a fruit that's death to taste

by maleficently

Summary:

Emma has hidden her face behind a curtain of unruly hair for now, but manages to tip it back on command--and Regina looks down at Emma’s chest and the heart she knows is beating there; wonders absently if any of her problems would be solved if she just plucked it out and kept it in her jewelry box upstairs--and looks at her with the kind of anguish that really and truly doesn’t befit a storybook savior.

“The curse. It didn't break right, so how do I fix it?”

[Part 1 of a 3-part post-curse AU that mostly ignores Season 2 developments; see the notes for details.]

Notes:

This is an AU that takes and changes bits and pieces of Season 2 canon. For instance: it ignores Ruby's S2 episode and it has Emma and Mary Margaret back in Storybrooke after their sojourn to FTL without really accounting for HOW they got back--but then it retains the Daniel storyline and Henry's move in with the Charmings. This truly is not the happiest piece at the outset, so here are a few warnings and explanations.

The basic premise:

- I think (and seriously, this is just my opinion) that the last seven episodes have been disingenuous to the characters of Regina and Emma, in that I don't think either of them would adjust well at all to the post-curse reality they're living in. My starting point for this story is a) Emma is not actually fine with being part of a "family" now and b) Regina has absolutely nothing left to live for that isn't Henry, and he's not receptive to her presence in his life at all, so... If this sounds bleak, it's because it is.

- The town boundary thing drives me insane. Why is it still there? If the curse actually broke, there is no reason for people to not be permitted to leave, so it's a contrivance that the show doesn't care to explain.

- Finally, I'm intensely annoyed at the fact that nobody is mounting a coup against Charming, who has appointed himself to be the head honcho but doesn't actually have anything to back that up with; given how many people, good or bad, Regina swallowed up in her curse, surely there must be more dissident factions in town than just King George?

What follows plays with those three concepts in equal measure and it's the first (complete) part of a three part story that I am piecing together; each part will only get posted as it's finished and has been proofread, but the entire thing has been carefully plotted and I know exactly where I'm going. Without wanting to ruin anything, I will stress that the tagged pairing will become the focal point of the story eventually.

I'll take this moment also to thank the friends who have talked the story through with me (ad infinitum) and who have gone over everything I've written so far with a fine-toothed comb; invaluable little helpers, and all credit for this being half-decent goes to them.

Chapter 1

 

a fruit that's death to taste

the fatal plunge: part one

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In which the savior loses, the queen finds an ending, and the dark one laughs all the way home.

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I cast off my identity
And take the fatal plunge
Sylvia Plath, “Family Reunion”

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You don’t know what it means to win
Fleetwood Mac, “Never Going Back Again”

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Here is a queenship no mother can contest ---
A fruit that's death to taste: dark flesh, dark parings.
Sylvia Plath, “The Beekeeper’s Daughter”

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I was neither   
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing
T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland”

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I imagined ashes
And us alone, always us alone
Matthew Good Band, “The Rat Who Would Be King”

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If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”

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