Chapter 7: Chapter Seven
Regina sat despondently at the kitchen table of her home, gazing fixedly into nothing. She ached all over, and was disappointed in herself for letting the Evil Queen take over once more. It had been to no avail, anyway... She'd battled, and she'd lost. Maybe if she'd approached the situation as a Hero, instead of a Villain, she would have triumphed... She blew sharply through her nose in exhausted frustration. When would she ever learn?
An insistent hammering stirred Regina out of her depression. She listened for a moment, hoping whoever it was would simply go away. But the knock at the door came again, more aggressively, along with Emma's voice.
"Regina? Regina, open up!"
Regina forced herself to her weary feet with a soft groan. There was no chance Emma would leave just because she didn't answer the door. The woman was stubborn like that.
"Regina? I'm serious! Open this door right now!"
Emma paused mid-strike as she heard soft footfalls on the other side of the door. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot, waiting. The latch clicked, and the door began to swing open.
"What do you want?" Regina spoke softly. She held the door half open, barring the way inside.
Emma's scathing comment died in her throat at the sight of her.
Blue bruises under Regina's eyes stood out in sharp relief against her pallid face, and her gaze was halting. She looked utterly shattered, a faint shadow of her former self.
"Uh, can I come in?" Emma said, instead of her original furious comment.
"I'm in no mood, Miss Swan," Regina replied. But she shook her head helplessly and let the door swing open. She turned and walked away toward the kitchen, leaving it up to Emma to follow, or not.
Emma strode after her, taking in her dishevelled appearance with growing alarm. She was still wearing the same attire she'd had on at Granny's two days ago, now creased and rumpled, and though she hadn't removed her stockings, her formidable heels were conspicuously absent. Emma couldn't recall if she'd ever seen Regina barefoot before.
In the kitchen, Regina sat down heavily at the kitchen table, and cradled her unkempt head in her hands. Emma put the kettle on and scraped back another chair opposite her.
"You look like hell," she said, "Where on earth have you been? No one has seen you for two days."
"Has it been two days?" Regina glanced up in confusion.
"Yes, Regina," Emma said with gentle firmness, "Two days. Where have you been?"
"I... I was – in my Vault," Regina replied. Her voice was distracted, vague.
"For two days?" Emma raised an eyebrow.
"Apparently," Regina sighed. She pushed her hair back out of her eyes and met Emma's gaze at last. "I honestly couldn't have said it was two days... It felt like a moment - it felt like a lifetime."
The kettle boiled up loudly and switched itself off, and Emma got up to make tea. She swirled cream and sugar into each cup, letting Regina's brew a little longer than usual. She looked like she needed it strong.
Emma returned shortly with the tea, set the two cups down, and resumed her seat. "Regina, two days ago, you stormed out of Granny's like the Angel of Vengeance. Today you show up looking like the Angel of Death. You want to tell me what happened?"
"Not really," Regina answered absently. She folded her hands in her lap, leaving her tea untouched. "It's... complicated."
"Did you find a way to beat this Red Queen?" Emma prompted, sipping at her tea.
"Not exactly..."
Emma let the silence drag out until Regina looked at her again. She inclined her head ever-so-slightly with one eyebrow raised in a question mark, making it evident that she would wait all day for an explanation, if necessary. With a sigh, Regina reached for her tea. She cupped both hands around its warmth and took her first sip.
"I don't take sugar," she commented, but she drank it regardless.
"You look like you need it," Emma smiled gently, "Come on, Regina, what happened? We're all worried about you - Henry most of all."
At the mention of their son, Regina's eyes lit with the first spark of life Emma had yet seen.
"Where is Henry?" Regina asked, looking around her as though he might suddenly materialize out of thin air.
"He's with Snow and Charming," Emma replied, "I didn't want to bring him until I'd made sure you were okay."
Regina nodded her silent acceptance and dropped her gaze back to her tea, but she looked past it as though it wasn't there. When it seemed apparent that she wasn't going to say anything else, Emma tried again.
"We went to see Gold," she mentioned, "After you left Granny's."
Regina continued to stare into her teacup as though she hadn't heard.
"We told him about the Red Queen, but he only said that we had to stay out of the way," Emma pressed on, "He said that we couldn't help you, even if we wanted to."
Regina looked up from her tea at last. She met Emma's gaze with a strange expression. "She... tried to kill me."
She appeared lost and confused, and Emma chose her next words carefully to avoid accidentally send her retreating back into her emotionless void. "Regina, you're safe now. We all want to help you – just tell us how?"
She reached across the table to squeeze Regina's arm reassuringly.
"You can't help me," Regina said, pulling away. Her voice was devoid of expression. "I can't tell you how to help me, Miss Swan, because you can't. No one can. This battle is mine, and mine alone."
Emma sighed with a rising feeling of foreboding. "That's exactly what Gold said. But you can still talk to me, right?"
Regina drained her tea and stood up. She supported herself with one hand on the table as she listed slightly with exhaustion. "I could," she said in answer to Emma's question, "If I had any idea what to say. Thank you for making the tea, but please, I'd like you to leave. I'm so tired, and all I want to do is sleep."
If Emma was surprised at receiving the politest banishment she'd ever had from Regina's home, she didn't show it. Instead, she nodded and carried both empty cups to the sink. Regina watched her through a fog of fatigue, as though she were a mirage.
Emma made her way to the door, but paused and turned back before she walked out. "Don't go after her," she cautioned, meaning it.
"Do I look like I'm in any state to do such a stupid thing?" Regina managed to respond.
"You'll call me?" Emma smiled gently at her attempted frostiness.
When Regina wearily nodded her assent, Emma took the last few steps out the door and closed it quietly behind her. She sucked in a deep, worried breath at the image of Regina standing forlornly in the kitchen, unnerved by how fragile she appeared. Emma turned away from the house with her hands thrust deeply into her jacket pockets, thinking about what Gold had said about this being a 'test' for Regina.
She considered that fact that Regina had briefly fled back into the safety of her dark side once again in the face of this Red Queen, and wondered if this proposed 'test' was a fight between good and evil inside her. Regina seemed as though she'd lost every last drop of her confidence and resolve over the last few months. The effort of pulling away from Evil was crushing her, and her brief relapse had left her obviously dishevelled and hurting.
Emma clung to the thought that perhaps this was the last phase of her battle; that if she triumphed over her dark side once more, maybe she'd finally get her Happy Ending. Emma certainly hoped so. If anyone deserved a Happy Ending, it was Regina. She'd been a Villain all her life, and Villains didn't get Happy Endings – everybody knew that, Regina included – so with the support of her friends and her son, she'd turned over a new leaf and been trying to live in the light of good for a long time now. And yet, Life still seemed to be sucker-punching her every time she turned around.
Emma pursed her lips as she walked, frowning as a new thought occurred to her. Regina hadn't triumphed as the Evil Queen in the dark thrall of Evil, but neither did she seem to be succeeding as Regina Mills in the bright light of Good. Emma's pace slowed and her eyes darted back and forth, surprised at her own train of thought.
What if their supposition that Regina's good side needed to defeat her darkness was presumptuous? Was it possible that the two sides of Regina were not warring factions at all, but rather two halves of the same whole? After all, Regina had used her dark powers for good purposes on more than one occasion. They were a fundamental part of her. Emma sucked in her breath as the realisation dawned on her.
Regina's so-far fruitless search for her Happy Ending wasn't because her dark side was defeating her good side - it was because she had split herself in two all her life. First, she'd avoided her inner goodness as the Evil Queen, and then, she'd rejected her dark side as Regina Mills. Emma stopped altogether as the implications settled heavily in her mind.
Regina wasn't a Villain, but nor was she a Hero. Somehow - indefinably - she was both, and that was her whole problem. She was trying unsuccessfully to be one or the other. Emma half turned to retrace her steps and tell Regina what she'd ascertained, but she paused as Gold's words echoed menacingly in her head.
"If you attempt to help her, she will be unable to help herself."
She stood where she was for a long moment, undecided, but eventually allowed that Gold was probably right. This was the kind of revelation that Regina needed to figure out on her own for it to have the right impact on her life. Emma sighed, but then her resolve tightened with her following thought. If Regina's test was an inner battle for balance, then there was no reason why Emma couldn't get involved in dealing with the problem of the Red Queen. She was fairly sure that the stranger was merely a catalyst for Regina's journey of self-discovery, and nothing more.
Her eyes sparked with her renewed determination to deal with the threat, and she abruptly strode out on her original path, away from Regina. The woman needed to rest, anyway, and Emma would tell her about her designs for the Red Queen tomorrow, when she had recovered. In the meantime, there were things to prepare. She swerved her course unerringly towards Gold's shop, eager to begin.
Weekly Power Status
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