The Pay-off Finale (Patreon)

Luckily—or unluckily, depending on how you look at it—Emma did not reappear in Storybrooke soaking wet with a naked Regina Mills in her arms. She jerked up from the floor of her parents’ apartment, feeling an acute missing where Regina had been pressed to her. Phantom Limb Syndrome.

Meanwhile, Mary-Margaret babbled about whether she had any real morality or if she was just born into circumstances fortunate enough for her to be a good person. As David started to comfort her, Emma ran to check on Henry. He was fine. A bit confused, but fine. She told him she and Regina had cast a spell together.

Henry stared at her suspiciously. Emma guessed he wasn’t worrying about what to get Hook for Father’s Day at the moment. “We should probably get the Author before he causes any more trouble,” Henry said at last, Emma nodding.

“Yeah, I’m pretty over having to hear sentences like that. Everything feels so meta all of a sudden. Like a bad season of Community.”

“You mean Season 4?”

Emma huffed a sigh. “See? That kinda thing. The in-jokes. Hate that. I’ll call Ruby, tell her to go after anyone who smells like dragon blood.”

“Be nice to remind the Author that Ruby exists. We haven’t heard from her in a while,” Henry needled.

Emma rolled her eyes. She needed to find Regina. Write her own damn ending.

***

David was still consoling Mary-Margaret when Emma came downstairs (“We were together, but we were still bad people!”). She promised herself she’d check in on her mother later. Never really got any easier to deal with reality shifting under her. Between breakfast and lunch of that day, she’d stopped seeing Regina as some unpredictable mix of rival, ally, friend, mentor, partner, and thinspiration, and started seeing her—

On her doorstep. With her hand raised to knock just as Emma had opened the door.

Emma quickly stepped out into the hall. It might’ve been fun for Regina to see Mary-Margaret going through a crisis of conscience, but there were probably psychological terms why that was a bad idea. “Hey.”

Regina smiled wryly. “Hey.” Such a pathetic greeting between the two of them, but at least it was honest at not at all capturing their—whatever.

“Henry’s fine,” Emma said.

“Gold’s down for the count,” Regina added. “And if you got him and Belle a toaster for their wedding, I’d ask for it back.”

“And Ruby’s on the Author—“

“Good choice. I sent Maleficent. We shouldn’t hear much from him anytime soon.”

“Unless he gives her indigestion.”

Regina’s eyebrows flared, indignantly protective of her friend. “I don’t think Teen Wolf Season 10 has much room to talk!”

Emma smiled apologetically. “I wasn’t complaining. I don’t exactly remember a lot of being locked up in a dungeon for six years.”

“Wasn’t it seven?”

Emma shrugged—my point exactly. “But still, he couldn’t even let me be evil and hot? That was my one shot at being evil and hot!”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Regina assured her. “Well, if that’s all…”

She turned to leave.

“Regina!” Emma cried out, though Mills was right there. Mating call of Swannicus Dumbassus, she thought to herself. “How much do you remember about… all that?”

Regina looked at her. She could control everything about her appearance except the way she looked at Emma… “How much do you want me to remember?”

Emma kissed her. Not just her lips, but she tried to kiss Regina’s past, her future, her mistakes, her triumphs—her soul.

And Regina pulled away. “I’m not her,” she said.

She turned herself to smoke practically in Emma’s arms, running away.

***

Another round of fake memories, another villain defeated, another night out at Granny’s. Only Emma wasn’t there amongst the heroes. She went to a dive bar close to the docks. It was almost deserted at the moment—an event like this brought everyone together, even Grumpy at his most eponymous. It was the hardliners who populated The Rabbit Hole.

“Who invited the Savior?” Maleficent complained loudly, observing Emma coming through the door.

Regina hadn’t, but nonetheless she stood, staring down Maleficent. “I did,” she said, daring Maleficent and her quasi-villain, baby dragon, faux-leather daughter to do something about it.

Maleficent just went back to her drink, glancing out the corner of her eye at the bar, where Smee was hitting on Ursula. She was giving him just enough rope to hang himself. Bo Peep was setting up shots. Some of the rowdier Lost Boys played darts with Keith, while Sidney played a pinball machine in the corner, Lily’s money on the glass, waiting for the next game. The belles of the ball were the Queens of Darkness, and seeing how Emma looked at Regina, they gave her possessive, defensive glares. Whatever else their problems, they were loyal to their friend. Emma got that.

“I brought party favors,” Emma said, reaching into her jacket pocket for a baggie.

“Flower seeds?” Lily quipped. “So we can all have a happy little garden?”

Emma tossed the bad to her. Good catch. “Some weed David picked up off Lampwick. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me disposing of it as I see fit.”

Lily opened the bag. “Better be some good shit.”

“I’m pretty sure Anton’s growing it, so yeah.” Emma gave the assorted forces of evil a look. “Regina, a word?”

Regina hadn’t looked at her once. Sitting back down, she’d picked up her tumbler and stared at it. Emma thought she got it. Why am I not drinking alone? I have better booze than this at my place.

Maybe she’d known Emma would check there. Or maybe she’d just wanted to have some friends on hand in case this conversation happened, and it did as much damage as Emma feared it might.

“Go on, Reggie,” Maleficent taunted coyly. “Don’t make our Sheriff break out the handcuffs.”

Regina eyefucked Maleficent as she stood, an unsteady wobble as alcohol intake combined with five-inch heels, then she walked with regal dignity out past Emma, all the spite in the world in the wag of her hips. Emma looked back at Maleficent, seeing if she’d gotten the message. Mal winked at her.

They walked out the backdoor, into the alley behind the Rabbit Hole, its narrowness giving the breeze from the coast a straight shot through and past them. The sea air was cool and damp, a thrillingly pleasant sensation that rushed under Emma’s clothes and made her feel like at least losing her jacket.

She wondered if Regina felt the same thing; the same resistance to the idea. She was dressed even more severely than she’d been at the apartment. Her pantsuit was further straitjacketed by a heavy trenchcoat, even a cravat obscuring her pale throat. More than enough for the chilly night, but there was a forced casualness in how she held her coat shut anyway. Busying herself with belting it together.

So poised. All her make-up, all her clothes—all her armor. Emma had never appreciated just how open she could be… how open she wasn’t… until meeting the her she could’ve been. The hero she was meant to be before Gold and Leopold and Cora and so many others had decided she was a tool they could use for this scheme or that. Cut her and broken her so many times that the only way she had to fight back was to use her own jagged edges against them.

“If you’re going to tell me that Henry misses me at your big party, you can save it. If the boy has two mothers, and a family tree the size of Yggdrasil, he should be okay with me having a social life.”

Yggdrasil? “How the hell did you pronounce that?”

Regina shook her head. “He isn’t… wondering where I am… is he?” Shaking her head more to clear it of the shots than in reaction to Emma.

“He gets it. Regina Mills’ alone time. But you might be surprised at how much my parents are missing you. They’re kinda in a mood to mend fences. And they would’ve loved if you’d brought a casserole…”

Regina laughed shrilly. “That’s the hell of it, isn’t it? Your… bosom buddy in the other world, she would’ve fit right in there. But I’m sure she doesn’t have thirty years’ experience making casserole.”

Emma took a step toward Regina. She remembered what it felt like to have your entire life be a lie, to walk a tightrope over hysteria and everyone you knew seemed to have a rock to throw at you. And they thought they were helping…

Regina looked at her, a flicker of suspicion in her eyes, and Emma stopped. Sometimes, people wanting to help was what hurt the worst. When you thought you didn’t deserve it…

“Henry made me quite a good cook,” Regina continued. “He was a very picky eater.”

“Yeah, I remember.” Emma tapped her temple. “Thanks to you.”

Regina shook her head again. No cobwebs out yet. “I just wanted you to know what it felt like to change all those diapers.”

Enough. “Regina, you’re not that!” Emma promised, pointing hard at the bar.

“Now who’s—“

“Okay!” Emma rethought her statement. “Maybe you’re kinda that. But you are so much more!”

“What? Snow White’s understudy?” Regina sagged. Emma could see the effect admitting what had happened took on her. “Odd that you’d be attracted to that by the way. Quite incestuous.”

“I wasn’t attracted to you living in the woods—trust me—I was attracted to you. How can you remember everything else but not what I told you?” Not quite another step, but it wanted to be, Emma inching her foot forward to see if Regina would be happy or saddened by it. “What I promised you.”

“I won’t hold you to some… promise you made to another woman.”

“That was you,” Emma insisted, “she’s a part of you—“

Regina shook her head with the repetitive motion of a machine. No cobwebs anymore. She was clear and sober and all too aware. “Nonetheless. Whoever I could’ve been or should’ve been, I’m this. Regina Mills. The Mayor. The Evil Queen. That’s not changing.”

“I don’t want it to. Everything I said to her, I was saying to you. Everything we built started between me and you.”

“But she’s the one you kissed. She’s the one you made love to. Not me.” Regina bit her lip and looked like she’d like to do far more damage to herself. “We’ve known each other all these years and it never happened for us. But the day you met her… so noble, so heroic… her you couldn’t resist…”

It was so hard to care about Regina’s boundaries when everything in Emma was screaming that she could make it better by embracing her, hold Regina close and make her feel how Emma’s heart was beating for her. But Emma held herself still. Only allowed herself a single step toward Regina, backing her against the wall of the alley.

“So I’m an idiot! I had to see you at your absolute best to realize who you’d been all along. Because you and—you aren’t so very different.”

“She was a fantasy,” Regina argued. “Whole where I’m broken beyond repair…”

“Bullshit! You think you’re so different, but the truth is, you’re even stronger than she was. She wasn’t tested like you were, tempted like you were. She was a fairy tale, but that’s not what I want. I want the real story. I want you.”

“But she was nothing like me!” Regina felt behind her, as if there was some way through the brick wall that trapped her with Emma’s gaze. “Selfless, brave, and true—doesn’t it tell you something that reality had to be rewritten before that could be me?”

“I don’t think that at all. I think she came from you. Just like Snow White’s darkness came from her. She kidnapped a baby, you—“ Emma spread her arms wide, breaking out in a grin that she couldn’t resist because she could tell Regina, she could make her see. “This! This town is still standing because of you! Because you’re a hero! Isaac gave you an excuse, he pointed you in a direction, but the woman I met? That was all you. Or do you think he wrote that you’d fall in love with me? That I’d be in love with you?”

Regina gathered herself for a moment—poised and armored and invincible—before sagging against the wall in such a human gesture that it almost took Emma’s breath away. She looked away from Emma, grinding her shoulder into the brickwork. “You don’t understand. I can’t be her. Holding your hand or falling asleep next to you—kissing you—trusting you—none of that will come easy to me. It’s alright if you’re disappointed in that. I’m used to not getting everything I want. I can be happy with just being your friend. With being Henry’s mother. Maybe even with—having some kind of happiness with Robin. He’s not Daniel. He can not be you too.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Well, at least being a martyr comes easy to you. I know it’s going to be hard, Gina. I know people won’t get it. I know Hook’s—probably going to stalk me. God help us all if he figures out what Facebook is…”

Regina’s eyes flashed dangerously. “That won’t be happening.”

“He’ll get over it,” Emma assured her. She leaned against the wall next to Regina, twisting a little in what felt like a dance, helplessly smiling as she detected a bit of relief in Regina, some hope. “Henry. You’d still love Henry if he lost an arm, right?”

“I’d love him even if he lost his left arm!” Regina teased, mock-affronted.

The spell was broken. The boundless self-confidence, even arrogance of the Evil Queen was coming back to Regina. It took a lot to defeat the inner demons screaming how worthless she was, how evil and filthy and awful, but Emma could feel them retreating. She’d be honored if it was something to do with her—but she thought it had far more to do with Regina letting herself be happy.

Emma felt her smile widen. Maybe her happy ending was being Regina’s happy ending. “Yeah. And you’d love him if he suddenly became a scene kid.”

“Yes.”

“Or if he became a vegan.”

“You’re scaring me now. But yes.”

“Okay! So… same deal. I love you while you’re dealing with your issues and having nightmares. And however you’re trying to be a better person, I’ll help you with that, and I’ll love that—better person you. And if you slip, I’ll love that slipped you, and get you back on your feet. And I love you right now. The you you are right this second of this minute of this day. And if you’re just this… Regina Mills… the Mayor… the Evil Queen… then I love you. I don’t want you to redeem yourself. I don’t want you to prove yourself to me. I don’t want you to earn me. I just want you to be as in love with me as I am with you.”

Regina sighed. “You’re kinda locking me in to loving you as you are.”

“Regina!”

“You’re wonderful!” Regina assured her. “I adore you… but if you took off your heels when you came into the house…”

“This is peak romance for us, isn’t it? All downhill from here.”

“I pay my heating bill. I vacuum regularly. Why do you need to have your shoes on in my house? I have a Roomba.”

“The ideal moment to kiss me is quickly passing.”

Regina leaned in. Paused. “I could buy you slippers!”

Emma grabbed Regina by her little cravat—which was cute as all hell—and showed Regina how nice a kiss could be, even if it didn’t destroy an alternate reality.

“I want bunny slippers,” Emma said afterward. Once Regina had sufficiently swooned.

“Emma, no.”