The Black Knights were vicious, ruthless killers, with no honor and loyalty only to her stepmother's gold purse. Snow had known that since she was a pampered princess running for her life. Before she learned many other hard lessons in the rough world and hard life of a bandit. She had supposed when the men chased her, that they were dreaming of the riches the Queen would bestow on them if they brought her the heart of Snow White. She wouldn't have put it past her stepmother. Once upon a time, even when she was running, she had held hopes that Regina could be reasoned with. That fences could be mended. That the woman she had met so many long years ago was still in there.

But we all must put away foolish things when we reach adulthood. Especially when you have responsibilities such has a husband, a child, and a kingdom to care for. The blade at her throat hadn't bothered her. She knew from Rumpelstilskin that Regina couldn't hurt her in the test. But it was the malevolent crazy eyes that haunted her. There was no love in there anymore, not for her, and not for anyone. The glimpse she had gotten of Regina's pain on that windy hillside the day she bit the apple had been a mirage.

The queen was incapable of love. And now her foolish hope was going to cost them all.

She stumbled through the carnage of the castle, how she managed to walk so soon after giving birth she had no idea. Truthfully she had no idea how she managed to get from her bed chambers to the nursery. Over the bodies. How had Regina had so many men willing to die for her now? She wasn't a queen anymore... yet the halls were full of bodies. Both their own knights and the men in black.

What she never expected to see, what she had never prepared herself for, was Charming. David was laying on the floor of the nursery. His shirt covered in blood and a small pool forming around him as his life force bleed out of him. The distant clash of swords and thunder from the curse faded, and all she could see was David. She cradled him in her arms, crying for only the fairies probably knew how long, that she didn't hear her enter.

"Don't worry dear, in a moment you won't even remember you knew him, much less loved him." The Queen's mocking voice came from above her and she looked up through watery eyes.

"Why are you doing this?" It seemed like the only question she ever asked Regina when they encountered each other these days. Long gone were the days in which she felt like she could talk to her stepmother about anything.

"Because this will be my happy ending." Her smile didn't reach her eyes, and Snow imagined she saw swirling blackness behind them. She turned to her knights as they entered to report. "The child?"

Snow knew, knew in her soul, that they had won. She had hope that Emma had gone through the magic wardrobe to save them all. She started to smile... until she heard the crying. How had she not heard the crying before?

"Here your majesty."

Regina turned with malevolent eyes. As if she was prepared to snap the newborn's neck as the guard handed the bundle over. But instead of the act of evil Snow expected, in horror and resignation, Regina took her daughter in her arms, looked down into her eyes, and the darkness softened.

And as the curse hit Regina rocked her enemy's daughter in her arms. "My happy ending."

Emma Mills hadn't lived in Storybrooke in nearly a decade. Not since she'd gone off to college, her volvo station wagon filled with everything she owned and her mother waving from the front porch of the mayoral mansion. She had been sure that her mother was crying, but Regina never liked to let Emma see her cry, so she was waving from the house rather than standing at the end of the driveway. Emma had once joked with a friend at Brown that she thought her mother more the type to try and move into her dorm room rather than let go, but to her eternal gratitude, Regina had not. Not even when she found herself pregnant with Henry, and Neal had disappeared like the cockroach he was. Though there had been a conversation about responsible birth control which was infinitely more awkward than the birds and the bees lecture had been when she was twelve.

She and Henry came for holidays of course, and she called her mother once a week, but Storybrooke as an adult always seemed to her more of a haze. A dreamy place from some sort of Norman Rockwell painting. Completely with the dreary skies. Because no one knew how cold Maine could actually be like someone who was actually from down east. And certainly not like any city she'd lived in. Not Providence, or New Haven, or Boston. But sometimes, the spirit calls you home, and she found herself wanting for Henry the kind of safe childhood she'd had. In a town where there were no bad guys behind every corner.

She blamed her job for that fear of course. She had worked for the Suffolk County District Attorney's office since she'd gotten out of law school. Putting away bad guys had always been what she wanted to do, when she was a little girl she'd wanted to be a cop, but her mother stirred her to safer, more respectable paths. She'd gone from dealing with petty crimes, to major, high profile cases. And it was a child's murder that drove her home. During the months of the trial she couldn't stop seeing those crime scene photographs when she closed her eyes. And the nightmares about Henry kept her from doing that much...

And so when Regina had casually mentioned-for about the twentieth time in several years-that the Storybrooke DA's job was open, this time she bit. And on her twenty-eighth birthday she drove back into town. Her apartment was still filled with boxes, her office a mess, but given that the only three times she'd been to court so far had been for Leroy's drunk and disorderly charges and one particularly risqué outfit from Ruby Lucas she wasn't in that much of a hurry to organize it.

A little chaos had always felt right to her. Just as meticulous order had appealed to her mother.