"You could try, certainly." Regina said with a bravado she didn't feel in her heart. Not when Anna's eyes were trying their damnedest to drain away all her willpower, turning her blood into the furious roar of an ocean pounding away at her eardrums. It was just so hard to look at her, look at those eyes without drowning in their emerald depths. Regina willed her fingers to relax out of the tight fist they'd become. So this was to be it was it. Fine.

But Robin - he just stood there at her side, his bow half lowered, and feet apart, arrow held loosely to his bow, his eyes the calmest sea she had ever seen. She wished… Damn it all to hell. There were too many things she wished. A smile tugged up the corners of his mouth; a sad smile, etched with regret, tugging at the strings of her heart, offering up an apology for everything they had lost. But he shouldn't apologize. It's she that should apologize. For the little boy that would grow up without his father or mother. At least her Henry had Emma, and Snow, and Charming, and …that list went on.

She didn't come. It had been a long shot anyway, trying to sneak one by Jack, halfway between two worlds, on the edge of a thousand where they collapsed into one, sending out a pulse of thought, a spike of need so that a woman might hear, that she might come and fix this mess. Someone had to. Looks like it's gonna be you and me, Robin. She returned his smile with one of her own. They weren't dead and turned to dust just yet. Say what you want about me. I am not one to go down without a fight. "Shall we show them how it's done?"

"Seems surviving the Heart's wrath has gone to your head little queen." An amused William drawled. "Have you forgotten to whom this land and everything on it belongs?"

"A stolen Heart." A voice said from behind them. A woman's voice, soft and musical like the chiming of birds in the wind. "Stolen land." It was mad that voice; mad and bitter as only the voice of a woman driven to the point of filicide could be. With those very few simple words it had made a statue of William, his face bereft of all warmth, bloodless as death.

Finally! Regina wanted to shout with elation despite the prickling hairs standing on ends all over her body. Eagerly she scanned the suddenly mist-shrouded great hall. Took her long enough. The wait was worth it though. Anything was worth wiping that smug grin off William's lips at last. Even the ill forbidding icing down her spine. Little by little, the impregnable fog eased and she started to make out shapes and outlines in the great hall. Her breath caught, catching sight of the owner of that voice. She stood there, the woman, with hair lighter than spun gold floating around her pale face, a face that was overtaken with two dark orbs of brewing storm in the hollow of her eyes. Strands of mist clung to her slender body covered in a flowy white dress floating around her the same way her hair did. Her bare feet showed on the dark stone floor that overflowed with water bubbling out of the cracking stones and caressingly lapping up her calves.

It hadn't been her blood pounding in her ears sounding like the ocean after all. The woman had brought the ocean with her. How the hell did we miss all this? The whole hall was covered in it. But it wasn't just water. Viny corals were sprouting out and eating away at the ground and walls, breathtaking explosions of color blooming along the way.

"Regina." The undercurrent of threat in Robin's voice cut through Regina's daze. "What have you done?" Robin went on, his face as white as William's.

"Castles, minds, dreams and lives. Thieves. The whole lot of you." The woman's voice wasn't so beautiful now. Venom dripped from her very word. Regina's ears were filled with a cry of a man, calling out a name in anguish and despair. Begging for forgiveness, begging for the life of his child. Maybe calling to her hadn't been the best idea. "Um…" Regina had to swallow before adding defensively, "We needed reinforcements." What else was she supposed to have done? Rolled over for William's final blow?

"And you thought to bring our mother?" William asked incredulously.

"She is no mother. To either one of you." Anna spat.

"Mother?" Robin almost snarled. "The woman who tried to murder her own children?"

What the hell was happening? Were the three of them ganging up on her? It was bizarre, absolutely bizarre. "Whose side are you on anyway?" she asked her supposed ally archly.

"Not on her side."He sneered back.

This bickering was useless. The corals Rhioannon had called were growing faster and faster, climbing up the walls with astonishing speed, the lapping waves but a step behind . Before Regina had time to blink, they reached the top, pouncing on the mounted heads and swallowing them whole.

William let out an unintelligible growl. "You dare!" He bellowed, too incensed to form coherent sentences, shaking the whole castle with the force of his furious roar.

Arms floundering blindly, struggling to regain her balance, Regina tried to get a hold of Robin but her questing fingers closed on empty air, the cracking ground already breaking them apart. She backed up from the gaping wound in the broken stone floor, signaling widely to Robin to move away from where Anna and William stood, closing ranks and readying themselves for a face off with Rhioannon.

Anna drew the two long swords strapped to her back in one fluid motion, swirling them around so fast they seemed to blur, beginning to suck in light till they looked like two dark schisms in the fabric of the universe. Letting out a blood-curdling cry she sprinted into the water, cutting away at the jagged corals jabbing at her from every side, spinning to thrust her swords into the rising walls of water lunging at her, trying to ensnare her with its furious claws. "She is mine!" She yelled out.

William didn't seem inclined to leave it all to her though. Darkness pooled around his outstretched arms, spinning faster and faster with the sound of a thousand dying screams. Feeling wetness trickling down her neck, Regina touched her ears, her fingers coming away soaked in crimson. Blood dripped down Robin's nose too, but he seemed not to notice; he only had eyes for the woman in white, not even hearing Regina calling to him to get back, get away.

The castle was ripping itself apart, and the air filled with daggers of sound that were trying to boil away their brains. At the center of it stood Rhioannon, unfazed and uninterested in the mayhem around her. Dancing and clawing and ripping her way to her query, Anna finally reached her. Not wasting any time, she lunged at the woman, her swords plunging down like avenging shards of night.

Finally taking notice, Rhioannon looked up at her, a smile blossoming on her lips. White tendrils of mist from above and foaming arms of water from below sprang out around Anna, a trap closing tight with the prey in their midst. A scream tore from her throat, the swords dropping from her nerveless fingers, the inky blades evaporating into thin air before they had time to fall to the ground.

Waves of darkness shot through the air, swarming the two woman. Regina had to duck to avoid getting hit by stones and mortar falling from the ceiling. Her hearing was gone. She could barely make out William, mouth open wide and eyes blazing with insane rage. Anna was on her knees, mist and wave a weaving tapestry over her bent form. Her face flickered, becoming the horror doll Anna with eyes sewn shut, then the painfully beautiful Anna, then an Anna Regina remembered seeing as she held onto the shoulders of a young Robin heaving up his disgust.

The waves have become insurmountable walls, clear to taunt, to show the prisoner behind, barring William's way to Anna, all his power, all his rage, all the darkness he gathered to him to blast away at them useless. Regina's hearing came back with a vengeance, the intensity of the noise assaulting her ears making her vision momentarily go dark. Her head spinning, she would have gone down if not for the arms that were suddenly there to catch her from behind. Anna let out another harrowing scream, her face finally solidifying. It was Anna. The real Anna.

She opened her cat eyes, skewering William with her green gaze. The solid walls of water collapsed down as suddenly as they had emerged, but he stood there, frozen in place. Anna's breath misted in front of her as she opened her lips to form a word. Before she could, in the space of that one breath her whole body dissolved into mist, and she was no more.

Hey guys! Terribly sorry author here. All I can say is that I've been suffering from a mighty case of motivationlessness ...

And I was so worried my ending was going to turn out too Deus Ex Machina…No matter which way I tried spinning it this is what I kept coming back to.

I hope it doesn't seem that way to you guys. Did you see Rhioannon coming?

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it!