Chapter Nine

Before she can push back through the door to the main room, it is ripped off its hinges in front of her, and she's snatched up and held in front of her mother's face by those wretched vines again.

"You thought you could get away with lying to me, did you, Regina?" Cora growls. She waves a hand at Zelena, one side of her face now an angry green weal, and scoffs, "So did this one. Now look at her."

Cora turns back to Regina. "She told me all about your little family," she says, and Regina shoots a betrayed look at Zelena, who just mouths I'm sorry, I'm sorry at her over and over.

Cora twitches her hand, and the vines shake Regina until her teeth rattle. "Well?" Cora says, stilling the vines. "Don't you want your family to meet your mother? Call them out of hiding, wherever they are."

"They're not here," Regina croaks, grinning through the blood she can feel welling in her mouth from her split lip. "I sent them away."

"Oh, did you?" Cora says. "Thought that would keep them safe? Thought they'd be able to get away?" The manic edge to her smile sends ice down Regina's spine. "Not to worry. Young Henry will be easy enough to track down, and so useful as an heir, once we've seized back the power in this town. And as for the other- a Miss Swan, was it?"

Regina's stomach churns. "She's no one," she says desperately, "no one at all."

Cora's teeth flash bright under the bakery lights. "Oh really?" She says. "Odd, I remember you claiming that once before." She squeezes her hand into a fist and Regina chokes, air supply suddenly cut off. "I remember it being a lie then, too!"

"Mother, stop!" Zelena suddenly yells from the other side of the room, "She can't breathe."

Cora sighs in disappointment and waves her hand, letting Regina drop, boneless to the floor. "It really is a pity you missed out on all the lessons I taught Regina as a child," she says to Zelena, moving further away, out of Regina's reach as she struggled back to her feet, unsteady. "Well- I suppose we'll have to start from scratch."

She gestures sharply at Zelena, and Regina instinctively sucks in a breath as a familiar burst of magic plucks Zelena off her chair and slams her, hard on the ground.

Cora laughs gently and turns to Regina. "Now," she says. "Where were we?"

Regina is sure, now. There's no way to defeat Cora- she knows Regina too well for her to be able to surprise her, Zelena is still horribly still where she's splayed out on the floor, and Emma-

The thought makes Regina stand taller, hands balling into fists at her side. Emma is somewhere safe with Henry, by now, and Regina will fight with everything she has to make sure it stays that way, victory or not.

But it does mean that she is facing her mother alone, feeling as small in her presence as she ever did when she was a child. All the power in the world can't keep her from remembering how it felt to be under Cora's control.

Cora's eyes cast over Regina's hunched frame as she struggles to stand on shaking legs. Her lip curls in disgust.

"Pathetic," she says, sweeping a hand almost carelessly through the air, a wave of magic following in its wake that shatters the counter and brings Regina to her knees again.

Cora strides closer, careful to stand just out of reach, twisting her wrist to pull Regina upright, dangling her from vines that have sprouted amidst the wreckage of what used to be Regina's sanctuary. "I had such high hopes for you, dear. To hold power over life and death, well," a vine twines its way around Regina's throat, forcing her head up to look Cora in the eyes as she prowls closer. "You could have been the greatest witch the world has ever seen."

A sick rage boils up in Regina's stomach. She's heard those words so many times, lived them again and again in her nightmares, but she refuses to be held sway by them anymore. She strains against the vines, pulling herself closer to her mother even as the pressure on her neck becomes excruciating. She grins in grim satisfaction as Cora takes a step back, away from Regina's deadly touch.

"Here's a secret, mother," Regina growls, voice straining as the vines tighten ever further. "I don't give a shit about what you wanted for me."

Cora's voice goes deadly quiet. "Well, then, you have been spending too much time with that low-born Swan woman, haven't you?" She sighs. "I suppose you leave me no choice, then. I had so hoped it wouldn't come to this."

Her arms begin moving in complex patterns and darkness swirls around them, condensing until it appears to be draining the color from the very world around it. "I simply can't let you live if you won't listen to reason."

Regina's heartbeat is pounding in her ears, her focus narrowed to the darkness gathering between her mother's hands, and she swears she hears the sound of bells chiming over the static hum of power overwhelming her senses.

Regina braces herself, thinks of Henry and Emma, safe and free and far, far away from Cora, and squares her shoulders against her mother's magic one last time-

But the familiar agony never comes. Instead, a blur of red and gold streaks across her vision and suddenly Emma is there - Emma is there; Emma is throwing a sad smile at Regina over her stupid, brave, reckless shoulder; Emma is spreading her arms wide and accepting the dark bolt like a gift; Regina screams -

And Emma's body drops to the ground before her, still as the day Regina met her.

Regina cannot even cry - the black hole of despair she feels growing in the depths of her lets no sound escape but a high keening whine, the sound of her heart breaking in her chest.

Cora looks down at Emma's body and tsks, shaking out her hands. "Such a waste of power on such an insignificant target," she laments. "Now," she says. "Where were we?"

Regina cannot even find the strength to offer a taunt in reply. Head bowed, she waits for the end to come.

Instead, a green-mottled leg in a tattered boot steps into her vision. "We were right about here, I think," Zelena says, squaring her shoulders as Regina glances up toward her face.

Cora scoffs, "Not you again," but Zelena stands firm. Cora shoots a spell at her, offhand, but Zelena draws up the energy to reflect it, bracing herself as a shield in front of Regina.

Cora frowns. "Why are you doing this?" She shoots another bolt of magic at Zelena, but she bats it away to land on the linoleum nearby, which promptly starts boiling. "You barely even know her!" Cora shouts, and her next bolt goes wide, the wake of it twisting Zelena's hair as she stands her ground.

"We may not have grown up together," Zelena says, grunting as the shield she hastily erects absorbs the power of Cora's next spell. "But I do know her.

"I know how kind she is," Zelena yells, throwing a bolt of her own back at Cora, who begins stumbling backward in shock.

"I know how strong she is," She takes a step forward, gathering magic now with both hands and hurling it at her mother.

"And I know how much love she deserves!" Zelena's scream only seems to fuel her as she reaches out and uses Cora's own spell against her, raising Cora into the air with the strength of her magic alone.

Her grip on Cora never falters, but her face twists in agony. "I could have loved you, too, you know?" she says, voice hoarse and barely audible over the hum of her own magic. "If you'd treated me like a daughter, I would have done anything for you. But instead you discarded me, threw me away like I was nothing!"

She's crying now, tears mingling with the blood still flowing sluggishly down her cheek. "That's fine," she cries. "Do whatever you want to me. But don't you dare. Do that. To. Regina."

Zelena squeezes again, and Cora's face goes slack, her arms dropping, and the magical vines that have been holding Regina up drop to the floor.

She gasps in a deep breath, then another, struggling to her feet and placing her hand on Zelena's shoulder. "It's okay," she says. "Zelena. It's okay. I'm here."

Some of the anguish bleeds out from Zelena's face, and she loosens her magical hold on Cora, although she doesn't drop her entirely. Cora gulps in deep lungfuls of air as the pressure eases from around her ribs.

"You know what has to be done," Zelena says. "I'm sorry, Regina but it has to be you."

Regina nods. "I know," she says, and she walks forward as Zelena slowly lowers Cora to the ground. Regina stops in front of her and reaches out to grasp her by the shoulders. "Goodbye, mother," she whispers, and with one last kiss on the forehead, her mother goes limp, gone from the world forever.

The silence in the bakery is broken only by the shifting of rubble and the deep, shuddering breaths Regina takes as she looks down at Emma's lifeless body.

She knows that this is the end- there's no coming back from this. None of her practices have worked, and her mother had no solution. Second touch, dead again. Forever.

But no. This is not how Regina's story ends. She refuses. It's not fair, and once, just this once, Regina Mills is going to get what she wants.

So she stretches out a trembling hand, and reaches past what should be possible.

She pulls together all the magic she can feel -

the tingle in her fingers when fruit blossoms to life again in her hand,

the feeling of cold skin growing warm again under her fingertips,

her father's lips on her forehead just one last time -

She collects it all in her hands, a golden swirl of magic coalescing and growing as she adds the more mundane magics of her life, too -

the sound of Henry's laughter as he and Emma wrestle their way across the lawn,

the color of sunlight through emma's hair as it's tossed in the wind,

the warmth of marian's smile as she teases her,

the smell of her pastries in the oven,

the freedom she felt on Rocinante's back,

Henry's first steps -

she gathers it all up, extraordinary and mundane magic in double fistfuls, and thrusts it into Emma's chest.

She's running purely on instinct and bullheaded determination, now, but the universe has taken so much from her already, and it's not right that it should take this, too. It's not right that it should take Emma, who should never again have been as cold and still as she was the day Regina met her, the day she set this all in motion-

And Regina adds her righteous fury to the magic she can feel pouring from her palms, emptying the hot pool of rage and fear and love that has lived at the center of her for so long, and she gives, and she gives, and she gives, until the light pulsing from her hands begins to flicker and die and she slumps, exhausted, onto the linoleum floor of the bakery.

Emma is still cold next to her, the golden glow fading as it soaks into her skin, and no, no, this cannot be how it ends, this can't -

She sobs, voice catching and broken, and leans over to kiss Emma's forehead, like her father did for her, like she did for her mother, awash in grief and love, and the spark rushes from her, catching something deep in emma's chest, and a maelstrom of tendrils of light sprout forth, enveloping them both in a tornado of magic.

When it clears, Regina blinks the spots from her eyes and sees-

Emma, sitting up from the floor and smiling at her. "So," she says. "I guess the feeling's mutual?"

"Emma, don't you dare scare me like that-" and Regina has pulled her into a hug, hardly thinking about anything other than the fact that she's alive, Emma's alive.

And then her cheek grazes soft skin and she freezes, horror clutching her throat, but Emma pulls back, chuckling at the shocked look on Regina's face. "Guess you fixed a little bit more than you thought you were," she says, and brushes a finger across Regina's cheek.

Regina takes a moment to comprehend it all, and then,

She kisses her.

And it feels exactly like magic.

"I knew it!" a familiar voice says, and Henry comes sprinting around the ruined wall at the corner of the baker, Marian in tow. "I knew it!" he repeats, fists pumping the air as his mothers break apart. "True love's kiss!"

"Oh, thank God," Zelena says, and Regina sees that the green weal is gone from her face- the green stains are gone from her whole body, in fact. "If these two kept kissing, I was gonna have to jump out the window in a minute."

Regina laughs, and reaches out to sock her in the shoulder. "You're the one who told me to find a way to kiss her without making her drop dead," she reminds her, then turns back to Emma, whose smile is almost as incandescent as Regina can feel the one breaking across her own face is.

She leans her forehead against Emma's as Henry throws his arms around them both, laughing helplessly as Marian pulls a twenty out of her wallet and slaps it down in Zelena's palm.

"Damn," Marian says. "I thought they'd take until Christmas at least."

Epilogue

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

— Alexandre Dumas

It has been one month, six days, and fourteen hours since Regina Mills' mother died, again, and Regina cannot believe how much her life has changed.

She still uses her powers, sometimes - to find a killer, or freshen fruit for the bakery - but she no longer feels chained to them. She has accepted them as part of her, and has freed herself from their weight in return.

And, no longer burdened by the divide between them, she and Emma found that their happiness multiplied with every passing day.

Emma, who had never had a family, Regina, who had longed for one that would love her, and Henry, a boy now soaked in the magic of of everyday life and love.

They do not live happily ever after, because who could? But they do live, happily.

And that is more than enough.