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"To be honest, you're too good for Hook."
Regina's words floated between them, far too airy around the edges for Emma to think the other woman wished her to analyze them in any way it mattered. And, as she sat down on the other nearby stool, the blonde did exactly that: Was she? The concept was far too foreign for her, for her to be something, someone, that could be considered better-than. A far too foreign idea that left her ears tingling where Regina's voice still echoed.
She looked down, feigning that the blush she felt on her cheeks was not as noticeable. Luckily, Regina kept her eyes turned away from her, enough for either of them to have the plausible deniability Emma had come to understood as the two of them having. A far too easier relationship: to built it when neither of them truly talked.
Was it?
The sounds of the diner kept their usual lull, no unnecessary changes to what she had come to expect from Granny's, the alive version that was. Yet, the lack of the faces she had come to link to the place, made the place slightly less loud than usually was.
Keeping her promise, Regina's eyes didn't leave the diner's door, hands raised and holding her coffee cup as Emma repositioned herself: elbows on the counter and conversations ricocheting around them as the patrons stopped their staring as they began to behave as they were expected to. Emma considered how many ongoing cycles had there been for some, how many changes had they gone through, trying to achieve what would liberate them. She hadn't gotten much of the logic in which the Underworld worked but as time elongated, she had started to feel the tether between herself and her tombstone; a permanent feeling that left her fingers tapping the counter's surface, aiming to free herself from the nervousness of it all without success.
"Will you reconsider leaving for New York again? After all of this is done."
Trapped as she felt, she needed a couple of seconds before she realized Regina had directed a question towards her. The brunette had hidden her mouth behind the cup, eyes unblinking and back as straight as possible. There was nervousness on her movements as well, Emma's mind supplied, noticing the way Regina's usual flair was lacking from the too-succinct hand movements she had been doing ever since that morning.
Not like, she considered briefly, either of them had had that much time together after Camelot that would have helped her into seeing how nervous Regina had truly been for the past.... weeks? Months? Or during Camelot itself her mind added causing a small frown that she quickly tried to shake off before focusing on the question once again.
"I... what?"
It had been some time since she had been asked about her previously rushed out plan to leave Storybrooke behind. At least, to everyone else, what had happened back with Zelena seemed to have them convinced she would not do it any longer. Besides, if asked, a there were several easy answers to could glaze over the lack of an actual response: She wasn't entirely sure she would ever be able to make enough money to acquire a similar enough flat any longer without Regina's magic to guide her! So, clearly, there was no further reason for her to not stay in Storybrooke. Of course.
Regina's eyes were still fixed on the door but Emma could picture them, turning and staring at her as purple began to crackle within them, soft at first, more obvious later. She liked the freckles made of purple sparks if she was being honest. Which, she realized with a startled, it seemed she was.
"Must have been a great place for you to be, considering it how adamantly you are considering it, even now. I wonder what Hook will say. Once we make his brother understand that you are the one getting shortchanged."
The last bit was said with slightly more bite and despite the odd angle, Emma could indeed see Regina's magic surfacing for a moment before it all got dissipated, the surface of her drink shimmering slightly as she blew on it, feigning tranquility.
Biting down her knee-jerk reaction to the implication of Regina's words, Emma thought back on New York, on what it had meant for her, the memories that now, after so long, she was able to see them as they truly were: bits of reality that had never been hers to begin with. Which was, she concluded, not all that fair.
"It's not that." The response felt more like a whining platitude and she almost felt ashamed as Regina rose her brows, clearly not buying her response. Which, on itself, she considered, felt insulting: she hadn't been the one mentioning that, Regina had. She ought to be the one defending the change in topics.
Looking down to the counter, to the way the lights bounced right off it as the dead inhabitants of the town kept their morning routines around them, Emma felt the tiredness she had felt just as Henry and her had returned come back in full force: a similar tether than the one that now kept her trapped linking her to the idea of a town that was just as tiny, just as full.
A sigh escaping her, Emma glanced back towards Regina: the woman was still refusing to look at her, the same angle an darkened expression. It had truly been a long time since they had talked, she thought with a startle. Even longer since the conversation had not been about some impending doom about to attack the town that, yes, indeed, Emma had finally surrendered herself to.
An overdue explanation was, maybe, the easier place to start.
Hands pressed against the counter now, she mentally catalogued the different shades of colored bits she was able to distinguish among the light-colored polymer. As seconds extended, enough, maybe, to warrant a second question from Regina herself, Emma folded the question itself as neatly as possible, lines upon lines of added context falling around her as poorly drawn out cards.
"I wanted an exit." She tried to keep her voice as conversationally as Regina had but she could still feel the soft plea on her tone. Something that felt she had been trying to echo far too many times lately. Frowning, she tried once more; "I feel that what I missed was the ability to be alone. I thought Henry also felt that. Seems like I was the only one needing to be..." Words faltered; mentioning Henry with Regina would always be a difficult enough topic. One she felt would be much more difficult now. Sure, they had seemingly forgiven her from her Dark One days -she shuddered at how easy it all had seemed, how painful had it been, to hear Rumple's voice, to hear the wishes and needs of creatures written as fallen and cursed only for the script to be flipped on her once more- but that did not mean...
"You wanted to feel lonely."
She bristled at that word because, no, it was wrong. Completely wrong.
She had not wanted to feel lonely. She had not wished solitude upon Henry. She had wanted silence. A place outside wandering eyes and a far too heavy weight. It was funny, she considered, thinking on the anchoring feeling at the base of her stomach; how trapped she now felt and how similar the feeling kept on being even now.
She wondered, perhaps with some dark glee to it, what her mother would say if she voiced her thoughts to her. Despite what she had tried to exhude, her Dark One stint had been far too full of measured movements: the type of abandon she had experienced when tunning in on Rumple's memories was severely lacking of her own experience. It was difficult to admit that with so many words, however, to voice experiences she felt she had been taken out of the equation for.
"There's a difference."
Regina was quick then, still looking at the door, still refusing to meet her eyes. The coffee must be getting cold but she kept on blowing over it at slow intervals, as if using the intake of breath to break through her own words.
"I know, Miss Swan. I know intimately well that there are differences." It was an angry response made in a tone that did not admit any further explanation. But Emma knew Regina enough -had, did, the image of a dagger handed over, of words that felt far too similar to vows for either of them to be comfortable with them, echoing back in whispering tendrils- to know that she was, indeed, waiting for her to answer.
"We would've come to visit"
Her voice tilted upwards, making the sentence slightly dubious, as if she was asking rather than admitting to it but Emma refused to backtrack now. They would have. Of course they would. Her need to leave the town behind did not change that she would...- What?
"We would've."
Regina chuckled, ruefully. "To the town that can't be found."
Biting down the most expletive words, Emma stood, the sound of the stool scrapping the diner's floor echoing back at her as she, decidedly, shook her head. Gone were the worries of Liam and whatever the man had told her a few hours ago, the feeling of unease that had predated their arrival to this twisted version of the town she felt trapped in, the tugging of the tombstone and the fact that she felt Rumple had been hiding something. Everything, at that very moment, felt fixated on the next point of the conversation she and Regina were having: of her making the other woman understand that, indeed, they would've come to visit.
Her. They would have come to spend time with her. Until seeing Regina with Robin would have become too much. Or until the older woman had decided that only Henry was worth her time. Then Emma would have been free.
Loneliness had many faces after all. Wishing for time alone was not, on itself, bad. Never was, never had found it so.
Dreading the solitude that would accompany change, however, and yet almost wish it so the circle was finally enclosed around one's heart was a radically different feeling. But Emma suspected that she would need far more time than the one they had to fully explain it and, she feared, she only had so many words to explain something she wasn't sure Regina would want to listen to any more.
Perhaps during Camelot. Maybe then. Maybe if she had been a far braver person. But, Storybrooke -for all its goods and lighter shades- had indeed made her smaller in far too many things. Angles of her that had gotten sanded, hidden, so they were better swallowed and understood. She missed them, missed those.
"I mean it, Regina." There were some patrons beginning to stare in their general direction but it seemed that fights-between-friends-that-felt-far-too-much-like-declarations were not all that weird here. "We would have wanted to see you."
There was a plural where a singular would also have worked. Not that it mattered. Regina's eyes left the door then, purple and dark and endless and Emma felt the damnest of impulses begining to grow around her heart, the idea of her kissing Regina one that had accompanied her for a long time and one which she had managed to become quite good at feigning it wasn't there to begin with. Yet, as Regina stared, speechless, it was becoming far too difficult to pretend that she had wondered -far too many times- how easy would it be for their story to unfold differently.
The next string of words escaped her before she was able to edit them out:
"You could also have come to visit us."
Regina did not get the option to reply, as Henry run into the diner, happy expression on his face and completely oblivious to what had been happening before (And Emma was almost 100&% sure some of the closer patrons exchanged some words between them that felt like barely-concealed insults for the interruption.)
"Moms... Grandma found the key."
Right, break's over.