A/N Dedicated to Pau for different and various reasons. One of them being that I want to apologize for not being able to shut myself up with my headcanons as you tried to digest the hype we felt over the SDCC panel. I'm truly sorry.

(Not exactly but I still wrote this xd)

Also… I want to thank her and a few other kind spirits (That already know who they are) for, unknowingly, making me want to write again. Always a close call, uh?

There is not enough light in the sky

The first time Regina had hold a heart between her fingers she had been unable to think in anything else but how it seemed to tremble, how it moved against her fingers as it glowed, magic keeping it safe. She, somehow, had expected blood and pain oozing out of the organ and when it didn't she had squeezed it slightly, a minute move she hadn't realized she had done until she had heard the gasp of the girl, the nameless girl Rumplestiskin had used in order to keep her at his side.

The feeling of strangeness never truly left and even after being responsible of myriads of deaths the fleeting sensation of the heart beating against her fingertips always made her pause. A second perhaps, a moment too brief to catch it. However, Regina always relied on it; it was the moment that made her remember that the ones she was killing were actually real. The act, that had been horrible for her before, transformed itself in an act in where she could show the control she possessed over everyone else. That quiet, brief beat against her magic was what made her smile and laugh as she transformed that war and strength into dust. She had enjoyed the killing. Immensely so.

So when, in the roof of an unnamed apartment in the completely non-magical New York, the feeling of her own blackened heart between her fingers had made her pause. Almost as if a part of her, an unconscious one, was expecting that stubborn beat, the war that all prey had uttered before dying at her feet.

It wasn't out of revenge. Perhaps not even out of cruelty. She, though, had expected the beat.

And it had never come.

So she had stood as tall as she was, lips shuddering as she tried to remain composed, eyes flaring and tears already streaming down her face, looking, just looking. Her limbs seemed to be on fire as she looked directly at the woman who had been looking at her back from the mirror's glass she had far too hard tried to destroy ever since the first curse had been destroyed.

The blackened heart laid death and rotten on her palm, its weight unnatural for something so dark and for a second Regina just wondered if that was truly her own heart, if that was truly what she possessed, what she had once possessed. Before Henry, before everything. The heart didn't yield and so she squeezed; dust and magic floating away as the last shadow of the Queen did the same, one last sad look glowing on the back of those brown eyes she knew too well.

She had wondered why the heart hadn't weighed at all. She had wanted to ask.

She, however, never did. Because asking would mean to grant her other self a few more minutes in a Land that wasn't even supposed to have such perception of herself. The Evil Queen had been a persona for another time. One she needed to kill, to forget.

To destroy.

At least that had been what she had thought weeks ago. The thought only being fed by Snow's eyes when she had turned, still shaken up, still with hundreds of regrets hunting her.

She had seen though the quiet silence of Emma at the side of her mother though, the way the woman's shoulder's had seem to hunch forward as the Queen's remains disappeared from their sight.

The memory of a not-ended conversation had returned to her in that moment, about leaps and horizons and edges and jumps. She hadn't wanted to ask about it either. Not when her tongue still trembled because of a list that hadn't wanted to be said.

And now…

The light of midmorning illuminated the forest's trees lazily as she eyed the barrier that could be seem shimmering for the trained eye of a witch. She had been there, on that same spot, over every day for over a few weeks now. Jekyll's words coming back to her whenever she gave her back towards the barrier.

And with such words the doubt, always the doubt.

The doubt of why she kept waking up every morning with the feeling of not having rest at all. The doubt of why she kept having the same nightmares about death and murder she had been having as her time as a Queen. The doubt of why she never truly managed to feel herself, unguarded, whenever she tried to. With her freedom, she had realized, had come another kind of jail. One that came from expectations. Although not in the way she had always thought about them before.

"You are early today" A voice made her look towards her left, the smell of mud and leaves reaching her nostrils as she focused once again on her surroundings. The wet and punished patch of road was now occupied by a yellow bug she knew all too well and by a guarded smiling blonde who approached her figure with her hands firmly dag on her back-pockets.

"I couldn't sleep" Regina replied back, in that strange sincerity that seemed to mar every word of hers ever since they had arrived at Storybrooke from their trip. She liked the sincerity but not the apparent lack of malice her brain had. And so, like always, she frowned and remembered the heart she had refused to wait for it to fight back.

"I know" The blonde answered back, positioning herself at her usual spot at Regina's right, head tilted as she eyed the barrier, eyes half closed as she focused on it. "Henry called me, told me you weren't on your bed"

Regina tried to remain calm as the boy's name was said. That was something else both Emma and herself weren't talking. But they knew.

They knew that the blank nights were more usual than they both would like to admit. Regina had nightmares over times she was now unable to protect herself from. She half-wondered what were Emma's nightmares about. Or why the blonde had accepted Henry's suggestion of living with his brunette mother without even suggesting something close to make the boy switch places every once in a while. In some part of herself she still remembered the nervous laugh as Emma had tried to explain herself.

"The kid's things are at your house, is for the best to give him that, right?"

She had agreed with Emma, magic running down her veins at that time, high still from being able to return to the safe haven that was Storybrooke. She hadn't realized in that moment. Not the moment after that, nor the week after that.

And then… it had dawn her. The lack of fight.

Glancing towards Emma the brunette sighed inwardly and remained at her now usual spot, her fingers itching as she felt the now familiar tingle that created the younger woman's power on her skin, a slow, almost lazy, spark dancing on her wrist only to crack back into nothingness.

Emma eyed her, silent. She didn't ask.

The words "You don't understand" weighed Regina down. The unsaid "you" hurt her more. Back in an apartment where she had thought that no one else was truly watching anymore.

She almost could remember, she reflected as she tucked carefully the treacherous fingers under her arms as she turned towards the barrier once again, the moment she had proudly said she didn't regret a single thing she had ever done since her actions had brought her Henry. She could almost picture the look of complete and utter incomprehension she had seen on Pan's eyes. On Emma's own amazed pupils, the title of "Lost girl" still far too raw on her. She had always thought that such feelings came from her, from the good woman, from the one that would give everything because of her child.

Now, as she eyed the barrier, waiting for an attack that didn't come and the suspicion that her other half wasn't as dead as she had once wished for, she thought different. The Queen in her had been the one who had looked at death and had laughed at it. The Queen had been the one who had been helped into moving the moon. As impossible as it may sound.

The Queen had been the one who had asked to be called Regina.

And if Regina needed to dwell on a moment that marked the moment both of her sides had been first split had been that moment. The moment in where she had asked, had surmised, that there was a fight within her. A fight that needed the annihilation over the other part.

She had been a fool, she sighed while eyeing the barrier, Emma's presence still strong at her side. The blonde silent and tired as she was also stood and stared, her eyes never quite focusing on Regina. As they usually did these days.

If Regina needed to be truthful that alone stung much more than anything else; the knowledge that Emma wasn't able to look at her. Or that she didn't want to.

"I'm sorry about…" The blonde had started once they have been back; Violet and Henry half asleep on the backseat and her voice low and deep due to tiredness. And Regina had sighed and looked at the window, not really sure what she needed to say. Or why she suddenly realized that there was something, a lack of something, that she had become accustomed whenever she saw Emma Swan from the past three years.

The Queen had taken it with her, not the feeling, but the burning, the way the feelings curled inside of her, full of need and want and something that had always made her feel alive. It had been that moment perhaps, when she had realized that The Queen, as it was, didn't only harbor bad feelings, but also the ones she didn't want to fight or think about on her regular basis.

No, she resolved as she glanced at Emma, the blonde still standing at her side, green eyes rimmed with tired red born from sleepless nights and as many secrets as she had, red jacket put haphazardly over a white tank top, boots barely tied in lazy bundles that tried to be knots. Emma was…

She wasn't hers, she blinked that thought away. However, something inside of her protested. Protested and asked why, why it hurt suddenly much more to eye the blonde and think about the pirate. She had already passed that, she had already accepted that back in Neverland, back with the Ice Queen. Back when she had transformed…

In the Evil Queen.

"Do you think they will attack?"

The question alone made Regina cringe, the memory of the malicious part of the doctor looking at her still seizing her throat. Neither her nor Emma truly had even the luxury to think otherwise. The tiredness on the blonde's tone however was what made Regina want to close her eyes and steal more mornings like this one.

"Yes"

Silence stretched as Emma nodded and stared stubbornly at her feet, where mud and the leftover marks of her footprints seemed to look back at her. She seemed lost, tired, angry. Regina wondered how much she really had been resting.

Neither of them talked of the question the younger woman had uttered one of the first days on their self-imposed duty. Emma's voice had broken that day, slightly, just a tad, not enough for Regina to decide to act on it but noticeable enough for her hands to itch.

(She had never thought on how much she actually restrained herself. Now everything seemed… pointless)

"When will I know that everyone has their happy endings?"

The "I" had been almost swallowed by sudden pursed lips and Regina… Regina had seen the tiredness and the slow realization on green eyes that once upon a time had been full of fire and righteous fury. The look of a warrior, the look that someone she wasn't anymore had find electrifying. That had basked as if Emma's wit had been the water to her thirsty self.

She had tilted her head to her left and had remained silent for so long she suspected that Emma had decided that she wasn't going to be answered. "If it's like revenge they will never know."

Emma had nodded once before returning to her staring, words hanging between the two of them. Words that had been about strength and fight and that now barely were said because the two of them knew that they weren't going to make a change.

It was stupid how that thought alone truly hurt.

"I liked your jacket, I missed it" Would had been too much though, or too little to even dignify it with an answer of its own. Regina had seen the way the blonde's pupils seemed always to wait for her and she didn't want to risk that for a misplaced word. Another thing she had lost.

"I was wrong" Could have been another one. "She completed me"

She had been too focused on what would be her happy ending she hadn't realized on what the actual fare for it would be. She had thought that no-one else would understand. However, she had realized too late that Emma had already been born without even the option of good or evil. She would forever be bound to the righteous necessity of her parents for her to be good. To be a hero. A Hero who had nightmares about her time as a dark one. A Hero who sometimes seemed to look at her fingers as she expected a fire ball. Or something else. A Hero who spent her mornings in her company without saying "I told you so" even though they both knew…

For Emma's credit she hadn't say anything at all that night. Regina often wondered what would have happened if she had.

She was awoken from her thoughts when a warm hand touched her shoulder, another spark seeming to flare inside of her the second she fought against her, submitting it back into oblivion.

"Do you want coffee? I know I could use one"

Regina nodded and turned towards the yellow monster with tired dragging feet.

They weren't going to talk. Not today. Titles though bumped inside her mind as she smiled gratefully at the younger woman, titles of lives they hadn't lived. Titles of lives they had wanted for them to work.

Perhaps one day she would find the words, she surmised. Not today though.

Her skin tingled, a spark cracking through her arm.

Not today.