So! I've gotten Writing Challenge to the point that I'm ready to start posting now. Picture me squealing like an ecstatic teenage girl. (No, seriously. You have no idea how fun this was. Or how exciting it is for me to actually be excited about having something to post. No writer's block on this sucker!)
And, yeah, it's fanfic. But it was friggin' fun fanfic. I had a total blast with this story. So, without further ado:
Title: Breaking Point
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: As with Harper's Island before it, I was most emphatically not going to write Once Upon a Time fic. And then hiatus happened. Mad props to ViciousCircle on the TWoP forums for suggesting the basic plot for this story and to Aliasscape for suggesting someone turn it into a fic. I took it as a challenge. My first time writing in a new fandom is always very nervous-making for me, so feedback is much appreciated. Enjoy!
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I am taking back my son.
One little sentence. A declaration of war.
Just who in the hell did Emma Swan think she was, threatening to take Henry from Regina Mills? Henry was Regina’s son, and there would be a blizzard that dumped three feet of snow on the ground of hell before she turned him over to Emma. To anyone else, either, but especially to Emma.
Calm down. She needed to calm down. She needed to consider the situation from all sides, and she couldn’t do that while she was seeing red.
Emma couldn’t take Henry. She couldn’t. She could try, and Regina had no doubt that she would try. But she wouldn’t win. She had no idea what the rules really were, what the stakes really were, and Regina didn’t exactly feel like sharing.
Still, she had to do something. She needed to think.
Step one: damage control.
She whipped out her cell phone and dialed the house. Henry answered on the third ring. She told him that she was going to be a little bit longer than anticipated and not to answer the phone or the door, no matter what.
“I’m serious, Henry,” she said when the agreement he gave her was half-hearted.
“Okay,” he said again, and this time his tone indicated that he was serious, too.
“Thank you. I’ll be home as soon as I can.” She said her good nights and disconnected the call.
Step one: semi-handled.
But now what? And how in the world had she let it get to this point?
From the moment that Emma Swan rolled into Storybrooke with Henry in tow, Regina had known on some level that this day was coming. Even that stupid yellow Bug of hers was a giant flashing neon clue. It was obnoxious and stuck out like a sore thumb--much like Emma herself.
It was also the first piece of real color that Storybrooke had ever seen. That right there had been Regina’s first indication that things were never going to be the same again. Emma would bring change. Emma would bring destruction. Emma would bring Regina’s downfall.
Regina had known all of that for a long time. So why had she ignored it?
If she was completely honest with herself, she’d done so at first because Emma Swan was fun. She was infuriating and set Regina’s teeth on edge to the point that she wanted to repeatedly bang the woman’s head against a wall, but she was fun. It had been a long time--too long, now that she thought about it--since she’d had someone go toe-to-toe with her and actually think they could win.
Emma’s first attempts at one-upmanship were spectacularly amateur, although Regina did have to give her a begrudging point for taking the chainsaw to the apple tree. However, over time, she’d grown into quite the entertaining little adversary. She provided a good challenge, and Regina never met a challenge she didn’t enjoy.
Then a more pressing issue had come up, namely that, despite all the obstacles she had thrown in their path, Snow and her Charming were finding each other again. And Regina could not have that, not at all. So she had shifted focus, set up Mary Margaret Blanchard for murder, and somehow in the process lost sight of playing with Emma Swan.
She’d also certainly underestimated the bond Emma and Mary Margaret had formed. Emma fighting like hell to get to the truth had come as a very unwelcome surprise.
A mistake, perhaps, but not a fatal one. No, it all could be salvaged. She just needed a plan.
So what could she do? It was far too late in the game to try once again to drive Emma out of Storybrooke for good. Too much had happened for that now. Like it or not (which, by the way, Regina didn’t), Emma was here to stay.
Besides, the stupid townspeople liked her. She had wormed her way into their hearts and they actually liked her.
It was disgusting.
But if Emma leaving town was out of the question …
Suddenly, light dawned. Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Oh, yes. Playing with Emma Swan was about to become a whole new level of fun.
-----
The apartment door slammed, rattling the glass in the picture frames on the walls. Mary Margaret Blanchard winced then sighed. One of these days, she and Emma needed to have a sit-down discussion about the latter’s tendency to stomp around like a petulant teenager.
One of these days but, considering the sound of that slam, not today. Emma didn’t need a reprimand right now, gentle or otherwise. She needed a friend. Mary Margaret set her book down and headed out of her bedroom to see what was wrong.
She found her roommate pacing back and forth in front of the kitchen counter, her hands on her hips and pure, unadulterated anger glittering in her eyes. “Emma? What’s the matter?”
Emma whirled on her heels, the fury on her face melting into total surprise. It seemed as if she’d forgotten that Mary Margaret would be at home now instead of in the cramped jail cell at the sheriff’s station. “I’m sorry. For the door, I mean.”
“Forget the door,” Mary Margaret said, sending a silent apology to her neighbors for all the times Emma had likely slammed the door in her absence.
Emma had started pacing again. Mary Margaret watched her for a couple of revolutions but eventually had to look away. The constant back and forth motion was making her head spin. “Will you please sit down?”
“Can’t.”
“Then can you at least stand still? You’re kind of giving me motion sickness.”
“Sorry.” Emma froze in place and gripped the edge of the counter to keep herself still.
“Thank you.” Only then did she notice that Emma’s hands were shaking. She’d never seen her roommate like this, and she’d seen her angry plenty of times. Sometimes it seemed as if Emma’s default mood was angry. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
The look on Emma’s face clearly indicated that what she really wanted to do was go throw things.
“Ice cubes in the bathtub.”
Emma blinked as if coming out of a daydream. “Huh?”
“Go whip some ice cubes at the inside of the bathtub. You’ll get the satisfying shattering sound without having to go buy new plates or having to clean up a mess.”
A flicker of a smile played across Emma’s lips. “You are the only person I know who would think of something like that.”
Mary Margaret felt heat rising in her cheeks. And just what was wrong with throwing ice at the bathtub? Having to go out to the store to replace her dishes or glasses after she’d calmed down just made her upset all over again. “Yeah, well, it got you to smile.”
Emma nodded, conceding the point to her roommate. And now that she’d relieved a little bit of tension, she could actually talk about what happened instead of pacing the room and stewing over it. “Our favorite mayor got Sidney to confess to the frame job.”
Mary Margaret’s jaw dropped. “What?! How?”
“You don’t want to know, trust me,” Emma murmured with a hint of disgust. “It’s total crap, of course, but I can’t prove a damn thing.”
Unable to keep still any longer, Emma stepped away from the counter. She let out a heavy breath and plopped down in a chair at the table.
Sensing that there was more to this story, Mary Margaret followed suit. Sidney Glass confessing to the frame job was both unfair--to everyone involved--and ridiculously frustrating but that alone couldn’t account for Emma’s rage.
Of course, Mary Margaret would have had an easier time climbing Mount Everest in flip-flops than she would trying to get Emma to open up about something if she wasn’t ready to open up about it. The one sneaky little thing she had learned, though, was that she could give Emma gentle nudges in the right direction. “So, what, she just gets away with it? All of it?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Emma finally looked Mary Margaret in the eye. “There’s more.”
“I figured.”
“I confronted her, told her I knew Sidney was lying and that she had put him up to it. She didn’t really seem to care.” Here she stopped and took a deep breath, which made Mary Margaret even more nervous. This was not going to be good; she could tell. “I was tired of her always being one step ahead of me and I couldn’t bear the thought of Henry being in her house for even one more minute, so I said … I told her I was going to fight her for him.”
Mary Margaret’s eyebrows shot up to the ceiling. “You what?”
“I know,” Emma groaned, wincing at the memory. “At the time I only said it because I was so mad. Because I wanted to hurt her--” Mary Margaret gave her a knowing look, and Emma rolled her eyes. “Okay, I wanted to piss her off. But now … I really think it’s the right thing to do. I’m not perfect--pretty far from it--but I’m a hell of a lot better for him than she is.”
“Of course you are,” Mary Margaret assured her, “but have you had a chance to really think this through? Do you think you’re ready? For any of it?”
“It’s not about me right now, Mary Margaret. That kid--my kid--is living with a sociopath. That is nowhere near okay.”
Mary Margaret sat back in her chair, letting the events of Emma’s evening settle. “We need some hot chocolate,” she said after a beat of silence.
“We need some hot chocolate with a whole bunch of Kahlua dumped in,” Emma corrected.
At that, Mary Margaret pushed herself to her feet. If Emma wanted Kahlua, then Kahlua she would have. She opened one of the cabinets, retrieved a bottle, and held it up for Emma to see. “Ask and you shall receive.”
“You’ve been holding out on me,” Emma teased.
“Again, teacher, not nun.”
By the time the cocoa was ready and Mary Margaret had added a generous amount of the coffee liqueur to Emma’s mug, Emma had calmed considerably. Her hands had stopped trembling and she no longer looked like she needed to wear a rut in the kitchen floor, at any rate.
Mary Margaret stuck a cinnamon stick in each mug before bringing them to the table. Emma grasped hers and mumbled a thank you but didn’t take a sip. Not yet. Instead she began running her thumbs up and down the warm ceramic. “I shouldn’t let her get to me like this.”
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Mary Margaret told her. “I mean, I worry for your blood pressure, but the fact that she gets to you like this only proves that you care.”
Another ghost of a smile. “My blood pressure’s fine, thanks.” She finally sipped the cocoa, letting the warm chocolate linger on her tongue for a moment. Then the alcohol hit her taste buds and forced her to swallow the drink down with a cringe.
“Too strong?” asked Mary Margaret uncertainly. Mixing drinks was not exactly her forte.
“Yes, but after the night I had, it’s perfect.” Emma set her mug down and sat back in the chair. “I need a plan.”
“Right this very second?”
“You can bet your ass she’s thinking of a plan right now. And I should be thinking of one, too, but I don’t have the first damn clue where to start.”
Mary Margaret watched her for a long moment, trying to think of how to word what she wanted to say. Emma was so damn hard to reach sometimes. Certain things--like overt shows of emotion or support--had the tendency to shut her down completely. A byproduct of her upbringing, clearly, and Mary Margaret didn’t begrudge her that, but it did make trying to let her know that people cared about her difficult as hell.
Finally, she picked up her mug and said in an almost offhanded tone, “You’ll think of something. But if you do get stumped, don’t forget that you’re not alone. You have friends here, Emma, people who like you and would be more than willing to help … if you asked.”
The tears sprang into Emma’s eyes without warning but she reacted quickly, blinking them back before they could fall. She picked up her own mug--an action she was almost certainly hoping would distract Mary Margaret-- and took another sip, most likely to give herself time to get her voice back under control before saying, “Thank you.”
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