A/N: This story takes place during season 2 of Once Upon A Time.
"Regina? Ms. Mills?" Dr. Whale. He was still talking. "Have you understood everything I've told you?"
"Yes." Regina had asked for a glass of water while he explained it to her. Twenty grueling minutes. Now, she ran her finger over the rim of the glass. "Car accident. Brain damage. Amnesia. We've had this conversation five times already, over the course of the last year. I'm no longer mayor, and my treatment requires me to stay inside my own house. Otherwise, I could become confused and wander off. Like a stray dog." She smiled, almost unwillingly. "Henry's been taken away from me and sent to boarding school, seeing as it's distressing for him to see me like this. And I'm supposed to be getting better, though the fact that I can't remember growing my hair out would argue against that."
"It is a good sign," Whale argued. "Three months since a relapse. That bodes very well indeed."
Regina nodded. It was a forced gesture. Like someone was turning a crank and making her do it.
"Would you like to be alone?" he asked.
"Yes," she said instantly. "I would. It seems like something I should get used to."
***
Emma was waiting outside. All the cold cream and wet towels Mary-Margaret could muster couldn't diminish the damage. Her face was so bruised it looked like she was wearing face paint, a cast around one arm, a limp when she stood, as she did now, too eager for news of Regina.
"She bought it?" Emma said, all her injuries somehow just making her more imposing.
"Judging by the stunned silence, I'd say so."
"Thanks. I owe you one."
"If you'd like, we could settle it this evening—"
"Whatever you're about to suggest, think hard about it. I've
just
managed to forget you had a one-nighter with my mom."
"Duly noted."
***
Emma came over during the weekend. Several reasons. She had nothing to do; she couldn't look at Henry without feeling guilty. The bruises had had time to fade. And she just needed to see Regina. Needed to; a funny choice of words, but accurate.
Regina answered the door with a sunny enough smile. It died a little upon finding it was directed at Emma, but only a little. The woman they had posing as Regina's nurse was gone; it wasn't good to give anyone too much access to Regina, knowing what she'd done. Regina still had the scar from someone who had gotten close and carried a knife. Emma wondered if she'd found it yet.
"Sheriff Swan," Regina said, having been waiting for Emma to speak. Emma had been waiting too; it'd never occurred to her that she'd be speechless. "I wasn't expecting you to show up here. Or to have been so damaged in shipping."
Regina's voice made it less of a jibe than it could've been. "Drunk and disorderly. Got very disorderly. Mind if I come in?"
Regina didn't move from blocking the door. "If you're going to ask about my whereabouts on some such night, I'm afraid I won't be very forthcoming."
"Regina..." Emma smiled. The lie climbed up her throat. It had such an easy passage; she wanted to make things right with Regina so badly. She wanted to beg for forgiveness from a woman who had separated her from her family for twenty-eight years. "It's Thursday. I always come visit on Thursday."
Regina blinked. "
Why
?"
"To talk about Henry, at first. Then, just to talk."
Henry's name was like Pavlov's bell. Regina fought it, but surrendered quickly. She stepped out of the way. "Inside."
The manor seemed chillier than before. Maybe with Henry got, Regina changed the thermostat to something she liked. Or maybe the nurse messed with it.
"How is Henry?"
"He's good," Emma said, trying to be honest. She knew instinctively she wouldn't have many chances for that. "He asks about you. When we talk."
"Skype?"
"Telephone."
"You should try for visual contact," Regina said. "I read it in a magazine, Contemporary Family Life. It's reduced divorce in military families with overseas deployments by thirteen percent."
"Oh. Okay. I'll keep that in mind."
"Coffee? Tea? Hot cocoa?" Without the front she put up, Regina was almost desperate to please. Emma knew that feeling. Being visited in prison.
When someone came into your dark little world, even though they saw you at your worst, it was perversely pleasurable. You couldn't get enough of it. Because it was proof that there was an outside, that you were being drawn there by an unbreakable safety line.
Regina didn't have a release date, of course. She just had Emma.
"Water's fine."
Regina nodded and went to get it. She came back with bottled water. Of course.
"He doesn't believe in fairy tales anymore," Emma said.
Regina didn't hesitate an instant. Her face didn't change a bit, except with relief. "Good. I was beginning to worry."
That was it then. Regina really couldn't remember.
Goddamnit.
***
Next Thursday, Emma came back. Whatever Regina had forgotten, she remembered Emma's blanket statement that it was a weekly occurrence, this... thing. It wasn't that long ago that Emma would've taken a steel-toed boot to the ribs over seeing Regina on a guaranteed weekly basis, but now it seemed almost fitting to ingratiate herself so. Like penance or something.
Not knowing what else to do, she fell back on college etiquette. Bring over some movies and get high. Not that she'd believe Regina, or at least
this
Regina, would light anything but a candle in a hundred years. But the movie part was sound.
"'Kill Bill'," Regina read, staring at the DVD case like a martinet searching for a spot of dust. "What a memorable title. And by Quentin Tarantino. A memorable auteur as well."
"You hate Tarantino," Emma not-quite-asked.
"I don't find spewing profanity and high school boy banter to be the height of dialogue. Any decent playwright gets that out of their system by the second play. Do you think Pinter would have his characters go on about some self-indulgent trivia?"
Emma almost giggled. Stripped of context—quite forcibly, in this case—Regina's domineering nature and perfectionist attitude was almost endearing. A pain in her ass, but apply it to something as silly as a kung-fu movie and it was hilarious. Regina probably had a scathing dismissal of Pogs stored somewhere in her hard drive.
"Give it a chance. For me."
Emma bit her lip, realizing what she'd done, wondering when she'd ever become such a good liar that she could bring up some nonexistent friendship just like that. Regina seemed to be having similar thoughts, her own doubts about Emma, but in the end, she was an any-port-in-a-storm girl.
"Twenty minutes, Sheriff Swan. And if I don't like it, we'll watch one of my films. I have a stunningly clear recording of a Russian ballet troupe ordered from PBS..."
***
Twenty minutes in and Regina surely noticed the time, but she left the remote squarely in Emma's hands. She had her legs folded, a pita chip neatly situated between her fingers, ready to make the trip from its bag to Regina's mouth when the woman dedicated she'd burnt away the calories of the last one. Emma should've brought popcorn; of course Regina didn't have any.
She herself sat at the opposite end of the couch, feet up on the coffee table. If Regina was judging her for it, she did so silently. They kept watching, the only noise besides filmed conversation about kung-fu movies being Regina's pita chips disappearing.
Then the ending.
Emma never had been great at school. Things slipped her mind. She had a great head for ex-cons and informants, not literature, and things like who exactly had killed Julius Caesar took a permanent vacation long before tests came along. So while Emma remembered the scene of the Bride hacking through a hundred hopefully-well-paid stuntmen, she'd forgotten the ending. Where it was revealed that Bill had taken the Bride's daughter and raised her as his own.
"I'd like to watch the next one," Regina said evenly, the credits rolling.
"Yeah. Sure. I've got it in my car."
When Emma came back, Regina was still sitting there, kneading the empty bag of pita chips into a small, small ball.
"Would you like a pizza?"
"Huh?"
"A pizza." Regina looked at Emma. "I'm told they're quite popular. We could order one and eat while we watch 'Volume Two'."
"Yeah, okay. I'll call."
***
The pizza came and Emma paid for it, hustling the delivery boy away before he could get a look at the big bad witch. Regina ate daintily, but cleaned her plate. She even had some of the breadsticks Emma had sprung for. And they watched Beatrix Kiddo get her bloody satisfaction.
After, the DVD menu looped on the TV, the pizza box sat empty on the coffee table, numerous wadded up napkins littered the floor, and Regina was casting longing looks at the cupboard where she kept the Hefty bags. But she was far too comfortable to move.