Toxic is the Unyielding Love (5/?)
Title: Toxic is the Unyielding Love (5/?)
Author: Maggiemerc
Rating: M
Characters: Swan Queen
Spoilers: Veers from canon after the third episode of season 2.
Disclaimer: Of course I don’t own them. All the lady loving would be hella canon if I did.
Summary: After the events of “Destiny is the Rabbit Hole” Regina returns to Storybrooke to find the world changed in ways she could not have fathomed. Now she, Emma, and a woman from Kansas must team up to battle the bevy of evil witches who have made Storybrooke their home. Along the way there’s a fire-breathing tentacle monster, a lewd and crude parrot and a masquerade ball that threatens to reveal everything.
Author’s Note: Sorry for the delay. I was out of town for a week and a half. But I'm back now and ready to tell this story!
And if you’re wondering who I headcast for Dorothy and old hot Henry I answered THAT question on Tumblr.
Chapter Five
The bazaar seemed less crowded than usual. Not precisely silent or empty, but unnervingly less than normal. There was a sort of dead space just there behind the noise. An absence of the vibrancy he'd grown accustomed to finding in the bazaar. Vendors and their customers still bought and sold with enthusiasm. Foreign and exotic smells he’d never expect to find in Maine still wafted all about him. But it was…off.
The people moved past Henry without touching him. The world moved past. His world had shifted with the arrival of Regina, but the ripples of her appearance had yet to spread beyond him.
So the world was its same old self, and he was not.
It was annoying. The whole point of escaping to the bazaar was to have a little peace and familiarity. To get away and just breathe and now what had become familiar over the last few years was off like milk a day after expiration.
Henry was swimming in sour milk.
He grimaced and pushed his way through a group gathering around the Three Bears Bar. It was the only place in the whole bazaar to guarantee alcohol that wouldn’t blind a person. The only place that his grandparents and mother actually went for their alcohol. Their friends and allies would all gather there at night, drinking and talking and trying to escape their awful worlds. It was probably sour milk for them too. Changed just enough to never be truly palatable versus what they’d once known.
That didn’t stop them from going though, and it didn’t stop Emma and Mary Margaret from both repeatedly prohibiting him from going. Nor had it stopped him and Dorothy from sneaking away at night and drinking way too much mead and wine and ignoring everything his mom and grandmom demanded when he was younger.
He’d bought a carafe of wine from the bar on the night he’d turned eighteen. He and Dorothy had celebrated by sneaking away to the waypoint station all alone with the wine. It had been late at night so the whole station had been closed. The only light had filtered in through the stain glass windows, dimly coloring the marble and gold and brass.
They’d made their way right to the center of the echoing hall, where the statue of his mother towered over the closed up wishing well. That had been his grandmother Cora’s crowning achievement. She’d closed off every path in and out of their world but the ones she commanded, and left a garish avatar of her lost daughter to guard it all.
The stones around the base of the statues-the ones that covered up the old well, were of white and black marble. He’d pried a one away from the base of the statue to reveal the well, still filled with its magic water and they’d each tossed something in and made a wish. The same wish.
To find love.
It had been a big, gooey and romantic moment that had made them both blush like crazy. Dorothy had taken his face in her hands and pressed a kiss to his lips and whispered that her wish had come true. He’d said his hadn’t. Not yet. Said his definition of love was eternity and he’d given her a ring and she’d said yes and they’d drunk all the wine there all alone in the darkness and agreed that maybe his wish was coming true. Then they’d tossed the carafe in together “for luck” and carved their initials on the stone before returning it to the base of the statue.
He hadn’t thought it was weird to get engaged under the watchful eyes of his missing mother. At the time, a little drunk on wine and giddiness, he’d actually thought it was sweet. Like she’d been giving her blessing.
Only that wasn’t the case was it? Nope, she’d been alive all that time and he could only imagine her face. He still remembered every stricken look when he’d raced into Emma’s arms instead of hers. That had been another mother-and not even one trying to subsume her place.
Dorothy was his wife. His other half. She was the beginning and the end of him and his mother, who held on tightly and wielded jealousy like a heavy hammer, would not take it well. Could not take it well. Sharing him was as foreign to Regina as-as the new Storybrooke had been to Henry.
He could only hope she acclimated eventually. Like he ha-
“What’s with the brooding face, handsome?”
Dorothy had materialized in front of him with the gentle pop. It was her shoes, ruby red slippers that let her go wherever her heart desired, whether between worlds or rooms. She’d had them as long as he’d known her. Ever since that first day when he’d been sneaking into a bakery at the age of twelve to steal just a little food for his family of warriors and misfits. He’d heard the pop and turned around expecting Cora. Instead there’d been a thirteen year old Dorothy grinning and stealing bread herself. She’d thrown him a loaf and offered her hand, “Come on riches to rags, now’s not the time to gape at the little black girl who can teleport our butts out of here.”
Not quite sure who he was meeting he’d taken her hand and she’d taken him away. He’d drug his mothers kicking and screaming into their merged worlds, but it was Dorothy Gale who had guided him.
His wife was still patiently waiting for his answer. “Nothing,” he fired back automatically. As much as “I will always find you” was a Charmings saying so was outright denial the quick retort of a Mills.
Dorothy frowned, “Yeah right. You’re standing in the Three Bears buying,” she glanced down at his purchases, “a case of wine and frowning like someone took your favorite toy.”
“How can they when she’s right here,” he deflected.
She pinched him, “I’m not a toy jackass, and seriously, what’s up.”
“I may…have done something. Wait. Why are you back?”
“Because David and I couldn’t find your mom. He’s parking the truck and I went to find you. Now stop deflecting.”
“I’m not deflecting, I’m just taking a really circuitous route around to saying what’s-ow!” She’d pinched him again. “Jesus, okay, it’s my mom-my actual mom.”
Dorothy raised an eyebrow and images of all those times he’d tried to explain how he had two moms and they were both his real mom came rushing back.
“Regina,” he elaborated. “Regina found us and she’s helping Emma and I may have…um…”
His wife continued to stare.
“I may have left Emma to tell her we were married?”
“Hm,” Dorothy crossed her arms, well muscled and athletic as hell, arms he’d seen eviscerate flying monkeys, “would that ‘may’ actually be a ‘definitely’?”
“Maybe-stop pinching!”
“Stop being a jackass.”
“I’m not being a jackass,” he said testily, “I’m-I’m reverting.”
“You’re acting like Emma. Which is something you say you’d never do.”
Henry grimaced. “Can I help it? This is my mom, Dorothy.” He glanced around the packed room and lowered his voice-the rest of the bar didn’t need to know who had returned to Storybrooke, “The Evil Queen.”
She still wasn’t having any of it. She’d crossed her arms again and leaned against the bar top. Baby Bear, seeing their intense discussion, was wisely avoiding finishing the transaction he and Henry had begun. He’d moved onto other customers and kept glancing back at him and Dorothy nosily.
“Right, I know you’ve got an honest to God Disney villain for a mom, but it wasn’t like she spent your childhood talking to mirrors and ripping out hearts right?”
“Maybe?” He threw up his hands, “I don’t know! She hid all of it until the curse was broken.”
“Okay…but when the curse was intact what was she?”
His mom.
Dorothy’s brown eyes, only a few shades darker than her skin, softened. “She’s your mom Henry. Alive, and helping us apparently.”
“Yeah.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and forced him to meet her eyes, “So how about we stop standing around here avoiding her and you finally introduce me to the woman?”
That sounded almost like an excellent idea to Henry. In fact he grabbed his wife around the waist and gave her a firm hug to express his agreement. She put her arms around his neck and held him close and he inhaled that perfect and calming smell of her and he settled into the decision to stop running and turn around and face his mom and all the baggage there between them.
But then the whole room rumbled. People screamed. Chairs clattered. Alcohol fell off the shelves behind the bar, shattering and sending up the heady scent of a hundred different spirits merged into one overwhelmingly sweet and disgusting whole.
No. Not the room.
The whole cavern had shaken.
People fell and those that had stayed upright looked around in alarm.
Dorothy twisted in Henry’s arms to look out the door, “What the hell was that?”
“An explosion,” Baby Bear whispered from where he’d dove to the ground behind the bar and been pelted by falling alcohol.
“Someone’s trapping us inside,” Henry asked.
“No.” He looked down at his wife. She’d begun to faintly tremble in his arms. “No, someone’s attacking us. David-David was parking his truck.”
And his truck could explode. Go up in flames with all the other cars and trucks hidden in the cavern. Grams had once called it a perfect point for an initial assault because of that.
They shared a look of dread before Dorothy faded from view with a gentle pop.
Henry pushed past the panicking people out into the main thoroughfare. The gold flames from where Gramps hid his car were visible from there. The smell of burning oil trailed down the tunnel to him, followed quickly by the acrid smoke. He pulled a bandana out of his pocket and tied it around his face as he ran against the swath of people and towards the flames.
Dorothy reappeared beside him, his grandfather held in her arms. He was covered in a sheen of oil, sweat, and soot, but otherwise just seemed dazed by the cut at his hairline that was leaking blood into his one eye.
“Gold,” he gasped. “He and his minions have started a full on assault.”
God-fucking-They had to know. They had to know. They knew Regina was back, and they knew Emma should be trapped in her cage and they just knew. It was the perfect moment for an assault-with one mother incapacitated and the other not technically aligned Gold and his cronies could do a lot of damage. “Damn it,” he hissed aloud, “Dorothy get him back to Grams. If either of my moms can help bring ‘em back. I’ll try to keep them busy. Okay?”
She squeezed his hand in support and flashed away again.
It was in time to miss the flood of gold pouring into the bazaar. They all had skin pebbled like a crocodile but shimmering like their master’s name. They were all dressed in perfectly tailored charcoal gray suits, women and men alike, and their eyes were wide and liquid gold-possessed by the madness of his touch.
This was how Gold worked now. He offered bargains and claimed the souls of those who could not pay, turning them into little specks of himself and scattering them about like flakes of precious metal. There were twenty or more, all emerging from the entrance of the cavern system and grinning madly as they surveyed the panicked people.
Behind them, silhouetted in the flames and clutching his ever present cane, was the man himself.
Gold.
Or as he’d come to be known. Rumpelstiltskin. Chaos contained by Cora’s command. A creature devoid of good or evil. He had only his desires and those of his mistress and he’d consume any who tried to come between him and his wants.
“Henry,” he boomed, “I hear we have a visitor. I’ve come to fetch her.”
Henry kicked a club of fallen wood up into his hand. “I’m sorry Mr. Gold, but you’re going to have to check another castle for this princess.”
The man frowned, the quip flying smoothly over his head.
“Give me Regina and I’ll leave you to pick up the pieces of this quaint little town.”
Thunder cracked and ozone filled the air and Emma was suddenly standing beside Henry, the sheer force of her presence stunning everyone standing and for a moment there was the still quiet before a storm.
“Or,” she growled thunderously, “I can just kill your shiny metal ass.”
####
Regina had very strong memories of the one time Emma had teleported her. The image of it was a painting in her head. Strokes of bold color laid thickly on a canvas. Her mother on one side. Bluebeard on the other. Emma Swan wrapped around her and flinging them both from that tower.
She remembered the sinking feeling as they were falling and those arms around her body. Arms protecting her. And then the blinding pink smoke and her horror that a neophyte like Emma Swan would even attempt such complicated magic as a teleportation.
She also remembered reaming the other woman for it immediately afterwards and she’d rather hoped that her tongue lashing had stuck.
It had not.
Emma stood, declared they were being attacked, whipped off her glasses and threw them to the bed and then with a crash of thunder and a rip in the fabric of the world so garish that all it could do was bleed ozone, she’d disappeared.
Teleported.
Snap and she was gone.
And somehow her technique had grown worse in the past ten years. As though she’d forgotten the little bits of knowledge buried in the locket and now just forcefully ripped apart the world via her own will and power and bare hands.
There was no more terrifying sight in Regina’s living memory. Firebreathing snakes, her own mother, none could compare to the recklessness of Emma Swan. What the woman had done was a hair’s breadth from catastrophe. Too terrified to even attempt to teleport after her Regina instead ran from Henry’s room and up into the living room where Snow stood in mute horror.
Not from the magic her daughter had done. No, her eyes were on the door to the outside-on some distant point where that rumbling had begun.
“What’s happened,” Regina demanded.
“An attack,” Snow said distantly-her hands wringing a dishtowel, “We’re under attack.”
“Emma said the same thing before she tore a fabric in reality.” She snapped her finger in front of Snow to draw her attention back. “Are you just going to stand there gaping,” she motioned to the door like a woman guiding a senile grandmother, “or would you like to go help put a stop to this?”
“I-“ Snow actually looked panicked. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean you-“
There was a gentle pop as the air was displaced and Charming appeared, covered in grime and looking the worse for wear and wrapped up in the arms of a strange woman.
Regina would have liked to think the woman was a sorcerer, what with her ability to teleport so deftly, but Regina knew sorcerers. Could see the power emanating from them like those ridiculous auras awful New Age healers spoke of.
This woman had no magicks. The power that Regina or Emma had was not in her purview. She had only those sparkling slippers on her feet. She was Regina’s own height, but with skin nearly as dark as her black hair, which was divided into a multitude of microbraids and pulled back into a loose ponytail. Her brown eyes were sharp, focused, and unnerving. The eyes of a hero born for the stuff and never failing to see every little detail of the chaos surrounding her.
This was a woman she’d only heard tales of-and even those tales spoke of her as a child-not a woman-not an adult. A child who changed the course of an entire land. Shifted the balance of power in Oz forever and put the Princess Ozma on the throne.
The Queenmaker from Kansas. The overthrower of tyrants.
Her son had married Dorothy Gale.
She had not presumed it would be the Dorothy. What a foolish hope-to desire her son not to marry some storybook heroine. Naturally her graceful and heroic son would seek out a woman as heroic and graceful and clever.
She sniffed, between Dorothy and Charming there was the faint odor of burning oil.
Squaring her shoulders she frankly appraised the other woman. “Farm girl from Kansas I suppose.”
The woman dragged her eyes up and down Regina’s form. Seeing every bit of Regina and causing her to bristle uncomfortably. “And you must be the crazy queen who goes around ripping out hearts.” She had the hint of a twang in her voice. The twang of the American midwest. Bringing to mind tractors and corn fields and old men in overalls standing before silos of grain.
“That’s my mother, dear.”
“My mistake. I got my despots confused. Henry’s mother.” Dorothy dropped Charming unceremoniously into Snow’s arm and offered her hand.
“Henry’s wife.” Regina took the proffered hand.
Dorothy’s grip was assured, neither too tight like she was challenging Regina or limpid like she was deferring. Only confident. It reminded her of the old Snow-who lorded over their land so righteously. Or Emma ten years earlier as she’d swaggered up the path to Regina’s house and introduced herself.
“We have much to discuss,” Regina noted.
Dorothy’s smile was less than enthusiastic. “We do. After we stop the shiny asshole from attacking the bazaar and killing a lot of innocents.” She looked over Regina’s shoulder, “Where’s Emma.”
“Already there.”
Dorothy frowned. After a quickly glance at Snow and Charming she offered Regina her whole arm like a man asking a women to dance, “You coming or you want to sit back like Ma and Pa Kettle here?”
Regina stepped close, “Oh I’d quite like to see my old friend Gold.” Ramping up the Evil Queen snarl she’d long ago perfected, she continued, “Let’s go say hello.”
####
The magic of Dorothy’s shoes were less like the magic of Regina’s own teleportation and more like how she travelled between worlds. Shrinking and growing so quickly the air around them was displaced with an almost soothing sound. It was a smoother way to travel and Regina found herself, again, envious of the other woman.
She coveted those shoes.
But there was no time to find a way to possess them herself. When they were standing on solid ground again it was in a war zone. People were screaming and rushing past her in droves, carrying with them the unique smell of a fire with a mission. Not the fire of a fireplace or a bonfire. But the sort drawn up from hell that burned through metal and rubber and wood and flesh alike, scorching a path of destruction.
The army that was waging war was a bizarre one that shimmered like Rumpelstiltskin had once upon a time. They were all garish exaggerations of the monster he’d been while Rumpelstiltskin still loomed at the far side of the cavern. He hadn’t aged. Or changed from his Storybrooke form. He was still the shrewd little man clutching his cane and surveying all he possessed with a wicked smile.
Curiously those eyes didn’t even pause on Regina. Instead they followed her son.
Henry was busy pushing Rumpelstiltskin’s soldiers back and freeing people from debris. He’d lost his coat and vest and was in suspenders, pants that were far too tight and a little too short, and a white button down that had come untucked, the tails of it flopping about as wildly as his hair. The blue bandana wrapped around his face made him look like some well-dressed anarchist at a protest.
She too tracked his movements with a sense of pride-even as she quietly worked at the smoke filling the cavern and pushing it back. She wasn’t ready to present herself grandly just yet, and kept her hands at her sides as she worked her magic.
Dorothy didn’t waste time either. As soon as she’d let Regina go she was popping in and out of the cavern, grabbing the people Henry had freed and disappearing again. Sometimes she’d grab him too and they’d reappear in front of one of Rumpelstiltskin’s soldiers, dispatch them with a flurry of movement, and disappear again. It was perfectly choreographed havoc.
Lovers of one mind. Moving in sync.
It ached to watch her son so casual and gifted in a fight and so intimately aware of a stranger like Dorothy Gale. Ached as much as his strength and quickness hit flooded her with pride.
Yet the crux of their group wasn’t Henry or his new wife.
It was Emma.
She ignored the injured-leaving them for her son and daughter in law-and blazed through the golden soldiers. She didn’t move with the speed of a human. It was something beyond a mortal woman. Her magic seemed to fuel her, supporting muscles and tendons that should tear and bones that should shatter. She was ruthlessly efficient as she snapped necks and crushed ribs with a strength that surpassed most gods.
If Henry and Dorothy were angels, flitting through the carnage to protect and save than Emma was a devil, a wraith cloaked in blisteringly white magic that chased her every movement. They were efficient. She was ruthless.
Regina knew something of teamwork now and because of it she found herself drawing endless comparison between the four thieves that stole their way across lands of myth and the righteous three before her who fought not for purpose or love or hope, but for survival.
It was gritty and brutal and bones crunched and victims screamed and even Regina-even Regina-felt something awful quail inside of her at the tableau.
It wasn’t right.
The crack of magic and scent of ozone. Emma moved again.
It wasn’t right.
Her one hand gripped the man’s shoulder and the other went over his chin and she pulled and he snapped.
It wasn’t right.
Another crack. More ozone. More dead men and women with skin like gold.
A pop and Henry and Dorothy were breathless beside Regina.
“It’s Gold,” her son gasped, pulling the bandana away from his nose and mouth and sucking in deep breaths of smokey air. “He’s never attacked like this before.”
Emma launched a woman into the wall and she smacked wetly against the stone.
“This isn’t like him,” Dorothy agreed. “He usually doesn’t enjoy it this much.”
Rumpelstiltskin’s dark eyes now followed Emma. His face pulled into the cruel smile of a mask. Something was so wrong it wafted in the air. The pungent odor of magicks familiar and foreign.
“Are the survivors evacuated,” Regina asked.
Her son look surprised, “Y-yeah.”
Surprised that she would be concerned. As though she hadn’t one been a queen with subjects or a mayor with constituents. As though she hadn’t once been good.
Another crack. Emma was standing before that grinning bastard. Her hand was on his shoulder-Rumpelstiltskin hated to be touched-and her other hand was balled into a fist and launching towards his jaw with all the power Emma possessed behind it.
It wasn’t right.
So Regina teleported into the fray to fix it.
####
Henry knew his mother used magic. He’d seen her use magic in those few weeks before she’d disappeared through a portal and been lost for ten years. It was still incredibly incongruous with his personal image of her to see her disappear in a puff of purple and reappear between Emma and Gold.
She snatched Emma’s wrist from the air and halted a punch so vicious it would have destroyed a normal man. Gold didn’t even react, just kept grinning wickedly. And Emma-it was like all the anger that fueled her left her at the touch. One minute his mother vibrated with her deadly wrath and the next she was still, staring impotently at Regina who grimaced but said nothing.
“What are you doing,” Emma finally hissed.
“This isn’t right,” Regina protested.
“Isn’t it,” Gold asked.
“Shut up,” both woman shot back.
Dorothy snorted.
Regina then did something strange. Ignoring everyone else still in the cavern-even Henry-she lowered her voice and stepped even closer to Emma, speaking in an intimate tone he’d never heard from her lips before.
“You can’t do this.”
Emma stepped into Regina’s space. “He attacked us-“
“For a reason,” she glanced at Gold, “and not the one you think. I know Gold. A frontal assault like this isn’t his style,” she looked over at the man-arching an eyebrow in challenge, “is it?”
Gold continued to smile.
“You knew Gold,” Emma countered. “It’s been ten years.”
“And I new him for decades longer. I was his apprentice, and raised by the apprentice before me. I’d dare say there is no one that knows that despicable imp better.”
Gold laughed. “You know very little, child.”
“No,” Henry said. His mom was right. It wasn’t Gold’s style. He’d left their home beneath Storybrooke untouched for years despite knowing it existed. He wouldn’t attack like this and if he had attacked it would have been with far more of his little gold soldiers. Things were clicking into place quickly in Henry’s head-bits of a puzzle slotting into their rightful homes, “No, Mom’s right. Gold wouldn’t come at us like this. It doesn’t make sense. Hell, it doesn’t even feel right.”
Especially the funny buzz of magic in the air that Henry, of all people, could feel.
“Don’t curse dear,” his mother demanded. She continued to study Gold with that cruel gaze she'd always saved for her lessers. “What are you?” She smoothly stepped fulling in-between Emma and Gold, using her own body as a shield, while never letting go of Emma’s wrist. Facing Gold she cocked her head and stared him down imperiously. “What little gift has Rumpelstiltskin sent me?”
His hand shot out, something shining in the palm of it. He reached for her shoulder and all Henry could see was the bastard’s triumphant grin and all he could feel was the rush of anger at his mother being taken from him again.
He’d lost her once and found her against all odds and now Gold was stealing her away and winning. The bastard was always winning.
Then Gold lost. Or, more accurately, the man who wore his face did.
Regina reached up with her free hand and snatched his wrist, twisting it so sharply he dropped to the ground in pain. One moment Henry was watching his world be pulled away and the losses mounting and the next his mother was standing over the stranger, holding his wrist in a savage grip and holding Emma’s behind her in a tender one.
She laughed. It was a deep guttural expulsion that sent a shudder through Henry. Her eyes danced with malicious joy and curiosity and her lips were curled up into an evil smile that was the Evil Queen, but her other hand still held onto Emma’s and there was present a dichotomy. The gentle woman who had hugged him and seemed almost eager to help, and the monster Cora had beatified in her ten years of rule.
She squeezed Gold’s wrist so tight something cracked, her knuckles turned white and Gold screamed. His hand popped open. The shiny bit of metal he’d meant to attack Regina with fell from his exposed palm, but stopped in midair before hovering first at Gold’s eye level, and then at Regina’s.
“Do you know what this is,” she asked no one in particular. “Gold would know, and he’d never be stupid enough to attempt to use it on me. He has far too much respect for me to try.”
She squeezed again and the man who looked like Gold cried out once more. Dorothy tensed up beside Henry-like she might try and put a stop to the piece of theater being performed before them. Henry wordlessly reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together and stepping close to his wife.
The metal was a coin, a silver coin that flashed gold in the firelight. It dropped back down and hovered just in front of Gold’s forehead, spinning slowly.
“This is a piece of silver from Charon’s purse. Buys the holder passage anywhere.” The coin stopped, its edge pointed towards the man’s forehead. “You were going to use it to abduct me.”
The coin lurched forward as if on a rail, rolling through the air until its edge struck the man’s forehead.
And then, then the man flinched and Henry’s mother, like a cat cornering its prey, smiled wider.
He’d committed the gravest sin Henry knew of. He’d stared down his mother, and he’d flinched. There were some you could show weakness to. Some you could reveal your fears to. Regina Mills was not that person. She thrived on weakness of others. She claimed all ground exposed.
She leaned in, her eyes consuming every bit of the man who really was identical to Gold. “Where were you planning to send me?”
The man crossed his eyes looking up to keep them both on the coin, then he looked back at Regina and said nothing.
She dropped Emma’s wrist and seemed to turn even nastier. Curling the pointing finger of her hand as though she were calling a child towards her. The coin rolled gently through the air again, beckoned by that one crooked finger.
“It’s no matter,” she said flippantly. “I can guess where you were sending me. The more curious question is who sent you. The mother missing her daughter? Or the mad imp she commands? The imp would, as we’ve discussed, not be so stupid usually, but my mother-she has always underestimated me.”
She crouched down in front of him. He was sweating profusely now, and his arm was still held up above his head by Regina’s hand. His other hand held Gold’s cane limply and he didn’t even try to use it as a weapon or support.
How strong was his mother that she could exact such pain with a touch? Henry tried to creep closer just to better see, but Dorothy’s hand in his stopped him and he glanced back to find his wife watching the interrogation with wide, shocked eyes.
“Mom,” he said, “we should have this conversation elsewhere.”
Regina’s eyes did not waver.
“Henry’s right,” Emma agreed softly, “this is not the place to be interrogating this guy.”
Regina sighed. “Do you hear that? They want me to question you elsewhere. Perhaps where those who sent you can’t watch? But I rather like this space. Gives my mother such a lovely view.” She squeezed again and the man screamed in pain.
“Regina,” Emma warned.
She ignored her. “You see I came here to stop Emma from killing you. I didn’t like how violent our once good sheriff has become. But now I find myself possessing a little toy of my mother’s and I find myself shocked that my mother would think so little of me that she’d consider you a threat.” She dropped her voice, “I am the threat.”
The coin flew towards his head again, the edge of it biting into his skin.
“And my mother,” it began to spin on its edge, working like the smallest of saws and slicing through everything in its path. The man flailed with his free hand and tried to strike her. The cane shattered against her like she was made of stone.
“Need to know that-” He screamed and Henry ducked his head. Dorothy pulled him close to avert his eyes.
His mother was murdering the man who looked like Gold. Burying a coin in his skull and smiling excitedly as she did it. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to forget the sight-not of the carnage, but of his mother’s cheshire grin.
But her words were still lurking in his ears. Dark words said with tremendous promise. “I will see her soon.”
He heard the body fall to the ground. Fires crackled. People moaned. He could hear Dorothy’s heart beat. Could hear his own heart beat.
He cracked an eye open and found Emma in awe and his mother looming over the man’s body. Her hair was mussed and had fallen into her face. She ran her hands through it and shook her shoulders, divesting herself of a persona she’d put on as effortlessly as a hat.
The smile she then gave him wasn’t that malicious one. It was genuine.
Earnest.
“Now,” she said puckishly, “who would like to help me wage a revolution?”