Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Two (2/12)

Title: Breaking Point
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: You have absolutely no idea how much fun this chapter was to write. It kind of frightens me how much fun I have with Regina. She's hard to find but when I do finally find her, she's a blast.

-----

The sunlight peeking around the edges of the shades rudely pulled Emma from a restless slumber. She yanked the covers over her head with a groan. The action blocked out the light well enough but didn’t do a damn thing for the headache throbbing behind her eyes.

Headache? Why the hell did she have a headache?

After a second, it all came rushing back. The confrontation with Regina at the sheriff’s station, telling the mayor she was going to take Henry. The three mugs of Kahlua-laced cocoa she’d consumed when she got home. Mary Margaret, who would have been fired her first night as a bartender for giving away too much product in her drinks, helping her up the stairs to the loft and into bed.

She remembered Mary Margaret sitting with her. Remembered Mary Margaret telling her that everything would work out in that optimistic way of hers, the way that made Emma want to believe everything coming out of her mouth. And then … nothing.

She must have fallen asleep then. Or passed out. Whichever.

What the hell time was it? It was quiet in the apartment. Normally she heard Mary Margaret moving around downstairs, smelled breakfast cooking, but today, nothing. She pushed the covers off her face and squinted, bleary-eyed, at the bedside clock.

A sheet of white paper was propped up against the clock, blocking the face from view. Groaning again, Emma sat up and snatched the paper, almost knocking over a full glass of water in the process. The hell? Where had that come from?

The sheet of paper provided the answer. It was a note from Mary Margaret, which read, Hey Emma, Didn’t want to wake you. Not sure if you’ll need the aspirin but you should drink the water regardless. See you later.

Fourth-grade teacher that she was, she’d signed the note with a little happy face.

Despite the pounding in her head, Emma smiled. The smile widened when she spotted the two white pills her roommate had placed next to the water glass. “Thank you, Mary Margaret,” she murmured, grabbing the pills and swallowing them down with a large gulp of water.

She was going to set the glass back still mostly full but remembered the note and drank the rest of the water. Times like this, it was easy to see why Henry kept insisting that Mary Margaret was Emma’s mother. And times like this, Emma found herself wishing it were true.

Not all of it, of course. She could totally do without the whole being responsible for the happiness of the residents of an entire town part. But the Mary Margaret being her mother part, that was definitely okay with her.

Finally, she remembered her original mission, which was to find out the time. It was only quarter of eight; she’d only be a few minutes late if she hurried.

Then again, why hurry? She was a one-woman show, after all; no one to report to, no one keeping track of her hours. As a matter of fact, maybe she’d stop off for breakfast before heading into the station. If she was going to be late anyway, she might as well take advantage of it.

-----

Regina Mills heaved an irritated sigh as she shifted position in the driver’s seat of her car. She had parked across the street from Granny’s almost a half hour ago. Each minute that passed, the more annoyed she became.

Where in the hell was Emma Swan? Every other day, Regina could practically set her watch by her. At the sheriff’s station by eight, down to the diner for a cup of coffee and the occasional blueberry muffin by quarter past. But now here it was, almost eight-thirty, and there was no sign of her at all.

It figured this would be the one day that Emma would change her routine. Regina had come up with a plan, an utterly brilliant and endlessly entertaining plan that would solve all of her problems. She couldn’t freaking wait to put it into action.

However, putting it into action would be more than a little difficult if her target didn’t show. If she even had to wait until tomorrow …

Just then, Regina caught a flash of yellow out of the corner of her eye. Ah yes, there was Emma now, and from the looks of it, she hadn’t been to the station yet. The sheriff had unwittingly given Regina the perfect opening.

Oh, Emma, she thought, sometimes you make things far too easy. It was so easy it almost wasn’t even fun.

Almost.

Regina gave it another minute or so, just long enough that it wouldn’t be obvious she’d followed Emma inside. Then she climbed out of her car, eased the door closed, and crossed the street.

She found Emma seated in the far booth, a steaming mug of coffee in front of her. A quick glance told Regina that the diner was populated, though, due to the lateness of the hour, not as populated as she would have liked. She’d actually wanted to do this with Mary Margaret Blanchard as a witness, but the teacher and Emma were on slightly different schedules and Regina couldn’t figure out how best to coordinate it.

No matter, though. Word would reach Mary Margaret soon enough.

The stage was set. The audience was in their seats. Now it was time to start the show.

After setting her shoulders, Regina crossed the diner and slipped into Emma’s booth, sitting down across from her. “Running a little late today, are we, Sheriff Swan?”

Emma arched an eyebrow. “Don’t worry, Madame Mayor. I’ll make sure to put it down on my time sheet.”

Regina allowed a smirk to let Emma think she was conceding the point. In actuality, she was looking Emma over, taking in her bloodshot eyes and the dark circles underneath them that her makeup hadn’t quite been able to hide.

So, it appeared as if Emma had had a rough night. Good. That would be helpful. “Oh, I’m not worried, Ms. Swan. About any of it.”

The façade of pleasantness that Emma had been projecting for the sake of the other diner patrons cracked. Just a hairline fracture, not enough that anyone but Regina would have been able to see. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know exactly what it means, dear.” Regina crossed her hands on the table and leaned forward. She lowered her voice so that only Emma could hear her, injecting it with an ice-cold tone she used on very few people in this life. “You wanted to start playing a different game, Ms. Swan. I’m simply agreeing that it’s time we should. There are, however, a few things you should know first.”

Emma must have been if not scared then at least very confused but she simply raised a single eyebrow. She must be a fantastic poker player, Regina thought, because her face gave away nothing. “Oh, really? And what are these things I should know?”

“First among them,” Regina said as she leaned back in the booth, “is that I thought, in the interest of fairness, that you should know exactly whom you’re dealing with.”

“Since when have you been interested in fairness?” Emma easily returned, looking for all the world completely unperturbed. If anything, now she looked a little amused.

Oh, how Regina longed to smack that amusement off her face. But no, that wasn’t the plan. Stick to the plan.

She shifted position and glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. Ruby and August, over on the other side of the diner, kept glancing at them with interest, but nobody else seemed to be paying them any mind.

Excellent.

She turned back to Emma and gave her a sickly sweet smile, one Emma would immediately recognize as fake. “If you want to declare war, that’s perfectly fine with me because you have no idea the kind of power I have.”

Now Emma was regarding her with something that resembled pity. "You’re just the mayor of some no-name little town in Maine, lady,” Emma said. It was clear from her tone that it was all she could do not to roll her eyes. “Your power doesn’t extend nearly as far as you seem to think it does. Now if you’ll excuse me …” She set money on the table for her coffee and prepared to stand.

“Oh, Ms. Swan, I’m not the mayor of some little no-name town in Maine,” Regina murmured, her voice so low and cold that it froze Emma in her tracks. “Not really. That’s just part of the illusion.”

Emma blinked hard, her poker-player’s face forgotten. There it was, the confusion and, just behind it, the fear. Regina grinned to herself. “What illusion?”

“Oh, please. You know exactly what illusion. The one my son’s been trying to get you to believe in from the day he dragged you here.”

When Emma spoke again, her voice quavered. “I have no idea what you’re trying to accomplish with this, but all you’re doing is renewing my resolve. You’re clearly unstable and--”

“Believe what you want, dear, but you can’t tell me you haven’t considered the possibility. Not with everything you’ve seen and everything you’ve experienced. You’re convinced I have it out for your precious Mary Margaret. Did you ever stop to think of why that is? Or why I would have a set of keys to every lock in this town? So, Sheriff Swan, think hard and tell me … what do you think is really responsible for Graham’s death?”

At the mention of poor Graham, tears leaped into Emma’s eyes. This time Regina didn’t bother to hide her smile. Thank you, Emma.

She’d found her way in. Now all she had to do was keep pressing her on Graham. She had to keep pressing and not let up.

“Graham was sick, Regina,” Emma shot back with just a hint of uncertainty in her tone. “I was with him, remember? You were nowhere around.”

“No, I wasn’t. Do you want to know where I was? While you and Graham were off doing … well, who knows what, I was under my father’s tomb, retrieving Graham’s heart. It was there all along; you two were just too stupid to think of looking underground.”

Emma shook her head more out of reflex than anything. She sat there, a faraway look in her glistening eyes. In her mind’s eye, she was not in the diner but back at the mausoleum with Graham. Poor Graham who was going on and on about how he didn’t have a heart and how he needed to find it.

Then suddenly she was back in the present. She blinked the tears away and glared at Regina. “You’re insane. Do you realize that you just confessed to murder?”

“Well, now, which is it, Emma?” Regina asked, eyes shining, a smirk on her lips. “Either it is true and I did kill him, or it isn’t true and I didn’t. But you can’t have it both ways. If you want to charge me with murder, then you have to admit that the curse is real.”

“I--”

“Think, Emma!” she hissed. “Which is it? Did I kill him or not?”

“This is crazy. You’re crazy,” Emma muttered. She started to slide out of the booth, eager to put as much distance as possible between her and the mayor.

Oh, Regina most definitely had her on the line. Now it was time to reel her in.

“I told you that you were putting dangerous thoughts in his head, and you were. Those thoughts? Were his memories. His real memories, and I couldn’t have that. But it wasn’t until he betrayed me--for you--that I realized I’d lost control of him.”

Emma looked like she needed to vomit. Regina’s grin widened. She leaned forward again and made her voice as hard as she could. Mayor Regina was gone, and in her place was Queen Regina. It felt fantastic to drop the charade and let her true self out again, even if only for a few seconds. “So I retrieved his heart and held it in my hand, and then I crushed it to dust.”

For a long beat, Emma remained still. A single tear escaped her left eye and trickled down her cheek as she relived those final moments with Graham. Then she was up in a flash, lunging across the table, reaching for Regina.

The diner erupted in chaos. All around, the patrons were shouting, hollering. Emma had managed to rake her nails down Regina’s cheek but she was clawing too wildly to do what she really wanted, which was get her hands around Regina’s throat.

Though Regina desperately wanted to start a knock-down, drag-out fight with the sheriff, she managed to restrain herself to self-defense moves only. She did allow Emma to get in a couple of hair yanks and another scratch or two, though. It was better for the show.

The attack lasted less than thirty seconds. That was how long it took for August Booth to cross the diner, get a firm grip on Emma, and drag her away from the table.

“No! Let me go!” Emma cried, struggling against August’s grip. “She’s evil! She killed Graham!”

August murmured something into Emma’s ear that Regina couldn’t hear, but whatever he was saying had no effect. She continued to struggle to break free, continued to yell that Regina had killed Graham.

A siren wailed somewhere nearby. Someone--Granny, probably--must have called for an ambulance. It was all Regina could do not to smile at her good fortune.

The ambulance screeched to a stop outside and three paramedics burst through the diner doors, two of them running for Emma and the third hurrying over to Regina. He applied some antibiotic ointment to the scratch marks running down her cheek. It stung; Emma had broken skin. He apologized for the sting when he saw her flinch, but she insisted she was fine. Besides, she was trying to watch what was happening with Emma.

The paramedics didn’t have any more luck in calming her than August had, but at least they had come in a backup plan. While one of them ran back to the ambulance to get the stretcher, the other pulled out a syringe and stuck the needle into Emma’s upper arm. In the time it took him to push the plunger and remove the syringe, Emma had begun to quiet. A few seconds later, she slumped, unconscious, into August’s arms.

August helped get her onto the stretcher and the paramedics quickly strapped her down. The one tending to Regina--in another life, they’d all been her palace guards--finished applying the bandage to her cheek and asked her what happened.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Regina replied in her best confused voice. “We were just having a conversation and the next thing I knew, she was attacking me. She’s clearly a very sick woman, poor thing. I do hope she’ll be all right.”

“Not to worry, Madame Mayor,” the paramedic assured her. “We’ll make sure she gets the help she needs.”

Regina nodded, false but convincing concern on her features, all the while thinking that Emma getting “help” had been her goal in the first place.

He stood and helped his colleagues wheel Emma’s stretcher out of the diner. August stood still for a long moment, watching them go. Then he glanced at Regina and hurried after the paramedics. Just before the door closed behind them, Regina heard him asking if he could ride with Emma.

Huh. She hadn’t expected that.

Not that it really matters, she thought, her fingers lightly brushing the bandage on her cheek. Even with that little wrinkle, this had actually turned out far better than she’d planned.