She wonders what it might have been like, to meet Regina for the first time now, without the past and a series of Cora’s commands weighing on them. Mulan would never have allowed anyone to command Emma. Mulan has stepped in twice this evening with a grave hand on Snow’s arm at a try the rice, it’s so tasty and join us tomorrow for a ride and Snow had recoiled twice, eyes wide, and retracted the commands and apologized.
It’s easy to dream of a sheltered life with guards around her, to be watched like a hawk in exchange for a certain freedom, but Emma can’t imagine herself as the woman grown from that gilded cage. Nor can she imagine knowing any other Regina first but the girl in the stables, lying to her mother and flushing at Emma’s appreciation.
“I’ve always been certain that Mother had been the reason you’d rejected me,” Regina says suddenly. Emma isn’t the only one lost in thoughts of the past and what could have been. “Though it hardly makes a difference, if you were so easily swayed.” Emma aches. “But it must have been Mother,” Regina says, looking carefully at her.
“It wasn’t,” Emma says immediately, beholden to a command from long ago. Her face gives nothing away, no clues to the truth, and Regina sighs.
Emma Enchanted (7/15)
Published
Question of Smoke 