After They Kill The Queen

I don't own anything, of course. But mostly the one line from BBC's Sherlock that I used. Reviews are love. Regina is too.

They really, really, really thought they got it right. Evil will be defeated (after all, everything led to this moment, really, the return of Emma, the memories coming back to them, the realisation of the curse, the final battle) and everything will be as it should again.

Until the reality hits them all, quite unexpectedly, from Ruby's mouth.

"So you guys are going to magic all the stuff back, right?" the young woman asks, arms crossed and looking at the situation that is happening in front of her for all the people of Storybrook to see.

Regina, fallen down on the dirty road, the point of the sword touching her neck lightly.

David, towering above her, about the pierce the weapon through the evil queen.

Mary Margaret cradling unconscious Emma in her arms like a mother would a new born child.

Granny, Henry, Archie, Sidney, Lerloy, Ashley, Katherine and all the former inhabitants of the Enchanted forest forming a circle around the Prince (King, now, after his marriage to Snow) who is about the slay the Evil Queen, as it is the right thing to do (or, at least, they have always believed that).

"Not now, Ruby," David hisses, the sword pressing harder against Regina's Adam's apple, a red spot forming around it. The Queen's eyes never left his, silently daring him to do it. She lost: they remember. There is nothing left for her in the world to love, with Emma taking Henry away completely. She thinks she even wants to die (she thinks but she is not sure because death scares her more than anything).

"Do it!" Regina commands the King. Always the Queen, even in her final moments (she wonders for a moment whether any one will ever remember that the Evil Queen's last words were a command).

Just as he flexes his muscles to do so (Emma would not, he knows, but he is stronger than his daughter and he has slay evil creatures before), Mary's voice stops him.

"David, wait."

All the attention turns to her. In the dark of the night, illuminated only by the light of the street light, her skin glows a beautiful white. Snow white.

"I must," he says, not believing his wife, his brave wife, would try to stop him.

"Think about it. She is not going anywhere, she lost" - Regina winces at these words - "and now we are maybe going to lose, too. Ruby has a good point: what happens after you do kill her?"

Everyone looks at Ruby for a moment, who shrugs. "Sorry, guys, I didn't mean to ruin the party. I mean, you can somehow get us back to the Forest and everything will be the same again, right? The curse will end, right?"

The sword is starting to be really uncomfortable against her neck and Regina wants to speak but she can't, for only one movement of her lips could cause the sword to pierce her throat. She watches instead (she flicks a strangely concerning look at the sheriff, who, just moments ago, refused to kill her and then she knocked her out with her magic, not counting on the father instincts to suddenly over take David who got her to the ground with a few moves of his sword).

There is silence and almost no one dares to breathe. What happens after the happy ending?

"Fools," Regina breathes out, feeling all the eyes on her (she likes that, an audience).

"Give her a chance to speak," Henry suggests meekly and Regina's heart skips a beat. "Last words and all," the boy mummbles. He doesn't sound as sure of her death as he was all these years. Maybe…

"The curse ended already. It made you forget and now you remembered. This is all ther—-"

"NO!" David pressed the sword against her neck stronger and she starts to choke on the pressure. "We will go back home! I will kill you and your evil and we will get back home. You hear me, witch? WE WILL GO HOME!"

In his rage he does not notice Emma's eyes open. No one does, watching him raising his sword to deliver the final swing instead, until the blonde springs forward, her knees scratching the pavement as she lands in front of Regina, protecting the woman.

The sword cuts through the red jacket and draws blood. Next it is all a mess of colours and sounds: red everywhere, staining Regina's expensive dress, the pavement, the sword. Voices crying out in despair, Mary Margaret's almost inhuman high pitched cry, Henry's sobs, gasps of every one watching. David falls to his knees, shock white and not believing what happened. It was too late for the momentum to stop when he saw his daughter's face in front of him instead of the Queen's. Why, why, why.

Why or how is not important, everyone knows. Not then. Not ever. It is the now that matters.

"Emma, Emma, Emma!" Mary Margaret repeats, cradling the seriously injured woman in her arms again, her white skin marked with smudges of blood. Emma's chest is cut deep from her arm to her hip bone and she's almost gone, as the Queen would be if she hasn't saved her.

"Do something!" someone screams desperately. Or maybe everyone screams that because there is no one who it could be addressed to. No one can do anything anymore. No one has magic, not that sort of magic. Ruby has her wolf side, Granny has her wisdom, Mr Gold has his deals and Lerloy has his axe. Archie has his umbrella, Sidney has his freedom and the fairies lack their dust. All Snowhite had was her daughter, her little Emma, her hope.

Hope, she realises and through her tears she looks up at Regina (who everyone expected to be long gone, running away in this mess of blood and cries but she strangely stays at the same spot as she was, very close to Emma and now to Snow).

Their eyes lock. It is not magic that reflects in Regina's eyes back at Snow. It is humanity.

"Please," she whispers a plea of a desperate mother. An image of a girl in a stable cradling a dead lover in her arms flashes before Regina's eyes.

Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side, Regina's mother once said.

"I lost," the Queen whispers to herself as she looks down at the blonde, putting a hand where her almost non-beating heart is, and whispers strange words in a strange language and never before heard melody of voice. She almost sings but Snow cannot hear properly for everyone is still crying and shouting and David is broken now, she knows, adding to the mess. Someone is holding Henry against his will and the little boy shouts and screams.

Regina does not know why she is doing it. She shouldn't, she knows, for if the spell works it will bring Snowhite the very thing the woman took from her: happiness. If it was David dying, the King, Prince Charming, Snowhite's true love, she would not have saved him. But this is Emma - the woman who spared her life that night, the woman who has not done anything to deserve death except for being born into their mad world of magic and curses and heartless Queens (here Regina isn't sure whether she means herself, Cora or Snowhite or all of them perhaps). So she casts the spell, trying not to think of reasons why (because everyone knows why or how is not important, not really).

Time passes somehow slow. Maybe it stopped again.

When Emma opens her eyes, for the second time that night, she finds herself staring up at Regina. Alive again for only a second, Emma's first reaction is to smile. Unsure of herself, the brunette smiles back. No one knows what that means, then, only that it feels right.

After that, well, everything starts happening. It is a happy ending, Henry decides, when he sees Snowhite embrace her daughter and Prince Charming laughing and apologising and when he notices everyone hugs and rejoices. He insists it is a happy ending even though the Evil Queen was not killed (or, as he knows, because she wasn't killed).

Henry also knows that a happy ending does not necessarily mean the ending of things. A new story begins now: a story of how hope was brought back from nothingness by forgiveness. A story of how they got back to Enchanted Forest, with the help of the Evil Queen (who, even after everything, decided to keep her title as a constant reminder of her past) and how both Regina and Emma found their happiness in the end.

How it happened, well, that is a different story all together. One that no one knows yet - or maybe, just maybe, it is you who does.

THE END