I'm pretty sure i wasn't the only one who was staggeringly underwhelmed by the fight between Zelena and Regina in episode...3x16? Talk about your plot induced stupidity.

So i rewrote it, added some funnies, some outlaw queen, shook it and poured it onto the keyboard.

This is what came out, enjoy if you're of a mind to. Pretty much just meaningless nonsense anyway.

I have another outlaw quen if you squint drabble that i may post depending on the feedback for this one but i won't be putting any serious effort into them. I got Hyde and werewolves and woodcutters and shit to write about.

So, without further ado, read, love, review.

The Witch Off

Sundown, Main Street

Where the hell was Regina?

Emma pressed her lips together and scanned the street, looking for the distinctive figure of the brunette cutting her way through the crowd. They would part for her, of course they would, but all Emma could see was a mob of tense faces watching her, waiting with her.

Zelena –the Wicked Witch of the damn West- had called Regina out. Sundown on Main Street, Regina had agreed.

Of course she had, with that mad glint in her eye, she had looked positively gleeful at the prospect of ripping the Witch's heart out. Eagerness pouring from her. Emma was more than a little surprised that Regina hadn't just started then and there with a fireball to the face.

But, no, the Witch and the Queen had agreed to go their separate ways. Both of them performing for the masses in their way.

They knew, they had to know, that all out war between them would level the town. Every brick, tree and building would be razed to the ground with two such heavyweights throwing down against one another.

Emma didn't know, but she suspected that was the only reason Regina had held off. To give time for Emma, David and Snow to evacuate the civilians. To perhaps clear a radius of empty buildings that would probably get trashed around the two witches.

Regina might have practically vibrated at the prospect of ripping the Witch a new one, but she had been a lot more stable in recent months. Well, since before the reversing of the Curse and the missing year in the Enchanted Forest, she had been a little scattier than she was now. She had seemed to be quieting. Whatever had happened in that year, Regina might not consciously remember it, but some part of her must have. Whatever that part was, it obviously provided a firmer bedrock for her to build her sanity up on again.

Maybe that was why Regina was nowhere to be found. Maybe that sane part of her had taken one look at the Wicked Witch and her army of infectious flying monkeys and decided that she wanted nothing to do with the whole business.

No. Emma discounted that before she'd even finished the thought. Regina had never run from a fight and –no matter what had happened that she subconsciously remembered in that year- she wasn't about to start now.

"Does she really intend to make me wait?"

Emma twisted to look at the Witch. Black dress, big hat, chunky emeralds about her neck and a hauntingly familiar dagger in her grasp. Rumplestiltskin hovered at her shoulder, something stark in his eyes twisting and wrenching against the hold of his own dagger in her hand. Zelena bared her teeth in that smug grin of hers.

"Poor little Queen. I guess she's not as all powerful as she'd have you all believe." Zelena laughed through her teeth. "I told you that Wicked would win over Evil."

Emma frowned at her.

"When the hell did you say that?" Emma looked about her companions for a flash of recognition from any of them. "You wiped their memories, how are they supposed to remember what you said?"

Zelena's face hardened into a frown and she lanced Emma with a look that pierced clean through her.

"You're not nearly as charming as you think you are."

"Nope, that would be dad." Emma smiled tightly.

This was getting fraught. Where the hell was Regina?

Emma clenched her jaw and stepped up to the Witch. Well, if Regina wasn't here, then Emma was going to have to live up to her own legend a little bit. She'd been the Saviour once before. She could do it again.

Probably.

Hopefully.

"The Queen isn't here to protect you, Saviour." Zelena ground out from behind bared teeth in a terrifying smile. "Perhaps you should reconsider your attitude."

"Perhaps you might wanna consider running while you still can." Emma held out her hands and hunched her shoulders. "I've seen what Regina can do when somebody pushes her. She pushes back. Like a linebacker."

Zelena blinked, her eyelid flickering at the reference she didn't understand but her pride not letting her admit it.

"Anything she can do, I've done before and I've done it better." Zelena shrugged an elegant shoulder. "She holds no fear for me. I just want you all to watch whilst I trounce the bitch."

"I call bull on that." Emma stepped closer. She had to keep the Witch distracted. Without Regina there, with the Dark One's dagger in Zelena's hand, all the magic in Storybrooke was at the mercy of the Wicked Witch. Once Zelena realised that, there was nothing to stop her turning them all into flying monkeys. "You wanted to be out in the open so your little winged minions can get to you if you need help. You wanted to have a clear path out of here if you needed to zip off on your broom. I know your kind, this isn't grandstanding, this is a bluff."

Emma stepped even closer and got right in Zelena's face.

"Admit it, you're so scared that you couldn't put that dagger down if your life depended on it." Emma looked pointedly down at the knife with Rumplestiltskin's name scrolling elegantly across the blade.

"I need no Dark One to defeat my enemies."

"Oh, don't mistake me, don't put it down!" Emma pressed a hand to her chest and widened her eyes in mock innocence and then slowly let her expression darken into one of malicious glee. "Not if you want to survive the first five seconds against Regina."

"What's she going to do? Throw a fruit cocktail at me?" Zelena snorted. Trying to hold onto her bravado, but Emma could see through it. There was a glint of fear in her eye.

"You have no idea, do you?" Emma managed a laugh from somewhere. "You're completely clueless. You genuinely have NO clue as to how powerful she is."

"I know she's not as powerful as I." Zelena waved it away contemptuously. "I am the first born. I am the greater sorceress. Mine is the power that will snuff hers OUT."

"I've seen her set fire to an ocean." Emma murmured and waited until Zelena turned to stare at her. "I've seen her shrug off a spell that crippled even me. She ripped out Peter Pan's heart, cast a curse that Rumplestiltskin wasn't powerful enough to cast and she caused a damn ECLIPSE! She moved the freaking MOON and you think you can stand up to her with your pigeon monkeys?!"

Emma threw back her head and laughed and it was that which sent Zelena over the edge.

"Enough!" Zelena whipped the dagger up and –for a moment- Emma thought she intended to cut her throat, but Rumplestiltskin's arm lashed up at the same time as the dagger. Like there really were puppet strings between his arm and the blade.

Concussive force blasted Emma off her feet and sent her sailing backwards into some of the crowd they had been trying to disperse earlier.

"Silence, you simpering twit!" Zelena hissed through bared teeth. She opened her mouth to say more but a howling wind came out of nowhere.

It roared around the corner of Main Street casting a cloud of dust and debris before it. The howling rose into a thunderous crescendo like a thousand swarms of bees. The ground shook and then, before any of them could truly believe what they were seeing, an honest to god tornado rounded the bend.

"Hoooooleey crap!" Emma scrambled to her feet, aware of the running and screaming of the mob going on around her but –judging by Zelena's wide eyed expression- the new weather was no doing of hers.

"Emma, move!" David grabbed her hand, pulling at her but Emma shook her head.

"No, look!" She pointed to a shadow deep within the swirling vortex of horrendous wind and –as suddenly as it had come- the twister died.

The wind disappeared, the howling stopped and –for a moment- all was silent.

Emma looked up and frowned.

"Isn't that…?"

"Move!" A hook caught in the back of her jacket and Emma was bodily hauled out of the way when an eerily familiar farmhouse dropped out of the sky.

The sound was tremendous, a great cracking boom that shook the street.

The house, Zelena's house, crumpled like a box of eggs that someone had trodden on. The windows were shattered, the eaves cracked, the porch was in two halves, the roof subsided in a drunken slump and –slowly- the front door swung open on a broken creak.

Regina stepped from within the house onto the uneven and broken floorboards as if she did it every day. She straightened her coat's lapels, tugged at her sleeves to make sure they were even and flicked imaginary lint from her shoulder.

"You!" Zelena's voice was ripped from her on a low snarl and Regina looked up as if just noticing her.

"Me." She swaggered off the porch and down the steps, smiling pleasantly. "Lovely house you have there, pity about the location, the more centralised it is, the higher the property value. I thought I'd help out."

"How dare you?!" Zelena was all but spitting with her rage and Regina was –for once- the complete opposite.

She sauntered towards Zelena and fell into circling her as Zelena did the same. Her face was relaxed, her smile borderline friendly and her arms swung casually.

"It was a favour." Regina blinked as if in innocent confusion. "I thought you wanted us sisters to be closer."

Zelena seethed in a breath and growled it out from behind bared teeth.

Emma stood on the sidelines, panting with no real idea as to why. Her heart was thudding in her chest, kicking against her ribs, and she couldn't stop shivering.

The twister might have disappeared, snuffed by nothing more than Regina's desire for it to be so, but the oppressive air of an impending storm still pressed down on them like a cap of steel over the world.

This was going to be bad. It was going to be really bad.

Zelena mustered herself under some kind of control and sneered at Regina.

"You're fooling no one with your theatrics. Making me wait, the twister, the house, none of it shall save you."

Regina didn't rise to the bait. She looked up and down Zelena instead and her lip curled in a disdainful smirk.

"Didn't anyone tell you that black is my colour?"

"Not anymore it's not." Zelena circled Regina counter to the rings Regina was prowling around her. "I'm going to take that from you too. I'm going to take everything from you."

"And why is that, sister-sweet?" Regina's teeth clipped out every word. "Why the vendetta? What could I possibly have done to inspire such ire?"

"You had everything!" Zelena barked. "Everything I wanted, absolutely everything, and you didn't deserve one piece of it. You STILL don't deserve it, so I'm taking it. All of it."

Regina threw back her head and laughed. She laughed long and loud and in Zelena's face. When she mustered herself under control, still laughing in the face of her sister's rage, she spoke from behind bared teeth.

"What are you going to take? Hmm? My memories? Already gone. My family? They're all dead. My wealth? I've still got the biggest house here!" Regina laughed in her face again, swinging arm wide and almost giving a little two step with her glee. "You've already lost, you idiot! There's nothing to take."

"There's your life." Zelena snarled and Regina spun again, still dancing apparently, she grinned showing all her teeth.

"Take it, if you can, it'd be a welcome reprieve." She ground out every word and the mirth seemed to leave her for a moment. Her eyes bored into Zelena's, digging deep, searching for something.

"I will destroy you." Zelena growled but it was oddly calm. So sure, so certain.

If Regina felt a flicker of fear or doubt…it didn't show.

"God, you're boring." She said instead.

Had Emma blinked, she'd have missed it entirely. Even though she hadn't blinked, she barely saw Regina move.

There was a meaty thwak! Zelena's head snapped to the side and she staggered back a step and it took a moment for Emma to realise that Regina had just let fly a mean right across her sister's jaw. This was a woman that was fast enough to catch crossbow bolts mid-flight. She might not have Muhammad Ali's height and breadth, but she could sure as shit punch faster than him and the slightly dazed look in Zelena's eyes showed it.

"Fight if you're going to fight, but enough of this idiotic posturing. Nobody cares about your baggage, they just want me to put you down like the rabid dog you are." Regina drawled in a thoroughly bored tone knowing it was the exact thing that would goad Zelena into a rage.

It worked and then some.

"Bitch!"

Zelena's hand clawed in the air and Regina's choked. She was hoisted up off the ground as if an invisible hand had lifted her. Her toes pointed straight down at the ground but they didn't kick. She didn't struggle.

"I'm going to enjoy killing you." Zelena murmured and then flung her arm wide.

Regina was sent flying, spinning through the air, up and up and up and then crashing through the clock tower of the library.

Emma, eyes wide, breaths shivering hot and tight in and out of her chest, stared at the gaping hole in the shattered tower.

Regina did not reappear.

"Oh…shit." Emma murmured and Zelena looked disappointed.

"Well, that was about as exciting as expected." She huffed out a sigh. "What does a girl have to do to get a decent opponent around here?"

Emma kept glancing up at the clock tower.

No way. No way had Regina just been taken out by this pilgrim hatted pretender. Regina was the Evil Goddamn Queen. She had survived curses and Dark Ones, swords and mobs, a soul sucking wraith, Prince Charming out for her head and the paperwork of running an entire town for thirty years. No way she had been defeated by someone that was rumoured to be done in by a bucket of water.

Zelena turned to Emma, teeth bared in a shark smile, and thunder boomed overhead. Her pale eyes glittered with a hungry kind of light when she looked over the crowd.

"Now…who wants their wings first?"

A beam of light came out of nowhere and blasted Zelena square in the chest. The Witch was sent flying backwards, punched into the road and dragged thirty feet. The ringing column of light thundering into her every inch of the way.

Emma twisted, her teeth bared in a fierce grin when she saw Regina standing in the ragged hole where the clock face had once been.

Without missing a beat, Regina hopped out of the window and plummeted to the ground.

There was a street shaking boom when she hit the ground in a crouch, one fist punching into the road hard enough to spiderweb cracks through the concrete, her other hand outstretched, still smoking from her spell.

She lifted her head, her face a grim warmask, and the whites of her eyes glowed like headlamps.

She slowly rose from her crouch and dusted off her coat with one red gloved hand. She never took her eyes from Zelena struggling to her feet, her hair ruined, her hat askew and smoke billowing from her chest where Regina had struck her.

Zelena, incredibly, still held the Dark One's dagger in her hand and she levelled it at Regina, spitting a command that held too much rage to be clearly heard.

Rumplestiltskin appeared behind Regina and grabbed her about the waist, pinning her arms to her side, intending to hold in her in place for Zelena's advance.

Zelena, being of the Enchanted Forest, had never really come across the concept of hand to hand combat for women. Not for witches at any rate.

Regina was a veteran of wars.

She twisted like a cat, lashing backwards with her head and landing a stunning blow on Rumple's nose. He cried out, loosening his arms around her and she spun, lashing out with a heel kick to his chest that sent him careening backwards, smashing through the library doors and disappearing into the darkness beyond.

Regina spun, her teeth bared and eyes still glowing.

"This is pointless!" Zelena spat, hoisting herself out of the trench Regina had thrown her into. "Everything Rumplestiltskin taught you he taught me too and I was the better student!"

"That's the difference between you and I, dear," Regina started towards Zelena too, her heels clipping a fast tempo on the street, "YOU are still his student."

"I have long since surpassed him." Zelena growled.

"Says you." Regina bared her teeth in that grin again, her hands were glowing, the bones lighting them up from within. "You might have had a troop of monkeys to keep you company but I had something far better."

"And what was that?" Zelena lifted her hand and the glow in Regina's hands flickered, dying. Regina didn't seem all that bothered.

"Comic books."

Zelena had a moment to look confused and then Regina's eyes exploded.

Twin beams of ruby light blasting out of her eyes and smashing into Zelena's face.

The Witch screamed, staggering backwards, her skin sizzling and smoking. She cast wildly, throwing up a hasty shield and twisting away. The dagger flashed in the light and Regina coughed in surprise when the Dark One reappeared and sent her soaring with a wild gust of force.

Regina flew across the street and crashed into the trashcans outside one of the store fronts. She skipped over the ground and smacked into the wall leaving an imprint of her body in the brickwork before she slapped onto the sidewalk.

She growled and hopped to her feet. She didn't even look winded.

"This is getting old." Regina stomped her foot onto the lid of one of the trashcans and it bounced up into her hand. "Catch."

She hurled the trashcan lid like a discus and Zelena swore, ducking out of the way and still clutching at her face.

The metal disc had not been intended for her.

It smacked clean into Rumplestiltskin's middle and folded him in half, snapping his feet up off the floor and toppling him onto the ground.

Had she had to face the Dark One in open combat, a Dark One intent on killing her, one that had a vendetta against her, one that had access to the centuries of accumulated experience of the Dark One as he was and all those that had come before him…well, the fight not be going nearly so well as it was.

Rumplestiltskin had no desire to see Regina dead, nor any of the rest of them. He knew that Regina alone stood between Zelena and the rest of the town. He was doing what Zelena ordered and no more.

It was all he could do to help.

"Enough of this!" Zelena conjured a fireball and hurled it at Regina, having to take her hand away from her injured face to do so.

Regina blurred to the side she moved so quickly. The fireball splashing harmlessly against a brick wall.

"You have a little something," Regina lifted her hand and tapped the corner of her eye, "right here."

"You'll pay for that." Zelena seethed, her burned skin showing its natural emerald shade under the smoke. Regina had burned the magic clean out of her.

"We've already covered that I've got nothing left for you to take." Regina sauntered closer, her eyes searching again, looking for weaknesses.

Zelena endeavoured not to give her any.

"I could always take your heart." Zelena pounced, slinking forward and plunging her hand into Regina's chest.

The Queen tilted her head and arched a brow.

"What's the matter, big sis?" She gripped Zelena's wrist and hauled her hand from within her chest, her empty hand. She squeezed. She squeezed until bones cracked and Zelena grunted in pain. "Didn't mommy ever tell you never to bring a heart to a witch fight? Oh, that's right, she abandoned you."

Zelena yelled and backhanded Regina in the temple with the hilt of the dagger.

Regina was staggered by that. The concussive blast of magic from the Dark One's dagger sent her reeling and she crashed to one knee.

"Where is it?!" Zelena thundered at her and Regina lifted her head, swinging her hair out of her face, blood dripping down her face. She bared her teeth in a bloodied grin.

"So that's what you're after."

"And I'll get it too." Zelena held out her hand and her broom appeared in it with a thud.

Leaping into the air, Zelena billowed away into the night.

Regina rocketed up into the air after her. She kicked off the ground so hard that she left footprints punched into the asphalt three inches deep. She snatched the broom by the bushel and hauled, yanking it clean out from under the Witch. With a yell and a violent swing, Regina whirled the broom full circle and cracked it down over Zelena's back with the sickening whipping sound of a birch switch…only this switch was three inches in diameter.

Zelena coughed, so pained that she couldn't even scream, and smashed into the street.

Regina screamed, plunging down like a stooping hawk and landing Jimmy Choos first in Zelena's back. She dropped to straddling her sister's back in an instant and fisted her hand in Zelena's red hair, her hat long since knocked from her head.

"Now who's enjoying murder?" Regina snarled in an inhuman voice and hauled back, smashing Zelena's face into the ground.

Again and again and again.

She might have killed her, might have succeeded in wiping her sister out, had she not forgotten about her little minions.

With a screech, they stooped on her from the black of the night.

Regina made a choked off sound of pain when the monkeys tore into her. Grasping gnarled hands wrenched at her clothes and hair, dragging her from Zelena's back, pinning her to the street in a savage press of beating fists and sharp feathered wings.

Regina set fire to herself.

With a cacophonous boom, Regina was suddenly the epicentre of a small explosion. Her entire body wreathed in white hot flames that flashed blue. The heat was so intense that it pushed the gaping crowd back even further than their respectable distance of thirty yards.

Regina bounded up off the street and clasped the nearest monkey in a crushing bear hug.

It shrieked.

Clawing and biting at her, desperate to be free. It died in screaming agony. Thrashing into a cinder and finally crumbling to blackened ash in her arms.

She turned, a darkness within the white flame, barely visible beneath the magnesium sparking flare of fire she had conjured about herself and spoke in a hollow rasping voice that seemed to be moulded of the fire itself.

"Who's next?"

The monkeys danced back out of her range, shielding their faces from the solar burn of her flame. Their fur steaming and crisping she was so bright.

A light that snuffed when the dagger punched into her back.

Regina's mouth opened in a wordless gape and –after a stunned second- she bellowed a scream that blew every single one of the street lamps.

Zelena withdrew the knife with a wet shunk of sound and Regina staggered away, spinning to snarl at her sister with an animal rage that seemed to shock even the piebald green witch with its ferocity.

Regina was so stoked with magic that she was bleeding fire, her jacket beginning to smoulder from the trailing plumes of power that sparked and whirled from her in waves and eddies.

She was suddenly as predatory as any big cat. Her entire posture changed and she began to prowl. Not the measuring circling that she had danced earlier but a low and measured gait, coiling her body tighter and tighter in preparation for the pounce.

"Drip, drip, drop…" Regina's teeth bared in a manic grin, her flaming blood beginning to bloom lower and lower over her jacket. She didn't appear to notice.

"Little…April…shower…"

"What?" Zelena looked strongly as if she suspected the Dark One's dagger had driven her sister completely stark raving mad.

At least, she thought that right up until the first droplet of water hit her face and burned into her like the most virulent of acids.

Zelena without the broad brim of her hat was left open to the elements and she clutched at her face, the water doing absolutely nothing to soothe the burns she had already weathered.

"What's the phrase," Regina tilted her head, the madness consuming her features entirely, "bring the thunder?"

"You wouldn't." Zelena shook her head. "You couldn't."

"I moved the moon, dear. Clouds are a cakewalk." Regina sneered and raised her hand. She snapped her fingers once and the sound was a clap of thunder rather than any mortal sound and the heavens opened.

Water, a deluge, a torrent, a plague of water fell on them all.

Zelena shrieked and disappeared in a spiralling plume of smoke. Her monkeys screaming, clapping into the air with an applause of terror.

The rain thundered, raindrops the size of golf balls splattering the street so hard they bounced twice. They hit so hard that the crowd were actually bowed under their weight. It was seconds for the water to cover Main Street, overwhelming the storm drains in moments, rising to their ankles in less than a minute.

Then it stopped.

Emma stood alongside her companions and watched Regina stand tall and proud in the street, her back no longer flaming at least, and steam rising from her like a cloud of her own malevolence given form.

Her hand was still raised and she slowly waved it forward.

Emma's neck craned back in worry when dark shadows passed over them. She frowned when she saw great blocky shapes lower to the street.

Shipping containers.

Three huge shipping containers, holes punched into their underside, swung over the street and then touched gently down, neatly lined up at the side of the road.

A trick.

A powerfully magical trick, but a con nonetheless.

Emma's lips kicked in a smirk. She was soaked to the skin, her hair plastered down her back, the cold rapidly seeping into her bones but Regina had done it.

Not defeated Zelena, but certainly given her a hard enough kick in the teeth to go away and think about her life.

Regina straightened her shoulders, shook out her hair that was as soaked as the rest of them, and stalked away down the street.

"Regina!" Emma called out to her, running after the older woman. "Regina, wait!"

Emma hesitated to grab her by the shoulder, mindful of the wound she had taken, so she slipped in front of her and forced her to stop.

"Where are you going?"

"Not now, Miss Swan." Regina sidestepped her and continued down the street.

"Seriously, Regina, you just kicked the Wicked Witch of the West's ass. I'd say that's earned you at least a thank you."

"Fantastic. You're welcome." Regina attempted to step around her again but stalled when she came face to mob with her audience. "What?"

"You alright?"

It was Granny who spoke in her gruff way. It was only then that Regina noticed the green and white box held in her hand. She had brought a first aid kit.

How odd.

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

This from Hook at her back and Regina sighed but didn't turn to look at him.

"Of this I am aware." She shooed at the crowd. "Excuse me."

Grumpy didn't budge.

"Why'd you kill one of the monkeys?"

"What?" Regina snapped at him, her patience rapidly dwindling.

"The monkeys! You know they're our people and you killed one of them! What if it was one of our friends? One of our family?!"

Regina levelled a long and blank look at him and then appeared to come to a decision.

She punched him harder than she'd punched Zelena.

Grumpy was punted back several feet, further than Gold had flung Emma, and he crashed to the street.

Regina stalked through the gap left by his sudden departure and was sure to step on him rather than over him on her way out.

"Oh good," Granny drawled, "I was worried she'd actually turned over a new leaf and I was going to have to start liking her."

"Regina, come on, at least let us take a look at that wound." Emma hurried after Regina again and drew level with her in time to see her cough.

It was a horrid wet sound, blood blurting from between Regina's lips and she lifted her hand to try and catch it, like she intended to put it back in and then her legs buckled.

Regina staggered badly, hitting one of the cars lining the street and sliding down it to thump onto the road.

"Regina!" Emma hurried forward and dropped to her knees beside the sorceress.

Regina blinked blearily and coughed again. She choked out the words, wet and bubbling.

"He should have let me…pass."

"What, so you could die halfway home rather than where there's someone to help you?" Emma snapped and moved out of the way for Granny who dropped into a crouch at their side without hesitation.

She snapped open the medical kit and measured the blood soaking down Regina's chin and into that expensive coat of hers with a worried grimness.

"Too late." Regina coughed a sodden laugh. "She punctured my lung…bitch…"

"Your family's fucked up." Emma agreed and helped Granny open Regina's coat to reveal her shirt underneath. A bloom of dark low on her chest on the right side. The dagger had punctured her clean through and through.

Granny swore under her breath and looked over at Emma. She subtly shook her head.

"No." Emma shook her head. "That Witch has killed enough of our people, I'm not letting her take another."

"What…going to…try saving me?" Regina laughed again, more blood bubbling from her mouth.

"Come on, Regina!" Emma snarled at her. "Heal yourself. I know you can."

"Can't…actually." Her breath was rattling in her throat now and she lolled back against the car. Her eyes were glassy and beginning to lose focus. "Magicking superpowers…not as easy as…it looks."

"No. You said earlier, you don't lose. Come on. Heal yourself. There's got to be something left."

"Liar." Regina smirked and pointed to herself. "I've done nothing…but lose…since the day…I was born."

Regina began to sag, sliding further down the car, the light in her eyes began to dim.

"No!" Emma gripped her by the lapels and hauled her close. Regina hung limply in her hold. "No more. Not again. I'll not break this curse only to have to watch Henry have to grieve for his father as well as his mother."

"Take him away…" Regina's eyes fluttered, closing, Emma feared for the last time. "Take him…to…happinnn…"

"No." Emma caught Regina when she went completely limp, sagging forward into her chest.

She looked over to Granny, open mouthed, then up at David.

He stared down at the suddenly tiny seeming Evil Queen. The mortal shell left over from a woman that had been so much larger than life. She slumped against Emma, her eyes closed as if in sleep and he…no.

"No." He shook his head and looked Emma dead in the eye. "Save her."

"What?" Emma gaped up at him.

"I don't like it, but you make her stronger. Her experience and your power…you two can do great and terrible things together. Save her."

"I don't know how."

"Now would be an excellent time to learn, girl." Granny offered sagely and Emma looked between them for long pounding moments.

"Right…cheat death…right." She looked down at Regina and moved suddenly, setting her back, laying her out on the ground. "Pretty sure it's not the first time you've done it you canny bitch."

Emma hesitated for a moment and then set her hands over Regina's sternum and her forehead. That seemed about right. She closed her eyes and dug deep, as deep as she'd dug for Neal and deeper still. Regina was tapped out, Emma could feel it. That yawning reservoir of strength that the Queen had all but run dry.

Emma needed to fill it again…with what?

Power, she needed power, she had to…the mains.

Emma could feel it around her. The thrum of electricity running under where she sat and zipping over her head from the wires both above and below ground.

Yes, that would do nicely.

Emma summoned it, all of it. She gathered it to her and the lights dimmed. She kept pulling and they flickered, sputtering, dying. First on Main Street then the block, then the block beyond that. A radius of ten blocks later and Emma was only halfway done.

Electricity zapped and sang around her. It cracked the air like a thousand whips, making her hair stand on end and leaving the taste of dead pennies in her mouth. The stench of ozone pressed down on them like a physical thing and Emma dug deeper still. Right down into the heart of herself, right down to the bones of her soul and she sucked out the damn marrow because they needed Regina.

Emma might be good for breaking curses but Regina was going to be the one keeping them alive and giving her time to do it.

Emma thrummed with power, shuddering with it. It crackled from her skin in a hazy corona that drove Granny and Charming back several steps.

Sucking in a deep breath, Emma braced herself, and shunted all of it, every last watt, into Regina.

The effect was instantaneous and explosive.

"FUCK!"

Regina roared back to consciousness, legs kicking and arms clawing. She shoved past Emma, hurling herself to her feet and ran several steps before she crashed into one of the shipping containers she had dropped there earlier. She hunched her arms in towards her chest, hopping from foot to foot, lightning striking from her expensive shoes and grounding itself into the street.

The whites of her eyes glowed like headlamps again, the iris completely neon purple, and her hair tumbled about her head tossed by a wind that no one else could feel.

"Fuck!" Regina shrieked again and punched the shipping container hard enough to punt a dent into the solid steel hull. "Fu-uck." She shivered convulsively again and Emma cautiously weaved to her feet.

"I think I might have broken her."

"Her Majesty knows how to swear?" Granny smirked and folded her arms over her chest. "Interesting."

"Gods above, Swan, what did you DO?!" Regina tried to still herself but couldn't. It would have been funny, her little hopping from side to side, but she did look to be in quite a bit of pain. She clutched at her ribs and gave a harsh yell that sparked blue from behind her teeth.

"I…healed you. Gave you some magic back."

"And half the power grid." Regina clutched at her ribs still and grimaced, twisting herself back and forth. "I taste ham. Oh, this is horrible. Gods, it hurts. Is my hair on fire? I think you melted my underwire." Regina jittered back and forth in a little circle, trying to burn off some of the energy that had lit her up like a Christmas Tree.

"My eyelashes hurt. Ugh. Take me to the vet's and put me down, I'll never race again. Is anyone wearing green? I don't think I can see green anymore." Regina squinted at Granny and then David. "You all look to be British Racing Fuchsia."

"Definitely broke her." Emma muttered.

"I dunno, I kinda like her better this way." David appeared at her side and Emma looked up at him, her mouth twisting.

"Well, we're a little screwed if she can't see green. Public enemy number one would then be rather well camouflaged, don't you think?"

David burst out laughing.

"Am I inside out? I feel like I'm inside out." Regina was clutching Granny's shoulders and looking her in the eye. She suddenly clapped her hands over her nose. "I think I can smell radio."

"Maybe we should hit her on the head. Try and switch channels."

"Yeah, because we need to add concussion to this!" Emma snapped and folded her arms over her chest, frowning at Regina who appeared to be trying to pluck something from Granny's aura.

"She'll be fine." David waved it away. "Way I figure it, it's just a different kind of mad. At least this one might be entertaining rather than eviscerating."

"Can anyone else hear the Conan Obrien Show?" Regina stuck a finger in her ear and waggled it as if to clear up her reception.

"Okay, I think you need a drink." Granny decided for her and reached out, taking Regina's hand in hers. "Come on, on the house."

"Say it ain't so!" Regina was towed along behind Granny already quite considerably drunk on a fair few megawatts of electricity and some good old fashioned charcoal refined Saviour Power. "You're giving stuff away?"

"Just to you and just for tonight. Don't get used to it."

"I am going to drink my weight in Talisker." Regina declared.

"Should we be adding alcohol to this?" David murmured to Emma.

They both watched when Regina passed the dwarves helping Grumpy to his feet. She quite deliberately leaned over and extended a single finger, helping them to a generous portion of the lightning like static electricity she had floating around her.

Every single one of the dwarves yelled in pain and dropped to the street, twitching.

"Regina!"

The sorceress was too busy holding herself up whilst laughing hysterically to take any notice.

"Come on, girl." Granny sighed as if this was all in a day's work. She'd raised a werewolf after all. Maybe it was. "There's a bottle or six with your name on them."

"Excellent." Regina snapped the fingers of her free hand and nearly fell over when she forgot to compensate for the weight of a full bottle of whiskey suddenly being in her palm.

She staggered, catching herself with a human pretzel impression and then snapped the fingers of her other hand. Two crystal tumblers appeared there and she grinned beatifically at them.

"Now, you've been a wonderful audience, such a great crowd." Regina began to back down the street. "Thanks so much, tip your waitress, I'll be here all week and try the lasagne!"

Regina held the bottle of whiskey and the tumblers up into the air and then disappeared in a puff of glittering smoke that was definitely a family trademark.

Emma let out a long sigh of displeasure.

Granny summed up the situation rather aptly.

"That had better not have all been a ruse just to get my secret stash."

The Forest…

Robin whirled when he felt that familiar pressure of magic against his senses and spun, bow already raised.

He yanked it up when the magic was purple and Regina all but fell out of the cloud of it.

"Whoop!" She staggered and righted herself, managing not to drop anything she was holding. "Shit."

It was a few more staggering steps and a bemusing little twirl that sent the skirt of her coat to flaring before she came to a halt. She spun to find Robin staring at her, the hilt of his crossbow canted on his hip.

"Ah, there you are, I brought booze." Regina waggled the bottle and the tumblers at him.

"I take it the fight went well?"

"I didn't die for long." Regina nodded and walked with that exaggerated care that drunkards have towards the stump he had been guarding all night. She set the two tumblers down and then looked at the bottle of whiskey with great interest and very little understanding.

"Didn't die for…right." Robin edged closer, watching her finally figure out that she had to break the wax seal on the bottle so she could open it. She sloshed three fingers worth into each glass and then took a generous pull from the bottle herself.

She looked him dead in the eye, measuring his cautious observation and frowned.

"What?"

"I just…it's still here."

"What is?"

"Your heart?" Robin looked more worried.

"Oh! Right. That. Wonderful." She picked up her glass and drained half of it in a single gulp. The woman drank faster than Little John did and she certainly didn't have the mass to handle so much so quickly.

That and she already seemed plenty drunk enough for a whole tavern of people.

"You keep it." She waved his glass at him. "Drink!"

"I, you…what?"

"As is made quite evident, the first place my dear sister is going to look for my little coal ticker is in my chest…or my house or my office or my vault or…I don't know…my favourite coffee cup at the diner. I need to be unpredictable."

"So far so good." Robin finally accepted the drink she was waving at him. Accept it or wear it seemed to be his options.

"So, the way I figure it, I give it to you. An overture of trust that NO ONE would expect of me and –boom- problem solved. Jenny Green Teeth will never find the hateful thing."

Regina used her left hand to try and reach her right pocket and walked in a little circle before she managed to catch what was inside it. She hauled out a black pouch and waved it at him.

"Mmm!" She was too busy drinking to speak so he reached out and took the pouch from her while she drained her glass.

"Put it in that. Should mask any magical signature that it gives off. It's fairly potent after all." Regina went on to pour herself a full glass of whiskey, help herself directly from the bottle again and then clunk it onto the stump once more.

"Much like its owner." Robin agreed, dropping to his knees and digging into the sod at the base of the stump. He unearthed the heart and stowed it in the pouch. He rose to his feet and looked her right in the eye. Hers were glassy and unfocussed, his were worried and icy blue. "You're going to trust me? A common thief."

"Can't steal what's given, bowman." Regina shrugged and smiled at him in an admittedly winsome manner.

Robin huffed out a breath and raised his glass to his lips, taking a deep pull from it.

"Attaboy." Regina smirked at him, weaving a little.

"You are very drunk, madam."

"And YOU are very…English." She decided after a moment. "It's a terrible quality."

Robin gave a bemused smirk.

"Though you are quite pretty, so I suppose that's something." She reached up and clapped her hand three times against his cheek quite hard. She rested her hand there and looked at him dead in the eye, she frowned after a moment. "Gods, I really hope I got laid in the missing year because a year and a half without getting any is just…saddening."

"Laid?"

"Like a rug." Regina smiled in that charming way of hers again. Though he would be sure never to use that particular adjective around her. Not if he wanted to keep his skin where it was. "A screaming, sweaty, bonelessly happy, rug."

Robin caught on and his eyebrows rose.

"Ah, well, I suppose…there's no reason you wouldn't have had…companionship."

"Aside from being the scourge of all the realms, mass murderer of thousands and having a sex drive that could keep a brothel in business for a year?"

Robin blinked at that.

"Some of those are admirable qualities." He said perfectly seriously.

"I KNOW, right?" Regina turned and hopped up onto the stump, pitching her empty glass away and drinking directly from the bottle again. "I mean, gods, I just hope he was human. That long without –you know- a girl's standards can be lowered."

"Human?" Robin couldn't prevent his curiosity from surfacing.

The queen was a puzzle, one he wanted to take apart and put back together again only once he understood all the pieces. He couldn't really say why, he just had to know her and –while she seemed to be opening up to him one fractured piece at a time- well, there was a reason that he was a thief. Being preciously low on scruples being one of them.

"I don't judge!" Regina waved effusively with the bottle. "Male, female, vampire, werewolf, human, satyr, merman…if they can make me scream I'm of an open mind." She nodded firmly to herself and then looked over at him, her eyes clambering down him and then crawling all the way back up. She tilted her head.

"How's your drink?"

"Entertaining." Robin was still nursing his first one and she was two thirds through the bottle.

"You lightweight." She noticed too.

"I am not as practiced in the art of drunkenness as some." He agreed.

"That's quittin' talk." Regina sloshed more whiskey into his glass. "You don't take over the known world without being able to hold your alcohol. I just swallowed the power grid and I'm still standing. You've got to keep up."

To that effect, she drained the rest of the bottle in three long swallows. She hurled it up into the air and blasted it out of the sky with a fireball that crackled with lightning.

Shimmering sand rained down on them both and she laughed merrily to herself. She looked over at him again.

"Drunk enough for me to have my wicked way with you yet?" She wrinkled her nose when she realised what she had said. "Ooh, no, not wicked. I promise not to turn green until at LEAST tomorrow morning."

Robin smirked and looked down at his glass.

"Not quite, your majesty. Besides, I would much rather you be sober to enjoy the experience."

"Pfffft." Regina huffed out a breath and looked out into the dark of the forest. "Figures."

"I would be no man at all if I were to take advantage of your drunkenness, milady."

"Even if I promise to respect you in the morning?"

"Even then."

"Alright! I declare this night a total loss." Regina hopped down from the stump and nailed the landing even though she nearly pitched right over at one point. She held her hands out for balance and then turned to look up at him. "Tall." She muttered.

"Small." He countered and she smirked in that drunken way of hers.

"I prefer 'snug'." She wrinkled her nose when she smiled at him and he thought it was quite adorable…until her words and her meaning caught up with him.

"I look forward to finding out." He saluted her with his glass and drained it, not missing the hungry way she watched his throat work. Her tongue stroked over her lower lip and then sucked it between her teeth.

Robin could feel her heart inside his shirt and the pouch he'd wrapped it in. It was pounding hot and heavy against his skin.

Her fingers suddenly hooked in his belt and Robin's eyes flew wide when he was quite suddenly yanked against her. He yelped when static electricity struck him several times where their bodies were pushed flush together and she pounced on the opportunity to haul his mouth down over hers and kiss him like a damn demon.

Robin made a groaning sound of pleasure and pain. Her mouth was skilful and her tongue licked him in all the right ways, but her body was crackling with an energy that lanced him wherever they touched. His lips were already chapped from it and she seemed to belatedly realise. Drawing away from him and rocking down onto the flats of her feet again.

Her tongue slid over her lip once more, savouring his taste like a tiger after a hearty meal and she smirked lazily.

"Oh yes, you'll keep." She smoothed her hand, more energy whipping between them, down over his chest, and pursed her lips in a pout of appreciation.

Robin was pretty sure that his hair was standing on end.

"Now, I'm going to go before I throw up on you."

With that happy declaration, she disappeared in a plume of smoke, her laughter echoing in the empty air she left behind.

Robin huffed out a breath between tingling lips and shoved a hand through his hair.

She was going to be a tough one to court, that was for sure. Her sense of humour alone might kill him.

Robin turned, scooping up his crossbow and hiking into the woods. He was halfway home before he realised he hadn't made the conscious decision to court her. It just seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

Oh, lord, was he in trouble.