A/N: Just an inordinately depressing oneshot. Pre SwanQueen, if you squint. I don't actually know why I went so dark here, but I kind of had a terrible dream and it just sort of evolved into this...
Warnings for mentions of rape, child abuse, and other horrible things and general emotional strain. Don't read if you're not prepared for the feels!
Shattered Mirrors and Broken Things
So far as Emma was concerned, her life in Storybrooke was more like the inner workings of an unsupervised madhouse than the stable home she'd always dreamed of having as a child, but she supposed that it suited her in its own way. She'd always been a bit of a scrapper, and more than a bit of a runner, so the wildness of her first true home was really something she should have come to expect. Emma didn't always like it, but it was home regardless. Despite the discomfort she felt with the whole 'Savior' thing, she had a stable job, good friends (even if they were fairytale characters) and even a family. Her real family. Which had an accompanying horde of issues that generally didn't (and really shouldn't) happen in the real world, but did anyways.
Oddly enough, it wasn't one of these 'shouldn't ever happen' issues that was pissing her off right now though. Sure, her mom might be physically younger than her, and overly sweet, and somewhat judgmental, and also a queen, and remarkably insensitive to Emma's abandonment issues, but Emma could overlook that. Lord knew she herself was far from the ideal daughter. No, what was happening right now was such a clichéd problem between mothers and daughters that Emma almost wanted to slap herself just to see if she was really awake. And she definitely wanted to slap Mary Margret.
Because really. Who in actuality read their adult child's clearly very personal diary without permission in the dead of night? Not cool, even for royalty.
Emma was a light sleeper. She always had been, and the habit had honestly saved her ass more than a few times in the past, though she'd been starting to sleep more normally since coming to Storybrooke and meeting her family. Still, the sounds of poorly muffled sniffling coming from the kitchen had been enough to rouse Emma from her sleep to see why her mother was up and crying at –she took a quick glance at the blinking red clock face at her bedside table—twelve thirty at night. Neal had been a perfect angel all night, so it wasn't like the woman was sleep-deprived or anything, and knowing this made Emma concerned that there was something seriously wrong with her former-roommate-turned-mother.
That concern instantly evaporated as soon as Emma ventured out and was greeted by the sight of Snow sitting at the kitchen table and reading Emma's journal. The one that she kept hidden in her sock drawer and only removed when writing in it. She'd started the habit in prison, actually, where she'd been given counseling to deal with her depression and mild PTSD. Whenever Emma felt like the world was crushing her, or she had a nightmare, flashback, or panic attack, she would scribble her emotions out onto paper until she couldn't anymore as a sort of release. It honestly helped more than Emma had ever hoped for over the years. The more she wrote, the less she needed to, and this particular journal fortunately had barely a few pages filled.
Still, those few pages were still pages that Emma desperately wanted to keep to herself. Those were her demons. It was her life. And –mother or not—Mary Margret had no right to take her diary and read from it, because it contained truths that Emma had never intended anyone to see. Much less one of the few people whose opinion truly mattered to her.
Emma's gasp of shock and anger alerted her mother to her presence, and the woman hastily dropped the journal onto the table, furiously wiping her eyes clear of tears. "Emma?" she said meekly. "What are you doing up?"
"What am I doing up?" Emma hissed, rage boiling within her and filling her from head to toe with searing heat. "What are you doing with my diary, your highness?" she spat. She felt violated. Betrayed. Terrified that Snow now knew. She knew and then everyone would know that Emma wasn't a Savior. She was just a broken, unwanted girl who'd been used and thrown away and she felt dirty.
"I… I just… You had that nightmare the other night and I was just concerned—" the brunette stammered, wringing her hands and looking highly pitiable, with her puffy eyes and tear-stained face and innocent body language. Emma was well aware that Snow would never think she'd done wrong here. She never did.
We put you through the wardrobe to save you, Emma.
I violated your trust because you were having bad dreams, Emma.
But this… this was wrong. And now Emma's family would never be able to look at her the same way again.
The brunette gazed at Emma's form, still frozen in the doorway despite tensed shoulders and clenched fists, with fresh tears welling in her eyes. "Is this true, Emma?" she choked, gesturing towards the little book lying innocently on the table. "Did you… were you really…"
"Of course it's true!" Emma burst out, teeth bared slightly in her anger. "But you had no right to read that, Snow. It doesn't matter how much you want to pretend that I write sad stories in my diary for fun. What matters is that I trusted you and you… you invaded my privacy and crossed a line you had no right to cross!"
At first, the woman seemed taken aback by Emma's aggression. But then her own temper (which was surely the genetic source of Emma's own short fuse, Emma reasoned, having met her laid-back father and eliminated him as a possibility) flared and she too raised her voice. "I only ever want what's best for you, Emma," she snapped back. "Why didn't you ever tell me? How can you say it doesn't matter? Of course it matters! You were a child, Emma, and he raped you! He ruined you!"
Ruined. Emma flinched. It was true. She felt ruined. She'd felt ruined ever since that particular foster father had decided that she'd needed to 'earn her keep' but that didn't mean that it hurt less to hear her own mother say it to her face.
Sensing the negative reaction to her words, Snow's eyes widened and she clamped a hand over her mouth, as if the physical action could take the sound back. "Emma I… I didn't mean—"
"Ma, is that true?"
Both women jumped at the sound of Henry's trembling voice. Still in his Iron Man pajamas with his hair mussed from sleep, the boy stood just behind Emma with an expression of pain and horror on his young features. Feeling like a boulder had just been dropped in her gut, Emma realized that her son must have heard the raised voices and come to investigate the disturbance, only to have caught Mary Margret's last statements. She wanted to run. She wanted to sink into the ground and have the earth swallow her up. She wanted to turn back time and burn her journal before her mother ever got it into her head to read it. Henry shouldn't have heard that. Of all people, he should have never been one of the ones to find out.
He was a child. He was her son. She needed to protect him. But she apparently couldn't protect him from her past, because she'd made a promise not to lie to him, and he'd know she was lying if she denied it now.
"It… it happened a long time ago, kid," she finally spoke, doing her utmost to keep her voice even. "Go back to sleep."
Immediately, fat tears began to roll down the boy's cheeks, making him look startlingly like his grandmother in that moment. He shook his head vigorously and moved to hug Emma, burying his face into her stomach. Emma could feel him crying, and panicked on the inside. He'd cried in front of her before, but this time… this time there was nothing Emma could do to make it better. Not for him, and especially not for herself.
"How dare you, Snow White?" Emma growled, making an effort to keep her voice low. No need to wake the rest of the peanut gallery. "How dare you steal my journal and talk about it in front of my son?"
Her mother looked stricken. Upset beyond speech. And really, Emma understood. Her mother was an optimistic woman, and always wanted to believe the best of the world because the world had generally treated her well. And sometimes, Emma even admired that trait in her. But she also knew better. The world –magic or no—is a cold and unforgiving place, and you either conquer it or it conquers you. Emma understood that this was a lesson that Snow had yet to learn, despite the hardships she'd endured in her life, and that it was hard for her to accept that Emma's childhood had been filled with anything less than love. Especially since Emma was her child. Had anything even upset Henry, Emma knew that she herself wouldn't take it well either. So Emma understood quite well why Snow had reacted as she had to something that was so much worse, because that was a mother's worst nightmare.
That knowledge didn't make her want to slap Mary Margret any less though.
"Henry, go to your room and grab your bag," she instructed her son softly, giving him a squeeze about the shoulders. "I'm taking you to your Mom's house for tonight." Thankfully, Henry obeyed without question, and Emma quickly moved to grab her purse and coat as Snow trailed helplessly behind her.
"Emma, no," she begged. "Please don't leave. Not now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I read your journal and said what I did, especially in front of Henry. It was wrong, but please don't go. We can fix this."
Fighting to remain rational, Emma firmly clamped her mother's shoulder beneath a trembling hand. (Though whether the tremors originated from anger or fear, she couldn't say.) "I need to leave," she announced, leaving no room for argument with her tone. She needed to cool down, and she couldn't do that here. "I can't be here right now or I'll do something I'll regret. So just… stop, Snow. You can't always make things better, okay? Just stop."
By this point, Henry had returned to her side and Emma rushed them out the door, feeling a little better once she'd left her mother behind. She couldn't be in that apartment with Snow anymore, and she didn't want Henry left with her either. He was still visibly upset, and Emma knew he needed Regina right now. His Mom. She'd know what to do to fix the mess that Emma made, and Emma felt safe leaving Henry with her while she… well, she didn't actually know what she was going to do. Or where she was going to go. In all honesty, she wanted to run, but she knew that wasn't an option anymore. She couldn't be without Henry, and Henry couldn't be without his other family. She wouldn't do that to him. So for the first time in her entire life, Emma couldn't run, and she honestly felt like she was going to burst.
She didn't know how to handle this. She was going to go insane.
Mercifully, Henry didn't speak at all during the short car ride, clearly sensing that Emma was in no state to converse with him and operate the vehicle at the same time. He just looked at his lap and sniffled quietly to himself, clearly tired. In fact, he didn't speak at all even when Emma had dragged him by his hand to his Mom's front door and rung the bell, and the ex-Evil Queen had flung the door open dressed in a gray silk sleep suit.
Her eyes widened at the sight of the pajama-clad duo on her doorstep, Henry still looking a bit weepy and Emma (she was sure) looking like hell warmed over. "What's happened?" Regina gasped, reaching for her son and pulling him into her side, where he took a fistful of the fabric of her nightwear and held on tight.
"Nothing, really, I just… I can't be in that apartment right now," Emma admitted, feeling the sting of tears in her eyes for the first time all evening. Her anger was dissipating slowly, but the space in her heart that it had once occupied was now flooding with crushing sorrow, and she worried that she wouldn't be able to keep it together. "Please Regina, Henry needs you right now and I can't…" be you, be his hero, be whole, be anything. There were too many things she couldn't be, and Emma couldn't pick just one. She was pleading now. She never pleaded with Regina. They might be co-parents and sort-of-friends now, rather than enemies, but Emma honestly held a high opinion of the woman despite their previous status as enemies, and still took great joy in their verbal sparring. She couldn't break in front of Regina. Not now, when they were just finally getting along.
And Regina knew this. She knew Emma. She always knew what to say, and how to push her buttons, and her alarmed demeanor only strengthened upon witnessing this atypical behavior. Emma winced a little. She'd slain a damn dragon without breaking down like this, and she should have known that she'd be freaking her sort-of-friend out by just showing up like this in the middle of the night, distraught and half-dressed with their equally distressed son. But Henry needed his Mom, and Henry came first.
"No, Ma! Please don't leave!" Henry suddenly cried out, tearing himself away from Regina and wrapping himself around Emma's waist, holding on tight enough to be uncomfortable and crying once more. "I need to stay with you."
"Henry, you need to stay with your Mom," Emma corrected gently, doing her best to gently pry herself free. "I don't want you to be in the apartment tonight, and you need your sleep."
Emma's efforts were in vain. "No, I need to stay with you," the boy stubbornly corrected. "You're hurt."
"It… it stopped hurting a long time ago, kid," Emma breathed out, her heart breaking a little for clearly inadvertently traumatizing her child and looking desperately at Regina (who still looked like she was waiting for a flock of flying monkeys to descend from the heavens) for help. "I'm fine."
"No, you're not! And it will never stop hurting because what happened to you was wrong!" Henry insisted, slowly slipping into the realm of hysterical. "And Grandma was wrong. You're not ruined. You're my Ma, and you're perfect."
"Oh God, Henry," Emma whimpered, suddenly abandoning her efforts to free herself and reverting to holding her son close. He was so worried for her, and it was so touching, but he shouldn't worry for her. It was her job to worry about him, not the other way around. "It's okay, kid. Really it is. You make me feel so much better," she promised.
"Then let me stay with you," came the immediate stubborn reply.
Just in front of her, Regina's expression told Emma that she was finally getting an inkling of what the problem actually was, and the woman proceeded to hit Emma with her x-ray glare that made her feel like Regina could see every part of her. It had always been slightly unnerving, and the calculating gleam in the brunette's dark eyes wasn't any less so now. "If you go to bed, Henry, perhaps Miss Swan might spend the night in the guest room," Regina bargained. "Would that be acceptable?"
Emma wanted to protest. Vehemently. But Henry needed his sleep, and Emma had nowhere to go, and she knew Regina knew that. The guilty thought struck her just then that she really needed to explain to the woman what was going on, as well. It wouldn't be fair for Emma to leave Henry here so upset without telling her why.
"How about it, kid?" she encouraged, doing her best to sound upbeat. "Everyone gets their beauty sleep, and your Mom and I can talk to you about what you heard Grandma say in the morning, okay?"
Slowly, Henry nodded into her shirt. "Okay," he agreed, allowing Emma to lead him into the mansion and up the stairs to his bedroom. Regina followed them silently, and Emma could feel her 'explain-your-idiocy-immediately' glare boring into the back of her head, but there was no way she was bringing it up in front of Henry again. He was only twelve. Too young to have to hear something like that. But he had, and Emma was mortified.
It took close to half an hour for Henry to go to sleep. He insisted that Emma stay with him until he did, clutching at her hand, and if it weren't for Regina rubbing his back in an obviously well-practiced soothing motion, Emma was sure that he'd have resisted sleeping entirely. As it was, his breathing eventually evened out, and Emma was able to ease her had free of her son's grip and follow Regina back downstairs where they could talk.
The other woman was clearly unhappy, but Emma wasn't sure if she was unhappy with her specifically, or just with the general fact that Henry was unhappy. Either way, she privately thought that the woman's 'I-will-destroy-whatever-hurt-my-offspring' expression was just the tiniest bit adorable paired with her excessively stylish pajamas and sleep-mussed hair. Not that she would ever admit such a thing out loud, of course, for fear of high-temperature projectiles being flung at her in retaliation. (Emma was so done with fireballs.) Wordlessly, they moved to the study and seated themselves on opposite ends of the couch. Regina sat on the lounger like a Queen on her throne, as always, but Emma was feeling a million things –and none of them queenly—so she just hugged her knees to her chest as if the position could keep her heart from breaking, staring fixedly at her bare toes. Their unpolished state looked especially plain next to Regina's perfectly pedicured blood red toes, but Emma supposed that was just how the two of them always were. Emma was the low-maintenance wild-child, and every bit of Regina was immaculate even though all of her shoes were close-toed and no one would ever know if her toes were painted or not. It was just so them that it made perfect sense, even when it didn't.
Regina's voice –unexpectedly soft—broke through Emma's musings. "What happened tonight, Miss Swan?" She was glaring at her still, but Emma knew that she didn't mean it. She knew that Regina was secretly a little bit concerned about her, even if she didn't want to show it, because this wasn't typical brazen Emma Swan behavior and Emma knew that Regina actually enjoyed her 'uncouth' ways. Just a little. Because they were sort-of-friends and they just got each other, but Regina had never seen Emma like this.
But that was probably because she hadn't seen Emma after her mother had broken her trust and confronted her about some of the darkest secrets of her past in front of their son. Not that she knew that had happened yet. But she would, because Snow knew, and Henry knew, and there was no hiding behind the hope of finally feeling clean anymore.
Agitatedly, Emma ran a hand through her messy curls. How was she even going to begin to explain this?
"I… I haven't had the best life," she finally began, frowning at herself for not finding a better way to explain herself. She trusted that Regina wouldn't mock her too badly for this though. Hopefully. "And I try to keep it to myself. But sometimes I get nightmares… or flashbacks and… the way I deal with that is to write them down in my journal." Hesitantly, Emma snuck a glance over to Henry's adoptive mother to see if she was following. She appeared to be attentive, though her expression was carefully neutral. "I don't know why she did it," Emma continued, her tone growing slightly bitter, "or why in the hell she thought it was okay, but Snow snuck into my room when I was sleeping and took my current diary out of my sock drawer. When I woke up and found her reading it I was… really upset." Emma smiled weakly. "I told her off about it, and... you know her temper. Before I knew it she was yelling at me about something she read and Henry woke up and heard her mention something that… that he really shouldn't have heard. It… it really upset him, Regina, and I don't know how to fix it," she finished off with a whisper, clenching her hands into fists to keep them from shaking.
"And what, exactly, did he hear?" Regina asked, her posture and expression more relaxed now. She was sympathetic. Emma supposed that she of all people would be sympathetic towards someone who had suffered damage after Snow White blurted out their secrets.
"Verbatim?" Emma sighed, doing her best to muster up her courage. Snow knows. Henry knows. Everyone will know soon, so it's best to tell Regina now before someone else does. "I believe she said something along the lines of, 'Why didn't you tell me? You were a child, and he raped you. He ruined you,'" she finished stiffly, eyes fixed on an ambiguous spot on the far wall. She didn't want to see Regina's face when she said it. Didn't want to see the moment when she realized that Emma was damaged. Just like her mother had. Just like anyone else who found out and could never see her as anything but a victim again.
Silence. Then the soft rustle of fabric as the woman suddenly scooted closer to her and placed a gentle hand on her forearm.
Anger sparked in Emma's gut once more, and she jerked herself away from the touch while turning her head to face Regina fully. The woman had an honestly shocking amount of anguish written across her face, and Emma wanted nothing more than to scratch it off with her fingernails. "I don't need your pity, Regina!" she snarled, incensed. Of all people, she didn't want this woman to pity her. She hated pity. Yes, something terrible beyond words had happened to her. But there was nothing she could do about it now but move forward and try to forget that vile thing that had taught her to hate herself. Emma hated pity. And for some inexplicable reason, she hated Regina's pity the most.
"You don't have my pity, Emma," Regina retorted firmly, catching Emma by surprise with the use of her first name. Regina Mills never called her Emma. Just Emma. Confidant that she now had her attention, the brunette returned her hand to Emma's forearm and squeezed just hard enough to disqualify the pressure as gentle. "I understand. Do you hear me, Emma? I understand."
And suddenly, it hit Emma like a bus full of fat kids, knocking the breath clean out of her. Regina didn't pity her. She understood, because she'd been where Emma was, once. She'd felt that pain, and she understood why Emma was falling apart right now. Why Snow was so distraught. Why Henry refused to let go of her. And it made Emma irrationally angry that someone had touched Regina without her consent, because Emma understood just like Regina understood that something like that… it shattered you on the inside, and the cracks on your soul were filled with the essence of the inhuman beast who abused you because no matter how much time had passed, it was impossible to forget the pain and the fear and the helplessness and the desperate wish for something –anything—to make it stop. She understood the feeling of being a cracked mirror: of being broken beyond repair so that everything in your life is distorted by the one thing you never wanted to allow to control you. She understood the desperate need to be whole again, and how impossible it felt to feel that way.
"No one… no one was ever supposed to know," Emma sighed, breath hitching with tiny sobs as she relaxed her tense muscles slightly under Regina's hand. "Especially Henry. I can't believe that Snow would…" She shook her head. She couldn't be angry with her mother forever, because she was angrier with herself than with anyone. "How do I tell him, Regina?" she begged for the second time that night, gazing desperately at the woman seated just inches from her as if she could somehow make this better, even though Emma knew that this was one thing not even Regina could fix. They could move fucking planets together, but they couldn't fix this. "How do I tell Henry that I'm broken –that I don't even know what 'not ruined' feels like because I've never been whole? That all this time I've been playing at holding the pieces of myself together because he deserves the hero he wants and not the wreck that I am? That I've been selfish and used his expectations as glue to put myself back together, but now that he know this –all of this—it's not holding anymore?"
Because that was the kicker, really. Emma Swan was a wreck. Everyone knew it. She was a high school dropout and an ex-convict who made a semi-successful living as a bounty hunter, but could never be free of pain or fill the hole inside her with love. But Henry had helped her when nothing else could. He'd knocked on her door on her birthday and swept her off her feet and she'd been happy to forget that she was a screw-up and grateful to be the Sheriff. Someone dependable. Someone who deserved to be loved. She'd never wanted him to know that she wasn't a hero. Because a hero would have been able to save herself, right? And now that he knew. Now that Snow knew (which meant everyone would know, because Emma knew that her mother would go looking for advice on how to 'deal' with her, as if she were an unruly child instead of a nearly thirty year old woman) she'd never be looked at the same way again. As just Emma. She felt like that beast in her past had branded her across the forehead, so that whenever anyone looked at her, she was Emma Victim Swan. Emma Broken Swan. Emma Fragile Swan.
And she hated it, because when people didn't see it, she could pretend it wasn't true.
Regina didn't say anything, because Emma knew that she was well aware that there was nothing to say. Instead, she merely used her grip on Emma's arm to tug the blonde closer. Emma readily accepted the comfort that the woman was offering, folding herself right into her lap like a lost child and reveling in the warmth and the quiet and the softness of being held by someone else. Someone she trusted, even if there were a million reasons that she shouldn't. Because nothing could make it better, but when Emma was tucked into Regina, she thought for the first time… that it didn't have to be made better. All she needed was this, because Regina understood.
They stayed like that for a long time, curled up together in Regina's study. But eventually, Regina began to speak, her voice low and melodious and swelling rhythmically with the idle patterns her fingertips were tracing on Emma's back. "I had just turned eighteen when I married the King," she began, and Emma dared not move her head from where it was resting on the join between Regina's neck and shoulder so that she could see the other woman's face, for fear she'd stop speaking. "He was well into his fifties at the time, and I did not love him. But one does not simply say 'no' to the King, and especially not to my mother." Emma cringed slightly at the mention of Cora. She was certainly a sadistic bitch, and as terrible as she felt for thinking it, she was glad the woman was dead. Perhaps not glad for how she died, but glad for the death regardless.
"Mother even cast a barrier spell on the castle to prevent my escape," Regina continued, her tone still lulling and soft. "Rumple assisted me in banishing my mother to Wonderland, but it was too late by then." A pause. "I'd always been told that Leopold was a good King. A good man. But I never saw that side of him. On my wedding night, I was escorted from the reception directly to his chambers, and I waited there for hours until he came for me. He'd been drinking, and he wasn't gentle. He tore my beautiful dress, and pulled my hair, and used me roughly even when I cried and begged him to stop…" Regina trailed off, her hand stilling, and Emma was suddenly glad she couldn't see her face. She could only imagine the pain she'd see there, and it hurt enough just hearing the story without having to watch Regina relate it.
"He cried out his dead wife's name when he came. He always did," Regina confessed. "He called me to his bedchambers at least twice a week for as long as we were married, and he never grew kinder, or gentler. My handmaiden, Kya –you know her as Katie, my PA, dear—would always wait outside the door for me with a robe. Sometimes I wasn't allowed to dress properly before I was made to leave. Many times I couldn't walk on my own, or was bleeding, and I needed her help to seem strong. Snow lived in the same wing, and though I hated her, she was still a child and didn't deserve to know that her father was not as she saw him. I… I fell pregnant twice, did you know?" Only at this point did Regina's voice break and her chest begin to heave slightly with suppressed sobs. "But he still called me to him even in that state and both times, the damage was too great for them to survive. I lost them both and nobody even knew to mourn them."
The story was over then, Emma knew, and Regina lapsed into silence, her breathing still ragged against her body and her cheek damp against Emma's forehead. Emma felt sick. This was her grandfather. She was directly related to the sort of monster who would do that to an innocent girl. An innocent girl who'd protected the stepdaughter she hated from that truth even through all the madness that had followed. She was suddenly very glad that she'd protected Regina from harm, even when they'd been enemies. Nobody else had ever thought to, that was for certain.
And to think that Regina was sharing this now –this story that no one, perhaps outside of Katie, knew—with Emma simply because Emma was upset… it was humbling. Very humbling. And Emma was completely, continents-long past the point of joy and relief that Regina was here for her. That she understood. And that they were sort-of-friends, connected in that strange, passionate way that they'd always been because they were kindred spirits and each too full of fire for their own good. Because Emma would have had to share this story with Regina anyways so that they could plan what to tell Henry, and Regina had chosen to ease the sting of that fact by sharing her own story out of the goodness of her heart, which she had in no way been obligated to do. It was touching, and Emma was crying, but she just snaked her arms around Regina's waist and clutched her closer because Emma understood.
And maybe that's why Regina had shared. Because she knew that. And it felt good to hold someone else and know that you were the same in more ways than you had ever previously suspected, because they were kind-of-friends and devoted enemies and magic users and a fucked-up sort of family, and nothing made Emma feel like Regina did. And that was a good thing.
Gathering her courage, Emma took a deep breath and began her own story. She knew her voice would by muffled by the soft skin of Regina's neck, but she didn't worry much about it. The brunette could still hear her, and she felt safe this way, hiding her face. "I bounced around a lot of foster homes as a kid. I was a problem child, you know? Not that you could ever tell from my angelic disposition nowadays, of course."
Emma couldn't resist cracking that little joke, and her lips curled into a pleased smile when it earned a weak chuckle from her co-parent.
"And it wasn't so bad," she plowed onward. "Some places were worse than others, and sometimes I got kicked around, but I was pretty good at avoiding confrontation. But then I got moved to this one home…" Emma tightened her arms around Regina's middle, and was rewarded with a reassuring squeeze. "The Tilbergs. The woman was all right. She made sure we fosters kids ate and all that, but she was kinda dead inside. Just going through the motions, you know? The man just ignored us mostly, but then… he started coming into my room at night. I always pretended to be asleep, and at first he never touched me. Just himself. But then…" Emma shivered in remembered horror, and Regina resumed tracing her fingers down her back, much like she had done to soothe their son earlier in the evening. It worked remarkably well, for such a simple thing, and Emma was grateful for it.
"One night, he shook me awake," Emma breathed, almost afraid to speak too loudly. Like maybe Mr. Tilberg could jump through her words and hurt her again, even if she knew that was impossible. "I was… so scared. He pulled off my clothes and told me that I'd better be quiet like a good girl, or I'd be in trouble. And then he… he…" She whimpered a little before pulling herself back together. "I'd never felt such pain. I wanted to die. And when he was done, he picked me up and put me in the bathtub and told me to clean up, and that he'd kill me if I told. So I never told. And he came back every night for two months, and no one ever noticed or cared because it was summer and I didn't have to leave the house for school, and none of the other kids would tell because they didn't want to be next. I was rotated back to the group home after that, and I never told anyone because no one would have believed me, because I was a bad kid and a thief and a liar and I felt so dirty and used, and I didn't care about anyone or anything anymore because I hated the world and I hated myself." Her words came faster and faster until she stopped, glad to be finished. Like ripping off a band-aid.
For a moment, Emma was overcome, and simply allowed herself to relax into Regina's body. It was… peaceful. She'd never spoken any of this out loud before. Not even to her prison counselor, who'd recommended her writing. She was surprised at how light such an action made her feel. Like she'd traded her pain for Regina's and that together, the weight of their sorrow really wasn't too heavy at all.
"How old were you, Emma?" Regina finally asked, her voice trembling ever so slightly.
Emma cringed and pressed her face further into the woman's neck, as if this action alone could hide her from the truth. "Thirteen."
Regina sucked in a shaky breath, but chose not to comment, and Emma was glad. What was there to say, really? "I would have died, Regina," she admitted instead. "I was a mess from that point onwards. I would have died either by my own hand or someone else's, because I just didn't care. But Henry… he saved my life. Neal was the first human being that I ever loved in any capacity, but Henry prompted me to make my first truly selfless decision ever. I gave him up, because he needed a mother and I couldn't be one. He made me want to be better."
"You are better," Regina promised her, oblivious (or at least Emma hoped she was) that Emma nearly passed out in shock over the complement. It was a good kind of shock though.
"And now there's one more person to mourn your babies," Emma shot back. Regina stiffened, and for a terrible moment, Emma worried that she'd offended the woman. Thankfully, she soon relaxed once more into a new silent flood of tears. (Emma didn't want to think about why Regina had learned to cry without making a sound.)
"Thank you, Emma," she choked out. "And… I'm sorry for what happened to you. You weren't a 'bad kid'. You were innocent."
Emma just sighed softly. "So were you," she pointed out.
And that was the end of that. The pair of them fell asleep like that –curled up like napping puppies on the couch. The world had tried to shape Regina into a Queen, and Emma into someone who was worth nothing, but they both ended up sleeping on that couch together in the end. It was a pained, exhausted sleep, but it was a sleep free from nightmares, and that was a good thing. For both of them. They'd laid to rest that night's demons, and though new worries and memories would undoubtedly rise with the sun, Emma sleepily thought that for the first time in quite a while, she would be ready to face them. She had Regina now –in whatever strange capacity they'd just bonded—and Emma thought that she was brave enough now.
Henry knew. And Snow knew. Everyone else would follow. But Emma was determined that the only thing they'd see was the Emma she was now, and not the Emma that was then. It would be difficult, but she wouldn't run, because family was messy and painful, but that's why you loved them so much.
And Emma could do it. Because Regina understood. And because Emma was better now than she ever had been, even though she was broken. All she had to do was believe it.