Chapter Text
When they first bring her into the room she almost doesn’t notice the body curled up on the corner, dirty and bloody and so bent within itself that it is as if it is trying to become one with the wall.
She supposes it is.
As soon as the door closes though, the body unravels and before her sits a woman, eyes curious and defiant looking her up and down.
Emma forgets how breathing works for a second because the woman in front of her is stunning, even in dirty rags and blood smeared and the transformation that happens before her eyes is astonishing.
In one second, gone is the curled up scared ball of limbs trying to hide and instead Emma is faced with such a presence. The woman sits regally on the floor, legs crossed elegantly, posture impeccable and an intelligence to her eyes that cannot be overlooked.
“And who are you?” a husky voice asks. And sexy, that voice is definitely sexy.
“Emma. Swan,” she says, unable to take her eyes away from the mystery in front of her.
“How did you end up here, Miss Swan?” she asks with a sort of detached curiosity, her eyes visibly analyzing everything there is to analyze about Emma. It’s unsettling.
“I’m a journalist,” she replies, leaving the longer explanation for later. “And you are?”
“Glad someone else is here to share interrogation time with me,” she says with a smirk that is anything but amused.
Emma swallows loudly. “And your name?”
“Regina,” she concedes after a beat. “I’m an interpreter.”
Emma doesn’t for one moment believe that to be true.
*
Regina is a mystery, and Emma is sure she likes to keep it that way. Emma however, happens to like mysteries, so she is very intent on figuring this one out.
She manages to stay quiet for all of 23 minutes before curiosity wins over, aided by a huge amount of boredom.
“How did you end up here?”
“Much the same way you did, I suppose,” Regina tells her with a raised brow.
“Well, I was just in the wrong place,” Emma says with a whole lot of resentment lacing her words. “I was only trying to get a story.”
Regina hums before saying, “As I said, much the same way.”
*
“How long have you been here?”
Regina huffs, annoyed. “Miss Swan. I regret to inform you that you will have plenty of time to pester me with all these pointless questions, you don’t have to waste your quota in the first hour of your arrival.”
“So I have a quota for questions?”
“Oh yes, and it’s shrinking by the minute.”
Emma laughs, amused, and she places herself more comfortably against the cool wall.
“So how long?”
“96 days,” Regina says, a haunted look crossing her features before she is able to mask it.
Emma has nothing else to say for the rest of the day.
*
She should have known Regina was not kidding in the slightest when she said she was happy to have a break on interrogations.
Simply stated, they fucking suck.
She is thrown back into the dimly lit room after her first an indefinite number of hours later and she is more than content to not move from the lump of amalgamated limbs she has become plastered on the dirty floor.
She hears Regina approach her a few seconds after the door closes, her footsteps as hesitant as those of a wild animal approaching something unknown.
Emma whimpers when she feels a hand stroking the hair off her face and she is surprised to note that Regina is incredibly gentle as she lifts her head up slightly and gives Emma some water from the canteen.
She drinks it avidly, her throat sore from screaming for hours and murmurs a “Thank you” after she can’t take any more.
Regina rests her head back on the floor only to come back straight after with a folded blanket she places under Emma’s head and she begins to slowly wipe Emma’s face clean of the blood with a wet rag.
Regina is careful and so soft that Emma has a hard time reconciling who this woman actually is. She who kept her distance the whole day and was perfectly content to ignore Emma, sitting on opposite walls of the room, who didn’t bat an eye when they came to take Emma just as they were falling asleep.
This Regina wipes her face with the gentlest strokes imaginable and then goes to clean the rest of her body, before placing a blanket over her and telling her to rest.
She goes to sit on her side of the room and Emma lies there looking at the puzzle that is Regina until the pain in her body is too much to fight and she falls asleep.
*
Emma thanks whichever shitty gods were responsible for her growing up an orphan in foster care because she has never been so glad for her ability to just ignore flavors and eat whatever they put on her plate.
She shovels down food that is almost inedible because she never knows if they will simply decide to stop feeding them, and she knows she needs to keep her strength.
Regina, however, looks like she is being forced to eat rat (she really hopes they are not being served rat). The disgust on her face borders on amusing but Emma watches as Regina does her best to overcome her gag reflex and cleans her whole plate.
There are worse things than being forced to eat crappy food and they both know it.
*
Emma learns to be thankful for the little things after spending some time in a shithole with no foreseeable way out.
For once, she is thankful that their captors don’t resort to torturing them every day. Instead, they keep it more once a week, taking turns with each of them. At least they each have about a week to recover before their next session.
It’s a nice gesture.
*
Emma learns that her most hated sound in the world is Regina’s screaming.
On the days that they take Regina, sweeping in at random hours of the day and whisking her away, Emma watches as Regina transforms from the strong force of nature to a whimpering mess before her eyes.
As soon as the door opens her posture changes, her demeanor submissive, eyes downcast, her voice trembling.
And she screams.
Regina screams and those screams get burned into Emma’s brain and she dreams of it most nights. Not her own screams, curious enough, but Regina’s, the woman who seldom speaks but takes the gentlest care with Emma when she’s been hurt.
*
Emma often wonders what type of a chameleon Regina is. When they bring her back and throw her on the floor, even though she had just been screaming for hours and is still whimpering in their presence, she immediately quiets.
Her breathing slows, her tears dry, her body back under her careful control.
Emma doesn’t have nearly as much skill.
Emma cleans her up as well and softly as she can and she knows she’s nowhere near as gentle as Regina is but Regina doesn’t complain and she doesn’t make a sound.
She lies there and she lets Emma pass the wet rag through her broken skin without a hiss, her eyes closed and her face a mask of serenity.
Sometimes Emma wonders if Regina is meditating when she lies like that, if she locks her mind away in some remote place where there is no hurt. It certainly looks like it.
Emma leaves her covered and as clean as possible and Regina drifts off to sleep without saying a word because she never does.
*
Emma watches Regina sleep.
It would be creepy (well, perhaps it is creepy), but Regina is fascinating to watch, awake or asleep, and Emma is fascinated.
Emma watches slowly as Regina transforms once more. She goes from Buddhist monk in meditation to restless in a slow progression. Her brows crinkle and her lips purse and she begins to thrust in distress, small whimpers leaving her lips until it culminates in her waking up with a scream.
Emma closes her eyes then, pretending to be asleep and Regina acts as if she believes her.
It’s a repeating pattern, much like Emma’s repeating nightmares, and Emma is as fascinated as she hurts.
*
Regina has this necklace with a ring on it that she keeps in a hole in the wall hidden behind a rock.
She takes it out at night when she thinks Emma is asleep and she spends long moments holding it. Just that. Just Regina sitting against her wall, legs crossed as she holds on to the necklace, eyes closed in some type of trance.
Once again, Emma is fascinated and perhaps her creepy levels have gone up a notch.
*
Emma wonders when exactly she started thinking about her side of the room and Regina’s side of the room. As if they’re willing roommates instead of unwilling captives forced to share the same dingy, smelly, dark, humid room god knows where.
She also wonders if Regina resents her for taking up half of the room which she once held full sovereignty over.
It’s things like these that keep her mind going in a place that is slowly but surely trying to turn her insane.
*
Emma concludes that if one is to be captured and held captive for extended periods of time that one should not have a vagina.
Emma doesn’t even want to think about having to deal with her period again next month.
Just no.
*
She comes to the conclusion that humans have a need to make things their own, just like they have a need to categorize everything.
She notes that people will occupy a certain space, even if it’s for the first time, and they will immediately set a boundary around it. If they’re standing, they have their own personal space that others are not supposed to cross. If they are sitting on a bus there is a very clear line between “my seat” and “your seat” and no one better cross it. If they are in a room they will similarly delimit their own space.
Emma has the right side of the room with the tiny window way too far up for her to reach and Regina has the left side with her secret hole in the wall.
There is the sink in the corner and the toilet next to it which they both use and equally pretend they don’t because no one should be privy to a stranger’s bowel movements.
Emma supposes you can’t really consider someone a stranger once you’ve heard everything that has come out of their body, but still.
*
The rigid invisible line dividing their room becomes more fluid in the dark, Emma notices.
Perhaps it is the darkness that brings with it a sense of possibility, lowered inhibitions and a feeling of wanting to share secrets.
Either way, Emma often finds herself moving closer to that line in the dark of night and she feels Regina responding to the pull in equal measure, although slightly more reluctantly.
They don’t necessarily talk much, but they sit there a few feet from each other enjoying the quiet comfort of a stranger’s company in the lonely night.
*
Emma still thinks of Regina as a stranger even after five weeks of sharing a room.
It’s a strange thing.
*
Emma decides one day to brave the invisible line and she slides closer to its border as she’s having lunch. In plain daylight.
She might be going slightly insane after all.
Insane or not, she ventures towards the great unknown and unspoken barrier and manages to eat a whole (disgusting) meal there with only the slightest of narrowed eyes from her roommate.
It’s riveting.
*
Emma has decided Regina is also not a roommate, although she is yet to find an appropriate denominative for her.
The search continues.
*
Somehow Emma’s bravery is influencing the masses. She is becoming a revolutionary in her own rights.
Regina, slowly but surely, starts moving closer to the border every day when they eat until one day they are both sitting side by side and eating in companionate silence.
*
Companion in captivity, perhaps.
Emma is not too sure she is happy with this denominative either.
It has a certain…resigned quality to it, and neither of them is resigned to their captivity.
*
Regina is funny, Emma finds out.
Not that it is that big of a surprise, but the whole being held captive and tortured for weeks on end thing does tend to diminish someone’s sense of humor.
But Regina is, despite all this, funny.
And she certainly likes to make fun of Emma. Which is incredible in its own way because Regina barely speaks and Emma is left wondering how someone can mock another person so thoroughly with only some raised eyebrows and pursed lips.
It’s truly a gift.
*
Emma misses modern commodities. Really, truly, deeply misses it in an almost bone-deep level.
Showers, for instance, are some of the things Emma misses the most. She doesn’t think she even remembers what being truly clean feels like. Washing your whole body in a shallow sink just doesn’t seem to get the same results.
And she really misses having a bed. She would even take some of her beds going up, stringy as those mattresses were, to sleeping in this dirty cold floor.
Also, food. Enough said about that topic.
*
Emma gives up on keeping track of her days in captivity when she reaches 100.
It feels like a milestone, one which she had hoped to never reach, so she promptly stops finding ways to drive herself crazy over that.
*
Regina keeps counting.
It’s just the type of person she is, Emma supposes.
*
Emma is still not entirely sure what type of person Regina is but she is slowly composing the picture.
*
Regina comes back from one interrogation session and she is not exactly okay.
It takes Emma a moment to notice but the usually stoic woman is trembling slightly under her soft strokes and her face is slightly pinched, the blank mask that usually covers it is not fitting quite right.
Emma doesn’t really know what to do and Regina seems very adamant in pretending that everything is exactly as it always is so Emma says nothing.
Emma wipes her clean and she covers her up and perhaps she lingers a little longer and strokes her hair a few more times than she normally would but that is as far as she thinks she’ll be allowed to go.
*
Regina wakes up with a scream and Emma, who hasn’t fallen asleep yet because she is watching her worriedly, looks at her and dares ask, “You okay?”
Regina narrows her eyes, affronted at Emma’s audacity at breaking their mutually (and silently) agreed upon stance on not mentioning anything that happens during the night.
Emma is slightly surprised with herself actually, but for some reason, she has found her bravery this night and she is not letting go.
“Do you need something?”
“No,” Regina snaps, and that is the end of that.
*
It’s not really the end of that.
Regina falls into a fitful sleep, her distressed whimpers reaching some far hidden places of Emma’s heart and Emma has apparently still not let go of her bravery.
And foolhardy.
She gets up quietly, scoops up her blankets and dares to traverse the great barrier into the other side of the room to settle down beside Regina.
Emma lies down and rests shoulder to shoulder against Regina, who slowly calms down, her breaths evening out and she falls into a more peaceful (as peaceful as they get) dream.
Emma follows soon after.
*
They don’t speak about it.
Of course they don’t.
Regina pretends nothing happened and Emma is not stupid enough to bring it up, and she stays on her side of the room for the whole day, even during meals.
She stares at the border in wonder and thinks that nighttime really does bring out bravery in people because she would never dare cross it now, not when there is a mighty creature on the other side promptly ignoring her presence.
*
Regina is thrashing again and her screams wake Emma up in a fright.
Emma bites her lips in thought as she ponders possible scenarios and if she’d survive each outcome.
She decides to risk it and treks over the great valley towards Regina, lying down next to her in silence. Regina wakes up this time and looks at her, fear clear in her eyes before she hides it away and Emma is expecting to be thrown across the room but, miraculously, she is not.
Regina closes her eyes and her features look instantly more relaxed and Emma feels a tiny flutter of something that shall not be named inside her.
*
The next morning Regina wakes her up by shoving her back to her side and tells her resolutely, “That will never happen again, Miss Swan,” and then completely reverts back to her usual calm and collected self for the rest of the day.
*
Emma wakes up screaming and Regina is there by her side a few moments later.
*
It becomes a thing.
*
Emma marvels at the human ability to undergo change so well.
One day it is “my side” and “your side”, another day, it is still “my side” and “your side” during the day, but “our side” at night.
Emma becomes used to sleeping next to Regina, used to her warmth, to her breathing soothing her, even used to the thrashing and kicking when the nightmares come.
It’s comforting.
Regina is comforting.
*
Emma wonders when that happened.
*
She reevaluates her pending definition of Regina but still can’t come with anything more appropriate than comforting cellmate.
It just doesn’t have the right ring to it.
*
Emma decides to ask about Regina’s ring in the bravery conceded to her by the dark room.
“What ring?” Regina asks with an Oscar-worthy performance of cluelessness.
Emma rolls her eyes at the predictability and taps Regina’s wrist gently, leaving her thumb there for some mysterious reason.
(It’s comforting and she just doesn’t know why.)
“The one hidden in the wall, Regina.”
“Oh, that one,” she drawls, as if there could be any other ring in this barren cell. “My wedding ring.”
“Ah,” is Emma’s only input as she becomes acutely aware of where her thumb is and removes it.
*
Regina still takes out her ring at night to hold it, only now she doesn’t wait for Emma to fall asleep because there just wouldn’t be much point in that.
*
Emma finds that she is not so fascinated by this nightly ritual as she used to be and she avoids witnessing it at all costs.
*
Emma comes to the conclusion that she has probably, with about 79% certainty, gone slightly insane.
It seems like the only explanation for this weird thing that comes between her and Regina once she finds out Regina is married.
The insanity part coming mostly, though not exclusively, from the fact that Emma is, herself, in a loving and committed relationship and has been for the past three years.
The other part of the insanity coming from the fact that she obviously (obviously) feels nothing but slight fascination towards her reluctantly comforting cellmate (she’s still working on that definition).
*
Emma has decided that the only possible conclusion is that they have spent too much time in a closed space and they have developed some weird type of attachment towards each other, like some sort of Stockholm syndrome.
Granted, the attachment seems very one-sided, so perhaps not like that at all.
*
She still has to think about it.
*
Emma wonders why Regina (Regina) opened up with some sort of personal detail before Emma did.
She didn’t voluntarily give out the information but she could have shut Emma down like she’s done so many times before but instead, she chose to answer Emma’s question.
Emma also wonders why she didn’t feel the need to share some personal information in return as would be normal in human interactions, choosing to keep quiet instead.
*
Emma concludes they are not very typical humans.
*
Emma also decides to burn down whatever this strange thing growing inside her is (it looks a lot like a certain emotion Emma thinks is jealousy but she is not sure because she has never felt it before and she also has no reason to feel anything even remotely resembling it so she decides it is not that) by sharing a relevant piece of information about herself.
“I have a fiancé,” she tells Regina during the day so that there may be no confusion with the bravery of the night that invites the spilling of secrets and feelings.
Emma is in no mood to spill any of those.
Regina gives her a look and then continues looking at the ceiling, apparently something much more interesting than Emma’s love life.
“We’ve been together for three years,” her mouth continues to say.
Regina grunts in acknowledgment and says nothing in return.
“How long have you been married for?”
Regina turns her head to the side to give her a withering look and says, “Miss Swan, I have no interest in sitting here and sharing our lives as if we’re in some sort of teenage sleepover where we braid our hairs and talk about boys. Or girls”, she adds after a long look at Emma.
“Boy,” Emma feels the mysterious need to say.
Regina glares at her and turns once more to inspect the ceiling.
Emma holds in the need to point out this is a daytime conversation, therefore safe from any sleepover connotations.
*
Emma comes to the realization that Regina always calls her Miss Swan when she notes that she doesn’t even know Regina’s last name.
“You have a lot of questions, Miss Swan,” Regina says after she asks.
“I just get bored and you’re the only other talking organism in the room,” she replies with an innocent smile, fervently avoiding the pathway her brain wants to follow regarding their other living roommates.
Regina glares but says nothing.
Emma pouts because sometimes she finds that if she gives Regina her best puppy dog impression she will get results.
Sometimes.
Regina has to be in a certain pliable mood.
Regina is not in that mood today so all Emma receives is more unimpressed glaring.
*
Emma is feeling bored again when she asks, “How come you never call me Emma? Always Miss Swan?”
Regina rolls her eyes as she says, “Because you already pester me too much with what little intimacy I allow you, imagine where I would be if I called you Emma.”
It’s the first time Regina has said her name and she says it in a way that very much becomes Emma’s favorite way of saying her name.
It might have something to do with the person who says it.
*
“I’ve been married for five years, together for seven,” Regina tells her seemingly out of the blue one night.
Emma turns to her and is momentarily speechless, the shock of Regina volunteering any information short-circuiting her system.
“Wow. That’s a long time.” Maybe not that long, but Regina seems young to have been married for so long.
Come to think of it, she actually has no idea how old Regina is. she has one of those timeless faces so it’s kind of hard to tell.
Regina shrugs noncommittally and turns to the side, apparently sufficiently satisfied with the information shared. Her breathing evens out soon after and Emma is left looking at her back rising and falling in a rhythmic pattern that lulls her to sleep.
*
Emma doesn’t particularly understand how it happens but something surely shifts between them after that night.
She decides she likes it.
*
Emma also decides that she is very much the biggest fan of Ramadan there is.
She is thrilled when their food suddenly improves overnight and, though they now fast during the day and are woken up at an ungodly hour to have breakfast, she rejoices in the knowledge that she will get this wonderful food for a full moon’s cycle.
It’s as close to heaven as she’s gotten in a long time.
She would have Ramadan all year long if it were up to her.
*
Emma is vaguely aware that food is not supposed to be the best part of Ramadan but she is a woman with her priorities straight and way at the top is definitely decent food.
It’s just a fact of life.
*
“If you could eat anything in the world right now what would it be?”
“Anything anything?”
“Anything. The world’s best restaurants at your service.”
“Cheeseburger from this little place in Brooklyn,” Regina replies instantly, her eyes twinkling with joy at the idea.
Emma’s heart melts a little bit at the sight.
She also wishes she could give the woman her beloved cheeseburger.
Emma laughs at the conundrum that is Regina, a woman so poised and regal-like whose favorite food is apparently a greasy cheeseburger. Go figure.
“You’re American?” Emma asks curiously after a beat.
Regina gives her a strange look.
“What else would I be?”
Emma shrugs. “No idea. I just wasn’t sure. You do have a thing for languages and I’ve heard you speak perfect Farsi.”
“How would you know what perfect Farsi sounds like, Miss Swan?”
Emma tips her head in surrender because she doesn’t have a reply for that.
*
She notices later with the clarity of the moon that Regina didn’t actually confirm her nationality.
So basically, Emma is still mostly clueless about her.
*
Emma is extremely perplexed to note that, topping her love for food, is her love for a torture-free month.
And that is definitely her new favorite perk about Ramadan, which remains steadily her new favorite month for all reasons possible.
She is perhaps as equally perplexed to find something that can make her happier than food. She never thought she’d live to see the day.
*
She is a bit bummed to note how commonplace all this torture business has become in her life.
She feels a bit nostalgic for the days when she didn’t think a good day was any where either she or Regina weren’t being tortured.
Eh. Life.
*
“First thing you’re gonna do after we get out of here?”
“Bathe,” Regina replies instantly making Emma burst with laughter.
“Same,” she says with a vivid nod.
“Then perhaps take a shower to feel the water falling over me and then take another bath to relax.”
“And sleep in my own bed!” Emma groans.
“Definitely.
“And eat. Oh my god I can’t wait to have proper food again,” she says, immediately feeling nostalgic for the end of Ramadan.
“And get a change of clothes,” Regina says wistfully and Emma feels the grossness of her clothes even more acutely.
It just isn’t the same to hand wash them in the sink and hang them as best they can in the room while they wait around in their underwear.
*
Emma notes she has lost all shame about being naked when she doesn’t even bat an eye at a half-naked Regina string across her half-naked self.
There’s something quite sad about that, she thinks. Not for herself, but a beautiful woman like Regina should always be appreciated, her nakedness should never be just another thing one gets used to.
Then again, Emma is engaged so there really is no reason why she would look and appreciate another woman’s body.
So she doesn’t.
(She does.)
*
“Emma,” she hears later that night as she’s about to fall asleep.
“Hmm?”
“I would hug my son. That’s the first thing I would do after getting out,” Regina says quietly and Emma is stunned silent.
She’s left perplexed after the infinite powers of the dark when they affect someone like Regina and not just her.
Emma decides to venture forth and cross the invisible barrier between their bodies to take hold of Regina’s hand and grasp it tightly.
Regina holds her hand just as strongly as if holding on to some invisible lifeline and they fall asleep like that.
*
Regina is back to her old stand-offish self for the next day and Emma grants her the space she needs to get herself under control.
She’s slightly unbalanced, Emma notices. It’s as if opening up unraveled something that she just doesn’t know how to make fit inside her anymore and there’s this unsettled energy around her.
It’s barely noticeable. In fact, were Emma not so attuned to everything Regina she might have missed it because the woman is an amazing actress.
But she is so very attuned to Regina so she does notice and it, in turn, unsettles her because she has come to realize that her sanity is very much interlinked with Regina and her unwavering self, and this change in her mental sounding rock brings about an uneasiness she is not happy with.
*
Emma files back for later this new awareness that Regina has become intimately correlated to Emma’s mental sanity.
It’s a topic she is not yet able to investigate further.
*
Regina is almost back to her usual self as they lie side by side later that night enveloped in the soothing blanket of darkness.
“Henry is four,” Regina whispers with only a slight tremble of her voice. “He’ll be five in sixteen days and I’ve been here for 287 days which means I’ve missed most of his fourth year of life and I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be here or how much more of his life I’m going to miss. Will he even remember me when I get back? If I get back?”
It’s the first time Regina has been anything but sure about their future escape and it scares Emma to no end.
It’s also the most Emma has heard her speak in one go and that scares her in a whole other way.
Regina is suddenly not the Regina she is used to, not the fearless force of nature Emma counts on and she wonders what happened in the past twenty-four hours which made the world turn on its axis.
She’s not sure what to make of this Regina who shows her deepest fears as quietly as she breathes, who allows herself to be so vulnerable to a woman she has kept at arm's length for so long.
Emma is as unsettled as she is understanding.
Emma also realizes that perhaps she is not the only one drawing comfort from her semi-friendly cellmate (name still going through a vetting process). She thinks maybe Regina also thinks of her as her reluctantly comforting cellmate and some sort of unusual warmth spreads through her at the thought.
“When you get back,” she reiterates to a wide-eyed Regina. “When you get back your son will be waiting for you and you will make up for the time lost and it will be as if this whole nightmare was just that, a bad dream.”
Regina takes in a deep shuddering breath and nods.
Emma holds her hand until Regina falls asleep and she stays awake for a long time after keeping some weird sort of vigil over her sleeping form.
*
Emma wonders if it is strange that it took Regina 190 days of sharing a room with Emma to tell her that she has a son.
*
She concludes that it is no stranger than any of the other things about Regina, including the fact that the woman apparently thinks reciting the periodic table in every language she knows (twelve by Emma’s count) is a fun way to pass the time.
Regina is still a mystery but Emma is learning that she very much likes it and she very much likes the way Regina slowly unravels herself.
*
Things between them change at an infinitely smaller pace after Revelation Night, as Emma has taken to think about it. But they change nonetheless.
It’s a small shift, Emma’s universe turning so slowly on its axis that she has enough time to accommodate for it. It’s good in the way that she can adapt to the changes as they came, slowly but surely.
She is not taken by surprise and she likes that. She likes having time to adapt, she likes having an anchor that shifts ever so slowly and gives her time to adjust.
She also likes that she has settled on the idea that Regina is her anchor in this nightmarish world and the fact that someone has become the way she centers herself no longer bothers her as it would have in another lifetime.
*
Emma sadly notes that she has come to divide her life into two major parts: Before this bullshit and After this bullshit.
Emma is very happy with that terminology and she finds it very fitting for this bullshit situation.
*
“One time I was staying with this foster family for the summer and it was seriously the worst time of my life,” Emma says dejectedly. “My stupid self decided that the girl next door was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and I spent a whole week sending her love letters. Honest to god the sappiest and cheesiest letters anyone has ever received because fourteen-year-old me fancied herself a poet,” she winces as she remembers her embarrassing teenage self.
Regina laughs. A full belly laugh that has her holding her stomach and holding on to Emma’s arm for support and Emma thinks that Regina’s laugh is the most beautiful things she has ever heard and that she is perhaps still very must the sappy and cheesy teenager she used to be when it comes to beautiful women.
She also thinks she is very okay with embarrassing herself in front of Regina if it gets her to laugh so freely.
“And did you get the girl, Shakespeare?” Regina asks with a twinkle of amusement in her eyes and a teasing smirk.
Emma rolls her eyes and shoves her playfully. “Obviously not. It was really bad, I could never go into poetry. That’s why it was the worst summer of my life! I had to avoid looking her in the face for a whole month, it was just the worst.”
“Poor baby Emma.”
Emma thinks playful teasing Regina is her new favorite type of Regina, so she spends the rest of the night telling her her embarrassing teenage stories.
*
Emma decides to ignore the fact that she has started categorizing Regina according to her favorite characteristics.
*
“I used to be the most well-behaved child, you know?” Regina tells her.
Emma hums her acknowledgment of hearing her but is far too comfortable feeling Regina tickle her hand to be able to utter any actual words.
“My mother was a nightmare and she wanted me to be perfect in everything,” she says in a tone that is only slightly resentful but an expression that reveals much more. “And I was, until I met my first boyfriend. Then there was no stopping me,” she adds with a mischievous smirk and Emma can just picture young Regina running around with her boyfriend behind her mother’s back.
“Who would’ve thought,” Emma teases her, “little miss perfect falling for a bad boy.”
Regina laughs and shakes her head. “I was never perfect and he wasn’t the bad boy.”
Emma gasps in mock horror. “Don’t tell me you were the bad influence on him!”
Regina shoves her playfully but laughs heartily. “I really was. I had two focuses in my life at sixteen: horses and Daniel. And only one of them came with the joys of sex so you can imagine which one quickly became my favorite,” she said with a devilish smirk.
Emma bursts out laughing, the image of a sex-crazed teenager so incongruous with her mental picture of this poised woman.
“Oh god, this is absolute gold. You know you’ve forever changed the way I think about you, right?”
Regina’s smirk never leaves her lips. “I’m much more than what meets the eye, dear.”
Emma has no doubts about that.
Emma’s heart also does a little funny thing at the term of endearment.
“Is Daniel you husband?” she asks after a beat.
Regina’s smile immediately drops and she replies with a curt “No” as she stiffens by Emma’s side, her hand stopping her ministrations and the barrier between them immediately raised again.
*
Emma needs to learn to keep her mouth shut.
*
“Daniel died when I was in college,” Regina tells her out of the blue the following night.
She has this thing for making huge declarations hidden by the cover of darkness, Emma has noticed.
Emma takes Regina’s hand to comfort her and the pain in Regina’s features fades a bit.
Emma has learned to keep her mouth shut and she doesn’t say anything else.
*
Regina is unusually quiet today and she snaps at Emma for everything and nothing and Emma is so confused that she snaps back because she has never been one to take unprovoked attacks without getting on the offensive as well.
By the end of the day, Regina’s nerves are so frayed that Emma wonders if she is going to physically break. She wouldn’t be surprised with the amount of tension running through her unusually diminished body.
Emma thinks maybe this is all finally getting to Regina and she panics at thinking she might lose the constant compass in her life.
She is also incredibly worried because she doesn’t know what to make of this frazzled Regina who doesn’t eat a thing the whole day and goes to sleep on her own side of the room after she very obviously puts Emma’s blankets back on her own side.
Emma is in a state of mild panic as she tries to fall asleep by herself for the first time in months and is miserably failing, and, judging by the constant tossing and turning from the other side of the room, so is Regina.
Emma is about to give up and just ask what’s wrong when Regina quietly speaks.
“It’s my son’s birthday today.”
And oh, that explains everything.
Emma gets up and grabs her things before making her way back to Regina.
Regina cries for the first time that Emma can see and she’s left trying to console the inconsolable.
*
Emma hates these people who would keep a mother away from her son and cause an unbreakable woman to completely shatter.
*
Emma feels the need to reiterate her hatred for the fucking bastards that hold them captive when they throw an unconscious Regina to the floor a few days later.
She has a very long list of things she plans to do to them once she can get herself out of this shithole and none of them are very nice.
*
Emma takes care of Regina the whole day, cleaning her and giving her water when she wakes up in fits, and holding her.
Mostly Emma holds her as she tries to keep the pieces of her anchor in place, afraid that if she fails and even one of them is lost to the vastness of the oceans that she will also become lost in its currents.
*
Regina gets a fever and is barely able to stay conscious for more than a few minutes and Emma spends a whole two days without sleeping while she looks after her with her heart in her throat and she doesn’t think she remembers what it’s like to have a normal heart rhythm anymore.
*
Regina is finally fever free although still incredibly weak and Emma cries for the first time since she got here because for a moment there she thought she might lose her and she still doesn’t know how to define Regina except that she’s her anchor and she can’t lose someone she hasn’t defined yet and she definitely needs to sleep because her whole body is just feeling so much that she thinks she is going insane, even with her anchor by her side.
*
Emma sleeps for long and when she wakes up Regina is still by her side even though it’s probably the middle of the day and they don’t do this.
They don’t lie next to each other during the day except for when one of them is sick and Regina is not sick anymore but she is lying next to Emma who is not sure what to feel or think or do.
She goes back to sleep.
*
When she wakes up it’s dark and Regina is still there but Emma can deal with it now because it’s dark and she’s no longer sleep deprived.
She’s still scared though, of so many things but mostly of losing Regina for reasons she very much cannot dwell on.
“It will take more than a little infection to get rid of me,” Regina tells her with a soft smile when Emma is not able to mask the fear in her eyes.
She is obviously not as skilled at masking her emotions as Regina is.
Emma chuckles lightly because surely that is what Regina intended with her comment but it sounds anxious to her own ears and her smile is 97% forced.
Regina takes her hand and intertwines their fingers and that is the first time they have held hands like that.
“I’m really okay now, Emma,” she says softly.
It is also the first time she has used Emma’s name when speaking to her and it does something to her insides.
Emma swallows and tries to smile again but it’s too wobbly so she gives up and she settles for nestling closer to Regina (another first) and tightening her grip on her hand.
*
“I hate them, Regina. I really, really hate them and I am not a person who hates easily at all,” she tells her angrily.
“I hate them too. Though I do hate easily.”
Emma glares at her. “This isn’t funny, Regina.”
“No, it most definitely is not,” Regina agrees in a tone still far too light for Emma’s liking.
“You were unconscious!” Emma roars.
“I am aware, dear.”
“You had an infection!” she shouts as she paces the room in boiling anger.
Regina keeps her impavid façade as she says, “Again, I know.”
“How the fuck are you so calm about this?!” Emma yells in exasperation.
Regina shrugs. “It could be worse.”
Emma looks at her with her mouth wide open.
“How the fuck could it be worse?”
“At least they’re not raping us,” she states simply.
Emma has no more words as that horror scenario sinks in.
*
Emma thinks that when you rate the level of bad by the existence or absence of sexual assault in a captive situation you’ve reached a point in life where the little things such as sleeping in a room full of crawlers don’t bother you anymore.
It’s all about perspective.
*
Emma gains a whole new perspective on Regina as well, reaching a deeper understanding for some of her behaviors.
*
Emma also has a feeling there might be more to Regina’s simple comparison statement but there are some things that even she will not ask.
*
Emma is now cautious with Regina in a way she has never been.
There’s this thing between them and she is very adamant that it stay unnamed and untouched.
There is also her almost comical concern for Regina’s well being, which earns her constant huffs of exasperation from her partner in torture (still working on that one) and a few snapped remarks that have Emma retreating to the protection of her side of the room while Regina lets her mind go to whatever head space she goes when she meditates.
*
Regina has been meditating a lot, Emma notices.
Or at least she thinks she’s meditating. Sometimes she wonders if she has developed the ability to take a nap while sitting up straight as an arrow.
If she has, Emma would very much like to acquire that ability.
*
She asks, and Regina laughs at her silliness and tells her that she can’t fall asleep while sitting and is, in fact, meditating.
Or she was trying to until Emma so rudely interrupted her. (Regina’s words, naturally.)
*
Emma decides she might as well use her very ample free time to learn some meditation. Perhaps she will even connect with Regina wherever it is that meditating minds go.
Regina gives her an amused smirk when she asks but agrees to teach her.
“Just focus on your breathing, Miss Swan, breathe deeply, in, then out, find your roots and just let yourself connect to the earth. Keep breathing and just let your mind go.”
Emma is perhaps concentrating a bit too hard on not letting her thoughts focus too much on that voice to try to find her roots, whatever they are.
Emma was not aware she was a tree.
Emma is also acutely aware that, with her eyes closed, her ears seem to focus a lot more on Regina’s voice than they normally would and that might not be the best thing for avoiding the thing she is vehemently avoiding.
*
Emma gives up on meditating.
Her mind seems to only wonder towards one thing when she’s supposed to be finding her roots and that is a whole other thing she will not dwell on.
*
“How did you meet your husband,” Emma asks one night because she thinks she might need to fill her brain with images of Regina in someone else’s arms if she is to successfully avoid thinking about what she cannot think about.
It’s complicated and she is perhaps a masochist.
(That is an interesting topic for another musing.)
Regina gives her a look and it seems like she will ignore Emma but then she surprises her by answering.
“We’ve been best friends since college. Robin was my anchor after Daniel died and we just sort of…fell in together.”
Emma treacherous brain notes Regina did not say fall in love and it also notes how Emma’s stupid heart reacts to that piece of information.
Then Emma promptly ignores both thoughts because she will absolutely not go there.
Emma also wonders if it is a thing. This anchor thing and the development of these…attachments. Then she stops that train of thought as quickly as it came.
“How old were you?”
“Is this your way of trying to guess my age?” Regina asks her playfully.
Emma smirks. “Perhaps.”
“I was twenty-five if you must know,” she tells her. “It took me a long while to get over Daniel’s death.”
Emma squeezes her hand because she doesn’t know how else to say how sorry she is that Regina had to go through that pain.
“I’m thirty,” is Emma’s reply to a question that wasn’t vocalized.
Regina rolls her eyes but it’s fond and Emma smiles at her foolishly in return.
*
“I can’t have children,” Regina whispers in the dark of night, her usual confessional time.
Emma turns to her curiously, waiting, and Regina chews on her lip as she ruminates over whatever thoughts are jumping around in her head.
“I had some complication from surgery,” she says after a while, her free hand vaguely waving towards her lower abdomen where Emma knows there’s a scar.
Her other hand is firmly in Emma’s as it has been for the past many, many nights because that is how they fall asleep now.
“So Henry…?”
“Adopted,” she says, and Emma feels a tug at her heart as she does whenever someone talks about adopting, only this time it is much more intensified because this is Regina and Regina gave a baby a chance, a home, and she loves him so much that it’s almost palpable and Emma is suddenly very lost in this woman and for one moment she doesn’t care to stop her heart from following its usual foolish trajectory.
“I would also like to adopt one day,” she says after a long while once she has regained enough confidence in her vocal cords’ abilities to function. “I’ve always wanted to give someone a home when they didn’t have one.”
Regina holds her hand oh so very tight and doesn’t say anything because she knows what this means to Emma.
*
Emma gains a new appreciation for winter in the comfort of her heated home when she has to spend cold nights with barely anything for warmth.
Thankfully, and considering in this bullshit situation things to be thankful for are few and far between, winter in the Middle East is doable.
It’s cold, especially at night, but it’s not freezing and it’s really all about the little things when you’re in a situation full of big bad things.
They get thrown a few more ragged blankets when they complain about the cold for days and they are both thrilled.
Happy about ragged blankets - there’s a new low Emma never thought she would reach.
*
Emma is, funnily enough, not very disturbed by the fact that the weather drops when a cold front hits them and she and Regina are forced to huddle close together during the day for warmth and to cuddle tightly at night.
The first moment their bodies make contact Emma is not shocked in the slightest that she feels an electrifying feeling running through her.
She may be especially good at avoiding things but she is not stupid and she is definitely not blind.
She gives herself until the end of this cold front to be able to enjoy Regina’s body pressed against hers without guilt, without second thoughts.
She just wants to enjoy the feeling and her body is so starved that she shivers at any type of contact anywhere other than her hands, the only ones to have been spared this desert of affection she’s been on.
*
Emma takes a moment to appreciate Regina’s own response to their skins’ contact.
Her brain short-circuits a little when a sound that is very much like a contented hum comes out of the woman she has in her arms.
*
Emma’s brain is a treacherous thing and she would wash it would bleach had she any at hand.
*
Emma loses the battle against herself when Regina pulls Emma’s arm dangerously close to her breasts as she cuddles closer for more warmth during a night that is very much spent sleepless on Emma’s part.
Emma also curses whoever is responsible for making her body so responsive to beautiful women who have their backs pressed so tightly against her front she can feel every curve there is to feel.
*
It is a very educational night as Emma finds that Regina’s little periodic table reciting game comes very much in handy when one is trying to control raging hormones and fantasies that have no business crossing the fantasy world to try to materialize into real-world things.
*
Side note: Emma needs to practice her Mandarin, she’s getting a little rusty.
It took her way too long to properly recite that part of her list and there are certain things which are just inadmissible.
*
The cold front passes.
*
Emma is not sure how she feels about the absence of justification for night cuddling with her beautiful roommate (still not the right denominative although she might be getting closer).
She reserves the right to revisit her feelings on the matter at a later stage.
*
Emma takes too long thinking about her feelings about cuddling Regina.
*
Conclusion: they cuddle again for no apparent reason other than for the sake of cuddling.
*
Second conclusion: Regina is a cuddler with capital C and Emma would never have guessed it.
What she thought was strictly about the cold was clearly not and she is, again, not sure how she feels about her cuddle partner’s propensity for all night snuggling and holding onto body parts that are extremely sensitive.
(Fair enough, all of Emma’s body parts feel extremely sensitive when they come in contact with Regina’s skin.)
(Emma is weak and her body is weaker still.)
*
Third conclusion: daytime Regina is happy pretending nothing extraordinary happens at night and Emma is pretending she is happy to pretend that nothing is out of the ordinary.
(Emma’s brain is the weakest.)
*
Emma also has a fiancé whom she loves.
It is a thought she has to remember more frequently every day, but it is an exercise that becomes increasingly more important to maintain as the nightly cuddling progresses and it becomes as integral to her functioning as breathing.
*
Emma revisits her attempts to define Regina when weeks go by and the woman remains acting as if nothing is out of the ordinary.
And perhaps that is the thing. This nightly routine of theirs has been going on for so long that it has become normal, ordinary.
It just is.
Emma is still on the fence about her feelings on the matter and she is even more rattled by Regina’s apparent lack of feelings.
*
She decides to also revise her own personal sanity.
*
She concludes that she will possibly never understand Regina as the woman remains an enigma, her actions motivated by something beyond Emma’s comprehension.
*
She’s still pending judgment on her sanity but she thinks it is very thinly hanging in the balance and the reason is Regina, as is the direction it is swaying to on either side of the fence.
*
Emma is busy trying to practice her rusty Mandarin when she hears shouting outside quickly followed by their door banging open and two of their captors barging in the room yelling at them to get up and grab their blankets to leave.
Emma makes herself as much of a nuisance as she can and she motions to Regina’s secret hole in the wall hoping she’ll be quick enough on her feet to get the meaning and use Emma’s distraction to her advantage.
It all goes by in a flash and Emma is lying flat on the floor in an instant, her cheek cut open from a hit with the back of a sniper rifle and she grumbles and acts compliant as she grabs her things and Regina’s and she really hopes Regina made good use of her injury.
Regina is back to her usual meek persona now that they have company and Emma is once again fascinated, almost unable to tear her eyes away from her as they are dragged and shoved around through corridors and into the back of a car.
She is glad they seem to be in too much of a rush to blindfold them as they had done when they had brought her in all those months ago.
For the first time in what feels like an eternity, Emma sees something other than four walls around her and she is breathless.
She takes in the blue sky and the shining sun and absorbs the chill in the air like it is the most welcome feeling ever because, at this moment, it is.
She takes a moment to glance a look at Regina who has the same look on her face. They’re both just taking it all in.
She isn’t even that phased when she’s shoved into the car and they drive away to some unknown place because she can still see the world through the windows.
She takes Regina’s hand in hers and for a moment she is as peaceful as she’s ever been.
It really is the little things.