A/N: I promised myself I wouldn't write a fanfiction about these two and you can see how well that went. This will twist plotlines around and such to make the monstrous pile of SwanQueen subtext in the series make us shippers happy. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters. If I did I'd be rich.
Daniel's body was pale and still. The raven haired woman stared down at him, tears leaving hot trails down her high cheekbones. Her fingers stroked absently through his short hair. If only he were just sleeping. The wound in his abdomen may have been covered by cloth, but the blood had long since soaked through, betraying the truth of his demise. Regina closed her eyes and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
"Goodbye, my love," she whispered, her heart broken.
But when she righted herself again and opened the dark eyes to gaze one last time at her beloved, the body on the table was not Daniel's.
The former queen's eyes widened in shock and she staggered forward a step, finding her hand tangled in hair. Long hair.
Blonde hair.
"...Emma?" she whispered, her voice cracking as her gaze traveled down the woman's body until they fell upon a wound in the very same place where Cora had ended Daniel. Only this wound was fresh. This blood was hot and...there was so much blood. And...she was still alive.
"Emma!" Regina cried as her eyes linked with those of her former nemesis.
"...Gina..." Swan's voice was weak. Regina had seen enough death in her life to know what was happening. She was dying.
"No...Emma, no!" The older woman shoved her hand onto the wound and pushed, straining to stop the bleeding. She willed magic into her hands, but it wouldn't come. Why wouldn't her magic just work? She heard Emma whisper her name again, but it was jumbled and broken.
And when Regina looked at her again, the light in the blue eyes had gone out.
"Emma!"
Regina's body shot upright in her bed, the sheets thrown astray and her pillow nowhere in sight. Her palm flew to her heaving chest as she struggled to breathe. The dark brown hair was sweat dampened and stuck to her face.
"Mom?"
At the sound of her son's voice the woman gasped and her gaze flew to him. He was standing in the doorway of her room, his hand on the doorknob, a concerned expression on his face.
"Henry," she breathed, forcing a smile to her lips. "I'm sorry dear, I didn't mean to wake you."
"Are you...okay?" He took a step into the room but his mother stopped him.
"I'm fine Henry. It was just a dream. You can go back to bed."
"It sounded more like a nightmare."
She looked down at the strewn sheets.
"Do you want to tell me about it Mom?"
Without missing a beat, "No, dear. Not tonight."
He nodded, and turned to leave. She watched him go, and when she heard the telltale click of his door closing, she was up in an instant. She didn't care that she was in her robes. A pair of decent shoes, a swift journey down the stairs and an attractive black jacket flung over her shoulders a moment later and she was on her way to Gold's.
Emma Swan flipped lazily through the pages of a magazine as she sat in her patrol car. It was nearly 3 in the morning, and night patrols were rather pointless in Storybrooke as it were. But the sound of heels on concrete that suddenly pervaded through her open windows caught her attention, and she lowered the magazine to look for the source of the sound.
It was Regina, striding in the general direction of Gold's shop.
At 3 in the morning.
What the hell did that mean?
Emma and Snow had returned from the Enchanted Forest only one week before—thanks to Regina—but Emma was still on the fence about whether the woman could actually change for the better. She wanted to believe she could—that she would—for Henry, of course. Still, the sight of her at such an odd hour tipped the scales against her in Emma Swan's rational mind...although the night robes beneath her rather fashionable outerwear suggested this had not been a planned outing. Thankfully, shrouded in the darkness of the alley in which she had parked, the fallen queen did not appear to notice the Sheriff's presence.
"Mr. Gold?" Regina called into the dimly lit shop as she moved through the unlocked door, and the man appeared in an instant behind the counter.
"Regina," he greeted, his eyebrows raised and his cane clacking onto the wooden floor. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company at this hour of the night?" He ran his eyes down her form. "And in this...state of dress?"
She closed the door behind her and stood with her back to it, her hand not yet releasing the knob.
"You have something I need." Her response was simple enough, and Gold smiled.
"My dear," he began, beginning to pace behind the counter as she released the door and came to the center of the aisle. "There are only three items you could possibly need which you cannot produce yourself, and two of them you know I no longer possess." He came around the counter now, brushing past the woman to reach for a nearby cabinet door. "I am not a simple man, Regina. Tell me, dearie, how long have you been having these nightmares?"
Regina barricaded herself behind her arms, seeming to hug herself for a moment. It was never just easy to deal with Gold. Rumplestiltskin. Whatever the hell he went by these days. But he had stopped rummaging through the cabinet, his head was turned slightly toward her over his shoulder, waiting for her answer before he moved again.
"Since...since Snow and Emma went through the portal."
"Ah!" he exclaimed, turning 'round with a small bottle held between his index finger and his thumb. "I would have assumed they would have arisen after our friends' return, not before. Most interesting. Hm."
Growing tired of his unpleasant way of doing business, Regina rolled her eyes and shoved her hands in her jacket pockets.
"What do you want Mr. Gold? If you don't mind, I would like to hurry this along so that I might get to sleep again tonight. Free of...dreams."
"You do seem rather upset about these dreams," the slithering man observed, moving to stand just outside Regina's personal space bubble. The bottle was still in his hand. She snatched for it, but he held it out of reach.
Resigned, she crossed her arms and huffed, "It's Daniel."
"In your nightmares? That seems a bit odd, considering the recent circumstances. What, with your killing him again...and all that. Your heart let him go some time ago." Regina realized Gold was no longer speaking with trickery in his tone. No, now he seemed genuine in his interest. His eyes met hers and she rubbed her arms, looking down at the floor again. He read it for what it was.
"Ah," he murmured. "Not Daniel."
The woman shook her head.
"And not Henry."
Again, Regina shook her head. Gold smiled at her, tugged one of her hands away from her upper arm and folded the bottle into her palm.
"It always starts out as Daniel," she whispered, uncertain as to why she felt the need to elaborate. "But then...it...changes. Into someone else. Someone who shouldn't be there." She snarled the words, her teeth clenched and her lips quivering in anger and frustration. Gold only bows his head and limps back behind the counter.
"Are you familiar with the theory of reincarnation Regina?" he asked, leaning his cane against a drawer. The woman studied him for a moment, apparently confused by the change in topic.
"I suppose I am, yes. Not so much in the details, however." Her perfectly sculpted eyebrows pulled together over the bridge of her nose, her lips thinned, and she waited, suspicious. "What has that got to do with anything?"
"You loved Daniel."
"Of course I loved him."
"Well, as you may understand considering recent—and maybe not so recent—events with Snow White and her Prince Charming...when two souls are connected by true love, they have an uncanny ability to find one another again." Gold placed his hands on the counter, calm, as he watched the woman begin to frown. "Daniel's already found his way back to you once, my dearie."
When the former mayor realized where the imp was going with this, her frown intensified.
"That was not his doing. That was Victor's mistake. Daniel never would have haunted me that way."
"Mistake, Regina? Hardly. Like it or not, magic has a way of dealing with those who try to sidestep its powers. You see, when the body of one's true love dies, their whole soul cannot truly be at rest until the surviving lover is able to...let them go. I think a part of Daniel's soul came back to you the only way it knew how. Unfortunately, due to the Doctor's...methods...it was entrapped in a broken body that was unable to properly contain it. Being in such pain as he was...as you told me he was...it was desperate to free itself. Desperate to make you let go."
"No..." the woman whispered, her eyes growing red and watery.
"Yes, dear. And, when you killed him for the second time, you let him go. Left him free to move on to the next stage, whatever or wherever that may be. It appears though that it may...not...have moved on. Not entirely, anyway."
Regina squeezed the bottle in her hand, beginning to tremble.
"So now he's coming back in my dreams. What is he now, a ghost? A wraith?" She stared at the man before her, hate and rage flooding her blood, but she sensed he wasn't finished yet. And he wasn't.
"Quite the contrary, actually," Gold smiled, limping around the counter again to stand before her. He centered his cane in front of him and rested his palms atop its head. Regina's chin lifted, nervous but bold, as she waited for him to continue. "I must admit, I've had my doubts about your ever having experienced true love, Regina. However, I now see that I may have been mistaken in that assumption."
"...Mistaken. Indeed." They were but two words she hissed, but the wrath behind them was palpable. For a moment, she thought even Rumplestiltskin had faltered at her quiet fury.
"I think, Regina, that your Daniel's soul, or at least the part of it that loved you, has found its way back to you yet again—but this time in the form of another."
At this, the chestnut eyes widened and grew quite fearful. She took a step back from him, shaking her head vehemently. This didn't make any sense. Even with magic, and fairytales, this made no sense!
"Reincarnation, Regina," Gold said softly, raising his eyebrows again. "If you really loved him, then a part of him will be with you for as long as you survive...in one form or another." He paused for a moment, making it much more dramatic than it already was, and Regina's eyes stayed locked on his, hating herself for hanging on his every word. Gold leaned forward and whispered into her ear, "Why do you think your heart always drove you to seek out Snow White's child, dearie?"
"No!" the fallen queen screamed, and she shoved him away from her, pointing a quivering index finger at him. "You're lying to me! This is nonsense! Daniel's soul in Miss Swan's body? This is preposterous! They aren't even the same...gender!" She spun around, hurrying for the door, dreamless sleep potion in hand. When her fingers touched the doorknob, Rumplestiltskin's voice stopped her one last time.
"It's why you couldn't kill her at the well, you know."
Regina turned to him, her back pressed frightfully against the door, her eyes wild.
"Henry played a part, of course. But your heart had the final say, Regina. It never made sense to me until now."
Her lids lowered, and she curled her lip in an unconscious threat.
"You know nothing of my heart, Gold."
Gold only raised an eyebrow and grinned.
"You are not a simple woman, Ms. Mills. But so too do you know that I am not a simple man."
She huffed once, and fled the shop. The door slammed behind her, and the sound of the tinkling bell rattled in her ears the entire run home.