A/N: It's always bothered me how easily Emma changed her beliefs regarding Regina during "The Cricket Game." After having her life turned upside down and not having a chance to breathe from discovering she had parents, being forced into a world of magic where she was completely out of her depth, and then rescued by the woman she had spent months locked in a battle with; at some point I think Emma would have reached a point of critical mass.

Watching a dog's memories in a dreamcatcher seemed to be as good a place as any.

Emma chooses to trust her instincts over what magic seems to tell her, and the world changes.

Much like magic, all choices come with a price.

Chapter edited and updated as of 10/28/2015.

A Gambit in Trust

Emma I

Emma Swan had no idea what the hell she was doing.

"You have to will it," Gold's words echoed in her ear as the ends of her fingers tingled with the hushed promise of energy ready to burst forth. With no other instruction - and the logical side of her brain just about fried after the past few weeks' descent into magical, curse-induced insanity – Emma just went with it.

Show me, her thought was stern, commanding. With a quiet gasp, Emma's eyes widened as she felt the built up energy slither from her fingers into the dreamcatcher she held. The intertwining threads shined with a golden glow that solidified into a clear image as long seconds ticked past, but the exhilaration performing actual magic created was tempered as her mind caught up to the fact she was watching a dog's memories played back in a goddamned dreamcatcher.

It was surreal enough that it left her half-sure she would find herself waking up from a strange, strange dream.

"There's Regina." Mary Margaret muttered. Emma felt the woman shuffle closer, but her focus was on the image of Regina striding across Archie's office. Regina's expression held no anger, or the haughty malevolence Emma was used to. Archie greeted her in surprise, but Regina ignored him, wrapping a hand around the man's throat without a single moment's hesitation.

Emma cringed, wanting to turn away as the therapist struggled in the mayor's grasp, his movements jerky and pointless, but Emma forced herself to watch until the end. As the image of Regina dropped Archie's lifeless form, Emma let the dreamcatcher slip through her fingers.

Pongo yelped in protest as it bounced off his head, but nobody else made a sound.

Emma let out a haggard breath, eyes wide but unseeing as her mind tried to piece together a plausible chain of events. She had been sure Regina had not lied. The mayor had never managed to get past her well-developed sense for spotting lies and untruths in any of their verbal repartees before. Her discovering of that skill out of nowhere just did not make sense.

Nothing seemed to, since fairytales came to life.

She thought that fury should be overwhelming her – enough to drive her to rush and face Regina down for lying to her face and betraying Henry's fragile trust - but instead she found herself dealing with the overwhelming emergence of agitated frustration alongside a mild nausea. She wished something could remain consistent following the curse. Give her a rock to navigate from…

"Well," Gold drawled, leaning on his weight onto his cane with his pretentious smirk showing up on his lips. "I suppose that makes it clear." Mary Margaret let out a low sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose while shaking her head. David's jaw clenched as he still looked upon the fallen dreamcatcher. His hand wrapped so tight around the pommel of his sword that his knuckles paled to white.

"We've given her too many chances," Mary Margaret's voice came out low and harsh; sounding halfway between tears and fury.

"You always wanted to see the best in her," Belle said, laying a gentle hand on Gold's shoulder. She wore a melancholic little smile as Gold turned gentle eyes on her. "That she chose not to be worthy of your faith is not your fault."

Mary Margaret shook her head. "No matter whose fault it is, Archie's paid the price" She closed her eyes and seemed to build herself up. "She has to be stopped."

The sick feeling in Emma's gut increased tenfold at the finality in the woman's tone.

Henry's earnest face when he claimed Regina was trying to be a better person and Regina's clear surprise and subdued despair at hearing about Archie's death flashed through her mind alongside Archie's repeated assurance that Regina was truly trying to be a better person. The last words the therapist had spoken to Emma about his apparent murderer had been so confident.

None of it matched up to the image she had just fucking conjured out of a dog's head. A dull pain throbbed at her temples as her brain worked in overdrive to unravel the tangle of weird shit life had thrown at her in the last few weeks and make some sense out of it.

Pongo whined, laying down across a bemused Gold's feet, and stared at them with the depth of sadness only animals could achieve.

"You're right," David's soft spoken words held no less conviction than his wife's. "I'll go get Leroy to round up the dwarves and get Blue's help. We'll have to take her by surprise. Contain her magic." Emma frowned. The casual way he listed off what he needed spoke to him having needed it before. Mary Margaret gave a sharp nod of agreement and David took a step toward the door. Something in Emma's mind snapped as David reached for the handle.

"Wait." The word escaped her mouth strangled and strained, but it stopped David in his tracks as he turned to her in askance. His expression melted toward sympathetic pity, and a quick glance toward Mary Margaret found the same emotion in her eyes. Emma must have looked as shaken as she felt. "I'm not going to let us condemn a woman to death with just this as evidence," she said with a waving gesture toward Pongo and Gold.

"Emma," Mary Margaret took a step toward her with her hand outstretched and aimed toward her arm, but Emma took a stop back. Hurt flashed across the schoolteacher's features, but Emma ignored the brief flare of guilt as it simply added to the tumult of warring emotions swirling in her head. Mary Margaret let out a tiny sigh before saying, "You saw the same thing we did."

"It's not what we saw, it's how we saw it." Emma held her arms out wide in a vague shrug. "All of this is just…" She trailed off, the word 'insane' stood poised on her tongue, but she shook her head. "I just, I just can't." She urged the two to understand, but the Charming couple stood unmoved, wearing resigned expressions of weariness that did little to improve Emma's mood.

"As intriguing as watching this little family drama is…" Emma's head snapped back to Gold, finding the bastard with a bemused grin as he idly scratched Pongo behind the ears. She did her level best to resist the urge to punch the smug off his face. "I would appreciate it if it happened away from my shop. Some of us have more important things to take care of today." He glanced toward Belle and the librarian's lips rose into a pleased grin.

Emma frowned. She had barely seen the woman since being back, and could not wrap her head around the relationship she shared with Gold. It was a lesser mystery to be solved later.

"Happy to," Emma said and wasted no time in striding from the shop. The door slammed behind her, and Emma took a juvenile bit of petulant joy from the act. Once she stood on the street, she realized she did not know what the next best move would be.

Without a plan to speak of, without knowing what she believed about the turn towards insanity her life decided to take in the last few weeks, Emma let her instincts guide her, and found herself powerwalking toward Mifflin Street and the mayoral mansion.

Either Regina had experienced a massive improvement in her skills in deception, or had never truly lied to Emma before. Or there was a deeper scheme at play that Emma could not begin to unravel without more information than it involved someone else with magical powers. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she picked up her pace. She needed the truth, she needed it to make sense, and there was only one person that she could get that from at the moment.

"Emma!" A hand wrapped around her right bicep in a strong and steady grasp, pulling her to a halt and spinning her around. Emma's free hand was halfway to her holstered weapon before she registered David's flushed features; his shoulders heaving with labored breaths and eyes full of worry. Had she gotten far enough where had had to run? "What are you doing?"

"Getting to the bottom of this." She jerked her shoulder out of his grasp and ignored the man's worried expression. "One way or another."

David sighed with a small shake of his head. "I know you want to believe in Regina for Henry's sake, but we've been down this road before. Time and time again, Regina proves she is just too far gone."

"I don't believe that," Emma stared him down, unflinching in the face of his conviction. "Isn't there a hero's law or something that says nobody is beyond redemption?"

"Hero's law?" David's eyebrows quirked as he smiled for the first time that afternoon. "Is that from one of Henry's books?"

"Doesn't matter." Emma muttered, turning away from David's amused gaze. "All I know is that something here doesn't feel right." She added steel to her tone as she attempted to articulate her instincts. "Me using magic? I have no idea how I did…" She waved her hand in the vague direction of Gold's shop. "Whatever that was in there." She turned back to the man to find him looking as if he'd just swallowed something sour. An inexplicable wave of insecurity bloomed within her at the sight.

Wondering how her parents would react to her magic had not even crossed her mind until that moment.

"I don't have the answers, Emma. I wish I did." David's grimace softened into a frown, worry knitting his brow. "But I know what Regina is capable of, and I'm not letting you go there alone." Emma allowed a tight smile, touched and annoyed at the same time. She was a walking contradiction lately.

"It's best if I do." David blinked, taken aback, and opened his mouth to retort, but Emma continued before he could. "If we all swarm her front door, she's going to get defensive. We don't want to back her inter a corner."

"Emma—"

"She won't do anything to me." If there was anything she was sure about this day, it was that. "She wants Henry in her life too badly for that."

"And you think that makes you safe? She killed Archie, what makes you-"

"If she killed Archie." Emma corrected with heat in her tone. David held up his hands in a placating gesture. "Then she will still be trying to play innocent. And if she didn't, then there's nothing to be worried about." David ran a hand over his face, looking at her with indecision in his eyes.

"I don't like this," he said. Emma could have laughed.

"Yeah, I got that." David studied her for a moment longer before sighing, turning his gaze skyward, and mouthing either a silent prayer or a string of curses – Emma could not tell which. When his eyes dropped back down to her, he looked resigned.

"Snow's getting Blue. It won't take very long to get the dwarves, dust, and fairies together. Maybe twenty minutes. If we don't hear from you…"

"You'll come in, fairy dust blazing." Emma grimaced against both the ludicrousness of the words she spoke as well as the idea of being stuck between the Blue Fairy and what would be a furious Evil Queen. David gave a grim nod, and Emma spun on her heels and ran before he could change his mind and waste more time.

She had a maybe-reformed Evil Queen to interrogate in order to get to the bottom of a murder surrounded on all sides by magic – a concept she could not wrap her head around at the moment let alone be familiar with it – with less than twenty minutes until Mary Margaret and the Blue Fairy would blow the situation straight to hell and it would not matter if Regina was guilty or not.

No pressure, Swan.

By the time she reached the mayoral manor, her breath came in short bursts and the muscles in her legs made their protest known. She ignored both and pounded her fist against the heavy oak door, without bothering to gather herself. Silence followed her knocking for several dreadful seconds before Emma heard the telltale click-clack of Regina's heels against the hardwood floor.

The door swing inward and Regina stepped through the threshold, looking as composed as ever in her pricey pantsuit; not a hair out of place. She held a guarded expression on the edge of emotionless, with only the slight lift in her eyebrows giving away her surprise.

"Sheriff Swan," she said in as neutral a tone as Emma had ever heard from her. "I assume you're here to apologize?" Emma wrung her hands and found she could not quite meet the mayor's eyes. Real or not, seeing the image of Regina strangling the life out of Archie was not an image easily put out of her mind, and she doubted opening up with a cringe would go over well.

"Not exactly," she said. Regina froze for a brief moment before her arms crossed and a frown tugged at her lips. Emma braced herself and pressed forward with no clear plan in her head. "We found a new witness." Regina's frown deepened.

"And who else is condemning me today?" Her voice was almost light and uncaring.

Emma grimaced before answering. "Pongo." Regina blinked, jaw dropping a fraction of an inch before she replied.

"Pongo," the other woman said, deadpan. "The dalmatian."

"The dalmatian." Emma confirmed with a tile of her head. It should have irked her that this entire discussion was ludicrous, but her bullshit meter was spent. "We saw his memories."

"How?" Regina demanded at once, posture going rigid, defensive. Emma took a moment before replying, unsure how to proceed with any semblance of tact.

"Magic." Regina let out a breathy, humorless laugh.

"And who performed this magic? Rumplestiltskin?" Regina sneered. "You should know better than to take anything he does at face value."

Emma tried to hide her grimace, but by the way Regina's face blanked, she was unsuccessful. "It wasn't Gold." She took a breath, bracing herself for a reaction she could not predict. "I cast the spell."

"You have magic…?" If Regina had been going for stoic, she failed. Her jaw came loose, her eyes went wide, and her head tilted to the side in the way of someone relieved to be figuring out a puzzle. "The savior, of course." Regina nodded, thoughtful, and Emma could see the gears turning in her head.

She sobered after a moment, her guarded expression returning, and asked. "What did you do?"

Emma shrugged. "There was a dreamcatcher, a bit of light, and a depressed dalmatian." She half joked, not sure she had a solid enough grasp on what happened to properly describe it. It did not much matter at the moment, anyway. "Long story short, Pongo saw you kill Archie."

"Dreamcatchers can be used to view memories," Regina said, annoyance slipping into her tone. Emma assumed she wished that the explanation did not make sense. "But the dog could not have seen me there," Regina said, eyes downcast and darting back and forth while her eyebrows furrowed.

"I don't really know how I did it." Emma offered the caveat. "But I know what Pongo saw." Regina's head snapped back up to attention and her hands came up in either a placating gesture or in preparation to send Emma flying, Jedi style. Emma made no aggressive move and stared into Regina's hard, brown eyes with all her unwavering might. If the mayor lied, Emma had to see it this time. "Can you explain this one, your majesty?"

"Forgery," Regina bit out the word. "A false memory implanted into the beast."

"How?" Emma frowned, studying the other woman for any hint of aggressive hostility. Every bit of body language coming from Regina screamed defensive and desperate, but Emma could not pinpoint if that was from guilt or fear.

"How else?" Regina smiled, toothy and sardonic. "Magic."

Emma groaned and pressed her palm to her forehead while squeezing her eyes shut. A quick throb at her temple warned of an oncoming headache. She was tired of going around in circles just because magic had to go and become real.

"And who would think to put memories into a dog and assumed we would check?" She dropped her hand and refocused on the brunette in front of her. "Only you, Gold, and Mother Superior are strong enough to do anything other than parlor tricks, right? And I doubt the nun had a motive."

Regina looked offended. "She's been trying to have me killed for decades." Regina sniffed, disdain clear in her tone. "Never had the courage to try it herself."

"She wouldn't kill anyone for it," Emma said, and Regina let out a quiet snort of disbelief. Emma grit her teeth, trying not to let her aggravation show. "And Gold was with Belle all night." Emma spoke the lie, taking away Regina's only plausible deflection

Regina reacted in frustrated anger. "Then what's my motive?" Regina's hands balled into fists, her knuckles turning white from the strained grip, her nostrils flared, and the brown of her eyes disappeared against dilated pupils. Emma's fight or flight response kicked in and she drew herself up to her full height. Instead of lashing out, Regina asked, "What would push me to kill a man when I know doing anything but toeing the line will make me lose my son?"

"Your argument with Archie at the docks," Emma said, feeling tired. It was the only not-magic evidence they had on Regina. Without figuring out the issue with Pongo's memories, they were just spinning their wheels at this point. Regina let out a frustrated breath on the edge of a huff.

"If you haven't noticed," Regina said, tone heavy with sarcasm. "Nearly every conversation I have ends in an argument or worse."

"I need more than that if I'm going to help you, Regina." Emma implored, not in the mood to give any ground. That answer had worked yesterday, but it was not enough. Regina clicked her tongue against her teeth, hesitated, but gave in.

"He betrayed my trust." The woman crossed her arms. "He told youabout my sessions when he had no right. I was justifiably angry." Emma raised an eyebrow. "Not angry enough to kill."

"He was just trying to help you," Emma said, feeling the need to defend the late therapist while poking the metaphorical bear.

"By spilling my secrets for the world to hear." Regina's voice was rigid, eyes gaining a glint of anger.

"By confiding in me that you were getting help. That you were trying. You should have thanked-"

"It was not his business to share!" Regina took a step forward, invading Emma's personal space. For a brief moment, Emma felt nostalgic for the confrontations between Regina and her from before the curse had broken, but she shelved the feeling while the angry mayor lost her composure. Emma tensed, ready to lash out in defense if Regina attacked, but the woman only continued in her heated tone, "So tell me exactly why I should be thankful?"

Regina stopped her advance inches from Emma with a steady glare – daring her to come up with a response. Emma was not cowed.

"Because he's the only reason I haven't arrested you already." Regina blinked once, twice, and faltered - taking a step back with a shake of her head.

"It's ironic," Regina said. The heat had drained from her, leaving nothing but irritated bitterness. "That I've spent the last few weeks avoiding casting even the simplest spell to prove I've changed. Yet, it's you performing magic that's going to condemns me." Something joined the intensity in Regina's eyes that Emma hesitated to call vulnerability. "Tell me Sheriff, how will you explain to my son how you justify using magic to judge me guilty?" Emma's stomach twisted in a nasty surge of guilt. That was a conversation she truly hoped to never have to have. "Because I would love to see you talk your—"

"Enough," Emma interrupted. She glanced over her shoulder and felt a renewed sense of urgency. Mary Margaret and Mother Superior were already past due, and Emma needed to make the situation square before they arrived. "I haven't put you in handcuffs yet, have I?" Regina frowned and stared at her like she was puzzling something out. Emma took a breath to steady herself. "I need you to look me in the eye and tell me the truth."

Emma narrowed her focus to nothing beyond Regina, urging her instincts to not fail her. Sounding tired and exasperated, Regina said, "I did not kill Archie." Emma listened for a hint of hesitation in the words and searched for a glimpse of deception in brown of Regina's eyes as she stared Regina down for long moments after she spoke.

There was none.

Emma let out a ragged breath. Nothing had changed from the previous day; every one of her instincts shouted at her that Regina was telling her truth.

She made the decision to trust them.

"Okay." Emma breathed out the word before nodding as her mind raced. "Okay," she repeated, more assured. Regina looked surprised, shoulders sagging just the slightest bit in relief for a single moment before the woman gathered her poise. "Now we just need to figure out how someone's framing you."

"Obviously through magic," Regina said with a hint of energy returning to her. "But other than forging the dog's memories or shape-shifting, I don't—Miss Swan?"

Emma could have smacked herself. Shape shifting.

Her vision glazed over as that one idea snapped the puzzle together and the entire situation began to crystalize in her mind. The Enchanted Forest, a devastated stronghold, mind control, a hand inside her chest, and, most vividly, Lancelot morphing into another person. The memories of her week in hell came flooding back and she felt like the world's biggest fool.

If Emma and Mary Margaret could find a way to cheat a portal to Storybrooke into existence, why couldn't she?

"Miss Swan?" Regina repeated, a slight note of urgency playing at the edge of her tone. Emma snapped out of her own head and refocused on the woman before her, lips set into a grim line.

"Cora," she said.

Weeks ago, Emma would have marveled at how one word from her could cause Regina to stagger backward as if stricken, her face draining of color. Now the effect only served to fuel her growing sense of dread. That problem was supposed to be over. Taken care of, left in another realm to stew in her own failure. Instead, Emma now held no doubt that Regina's mother managed to follow them to Storybrooke, and had them all running around in circles trying to frame her daughter for murder.

She groaned as the throb in her head turned into a full blown headache.

Magic was such bullshit.

E/N: Did it ever irk anyone else by just how little time passes through season 2 and the beginning of season 3? Seriously, we never stop to take a breath from the curse breaking, to Emma and Snow getting thrown into FTL, to them getting back and the Cora shenanigans, to the Tamara/Greg stuff, and finally to Neverland. I mean, it felt like it couldn't have been more than a couple weeks at most.

In any case, I've out lined this story a fair bit, and we'll at least get through the Neverland plot, but each chapter will take us further and further from canon, so expect new twists and turns along the way!

And please leave a review if you have a spare moment! I'd love to hear how well or terribly you think I've captured the characters here. Both Emma and Regina have a bit more nuance to them than characters I'm used to writing, so I'm looking to improve.

Until next time!