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Crocodile Tears
🕑 Added 2015-10-05 19:06:08 +0000 UTChttp://archiveofourown.org/works/4939990
“You?” Emma asked, voice rich with amusement, eyes darting over Regina’s face as if ceaselessly trying to see if she was joking. “You’re the Savior? Don’t make me laugh! No one in this town will ever see you as a hero, because deep down, you’re the Evil Queen, and that’s all you ever will be!”
Regina stared at her, aghast, as Emma smugly smiled, marshalling herself for Regina’s comeback. Only Regina didn’t say anything. Her full lips quivered, but didn’t open. Then her chin began to wobble. Emma, confused, watched as a tear dripped down Regina’s cheek.
Then Regina turned away and began to sob. “Why, why would you say something like that?”
“What, I…” Emma looked around, feeling far more panicky than a Dark One should, as Regina’s shoulders shook with barely repressed sobs. “What’s she doing?”
“Look what you did!” Henry said, staring right at her. He went to Regina’s side. “Mom, it’s okay—“
Regina pushed away his hands before he could touch her, suddenly taking off at a run. Emma watched her go, still incredibly confused.
“Where’s she going? What’s she doing?”
“You hurt her feelings!” Henry said in quick, curt words, as if she were a toddler he were particularly upset with.
“No!” Emma balked. “Regina doesn’t have feelings, she has push-up bras—“
Far in the distance, Regina settled on a park bench, her head in her hands.
“She’s faking!” Emma insisted.
Henry crossed his arms, completely unmoved by Emma’s excuses. “You owe her an apology.”
“I’m not going to apologize for being evil, I’m the Dark One! You should’ve seen how skanky I was with Hook!”
Henry’s crossed arms tightened over his chest. “Fix this.”
Emma grinded her teeth. “Yeah, fine, make me the bad guy—“
“You are the bad guy! You just said you were the bad guy!”
Emma went “Urrrrrrrrrrgh!”, rolling her eyes, being teleported in a whiff of smoke to Regina’s park bench.
Regina was still crying, blowing her nose with tissues from her purse, her face red and puffy. Emma felt an odd sense of mourning for Regina’s carefully put on face, suddenly having runny mascara all over it.
“Hey,” she said. “You can quit that now. You’ve got Henry on your side.”
In Emma’s presence, Regina quickly tried to contain her tears, repressing everything but a few sniffles. She daubed her eyes with another tissue, then blew her nose with a loud honk that startled Emma more than she’d care to admit. Then Regina straightened her spine, turning fixedly away from Emma.
“I don’t know why you have to be so mean,” she said in a trembling voice.
“That’s because I erased your memory,” Emma said.
“So—“ Regina paused, her breath hitching as she struggled to contain another heaving sob. “Clichéd!”
“What can I say, it’s traditional. And I sent everyone to Maine again instead of Westeros, I don’t see anyone complaining about that! And you want to talk mean? You’ve killed like a hundred people!”
With a choked sob, Regina began crying again, face buried in her hands as her whole body was wracked with emotion.
“Hey,” Emma said gently, reaching out her hand automatically before stopping herself. “You quit that! I know you’re not really sad!” Regina just kept crying. “You’re milking it, you are totally—“ She looked back to Henry. He still had his arms crossed. “Okay, I’m sorry, alright?! I shouldn’t have said those things. I didn’t mean them.”
“Yes you d-d-d-did!” Regina huffed, tears freely flowing now, gulping sobs entering her voice. “You h-h-h-hate me! Just like everyone else!”
“No, no, no one hates you…”
“You—you—you’re just saying that to stop me from crying!”
“No, I—well, yes… but also, uh… look, can you just quit it?”
Regina wailed, Emma looking around automatically to see if there was anyone around to hear this more and more public display.
There was. Archie was walking Pongo, and seeing a crying Regina right beside an emotionless, ineffectual Emma, he gave her a nasty look.
What? Emma mouthed, shrugging at him, and he went on his way, shaking his head. Even Pongo seemed eager to get away from her. And after all the bacon she’d ‘spilled’.
Pinching her lips together, Emma summoned up a carton of Ben & Jerry’s with a silver spoon, which she held out to Regina. “Here. You want some ice cream?” She shook it. “Ice cream?” she repeated, as if Regina were in some doubt as to just what was in Emma’s hands.
Regina snatched it from her, once more holding in her sobs as she opened up the lid—Emma gave her a little magical help with the plastic liner—and dug her spoon in.
“It’s Salted Caramel,” Emma said. “Your favorite!”
Regina resolutely ignored her, still letting out panting sniffles in-between bites. Tentatively, Emma reached out and rested her hand on Regina’s back. With Regina’s allowance, she began rubbing her palm in gentle circles.
“Hey, you wanna see my new place?” Emma offered. “It’s really cool and I can hardly ever hear my parents having sex in it.”
Regina smiled a little at Emma’s joke and Emma butted into her with her shoulder, nuzzling against Regina who swatted at her once with an open palm, then returned to her ice cream.
“You’re not getting any of my Ben & Jerry’s,” Regina said haughtily.
“Okay.”
“And I need some more tissues. I’m all congested. I’m gonna get phlegm.” Emma made a face. “Well, it’s your fault, so you can frickin’ hear about it!”
***
At Emma’s new place, which Regina noted had more IKEA furniture than a divorced man, Regina washed up, emerging after a few minutes with her face scrubbed clean. Emma actually felt a stab of pity, seeing her with all her make-up washed off.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I didn’t know it was such a sore spot…”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Regina insisted. “You’re the Dark One now, you have to say mean, hurtful things…”
“No, it’s not okay. You were evil when we first met and you were still polite at least. You gave me all those apples and made me apple strudel—“
“Most of those were poisoned,” Regina admitted.
“Still, I bet they would’ve tasted good.”
Regina conceded it with a nod.
“You wanna see my evil lair?” Emma grinned, wiggling her shoulders up and down enticingly.
“Yeah, sure.”
Emma beckoned her with a crooked finger, leading her to the door under the staircase. “I undo the big lock—“ She said, demonstrating. “I open the door—whoa, more stairs? What’s down the stairs, Regina? A basement?” Emma shook her head. “Folloooow me…”
Regina rolled her eyes and tried not to giggle as she went down the stairs with Emma.
“It’s a cave!” Emma cried excitedly at the foot of the stairs, looking like she was restraining herself from throwing her hands in the air. Or maybe doing a jig. “I know you had a crypt and everything, but—this is a cave!”
“Crypts are cleaner,” Regina pointed out.
“Also full of dead people. So yeah…” Emma flounced through the cave, grabbing hold of a stalactite and swinging around it playfully. “Here’s my evil lair for Dark One business. I plot your demise, hatch fiendish schemes—I have some cots, for when I get minions…”
“Wait, wait—“ Regina held up her hands. “So up top you have a perfectly normal house?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And down here is a cave?”
“Yup.”
“And in it, your dark alter ego makes plans to fight your enemies.”
“Mmmhmm?”
Regina grinned. “This is the Batcave. You think of it as the Batcave.”
“I do not!”
“You have a Batcomputer right over there.”
“That’s my laptop, and I get really good wi-fi down here. Evil wi-fi.”
Regina persisted: “Nananananananananana—“
“It’s not the Batcave!”
“All you need is a really big penny and a dinosaur—“
Emma put her hands on her hips. “Okay, maybe I’ll put up a dinosaur statue, but just because I like dinosaurs! That’s not specific enough to be Batman. Don’t ruin dinosaur statues for my lair with your dumb analogy.”
“But you wouldn’t have a giant penny? Because it’s too Batman?”
“Well… maybe a giant doubloon or whatever…”
“Ha!”
“Because—Dark One—gold—paying things and—making deals—it makes sense!”
“Yeah, it’s totally different!”
“You better hope I’m not Batman, because you know what that would make you?” Emma gestured and in a puff of smoke, Regina was wearing green panties, a red vest, and some very sensible fairy shoes. “Nice gams, though.”
“Please.” Regina gestured. Another puff of smoke. Abruptly, Emma was reminded of her adolescent self’s very critical questioning of why Batman didn’t just let Michelle Pfeiffer kill Christopher Walken and then spend a lot of time touching her pretty, pretty hair—lying awake at night and wondering what it would feel like if Michelle Pfeiffer licked your face? Would it be rough because she was Catwoman, or soft because it was a tongue?
“Ha. The Burton one. I’m more of an Anne Hathaway girl.”
“Yes, well—“ Regina gestured again, smoking herself into a comfortable pantsuit. “I prefer to save dress-up for Halloween and certain date nights.”
Watching Emma suddenly jaw-dropped was worth the rather obvious come-on.
“Do you have a TV room? And please, tell me it’s not in your basement—“
“This is not a basement!”
***
“Here,” Emma said, patting the couch cushion next to her. “We can watch Legally Blonde without any emergency town business bothering you.”
“And why would I want to watch Legally Blonde?” Regina asked, arms crossed.
“C’mon, Reggie. We all have the same Netflix account. I’ve seen Legally Blonde on the recently viewed tab like twenty times. I’m not watching it and Henry’s not watching it…”
“You know what? Yes. Reese Witherspoon is America’s sweetheart and I won’t apologize for enjoying her work just because she’s not Nicki Minaj. She’s a cute blonde white woman who the Midwest adores and so do I!”
“Okay, okay, I don’t have anything bad to say about Reese Witherspoon. She’s not Sandra Bullock or anything—what?”
“You really are evil,” Regina said simply.
“For not liking Sandra Bullock?”
“If Audrey Hepburn was alive and making movies, would you hate her too?”
“Great, next you’ll be defending Julia Roberts!”
“I—okay, she’s overrated, and Erin Brockovich was trash.”
***
Regina sat beside Emma on the couch and, after a few questing sniffles, Emma took Regina’s hand and held it in her lap as they watched Reese Witherspoon walk a gay dog.
“Do you think Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds should get together?” Regina asked. “I know he’s with Blake Lively, but she just doesn’t seem to get him, you know? And he and Sandra are such good friends!”
“I don’t know—I guess they’d make a cute couple… Regina?”
“Yeah, Emma?”
“Are you sure you didn’t—you know—turn it up to eleven with the tears? Just a little?”
“You really did hurt my feelings, Emma.”
“I know I did. But I have never seen you cry before today.”
“Mary-Margaret said I should be more in touch with expressing emotions other than anger and lust. It’s okay to cry, she said. You just have to be open and honest with your feelings and let people know they’ve hurt you instead of burying it all inside and only letting it out with mass murder.”
“So I didn’t really make you cry, I just made you sad and then you cried on your own.”
Regina’s eyes shot heavenward. “I swear, when a dog piddles on the carpet, it’s equaling your emotional depth.”
“I just don’t want it all on me, okay? You milked it—a little—and I know you milked it so you might as well admit it.”
“Well… I am on my cycle at the moment. This morning I cried at an episode of Adventure Time.”
“That can be a pretty sad show. When the Ice King was friends with Marceline but his power made him forget, and she just wants him to remember…”
Regina rested her head on Emma’s shoulder. “Shush. We don’t have to get into it just now. Just watch the movie, this is the good part.”
“Okay,” Emma said.
And they watched, letting their bodies stay together like they’d fallen that way.
***
“Regina?”
“Yes, Emma?”
“Is it just me or did Leroy murder a guy by forcing him to cross a clearly magical boundary?”
“Yeah, I… guess he expected that would be undone when the Curse was broken.”
“Oh, no, he’s a tree forever now. Pretty much dead.”
“Ah. Well then.”
“Grumpy the Dwarf definitely killed someone.”
“Very sad.”
“Well, he’s alive as a tree, so it’s more like Leroy cut off all of someone’s arms and legs, and then put them into a coma that they would never wake up from. So not murder but, you know…”
“Manslaughter. Or, uh, murder in the… fourth degree?”
“The equivalent of killing a dog, maybe? It’s almost killing a person, but not quite as bad?”
“Like what those paparazzi did to Princess Di.”
“Yeah, that. You should probably have a talk with Leroy about supporting the guy’s wife and kids.”
“Oh, he had a family?”
“Yes. Daughter was about to get married.”
“Oh, wow. I suppose I’d better explain to Leroy not to… not to force people into doing obviously bad things just to see exactly what bad thing will happen to them?”
“Yeah, I kinda expected people got the gist after all this time. Don’t cross the town line or bad shit. Not sure why anyone needed to test that out.”
“His daughter is getting married?”
“Yeah, they wanted to… wanted to make it official before the chemo started to make her hair fall out and everything.”
“Oh, man. And Leroy just…?”
“Well, he was mute, so…”
“He had a physical disability and that makes it okay?”
“I’m not defending Leroy!”
“I should think not… the manslaughterer…”
