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Her first thought is that there’s something wrong with her cocoa.
“What’s the matter, love?” Killian asks and her inner lie detector is dinging so hard, the concern so fake it might as well be a lie. He can barely hide his grin.
“I think I’ve been roofied,” she says, words automatic when what she really meant to say was ‘nothing’. Nausea rolls in the pit of her stomach when Killian’s smile broadens, white teeth gleaming. “What have you done?” she asks. This can’t be happening, not again, not here.
“Relax, love, it’s just a little truth serum. Nothing bad,” Killian says, holding up his hands (well, hand and hook, Emma’s brain silently amends). “It’s just something to help you open up to me.”
That’s what he’d said. Sixteen, her first alcohol. “This’ll just make you open up to me,” he’d said and she’d thought he was cute so she’d drank it and woken up on an unfamiliar couch alone and sore. Logically, she knows this isn’t the same but it’s an invasion and she feels the cold of that night pervade her bones.
Emma punches him, taking grim satisfaction in Hook’s head hitting the back of the booth and the blood pooling from his nose before she runs. She throws up in the gutter outside the diner, trying to purge the cocoa from her system. She can’t drive. Her legs feel shaky and she can feel the beginnings of a panic attack well up in her. She stumbles across the road to the sheriff’s station, locks the doors, flicks the blinds shut and sits on the floor, back against her desk, taking in deep, gulping breaths.
In. Out. In. Out.
As the tidal wave of panic subsides, her phone rings. She ignores it. It rings again. And again.
“What?” Emma barks down the phone.
“What happened?” It’s Snow. “Ruby told me about an incident in the diner. Are you all right?”
“I-I-” She can feel the truth bubbling up inside her. “Hook drugged me. Some sort of truth potion. I’m not okay.”
There is steel in Snow’s voice when she speaks. “Give me five minutes.”
When Snow arrives at the station, it’s with David in tow and he unlocks the doors, which is good because Emma’s not up to standing up, not yet. “Hold Neal,” Snow says, passing the baby over to David who takes his son and cradles his head in his hand, though his eyes are fixed on Emma. It’s her dad’s eyes that she focuses on; they’re placid and soft and looking at her with such love and concern.
Instead of ‘Hi’, Emma finds herself saying, “I really wish you’d asked me before you called him that.” And she shudders. She hates this compulsion to tell the truth, hates not being in control.
“Oh, honey,” Snow says, cradling her in her arms and Emma tries not to flinch away. They’d made so much progress and Hook’s swept it all away with his stupid, coercive potion. “I think we need Regina’s help.”
Emma hasn’t seen Regina since the diner, since bringing back Marian and seeing Regina break, lips parted in silent horror and eyes wet. She doesn’t want to be around her now, not when she’s torn between distress on her behalf and an insane hope that just maybe Robin wasn’t meant to be her happy ending after all, that maybe it was Emma instead. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”
“She’ll have an antidote,” Snow argues. “She can help.”
“She hates me,” Emma says. “And I care about her so much and it’s killing me.” She kicks at the couch. “Fuck.”
“David, go and find Hook. Bring him in. This must be against the law,” Snow says and she shows no surprise at Emma’s revelation even though it’s something that Emma’s kept imprisoned in the deepest recesses of her mind until now. “Emma, get in the damn car.”
“No.” Emma stands, taller than her mother and arms crossed. “You can’t make me get in your car.”
“Fine,” Snow hisses, taking the baby back from David and storms out.
“She’s gone to call Regina, hasn’t she?” Emma asks her father, resignation laced into her voice. She could go after Snow and tackle her, force her to stop, but she knows it’ll only end the same way. With Regina.
“Probably,” he says, shrugging. “You all right, kiddo?”
“No,” Emma says and clenches her teeth. “Can people stop asking me questions? I don’t want to talk and something about this serum is making me lose my inhibitions.”
David pulls her into a hug and Emma cries, clutching his shirt collar and soaking his shoulder with salty tears. David’s hand rubs circles on her back, the gesture soothing. She imagines it’s something he would have done for her when she was a little girl and had nightmares.
“David,” Snow says, returning. “Hook. Before he finds a hideaway.”
David disentangles himself from Emma and presses a soft kiss to her forehead. “Love you, baby girl.”
The moment the door swings shut behind him, there’s a cloud of purple smoke and Regina arrives. “Snow, Ms Swan,” she says, nodding curtly. “Now, Ms Swan. I will need to ask you some questions to work out what exactly Hook slipped you.”
“Please call me Emma,” Emma says, shoulders shaking with the effort required to keep her tears contained.
“Very well, Emma,” Regina says, face softening when she takes in Emma’s appearance. She must look a mess: tear tracks down her face, bruises on her knuckles, lips raw and red. “Snow, you can leave us.”
Snow frowns. “I don’t want to leave Emma.”
“I want you to go,” Emma says. “I’m sorry.” It’s bad enough that Regina’s going to compel her to answer questions, let alone have her mother hear whatever Regina forces her to reveal. So Snow leaves, grip tightening on Emma’s shoulder briefly before she does, and Emma is left alone with Regina.
“I want to test something. Generally truth spells compel you to speak. If you do not wish to reveal information, simply saying ‘I do not want to tell you that’ may suffice,” Regina says. “What did you dream about last night?”
Emma blushes pink. “I… don’t want to tell you that.” Never have truer words been spoken because Emma had dreamt last night of Regina. She has flashes of hands clutching dark hair, the smell of salt and sex, loud, unfettered cries… The dreams have been coming since her memory was returned to her and the first person she saw was Regina, and they’ve been growing in intensity ever since.
“Good girl.” There’s approval in her voice but the words make Emma sick.
“Don’t call me that,” Emma says. “Just, don’t.”
Regina nods. “I won’t ask why.”
“Thank you,” Emma breathes. One of her foster fathers had called her that and she’d never liked the way he looked at her, eyes always skirting past her neck. She doesn’t need more memories dredged up further today.
Regina eyes her for a moment. “What happened at the diner?”
“Hook bought me cocoa. There was something in it. He called it a truth serum. I punched him.”
Regina swears. That soft ‘motherfucker’ is so incongruous coming from Regina’s lips that Emma can’t help but laugh and it lightens her whole body. “Something funny?” Regina asks, raising an eyebrow.
“You’re cute when you swear,” Emma says and then blushes.
“Yes, well,” Regina says and as shitty as everything is, it’s always pleasant to see her flustered. “How did you know something was wrong?”
“There was a taste,” Emma says. “Sort of bitter, like soap. Not strong, but it was there. And then he was so open about the fact that he’d done it, like pulling down my walls and forcing me to tell the truth is a good thing, like I’d be grateful to him.”
“It sounds like the serum I’ve made before,” Regina says, and Emma tries not to dwell on the fact that Regina’s made truth serums because Regina’s not the evil queen anymore. “I should be able to brew an antidote. Do you want to come with me?”
Emma nods. “I need to know what’s going into it.”
“I quite understand,” Regina says and purple smoke envelops them and they’re in Regina’s workshop beneath her father’s crypt.
Emma sits, chin resting on her hands, as Regina brews the potion. It reminds her of Chemistry classes at high school. She’d liked Chemistry, even though she’d never been much good at it. The colours they’d made in precipitation were pretty and there’d been something pleasantly mathematical about it. Emma’s always been better at numbers than words. Regina talks her through the process, explaining each ingredient as she adds it and Emma can feel the tight coil of anxiety in her stomach loosen.
“Now it just needs to brew for half an hour,” Regina says, setting the beaker on a tripod above a Bunsen burner on low heat, the flame gleaming golden.
“I’m sorry,” Emma says, picking at her cuticles, relishing the pain as she takes it too far on her left index finger.
“Hook should be sorry,” Regina replies, her eyes taking on a flash of darkness, fury.
“Not for this,” Emma says. “For Marian and Robin. I don’t regret rescuing her but I wish it hadn’t come at your expense.”
“Thank you,” Regina says. She sits, hands playing with a small glass beaker and eyes downcast. “I wasn’t in love with him, for what it’s worth. I could have been, with time.”
“I’m glad,” Emma says. Her phone buzzes with a message from David. We’ve found Hook. Locked up. We’ll discuss tomorrow. She switches her phone off because a phone call from Snow is imminent and she doesn’t want to deal with her now, not until she’s under control again.
“Why?” Regina asks, curious.
“I don’t want to answer that,” Emma says, staring at her hands.
“Oh?” Regina says, raising an eyebrow. “What do you want to talk about then?”
“I don’t want to talk,” Emma says. “I just want to be held.” She blushes.
She doesn’t expect Regina to take it upon herself to do the job but she does, shifting to sit beside Emma on the sofa and wrapping her arms around her waist. “Lean back against me,” she says.
“You’re being kind,” Emma says. “I don’t deserve this.”
“You’ve obviously experienced trauma from this,” Regina says, stroking her hair. “And you do deserve to be cared for.”
And Emma starts to cry again. “I don’t,” she says. “I really don’t. Not from you.” Because of New York and Emma wanting to run back there with Henry and letting Hook kiss her and being a total bitch to Regina over the past weeks and not believing her over and over and over again.
Regina shushes her. “Stop talking. Just let yourself be held.” So Emma leans back against Regina and lets herself be comforted and when the alarm on Regina’s phone chimes Emma realises that she’s calm. “It’s ready,” she says, decanting the liquid into a clean glass. “It may not taste pleasant.”
Emma holds the small glass between her fingers and raises it. “Before the walls go back up,” she says. “I just want to say…”
“Drink it first,” Regina says, sharp.
Emma drinks, feeling the antidote get to work, feels her mind become clear, but inexplicably she still wants to finish her sentence. “I just want to say that I want to be a part of your happiness,” she mumbles.
Regina’s eyes catch the light and she’s smiling in the way Emma’s only ever seen her smile for Henry. “I could want that too,” she says and she reaches out and takes Emma’s hand.