5Would it sound too weird if I said that I didn't remember what I wrote when I wrote this first chapter? I was falling asleep, but muse wouldn't let me go until I'd gotten this written, so I was sort of sleep-writing when I typed this. On the other hand, doing that means that I get to enjoy being a reader, rather than the writer, some several days after the fact. Didn't even remember I'd written it, honestly... well, there's a reason I keep a computer in my room.
So... Yeah. I'd meant this as a one-shot, but there was so much interest in ongoing chapters that the muse kept turning over ideas and handing them to me...and what can a poor writer do but knuckle under and take what's given her? Robin Hood demanded an appearance, the Red Shoes danced through my head, and other means of portal-jumping fairly leaped off the page... It's gonna be an interesting adventure, I think.
I don't own OUaT, but I wish I did - then I'd know what the heck happens next!
"Maybe I can help you," the woman declared, coming out of the shadows of the pit. "My name is Cora."
Emma shook out of her bonds, pulling herself to stand. "Great," said Emma, wearily. "And who are you? her voice was mournfully curious, along the tones of NOW what do I have to deal with?
"I'm Cora," she repeated, standing fully in the light that was let into the cell. An older woman, surely a beauty in her younger days, but there was an indefinable air about her, one that only the royals carry, rank and privilege gone subcellular. "I was a queen," Cora said, simply. "Now I am a refugee, like you."
"A refugee in a cage," snapped Emma.
"Mistaken identity," she passed the comment off with a wave. "I think I can help your friend." Cora had knelt by Mary Margaret before Emma could correct her - not friend, mother, not friend, mother, not mother, friend...wait, that was backwards...
"My dear?" asked Cora, gently raising her eyelid and using her ring to refract light into Mary Margaret's eye. The dark haired woman flinched, and Cora nodded in satisfaction. "No head wound, and she's breathing. My dear, can you move your fingers and toes? Legs and arms? Does it hurt when you do move?"
Mary Margaret considered the question carefully. "...No..No, I don't think so."
"Good. No immediate danger then," Cora said. "Sit up, you'll be fine."
"Oi! Cora!" came a voice from outside. "Dinner!"
"Yeah, food for the freak. Why we bother feeding her..." came another voice.
"Maybe we ought to cut her off."
"Because it's more fun to watch her squirm!"
The mocking voice was answered by one somewhat closer. "Oh be quiet, Gus!" he yelled. "We can't let her starve."
"She murdered you, you idiot! Or don't you remember that part?"
Emma looked at their cell mate with a raised-eyebrow look of assessment, but Cora merely waved it away. "No, just transported."
"You tried to kill me, though," said the handsome young man as he approached the door. His face wrapped in shadows by the tunnel. "Didn't manage it; it was only a banishment instead, to a land beyond her powers. And then, who should arrive not a few months later but my dear Cora, wrapped in chains of glass and ready to serve."
The older woman's face twisted in anger. "I will never serve you," she spat, but the young man wiped the phlegm from his cheek with a cheerful grin. She's nuts, he seemed to say, but isn't it tragic? We must humor her, she's losing her mind after all. And it's nothing more than I'm used to taking.
"So," he turned to the new women. "What brought you two in? Dressed a bit oddly, aren't you?"
Emma took point on the conversation; Mary Margaret had been staring at Cora since the woman had first emerged into the light, with the abstracted air of one trying desperately to recover a memory. "We came from...another land," Emma explained. "By magic. The wraith wanted Regina, but I'd promised Henry that I would keep her safe. I pushed Regina aside, so the wraith got me instead. And my... my best friend jumped in after me, I guess. That's how we came here, through a portal." She wasn't making sense, she knew she wasn't, and she tried to back up, to explain, but she never got the chance.
The guard's eyes went round. "Regina and Henry?" he demanded, grabbing the bars on the door. "Regina and Henry? How do you know them?" Cora, Emma noticed, was intensely interested.
Emma explained, "Regina is the mayor... the former wicked queen. Henry is her...adoptive...son."
"Named for her father, no doubt," said Cora, sourly.
But their jailer's eyes were on Mary Margaret, doing the same age-adjusting calculations that had been so common in Storybrooke for the last day or two. . "...Snow?" he finally managed in a strangled voice. "Princess Snow?"
Mary Margaret's eyes darted over to him, and her eyes flew open. "Daniel!" she exclaimed. "You're not dead!" Her initial surge forward was arrested by a thought. "Oh. Oh, Regina's going to be so pissed. All that revenge... for nothing. "
The guard at the cell door was straining in, reaching for Snow's hand. "Snow! You know her! Tell me... how is she? What happened to her? "
Emma tapped the bars impatiently. "Well, come in and sit down, it's going be a loooong story."
What seemed an entire season later...
Mary Margaret wrapped up their story. Daniel was floored. "And all that... because she was hurt? Because I wasn't there... Aw, damn, 'Gina... I have to go to her. I have to find her again." He stared up at the stone ceiling, as if it might be concealing a doorway home among the stalactites.
The look on his face angered Emma. She demanded, "You still love her? No matter what she did?"
"Of course," said Daniel, conviction in his voice. "She turned bitter. Bitter can be turned back. She just needs to remember who she was before. And I can teach her. I will teach her, if it's the last thing I do. My Regina wasn't like that. I know that gentle girl I loved so much is still there. I will find her again."
"So... how do we get back?"
Emma winced. "That's... gonna be a bit more complicated..."