So Does This Make Us Both The Other Woman?

5. Fairy Dust And Fairytales (That Never Felt Like Them)

"So how did it happen?" Emma's leaning back against the bench, cocoa in hand. She's wearing the coat Regina had gotten her and it does draw out the green in her eyes in entirely distracting ways. Regina isn't staring. She's...appraising her purchase. Right.

She sips at her own cocoa and produces a smile and a hand for Roland from where he's dangling upside-down from the monkey bars and waving frantically. She'd been terrified the first time they'd gone to the park together and the way he'd ignored the steps and ladders in favour of shimmying up bars and swinging from structure to structure, but by now she's used to it. Little boys raised in the woods, honestly. Her own son sits happily atop the bars, watchful eyes on the boy below him. "How did what happen?"

Emma motions with her cup to Roland. "Him. His dad. I mean, I thought we were pretty much around each other all the time when we were fighting Zelena. And I never saw you two together much but then suddenly he's basically moving in with you and you're true loves and..." She shrugs. "I just...didn't know it was happening until I saw you two outside Granny's on the night after we banished Zelena back to Oz."

"Ah." She frowns, remembering that day all too well. She'd been on her way into the building when she'd heard cheering and catcalling and then the three of them had walked inside and Emma had been kissing Hook, right in the middle of Granny's. It hadn't taken more than a month after that before Emma had finally conceded to date the pirate. "I'd thought you were...busy that night."

"Yeah." When she turns, Emma's eyes are on her, her face too close and her lips pressed tightly together. "I guess I was."

There's a new strain in the air, tension Regina doesn't want to think about, and she wills herself to turn away from Emma before she gathers her thoughts again. "You know about the pixie dust. It was never a question for me that Robin was my soulmate."

Emma's brow furrows- with you, Regina, I always know when you're lying- and she shakes her head disbelievingly. "That's it? Some fairy dust tells you who to love and you love him? What if he was a homicidal maniac?" Blonde waves are cascading down her shoulders as she moves, her voice rising, and Regina takes a moment to process anything she's saying. "Would pixie dust tell you that?"

"Emma," she says patiently, dragging her eyes away from the hair tickling at Emma's neck under her coat. "I was a homicidal maniac, remember?" She untucks the hair from Emma's coat without thinking in an unconscious, almost motherly (not motherly at all) motion. And retracts her hand as soon as she realizes what she's doing. "Robin should have been the wary one."

Emma scowls, and she blurts out, "I just thought you were smarter than that," so quickly that Regina's eyebrows shoot up and she's startled instead of offended. Emma pales. "Wait. That came out...wrong. I just don't get how you'd just–"

She smirks without much bite. "Jump into a relationship?" Her hand is back on Emma, this time gentle on the blonde's gloved hands, and she can hear the exhalation as Emma relaxes. "Well, we talked about the Killian Jones method, but frankly I don't have the patience to be wooed for years with off-colour remarks. Robin would be a pile of ash by now."

"Be nice." Emma nudges her and her cocoa splashes up the sides of her cup. "He was just...persistent."

"Yes, well, it seems to have paid off nicely. Good for him." It's coming out sharper than she intends. Old resentment is unspooling within her, bitterness she has no business feeling threatening to break free, and she ignores the way Emma won't look at her anymore and thinks about Robin. Kind, safe, easy Robin, who's a good man and loyal and loves her so much more than she'd ever dreamed anyone could. "I suppose...my, uh. My first love. Daniel."

It's a bit like rolling on sandpaper to say his name here, in this place where light is shining and her son is playing and Emma Swan is sitting beside her with her hand below Regina's fingers. "We were very much in love. It was simple and mundane and just like any other young love affair in the land. I'd never imagined that I'd be worth much more than that. I wasn't a princess. I wasn't the kind of girl who had magical legends written about her."