“You’re going to force me to eat it.”
“No, of course not,” said Regina. “That would be barbaric. And it wouldn’t work anyway. The choice is yours. It must be taken willingly.”
“And why would I eat it?”
“Because if you refuse the apple, then your Prince Charming will be killed.”
She had known it was coming, but hearing the Queen say it made her imagine his death, and along with that came a glimmer of the feeling. Agony. Years—decades—of agony. It would not be worth it to live like that anyway. She was trapped.
“As I said, the choice is yours,” said the Queen.
“I take it and he lives?” Snow said. “That’s the deal?”
“That is the deal.”
Snow nodded, took a breath. “Then congratulations,” she said. “You’ve won.”
Snow took a step forward and took the apple, and without another moment’s hesitation, she bit into it.
She chewed slowly, looking at the Queen, waiting for the pain to come. And when it did, it came all at once, rushing over her chest. She dropped the apple; she felt her eyes go wide and her legs quiver. Regina smiled through it all.
The last thing Snow saw were blades of grass; the last she heard was a quiet laugh from the Queen.
• • •
Emma stopped on the middle of Mifflin, gathered herself, and approached Regina’s home. Before she pressed the doorbell, a thought struck her: It’s not just Regina’s home. It’s Henry’s.
Regina answered the door wearing an apron and holding a spatula. She looked genuinely surprised to see Emma.
“We need to talk,” Emma said.
“Yes,” said Regina. “I imagine we do. Come right in.” Emma remembered the first time she’d been here, which was the night she arrived in town. Everything looked the same, and yet virtually everything had changed. From the kitchen, the smell of something—pie or some other pastry—filled the whole first floor with a warm, inviting scent. She didn’t trust the feeling it evoked.
“Look,” Emma said to Regina, who was waiting patiently. “This isn’t easy. But I think this—whatever it is between us—needs to end.”
“At last, something we can agree on,” Regina said dryly.
“I want to make a deal. About Henry.”
“What kind of deal?” Regina said cautiously.
“I’m leaving town,” said Emma.
“What?” Now Regina looked absolutely befuddled. Emma enjoyed catching the woman off guard, although this time it was bittersweet.
“This? What we’re doing? It’s a problem.” Emma pointed from Regina to herself. “I’m going to go. But there are conditions. I still get to see Henry. Visit, spend time. Whatever. And you promise not to hurt anyone again. Not David, not Mary Margaret. No one.”
“I never hurt anyone,” said Regina.
“Then it’s an easy promise to make,” said Emma.
Regina looked dubious. She crossed her arms. “Do you expect me to believe you’re really giving up?” she said.
“I’m not giving up,” Emma responded. “I’m doing what I’ve always done. I’m doing what’s best for Henry. The only way for us to stop fighting is… for us to stop fighting.”
“You’re right,” Regina said. “It has to end.”
“So then let’s make it easy,” Emma said. “I go back to Boston. You get Henry.”
“And you still get to see him. You’re still in his life.”
“Let’s be honest. We both know the world where I’m not in his life no longer exists,” Emma said. “There’s nothing anyone can do about that.”
She took a deep breath, then nodded. “Fine,” Regina said. “You’re right. Would you mind following me for a moment?”
Regina led Emma into the kitchen, where the temperature was a little higher. The place, Emma had to admit, was a real home. A clean, safe home. The lights were bright, and when Regina went to the oven, Emma watched as she pulled out a crisp, steaming apple turnover. There is no chance in hell, Emma thought, I could cook something like that.
“So what exactly are you proposing, then?” Regina said.
“I don’t know. Just that we’ll figure it out in good faith as we go.”
Regina nodded. “However,” she said. “He is my son.”
“Yeah,” Emma said. “All I want is your word you’ll take good care of him. And no one—not him, not this town—will get hurt.”
Regina nodded. “You have my word.”
Emma stared at her; she could always tell when someone was lying. She looked at Regina for a long time, trying to see if she was being honest.
“What?” Regina finally said.
“Just seeing if you’re telling the truth,” said Emma.
“And am I?” Regina asked.
Emma nodded. “We have a deal.”
Seeing Regina smile was a strange experience. Had Emma seen it before? “Ms. Swan?” Regina said. She held out the turnover, now inside a box of Tupperware. “Maybe a little something for the road?”
Emma shrugged. “Why not?” she said, taking it.
“If we’re going to be in each other’s lives, we need to be cordial, don’t we?”
Emma nodded.
“I do hope you like apples.”
• • •
It took Henry fifteen minutes to arrive at Emma’s apartment after she’d called him on the walkie-talkie. She waited at the kitchen table, a cold cube of dread in the pit of her stomach, imagining how she was going to tell him that her time in Storybrooke was over.
When she opened the door, he took one look at her face and said, “Is everything okay? You sounded strange over the walkie.”
He came inside, and Emma remembered the way he’d so brazenly entered her apartment in Boston. The same laser-guided initiative. She loved that about him.
“Henry, yesterday… when I tried to take you away…” She crossed her arms. Do not cry, she thought. “You were right. I can’t take you away from Storybrooke. But I can’t stay here, either.”
Henry looked back at her, trying to figure out what she meant. “I don’t get it,” he said finally.
“I have to go, Henry,” she said.
There. It was out. The hardest part was over. An arrow through the heart did not do the feeling justice. Something in her was dying.
“Go?” he said finally. “You’re going to leave Storybrooke?”
“Yes,” she said. “I talked to Regina. I made a deal with her. I’m still going to be able to see you. I just won’t be here… every day.”
“NO!” he cried. “NO! You can’t trust her!” His tears were coming again, which pulled at her own.
“I have to, Henry. This is what’s best for you.”
“You’re just scared,” he said. “This happens to all heroes right before the big battle. It’s just the low moment before you fight back.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t a story. This is reality. And things have to change. You can’t skip school anymore. You can’t run away. There are consequences. You can’t—You can’t keep believing in this curse.”
He looked back at her, eyes wide, shaking his head. “You really don’t believe, do you?”
“This is how it’s going to be. I made a deal. I used my super power. She was telling the truth. She’s going to take care of you.”
“Maybe she will, but she wants you dead,” Henry said.
This surprised Emma.
“Henry, come on,” she said.
“She wants you dead, because you’re the only one who can stop her.”
“Stop her from what?” Emma said, raising her voice. “What is it that’s she’s really doing? Other than fighting for you?” She took a step toward him, meaning to hug him. “This whole thing has gotten out of hand.”
She put a hand on his shoulder and knelt down to him. She thought he would pull away and fight, but he didn’t. He buried his face in her chest, sobbing. It was unbearable. She felt him stiffen then, and his he
ad came up. He was looking at something over her shoulder. She looked, too. It was the apple turnover.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“Regina gave it to me,” Emma said. “So what?”
He sniffed the air. “Is it apple?”
“So?”
He went to the counter and pushed it away. “You can’t eat it,” he said. “It’s poison.”
“What?”
“Don’t you see?” Henry said. “The deal? It was all a trick. To get you to eat this. To get rid of you once and for all. This is exactly how she got rid of Snow White, except this time, you don’t have a Charming here to come wake you up.”
It was terrible to hear him going down this path again. Archie had been right—he’d retreated into it. Her presence here was hurting him. “Why would she do that after I told her I would go?” Emma asked.
“Because as long as you’re alive, wherever you are, you’re a threat.”
“You have to stop thinking like this.”
“BUT IT’S THE TRUTH!” he yelled. She had never heard him so loud.
Emma reached for the turnover. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll prove it to you.” But when he saw what she was doing, Henry snatched the turnover before she could get it, and held it in front of his own mouth.
Like a threat.
“What are you doing?” Emma said.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this. You might not believe in the curse, or in me,” Henry said. “But I believe in you.”
He took a big bite.
Same difference, Emma thought.
Either way, he’d know for sure.
She waited.
He chewed and swallowed.
“Do you see?” Emma said, after she thought that enough time had gone by. “You want some ice cream with that, or can we get back—”
Before she could finish the sentence, Henry dropped to the floor.
She ran to him, grabbed his little shoulders, shook him. “Henry?” she said. “Henry?”
Panic gripped her after she took his pulse. He was not messing with her. Almost no heartbeat.
“Henry?” she cried again, her voice trembling.
One thought kept circling her mind: This is not happening.
“Henry!” she cried. “Henry!”
CHAPTER 17
A LAND WITHOUT MAGIC
The hospital. screaming. frantic cries. Dr. Whale’s harried questions.
More doctors. Trying to stabilize Henry.
Tears.
Emma ran alongside the gurney, her eyes full of tears, as they carted her son into the ER. She was unable to think. She could barely answer their questions. She tried to tell Dr. Whale about the turnover, to tell him that Henry had been poisoned, but none of it made sense, none of it sounded right. She sounded like a raving lunatic, and Dr. Whale insisted that Henry had not been poisoned. He could find no evidence.
“Is anything different?” Whale said. “You have to think, Emma. What’s happened in the last few hours?”
Frustrated, she grabbed Henry’s backpack from the gurney, pulled it, and began riffling through its contents, looking for any ideas. Soon, however, the backpack spilled all over the floor, and Henry’s things were everywhere. Emma, tears in her eyes, began to look around. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”
Whale, frustrated also, went back to Henry.
And just then, Emma saw Henry’s book.
Magic, she thought. It’s not poison. It’s magic.
She remembered Henry’s words from that first day: “All the stories in this book actually happened.”
She touched the book. And as she did, she remembered… more.
She remembered…
Her mother, handing her to her father.
Her father, fighting the Queen’s men as he held her.
The wardrobe, and being gently set inside.
The woods, waking up… with August.
Emma blinked as the images flashed over her.
All of her life, Emma had been a skeptic. She’d been the person who poked holes in other people’s logic, the person who saw through the illusions that trapped everyone else. It was what made her good at her job, and it was what had gotten her into (and out of ) so much trouble along the way. This time, though, it was different. This time, she’d been the one living in a dream world. Emma, the realist, had been utterly wrong.
It’s all real. All of it is real.
All of it.
The gurney and the team of doctors reached a set of doors, and as they pushed Henry through, down the hall, they all heard a withering shriek. Everyone stopped and looked up. Regina, in a panic, was running toward him. “My son!” she cried.
Emma’s eyes narrowed. If it was real, than Regina was behind it all. And if Regina was behind it all, it was time to kill Regina.
“You did this,” she said, grabbing the woman by the collar and pushing her into a door. The door gave way, and the two of them ended up inside a storage closet. Regina didn’t know what had hit her.
“What in the hell are you—”
Emma punched her. The rage of the last weeks flowed through her shoulder and her fist as she struck the blow, and Regina’s head banged back into a shelf. She tried to hit Emma back, but she wasn’t fast enough. Emma grabbed Regina’s arm and pushed her again, back into the shelf.
“Stop this,” Regina sputtered. “My son is—”
“Your son is sick. Because of you,” spat Emma. “That apple turnover you gave me? Henry ate it.”
Regina’s eyes showed Emma a new kind of terror. Something she’d never seen, quite honestly.
“What?” said Regina, wilting before her.
Emma stared back at her, letting the truth sink in.
“It was… it was meant for… you.” Regina barely got the words out. Emma was holding her up, and she guessed that Regina would probably fall if she let go.
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?”
Emma slammed her against the shelf one more time.
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
Now Regina understood.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
“Why would you do this?” Emma cried. “I was leaving town. Why couldn’t you just leave it alone? It would have been okay!”
Regina shook her head. “Because as long as you’re alive, Henry will never be mine,” she said.
“He’s not going to be anyone’s unless you fix this,” Emma said. “Wake him up. Turn off the magic.”
“I can’t,” Regina said, shaking her head.
“Why not?”
“That was the last of the magic in this world,” Regina said. “It was supposed to put you to sleep. That would have been it.”
“So what’s it going to do to him?” Emma asked.
“I don’t know,” Regina said. “Magic here is unpredictable.”
Emma stared. “So he could die?”
“Yes,” Regina said. “Yes.”
“Then what do we do, Regina?”
Regina straightened up as well, nodding, thinking it through. “We need help,” she said. “There is one other person in this town who knows about this. Who knows about magic.”
Emma knew who she meant. There was only one possibility.
“Mr. Gold,” she said.
Regina nodded.
“Actually,” she said, “he usually goes by Rumplestiltskin.”
• • •
“Can we talk?”
Mary Margaret looked up toward the voice. She had a fresh cup of coffee in her hand, and she nearly spilled it when she saw David coming toward her. He was looking contrite, although that didn’t mean anything. She was tired of having a man who had to apologize for himself. All the time.
“I don’t think there’s anything left to say,” she said. She went toward her car.
“I was wrong.”
Mary Margaret stopped. She looked back at him and sighed. She couldn’
t stay away. No matter how hard she tried.
“About you,” he said. “About me. About everything.”
“I’m listening,” she said.
“I didn’t believe in you,” David said. “And I wish I had a good reason why—but—well, it’s like I keep making the wrong decisions, and I don’t understand how it keeps happening.” He shook his head, frustrated. She didn’t say it, but she could relate. “Ever since I woke up from that coma… my life hasn’t made any sense. Except for you. And what I’m feeling—it’s love, Mary Margaret. And it keeps pulling me back to you.”
She tried to imagine a version of David, one that had been driven by love all these months. Through every bumbling decision. It wasn’t easy, but she supposed she could see it. In a way.
“That may be,” she said. “But I’ll tell you what I’ve felt since you came into my life. Pain.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you here, David?”
“Because Kathryn put a down payment on an apartment in Boston,” he said. “She’s not going to use it. But I am.” He looked at her sadly. “Unless you can give me a reason to stay here.”
She looked at David for a long time.
“I can’t,” she said finally. “I’m sorry.”
She walked to her car and got in, not wanting him to see her face. How many times had that happened? Too many.
Her phone buzzed again, as it had several times this morning. She had ignored it up until now, but she looked this time, mostly to distract herself. Eight missed calls. All from Emma. She called up her voicemail and put the phone to her ear.
“Mary Margaret,” came Emma’s frantic voice. “It’s Henry. It’s Henry, I don’t—Something is wrong. Something is wrong.”
• • •
It was true that Emma hadn’t known what the day would bring once she decided to leave Storybrooke. In her wildest imagination, however, she hadn’t come up with this: working together with Regina. The two of them were on the way to Gold’s shop. They hadn’t spoken since they’d left the hospital, and Emma had no plans to say anything to Regina now. She hated her, of course. But she had to work with her.
“Do my eyes deceive me,” said Gold, once they were both at his counter, “or is that the look of a believer?” He could tell, apparently. Something about her had changed.