I had to write something for that heartbreaking scene in 3x19...


"And I'll love you until my last."

It hits Snow again, as hard as the first time he suggested it, that this is his last. If she does this, if she can be brave enough to do it, her fingers will crush his beating heart- the heart she's loved with all of her own even through a curse and across realms- and he'll be gone. Her daughter will have lost the father she forgot and the child inside her will have lost the father it never knew.

But he's willing to go. He's willing to do whatever it takes to give their child its best chance.

And when it comes down to it, so is she.

Because that's what parents do. They fight for their children. And from the moment she told him eight months ago (the moment she told him thirty years ago, before the little girl who should have been theirs became a beautiful, brave woman who was all grown up) they have fought with everything they have to make sure their child does not fall into the witch's hands.

So she'll do this. She'll do it because as cruel as the world is this is her child's best chance.

Regina pulls out his heart, and he's smiling at her, calm, waiting for the end.

"Don't say goodbye."

No. She won't. Because a goodbye means letting go, and she's already had to let go of too much.

(Emma, driving off as the curse engulfed them. Henry, the grandson she watched grow up.)

She won't let go. She'll hang on to Charming with everything she has even after he's gone, even after her own breath stills and she's as pale and silent as he is.

"I love you more than anything," Snow says instead and her hand barely trembles as it moves to hover over the cauldron.

And she sees him say it back in his eyes even as he tells her to crush the heart in her hand.

In that moment, she thinks of all the times she's lost him, and how this will be the last.

For Emma, he almost died.

And now for their second child, the tiny life growing inside her who has no idea of the pain the world holds (the pain of loving and losing, of choices that should never be made, of seeing a tiny bundle only hours old being ripped away from you for twenty-eight endless years) -

For their second child, she will kill him.

Her fingers tighten around his heart.

For our child.

And his life crumbles to dust in her hand.

She's always been too brave for her own good.

Because she loves him too much to look away as he dies.