emma seems to adopt for her. Regina doesn’t quite trust her, not after she’d hidden Emma from Regina for so long, but Emma smiles and so Regina does, too.
Her reputation is all but gone by now, she thinks ruefully. Terrorizing peasants while searching for true love seems to have the opposite effect. She’d bark out orders and they’d smile indulgently, offering her well wishes and sighing dreamily. One old woman in the White Kingdom had even patted her on the arm and told her We know you’ll win over Princess Emma , as though this is some sort of public matter.
No . This is private, a closed door and their backs against the wall and cocoa warming their hands. And this is Regina getting answers , at last. “What did you mean?” she asks when they’re alone. “My mother ordered you to break my heart?” She can’t imagine a world where Emma would ever cede to that, Emma who fights like hell even to be with Regina.
Emma runs her fingers through her soot-streaked hair, combing out the ashy lines of it. “When I was born, Tinkerbell gave me a gift,” she says, and she laughs giddily again, wonderingly. “I can’t believe I can finally say that to you. I’ve wanted to for so long.” She takes a long sip of her cocoa. “The curse is broken. All the curses are broken. Do you still want to marry me?”
“Yes,” Regina says, because that hasn’t changed since she’d first seen Emma again, days after the king’s death. “The compulsion is gone, though,” she concedes, because she’d felt antsy for weeks, desperate as though she’d been clawing blindly for something she can’t describe. She’d awakened with dread and fallen asleep with longing, dreaming of golden hair and eyes that had shone around her, once. “But I do still want to…” It’s not the time to discuss it, though Emma’s eyes glow and Regina’s heart glows in response. “The gift, Emma. What was it?”
Emma shivers, closing her eyes for a moment. “Obedience,” she murmurs, and Regina’s eyebrows shoot up. “Every command I’ve ever been given– whether or not it was meant to be obeyed– I’ve had to follow every single one, for my whole life.” She barks out a morose laugh. “I was going to tell you years ago. I almost told you right before King Leopold’s horse went wild in the field and then…well.” She pauses, watching Regina solemnly as she waits for it to sink in.
Regina’s first reaction is disbelief. There’s no way that Emma– Emma , the most frustrating and contrary woman she’s ever known– could be beholden to every command. She runs through her memories, desperately trying to remember a single time when Emma had obeyed without question, and she draws a blank.
Wait . Little incidents begin to drift back to her, moments that had seemed more of an oddity than symptoms of a curse. A casual follow me when they’d been girls that had had Emma dogging her steps, laughing as though it had been a joke while Regina had rolled her eyes. (“I’d follow you anywhere,” Emma had said breathlessly, and she’d backed Regina against a tree in the gardens and kissed her.) Emma gripped with nausea on the way to Neverland because she hadn’t been loving Killian enough. Emma on her back in her bed at Regina’s castle, Regina whispering lie back and the lust on Emma’s face fading into heartstopping fear.
Regina had been terrified then of what she’d done, of going further than Emma had been comfortable with and crossing lines she’d never meant to. It’s nothing compared to the sick horror that she feels now that she comprehends. “What have I done to you?” she whispers.
Emma shakes her head rapidly. “Nothing. You never did a thing,” she says, and she’s smiling, smiling as though all can be forgiven, forgotten–
“My mother,” Regina understands at last, her heart wrenching in her chest. “My mother tore us apart and I spent years hating you for it. How could you– how can you sit here with me after all I’ve–”
Emma scoots over, twists onto her knees and presses a kiss to Regina’s lips. “Stop,” she breathes against them. “You didn’t know. Do you think I ever once blamed you for any of this? Do you think I ever once hated you back?” Regina tilts her head back. Her eyes are wet, her heart aches, and she’s swimming in a sea of regret. She’d thought– she’d thought once, on a tired whim after she’d found Emma again– that at least they’d been on equal footing now, that they both have equal power and standing. But they had never been equal. “I love you,” Emma murmurs against her lips.
Regina wrenches away. “Stop comforting me,” she says, and then claps a hand to her mouth as that registers as an order. No . Emma isn’t being held hostage by them anymore, and she doesn’t react to it, only lays her head against Regina’s shoulder in defiance of the command. “You’ve been through hell, Emma.”
Emma doesn’t deny it. She closes her eyes again and says, “A little bit, yeah,” and Regina kisses the top of her head, lets Emma curl into her lap, and she listens silently as Emma murmurs, “It was always better with you.”
Regina waits. Emma has spent too many years of her life being told what to do, how to think, how to be, and Regina can only offer her silence as Emma begins to speak haltingly. There is more pain that Regina had ever imagined, more years spent alone and afraid of what new commands had awaited. There are years in the hinterlands, heartbroken and afraid, and there are the weeks of Killian’s command when Emma’s voice gets cold and angry and sickened.
They shift midway through Emma’s recounting of Cora’s appearance in her bedroom, and Emma plays with Regina’s hair, tugs it loose and twists it between her fingers. “She told me to marry you,” she says. “She told me she would use me to control you. And I couldn’t– I couldn’t,” she whispers. “Not even if it meant getting to marry you.”
“You broke your curse for me?” Regina whispers back, twisting around to meet Emma’s eyes.
Emma blinks back tears, smiles blindingly through them, and she amends, “For me. For us. I didn’t want to be used to hurt you anymore. I’m not a thing to be used, to be…shaped into whatever my obedience makes me. I wanted to have choices, I guess. I wanted both of us to have choices.”
“My mother took so many of your choices,” Regina says, grieving for ten years gone and ten years suffered, and Emma presses a finger to Regina’s lips and replaces it with her mouth a moment later.
Second.
Second , the first night in Regina’s castle for both of them. Emma is given her own quarters, both for their purposes and because Regina doesn’t want to presume, and she says, “When you marry me, we shall move into my quarters, if that’s all right with you.”
Emma looks miserable. “Of course,” she says shakily, and Regina turns in her embrace, presses her forehead to Emma’s temple and brushes a kiss against Emma’s cheek.
“Have I upset you?” she asks, and it’s easy to summon up the desolation that comes with her words. There are too many times when she must have left Emma just as stricken unknowingly, and the scene they’re playing out right now could have been…
She takes a deep breath and holds Emma’s hands in her own, swinging them with hers. “I love you,” she says, and she means it. “I…” She can’t say the words she wants to, not now, and Emma smiles at her tearfully as Regina flees the room.
She can hear Emma sobbing behind her as she closes the door and leans against it. She doesn’t need to feign her exhaustion and dread, not when this is exactly how it might have gone. She’d thought herself protective of Emma, but she’d never understood what had been in Emma’s heart, and it leaves her lost in self-loathing and frustration at how foolish she’d been.
Not tonight. Never again.
She goes about her business, Mulan lingering in Emma’s room after Regina has gone and another knight disappearing to keep Henry away; and Regina mixes potions absently, keeping an eye on the flickering little enchanted mirror that she keeps at her bedside table. Mulan says her goodbyes at last, stepping from Emma’s rooms, and Regina watches the mirror with fixed intensity until a panel slides open on the side of the room and Mulan emerges from it into Regina’s chambers. “Ready?”
“Of course.” Regina spins around and follows Mulan into the passageway, keeping her voice carefully low. “My room is warded from my mother. As long as she believes that I’m inside it, she won’t search for me.”
“Do you really think she’ll come tonight?” Mulan mutters back. Regina likes Mulan. She especially likes the suspicious way Mulan regards Regina herself, as though she still isn’t entirely sure that they’re on the same side. Suspicion of the unknown is good. Loyalty to Emma is even better.
“I know my mother,” Regina says grimly. “She never leaves unfinished business.”
And by the time they’re back at Emma’s chambers, peering from behind a bookcase inside, Mother is already there. “You will not attack me. Your loyalty is to me first. I knew you couldn’t hide forever,” she croons, passing a hand along Emma’s cheek. “And now you’re going to be my daughter . We have so much to discuss.”
“I won’t do it,” Emma says hotly. She gives no sign that she knows that Regina is watching. Her eyes remain fixed on Mother in loathing and dismay. Dismay , and Regina’s brow furrows as Emma says, “Why do you have to…Regina loves you. If you’d come to her now– if you’d try to understand her, instead of using me to use her…you two could still be family ,” Emma whispers. “I would do everything I could to help.” She means it, and Regina watches her with sorrow and affection and a tiny, useless bit of hope. “Isn’t that better than–”
“You will obey my commands over any others,” Mother says sharply, and Emma falls silent. Mulan touches Regina’s hand, an instant of compassion that never transforms into pity on her face, and Regina is grateful for it.
Mother circles Emma like a predator playing with its prey. “If someone else’s command supersedes mine for some reason, you will come to me and tell me immediately.” She ponders for a moment. “In fact, you will tell me immediately about any commands given to you, regardless of how big or small.” She smiles in slow, cold satisfaction. “You will begin by suggesting to my daughter that this armistice is a mistake. You won’t settle for anything less than your parents ceding their kingdom to you.”
She looks smug, triumphant at Emma’s horror, and Regina feels a burning fury at the web Mother has spun to imprison Emma in her clutches. “Be subtle. Don’t make it obvious that that is your endgame. Do nothing that will arouse anyone’s suspicions. Can you be subtle?” Mother says, her brow wrinkling in amused disapproval.
“I’d like to think so,” Emma says, and she finds Regina’s eyes behind the staircase and crooks a finger, beckoning her forward.
Regina pushes the catch on the back of the bookcase and it turns in place, bringing her and Mulan into the room. “Hello, Mother,” she says, and there’s a certain victory just in making Mother jump, in taking her utterly by surprise. She pauses as she strides forward, coming to a halt beside Emma. “Darling,” she murmurs, kissing her cheek. “Did you think my mother would come back from this place now?”
Emma sighs, reaching out to stroke Regina’s back. “I thought…before the end, she should have one last chance.”
“I love you,” Regina sighs, and she kisses Emma’s cheek again.
Mother eyes them, her lip curled. “Come here, you silly girl,” she orders.
Emma eyes her right back, her eyes triumphant. “I don’t think so,” she says.
Mother’s face darkens. “So you’ve found a way around your little curse,” she says coolly. “Do you think that’s enough to stop me? Do you think words are all I have at my disposal?” She flicks her wrist.
Nothing happens. She flicks it again, her brow creasing.
“Do you think I’d let you come here without any precautions?” Regina retorts, and she gestures at the room. “Blood magic, Mother. Making sure that you can never use your magic against me again.” She can’t imagine how Emma had felt after her curse had been lifted, dancing through the tavern on giddiness alone, but she supposes that it must be something like this.
Mother slumps, and Regina tastes a bittersweet victory. “You ordered Emma to break my heart,” she says, her words practiced over and over again in her head on the way home. She had planned to sound vindictive, but the words emerge simple and bland, statements instead of accusations. “You made me believe for years that I was unlovable, that I was a naive fool and the only way to survive was to change.”
“All I ever wanted was to make you strong,” Mother says, her eyes shining with the honesty of that statement. “I gave you the tools to make you powerful, even if it hurt a little along the way.” She reaches for Regina and Regina blanches, uncertain. “Regina, my dear, I made you queen . I gave you your princess in the end, didn’t I? All I have ever done is make you who you were meant to be, and if you’d rather see me as a villain than acknowledge that, then, well…” She shrugs her shoulders helplessly. Regina can feel the words sinking in, the doubt returning on the heels of her desperation for her mother’s love.
Emma says, “ Bullshit .” Her voice cracks across Regina’s self-doubt like a whip. “Regina didn’t want to be queen. You wanted to be queen. Don’t you dare justify the hell you’ve put her through as being somehow for her own good.”
Mother ignores Emma, but Regina stands taller, lifts her chin, feels her confidence swell again. “Perhaps you do love me, Mother,” she says. “We will have some time to talk through this, then.” She reaches into her dress and retrieves a box, ornate and silver.
Mother’s eyes fix on it, narrowing, and Regina opens it carefully. There’s a flash of light, an instant of magic, and Mother is suddenly inside the box, her tiny body spinning around in despair.
“Goodbye, Mother,” Regina says, and she closes the box and puts it away. Daddy will keep an eye on it, and if she wants to…
Not now. Maybe someday.
“So what do you think?” Emma says brightly, sliding an arm around Regina’s waist and nuzzling her ear. “Did I make a good impression on the mother-in-law?”
“ Is she your mother-in-law now?” Regina says archly, and Emma just laughs and kisses her hard.
Third.
Third , curled in Emma’s arms later that evening when Martín raps on the door. Regina rears up, infuriated at the interruption, and she dresses herself and Emma with an angry wave of her hand and stalks to the parlor door. “How dare you,” she says, and then she sees whom Martín is holding over his shoulder, wrapped in a rain-soaked coat and thrashing.
Henry is struggling against Martín’s grip, but he stops when he hears Regina. “My apologies for disturbing you,” Martín rumbles. “We found him sneaking out of the castle, and I didn’t think you’d want him in the dungeons.”
“You thought correctly,” Regina says slowly, and Martín sets Henry down. His pale face is defiant and guilty, and he stares at the ground as his cloak drips onto Regina’s floor. “Henry, I thought I made it clear that you aren’t a prisoner here. You don’t have to skulk about,” she says, taken aback at his sullenness. There has been something about him, since the moment she’d scooped him up and taken him from Neverland, that has felt like he belongs with her, like this is where he should be.
And he’s never fought it until now, has let her spoil him and dress him for balls and has sat beside her when the weight of the curse has been overwhelming and told her that it would be all right. She doesn’t understand why he’d leave now , when everything is finally good.
He doesn’t meet her eyes. “I’m not…I can’t be useful anymore,” he mutters, and Emma appears in the doorway from the bedroom, sleepy eyes focusing on Henry with keen understanding that Regina doesn’t grasp. “I just figured it was time to go.”
“Useful,” Regina repeats blankly, and Henry shrugs sullenly.
Emma says, “Henry’s gift is gone. Isn’t it?” Henry looks up at her, betrayed, and she steps through the doorway and makes her way to Regina, resting a hand on Regina’s hip. “Regina,” she says, and she doesn’t sound nearly as uncertain as Regina feels. “Are you going to send Henry away now that he doesn’t have his book anymore?”
Regina stares at her. “I don’t give a damn about the book,” she says, and Henry exhales, his arms sliding tightly around himself. He shivers suddenly, and Regina takes a step forward automatically, pulling off his soaked cloak and flicking a finger to dry his clothes.
“Come here,” she says, and Henry follows her silently into her chambers. She pulls a blanket from her closets and wraps it around Henry’s shoulders, sitting him down on her sofa. He snuggles into the blanket, into her side, and Emma takes a seat on his other side, slipping an arm around his shoulders. “Stay,” Regina whispers, and Henry looks up at her with wide, vulnerable eyes. She’s seen herself in him before, in the way he’s quick-witted and stubborn and has that same open-eyed wonder that she’d once had as a child. But today, there’s something lost and irrevocably Emma in the way he watches her.
“If you wish,” she amends, careful now about stray commands. Emma gazes at her with warm eyes.
Henry takes a deep breath and looks from Regina to Emma and then back to Regina again. “I do wish,” he says quietly. Regina reaches for him and he buries himself in her arms, Emma pulled into the embrace as well.
They hold him for a long time before he squirms, still just a child antsy with too much emotion. “I’m just going back to my room,” he says, looking up at them, and they walk him back to his room, down the hall from Regina’s.
He lets them tuck him into bed, and he smiles sleepily at them. “I knew the story was supposed to end like this,” he mumbles, and Regina kisses his forehead gently, smoothing down his hair as she rises.
“Night, kid,” Emma says, smiling softly.
When they’re back in the hall, walking to Regina’s chambers hand-in-hand, Emma ventures, “So I guess you’re a mom now.” Regina flushes but doesn’t deny it, doesn’t want to. Emma contemplates. “Or maybe we are.”
Regina turns to watch her carefully, but Emma just winks, tugging Regina into her chambers. She has her hand to Regina’s back, and Regina doesn’t notice until she feels a cool touch to her skin that Emma has unzipped her dress. “I think we were in the middle of something,” Emma breathes, and Regina lets out a strangled gasp in response.
Emma dots kisses down her back, presses them against her skin, and Regina feels suddenly obligated to ask, “When you said that you’d never–”
“ Never ,” Emma sighs, sliding her hands beneath Regina’s dress to ease off the front. The corset is untied swiftly, Emma directing her attentions to the small of Regina’s back, and Regina arches her back and moans. “Couldn’t trust anyone with my curse. Couldn’t risk–”
Regina remembers again that moment in the castle, and her arousal fades away. “Stop that,” Emma murmurs against her skin. “Stop thinking about…” Her fingers creep downward, squeezing Regina’s ass sharply. Regina chokes. “Stay with me,” Emma whispers, biting Regina’s shoulder.
Regina splays her hands against the wall, propping herself up as Emma’s fingers slip inside her. “Missed you,” Emma says hoarsely.
“Missed you,” Regina echoes, and Emma plays her like a violin she’s never forgotten, draws out whimpers and moans and builds toward Regina’s release until Regina is panting and desperate, forehead pressed to the wall and teeth gritting together from the sensations. “Fuck it, Emma, just–”
Emma flips her around and pushes her onto the bed, her eyes intent, and she kneads Regina’s breasts roughly as Regina groans, needy and wanting. “Lie back,” Emma orders, and this is– this is catharsis, Regina is beginning to realize, a long-overdue healing.
Regina lies back, and Emma buries her face between Regina’s legs and licks her up and down until Regina shudders and cries out.
Regina stays on her back, limp and sated, and her hands fall to Emma’s hips, slide Emma’s disheveled clothes from her. It suddenly feels very important to whisper as she pulls Emma to her, “May I?”
Emma nods shakily, kissing her. Her tongue slips into Regina’s mouth, her teeth brushing Regina’s lips, and Regina tears herself away onto to press hot, open-mouthed kisses to Emma’s neck.
“May I?” she whispers again, and Emma nods fervently as Regina licks a trail down to her breasts, sucking on one nipple while she pinches the other, letting her teeth graze Emma’s skin until Emma’s squirming against her, grinding against Regina’s center and hissing out frustration when it isn’t enough.
Regina presses a kiss to Emma’s stomach, lifts Emma’s wrist and kisses it, too. “May I?” she says, bringing Emma’s hand to her breast, and Emma massages it in response, leaving Regina writhing above her in tandem with her.
“Please, Regina,” Emma begs in a breath, arching to her. “Please, please, please…”
Regina pulls her forward, drags Emma up her body until her sopping center is nearly at Regina’s breast, warm and wet against her stomach. She positions her fingers just so, trailing them along Emma’s thighs and angling her back just a bit, and Emma watches them with glassy eyes, thrusting forward wildly. “May I?” Regina breathes, her fingers just skimming Emma’s lower lips.
“You’d better ,” Emma says fervently, and Regina slides her fingers into Emma, arcs them and twists and pumps in and out, in and out, her thumb flicking at Emma’s clit. Emma keens, rocking against her, and Regina pistons her fingers into Emma, deeper and faster and harder until Emma is crying out. She replaces her fingers with her tongue, spells out I love you into Emma with her tongue, and Emma comes and comes and comes until she’s spent, tears of sheer pleasure spilling down her face as she drops to kiss Regina ardently.
Fourth.
Fourth , the inevitable. Snow White arrives at the castle, her husband beside her.
It isn’t as though Regina hadn’t known to expect them. Mulan had left to bring them here days before, and they’d heard reports of a formal diplomatic envoy being put together. “She’s my mother,” Emma reminds Regina, kissing her behind her ear. “And she’s trying . Can you be…” She swallows what she’d been about to say. “Be tolerant,” she decides on.
Regina gives her a dark look. “I have a reputation to uphold,” she says, pouting.
“You’re practically sitting on Emma’s lap,” Henry points out from the next throne. “In front of half the nobles in the kingdom.”
Regina blinks around the throne room. The nobles present suddenly find the walls of the room fascinating. One beams directly at Regina and says, “We’re so glad you’ve found true love.”
“They love you,” Emma murmurs in her ear. “You threw a bunch of parties and let them into the castle. Leopold would never.” She’s thoughtful for a moment. “We should keep that up, actually. Not every night, but often. Make the monarchy more accessible to everyone.”
Regina twists around to face her. “We?” she echoes, and Emma smiles enigmatically and nods to the door.
“They’re here,” she hisses, and she sits up straight, shifting over as the throne widens magically to seat them both. The doors open, Regina’s guards pulling them back as Snow’s guard enters, marching sharply to the center of the room.
“King David and Queen Snow of the White Kingdom,” the man at the front of the guard announces. Regina nods warily, motioning them forward, and Snow and David enter the room.
“Emma,” David says, distracted at once, and Emma climbs down from the throne to be wrapped into a hug. “It’s broken? It’s really–?”
“It is,” Emma says, eyes shining. “Tell me to do something. Anything.” Regina knows she secretly craves commands to defy, sees the barely-concealed grin every time she can disobey someone.
David says, bemusedly, “Do a cartwheel.”
“I couldn’t if I tried,” Emma says smugly. “And I’m not going to try.” She’s pulled into another hug, and Snow watches her with so much love in her eyes that Regina can’t muster up the fury she’s been holding onto.
She clears her throat, and Snow shifts to face her. “Regina,” she says, her tone cautious.
“Snow,” Regina responds warily. She doesn’t know what to expect from the other queen. Emma has been closed-mouthed about whatever effort Snow has supposedly been making, and Regina already knows how this will end. Snow is regarded as the victim in their feud by public opinion, is beloved by all, is as good as queen herself in Regina’s own kingdom. Emma might talk about Regina winning over the nobles, but Regina knows well enough that it’s the fact that it’s Snow’s daughter beside her that has won their loyalty.
She will have to apologize, make some amends for her angriest strikes against the White Kingdom, and maybe then Emma will be permitted to marry her–
–if there even is going to be a wedding, and Regina still can’t figure that one out–
She takes a deep breath, preparing for the worst, and Snow says, “I should never have sent you to marry Leopold.”
The room falls silent. The nobles gape at Snow, David’s eyebrows shoot up, and Henry exhales as though he’s been holding his breath for a long time. Only Emma, standing beside Snow, looks unsurprised.
Regina purses her lips. “Because now he’s dead, I’m queen, and I’m going to despoil your daughter repeatedly tonight?” she offers sleekly. Emma winces. David lets out a garbled sound from his throat.
Snow stands her ground. “Because you trusted me to help you,” she says, and Regina doesn’t have a response to that . “Because I saw your anger and thought you ungrateful instead of suffering.”
They’re…all the right words, all the right sentiments, and Regina is stunned to silence. They’re the words she’s craved for a decade , offered freely, and nothing demanded in return.
There’s a bitter instant when she thinks back to all she’s done, all she’s lost, every single thing gone in the past ten years because Snow couldn’t say those words until now. There’s a bitter piece of her that still craves to punish , to hurt, to strike out and tear apart instead of heal.
But Emma looks at her with so much faith that the bitterness fizzles and dies. “I suppose I have some things to apologize for as well,” she says grudgingly.
Snow waves a hand. “You saved our lives,” she says. David looks very confused at this revelation. Clearly, his wife has been keeping him out of the loop. “Consider this a blank slate for your future with Emma.” She shoots her daughter a look that makes it clearly exactly what her motivation is in making peace. Snow’s love for Emma is swiftly becoming her most redeeming feature. “Though I could do with a little less discussion of despoiling .”
“Oh, no,” Regina says, and she feels less weighted down, a burden gone from her shoulders. “That’s non-negotiable.” Emma rolls her eyes at Regina, and Regina can’t help the smile that creeps onto her face.
Snow notices it, too, and she takes a bold step forward, hand out. “Peace, then,” she says.
Regina rises from her throne, stepping down to meet Snow. “Peace,” she agrees, extending her own hand. Instead, Snow pulls her to her in an embrace, warm and unexpected. There is still something about Snow, a quality that feels as a mother should be even after the years of antagonism, and Regina can feel her eyes stinging within the hug.
When she can pull away, she does, slipping her arm into Emma’s and holding out her other hand for Henry. “There is a reception to attend,” she says, and if her voice is wobbly, no one comments on it.
Fifth.
Fifth , the urgent message that comes via bird one morning during Snow’s visit. There is a seabird rapping on the doors to the balcony when Regina rises, and it caws and caws until Regina sighs and says, “Emma, you have a friend here.”
Emma pokes her head out. She’s dressed in nothing but a pair of Regina’s royal robes, and she tucks them around herself as she pushes open the balcony doors and immediately launches into conversation with the seabird. Regina has always been fascinated by Emma’s skill with language, the way her voice shifts to mimic intonations and rises and falls with the words she speaks. She still sounds like Emma as she speaks, but she sounds alien at the same time, birdlike in an inhuman way.
When she finishes, the seabird flies away, and Emma turns grim-faced to Regina. “It’s Tinkerbell,” she says, and Regina tenses, preparing for the worst.
She doesn’t expect Emma to take a deep breath and then say, “She needs our help.”
“Absolutely not,” Regina says when they’ve dressed and made it downstairs to the council room. Snow has the same hard look on her face, and David is drumming his fingers on the table in agitation. Ella is biting her lip anxiously. Mulan and Martín are emotionless, and Red looks as though she might transform and tear out Tinkerbell’s throat, if given the go-ahead. Only Henry looks worried, and he squeezes her hand under the table. “We owe her nothing.”
“I took her magic away,” Emma points out. At their disbelieving looks, she says irritably, “I know she had it coming. But I can’t just stand by and let Peter Pan kill her when she’s asked for help.”
“Let her rot,” Snow says, teeth bared, and Regina is inclined to agree with her.
Ella clears her throat. “Is she really…is she trapped ? How did she get to Neverland? Doesn’t she have a way to leave herself?” Without her curse, she’s more subdued, more thoughtful. She remains a fiercely loyal handmaiden, though Regina suspects it won’t be much longer before those notes she’s been passing off to Princess Rapunzel culminate in her departure.
They’re all better off now, and no one will deny that. Regina hadn’t expected this, Emma beside her, advocating passionately for the fairy who had started all of this. “It’s the right thing to do,” Emma argues. “She doesn’t have her magic. She can’t hurt us.”
“Anymore,” Mulan corrects her, and Emma shoots her a tired, exasperated look.
She turns back to the whole table, finding Regina’s eyes and holding them. “Who am I if I knowingly let this happen?” she says simply, and Regina has no response to that.
“It’s what she deserves,” David argues. “She should be locked in our dungeons at best . And if she’s killed by some person she cursed, then, well…”
“He wanted it,” Henry says suddenly. His voice is low, angry, conflicted. Regina remembers what he’s told them about his past, about the years spent manipulated and used for his gift. “He wanted it, and if Emma goes to save Tinkerbell from him, then I’m going, too.”
“She is not–” Snow begins, and Regina cuts her off.
“So am I.”
They all look at her askance. She shrugs. “Emma’s right. And so is David. She should be locked in a dungeon somewhere. But justice isn’t meted out by a vindictive child-man. That isn’t justice.” She tosses a sidelong glance at Emma. “And Emma’s going to go either way, so she might as well have backup.”
Emma sits back, her smirk threatening to consume her entire face. Regina rolls her eyes at her. “For the record, you’re an idiot.”
Emma looks around the table disbelievingly. “Do you hear this? Do you hear the way she speaks to me? Are you all just going to take this?”
Mulan cocks her head. “She isn’t wrong.”
Emma glowers at her. “I knew she’d wind up getting you in the divorce,” she says sulkily. Mulan snorts.
“ Divorce? Does this mean we’re…?” Regina begins, but everyone is rising, the tension at the table fading with the decision made.
“I’ll ready the guard,” Martín says, exchanging a glance with Mulan and Red. “We’ll have to coordinate with the White Kingdom’s guard.”
Red shrugs. “I can’t imagine anyone on Neverland will pose much of a threat,” she points out, and she and Martín begin a discussion of resources as the others file out. Snow is still arguing with Emma, and Ella and Henry go off in the direction of the docks to scope out the available ships.
The room is empty soon enough, and Regina pauses in the doorway, watching Emma and Snow from a distance. “She still doesn’t understand how she earns the loyalty of everyone she meets,” Mulan murmurs from the other side of the doorway.
“We’ve acknowledged that she’s a bit of an idiot,” Regina points out fondly. Mulan barks out a laugh.
She watches Emma with quiet, fierce affection. “I would lay down my life for her.”
“As would I,” Regina says.
Mulan looks at her appreciatively. “You really are growing on me,” she says. “But if you do break her heart, I’ll rip out yours.”
“You’d need to be a witch for that,” Regina points out.
Mulan’s eyes narrow. “No, I wouldn’t. I’d just need a really sharp sword.” She pats the hilt of hers and heads off, toward Martín and Red. Regina watches her, somewhere in the uneasy land between touched and disturbed.
Emma does inspire this sort of loyalty, and a surprising number of Regina’s own guards seem surprisingly loyal to Regina, too. There are too many people willing to join them, and they only choose a few guards in the end, enough to man the ship. Henry slips on against both their protests, too. “If you’re going back there, I am, too,” he says, and he stands grimly on the deck, Emma and Regina standing protectively beside him.
It’s a long, quiet trip to Neverland this time. The skies are clear and there is little tension on board, and Emma and Henry play cards with Mulan while Regina watches the sky. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for– a little flutter of light in the distance, a sign that the fairies are taking care of one of their own? Doubtful. They’re going to have to go back, and Regina worries about it in the same way that she worries about Henry’s eyes flickering out into the distance every few minutes, in the same way that she worries about Emma worrying her lip over and over again until it’s beginning to chap.
“I’m fine,” Emma whispers later, when it’s nearly sunset and the island is visible from a distance. “I’m doing what I have to. She can’t curse me anymore, right?” She laughs shakily and Regina strokes her hair, kisses her skin, holds her close until Emma is still and her breathing is even again.
They dock at nightfall, and Mulan calls out orders. “Spread out,” she says, eyeing the terrain critically. “Find the fairy, bring her back to the ship.” She pauses, contemplating, “Find out how she got here. Any sign that Pan can abduct people from the island and we take him, too.”
She bounds off in one direction with her werewolf beside her, the other guards fanning out at her orders. “Look how well they work together,” Emma says. “It’s good practice, I suppose.” Henry bobs his head in agreement. Regina stares at them, stymied.
They walk together along the coast, toward where they had docked last time. Emma had been so determined to do everything on her own then, so determined to save Regina from herself, and they’d both paid dearly for it. “How did you get into that hole in the ground last time?” Regina asks now. Emma isn’t alone, has an arm around Henry as they walk, and Regina is protective beside them.
Emma shivers. “I crawled,” she says, and she looks hollow and haunted as they approach it. Henry bites his lip, staring straight ahead to the crater in the ground, and Regina steps ahead of them, walking forward where they can’t yet.
It’s still a crater. Rubble blankets the bottom of it, broken trees and rocks and dirt everywhere, except at the very center.
Tinkerbell is there, gagged and bound to a tall stick that’s been embedded in the ground. Her eyes widen when she sees them at the edge of the crater, darting from Emma’s face to Regina’s to Henry’s, and she looks apprehensive.
One well-timed fireball, and she’d be gone. Regina knows this, just as well as she knows that neither Emma nor Henry will allow it. “She looks–” Emma begins abruptly, then stops.
Henry finishes her sentence for her. “Small,” he says. She does look small. Without the glow of magic around her, she looks small and afraid, diminished and furtive as she hadn’t before.
“Doesn’t she?” someone drawls from beside them. A boy is perched on a rock beside them, his face twisted into a sneer. Henry stands straight abruptly, his fingers tightening into fists. “All those spells and curses and she’s nothing with her magic gone.” Peter Pan sounds smug. “You know how I got her here? I sent her a note about the berries here. Food and a cave. That’s all she wanted.” He laughs shortly. “Pathetic. She doesn’t deserve to live.”
“Neither do you,” Regina says coolly. “But here you are.” Emma has filled her in on the pieces of Henry’s story that Henry is reluctant to repeat, and she feels a surge of loathing toward this man-child.
Pan snorts. “What are you going to do, lock me in a dungeon? Give me food and shelter and keep me safe for the rest of my days? I’m shaking in my boots.”
“No,” Regina says. “That’s what we’re going to do to the fairy. I have other plans for you.” She waves her hand and Tinkerbell is abruptly in front of them, the gag and bindings gone. “And as for you…” Pan is flung into the crater, and Regina concentrates and begins to build, step by step and tree by tree and rock by rock, recreating the prison that Pan had formed for Henry. Pan screams, shouts out curses and threats until they can’t hear him anymore and the ground is solid in front of them.
She twists around to face Henry and Emma. Emma says, “Is there food down there?”
“An underwater spring,” Henry says, staring at the space where Pan had been.
“Hm.” Emma catches Regina’s eye. “Strange how we never found Pan on this island,” she says, a ghost of a smile on her face, and Regina presses a kiss to her cheek, immeasurably grateful to know her.
She turns back to Tinkerbell, who’s smiling uncertainly at them as though they might be her allies. “You,” she barks out. “Walk.”
Tinkerbell stops smiling.
They wait while Mulan recalls the guards and readies the ship for departure. Tinkerbell’s wrists have been bound, and she sits on a bench on the deck, staring at the ground. Emma sits opposite her, and Regina tenses.
She doesn’t know what Emma might do, how Emma might be affected by Tinkerbell. When she thinks about Emma, when she tries to comprehend what the past three decades have been like for her, all she’s left with is the memory of Mother wrapping her in Rocinante’s bridle, leaving her helpless to do anything but Mother’s will. All she’s left with is the girl who’d had to do the king’s bidding and the horrors that it had entailed.
But Regina had pursued her vengeance for years following, had found power and control where it had been stripped away from her. She doesn’t know who Emma would be if given those tools.
She doesn’t think she could bear Emma’s compassion if she rejects them, either.
The ship is leaving, sailing off back home, and Emma says at last, her eyes intent on Tinkerbell, “Why?”
Tinkerbell’s shoulders slump. “I thought I was giving you something good,” she says. There are no more airy defenses, no more gifts to disseminate. Tinkerbell is just human, just a girl with her wrists bound behind her back. “I was trying to prove myself.”
“You’re a fool ,” Emma says fiercely. “You ruined lives.” Tinkerbell stares impassively, silently, and it only makes Emma angrier. “And you still don’t care,” she says disbelievingly. “You don’t even…do you even think of us as people ? Or are we just…toys to play with, to experiment on? Are we just stories to tell the other fairies about how much you’ve done to the stupid, helpless humans?”
Under Emma’s glare, Tinkerbell is muted, underwhelming, and Emma glows with her fury. “We could lock you up in the dungeons,” she says, her fingers drumming against her knee. “We could feed you and shelter you and take away your freedom like you took mine. But–”
She stops, takes a breath. Regina watches her in quiet awe. “But that’s too easy,” Emma says through gritted teeth. “I want you to– I want you to learn what it means to fight for every meal. To keep yourself safe when you have no one. To wander through the land and never know what might happen next, how you might be hurt or stranded or trapped.
“And while you’re there,” Emma says, her voice growing in intensity. “I want you to imagine what it might be like to go through that and– and be incapable of feeling the emotions you want to. Or be forced to follow the path someone else has decided for you. Or to have something everyone wants and no way to protect yourself.” She clears her throat, her eyes like steel. “I want you to imagine what it might be like to be obedient ,” she hisses, and Tinkerbell trembles. “And then you can begin to make amends.”
She turns abruptly and stalks from the former fairy, to the other side of the deck as Regina hurries after her. “I don’t want to hear about how I’m going easy on her–” Emma begins.
Regina cuts her off. “You were glorious ,” she breathes, and she means it. “That was…I’m going to have to get you angry more often.”
Emma raises her eyebrows, amused. “It turns you on, doesn’t it?”
Regina heaves a sigh. “You have no idea,” she admits. “If we weren’t surrounded by our loyal guards and Henry, I would have taken you right then against the wall, fairy be damned.”
Emma laughs, loud and delighted and free, and says teasingly, “Save it for the honeymoon.”
Which is– enough.
Enough .
“Enough,” she barks out furiously, loud enough to attract the attention of everyone in their vicinity.
Emma blinks at her bemusedly. “Enough?” she echoes. “Enough of what?”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Regina says, her hands clenching into fists. Emma is beginning to look concerned. “I can’t–” She’s breathing hard, and she can feel the words threatening to escape at last, to unleash themselves, consequences be damned. “Are we…” She surrenders to them, bursts out the demand. “Are we engaged or not?”
Emma stares at her. “What?”
“You keep…talking about marriage and weddings! And divorce! Why are we getting divorced if we’re not even engaged!” Regina explodes.
Emma’s brow furrows. “Regina, I don’t–”
“And I proposed to you, but you said no –”
“I was trying to break a curse! I thought that was valid!” Emma spreads her hands, and Regina glares at her, absolutely stymied at all of this.
“Regardless!” The guards are staring at them with what seems like much amusement, and Regina glowers fiercely at all of them. “I have no idea if I’m supposed to be– to be planning a wedding or if we’re dating or–”
Emma holds up a finger. “Okay, first of all, I proposed ten years ago and you said yes, so I don’t see why we aren’t still engaged.”
“I got married in between,” Regina points out.
Emma makes a face. “Doesn’t count.”
“Second of all, I can just–”
She makes as though to get down on one knee, and Regina says, “Don’t you dare. I want an answer from you ,” and at that moment, she recognizes at last how ridiculous they’re being. A desperate, near-hysterical laugh escapes from her mouth, and Emma snorts, snorts again, until they’re both laughing hard enough that tears of laughter are streaming down their faces and they’re shaking, leaning into each other and pressing wet kisses to each other’s face.
Regina whispers, wheezing a little at the effort, “Marry me.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Emma says, and she laughs helplessly, kisses Regina on the tip of her nose.
Regina scowls, but she’s unable to muster up any outrage. “And you see, this is why I’m so frustrated–” she protests, and Emma kisses her again, her cheeks and earlobes and neck and finally her lips.
“I will absolutely marry you,” she says, and she pulls back, the laughter gone and replaced with a blazing, triumphant smile. “Because I choose to.”
And so she does.