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The trek to the Underworld begins like many of Emma’s adventures, both pre- and post- discovering Storybrooke. She hurls herself blindly in the direction of the problem, some semblance of a plan in mind, sure that she will be able to improvise the rest of it along the way.
But something goes wrong.
She fails.
*
Regina’s hand is inside her chest.
*
The thing about the Underworld is that it isn’t terribly difficult to enter. She, Regina, and David are accompanied by the newly re-darkened Rumple, who abandons them the second they cross over. He clearly has his own agenda for the trip, but Emma barely even notices. She has a goal in mind, and nothing is going to stop her.
It doesn’t occur to her that nothing even tries.
They trek deeper and deeper into the bowels of the darkness, sticking close together, searching for clues as to Hook’s whereabouts. Pan’s shadow sneers at them from a distance, and Regina slams to a halt when she hears her mother’s cold laugh echo through the cavern. But Cora never materializes, and Regina clenches her jaw and unfreezes.
“Keep going,” is all she says, and Emma wants to talk about the fact that Regina’s face is three shades paler than it was a moment before, has the urge to reach out and give her a quick reassuring touch on the shoulder, but the impulse is over before it even begins, and Regina has already forged ahead anyway.
Emma clears her mind and refocuses, letting each step she takes echo Hook Hook Hook through her brain. Nothing else is important right now. It can’t be. She has a goal. She has a plan.
She just has to find him, and it’ll all work out.
(She finds him.)
(It doesn’t.)
*
Those fingers curl around her heart and pull and pull and-
*
The thing is that while getting into Hell is relatively simple, getting out is another story entirely.
Every terrible smell, every clawing screech, every threatening shout, every looming shadow that graced their way down into the bowels of the Underworld suddenly makes its very real presence known.
There are bodies - ghosts? That’s never really cleared up for Emma, but everyone in the Underworld is entirely corporeal even if they aren’t actually alive in the usual sense - hiding in every crevice, just around every corner. Some prefer to ambush with skill and agility, while others just run headlong toward them, pelting rocks and grabbing with too-strong hands.
Former enemies Charming had killed in battle, those who had gotten in the way of Regina’s revenge against Snow White. Those who have simply been in this deep, dark, twisting cavern of nothingness for too long, all ready to pounce on this new, fresh, living prey.
That isn’t to mention the faceless wardens in dark robes, the magical spells, the enchanted corridors that appear open only to suddenly turn into complete dead ends.
By the end of the second day of fighting to return through the realm, they abandon hope of finding the Storybrooke portal. Any exit will do, because magic or no magic, they are not going to survive if they stay here much longer.
They decide that after they’ve rested, they will make their way back to the portal they passed several hours before. Emma is on watch while Regina and David sleep, keeping her magic close, thrumming in the tips of her fingers, the light feel still so natural and altogether foreign at once. She is contemplating this when she nods off, her head against the stone wall, hands limp in her lap. When she wakes again with a jerk, their surroundings are entirely rearranged again.
“Fuck,” she shouts at no one in particular, jumping up from the ground and turning in a quick circle. It’s no use.
Regina and David both wake, standing alongside her, investigating the walls that have shifted since they laid down to sleep an hour before.
“What happened?” David asks.
“I don’t know. Everything was the same, it was fine. And then I closed my eyes, I swear it was only for a second! But when I opened them, this.” She gestures wildly around the surrounding stone walls.
To make things worse, she can hear the echoes of footsteps shuffling along, something coming toward them from the newly revealed tunnel on their left.
“New plan. We find an opening wherever we can and get the hell out of here,” Regina says as they take off at a sprint straight ahead.
“Amen,” Emma agrees, and it’s the last thing she says for several hours as they make their way through the dark.
*
-and pull and...nothing.
“I can’t.”
“Well, try harder.”
Her look is pure exasperation. “This isn’t a matter of force. I’ve removed plenty of hearts, and I’m saying yours won’t come out .”
*
When they finally make it out, they emerge in what appears to be a...high school? Emma looks around, and yep. Definitely a high school. Of all the places. But at least it seems to be in their world, not Neverland or Wonderland or any other lands Emma had no desire to face right now. The posters on the walls are in English, proclaiming their location to be in Sunnydale High, specifically. Thankfully it must be the weekend, because if the sun streaming in through the windows is any indication, it’s the middle of the day, and there aren’t any students around.
Still, they need to get out before anyone spots them.
Unfortunately, all the doors seem to be the electronically automated lock variety, which isn’t something Emma can get them out of with a bobby pin. Instead she picks up a metal chair and slams it into a window in the school library, and they all crawl out and make a run for it before anyone can show up to investigate the disturbance.
They stumble into some sort of public park soon enough, and Emma decides that’s as good of a spot as any to stop and take stock of their position.
All three of them have their phones, but the devices are all dead and completely useless.
Emma, however, is the only one with ID.
“Are you guys serious?”
David just looks at her with a sheepishly blank expression, but Regina shoots back an annoyed: “Well, excuse me for not thinking I would need a driver’s license in Hell.” She whispers the last two words, but does so in an emphatic manner that says she would be yelling if their surroundings allowed for it.
Emma feels herself start to rise to the bait, but she takes a deep breath and stands down.
“Okay. Fine. Whatever. What about money?”
They both shake their head at her, which is what she had expected anyway.
“Okay. I have my debit card, so we have enough to last us for...a while. Why don’t we just go get a hotel room, take a shower, and figure out just where the hell we are. For all we know, we’re only a few hours from home.”
Regina’s expression is skeptical, David’s hopeful, but they both agree that sounds like the best course of action.
They begin to set off toward the road that seems to have the most businesses, but before they can get far, Regina calls them to a halt.
“We can’t go anywhere looking like this,” she says, gesturing down at their clothes. Emma looks down, and shit. No cleansing spells in this world outside of Storybrooke, no magic at all. (Except that isn’t true for her, not exactly. But she doesn’t think getting upset and maybe burning out a couple nearby lightbulbs is going to be any help here. Of course. She’s an exception with no power to make any of her own rules.)
Emma casts thoughts of magic aside, concentrating on the goal at hand. She starts brushing off as much dust and dirt as she can, yanking the elastic out of her hair, wincing at the greasy feel of it, and tying it back in a ponytail at the base of her neck. She zips up her jacket, both because it’s chilly and to hide the bloodstain from the wound she’d gotten yesterday during their fight to escape. With their combined magic, she and Regina had healed it completely in under ten seconds. At the time, the stain did not seem worth the effort of removing. Now, however, it would definitely draw some unwanted attention.
Regina and David also tidy to the best of their abilities, though it is not particularly effective. Twenty minutes later, they are standing outside a small motel as Emma goes inside to get a room.
A tall man with red hair greets Emma as soon as she steps in the door. “Good afternoon. How may I assist you today?”
“Hey there,” Emma blinks a few times at the dimness of the office, her eyes still adjusting from the bright sunlight of the late afternoon outdoors. She focuses on the friendly man’s nametag, calling up years of experience to get into character when she feels like death. But she can con with the best of them; that’s one skill she’ll probably never lose (she can barely remember the last time in her life when she wasn’t acting). “Lou. I’m in a bit of a jam. We were doing the whole ‘roughing it’ thing, back to nature, y’know? But that kinda fell through, since if I sleep on the ground one more night, I don’t think I’m going to be able to bend over for a year. So I’m hoping you’ll tell me you have a room available.”
“How many rooms will you be needing?”
“There’s only three of us, so just one with two beds, preferably.”
He types something on the keyboard and clicks a couple times before answering. “I have a non-smoking room with two doubles available?”
“I’ll take it.”
Emma fishes her ID and her debit card out of her back pocket and waits while he checks the ID and then runs the card.
“Hopefully you’ll find our amenities better than those at your campsite,” he winks, handing her cards back across the counter.
“This is the last time I try to take my sister-in-law camping, I’ll tell you that,” Emma smirks, but it feels brittle. She doesn’t bare her teeth because she can’t actually remember the last time she brushed them.
The man laughs, and the sound grates on her nerves.
“I hear you. If there’s anything else you need that isn’t in the room already, just give the front desk a call, and we’ll have it up to you in no time.”
“Thanks, Lou. You’re a lifesaver.”
He grins at her, and Emma exits the door without a backward glance.
Two hours later, Emma feels human again after using up an entire one of those little mini bottles of shampoo the hotel provided, but it only heightens the fact that she just feels...off. And tired. So, so tired. If she were alone, she would just crawl into the bed naked and sleep for an eternity, but instead, she reaches for the heap on the floor that is her outfit, wrinkling her nose at the rank scent that assaults her nose as she tugs her shirt down over her head.
She emerges to the news that Regina found a map in the drawer while Emma was in the shower, and they are, in fact, in the US, but they are in California, which is pretty much as far from Maine as you can get without crossing the border.
The mood in the wake of her announcement is listless. David is trying to be cheerful, blathering on about something, but now they are all out of danger and standing still, and there’s nothing to distract her, and suddenly the feeling of failure is cracking her ribs.
David disappears into the bathroom to take his own shower, cracking a joke about hoping there’s enough hot water left for him after Regina and Emma have already gone.
Emma thinks she pretends to laugh, but she isn’t sure.
Regina asks to borrow her debit card to go to the store, and Emma grabs it out of her pants pocket and tosses it her way.
The brunette gives her a searching look, but Emma just says, “Make sure to grab a bear claw if you see one.”
Her voice is all wrong, and Regina knows it, but she gives a small nod of understanding before turning away and letting the door close softly behind her.
And Emma’s alone.
She sits down on the bed, stands, paces, sits again.
A flier on the credenza catches her eye, and when she looks more closely at it, she can see all the local food places that deliver. And suddenly, Emma realizes she is hungry - starving, actually. And good, that’s good, because hunger she can do something about.
When David emerges from the shower, Emma is just finishing up reciting her card number to the pizza place. She hangs up the hotel phone and looks over at him.
“Pizza will be here in 20.”
“Excellent. I hope you ordered plenty; I feel like I could eat an entire pizza myself right now.”
“I ordered enough for a small army, so I think we’ll be good.”
He gives her a thumbs up and flops down on the opposite bed, gesturing at the television.
“Mind if I turn it on?”
“Go for it.”
David flips on the television, but Emma doesn’t really pay attention to it.
The laugh track grates on her nerves after a couple minutes, so she steps out onto the tiny balcony right outside their room with the two plastic lawn chairs sitting next to a crappy little metal table. She suddenly realizes she is dying of thirst, but the idea of going back into the room right now sounds like torture.
Out here, she is starting to at least feel like she can almost breathe.
She has the strangest urge for a cigarette. She’s only smoked once in her life, and the attempt had ended with her teenage self coughing up a lung and turning green while Lily laughed at her from her corner of the couch. She had declared never again, though she hadn’t minded the taste on the other girl’s tongue when Lily kissed her later that night.
She feels...different, without the darkness. She has been on the move since she lost it (since she finally rid herself of it, she corrects internally, glad the slip happens only in her own head and not out loud.)
She doesn’t miss it. Not exactly. It’s impossible to really miss something so toxic, so dark. She just isn’t sure how to feel anymore without it, what she can do.
She wonders if it’ll be better or worse once they’re back in Storybrooke and she gets her magic back. How will it feel wielding pure white magic again, outside the thick darkness of the Underworld? Is her magic still entirely light? Is she less powerful than she was before? Moreso?
She wonders if selfish acts that ultimately lead to a death is the same thing as murder.
It feels like it sometimes. When she lets it. She wonders if that’s enough to disqualify her from being A Hero.
She wonders if the difference between heroes and villains is that heroes get away with murder on technicalities.
David sticks his head out of the sliding door to let her know the pizza has arrived, and Emma stands still for a few more seconds before she follows him back inside.
*
“What do you mean, it won’t come out? Are you fucking kidding me? Regina, come on.”
“Look, Emma, I told you this would only work if-
“No. That’s not the problem. It has to be something else.”
“Emma.”
She hates how her voice comes out, raw and broken and desperate. “I love him. I do. I do .”
Now the dark eyes are starting to get a hint of pity, and she wants to fucking punch something.
David is keeping watch outside the small room, only the two of them and a passed out Hook on the floor next to them.
Emma looks at him, sets her jaw. “But I have to.”
*
Regina gets back from the store right after the pizza arrives. She rolls her eyes and mutters something about being unsurprised by their choice, but she eats it anyway, dabbing the extra grease off with a napkin.
While they eat, Regina briefs them on the things she bought, gesturing to the bags over on the bed. The largest is a new backpack, presumably to put it all into when they’re traveling. She bought a package of water bottles, some toiletries, a phone charter, a small throw blanket, a simple change of clothes for each of them, and a few other things. Emma polishes off her second slice and reaches for the phone charger immediately, which had been the primary reason for the store trip.
Regina gives Emma her debit card back, and Emma slides it into her pocket while she continues fiddling with the plastic packaging surrounding the charger. It’s one that will work both in the wall and the car, and it would be great if she could just fucking get it open.
She feels the tension growing inside her, starting in a little knot between her shoulder blades and spiraling out with every ineffective yank on the plastic. She’s beginning to feel like a bubble ready to burst and her hands might be shaking, and she doesn’t look up at Regina and David, because they’re probably staring at her. Finally out of sheer luck, the tab slides out the way it’s supposed to, and she’s able to dismantle the rest with minimal effort. She looks up, and no one else appears to be aware of her struggle, and somehow that makes it worse.
The whole thing is terribly anticlimactic and leaves her with this energy that has no place to go, a powder keg without any reason to explode, and she doesn’t even know what this is. She just needs to do something, anything to get his horrible energy out of her. It isn’t hers anymore, doesn’t belong, doesn’t feel like something she should be feeling right now.
Gritting her teeth against the sensation and trying to take deep breaths, Emma plugs the charger into the wall, connects her phone, and powers it up.
She pulls up Google Maps and inputs their location alongside Machias, Maine, which is the nearest town to Storybrooke that’s actually going to show up on a map.
“Looks like we’re in for a ride, guys.”
Two heads swivel toward her.
“GPS says it’s a 54 hour drive to Storybrooke.”
Regina suggests renting a car in the morning after a full night’s rest. Emma agrees that both of them look like they could use sleep, and had she not avoided looking at herself in the mirror when she was in the bathroom, she likely would have seen her reflection looking much the same.
Still, as soon as that is decided, there’s not much else to do.
Emma lets her phone charge and downs another slice of pizza, sipping water from a tiny plastic cup from the tiny sleeve of cups left in this tiny room, and everything inside of her is too big for this right now.
The silence hangs stagnant for a long moment. The fact that they failed isn’t a conversation they’ve had yet, nor is it one Emma is in a hurry to partake in, but with a plan decided and nothing to do, it is suddenly the giant, fire-breathing elephant in the room, swinging around and knocking over lamps and crushing glass and turning toward Emma and scalding her flesh with its heated breath. David is either oblivious or pointedly ignoring it - probably ignoring, because he does everything he can to protect her to a fault, as they’ve long established at this point - and he reaches for the remote and turns up the volume on the television.
Emma isn’t naturally a still person. She knocks things over and jiggles her leg and fiddles with the strings that always seem to be unraveling from the hems of her shirts. But she consciously holds everything still as she waits for her phone charge to reach enough that she can justify unplugging it. She breathes in, breathes out, counts her breaths and the times she blinks between commercial breaks.
Finally, her phone reaches a halfway decent percentage, and Emma unplugs it and stands with a jerk.
“I’m going for a run. Be back later.”
“What?” come the twin responses, two heads swiveling toward her in tandem.
“Running. I’m going to run.”
Regina looks like she wants to argue, but she just nods toward Emma’s phone.
“Just don’t forget your phone. Be safe.”
David looks at Emma like she’s crazy. “We’ve been running almost constantly for-”
“Dad. I know. Okay? I just...need to do this.”
He looks like he wants to protest more but realizes she is an adult and not even pretending to ask his permission. “Okay. Just be careful. Call Regina if you get into any trouble. I’ll be here with her.” He gestures to where Regina has already plugged her phone in and is powering it up.
“Thanks.”
Emma is still in her gross clothes, so a jacket is necessary, and she’s grateful it’s chilly so her choices aren’t dying of heat stroke or looking like a murderer fleeing from the scene of a crime.
But youareyouareyouare.
Other than a select few times of literally running for her life, it’s been a long-ass time since she’s done anything more than a casual jog, and a mile in, it becomes glaringly apparent that Emma’s overestimated her stamina for running at this speed anymore. She’s got a sharp stitch in her side, and her left calf muscle is aching like it always does when she doesn’t stretch it enough before a run. Those she could deal with, relish even, with a masochistic sort of satisfaction. But her lungs are failing her, burning and burning and barely taking in a fraction of the air she needs.
She thinks about stopping, then the image of his face pops into her mind again, and she pushes forward with a burst of speed.
She goes and goes until dots begin to swim at the edge of her vision, and she knows enough to stop now, because passing out in the middle of a strange town is not on her list of priorities. Bending at the waist, Emma struggles to get air into her lungs.
If there is an opposite of runner’s high, this is it, because every cell in her body is revolting, and she turns to a storm drain on the side of the road and throws up every bit of the pizza she’d eaten earlier. She wipes her mouth on the back of her wrist, still breathing hard, and turns to see the motel not too far up ahead, silhouetted by the last strains of a gorgeous sunset she barely even notices. She forces herself to walk the rest of the distance, because she didn’t warm up earlier, but she can at least do her muscles the favor of a cool down.
Even her bones feel exhausted, and with the foreign energy from earlier finally depleted, she’s empty, hollow, a husk of a person, and her hair is yellow like wheat and does that make her the scarecrow? No, she has a brain, it won’t shut the fuck up, and God knows her heart won’t budge from its place, beating, secure and whole, inside her chest. So that must mean she’s the lion, and yeah, that seems about right, because she has a shit ton of courage, but for all the good it does, she may as well be a coward.
(She is a coward, one of the worst sort, and that’s the reason everything started in the first place.)
When she gets back to the room, she just nods at Regina and David before jumping into the shower for the second time. After she towels off, she puts on the secondary set of clothes Regina bought earlier, simple black yoga pants and a mint green cotton t-shirt. Acceptable for wearing in public but also great for sleeping.
Sleep.
God.
Emma can’t even remember the last time she had a full night’s sleep.
She hadn’t slept at all the night before the Underworld, adrenaline or lingering habits from the past weeks, and she had only grabbed a short hour or two a couple of times since.
When she enters the room again, David is sprawled across the bed closest to the sliding door, and Regina is scooted all the way to the edge on the other.
Well. That solves that question.
Emma is past the point of caring about much of anything at this point; sleeping arrangements are the least of her worries.
Regina peers cautiously at her.
“How are the clothes?”
“They’re fine. Thanks for going to get them.”
“You’re welcome. We called Snow and Henry while you were on your run. Just a quick update, to let them know we’re okay. And we didn’t want to miss your call.”
Emma is suddenly reminded she’d heard her text tone go off earlier while she was running but hadn’t stopped to check it. A quick swipe now reveals that Henry had texted her to tell her he loves her and wants her home safe quickly.
Emma’s lips curl up the tiniest bit, the closest she has come to a genuine smile in days.
She text him back that she loves him, too, but telling him to go to sleep and not reply to her until the morning.
“How is he? How is everything there?”
“Fine.”
“Good. I think I’m gonna go ahead and turn in.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Perfect.”
Emma doesn’t say anything further, just crawls into the bed, pulls the sheets up to her chin, and hopes desperately for sleep.
*
They forge along through the dark tunnels, trying to follow the path back to Storybrooke.
She doesn’t fail. She doesn’t. Emma Swan gets her man when she’s the bail bondsperson, slays the dragon when she’s the hero, breaks the curse when she’s the Savior.
But what does she do when she’s just Emma?
Once upon a time, she knew. Back when she was Emma Swan, not SaviorHeroDaughterMotherDarkOne. Once upon a time, it was “punch back.”
Right now she just wants to punch anything that gets in her path.
*
Regina’s phone alarm goes off before 8 the next morning, and they’re checked out and at the rental car company, which is thankfully only a few blocks away, by 9.
Emma goes in alone and comes out with the keys to a blue Civic. Regina mumbles something along the lines of “at least it’s not a yellow deathtrap,” and Emma has her second almost-smile in as many days.
Emma takes the first shift as driver, and David plays the gentleman and takes the backseat, leaving the passenger side open for Regina.
Emma’s always gone by the driver-picks-the-music mentality - though to be fair, she hasn’t had many long car trips where the driver wasn’t the only one in the car, so that just meant she picked the music.
Unfortunately, the three of them do not appear to share musical taste or see the reason behind the rule.
Guns N’ Roses versus Garth Brooks versus Fleetwood Mac. It makes her feel almost normal, arguing about music.
(Almost-smile, almost-normal, almost almost almost. At this point, she’s almost-Emma and she wonders if she’ll ever be whole again)
Finally, they agree to just keep it quiet for the first leg of the journey, and she zens out for a while, listening to the whir of the tires on the road underneath them and the sounds of David munching on the last leftover slice of pizza in the back seat.
She doesn’t miss the way Regina and David’s eyes meet in the rearview mirror, look over at her, and then meet again, brows furrowed in concern.
But she ignores it anyway.
*
It’s done. He’s dead. Sucked up all the Darkness and gone to the Underworld. There are tears on her face and she doesn’t know what is happening and what to do. She is unmoored and adrift and somewhere beneath it all, she’s relieved . She’s upset and horrified and sad, but-
And then it crashes into her. Guilt. So much guilt she’s swimming in it, and she turns away from the prying eyes of her family as she vomits right next to the innocent-looking pond that has secretly been a portal to hell since the beginning.
Idly, she wonders if it has always been there or if it only popped up alongside Storybrooke.
*
They stop around lunch time, for the restroom and food, and they’re back on the road in fifteen minutes. This time, David takes the wheel, and Emma moves to the back seat.
That’s fine with her. That way David and Regina can talk, and Emma can sleep. If she sleeps, she doesn’t have to think, doesn’t have to feel anything, doesn’t have to be concerned about the fact that the two in the front seat will likely start whispering about her the second she drops off.
She leans her head against the leather interior, watches the scenery that passes by until she finally drifts off. But when she does, it’s like she’s floating above herself, looking down at herself kneeling alongside him in a field of jarringly pink flowers. The Emma below is crying, and-
Emma jerks awake to find that music is playing again. Nothing terrible, Simon and Garfunkel, barely loud enough to hear.
She fights the urge to throw up, reaches blindly for her water bottle and takes small sip after small sip until her throat begins to feel normal again and her stomach has settled.
The next time she wakes up, it’s from a deep and dreamless sleep, and she’s groggy when David gently shakes her shoulder and tells her they’ve stopped for dinner.
Emma blinks and looks around, sees the gas pumps and the sign for a Subway next door, which Regina is already walking toward. Probably happy for the chance to get something with vegetables on it.
Emma climbs out of the back of the car and stretches. God, what she wouldn’t give to be twenty-one again. She’s too old to be doing the whole sleeping in the back of a car thing. Her bones can’t take it.
David smiles when her back gives a particularly loud pop, and he comments, “Gettin’ old?”
“Not as ancient as you,” she shoots back. It feels a little forced, but she’ll take forced over silence and worried glances she’s been getting from him since they got back.
Speaking of which...his eyebrows fold back down, and he takes a breath before they hit the front door to Subway.
“Don’t. I don’t want to talk about it.”
David eyes her, his gaze sad, but he agrees. “Okay.”
*
“Henry is probably going to ask again in the morning. About the Underworld. He thinks he’s grown up enough now, and he wants to go on an adventure.”
“I know. And I’ll tell him no, Regina. I wouldn’t be opposed to taking the kid to the Grand Canyon or something, someday. But this is the Underworld. It’s not like we’re going on a fucking family vacation. He’s just a kid. He’s seen a lot of crap, but...I want to protect him just as much as you do.”
“I know you do. But I could see it in his eyes, and he probably thinks you’re his best bet, now that you’re...back. So be prepared.”
“Got it. So, what else is it? I know you didn’t come over here just to warn me that our son is stubborn.”
Regina hesitates.
“Regina.”
She sighs and runs her fingers through her hair, and Emma’s stomach clenches.
“I...I am unsure about your plan.”
“What? Why?”
“Emma, splitting hearts...it isn’t something to be taken lightly. When your parents did it, I wasn’t sure it would work. I still don’t know exactly how it works. I don’t want you to die because you’re trying to do something impossible”
“Why should it have to be impossible? Do you think I can’t love like my parents?
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“What, then, that I don’t love him enough?” Emma spits out, and there it is. Regina doesn’t answer, not out loud, but the truth is whispered in her eyes and solidified in her answering silence.
Emma clenches her jaw and backs up a step, because somehow they’ve gotten close again, too close.
“You know what-” she begins, but Regina holds up her hand.
“Look. I don’t know this, not for sure. But your heart...it’s the magic of true love that welds it into your chest and makes removal impossible. And because of this, it isn’t going to be like any other heart. It can’t just be plucked out, even if you make the decision that you’re going to allow it. From what I know about the way this magic works...I believe you will have to be motivated by equal love in order for your heart to release its hold and allow itself to be taken.”
“So, what? You’re saying I shouldn’t even try?”
“Of course not. I’m just saying you should consider all your options before you go traipsing blindly into Hell.”
“I love him,” Emma says in a flat voice, “End of discussion.”
Regina searches her eyes and finally nods once. “Good. Then your plan will work.”
She turns to leave, but Emma stops her with a question.
“Why are you even doing this, Regina?”
How can eyes that are so dark appear so soft?
“You sacrificed yourself for my happiness. Now I’m going to do my best to save yours.”
*
Regina takes the last shift of the night, sure they can get in another few hours of driving before they call it a day.
Emma climbs into the back seat, saying something about David having more room to stretch his legs in the front.
It’s true, even if it isn’t the truth.
The truth being that she doesn’t particularly want to be in the front seat with Regina right now. She feels like she would start talking, and she isn’t quite ready to do that. Not just yet. She hasn’t even figured out all her thoughts herself.
So she stays in the back with nothing to occupy her but her own thoughts for the next several hours until they stop for the night. There’s a 24-hour laundromat right next to the hotel, and Regina collects their Underworld clothes and takes them to wash, which in hindsight is something they should have thought to do the first night.
Regina waves off offers of assistance, and Emma is secretly relieved by the prospect of some alone time.
David turns in almost immediately, having this one awkward moment after Regina leaves when he places a hand on Emma’s shoulder and starts to say something but can’t quite find it. Instead, he tightens his grip just a bit, gives her a nod, then turns to get ready for bed.
He’s snoring within minutes, but the unfortunate side effect of sleeping in the car for an extended period of time is the fact that Emma is now wide awake, even though it is nearing midnight.
She thinks about going for a run, but even Emma realizes that running around alone in a strange town at midnight sounds like a terrible idea. Besides, her muscles are still protesting her ill-advised session yesterday, and her restlessness is more of the quiet variety. The kind that just makes her want to sit and think and try not to think all at the same time.
So she stays, tries turning the television on low while David sleeps, but after twenty minutes, she realizes she hasn’t even been paying the slightest attention to what’s happening between Tony and Angela, so she switches it off and sits in the darkness.
Far off, there’s the sound of a siren, the occasional whir of a car as it drives by, but mostly all she can hear is the hum of the room heater.
Emma moves out to the tiny balcony without really thinking too much about it, thankful that this room has one as well. The chairs are unfortunately hard, made out of the kind of metal that is gratingly loud when she drags the chair aside a few inches so she can sit down comfortably.
By the time Regina gets back with their laundry, Emma has been sitting and staring out into space for...well, she isn’t entirely sure how long. A while.
She glances in through the door, expecting the other woman to go straight to bed. But she doesn’t. She starts walking toward the balcony door, and Emma turns back toward the skyline again. Emma hears the glass door slide open and closed behind her, and then Regina is lowering herself down into the chair next to Emma’s.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Regina asks gently.
“Turns out car naps have their disadvantages.”
Regina only hums in response, and they sit quietly on the balcony together, listening to the midnight sounds for several more minutes. Emma thought this silence would be comfortable, and it is, at first. But the tension grows steadily, unsaid words looming and threatening the peace with their power to reveal truths too painful to share. Regina takes a breath, opens her mouth but closes it again, but still, she doesn’t say any words.
Emma’s nearly ready to just say, “Out with it,” when Regina finally speaks without any prompting.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Emma snorts, because she hadn’t expected that.
“Really? That’s what you’re gonna go with?”
“Why shouldn’t I? You look like you need to hear it.”
“I don’t need you trying to console me, Regina. I’m fine. And the last thing I want you to do is lie to me.”
“It’s the truth. It’s not your fault you couldn’t save him.”
Emma almost laughs outright at that, but there isn’t even the smallest bit of humor in her hard tone when she answers. “Oh, really? Then whose was it, exactly? Enlighten me. Because I’m pretty sure it was my heart that refused to budge. I was the one who didn’t love him enough to save him.”
“You can’t force yourself to love someone you don’t. Trust me.”
And Emma almost lets herself get sidetracked by those last two words for just a moment, wondering what they could mean. But she skips past it, because now is not the time.
“I couldn’t even save one person. What kind of fucking Savior am I?”
“You’re not.”
Emma recoils. “Gee, thanks.”
“No, not like that. Listen to me. You do a lot of heroic things. But the prophesy was only for the one. You saved the town from my curse. Done. Savior mission accomplished. Now you’re just Emma. You’re Emma Swan who fought like hell for a man she cared about. You failed. It happens. I failed at bringing Daniel back. And if you think I didn’t try every way I could possibly think of, then you’re wrong. It doesn’t mean I loved him any less. It simply means that sometimes we fail.”
“But we were there. We were ready. We didn’t fail. I did.”
Regina shakes her head adamantly. “The love idea was only a theory. Magic can be tricky. It’s possible that you may have loved him in your own way-”
“Don’t lie to me, Regina. Not you.”
She only stares at Emma for a moment. “I’m not. Not entirely. It is possible. Sharing hearts, true love, it’s all a big grey area of magic. It isn’t like potions where if you mix an ounce of one substance with an ounce of the other, it will have the same reaction every time. Spells and magic that have to do with individual people...well, they’re just that. Individual.”
“But you don’t think I loved him.”
Regina looks down, smoothing imaginary wrinkles in her black pants. “I wouldn’t know. This isn’t something we ever discussed. We talked about my love life, not yours.”
“But surely you had some opinion.”
“Why are you pushing this, Emma?”
Emma just stares back at her.
Regina sighs. “I never thought he deserved you. That’s all I’m going to say in the matter.”
She just stares at her a moment before she lets out an incredulous laugh. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”
Regina nods primly. “Yes. It isn’t my place to say more, and it won’t change anything.”
“Well, then, right back at you, Madame Mayor.”
The words emerge far too bitter in quiet calm of their surroundings, and Regina’s eyes snap to hers.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“I’m aware. I was merely hoping I had misinterpreted the context.”
“Oh, cut the bullshit. We both know you’re too good for Robin.”
“We do? Forgive me, I was unaware. I was too busy thinking about the fact that he’s my soulmate.”
Emma clenches her teeth, because if she hears that word one more time, she’s going to scream.
“What, because some fairy who didn’t know what the hell she was doing tossed some pixie dust around a million years ago? Yeah, forgive me if I don’t think that’s the be-all-end-all of romantic stories. Besides, what happened to beating fate? When did that stop being a thing?”
“Why are you turning this all around on me?”
“Why aren’t you answering the question?”
“What question? The one where you insult the man I care for, or the one where you accuse me of...of....betraying you or something, because I took the happy ending you worked to help me find?”
“Look-”
“No.” Regina stands, holding up a finger to stop any further words. “I want to help you, Emma. I literally went to Hell to help you. God knows I didn’t do it for your precious pirate. I went for you. And I’m here to help you. And if you aren’t in the mood to accept that, fine. I’m just going to go to bed. Think it over and let me know when you’re ready.”
Emma doesn’t respond, just keeps looking out at the quiet city over the balcony rail, and soon enough, the sound of Regina sliding the door open and shut comes from behind her.
Emma dozes off and on in the chair until the sun rises over the horizon.
*
She lies in bed the night before they go to the Underworld, thinking that she should need sleep for the first time since the Darkness.
Dark Ones don’t sleep, and she thought this is one of the things she would miss most.
Instead, she’s wide awake, and despite the fact that she brushed her teeth, her mouth still tastes slightly of sick, her teeth have that weird chalky consistency, and she’s farther from sleep than she was even as a creature of Darkness.
She doesn’t want to wait for the next day, doesn’t see why they have to. She wants to move, and honestly they better be damn glad she can’t open that portal and remove her own heart all by herself, or she would already be gone.
The need to move is like an itch she can’t scratch.
If she doesn’t move, she’s going to think about all the reasons why she doesn’t want to do this. All the reasons why the thought of bringing him back makes her want to-
She flings the covers off. She’ll wear a hole in the floor from her pacing before she’ll sleep tonight.
*
They’re somewhere in Colorado, and that becomes apparent the next morning when Emma wakes up from her doze in the chair and sees the mountains in the distance.
Something inside her suddenly breaks. The beauty working with her early morning lack of defenses, and suddenly she wants to cry. She blinks and her throat burns, but she shakes her head and heads inside the hotel room to make herself a cup of coffee with the tiny coffee maker.
It’s kind of disgusting, but it does its job and jolts her out of her suddenly maudlin state.
Regina and David are easily roused by the smell of coffee.
The brunette does not mention their conversation the night before, polite as she sidles past Emma to get to the coffee. If Emma looks closely enough - and she does, because she always watches Regina, always - she can see the slight dark circles under her eyes. Regina’s face is completely free of makeup, as it has been for days now, because she hadn’t wanted to spend Emma’s limited funds on makeup. Emma’s certain the kind she prefers can’t exactly be picked up at the dollar store.
She looks different. Softer. Slightly older, but it works for her.
God, she’s beautiful either way, and Emma bites her lip and blames early morning fog for the thought.
She’s still in her new outfit that matches Emma’s almost exactly: black yoga pants and a tee, though hers is lavender instead of green.
Emma idly wonders if Regina had known green was her favorite color, if that means purple is Regina’s.
Not that it matters in the least. But she suddenly wants to know.
“What’s your favorite color?” slips out of her mouth, and Regina glances at her with a bemused half-frown on her face.
“What?”
Emma feels suddenly foolish. “Nothing. Never mind.”
But the words must catch up to her, because Regina is suddenly answering. “Blue. I suppose. I haven’t really given it a thought in years. But…” here, she smiles the gentlest smile, and Emma just knows she’s about to mention Henry. “There was this shirt Henry used to wear, back when he was three or four. It wasn’t anything special, but it was this bright blue, and it had tiny light blue horses on the chest. For some reason, he became obsessed. It was an adorable shirt, and it brought out his eyes, so I let him wear it often. But not as often as he wanted. He wanted to wear it everywhere, every single day. And it lasted for months. Even when he outgrew it, he somehow talked me into letting him keep it as a sleepshirt.”
Regina smiles ruefully, shaking her head at her past self, and Emma feels her lips pulling up into a full-out smile. The memories Regina had given her all that time ago had faded with distance and disuse, replaced by her real memories once again. So she can’t recall the exact experience Regina was speaking of, but she still feels a slight sense of deja vu. As if she had been there, had experienced that herself, but had not known until this exact moment.
“That’s a much better answer than I was expecting,” Emma says.
“What were you expecting?”
Emma shrugs. “I thought maybe it was purple,” she says, gesturing at Regina’s shirt.
Regina glances down, then shakes her head. “Oh, no. The store just had a very limited selection. It was either this, pink, or leopard print.”
Emma finds herself smiling at the idea of Regina in animal prints. “Decided not to embrace your inner cougar?”
“My inner what?” Regina’s brow wrinkles, and Emma freezes for a second, not about to explain the meaning to Regina.
She stifles a laugh. “Never mind. Just ignore me.”
“A difficult feat, but I’ll do my best.”
Emma flashes back to the last time Regina had tried to ignore her, back to You did this? and You’ve never had my back and you never will, to I don’t want to kill you and It’s a start. She remembers the desperation that had clawed at her heart every moment she thought about the other woman. She had wanted Regina back in her life because she had missed her. But most of all, she had wanted to fight with everything she had to make her understand, to be able to be Regina’s friend and be there for her again.
And she had fought. Not because she thought she had to. But because she wanted to, sometimes felt it so passionately that she almost needed to.
Then she thinks of that and compares it to the blinding, hurting, so so empty drive that had propelled her every step into the Underworld, and she wants to be sick.
She thinks about Regina’s words and how she isn’t able to ignore Emma well, and it’s true. Regina hadn’t ignored her after Camelot, not exactly. She had actively worked against her at times, had confronted her, had made Emma want to scream in frustration. But she hadn’t ignored her. She had even, in fact, sought her out at times.
But Regina’s desire to save her isn’t something she wants to think about right now.
As if she’s had too much happiness for one morning, she’s suddenly swamped with all the guilt she’s been carrying around - and more, for daring to enjoy herself for a scant few moments. Why should she be allowed to be happy right now?
Emma bites her lip and turns away, but she catches Regina’s concerned expression in the mirror and ignores it.
When David finally gets out of the shower, he offers to take first driving shift, and they let him. They grab some bagels from the continental breakfast, check out of the hotel, and are on their way.
Emma is wide awake from the coffee now, awake enough to be annoyed at Regina and David’s bickering over the music - again.
When their lunch stop happens to be at a gas station across the street from a bookstore, Emma not-so-subtly suggests that maybe audiobooks should be a thing to consider. When the other two agree, she abandons them for a few minutes and goes to pick up a couple of random James Patterson books on CD. He might not be the best writer out there, but mystery and action should at least keep them distracted. And anything is better than the constant radio station changing.
Besides, this will give her something to concentrate on, so she doesn’t have to be stuck in her own thoughts.
Because god knows her thoughts are not a fun place to be these days.
David calls Snow while they’re stopped for dinner. Emma doesn’t feel like talking to her other than to give her a quick greeting, and she promptly asks if Henry is around. He is, of course, and she talks to him for a minute before handing the phone over to Regina. It’s Emma’s turn to drive, so she takes over and listens to the one-sided conversation as Regina talks to Henry about seeing the mountains and what has been happening in Storybrooke over the last day.
There’s silence for a full minute after she hangs up the phone, and Emma reaches forward and starts the audiobook up again, pretending she cares about what’s happening to Alex Cross this time.
*
She walks and walks and walks like a caged tiger.
Breathe breathe she can fucking breathe finally, no darkness whispering in her veins, wrapping itself around her soul until she feels like she’s drowning.
*
Their hotel that night doesn’t have a balcony or porch of any sort, just a window with a really boring view of the apartment complex across the street.
Emma doesn’t mind, because she wants to sleep anyway, had purposefully not slept in the car the entire day. She had listened so hard to every word of the audiobook that she could probably quote entire sections upon command. She had filled every cell in her brain with the voice emitting from the speakers and the story he told.
But the second they arrive at the hotel room, those words fall out and all the thoughts she’s been shoving out of her head all day come rushing back.
Thankfully, what the hotel room does have a small room labeled “gym” they passed on the way to the elevators. And while she wouldn’t exactly call a single treadmill and a couple ellipticals a gym, she’s grateful for them nonetheless.
She’s alone in the room, so she turns some music on on her phone and runs and runs and runs until her legs are shaking.
Regina and David are both asleep when Emma gets back, and she’s grateful. She doesn’t feel like sharing tonight, just wants to sleep as soon as she is finished with her quick shower.
But as insanely exhausted as her body is, her mind refuses to shut up when her head hits the pillow.
Killed him you killed him you killed him, and maybe she hadn’t killed Cruella, maybe that had been an accident. But this hadn’t been an accident. This was her, all her, her selfishness.
She had tried. She had made herself fight instinct and run toward something for once instead of away from it.
And this is what happened.
You failed you failed you failed.
You’re not enough not enough never enough.
And now the anger is back, because those words have never failed to make her mad, not since she was eight years old and heard them for the very first time. She had punched that boy right in the mouth, cut her knuckle on his teeth, and gotten herself kicked out of her first group home.
But she can’t do anything to stop her own thoughts.
She feels Regina shift around on the other side of the bed and is suddenly aware of the hot, hot tears on her face, sliding down and turning cool in a damp spot on her pillow.
She turns the pillow over and wipes at her eyes, frustrated at the show of weakness. She sniffles a little and clears her throat.
Frustration and anger are waking her up again, and despite the fact that her body had been nothing but a limp noodle before, she’s wire tense again, fighting the urge to cry once more.
If she lets herself cry again, she won’t be able to hide it. It will be giant whale sobs that crack her ribs and empty her soul, and she isn’t ready for that yet.
So she grits her teeth against the emotions and wonders if she should head down to the gym again, but she doesn’t think her legs can take any more abuse without giving out on her entirely.
She stares at the wall and tries to count sheep, but that’s never worked in the past, so she doesn’t know why it should start now.
Suddenly, there’s a touch in her hair, so soft and hesitant she almost thinks she imagines it. But it strokes through the strands, still a little damp from her shower, once, twice, almost asking permission before pulling back.
She doesn’t dare to ask Regina to continue, but the brunette seems to read her mind anyway.
Fingers trail along her scalp and send little pleasurable frissons of comfort down Emma’s neck, through her spine, radiating pleasantly into her limbs. She feels the tension slowly seeping out, falling into a more relaxed position, allowing her head to loll a little farther back to give Regina more access.
If Emma didn’t know better, she’d think the other woman had infused her touch with magic, some sort of soothing spell. But no, it’s just Regina, her fingers achingly gentle, moving from the top of her scalp to the bottom, tangling in the curls from time to time, but never uncomfortably so.
She doesn’t touch her in any other way, not even a palm to the shoulder, which would be too much right now. Too much for Emma to handle.
But she can’t bring herself to protest against the delicate touch running through her hair, and she doesn’t even realize when her eyes finally slip shut and she falls asleep.
*
She paces the entirety of the room 328 times before sunrise.
*
“I’m not ready yet.”
Emma speaks up a minute after she hears the first of David’s soft snores floating up from the back seat, her father having succumbed to his post-lunch nap.
Regina is driving, and she only spares Emma a small glance of furrowed brows and questioning eyes before she turns back to the seemingly endless stretch of highway.
“To talk about it- about everything.”
“I’m not asking you to be,” Regina answers carefully, her eyes still focused outside the windshield.
“I know. But I feel like I’m supposed to be. Like it’ll...I don’t know, help, or whatever.”
“You may talk about whatever you feel ready to talk about. The only thing I will say is that in my experience, waiting doesn’t make saying difficult things any easier. But I understand if you’re unable to do so quite yet.”
Emma takes a deep breath and licks her lips and opens her mouth, because she wants to talk, she does. She woke up that morning with this weird urge to talk about everything. Maybe it’s because she finally slept so well, once she actually managed to fall asleep (although her cheeks flush and her eyes get shifty when she thinks about how and why she finally fell asleep). Or maybe this is some weird Dark One Anonymous party of one, and she’s in some sort of stage or whatever. Is one of them sharing? Because she feels words bubbling up hot in her throat, acidic like vomit, and she isn’t entirely sure she wants to hold them back, but there’s something in the way, something like tar, something like darkness, something like fear, and she can’t seem to get any important words past it. Emma shakes her head, frustrated. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to do this.”
Regina nods. “There’s no right way. At least, I’ve never found one.”
“I don’t even have the thoughts straight in my head, you know? How am I supposed to talk if I don’t even know what I’m saying?”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Regina states, and Emma doesn’t know if it’s passive-aggression or some sort of reverse psychology, but somehow those words free her voice from the constraints it’s been under.
Emma glances back at David, who is still snoring up a storm. Given his usual habits, he’ll probably be out cold for a solid hour before he wakes up again.
That’s enough time to start.
She can’t talk about him, not yet.
But she has other things on her mind, too, things they’ve never gotten to discuss.
“Can I ask you a question?” Emma asks.
“Of course.”
“What does it feel like? When you take a heart?”
Regina shoots her a look. “You would know.”
“I mean...I just want to know if it’s different, for you.”
Regina hesitates, and her hands shift, readjust to slightly lower on the steering wheel before she answers. “It always felt like...power, for me. That’s all I cared about. I could make the person do what I wanted, or I could kill them. Their fate rested, quite literally, in my hand.”
“I get that. It was sort of a blur when I...when I took Merida’s heart. But I also remember some details crystal clear, like it just happened ten seconds ago. And when I touched it, it was almost like touching her essence? Like I could feel her in a way, I don’t really know how to explain it.”
“No need, I understand.”
Did you feel it? With me? She almost asks, wants to ask, but she doesn’t, won’t ever, because she doesn’t want to know. Because she’s scared to know.
They fall into a strange silence until Emma speaks again.
“Do you ever miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“Being...not good,” she says, not dark or evil, but Regina knows.
Regina takes a deep breath. “That depends.”
“On?”
“You know I’ve...struggled with that in the past. Because it’s almost always the easier path, to be selfish. To have all that incredible power and no limits on what you can do with it. But at the same time, I have so much now I’d never give up for that. I’m not even tempted. Because I had all of that. I had unlimited power and years to chase nothing but my own goals and care only about myself and vengeance for what had been done to me, building my power until I was a god and no one dared stop me unless they wanted to bathe in their own blood.”
Emma hasn’t heard her talk like this, not since the one time when she sat down and talked late into the night, telling Emma everything about her side of the story.
“But it was awful. I was empty. All the time. Nothing I did made it better. I was lonely and angry, and no matter what I did, it didn’t change. And the power wasn’t worth it. So, no. No, I don’t miss it. Not anymore.”
Emma sits in silence for nearly a full minute. She thinks of the emptiness in her veins, the absence of the rage and the whispers and death that pumped through her body for weeks on end. The way she had resisted them, had eventually yielded to them, but had never actually embraced them. She wonders what it would have been like if she had.
She whispers, “I do.”
Regina only nods, silently accepting.
“I mean, I don’t. Not exactly. Being the Dark One...you felt it. You know.”
Regina murmurs her agreement, and Emma continues, glad she doesn’t have to come up with words to describe how it felt, the way it seemed like every bad feeling and dark thought from her past had taken physical shape and invaded her cells. “Having all that inside of me? It was like there was this part of myself I wanted to tear off all the time. But...but I sort of liked having it there, too. That power. I could do anything, be anything. And no one would be able to stop me.”
Regina reaches over. She doesn’t touch Emma, because it is almost like she has this weird sixth sense that such behavior is unwelcome. Emma can’t take being touched right now, can’t take the idea of physical contact when her own skin is buzzing. Instead, Regina just rests her hand on the edge of Emma’s seat for one, two, three seconds, then draws it back toward her to rest on the wheel.
“But I don’t want it anymore. I don’t. Even when I liked it, I hated it. I’m just...not sure what to do with the empty parts of me now. And I kind of miss the power.”
“Emma, your light magic alone is as strong as you need to do anything. The Dark One magic was really nothing more than overcompensation.”
Emma scoffs, lets her mouth lift into a slight smirk.
“You’re only saying that because I was stronger than you.”
“I don’t believe you ever proved that officially.”
“Please,” Emma says, waving a hand. “Like it would have even been a competition.”
“I suppose. But it’s not even playing fair, really. True Love and Dark One magic combined? Merlin himself couldn’t-” Regina breaks off, and and her animated expression falls in an instant. “Shit. I didn’t mean...I’m sorry, Emma.”
Emma closes her eyes and takes a breath, the guilt that swamps her familiar and alien all at once, and it robs her of her desire to converse any further.
“It’s okay.”
Regina doesn’t seem to know what to say after that, just stares at the road in front of them while Emma does the same.
She is thankful that Regina doesn’t rush ahead with platitudes, doesn’t give her reassurances that she can’t possibly know, about how none of it was her fault, how it’s all going to work out in the end. Doesn’t go on and on about how much she can understand Emma’s position completely.
Because she does, to a point. Their situations are incredibly similar, but they are also different, and Regina recognizes that.
Sometimes Emma flashes back to the time when she first arrived in Storybrooke. The way she hadn’t believed Regina was any sort of evil anything besides someone who made her blood race (with fury, with impatience, with...everything). Sometimes she’s amazed that they have made it this far. That they’re allies, friends, co-mothers. That they have reached the point where Emma sacrificed herself for Regina with barely a second thought, and Regina followed Emma to Hell to help save a man she despised.
Sometimes her chest aches, aches, aches as she thinks of these, aches in a way that she is oh-so familiar with, but which got easier to dampen and bury when she was the Dark One. Now that she’s dealing with all her emotions normally again...she can’t quite bury it like she used to.
Not that she was always able to do so successfully.
Most of the time, yes. But then sometimes Regina would look at her in this way that she had, like right after they had defeated the Chernabog at the town line. She would look at Emma like her world began and ended right there, and Emma? Her heart would start beating like mad, and words would start hovering on her tongue that had no right at all to be there.
But most of the time. Most of the time, she keeps it firmly under a lid labeled “things to never think about” in her mind. So when a rogue thought pops up, she immediately calls to mind a picture of Regina and Robin, all cozied up in the diner together, looking to the world like two parents to the two adorable two boys on the other side of the booth.
(And invariably, her heart contracts and another memory shoots forth, much as she wills it back. The betrayal on Regina’s face when Robin doesn’t believe her about Marian in New York. The main reason he doesn’t deserve her shown right there, in that split second.) It happens the same as it always does, but this time the anger she feels is...darker than usual. She wonders if that’s bad or if it just means she’s learning to be more honest with herself about her feelings.
She isn’t sure which she prefers.
But she doesn’t want to think about Merlin or Regina right now, so she leans forward and switches on the radio and watches the dark, ominous-looking clouds fill the sky while The Pretenders sing on.
*
She calls Regina just after sunrise.
“So you’re doing this for me, fine. But do you think it’s a good plan? For real.”
“He chose to die. Twice. You took it away from him the first time. Let him keep it now.”
The words make her blood start pumping, and she tells herself it’s from anger.
“Are you serious? Do you hear yourself? It was all for me. Both times. I have to make it up to him. I have to bring him back and bring him back right this time. Aren’t you always talking about how you got a second chance? Well, this is my opportunity to give him his.”
A lump forms in her stomach at the words.
Regina doesn’t say anything, just breathes through her nose, and Emma can see the expression on her face even though she can’t.
*
They call a halt to the driving early that night, finding a hotel in the town where they stop for dinner. It’s been raining non-stop for an hour, and the drops are getting angrier and heavier by the second. The car door almost slams back into Emma when she opens it to get out, the wind having increased to frightening speeds.
“I guess we won’t have to shower tonight,” David jokes as soon as they all reach the hotel lobby, dripping onto the carpet, and Regina rolls her eyes at him.
The hotel is bigger and better than the ones they’ve been staying in for the past few days, but it’s the only one in town. Emma holds her breath when the clerk tells her the charge for a room, hoping that the amount she has in her head is correct and she won’t wind up overdrafting.
They grab dinner at the small restaurant in the hotel. Chicken fried steak, potatoes, and salad make up the meal of the evening, followed by a slice of Devil’s food cake. If Emma were in any mood to taste the food, she would probably be in heaven. As it is, she can barely stomach it, only eating because it gives her sustenance.
She is slightly amused by the way Regina digs into the food without a comment. Emma would have expected her to protest the meal was disgusting and then only eat the salad and the potatoes, but she finishes every bit of the chicken fried steak. David clearly had the same idea, because he raises his eyebrows just a little, and his eyes are twinkling with mirth as he meets Emma’s gaze across the table. She makes herself smile back at him, and it takes a little less effort than she’d expected. Still, she lets it drop after a few seconds and looks down at her food and sees she still has nearly half a plate left.
The thought of finishing it makes her feel ill, so she takes a few more bites and calls it good.
As has become their habit, they go back to the room and turn on the television almost immediately. An episode of some CSI variation is just starting, so Emma has an entire hour to sit on the bed and attempt to pay attention.
When the episode ends, Regina stands and stretches, says she’s off to do laundry. David frowns out the window where the storm is still raging.
“There’s a laundry room upstairs,” Regina explains. “Emma, would you mind keeping me company?”
Emma blinks and opens her mouth to respond, but David’s there first. “I can do laundry tonight, Regina. I know you keep getting stuck with it, and I’m sorry.”
Regina waves away the words. “No, thank you. We need someone to be awake enough in the morning to take first shift,” Regina says, and he looks like he’s going to argue when Regina does that thing with her eyebrows that means any further talk is completely unnecessary because she is going to win. And her dad has known Regina long enough to know this look, so he backs down.
“Sure,” is all Emma says when the older woman turns to her, and she slides on her shoes to follow Regina, thankful to at least get out of the room. She never used to have a problem with hotel rooms - had spent entirely too many nights in her life in places smaller and and in much worse condition - but this trip, all she associates them with is feeling closed in and claustrophobic. Everything on this trip is making her feel that way, and maybe the problem isn’t with her surroundings but with Emma herself.
“I wanted to talk,” Regina says when they reach the laundry room and it becomes clear that they are alone. There are washers and dryers lined up against two of the brick walls, the third wall lined by a few plastic chairs and a long table, presumably for folding.
“Yeah, I kinda figured that. It’s not like you need my help with a single load of laundry.”
“I have a question for you,” Regina begins as she loads the clothes into the washing machine. Emma swings herself up onto the dryer catty-corner from the machine the brunette is using. “You can answer or not; it’s entirely your call. I just want to give you the opportunity, in case you need it before we get back to town and you have to deal with everyone else.”
Emma feels herself tense, unsure if she wants to hear what Regina’s about to ask. With a lead-up like that, it can’t be good. “Shoot.”
“How do you feel?”
Emma lets out a long breath. “You really want to ask me that question?”
“Yes,” Regina presses the button for the load to start, then turns to meets her eyes with a solemn expression. “I told you the other night. Whenever you’re ready, I’m here to listen. If it weren’t for you, our positions would be switched right now. Actually, if it weren’t for you, I would probably still be the Dark One.”
“If it weren’t for me, he’d still be alive.”
Regina sighs a little, but she doesn’t contradict her.
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.”
And there it is.
Regina blinks but doesn’t seem particularly thrown. “That’s only natural. It was a huge and painful ordeal, and he did rid you of the darkness. When you’ve had time-”
“No, you don’t get it,” Emma says, and the truth is there, finally. It’s in her head and resting on her tongue, and she want to release it, wants to finally just get it out there and let someone condemn her like she deserves. “You wanna know my deep, dark secret, Regina? There you go. You can fucking have it. You know why I feel guilty? Because I don’t.”
*
Regina concludes their call with a single line.
“I’m here to support you, Emma. In whatever you choose to do.”
Click.
And Emma knows it isn’t true, not exactly. She will be supportive, but she won’t condone everything. She will stand up to Emma when necessary, will tell her if she’s being stupid, will just...be there.
Emma presses the cool screen of her phone to her forehead and breathes.
*
The words echo throughout the room, but it must be all in her head, because the room is brick and she didn’t say it that loud. But she can’t stop hearing it inside her mind. It echoes, the truth, the one she hasn’t even been able to put into such simple words to herself in the past few days.
Some kind of adrenaline accompanies her secret spilling, and suddenly she can’t not move. She sets her water bottle on the empty dryer next to her and hops down onto the floor, because suddenly her legs just have to do something. The weird energy is back, and she suddenly wants to go run a marathon.
Regina stays silent, leaning against the washing machine while Emma paces back and forth in front of her. Emma chances a glance at her face, but it is carefully blank, giving her nothing to work with. But she hasn’t called the cops yet, so that’s a good sign.
“I mean, I’m not some kind of monster. Of course I feel terrible. It’s my fault that he became the Dark One, which was like...the biggest betrayal I’ve ever done to anyone. Ever. And it’s my fault he died, and I didn’t want him to die. But...I also wasn’t entirely sad. Part of me was relieved. It was over. I didn’t have to deal with it anymore. Because it was one thing when we were just messing around, but he was starting to want things, and I...I couldn’t do it anymore. He would look at me, and it was like I was choking. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want him. I never had. But I had boxed myself in, you know? I didn’t know how to get out. And then suddenly I was free. How was I supposed to feel?”
Her throat feels raw at the end of the speech. She looks at Regina, not really expecting an answer, and Regina doesn’t give her one.
She presses her fingers over her eyes.
She’s about to start crying, can’t hold it back anymore. But she doesn’t want to do it in front of anyone, and she has nowhere to go to be alone, doesn’t even know where the nearest bathroom is.
“I’m going to go get you a glass of water,” Regina says, and Emma can see through that more easily than the tiny window that looks out over the parking lot, and she doesn’t care because her eyes are burning and she just adds gratefulness to the list of emotions threatening to burst out of her right now. Regina leaves the room, closing the door behind her, and Emma lets it happen.
The tears finally spill over, and suddenly the sobs feel too big for her body. She feels the dryer against her back, slides down against it until she’s huddled on the floor and choking on tears. She cries for everything. For Hook’s death, for everything she had put everyone through as the Dark One, for Merlin. For herself. She doesn’t know how long she lets the sobs wrack her body, but it’s long enough that her chest feels like it’s bruised from the inside out, her throat is sore, and her face is covered in tears and snot.
She tries to get her breathing back to normal, and it takes a few tries to stabilize her lungs. There’s a void where her emotions used to be, as if she had exorcised every last one like a demon and she’s just an empty cage of bones and skin and nothing.
Then Regina is there, helping her to her feet, wiping at her face with a tissue. Her hand is warm against the center of Emma’s back as she guides her down the hall, down the stairs, and around the corner to their room. She slips off Emma’s shoes and gently pushes her down on the bedspread. She pulls the comforter up around Emma’s neck and bends down to press the softest of kisses against her forehead.
Her lips are dry and so, so soft.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Emma wonders if that’s what she used to do with Henry every night before he fell asleep.
That’s the last thought she has before she slips into a deep sleep.
*
“I’m sorry,” Emma chokes out from a throat tight with unshed tears (and guilt, guilt, so much guilt she can’t breathe, how will she ever be able to breathe again).
She touches her lips to his, a goodbye kiss, hoping (no) against hope (god please no) it will suddenly activate a True Love’s Kiss miracle, but knowing it won’t.
And they leave him.
*
Emma wakes before Regina’s alarm the next morning, and she finally feels rested for the first time in what feels like decades. She still has that guilt swimming around her insides like a disease, but it feels more focused now.
Emma gets up to use the restroom, and when she emerges, Regina is watching her questioningly from the bed. Emma tilts her head toward the door, and the other woman obliges, slipping on her shoes and the hotel-provided robe she has draped over the chair next to the bed. They pad up to the next level and into the laundry room, where thankfully no one is spending their dawn hours folding clothes.
“Sorry for,” Emma gestures vaguely to the corner where she’d broken down. “Yesterday.”
“Emma,” Regina starts, tone serious, but she’s interrupted by a giant yawn. When she’s finished, she clears her throat and continues, shaking her head. “You have nothing to apologize to me for. Nothing. Understand?”
Emma nods.
“I’m never going to criticize you for how you feel. What you do with it, maybe. But never your feelings themselves.”
“What about what I don’t feel?”
“That either.”
Emma takes a deep breath, hoists herself up on the dryer, crosses her legs, then uncrosses them again.
“I just…”
Regina leans against the washing machines, and they’re in almost exactly the same spot as yesterday. She waits for Emma to continue.
“I’m not glad that he’s dead. I want to make that clear.”
“Understood.”
“And I know that technically, he had already died, really, in Camelot. I only...prolonged it. But do you know what it’s like to suddenly be free, but someone’s dead and you’re supposed to be sad? And maybe a part of you is sad. But...not a big enough part.”
Regina bites her lip, and Emma’s train of thought halts. “Of course you know.”
“It isn’t exactly the same. I killed my husband. Not by my own hand, but with very clear intentions, I can assure you. But...yes, there are similarities.”
“Some,” Emma agrees. “But for me, it was like...everything I had been working for was ripped away. And it felt wonderful and horrible at the same time. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I’d been clinging to it for so long...I was scared of what I would do without it.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why were you fighting for something you didn’t even want in the first place?”
“Everyone expects me to be something, you know. You know you’re the only one who’s ever told me that just being Emma is enough?”
“I’m sure your parents would tell you they feel the same way if you ask them.”
Emma scoffs. “Oh, sure. They might say that, but they won’t mean it. They want their Perfect Daughter, their product of true love who also happens to be a white-magic wielding savior. They don’t want Emma Swan, ex-bounty hunter, lifetime screwup, commitment-phobe“ she hesitates, and figures, fuck it. If she’s soul-spilling, she may as well go for it. “probable lesbian.”
She doesn’t look at Regina to see her reaction, just messes with the coin slot on the dryer, pressing it in and letting it shoot back out again. Regina takes a few seconds before she replies.
“For what it’s worth, I think they will love you no matter what your sexuality.”
“Right. I’m sure it will go over even better than trying to just go it alone, like I did in the beginning. But apparently that’s unacceptable. Mary Margaret...she used to just look at me and ramble on with her misty eyes about Happy Endings and True Love and finding me a guy to have all that. She wanted it so much. So I tried. Because-” Emma clears her throat, ridding it of the tears that want to gather there. “Because they were my family, you know? They were the parents I’d waited 28 years to find. The people I thought of every single year on my birthday, because I just couldn’t make myself give up on them. Then I found them. And I just...I tried so long, so hard to be what they wanted. Then I was the magical screw-up and the person who killed Cruella and then the Dark One. And you know what gave them hope through all that? That I had a man to come back to. So I lied. I lied and lied to them, to myself. To everyone. I lied until I forgot it wasn’t the truth.”
“Lies can be like that.”
Emma isn’t usually much for the whole ‘never speak ill of the dead,’ thing. If someone’s an asshole in life, then why should the fact that they died change the fact that she’s allowed to tell it like it is?
Yet the thoughts creeping into her head feel disloyal. Probably because she spent so long trying not to think them...before. But suddenly they are clicking into place, and the words are falling out of her mouth before she can stop them.
“You want to know the worst part? I don’t even know why. Why was she happy for me? He was an ass to her. He tortured you. What the fuck was I even thinking?”
“You were thinking that being alone is worse than just about anything.”
Regina doesn’t it mean romantically. She means family, the people who are there to support you. She means the people Emma would move heaven and earth in her attempt to make happy, even if it came at a steep cost to herself.
And that’s it. That’s it, exactly.
*
The smell of the red leather. The weight of it. The texture. For a second, she feels like Boston again, like she’s about to go pound the streets in search of her next skip. It feels like freedom. But it also feels like lonely nights and stale cupcakes and not knowing she has a son just outside her door waiting to take her home.
*
There is a restless energy in the hotel room that night. They are only a scant few hours from Storybrooke, and the fact that it is so short a distance taunts them. But the car rental company isn’t open in the middle of the night, and that’s where Snow will be meeting them to drive them back to Storybrooke.
David flips off the television - on which he’s been doing nothing but channel surfing for the past twenty minutes - and Emma takes that as her cue to speak.
She clears her throat and says, “Hey, guys.”
David turns to look at her, and Regina glances up from her dollar sudoku book Emma had bought her from the grocery store yesterday.
“I just wanted to say thank you. For coming with me. And I’m...I’m sorry it didn’t go how we planned. But I appreciate the fact that you both came, even though it was kind of an insane plan. So...yeah.”
David smiles. “Of course. That’s what family is for, Emma. We’re here for you, no matter what.”
Emma looks at her father and smiles, and it is short and small but doesn’t feel the tiniest bit forced.
A few hours later, while Regina is out pumping gas, David follows Emma inside the station and draws her to a halt with a light hand on her forearm.
She looks down, surprised at the contact, and David’s eyes are hesitant but warm. He starts to speak but then just pulls her in for a brief hug instead.
She doesn’t know if he woke up and heard any of the conversation in the car the day before, if he somehow overheard them in the laundry room the night before, or maybe just a delayed response to seeing her yesterday after her crying jag.
Whatever it is, she isn’t the world’s biggest hugger, but she let his arms encircle her and rests her head against his chest for a moment, wrapping her arms around his back and squeezing in return.
“I love you, Emma. Know that. Always,” he whispers in her ear. And it’s everything she can do not to hold back tears. So instead she clears her throat and pulls away.
“What are you trying to do, get me make me weepy in public? Not cool.” She shoves at his shoulder with a smile and he grins at her in return.
Emma relishes being alone in the station bathroom for the next few minutes, trying to calm the riot of emotions warring inside her chest. She isn’t completely better, not by a long shot. The logical side of her brain knows all of the facts, but it might be a while before she begins to acknowledge them.
Until then, she’s just going to have to work on it.
They reach Machias just before noon, and Snow’s sedan is already there, waiting in the parking lot of the rental company.
Snow wraps her arms around as much of the three of them as she can manage with her too-small arms. She breaks off and kisses David for a short moment before turning to Emma, pausing mid-air to check her gaze and ensure Emma is okay with the contact. Emma nods, and Snow almost melts with relief, pulling her in closer than they’ve ever been before. She holds onto Emma for long second but pulls back when Emma’s spine straightens in discomfort.
But first, Emma hugs her back.
Emma knows that there are things she’s going to have to face soon. Issues with her parents, with Lily, with her living situation, because she never wants to step foot inside that blue house again. But at the moment, she is happy to have at least finished this trip safely and successfully. In the process, she’d even completed a cross-country road trip, which she’s always sort of wanted to do.
Less than half an hour later, Regina’s hand brushes over hers, and she nods out the window when Emma looks at her questioningly. Emma follows her gaze, and there it is. She can see the Welcome to Storybrooke sign through the window. She can almost feel Henry’s anticipation, even more than she can feel the magic rushing back into full bloom and buzzing under her skin.
And then there he is, standing outside Granny’s, waving frantically, and her eyes latch onto his face immediately, and her heart beats.
They’re home.