Shaya

Chapter 34 - Take me back

Shaya laughed hard at Emma's words.
" Really? You really dared to do such a thing?"
Regina nodded, smiling although glaring at the Savior. " Oh yes, she did! She did, and there with that satisfied grin on her face she faced me and was like... " Regina stood up, radically changed her posture, lowering her shoulders and leaning a bit back. " Yo come after me one more time I'm coming back for the rest of this tree."" she said, imitating the blonde's voice weirdly moving her head forms side to side, without bending her neck though, in the general laughter. Her eyes glittered in amusement. " " Because, sister, you have no idea what I'm capable of."" she plowed on. Emma was leaning her head on the table, hitting it with a fist, trying to catch breath from the laughter. " "Your move."" she concluded, leaning forward to an invisible herself. She then recollected her posture, gazing at the Savior with an amused smirk, and sat down. " Like, really Emma, I had to force myself not to laugh. If I wasn't that angry for my tree, I would have doubled up."
" What? No no no no no, sister, you're lying like shit!" Emma exclaimed, her face red as never before, as Regina's words had finally made her catch her breath. " You liked it! I saw it, don't you ever try to deny it, I saw it, you wanted to be challenged! I intrigued you."
" Oh, heavens forbid..." Snow exclaimed, covering her face with her hand.
Emma snapped open her eyes. " Not in that sense!"
" Mh, such a pity..." Killian commented, taking another sip from his pint.
Regina glowered at him. " Oh, please..."
He grinned at her, making her pinch her lips in anger. Shaya reached for her hand, tangling her fingers with hers, catching her attention. Her black eyes softened, and she squeezed the warrior's hand as to reassure her.
" But you really remember it well! Like, those were my exact words, Regina! So don't try to say that it didn't strike you!" Emma continued, taking the loved gaze away from her.
" I can't deny that the idiocy of that action stroke me."
" Oh, come on!"
Regina gave her a victorious sneer and Emma slowly shook her head, snorting.
" It wasn't that idiotic if it worked..." she grumbled quietly.
She didn't see the smirk Regina gave her, but Henry, sitting next to his natural mother, right in front of the adoptive one, did, and he smiled wildly when Regina winked at him.
They had had to move a table next to one with the benches to be able to stay all together for lunch. Belle and Rumplestiltskin were sitting at the table for two together with Killian, who was awkwardly avoiding Rumple's gaze since the beginning, David, Henry and Emma at one side of the biggest one, Snow, Regina and Shaya at the other side.
" Here we go guys!" Ruby exclaimed with a huge smile serving them the giant baking tray of lasagna they were about to share.
Regina skeptically stared at it. " Let's see if the granny can do better than me..."
Snow stifled a laughter as she started cutting the portions, glancing at her.
" Actually, Regina, you're a granny, too..."
The two of them stared at each other for a while, Snow with the knife mid-air upon the lasagna, Regina glaring at her. After some silent, tensed moment, Regina evilly grinned.
" And so you are, dear."
The laughter that filled the diner expressed so much relief that they even knowingly smiled at each other.
Snow served Regina first, then Henry, Emma and the others. She then grabbed her glass and raised it.
" To the family!" she exclaimed with a wide smile on her face.
David was the first one to raise his glass. " Cheers!" he said, clinking it against hers. Everybody's cheer followed. Shaya gazed at the woman at her left, leaning a hand on her thigh under the table as they smiled at each other. She had never seen her eyes shine so much.
Belle suddenly thumped her glass on the table for the haste to lay it down. She swallowed the sip of beer that was filling her puffed cheeks and gazed directly at her.
" Shaya, I'm really, really curious to know your story!"
The warrior knitted her brows.
" What? I though you'd read of it?"
" Oh, yes, I did, but that was just a tale." she glanced at Henry with a leery smirk on her face. " And we kind of know that books aren't always reliable..." She squeezed Rumple's hand, glancing at Regina.
" Yeah. My face isn't that large..." Snow complained frowning, making Emma almost choke on her lasagna as she bursted out into laughter.
" And, to be clear, I never thought you were prettier than me, dear..." Regina said smirking devilishly. Snow narrowed her eyes, pretending to glare at her, but she was smiling.
" That's only because you never used your mirror to actually look yourself in the mirror."
Regina cocked an eyebrow and slightly opened her mouth, faking to be outraged, but being really surprised, it seemed. Her lips tensed then in a grin.
" Touché." she said, giving Snow the time to feel the taste of victory before destroying her. " I was too busy making plans about your new haircut for the curse, indeed."
Snow's face fell, and she opened her mouth to reply but evidently nothing good came to her mind as she shut it, pouting.
" I-I like this haircut." she grumbled after a while, making Regina laugh.
" Yes, of course..."
" Shaya, please, end this!" Belle pleaded her, smirking. " Tell us your true story!"
" Yeah, right!" David said enthusiastically, slamming a hand on the table. " We only know that you're a badass with a sword!"
" And that you're older than you look, like the seventy-five percent of this table!" Emma added. At Regina's surprised look, she grinned. " What? Did you think I was only a cute face? I can do maths!"
The brunette rolled her eyes and shook her head. " Emma, dear, I think that if you say again that I think that you have a cute face, either your mother will stab me with her fork, and it wouldn't even be the first that it happens to me now that I think about it, or she'll stab herself with the before mentioned fork."
" Why can't I use my knife?"
" Who stabbed you with a fork? Did you stabbed her with a fork?" Shaya asked stretching behind Regina to look at Snow. She shook her head in deny.
" No, Ariel stabbed her with a fork."
" Ariel?! That Ariel?" Emma asked giggling.
" It's always that one, momma." Henry said, gazing at her like if she was eleven and he was twenty-nine.
Regina gave him an amused smirk. " I'm so happy you didn't inherit her brain..." she said stretching over the table to caress his face as he laughed.
Emma glared at her.
" Who's Ariel? Why did the bitch stab you?"
They all laughed at Shaya's questions. Snow was about to spill the beans when Regina spoke.
" Who cares, dear? Now, tell us about you. I don't know what exactly happened to you either. I'm quite curious, too." she smiled, making her forget what she so intensely wanted to know with just that sweet gaze.
" Aye, maid! Tell us, how did the Golden Death become the Golden Death?"
" Yes, Shaya, pleeeeaase!" Henry pleaded her, making her smile with those big, green, questioning eyes. " I love your stories!"
She let her gaze wonder over all of them, dubious.
David incited her. " Come on, don't be shy!"
" Indeed! I want to know the truth about you!" Snow added, the excitement that lit up her face.
" Please, Shaya! " Belle smiled, stretching her hands on the table as if she wanted to reach her. " I want to correct those books!"
This made her laugh again. She locked gaze with the only one who had never spoken yet.
Rumple sneered at her.
" Come on, dearie. Don't make them wait!"
She snorted, glancing down. Could she do it? Could she tell them the story of her life without shocking the boy? Without scaring them? Without getting hurt? She glanced at Regina. Her patient, waiting smile made her suddenly understand that nothing could change what she was feeling right now. That special warmth and sense of completeness that came from being there next to her, from being able to touch her, feel her heat at her side, look into her eyes and know that she was happy there with her family and with her, and that she loved her back. Her past was just a memory that meant nothing more than a preparation for her present day, a sad tale with a happy ending that had just become a beautiful beginning. So she smiled, and her smile became a challenging grin when she looked back at Belle.
" Okay..." she said, using that weird term she had lately learned. " You want a story? Here's your story, my little stubborn friends." she said, taking time to pitch her voice, find the right rhythm, catch their full attention. " But, be careful, you daring fools... " she plowed on, locking gaze with each of them. As she leaned forward on the table, they involuntarily did, too, and so she knew that they were hers. She sneered again, pleased. " ...The story you're about to hear it's a crow's warbling, a song written in blood with a golden pen, the screams of the war horns slipping from the hands of walking dead men... "
The silence was so thick that nobody could breath, not until four enchanted words would have left her lips riding a winged whisper.
Shaya smiled, enjoying their wait, breathing it in before breaking that magic moment. Everybody, in that weird tavern, not only the ones sitting at that table, was waiting for her to go on.
She glanced at Regina one last time, then leaned her challenging stare on the one who had asked for that. With a smirk, she let the magic of the words fill their mind.
" Once upon a time..."