Chapter Text
Henry sits up in bed on the morning of his tenth birthday and immediately spots two new developments since the night before. One, the town clock over the library is ticking. Ticking, when it hasn’t moved for as long as he can remember. He blinks at it and then turns to his dresser and the other out-of-place item he’d spotted on it.
Once Upon A Time, reads the name of the book, and Henry frowns fiercely at it. Mom doesn’t like fairytales, hates them, tells him again and again that they’re banal and useless and biased, and he’d gotten over his fairytale stage sometime around his fifth birthday. He’d been a kid obsessed before that, he knows. He must have done a lot of hiking with Ma back when she’d been around because he still has memories of traipsing through the woods with one of his friends, pretending that they’d both been princes or something equally fantastical.
Ma had been sick back then. He doesn’t remember much of it anymore, barely has any memories of Ma at all that aren’t Mom’s strained stories, but he has vague impressions of a woman lying in a bed beside him, her voice comforting and yellow hair spread around her in a halo. Mom doesn’t keep pictures of Ma and she gets weird when he asks more about what happened to her, so that’s all he’s had to keep of his other mother. No wonder he’d jumped into some secret fantasy life.
But now he’s ten, older and wiser and much too smart to believe that magic is real anymore. He’s in fifth grade and Miss Blanchard thinks that he has a great imagination, but that’s all. He doesn’t know why Mom would bring up that part of their past that he isn’t supposed to talk about.
He puts the book into his backpack and runs downstairs.
It’s the only day of the year he can get away with running on the stairs, and he takes full advantage of it, stomping and jumping down each one and landing with a bow at the bottom. Mom is at the dining room table, the plates set out for breakfast and a candle at the center of the table.
Is it for my birthday? he asked her once, and she’d shaken her head. It’s about Ma, he thinks, because her face gets tight and all he can see is that mix of angry and guilty that she has whenever he does something really bad. She lights a candle on his birthday every year, and she’s watching it now, the yellow light flickering against her face. “Hi,” he says.
Mom jolts and turns, politician smile on her face. “Happy birthday, Henry.” He gives her his own version of the politician smile and sits down to his breakfast. He has memories of Mom sitting with him, Mom twirling him around in birthday dances and laughing and singing to him before he’s even out of bed. Now they sit stiffly at the table and sneak glances at each other over a lit candle like they’re afraid that even breakfast won’t end well.
The hook slams into a sword that slides into place an instant later, flat side just above Emma, and Emma staggers, drops to the floor and gasps, “What the…hell?”
Even Milah looks a bit unbalanced. The sky is bright, the clouds of magic are gone, and they’re all left with the unmistakable sensation of time having passed, of years gone and all of them frozen in place. Henry, Emma thinks, and looks around wildly.
Cora is the only one who seems unperturbed, and her serene face has Emma springing to action, rolling over and drawing Milah’s sword out of her sheath. “Emma!” comes the warning from behind her, and she blinks up at Lancelot. Right. The sword. He’d saved her life.
And now Cora is lifting her staff, smiling unpleasantly, and fuck, fuck, fuck Emma knows what she’s capable of. They may be the only people who’d escaped this curse and they’re trapped in a world with the woman who gives the Evil Queen nightmares. “Lancelot, run!” she orders, taking off as a fireball comes whirling toward them. “We have to get out of here!”
He’s already brought his horse here and Beetle is trailing behind, so they both mount their steeds quickly and ride into the woods, more fire following them. Cora is laughing silently, Milah is fiddling with a pistol, and they vanish into the underbrush just in time. “The camp. We need to see if anyone’s still there.” That dome that Cora had created had stretched out a few miles, covered a few small towns and an abandoned castle.
And the camp is still intact, from the sounds of swearing that Emma can hear as they approach. “Hey!” she shouts out, and they fall silent, a few rising automatically at her voice. “We need to ride north, now! There’s a witch out there who would put the Evil Queen to shame, got it? We need to leave camp!”
There are no objections, the Merry Men as disoriented as she is and quick to act without thinking about it. They pack up the camp in a matter of minutes, Lancelot guarding the perimeter, and they’re riding north at once.
The towns that remain untouched seem to still be bustling, but beyond them is nothing but destruction, ruins and the forest beginning to take back some of the land, and ogres lurching around in the distance. The ogres are back. Emma breathes in, curses Regina in a mental stream of fury that would have silenced even Much’s filthy tongue, and rides on.
There is one place in the Enchanted Forest that even Cora might not venture to, and one place that must be protected from her. And lucky for her men, she knows exactly how to get in.
Regina blows out the candle at Henry’s bedtime, walks upstairs and confiscates the book he’s using a flashlight to read. “School night, Henry,” she reminds him. “The book will be there in the morning.”
He blinks up at her, his face devoid of expression, and she shivers under his gaze. They’d been closer before. Then one day he’d started asking questions- Why don’t my friends go to the next grade with me? How come you hate Miss Blanchard so much? Is Ma missing or is she dead? and she’d been frozen, unable to answer his questions and frustrated at her own inability, and since then they’d both withdrawn. She hates it. She doesn’t know how else to cope with it. “You didn’t give me that book, did you,” Henry says, and she shakes her head, confused at the grim way his face sets at the refutation.
She leaves the room, fishing for a bookmark to hold Henry’s place until morning, and blinks at the image on the page in the light. It’s…No. Impossible.
But it is, a dark figure clad in green fighting off guards as a queen watches from the distance, riding a horse with imperious posture and her cold face making it clear that she cares little if the green-clad woman lives or dies.
She turns the page forcefully, sinks down onto the floor beside Henry’s room to gape at each picture. Snow White, brought to life with a kiss. Emma riding through the woods with a toddler in a sling around her front. War council tables and towns on fire and so much Emma that she chokes on it.
And on almost every page, there she is. The Evil Queen, dark and mysterious and dangerous. Undoubtedly a villain. The words around the images are scathing when they refer to her, never Regina, only the Evil Queen. Frowning, she flips back through the pages. Emma merits discussion throughout, but even her teenage years and early twenties make no mention of the Queen Regina as a…dear friend, only Swan Hood was employed by the Evil Queen to steal for her.
Someone has given Henry a book of poison, and he’s already willingly devoured it. “It’s a good book,” his voice comes from behind her. Henry stares down at her, his forehead screwed up stubbornly. “Do you like it?”
He’s already put it together, pieced together slivers of memory and the people in town to understand exactly what he’s reading. Regina is terrified at once.
She flips to the end with haste, searching for the one great mystery, the one truth she’s never known, and finds only torn-out pages. Henry says, “I burned them in the fireplace.”
She forgets to pretend to not care and demands, “What did they say?”
He shrugs, but a sliver of fear passes behind his eyes, barely visible but oh so potent, a nail of destruction hammered into their already fragile bond . Regina’s heart feels dry and empty and dead. “Just stuff.”
And there’s nothing left to say but, “I thought you’d gotten over your fairytale phase,” a quick smile that lets him know that none of this matters, it’s just a silly book that makes out some fairytale character to be a villain. She doesn’t care. It’s fiction.
“I guess not,” Henry says, and there’s no more fiction in this house. Not anymore.
It takes weeks to make it to the Dark Castle. They’re waylaid by ogres along the way, more numerous than they’d been before the curse- seven years ago, Emma guesses. Something had happened with Henry and time had started moving again.
Henry. Henry, Henry, Henry. He’s been taken by the curse, she knows that now, spirited away by Regina at the last minute and stolen from her for good. She doesn’t know if Cora had been working with Regina, if this had been a final attempt to punish Emma for siding with Snow and taking Henry with her.
As if her near-death hadn’t been enough. She grimaces as her leg twinges in reminder of that. She’d been prepared for it and not at all, knowing what a wholly lost woman would do to the one who’d taken her son away. Yet she’d never believed that Regina would stop loving her, would hate this deeply.
But the curse had been cast. Henry Sr. has been killed, then, the one Regina loves most- or the other, who shares his name. Regina’s love is no saving grace.
She dismounts at the castle, leaning her forehead against Beetle for a moment in quiet grief for Henry- and quiet fury for Regina, which returns with every moment of loss. She’d taken Henry for Henry’s own good, for his safety, and Regina had known that. Regina had taken Henry from her out of spite and vengeance and some sense of twisted justice. And now…what? Is he leading a war against her? Finding whoever this savior is? Oh, god, she wants Henry to have love in his life, to be happy and protected even if the thought of Regina makes her rage right now. She doesn’t want him instigating battles against Regina.
She swallows hard, reminds herself that there’s nothing she can do about it now, and leads the way into the castle.
The suits of armor are easily fended off, and the bear- now headless through an accident that Emma can imagine- waves claws at her while Lancelot neatly swipes them off. There is no fire at the doorway anymore. The Dark One’s months of captivity before the curse must have left the castle a bit less well-defended.
She leads the way into the main room and pauses, staring in surprise at the center of the room. A woman is seated at the table, flipping through a book, and she looks up at them, equally startled. “How did you get here?”
“I could ask you the same,” Emma says. Behind her, she can hear the movements of bows drawn, her men already on guard. “Who the hell are you? How did you escape the curse?”
The woman waves at the room. “This whole hall had been protected from it. I suppose Rumple wanted to be sure his little trinkets here were safe. The upper floors are gone.” Her lip curls. Emma catches the Rumple and her eyes narrow. “I’m the help,” the woman says, by way of explanation.
“Where’s Belle?”
“Who?” The woman looks genuinely confused.
So Belle is gone. “The Dark One has been locked up for months even before this curse. And you…stuck around?”
She laughs. “Would you run from the Dark One? I didn’t take my chances.” The woman’s shoulders slump. “And now I’m here, separated from my family and utterly helpless. I thought I’d be alone forever.”
Emma shivers at the thought of it, of waking up with the world gone and certain that you’re the only one to survive it. No one deserves that, and least of all a prisoner of Rumple’s so fearful of him that she’d stay locked away here. She isn’t entirely convinced she trusts this woman, but forcing her from the castle to the ogre wildlands just seems cruel. “Well, if you don’t mind the company, you don’t have to be alone,” she decides, and bows lower around her. She extends her hand. “I’m Emma.”
The woman hurries across the room, a relieved smile spreading across her face as she pumps Emma’s hand up and down. “Zelena.”
David is awake. She hurls a glass into her mirror in fury, stalks through the house on high alert and snaps even at Henry when he comes in with a smug little smile like he’s done it. Because of course he did, he’d had Mary Margaret read the book to him, and even when Kathryn Nolan arrives to retrieve her husband, Mary Margaret’s disconsolate face isn’t comfort enough.
The curse is unraveling, and it’s all that book’s fault.
Henry isn’t talking to her anymore as much as communicating in grunts and glares, watching her suspiciously as though she’s going to set the town on fire if he turns away. It feels altogether too close to living with Emma at the beginning of the end, the both of them knowing that Snow had been in danger and Emma furious and impotent about it.
Except Emma had failed then and Regina had, too, and now Emma is gone forever. Not dead. She won’t believe that Emma is dead, had tortured herself with the possibility for far too long. Emma is somewhere out there, and someday she’ll come back to them. To Henry, she amends, because whatever they’d been is irreparable. She’d tried being angry with Emma for so long, but it seems a moot point now.
Except soon neither of them will have Henry. He’s slipping away, bit by bit each day, and there’s nothing she can do to keep him with her. It’s Emma all over again, knowing that she has no choice, she’s going to lose the ones she loves because of Snow White and her vaunted concepts of good and evil. Henry looks at her now like she’s evil.
He struggles through town, talking to people who see him as a silly child and talking to others who he’s able to save, and she scolds him for his recklessness and nosiness and can’t ever approve of any of this.
When he’s asleep at night, she curls up on the couch, the book open and resting against her knees, and she traces pictures of Emma’s face and thinks of how proud she’d be of Henry today. And she hates, and she loves, and she’s always, always afraid.
The castle is quiet, and Emma leads her men out to fend off ogres most days. They’re clearing out the area near it, slowly pushing the ogres back into the wild, and it’s hard work but all feels rather empty regardless. What’s the point, beyond enduring? What more is there to rebuild here?
Someday soon they’ll have to go down to the towns that had survived to help them rebuild. For now, Emma searches the castle for something to stop Cora, Zelena hovering behind her and wringing her hands anxiously as she does. “He had a spell once that could take away someone’s power for good.” She’d stolen it with Regina- for Cora, actually- and they’d used it to try to save Quinn instead.
“Nothing can take someone’s powers for good,” Zelena says, frowning. At Emma’s sidelong glance, she shrugs and mutters, “I listened to Rumple when he’d talk. Magic can be sealed, but even that can’t last forever. You just need the right ingredients to break that seal.”
She dusts at the bookcase Emma’s going through, on automatic, and Emma says, “You know you don’t have to clean for us. The Dark One’s in another world now.”
“It’s just habit by now.” Zelena moves down a shelf. “I was the bastard daughter of a woman who married the fifth son of a king. I spent most of my childhood cleaning to earn my keep.”
She smiles, self-deprecating, and Emma knows the feeling all too well. “I was an adopted princess handed off when I was three for the male model. I’ve scrubbed a few floors myself.” The thought occurs to her, finally comprehension of why Zelena would have waited in Rumple’s castle for all this time. “That’s why the Dark One took you on as a housekeeper? You made a deal to get out of that?”
“Oh, no.” Zelena shakes her head. “I was out of that house by the time I turned thirteen. My sister…” She stops herself. Emma arches an eyebrow. Zelena’s smile seems decidedly more forced now. “It’s all in the past now.”
Emma’s the last person to start pushing for someone else’s past, and so she offers, “I was just shy of fourteen when I ran for good. A home is…nice, but we’re better off on our own.”
“I suppose,” Zelena says, and she looks wistful and angry all at once. Emma isn’t thinking about masters and nobles and poor families who’d held her in that moment; she’s thinking of a sprawling apartment within a castle, a little boy’s nursery and a bedroom with elegant adornments and space enough for two.
Wistful and angry sums it up nicely.
“This is highly inappropriate, Miss Blanchard.” Regina stands in the doorway, eyes unfriendly as she can manage without outright hatred bleeding through.
Mary Margaret shifts on her doorstep, fidgeting as though she expects to be let in. “Yes, I know. But you weren’t answering my calls and I thought we should talk about Henry.”
“All right. Talk.”
“That book…” Mary Margaret says, and Regina steps outside and shuts the door behind her. “It’s…um. It’s been very good for his imagination. But he’s also been telling me some worrying things. About you.” She’s caught Regina’s gaze now, and there’s nothing but sincerity and concern in her eyes.
Regina despises her. “I’m aware of that,” she says coolly. “And none of it is your business, Miss Blanchard. You are his teacher. Your job is to teach him your curriculum and supervise him in the playground, not to put ideas in his head.” She narrows her eyes. Mary Margaret swallows visibly. “You will stop talking to him about that book. You will stop humoring him altogether, and you will not interrupt dinner with my son again.”
She turns on her heel and yanks the front door open, and Mary Margaret calls after her, “He thinks the book is Emma’s.”
She freezes. Mary Margaret ventures on, “Your late wife’s. There’s a character in the book with her name. He thinks she wrote it to warn him about you.” Regina whirls back around in a fury and Mary Margaret holds up a hand. “I’m leaving. I just…thought you should know that.”
She stalks inside just in time to catch Henry scrambling back into his seat, avoiding her eyes. “Are you going to take it away?” he asks, staring at his salmon.
“Would it change anything?” she counters, and she knows it won’t. Henry with a mission will always be obstinate in it, determined to seek out truths that no one else will offer him. He watches her now as though he’s desperate for them, craving the truth, and she says, “Emma is not the Emma in that book.”
Henry’s face falls, disappointed in her again. “Sure, Mom.”
“She isn’t,” Regina insists, and it feels urgent that he knows this. “Your mother wasn’t some milquetoast fighter for good like that...fairytale character. She was…she wanted to take care of everyone, yes, but she was driven more by what she thought was right. Even when it wasn’t good.”
Henry is listening now, eyes fixed on her, and she doesn’t know how to explain Emma, Emma who’d been childish and selfish and had loved stupidly. Emma who gives and gives and gives and takes away all the same. Emma who’d trusted her when no one else had and distrusted her when she’d needed her most. Emma’s always been a mess of contradictions, had struggled between love and justice and… “Maybe she was a hero, but she’s a better one than anyone in that book.”
“The book says…she was the Evil Queen’s captive when she had her baby. That the Evil Queen stole her baby.” Henry’s eyes are boring into her. She freezes, struggling to keep the outrage off her face. She hasn’t read most of the book, too furious to endure the biased retelling, and that hits like a bombshell.
“Henry, that book isn’t true,” she says, and has never meant it more fervently than she does now. “You are not that baby. You were born to two parents who loved both you and each other, and I know you’d rather believe that I’m the villain of this piece, but…”
She takes a deep breath and realizes there’s nothing to say. She is the villain, she knows that. She’s the enemy Henry has made her out to be. She’s built this town on her enemies’ memories, and she will do anything to keep it intact, even as Mary Margaret and David grow closer. His book might lie, but there’s enough truth in there that giving Henry the real story would push him further away. “Eat your salmon, sweetheart,” she says instead, and Henry stands, defiant, and storms upstairs.
Al the Lesser arrives at the castle one evening, seven years older. Behind him rides a nine-year-old Aziz and Emma stares, struggles to keep her face even and feels her heart straining with the effort of not breaking down. She greets them both and waits until they’ve disappeared into the main hall before she drops to the ground and buries her face in her hands.
Aziz had been barely a real person when she’d seen him last, had been toddling around behind Henry and both of them had been too little to be their own people. Now he’s joking with the Merry Men, trying to fence with Lancelot, a growing boy with hopes and dreams and god, Henry must be a stranger now.
She lies back against the dusty ground around the castle and stares up at the stars, wondering if Henry can see them too where he is. Hating Regina is the foregone conclusion of her thoughts all the time now, bitter resentment for all she’s missed and how little still endures. She may never see Henry again. Regina had punished her for keeping him safe when Regina had been the danger and now she’s doomed to living the rest of her life with a few survivors, her family gone and her son growing up without her.
She should have let Thea kill Regina, she thinks, and traces invisible lines with her eyes to form constellations between the stars.
Regina takes desperate measures, leads Graham in circles and tangles David and Mary Margaret so deeply into the investigation that they can’t possibly be close to sharing true love’s kiss. And then suddenly, Kathryn is back and the clock counting down to the end of the curse is ticking again. Henry is skipping school, sneaking into buildings that should be locked up and testing her patience and terror at once until she breaks outside the library, shouting, There’s a dragon down there, Henry! You need to stop this madness! until Graham and Mary Margaret are both staring oddly at her and Henry is crying.
She takes him home and refuses to speak to either of the people involved in their latest hunt for Henry, wraps an arm around him and walks him upstairs even though he’s shaking under her touch as though he’s terrified. “Mom,” he whispers hoarsely when she finally prepares to leave him and he’s tucked into bed. “Mom, tell me it’s real. Please.”
She refuses to speak. He says, “The last pages had a prophecy. They said that I’d be the one to stop you. That I’d find a savior. And I can’t find a savior. I think I did it all wrong. But I’m not going to stop trying to save everyone. I’m going to stop you. Even if you hate me at the end.” He’s struggling to sound strong but his voice cracks and his eyes are so tired, so heavy for a child who should have only ever known the peace of this world.
She goes back to him and he twitches away from her as though he’s afraid she’ll hurt him. Determined, she reaches for him, cups his cheek in her hand and murmurs, “I love you. I will always love you. Please, don’t do this to yourself.”
She thinks she’s crying because he starts again, silent sobs streaming down his cheeks, and she presses her cheek to his and hears him breathe in return, “I love you, Mom. I love you.” She curls up beside him as he drifts off to sleep and swears silently that she will end this, will rid herself of Snow White and the true love that could break her curse before Henry takes more extreme measures.
Emma has taken to exploring the catacombs of the castle, finding secret passageways and creeping through them with Aziz trailing behind her. Even Al’s filled out a bit over the years and no one else is small enough to fit through some of the trapdoors and hidden rooms except maybe Zelena, who has no interest in any of it whatsoever.
These have escaped the curse as well, and there are strange instruments, jars filled with what must be spell ingredients, and vials with potion after potion after potion inside. “We don’t know what any of these do,” she says, running her finger along the shelf until dust flies from it.
Aziz is looking at one like he’s thinking about drinking it to see, and she shoves him on the shoulder. “Watch it, kid.” The grief that comes with the way he leans against her is by no means unexpected, but it hurts just as acutely as it would otherwise.
She swallows hard and traces the wall behind them, feeling for a catch in the stone, and the wall slides open a moment later to reveal–
A full-sized room, lit with lanterns and decorated with tables and tall arches. “So this is where the Dark One does his big projects,” Emma murmurs. There’s even a mostly full odd-looking contraption still set up on one of the tables, lit by a magical green flame and the liquid inside roiling above it. “Huh.”
“We’re not coughing,” Aziz says suddenly, and Emma blinks at him. He shrugs. “We just…usually there’s dust.”
“Someone’s been here,” Emma concludes grimly. “Someone’s been mixing potions down here. We have an…” No. Not an intruder. They’d come to a castle already ruled by a new magic user. “Zelena. Fuck.”
“What?”
But she’s already charging forward, reaching for the glass just as there’s a puff of smoke and Zelena’s fingers are wrapped around her wrist. The beaming smile is gone, wide-eyed enthusiasm replaced with narrowed eyes and a smirk. “Ah-ah-ah,” she says, waving her hand, and Emma is thrown back against the wall. Aziz narrows his eyes and runs at her before Emma can shout, and he’s thrown back to land in Emma’s grasp.
“Who the hell are you?” Emma demands, setting him down and starting ahead again. Zelena is gasping for breath now, her skin fading…no, darkening…is she turning green? Emma stares for a moment before she takes her chance, reaches for her bow and nocks the arrow in place just as Zelena grabs the glass and swallows the whole thing.
The color fades from her skin and her breathing comes normally, and she laughs once and says, “It’s been fun, Emma,” before she vanishes in a whirl of green smoke.
Regina makes Mary Margaret an apple turnover. It’s some of her best work, beautifully formed and specially spiked with sleeping curse, and she comes to her classroom at lunchtime to pass it to her. “A gift,” she says, putting on her best smile. “I think we’re all a little embarrassed about all that unpleasantness, and I can’t help but feel guilty that Sidney did all this to get to me. I thought we could be friends.”
Mary Margaret is staring at her like she isn’t entirely sure the turnover isn’t poisoned (which, well…) but she smiles and lifts it to her mouth. “It smells delicious,” she says, and she’s about to take a bite when she’s bowled over by a little blur of motion from behind them. “Henry!”
Henry snatches the turnover from Mary Margaret without a word and Regina’s heart stops. “Henry,” she says, pleading.
He shakes his head. “No. I’ve been…I’ve been running around town for months, trying to find the savior,” he says, and his eyes are bright and he isn’t looking at her with hate or fear anymore. It almost looks like hope, like something that she hasn’t seen directed at her in years, and it steals her breath away. “But you love me.”
“Of course I do,” she whispers, reaching for him, for the turnover, for bringing him to safety. “Henry, please–“
He bites into it and falls, and all she can do is catch him and scream.
Zelena is gone when they emerge upstairs to pandemonium. “She just turned the Friar and Alan-a-Dale into some kind of flying–“ Will starts, and then stops, as though he can’t believe that he’s saying this, and Al finishes for him.
“Monkeys. They were flying monkeys.”
Emma covers her face with her hand. “What the fuck.”
Magic can be sealed, but even that can’t last forever. You just need the right ingredients to break that seal, Zelena had said, and now she’s flaunting power as though she’s unafraid, had finished a potion with little taken out of it before that. Zelena’s been waiting for her potion to be finished and her powers to be returned completely, and now that they’re back, she’s going to be a menace.
“What do we do?” Much asks from where he’s crouching under the table.
Emma looks at them all, the ones who’d missed the curse and survived ogres and Zelena. Will and John, Al and Aziz, Much and Lancelot. Six men remaining, and one’s a nine-year-old boy. “We stay here,” she decides. “We fight back if Zelena returns. We clear out the mountains. Then we go down to the kingdoms to get rid of the ogres down there. Got it?”
They nod in agreement and Emma reaches for her bow and leads the way outside.
This changes nothing. Now, they rebuild.
Henry is in the hospital. Regina panics, paces, threatens Gold and falls beside the hospital bed in helpless defeat when she hears a quiet voice behind her. “What were you going to do to me?”
And is there anything left to hide, even from someone as galling as Mary Margaret? Is there anything that matters with Henry unconscious and dying in front of her? Maybe there’d been a time when she would have thought so. Not anymore. Not faced with this. “The turnover had the apple I used on you last time,” she says, her head dropping against Henry’s limp hand. “I was going to put you to sleep before you broke my curse.”
“So it’s real.” A second voice, as cautious as the first. Regina hadn’t even known that David and Mary Margaret were still talking. Or maybe this is why. “You really believe all this,” he corrects himself almost instantly.
Mary Margaret speaks again, sounding tired. “What can we do, Regina?”
She turns. They’re both standing over her, these two warriors made into stock townspeople in her little kingdom, these two useless people even more useless than she is. And all she has is a sword that Gold had handed to her, slay the dragon then, with a smug little smirk.
“Slay the dragon,” she says now, and leads them out to her car.
And they do. Mary Margaret gets her bow from Gold’s shop and David waves the sword around as though he’s made for it, and Regina waits for them on the library main floor and hopes for the first time in many, many years that Snow White survives this.
Except they’re all fools, Regina most of all because she isn’t a naive victim of the curse, and Gold ties her up and runs off with an egg full of the magic that was supposed to save Henry. The phone comes just moments later- He’s flatlined, we don’t know what else to– and now they’re back at the hospital, Regina and Mary Margaret and David, and Henry is still and cold on the bed.
“Regina,” Mary Margaret starts.
“Don’t talk to me.” She has her arms wrapped around herself, afraid to reach out to feel a Henry who doesn’t move, a Henry who doesn’t breathe and fight and do stubborn, stupid things like Swan Hood herself.
And Mary Margaret, of course, is another person who doesn’t know when to stop. Maybe this is what Emma had loved about her. “Regina, what he said before the turnover…I think he figured out who his savior was going to be.” Regina freezes, and Mary Margaret says in a murmur, “What happens if you kiss him?”
What happens if you kiss him?
But you love me.
“I don’t have that kind of…I’m not you,” she says, and it burns like acid, furious at a woman who doesn’t exist anymore. “I don’t get magical moments like that. True love’s kiss didn’t save Daniel. True love’s kiss didn’t keep Emma with me. I’m the villain of this piece, not the savior.”
“Regina, I just...slayed a dragon! I discovered that I’m a master archer, and I’m apparently a Disney princess. I don’t think we can count on what we know about ourselves anymore.” She sounds more like Snow than she ever has today, the whole ordeal giving her new courage. Regina can feel long-dead bits of her heart prickling to life with feelings she’d sworn she’d never have for Snow again. “Break the curse, Regina,” Mary Margaret whispers, and Regina leans forward and kisses Henry.
The shockwave has her flying back, and Mary Margaret- no, Snow, she’d brought her worst enemy back to life- catches her, gazes into her eyes with dawning recognition, and Regina jerks away and flees.