She thought she knew grief.
She'd wept over the bodies of so many loved ones, her mother, her father, Johanna, their faces pale and still and so very far away from her. Somewhere deep inside her, a little piece of her heart withered and died along with them.
She thought she knew guilt.
She'd whispered a woman's name over a dripping candle, knowing she was asking for a life to be taken. She'd made her choice, and her heart had darkened.
She thought she knew pain.
She'd taken her husband's heart, felt his love for her in the palm of her hand as he'd fallen lifeless to the ground. Her own heart, broken and blackened, had brought him back to her, his life for a price yet to be paid, she's sure of it.
She thought she'd never again feel the emptiness that came from having both her babies snatched away from her arms moments after they'd left the sanctuary of her body, her heart hollow and aching.
She'd been wrong.
Her daughter is staring at her with wild eyes, a handful of hurtful words and twenty-eight years of loss burning the air between them as surely as the fire magic still sparking from Emma's hands. The instinctive rebuke dies on her tongue, the distress in her daughter's eyes like an arrow to her chest.
She forgets everything.
She forgets the boiling milk, the thick fear for Neal that had blanketed her reason and made her arms curl around him a little tighter. She forgets her husband's grunt of pain as the street light had knocked him to the ground.
All that matters is the fear in her daughter's eyes.
"Emma." She says her name again. It's a plea now, not a rebuke, but it makes no difference.
She's lost her.
(How many times can she lose her?)
As they stare at each other, Snow feels every missing moment of those twenty-eight years slapping her in the face. Emma's eyes, oh God, her eyes. They're the terrified eyes of a cornered prey, a hunted beast that doesn't have the words to plead for its life. "Emma, it's okay."
Her daughter runs.
She takes Snow's heart with her.