The major was laying calmly, curled slightly into herself to her left, as she settled into dreamland, any wrinkle of worry or hiss of anger gone from her features, as she was finally at cease-fire.

Emma walked back up from the kitchen, and found herself watching the moonlight shine across Regina's cheeks as the nimble brightness threatened to wake the Queen.

There was so much hate between them, so much rage that couldn't be contained for so many days, it was a constant struggle between the one who fought to become the one the people listened too, who as the story told was the savior, and the one who fell from her throne. It would be so easy to let go, for Emma to run as she always did after the Queen was no longer a threat, having lost every ounce of anything she once loved, even her dear Henry, who was the last flicker of light in her life. The little boy was someone she loved more than anything, in a way that was true, that wasn't manufactured in her spell book.

However Emma found the fighting, exhausting, and the struggle for Henry painful. Even as she had more of a claim to Henry, Regina had raised him for so many years, nursing him when he was sick, reading him to sleep, tucking him in, nurturing him as a mother would. Like Emma didn't. And after the curse had broken, and everything had fallen, she decided to have a discussion with the fallen Queen, in the older woman's empty home, with Henry at his grandfather's.

And she'd heard the woman's story, and she'd listened for the first time, without a biased of seeing all circles of hell in the woman's eyes, and she understood.

She and Emma had found a common ground with pain, with a loneliness one could only know after a life of being the cardboard box on the side of the road that someone didn't care to pick up or remember. That container wilting to expose a jail of cynicism and a cell block a million miles long, a labyrinth that only the best make it out of, but not without battle scars.

Emma crawled into Regina's bed, setting her water on the side table and falling next to the mayor, and laid down, her arm reaching out and wrapping lightly around the brunette, feeling Regina tense, then relax into her arm. "You alright?" Regina asked.

Emma raised her eyebrow lightly as the older woman turned around. "I thought you were sleeping."

"You aren't very quiet, dear." Regina whispered.

Emma rolled her eyes and laid her head down, meeting brown eyes, blending into the darkness of the night. She reached up and tucked away the black hair, a tender action that was rare, but soft and warm. They hadn't entirely defined what they were, or what they had been, but they were here, together, and they weren't alone, and that was the bottom line for them. That the bed wasn't cold and it was an unsaid rule that if a nightmare was to overwhelm one of them, they would be held, even if speech weren't there. It was an arrangement that worked for both.

" 'Gina?" Emma asked a few minutes into the silence.

"Hmm?"

"There's a dinner thing tomorrow, you should come."

Brown eyes fluttered open. "I don't think that would be a good idea, dear."

"Why not?"

"You know why not."

"Come."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"N-"

Emma's hand rested on Regina's hip softly as she kissed her, reveling in the taste of apples on her lips. "Come." She said softly. "I'll take care of whatever needs to be taken care of."

Regina signed softly. "Henry surely gets his stubbornness from you." She said with a light smile. "Fine, I will come to your dinner, but now it's time to sleep." The former Queen turned back towards the window and reached behind her, taking Emma's hand and pulling her arm around her.

"Goodnight, Ms. Swan."

Emma smiled softly. "Goodnight, your Majesty."