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One.
The novelty of having a town that falls at your feet wears off surprisingly quickly and after thirty years, during which you are the only one aware of time passing, the mundaneness of it is almost suffocating.
Regina thinks were it not for Henry she would have lost her mind years ago. She could never have imagined watching her greatest enemies float aimlessly through life would be so utterly unfulfilling. Henry had given her a purpose, Henry had given her hope, and with the arrival of his mother he had also brought desperation back into her life.
This is why Regina decides, Emma Swans arrival in sleepy Storybrooke, causes such a rise in her. There's no other rational explanation as to why she has taken such an interest in that pleather wearing, blond headed, disaster.
She's sitting at the bench in her perfect kitchen (inside her perfect house, in her perfect town) when she hears a mechanical roar coming from the vicinity of her backyard.
Throwing her back door open she sees none other than Emma Swan, sawing through a particularly thick branch of her apple tree.
As she storms across the lawn, hell bent on tearing that insufferable woman to pieces, Regina finds herself longing for magic for the first time in three decades. She stops under her beloved apple tree, the one thing from her old life (before self righteous kings and traitorous princesses, before hats and hearts and curses) that she simply could not to leave behind, she feels her fingers curling towards her palms in a gesture unnatural in this world.
She can almost feel that long forgotten tingle of magic pool in her fingertips. She can imagine it wrapping itself around her wrists like a lovers caress. Regina closes her eyes for a moment and swears she can feel the ebb and flow of energy from the garden around her, feeding into her hands just like it used to do in the Enchanted Forest.
Regina moves to stand in front of Emma, chest heaving, and hands balled into fists. Emma's pupils are blown wide with what Regina assumes is anger. As the brunette feels her nails biting into the palms of her hands, she realises with a jolt that she's actually excited. After thirty long years without a single challenge, Regina thinks she’s found herself an adversary who might just be able to rise and meet her.
She steps closer to Emma, well beyond the range of acceptable personal space, but the blonde doesn't step back, she pushes forward too and Regina can feel her warm breath on her cheek.
Regina is no stranger to using her body as a weapon, she learnt a long time ago that sometimes sex is a far more useful tool than a threat of violence. If she were in another place, body wrapped in form fitting velvet (or maybe even leather she thinks, remembering that horrid red jacket) she would move those last two inches to test if Miss Swan would respond to a slightly different approach.
She takes a deep breath and runs her eyes down Emma's body, before she realises that the other woman is doing exactly the same thing. How interesting Regina muses, maybe this will be much easier than she first thought. Man or woman makes no difference to her; they all plead the same way in the end.
Before she can react though, Emma pulls away, a threat (and a promise, Regina hopes) her parting shot as she retreats back across the lawn and out the side gate.
Suitably ruffled Regina is left standing in her garden for long minutes, silently calculating her next move (and the one after than, and the one after that) before she settles on a plan she is quietly pleased with.
Yes she thinks deliciously, she would see this Emma Swan bow to her before the end.
Two.
Regina’s knees are starting to ache on the cold marble floor of the Mausoleum. Her mother, the Cora she had known her entire life not the real Cora she had known for a few painstaking seconds, would have chastised her for being weak enough to grieve.
No one has visited her; no one has paid their respects to a woman who created the most dangerous Queen in the history of the Enchanted Forest. This is why she tells herself later, she doesn't hear the far too familiar scuff of knee high leather boots on the polished marble until they stop a few feet from her.
Regina rises slowly, with all the grace of the old kingdom, to meet Emma as she takes the few steps down to meet her.
“What are you doing here Miss Swan?” her voice rusty from misuse and crying.
“Your Charming family not able to resist slipping one more knife in my back before weeks end?”
“Jesus Regina, No. I just came to say I'm sorry, about everything, and to see if you were ok” Emma manages to blurt out.
“Henry was worried when you didn't return his calls, he asked me to check on you. I called by the mansion but it didn't look like you'd been there in a while. When he mentioned this place I thought I'd give it a shot.”
Feeling mildly self conscious (after all Emma's not wrong, she hasn't left her mothers side since she sealed the sarcophagus herself two days ago) Regina runs her hands down her skirt smoothing the wrinkled fabric in an attempt to make herself slightly more presentable.
“Well as you can see I'm fine Sheriff, you can run back to my son and deliver the good news,” she snaps.
“Look Regina, I know your mother wasn't exactly Mother Teres..” And that's as far as Emma gets before Regina's fingers wrap around her throat and squeeze. Hard.
Regina's no stranger to the concept of losing herself to rage and for a long second all she can see is red and her breath is stuck underneath a brick in her throat. For the better part of two days Regina has been wallowing in her grief, and with Emma's comment the last vestiges of her reason and conscious crack away.
“You knew nothing of my mother” Regina spits. “She sacrificed her whole life for me, everything she did, she did for me, what on earth would an orphaned waste like you know about family.”
A thought flits through the back of Regina's mind then, that murdering one of the last branches of the Royal Tree might not be the smartest idea but honestly, right now she can't think of anything more satisfying.
Emma is struggling for breath now, and Regina can see the desperation in her eyes. The reasonable part of her brain finally wins out for a moment so she releases her fingers and can see five bright red marks appear in their place. Emma's expression softens as she tries to suck in a few frantic breaths, and Regina decides in that moment that no, she's not done here.
She drops her hand and Emma relaxes for a split second before Regina drives her hand, hard, into Emma's chest.
Contrary to popular belief, hearts actually have their own colour whilst inside the chest. The only way to ascertain what that colour is though is by holding that heart in ones hand while its owner is still alive. Graham's was an earthy green, her long dead husbands was a blue so deep it was almost purple. Snow’s was a soft baby pink in the brief time Regina held it. She imagines if she were to pull her own heart out of her chest it would be such a deep purple it would look black.
But Emma, Emma's is something else entirely. She can feel it as soon as her fingers push into her chest. The glow almost makes her withdraw her hand out of shock but she stops herself just in time. Regina has never felt anything like it in her long and unhappy life and she finds herself moving closer to Emma unconsciously. Emma's heart is so pure and clean, so perfectly flawless that to Regina it feels like a diamond.
The human heart is the same colour once its pulled from the body though. There is a perversely beautiful equality in this Regina contemplates as she flexes her fingers inside Emma's chest, that no matter the status or wealth of a person, in the face of death everyone is equal.
Normally at this point the heart seems to retreat further into the chest cavity. The body's last defence against this inexcusable intrusion, but Emma's actually seems to move closer to Regina's hand, as though drawn to it like a magnet. This almost undetectable movement stops Regina dead.
Unlike her mother who simply strove to collect as much power as she possibly could, Regina endeavoured to control her own development. She read as many of the ancient, dusty tomes as she could find in Rumples library, picking out only spells and pieces of information she thought worthy. Once she had mastered the uncontrollably intoxicating skill of heart taking, she sought out its history to further herself. One thing had stood out to her in one of the smaller novels, an incredibly rare occurrence that had only been recorded a handful of times. If the subject, the novel had said, harbours any strong emotional ties towards the practiser, an oddity can occur. For example if the subject were to harbour love or lust then the heart can act independently and in recognising the object of its affection, the organ can move towards the intrusion, rather than away from it. She remembers seeing a note in the margin accompanied by and an electric jolt as she recognised it as her mothers hand writing - Henry's had done this.
The shock and realisation of what that minuscule movement had meant brings her out of her stupor and she raises her head to meet Emma's eyes, glossed over in shock, barely daring to breathe. Her fingers, still wrapped around Emma's sickeningly pure heart relax and her hand slips from Emma's chest as she crumples to the floor.
“Miss Swan” she struggles “I’m…I don't.”
Emma doesn't wait around to hear the end of her stuttered apology. She turns on her heel and runs. And Regina breaks.
Three.
Regina's no stranger to torture, either physical or emotional. She endured near on twenty years of it from her mother after all, another ten from that simpering fool of a King before she had enough power to rewrite her own future. There's something particularly unforgiving about running far too much electricity through the human body that she's struggling to settle from tonight though.
The Charmings had dropped her on her doorstep a few hours ago, Emma having stayed behind to help look for Tamara and Greg. With a silent nod of thanks she had limped through the door, an offer for help inside as absent as it was unwanted.
She's showered and scrubbed, (torture is never a particularly clean experience mind) and dressed herself in her finest silk robe in what is fast becoming an ill-fated attempt to calm herself down.
She settles herself in the study, pours herself a generous glass of scotch and folds herself into the couch, lighting the fire with a tired flick of her wrist.
Truth be told, being strapped to that table was the first time in long years that she had actually been afraid. Knowing with a distinct finality that not a single person in this town would ever willingly seek her out to rescue her had been terrifying.
She could smell the desperation on those two, they had been prepared to do whatever it took to get from her what they wanted and had Emma not come in when she did, she's convinced they would have killed her.
She feels Emma well before she hears the knock at the door, her magic singing out to Regina's from the end of the street.
Ever since that moment in the mausoleum Regina has found herself oddly attuned to Emma, or rather to Emma's magic. She can feel her coming from a distance, feels a spike of energy when she assumes Emma feels any kind of strong emotion. She has searched through all the books in her possession but is yet to find anything that makes reference to that sort of magical behaviour beyond the explanation of what happened inside Emma's chest.
How peculiar Regina muses, that this woman's magic seems to have bound itself to hers after everything that's transpired between them and their families.
Opening the door with a wince (there's only so much healing magic she can perform on herself in this state, and it was barely enough for the most superficial of her injuries), she sees a freshly showered and nervous looking Emma Swan on the other side.
“Can I help you Miss Swan?”
“Can I come in, please?” she adds after a moment of silence.
Regina pushes off the edge of the door and gestures inside the foyer where Emma follows her into the study.
“I wanted to make sure you were ok, you were in pretty bad shape when we got there, and Snow didn't say much when they got home.”
Feeling the need to busy her hands Regina picks up the scotch she was drinking, aching fingers wrapping around the crystal (a sting of familiarity hits Regina and its almost overwhelming).
“I'm fine as you can see Sheriff” she says with a grimace as she folds her legs. “Now is there anything else I can help you with?”
She sees a familiar stubbornness and defeat flash across Emma's features and a second later she pushes herself up out of her chair and is halfway to the door.
“Fine, I'll tell Henry you’re alright then” she mutters not bothering to turn around.
“Wait” Regina manages to get out before Emma leaves the room, pride swallowed for the moment. “How did you know where I was?”
“You called me Regina,” she says simply.
And suddenly it comes back to her. That wretched bracket was meant to neuter her, but those desperate, stupid fools underestimated how deeply rooted her power was. Just before she blacked out the final time, she vaguely remembers a flash; a crack of magic that her confused mind thought had come from the machine.
“We'd been looking for you for days, and I was starting to loose hope. We'd turned the town upside down and couldn't find a trace of you. Then, out of nowhere I felt this shock and a pull towards that cabin and we got there as soon as we could,” Emma says looking at her feet.
“How was that possible,” she demands moving closer to Regina who recoils automatically.
“I don't understand anything about this magic crap,” she continues, “but even I know there's something between us now.”
Yes Regina thinks, and there's only one way to test the theory that's been churning in her stomach since that night in the mausoleum.
Regina pulls Emma towards her, hands grasping desperately at that awful red jacket as she presses their lips together. The result is immediate and Regina doesn't think she's ever felt anything so intoxicating in her life (hearts and kingdoms falling at her knees incomparable to this moment of indescribable power). Emma pushes her tongue into Regina's mouth, and threads her fingers through the brunette’s hair. Regina forces her brain to stop for just a minute and swears can feel the blonde’s heart beat through every cell in her body.
After long minutes, Emma firmly pushes Regina by the shoulders forcing them to part, panting from the exertion.
“I'm sorry,” Regina gasps. When she looks up to meet Emma's eyes she can feel her own pupils glow an iridescent violet. “You..you're..that was rather overwhelming. Your magic...is overwhelming.”
“What...” is all Emma manages to stutter.
“I'm sorry,” Regina repeats “I had to check.”
“Check what?” Emma demands.
“Your magic,” Regina gasps, “it's the antithesis, the opposite to mine. It's essentially everything mine is not, and its incredibly intoxicating.”
“What the hell does that mean” (can't you feel it, Regina thinks, what on earth do you think it means).
“It means that for whatever godforsaken reason your magic, and my magic have bound themselves together. I think they've sought out an equilibrium,” Regina explains.
“They needed to find a force equal to themselves so they could balance each other out. Magic that powerful is dangerous in solitude, look at what mine was capable of without an equal. Natural systems corrects themselves in the same manner constantly, it's basic science.”
“No,” Emma says shaking her head. “What does that mean for us?”
“Oh,” Regina falters. “I don't know dear.”
Reaching over she tentatively covers Emma's hand with her own and sighs with the instant relief it brings (she can feel the tears in her flesh knitting back together as she exhales).
“What would you like it to mean?”
Four.
Regina hasn't seen Emma since the night they saved her. She has heard her magic though, every night she feels it slip through the hole in the hedge she keeps meaning to berate the gardener about, feels its walk up to the back door, raise a hand to knock before it falls to her side. Feels it sit down, shoulders slumped and broken on her back porch.
A reluctance to show any kind of need or weakness is a remnant from a extensive life of misery (Regina learnt a long time ago that it doesn't do to show ones wants or hopes for fear of having them crushed, literally, in front of you) means she cant possibly go down and speak with her and so she lets Emma sit there night after night in miserable solitude.
She knows Emma's not in control of her magic enough to feel that Regina is watching her too, but instead Regina surmises, must feel the comfort in being near the other woman. This is the only reason she imagines Emma would walk half way across town in the middle of the night to sit outside in the cold.
It's not until Emma picks a particularly stormy night that Regina feels she should go and do something about the other woman’s constant visits. Its been raining quietly for hours but the heavens decide to open somewhere around ten and when the thunder starts she thinks its probably time. She paints on a practised air of annoyance that comes so naturally to her and makes a show of flicking on every light she can (sure to alert Emma to her movements within the house) on her way to the back door.
She half expects that by the time she gets there Emma will have tried to make herself scarce, so is mildly surprised to see the blonde with her back to her, rain running in rivets down her black coat (there has been a noticeable absence of leather in Emma's wardrobe of late and Regina can't pinpoint why that might be), hair soaking wet, shoulders just starting to shake with what Regina assumes is the cold.
She could berate her, taunt her, tell her to get the hell off her porch before heading inside in the warm, but for some indescribable reason she sits next to Emma in the pouring rain and takes a deep breath.
“Miss Swan it's freezing and you’re soaked. Before I ask you what on earth you’re doing here why don't we go inside?”
“You can do it right?” Emma asks quietly, desperation and weariness etched into the lines of her face.
“What on earth are yo..?” Regina starts before Emma cuts across her
“You can take it out of me,” she starts. “Henry told me what you did at the well, he said you absorbed the magic into yourself somehow. I need you to do that to me, to my magic. I can feel it inside, (she's scratching at her coat now, right where her heart lies) it's itching and burning and I need it out of me. It's too much; it's all too much. I'm not a princess, I'm not a saviour I'm a mess.” Emma's babbling now “I can't do any of this, what they want. And now I have to deal with this magic crap and they (Regina can only imagine who they might be) are expecting me to be perfect just like them and I'm not. And I think that's their fault but I can't say that and now he's gone and I know Henry blames me and I can't do this alone and”...she finally sucks in a deep shuddering breath.
Regina does the only thing she can think of, she moves in front of Emma and takes her head in her hands and she speaks to her very calmly. The way she used to speak to Henry when he was little and he had done something he thought he was going to get a scalding for (before he came to expect them, before he resented her, before he figured out who she really was).
She starts at the contact. Even in the pouring rain touching Emma is like lightning.
Before she gets a chance to speak though Emma starts again, pushing through a sob.
“And the worst thing is you. I should hate you I know I should. You stole my life; you took my family from me. You’re the reason for every beating from a handsy foster dad that I told to get lost, every bad grade, every broken nights sleep, every scar. You tried to pull my freaking heart out of my chest a week ago for gods sake.”
Regina pushes up to leave then, having heard more than enough but Emma is quicker and grabs her wrists to hold her in place.
“But I don't, I don't hate you at all, instead of being with my perfect family and their perfect morals I'm here, every night because it’s the only place in the world where I feel peaceful, in your back yard for fucks sake. So you owe me, is the way I see it Your Highness. Now tell me can you do it?” Emma pants.
Honestly Regina doesn't think she's been more speechless in her whole life. She wants to say that she's sorry, that she could literally count on one hand the number of things she's been sorry for her whole life and Emma accounts for about three of them.
“Emma,” Regina starts taking a deep breath, “I have lived a very long time. I have seen things that people have no right seeing, and I have done much much worse. There are few things I am certain of but one thing I can say without a whisper of a doubt is that your magic is the most beautiful thing I have ever felt. I have razed kingdoms to the ground on a whim but even I have never done something as egregious as destroy something as pure as what is inside you.”
“I will do anything else you ask of me Emma, I owe you no less. But not that.”
Regina sees the break in Emma before it happens, she can feel it in the way her resolve crumbles. Emma lunges rather than moves towards Regina and she almost sobs in relief.
Regina knows this is wrong, that they should talk about it, or better still, never speak of it again. She knows it in every inch of herself and yet she cannot find the strength to push Emma away.
She has been waiting to do this again ever since they kissed in her study. When Emma's lips push against the brunettes, Regina feels her whole world shift. Emma threads her fingers through Regina's now drenched hair and pulls hard and she gasps, which gives Emma a chance to slip her tongue over her lips and into Regina's mouth. Her hands drop from Regina's hair to pull at her shoulders and a long shiver runs through them both in the process.
Regina does manage to push the blonde away now.
“We need to go inside Emma.” She says with a calm she doesn't feel.
For once, in the history of their relationship, Emma does not argue, she submits and allows herself to be led inside the house as Regina entwines her fingers with Emma's and pulls gently.
When they get inside Regina finally takes note of how sodden they both are.
“Come upstairs dear, I'll find us something to change into.”
Emma still hasn't said anything by the time she guides her into the bathroom off the master bedroom.
“Please don't make me go back,” Emma says quietly. Regina has no idea if she means back to that god-awful shoe box apartment or the Enchanted Forest but she can feel the panic rolling off her in almost visible waves.
“Emma dear, I don't think I could even if I wanted to.”
And with that Emma snaps out whatever stupor she had been in for the last ten minutes and she pushes forward to capture Regina's lips with hers again.
For just a moment Regina gives herself over to the symphony that is their magic coming together. She can almost see it swirling around them, and when Emma's mouth moves to scrape her teeth over Regina's neck she allows her head to fall back with a moan.
Before she loses the ability to vocalise her thoughts she manages to stutter out one last warning.
“If we do this Emma,” she tries to explain, “there's no coming back from it, once we bind this finitely there's nothing we can do but move with it. Magic as powerful as ours can't be separated if we have an argument, or you storm out, or decide you don’t want to be with me. I have no idea what will happen if we try to break the bond, it may very well kill us and everyone in this town.”
“Do you think I have any more choice in the matter than you do Regina? We've already lost.”
And with that a surge runs through both of them that stops the breath in their throats and blows their pupils wide.
“Now shut up and show me what we've just paid for.”
Regina pushes Emma's sodden coat off her shoulders and grabs her shirt by the collar and pulls, spilling buttons all over the floor, suddenly desperate and impatient as the blonde wrestles her black cashmere jersey over her head. They manage to peel wet denim off each other before they come crashing back together, tongues slipping past lips ruby red with cold.
Regina manages to pull away and runs her hand over the pebbled skin of Emma's shoulder before pushing her backwards towards the open door and the bed beyond it.
They're both breathing hard as the back of Regina's legs hit the bed and Emma pushes her down onto the soft down duvet.
She moves back in for a bruising kiss before moving down Regina's body. Sharp teeth nip at a collarbone and move lower down to drag across a raised nipple. Emma's tongue moves out and swirls over the raised flesh before moving over and repeating her actions.
Her nails drag down Regina's side, leaving sharp lines on her skin, making her back arch off the bed. Just as she's about to open her mouth to protest at the pain, Emma moves her leg between Regina's and pushes and the thought dies on her lips as a moan falls out instead.
Emma moves her hands, still cold from the rain to run along the edge of black lace and Regina curses as they push under into slick heat, the contrast enough to make her thighs shake.
She moves slowly at first, testing before slipping inside and pushing with the strength of her entire arm and Regina thinks she might actually pass out before she comes.
She can feel their magic again now, its urgency beginning to match Regina's. It’s only when she concentrates that she can feel how on edge Emma is, so she reaches up to press a heartbreakingly soft kiss to her lips before exposing her long neck to Emma's waiting mouth. She lets the push and pull of their joint current overwhelm her along with the impossibly long strokes of Emma's hand.
It doesn't take long (Regina thinks she's been waiting her entire life for this after all) before she’s is running perfectly manicured fingernails down Emma's back as she arches into the warm body above her and the current explodes.
Once the spots in her vision die down, and she can breathe normally, Regina rolls on top of Emma and leans down to catch a lip between her teeth.
She runs her hand down the soft skin of Emma's inner thigh.
“I've not done this before dear,” she admits slightly nervously, suddenly unsure of herself.
“You’re perfect Regina,” Emma gasps rolling her hips up to shift Regina's hand slightly.
“But if you don't hurry up and touch me I think I'll burn this house down without meaning to.”
She laughs at that and steels herself, closes her eyes and listens. She lets her body take over after that, it moves so intuitively to Emma's that it's actually beautiful.
She kisses her way down Emma's body, dragging her teeth and sucking until the blonde’s body is pulled taut like a bow beneath her. Regina settles between her legs, pausing to slip red lace off before moving her tongue to push against waiting heat. She can vaguely feel Emma's hands pulling at her hair but all the wants to do is taste and feel and so she does until she feels Emma start to come apart. Regina pushes then, determined to send Emma hurdling off the cliff, rather than slipping over the edge. She does and Emma screams.
It feels like an actual age before they come back to themselves enough to speak.
“It's done then?” Emma asks still panting, lacing her hand with Regina's.
“Yes” Regina breathes (and the outward breath says more than she ever could, of hope long lost, of despair, of pain so deep it took the destruction of a kingdom to fix it, of magic and light and Emma Swan) I think it is.
For the first time in forty-five years Regina closes her eyes and rests.