The Way

Chapter Nine

"You did this! What did you do to her?!" Snow bellowed, jabbing her elbow into Regina's windpipe, making her cough. "Whatever you did, you need to fix it, and you need to fix itimmediately!"

Sputtering and utterly confused, Regina wrestled herself away from the wall and composed herself, straightening her blouse and giving a few last coughs before staring straight into the pure one's eyes.

"I don't know what you're talking about! What happened to who and what makes you think I'm responsible?!"

Snow stood, her hands balled into quaking fists, and gave every appearance of disbelief. In another moment, she was shouting at her nemesis again.

"Because she was with you last night Regina! You can't play stupid with me, I know you have something to do with this! You always have something to do with it when someone gets hurt!"

Here Regina froze.

Hurt? She knew to whom Snow was referring, but she asked anyway.

"Who...?"

Snow rolled her eyes, exhasperated.

"Emma!"

As if it had surprised her, Regina's brown eyes widened out of instinct. Somehow hearing it made it more true.

"What do you mean she's hurt? What happened? I just saw her this—"

"Damn right you saw her this morning! And she was fine when I spoke to her yesterday! So excuse me if I find it just a little suspicious that she's now injured and refusing to go for help."

The older woman was growing irritated now, for Snow still had yet to mention the actual circumstances surrounding Emma's injuries. Something in her gut twisted as the worse-case-scenario ran through her head.

A rarely used nickname. Lifeless blue eyes. So much blood...

"Where...where exactly is this injury?" the fallen queen asked, her words tentative and uncertain. For a moment, she saw a flicker of confusion in Snow White's features.

The pure one knitted her brows and said, "Her lower abdomen...left side."

Regina felt herself fall back against the wall as the gravity of the situation hit her—along with another wave of pain in her chest. Her palm fell over it and she closed her eyes. Could this really be happening?

She was caught off guard when Snow started talking, tilting her head in the process.

"You...really didn't do this, did you Regina?" the woman asked, her voice having returned to its typical gentle tone. Her expression though, looked more concerned than ever before, and she seemed to be hanging on her nemesis' every possible word. Then she grew suspicious again. "But you do know something about it. There is still something you're not telling me." Regina's eyes snapped open again and burned into Snow's.

"You're right, there is," she snapped coldly, her upper lip curling just so. "But it has no place here, and it will neither help nor hurt Emma to have you know."

Snow dropped her eyes for a moment, and then, "You called her Emma." Her eyes grew larger.

On the other end of the scale, Regina's eyes narrowed. Damn.

"It is her name, is it not?"

"You never call her Emma."

"As important as the words I choose to use to refer to your daughter truly are, I'm certain there are much more pressing matters at hand, Snow. Like, say, the fact that she could in fact be bleeding to death, wherever it is she happens to be right now, while we are standing here discussing the issue."

"Bleeding to death?" Snow inquired, shaking her head in question. "Regina, she's not bleeding to death."

Russet eyes looked at her counterpart, distrusting.

"Then what...?"

"She's burned."

Another stab of icy pain ripped through her chest, and the woman almost doubled over. Snow White, apparently surprised but ever the motherly one, lay a hand on the ex-mayor's shoulder.

"What's going on Regina? Are you okay?"

Clenching her jaws together, she nodded with only a faint grunt of discomfort, but she still struggled to breathe.

"Where is she now?" asked the fallen queen between gasps as she once again leaned against the wall for support. The intensity of these pain waves was growing, and she had a strong feeling she had been wrong about magic not being involved with the dreams. This was too sudden. Too powerful.

"At the loft."

Regina winced, her eyes squeezing shut at another stab under her breastbone.

"Let's get the hell over there, then, shall we?"

Emma Swan stared at her stomach in the bathroom mirror, astounded by the sight before her. What had once been just blisters was now an enormous swatch of dark purple, as though she had been struck by a shot put ball. Tenderly she touched the flesh, hissed at the surge of anguish that emanated from that single point, and promptly vomited into the sink in front of her. Coughing and wiping at her mouth, she noticed her eyes were bloodshot and her face rather gaunt. It occurred to her then that she had eaten very little that day, and had drank even less. But just as she convinced herself to give the apparent injury the night to heal, another rush of pain cut through her, and she collapsed to the bathroom floor. She pulled up her shirt again and gasped as a three inch long line appeared, like an incision scar, and it was then that the normally strong and stoic Sheriff did something she had rarely, if ever, done.

She fainted.