#ec ff

[x-wishes-on-fallen-stars-x]

Absolute Silence.

I’m not even sorry. Blame @the-notsoevil-queen, She coulda talked me out of this. She chose not to. Thanks to @ninzied @dee-thequeenbee and @belleoftheballpoint for suffering so that this was grammatically correct.

When Whale brings back Daniel, Regina pays the price.

Season 2 divergent. Because I can. Major character death ahead lads. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Usual warnings that come with character deaths. Graphic as fuck descriptions of blood, and yeah, shit goes wrong in the stables with Daniel guys, tread lightly, I guess?

She never saw this coming.

She’s thought about death and how, eventually, it would come for her often throughout her years. As a child, too young to understand why Mother’s room behind the fireplace was off limits (just that it was), Regina had had nightmares of Cora ripping out her small, developing heart for getting grass stains on her petticoats. She’d daydreamed about slipping beneath the surface of her bath water as Queen and never coming back up, of slipping over the balcony railings and falling down, down, down into blackness and away from humiliation and pain night after night. But a servant would ultimately knock on the door, or a fairy with misguided good intentions would catch her, and eventually Regina stopped courting Death and became her.

Pitchforks and burning at stakes is honestly how she imagined this would go. Especially since the curse broke and everything she held dear shattered around her by her own fucking hands. She didn’t think it would happen like this, because of him, and she was starting to hope—she let it twist and carve its way into her being—that she might yet live to see her son forgive her.

She really should be used to being wrong by now.

You stupid, insolent, little girl, Mother’s voice hisses. Did you really believe you could have this?

Daniel is in ashes at her feet, and Regina has one hand over her mouth and one over her midriff, vainly trying to keep the blood in. The shears that he’d lodged deep into her gut, once, twice before she’d managed to stop him—kill him—clatter to the floor, staining it with drops of red. Where did he get those? is all she has time to think before her knees give out.

continue on ao3 or ffnet

[captainswansettingsail]

somewhere over the rainbow

My CSSV project is being a little butt right now and I was thinking about those soulmate aus but for Dorothy and Lucas. So here is what happened with that (unbeta-d and completely unplanned).

Prompt: Soulmate AU where Person A gets a tattoo as soon as she sees Person B for the first time and vice versa.

Dorothy has never really believed in fate or luck or destiny- there wasn’t some divine providence or puppet master pulling her strings. Every decision she’s ever made was because she felt in her gut it was right, so when her adoptive parents kept pestering her about every man she ever came across-questioning if she noticed any new markings on her skin- Dorothy laughed and diverted the subject. Soulmates was a fantasy and she wasn’t a kid anymore. She was going to make her own way in life, and she was going to be...more.

(Whatever that was supposed to mean).

That was before a freak tornado ripped her whole world apart and deposited her in the nightmarish version of a stupid musical with a gun and a German Shepard. But nothing has changed, she was still Dorothy Gale and she was going to go home- no matter the cost. 

Finding her soulmate was the last thing on her mind. 

But as it turns out, the universe has other plans, because as soon as helps down the man tragically hung up left for dead, she almost cries out in pain as she feels the skin right above her hip burn. 

After treating him the best that she can with what little she had, she leaves him to rest and examine the new mark on her hip. She knew what it meant. She felt like she should have been happy. But she was in unknown land, with no way to go home, the only thing that came to mind when she looked at the basic sword tattooed on her skin was: Shit.

---

“So Lucas is home?” 

He watched Dorothy nod shyly and he couldn’t help but feel his face light up at the sight.

“Lucas it is then.”

Lucas, it was strange, but...comforting. His body was still sore from whatever had transpired before Dorothy saved him. He felt as if the cuts on his skin were screaming at him to stop moving. Before he cleaned himself up with what little rags he had managed to scrounge up, he couldn’t tell which scars were new and which were old. He didn’t know if the thorned rose imprinted on his chest was recent or something he had done earlier in his life. And what did it mean?

But it didn’t matter, whatever his life was in the past it held nothing in comparison to the way his heart seemed to pump every time he caught her eye as they started the long journey to Emerald City or the protective feeling he got every time she put herself recklessly in danger. 

She was his future now, and he didn’t need his memories to know what certainty felt like. 

[claroso]

Selfie

So, this is my first time writing fanfiction, so let me know what you think! 

I love emerald city so much and I’m still upset that Lucas doesn’t know what he actually looks like!

The snow was still falling softly through their makeshift camp, but Dorothy didn’t feel the cold. She was warm and content, tucked against Lucas’s side. His arm was snuggly wrapped around her waist as they lay on the forest floor, and, for the first time since she was torn away from Kansas, she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

They had kissed, slow and perfect, until she had lost track of time. It was dark, when they finally broke away from each other. Lucas had breathlessly said that they get some sleep. She nodded, but instead of laying down next to Sylvie, she’d curled up next to him. He had frozen briefly before relaxing.

Now, they were wrapped up in each other. Dorothy was enjoying the warmth of Lucas’s body and the way he was circling his thumb against the small of her back.

“Dorothy?” Lucas asked, squeezing her hip.

“Hm?” She looked up at him, realizing she missed something. “What’d you say?”

“Are you alright?” His voice rumbled. She could hear it vibrating through his chest.

“Perfect.” Grinning, she pressed herself a little closer. He smiled softly. “What is it?”

“…that magic box, does it only play music?”

“Oh.” She paused, wondering how to explain a cell phone to him. “No, it does a lot of things. You can talk to people over a long distance with it, download books onto it, take pictures.  That sort of thing.”

He was silent for a long moment before speaking. “What’s a picture?”

She laughed. “It’s, uh, a portrait? But without the paint.”

“Without the what?”

“Here,” She shifted, grabbing her phone out of her jacket. Opening it, she pulled up the gallery app and started swiping through her pictures. “Here’s one of Rachel, one of the nurses—healers—I work with. That’s a cat I saw outside of the hospital. I tried to take her home with me but she ran off.”

She heard him chuckle at that. She swiped again and her smile faded.

“These are my parents.” It was a selfie of the three of them, taken at her last birthday, beaming at the camera. It was tinted strangely, seeming almost fake in the light of Oz’s double moons. She missed them so much.  

Lucas kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry, Dorothy. You’ll get back, I promise.”

“I know,” She said. Switching to the camera, she held the phone up above them. “Look up there and smile, alright?”

He shifted next to her and she took the picture. He jumped at the bright flash.

“Look,” She opened the picture. It showed Lucas, brow creased in confusion and squinting up at the camera. Next to him, she was smiling brightly. Snow clung to their hair and clothes.

“That’s me.” He said in quiet astonishment.

“Yeah,” Dorothy looked up to see him smiling softly at the picture. “That’s you.”

He moved, leaning over to kiss her quickly. “We should sleep.”

“Alright.” Her lips tingled at the brief contact.

They settled back down, pressed tightly together. She rested her head against Lucas’s shoulder and closed her eyes, smiling as she drifted off the sleep.

[livinglights]

Return to Oz - Kansas Knight Fiction

Summary: He has no right to ask anything of her, but he must somehow convince her to return with him to Oz. Can he find the words that will make her trust him in time? A Dorothy x Lucas/Roan one-shot. (Contains spoilers for the season 1 finale!) Also available on AO3.

“I’ve come to take you home.”

Her brows rose in a look of incredulity, “And what, you think I’m just going to go with you?”

The fear behind her eyes when she looked at him cut far deeper than any battle wound he’d endured. He didn’t dare reach for her, didn’t dare speak her name. She took an uncertain step backwards, putting another foot of space between them, and he swallowed down the apology that stuck in his throat.

There weren’t words enough to make right what he’d done. Even if she found it in her heart to forgive him he would never again be granted passage into the fortress she’d erected around her heart. She’d thrown her walls up so high they were nearly impenetrable. The warmth had evaporated from her soft brown eyes, replaced by suspicion and doubt.

It wasn’t until that moment that he realized with bitter longing just how deeply he’d missed her. He would never again be privy to those thoughtful, lingering glances, the quiet looks of amusement, and the teasing glint that appeared when she made a joke she knew he wouldn’t understand. It nearly made him drop to his knees in despair. He’d known that seeing her again would be difficult, but he hadn’t expected it to overwhelm him with such a profound sense of tragedy. He’d lost something truly special in her, and it wasn’t until this moment that he understood just what he’d given up.  

In that cottage, lying in his arms, she’d come so close to letting him in. She’d begun to dismantle that fortress around her heart, pulling it down one brick at a time. He’d pushed too hard, too fast; foolishly promising her a life he couldn’t deliver with a happy ending they both knew had no hope of being fulfilled. But he’d wanted it. He’d wanted that life more than he’d ever wanted anything. Even after his memories returned. Even after reuniting with Glinda. Even then…  God help him, even then he longed for that glimpse he’d seen of a future at her side. The promise of Kansas. The promise of home.

Fate had chosen to intervene, and it’d torn them apart like a butcher cleaving flesh from bone. The thought of living the rest of his life without her while his heart constantly yearned for the one woman he could not have had driven him mad. He’d lost his mind that day, and along with it every part of him that resembled something good. The man she’d met at Nimbo, the one she’d trusted, befriended, and fought for, the man she’d grown to care for, he’d murdered him the very moment he wrapped his hands around her throat. It still felt surreal, a vivid nightmare he couldn’t seem to wake from.

But it was no dream. What he’d done to her, what he’d almost succeeded at doing, was something he’d never thought himself capable of. Not a night had passed since where he wasn't wrenched from his sleep in a cold sweat, his heart still screaming inside his chest. He could feel the impression of his hands around her throat, the memory seared into the flesh of his palms. There was no merciful deliverance this time, no ignorant bliss. He had no choice but to live with what he’d done. It was a powerful reminder of what he was capable of, of the sort of monster that lurked underneath.

There was no future for them, the cool detachment in her eyes made that much clear. And there would be no future for Oz either if he couldn’t find a way to convince her to return. There was far too much at stake for him to fail now.

“You’ve got no reason to trust me,” he admitted, his voice grave, “but Oz needs you. Jane needs you.”

She crouched low next to Toto and gave him a scratch behind the ears. The big dog leaned his head into her hand and panted approvingly.

“Why’d they send you?” she asked after a pregnant pause. Her expression betrayed only detached curiosity and he resisted the urge to reach for her.

“I volunteered.”

“Did Glinda put you up to this, too?” she wondered and stood upright. She didn’t wait for him to answer before calling Toto with a quick slap of her hand against her thigh and retreating towards the house.

He jogged after her, pleading with her to listen, “There isn’t much time. If you don’t come back with me now there won’t be an Oz to go back to.”

“Good riddance,” she muttered and pulled open the door of her metal carriage. Toto jumped inside without hesitation and sat patiently atop one of the seats. He caught the door with his hand, preventing her from pulling it shut.

“You don’t mean that. What about Jane? And Sylvie? Are you just going to let them die?”

Her expression hardened, her jaw clenched tight around a torrent of unspoken words. With a shake of her head she jammed her keys into the carriage lock and turned. The engine roared to life and he jumped back. Dorothy used the temporary distraction to her advantage and slammed the carriage door shut.

“Good-bye, Roan,” she said with a sense of finality and quickly drove off.

He stood there feeling lost as he watched the dust curl up behind her carriage. He waited until it was out of sight before exhaling a heavy sigh. With a weary shake of his head he turned back in the direction of her house and made his way towards it.

It was after dark by the time she returned. He rose slowly from the wooden steps of her porch where he’d been sitting. She stared at him from inside the truck for a long moment before turning it off. The lights went dark, leaving him illuminated in the faint glow of the lantern hung by the stairs. Dorothy exited the carriage and shut the door firmly behind her. She walked slowly around the vehicle, her eyes never wavering from him.

“What are you still doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” he answered. “Where did you go?”

“To see Karen Chapman.” She looked out toward the horizon, eyeing a storm brewing in the distance. Lightening flashed and a roll of thunder lumbered towards them across the plain.

“Was she able to tell you anything?”

“She’s dead,” she announced with a calm sort of detachment. “About an hour ago. Her kidneys went into renal failure and they couldn’t bring her back.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her sincerely. “I know how important she was to you.”

Her head slowly turned towards him, her gaze sharp and unflinching, “You don’t know anything about me, Roan.”

The harsh bite of that last syllable of his name on her lips made him wince. It sounded wrong, utterly false coming from her. It was his name from birth, but in that moment he would have willingly cast it aside. He would have given anything to become Lucas again, a place she felt safe, a place she felt at home. But Lucas was dead, and all that remained was him.

“You’re right,” he said and slowly lifted his gaze to hers, “I don’t. I don’t know how to convince you. I don’t know what to say to you to…” His words faltered and he shook his head, finding himself utterly at a loss.

“I have no right to ask anything of you, I know that. If there were another way I wouldn’t have come to you like this, but there isn’t. Without you Oz dies. Jane and Sylvie die. Can you live with that on your conscience?”

“Can you?” she fired back.

She brushed past him, her boots stomping up the porch steps. She flung the screened door open and let it slam shut behind her, leaving him standing in the dark. After a few minutes she reappeared with a bag slung over her shoulder.

“Let’s go,” she ordered, and marched past him. Toto followed with an excited bark and he fell in step behind them. She walked far enough into the field to be unseen from the house and then turned her face skyward.

“What made you change your mind?” he asked.

“I’ve got a lot of questions,” she replied evenly, “and Oz is the only place I’ll get any answers to them.”

He watched amazed as she used her gauntlets to effortlessly summon the storm that would bring them back to Oz. He was as much in awe of her now as the first moment he’d met her, hanging on that cross in Nimbo. Hurting her would forever be his greatest regret. The rain began to fall, pelting his face with icy cool drops. Her hand grabbed hold of his and she called over her shoulder to command Toto to ‘Stay’.

“Hold on,” she warned him and turned her face towards the sky.

A funnel descended from the clouds, its howling wind whipping up the dusty earth around them. He hazarded a glance at the spot where their hands remained intertwined and felt his heart clench tight in his chest. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t anything at all, really. But it was a start.

[livinglights]

JackEv - Not Yet

Summary: Jack visits Langwidere’s room and discovers more than he expected to. Spoilers for 1x07.

(I got inspired by a meta from the other day and had to get it all down). 

It was the grandest room he’d ever seen. Jack’s eyes cast upward in amazement at the height of the ceiling above their heads. He’d never known a room could be so tall. But the opulence didn’t end there. Gilded mirrors, an impressive chandelier, and every possible edge, curve and piece of furniture covered in gold. It proved a stunning contrast to the tall urns filled to the brim with crimson red roses. They were the colour of blood, he thought, and couldn’t remember ever seeing a flower that looked more somber.

They paled in comparison to Langwidere, who took a careful seat at the edge of her bed. In all his life he’d never seen someone look so thoroughly alone. The cold white and gold starkness of the room only seemed to drive the point further home. He felt stuck as he stood there watching the tears drip from beneath her mask, his body half turned towards her and the door. He wanted to do something for her, anything to ease her pain. The necessity of it pulled at him with stubborn insistence, but he remembered all too well what happened last time he tried to help. His words never seemed to come out of his mouth the way he wanted them to. As he stood there searching for the right ones to somehow make her father’s murder seem less horrible than it really was, they seemed to evaporate the moment they formed on his tongue. Not wanting to hurt her more, he slowly turned to the door.

She stopped him with a soft plea, “No, please, stay?”

It was the first time she’d ever actually asked him to do anything. Normally she told him what she wanted, stubbornly persistent in her expectation that he would simply go along. He saw none of that cool bravado now. She sat there broken and sad, on a bed that was hers but didn’t feel like her own, in a room that only days earlier had belonged to her father. His death had left an obvious, gaping hole in her world and there was nothing with which she could fill it.

She guarded her emotions so effortlessly in front of the guards. Nothing ever seemed to reach her, break through that unflinching composure. Until this very moment that was how he’d seen her as well - cold, unfeeling, and too blunt to be considered kind. But here she was offering him a glimpse behind the carefully constructed mask she showed the rest of the world. He wondered if anyone apart from her father had seen her like this before, so completely vulnerable and human. His words to her in Oz slid unwelcome into his thoughts – “You’re the worst human being I’ve ever met.” He regretted them now, more deeply than he cared to admit. He’d met far worse humans in this world than Langwidere.

He moved slowly, deliberately, and sat as close as he dared next to her. His mechanical heart did a strange thing then, its cogs and wheels turning in an accelerated rhythm. The naked emotion was there in her eyes, too blatant to be ignored. She was hurting and unsure of herself, desperate to forge a new connection to replace the one she’d lost. But when her fingers slid behind her mask, determined to remove it so he could see her as she truly was, his hand rose up to stop her.

It felt wrong somehow, as though he would be taking advantage if he allowed her to assuage his curiosity now. But it went deeper than that. He’d had a lot of time to think in the Screaming Forest and while some of those hours were reserved for angrily cursing Langwidere for leaving him there in the first place, the others were consumed with a more productive sort of navel gazing. He resented Tip for getting him into this mess to begin with, for pushing him off that balcony. But when he thought harder on it he was able to admit that he’d had his own role to play in all of it. He still didn’t understand what had possessed him to try and kiss Tip, but every part of him knew that it was wrong. He owed Tip an apology, a sincere one, but may never have the chance to again.

And he resented Langwidere, too. For treating him as her play thing, for teasing him and acting as though he wasn’t entitled to any feelings of his own. But he hadn’t made it easy on her either. He’d been too wrapped up in his own pain and self-pity to see that she was hurting too. His well-intentioned words of comfort rang hollow when he thought back on them. “I’m sorry for your loss?” “I’m sorry he died?” It was all the consoling words you were supposed to say when someone has died, but none of them were what she’d needed to hear.

He’d been too focused on satisfying his own relentless desire to fix what was broken to realize his mistake. It was while standing frozen amongst the dark, twisted trees of the forest that he’d come to accept his inability to fix all things. Courteous platitudes weren’t going to bring Langwidere’s father back from the dead or miraculously allow her to come to terms with his passing. His words felt silly now. Silence would have been better. Or a listening ear. Or the comforting clasping of his hand around hers. There were a lot of things he should have done differently and would if he could go back to that moment. Time travel was not yet possible, but she was offering him a chance to redeem himself now.

“When we’re friends I’ll show you.”

That was the promise she’d made to him at the festival. Looking into her wide, glistening eyes he felt guilt creep in to slow his mechanical heart. He hadn’t behaved very much like a friend to her. And he certainly hadn’t earned the right to know her most closely guarded secret. She offered it to him now not because he was truly her friend, but because she was terrified of being alone. Someday, when he’d proven himself a friend to her, she would show him but that day was not today.

“Wait…You don’t have to do that,” he told her sincerely, and her hands slowly fell away from the edge of her mask. Her eyes darted back and forth between his, uncertainty clouding their depths.

“I do see you,” he assured her.

They were the truest words he’d spoken to her yet. He saw her now more clearly than he ever had before. For all her faults, she was not so different than he was. Both of them lost, both of them alone and freakish in the eyes of the world. She wore her masks to hide some small piece of herself from the world’s judgmental glare, while he wore his mechanical armour like a bitter shield to protect his heart from all its heartache. They were both frauds in their own way, finding themselves in desperate need of a place to belong.

The first time they’d kissed she’d initiated it, a show of gratitude for his bravery in defending her against a gang of thugs. This time it was he who kissed her, his mouth soft and tentative against hers. He offered comfort and intimacy, a tangible connection to remind her that even in her grief she was not alone. But perhaps even more than that, he offered gratitude. She saw far more worth in him than he saw in himself and it spurned within him a desire to do better, do more.

In time, when it was earned, he would be worthy of being called her “friend”. But not today, not yet.

[aistaraina]

Ahh to hell with it. I’m going to try taking prompts for Emerald City specifically Kansas Knight. I might even try my hand at smut. I can’t guarantee the quality but I will do my best. 

[lala-kate]

Hi Laura! I love that you love Evil Charming! :) Is there anyway you can write another one-shot of the Remnants verse, please? I really love it and you write it in such a way that gives me hope for healing and like Lana says that "good can come from broken" Thank you so much!

Remnants: Confessions

(Remnants in it’s entirety can be read here)

It just slipped out while they’d been kissing.

It hadn’t even been a passionate kiss, not one born of naked skin and sweat-slicked bodies, not one filled with the heated breath and clashing teeth. It had been a small showing of affection, no more than a peck on the cheek, actually, one given while Neal sat at the table in his booster seat while Nadia remained perched on her mother’s hip, one received over a stove where pancakes rose and bacon sizzled.

“I love you.”

The shock still encompasses them, and she’s not certain whose eyes are rounder. Her legs shake beneath her, threatening to give way at any moment as her pounding heart presses tears from her heart to her eyes within seconds.

“Oh, God.”

Her words tremble, and he clasps them to his chest with a tenderness she’s helpless to resist. His hand is now warm on her cheek, and she spies it in his eyes–conflict mixed with peace, the same emotions that rule her life now that David and Neal have become such an essential part of it. Her breath is uneven, yet his is steady, and she fights giving in to its pull, the pull that is David, the safety that is Charming, the need inside her that gnaws at her insides with a ferocity she’d believed forever lost to her after Robin left town with Marian.

Then his fingers stroke her cheek, and she’s melting, she feels it, her atoms rearranging themselves without her permission into emotions engulfing everything she is, like ivy overtaking old stone walls and forcing life back into hollow crevices. She can’t move, can’t breathe, and she wonders just why she’d exposed herself to feelings that have inevitably led to her downfall time and time again.

Love isn’t weakness, but it leaves one vulnerable to pain.

Yet she’s here, and so is he, whole somehow in spite of the scars and bruises they’ll both bear for life. His arms are now around her, and there is nothing in the world for a few blessed seconds except them–the two of them and their children–and she wishes she could freeze time again as she had once before, that she could cling to David, Neal and Nadia, that Henry would accept them as she hopes he will, that fears of losing this would simply vanish as suddenly as her happiness has so many times in her past.

Then his breath is on her temple, his fingers in her hair, and she gives in to the inevitable as warm lips form words on her skin that take root in her heart and bloom through the ashes.

“I love you, too, Regina.”

[restrainedubiquity]

Sometimes Helping Hurts

Written for @evilcharmingweek Day One

Read on ff.net

No. It was the only thought in David's head as the darkness swirled around Regina. Consuming her, devouring, destroying. They'd been through too much; fought too hard for their ending to be a horrific twist of fate that would take them back to the beginning, back to the manic rage of the Evil Queen. He couldn't look away from her, hardly noticed anything else that was going on around him. Regina was curled in on herself, terror evident in her every feature. He willed her to look at him, to focus on anything, but she looked everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He knew only one thing for certain: she wouldn't survive this.

When it came down to it there hadn't really been a choice. He was the hero, after all, the prince, the white night. In the end he was the friend and the father. So it came to down to him, down to a split second decision that had him reaching out with steady fingers, pulling the dagger from Emma's hand, and allowing the darkness to take him away. He never heard the screams of the three women he left behind.

He hadn't thought about the consequences. Had never imagined he'd be ripped from his land, sent back to the Enchanted Forest alone, empty and full at the same time. He hadn't expected the power constantly bubbling under skin, never imagined it could feel so damn good. David felt he understood Regina now more than ever: her wild desires, her unchecked authority. It all came down to control. He came from a world where everything was constantly threatened, where the safety and protection of his family, his kingdom, his town, his hope, had always been hard fought and rarely won. He could change that now, could manipulate fate with a flick of his finger. It was addicting. How had Regina been so afraid of this? How had she ever let it go?

"It would have ended me." David turned to see Regina standing behind him. Her eyes widened at his appearance, but she wouldn't let herself look away. He'd done this for her, become this so she didn't have to.

"Regina! You're here!" David closed the space between them, engulfing her in his arms. "How did you get here?"

"I…" she started, but there was no need to finish. She could feel David in her head, poking around, reading her thoughts before they became words. She couldn't have stopped him, she could have tried, made it more difficult for him to prod and probe, but what would have been the point? She hadn't come here to keep secrets from him.

"You came to get this out of me?" he asked her needlessly.

"You saved me, David," Regina took his hands in her own. They were cold; his hands were never cold. "Let me do the same for you."

"I don't want to be saved, Regina," David shook his head, laughing with manic eyes. He was excited, giddy even, and so very dangerous. "I get it now, I do. What you can do, what you can feel? It's so much more. Everything is so much more. I don't need to be saved."

"Like hell you don't," she interrupted. "Look at yourself, David. Look!" she waved her hand and a mirror appeared before them. For the first time, David saw his new self. It wasn't what he'd expected. There was a golden sheen to his skin, his eyes were dark, jeans and flannels replaced with heavy leathers, but the new Dark One didn't seem to find the changes nearly as disturbing as the woman next to him.

David smiled once more at his reflection before snapping his fingers and transforming himself into Prince Charming. "Is this better?" he asked her innocently, sweeping his fur lined cloak towards her. "Or perhaps this?" Another snap and he is David Nolan freshly awoken from his curse induced coma; the man that almost kissed her in her kitchen. "You wanted this," he taunts, stepping close. "You could have it now. I could give you whatever you want." His lips are so close they brush her cheek with each word.

"I want my friend back." Regina plants her hands on his chest, pushing him back so that they're no longer breathing the same air.

"We were never just friends, Regina. You can't deny that. There's always been something." He steps close again, cups her cheek, and leans in to whisper in her ear. "Even when you were trying to kill me. Did you ever ask yourself why you couldn't get the job done?" His tongue slips out to lick behind her earlobe, nipping and sucking his way down her jaw.

"This isn't you." Regina tried to step away again, but he's holding her firmly against him with a hand behind her neck, the other making its way to her backside.

"Maybe it is," he said against her neck. "Maybe this is what I was always supposed to be."

"The David I know would never say that. Let me bring him back." Regina wiggled out of his old. She had to do this before she lost her nerve, before the promises he was making became impossible to refuse.

"Or," he pulled her close again, transporting them both to the bed chambers of her castle. "You could join me. Think of what we could do together." When the smoke cleared he once again appeared as the Dark One and she as the evil queen.

Regina shoved away from him, almost tripping over the heavy skirts and too high heels she was no longer accustomed to wearing. "Think of what we've done together!" her screams echoed around the stone walls. "You and me. David and Regina. You did this to save me from the Evil Queen and now you dress me up like some doll?" She swept her arms up, her magic righting her appearance to someone much less deadly than her former self. "I know what you're feeling, David. I know how good the power feels, but you can't give into it. You helped me. You helped me find myself again and get back my son. I'm not leaving here until I can take YOU back to your daughter."

"I haven't lost Emma!" he yelled right back in her face. Mirrors shattered all around him; the dark magic was coming off of him in waves.

"She's afraid of you, of what you're becoming. So is Snow." She took a cautious step toward him, glass crunched under her feet.

"But you're not." He closed the distance between them, settled his arm against the small of her back and leaned his forehead against hers.

"Of course I am," her voice shook with the confession. "I'm terrified."

David's fingers brushed against her cheek, then slid down to her neck. His fingers paused, pressing over her pulse point. "Your heart is racing," he whispered, sliding his hand further down to her chest, reaching in to feel her heart.

Regina gasped at the intrusion, but didn't pull away. Instead, she wound an around his neck, her other hand loosely circling his wrist where it disappeared into her chest. He wasn't squeezing.

David closed his eyes to the feel of her heart fluttering wildly against his fingers. This was life: so small, so fragile, so frantic and in the palm of his hand. He could crush it. It wouldn't take any effort at all. One gentle squeeze and there would be no one left to stop him.

There would be no one left to stop him.

His thoughts were racing. She was the only one who had come, the only one who had dared to face the raw power of the Dark One. His fingers tightened their grip without him realizing. He was squeezing harder and harder until Regina's whimpers broke through his trance.

"David. Please." She was still leaning against him, not moving an inch save for her fingers running through the hair just above his color, pulling to try to get him to focus. "I know you're still in there. This isn't you," she was barely whispering, her panted breath warming his face, tears falling freely between them.

You know how to get this out of me? He wasn't speaking, but Regina heard him plainly; his voice was in her head, in her heart.

"I know where to start," she gritted out, squeezing desperately at his wrist as the pain in her chest was becoming too much to bear.

He released her heart as gently as he could, retracted his hand and let it rest where she held it against her chest. Regina sagged against him, muscles tense from holding so still for so long. His grip on her waist tightened enough to support her while her breathing evened out. David took their hands from her chest, guided them to the dagger secured to his waist. "Take it," he urged, squeezing her fingers against the hilt. "Don't let me hurt anyone else."

Who did you hurt? she thought but couldn't say. She had hoped she had gotten to him time, hoped that she could spare him the pain and regret of taking a life, of using power to hurt and destroy.

He stepped back once the dagger was safely in her grasp. Back, but not away. He watched her watch the dagger in her hands; he listened to the thoughts of failure and remorse running through her mind. But she was wrong; he hadn't yet gone that far. David extended his hand, tipping her chin up to meet his eyes. "You. I hurt you, and I don't want to do that."

Regina smiled for the first time since the darkness had set its sights on her. David was looking down at her, tears brimming in his eyes. Her David. He trusted her. The rest they would figure out together.