A/N: My best friend prompted me to write a love story. She wanted something real, where Regina and Emma don't just wake up one day in love, but they actually slowly fall in love. So this is my attempt. And naturally I took an innocent prompt and turned it into something dark and tragically terrifying. If any of you know what the leviathan is...be prepared. So enjoy. ;)

"You were scared."

The random outburst, characteristic of the Charmings but alarming nonetheless, whipped Regina's head around. Emma was standing behind her in the hallway while they watched Henry sleep. Neither of them felt secure enough to do the same for fear of something else steeped in disaster happening. Pan was dead, Gold was regrettably still alive, David was recovering, and Henry had survived the ordeal with nothing more than a few scratches. Thankfully. "Well of course I was, I thought–"

"No. I mean in the beginning," Emma shook her head. "You were scared."

"Excuse me?"

"When I first came here…when Henry brought me here," Emma looked down, picking at the fibers on the sleeve of her sweater. "You were scared."

"Of you?" Regina questioned, haughtiness threatening to slide back into place. But something about the way Emma's hair framed her downcast face held it back. "Hardly. Don't give yourself credit where it isn't due, Ms. Swan."

"Okay, can we cut the 'Ms. Swan' crap? Do we really have to do that?"

"As you wish," Regina paused. "Sheriff."

Emma rolled her eyes, exhaling a growl of annoyance. "When you accused me of giving him up, you made it sound like I should have felt like shit for even – entertaining the idea."

"'Entertaining the idea'? Perhaps my civility has rubbed off on you," Regina mussed. "And you should have."

"Why?"

Regina turned back to her son. "Because he is an amazing boy. So sweet, so clever. He was the light in my life, until you came along."

"Who you would have never had if I hadn't given him up," Emma watched her point hit home.

The brunette's slight body tensed.

"The curse that kept you locked in time for twenty eight miserable years would have never been broken. You would have been stuck in this world, alone, forgotten, forever. And don't tell me that you weren't miserable, Your Majesty," Emma could play the name game too. "I know a lie when I hear it, remember. You wanted your happy ending but when everyone forgot who they were and who they loved you didn't get it because no one else was miserable with you." Emma watched the contracting muscles in Regina's arms, in her neck. "Had I kept Henry, he wouldn't be the same. He's your son. The product of your love and attention. And you would have never known him."

"Your point?"

"I was miserable too. And you were scared. And that's why instead of just letting me in and letting me get to know him and just letting things happen, you fought. You drove him away, and so did I. Because I fought back. And we both almost lost him."

"Still missing the point, dear."

Emma met her eyes, "I wanted to give Henry his best chance. And that was with you. You're an amazing mom, anyone can see that. You love him, take care of him, you've sacrificed everything for him."

Regina looked away. Accepting admissions of truth from the blonde was almost worse than being saved by Snow White again, almost.

"I was still a kid when I had him. I spent my life on the streets and I had nothing to go back to when I got out of juvie. So yeah, I gave him up. But that didn't mean that I didn't love him just as much as you."

Eyes focusing on something down the hall, Regina softly said, "You were scared, too."

"Terrified." Emma heard the admission in Regina's voice. The woman was so guarded, even now. "I still am."

A tight-lipped smile pulled at Regina's mouth, "The first time I held him…even after all I'd been through, I'd never felt terror like that. Not knowing if I could be everything he needed."

There was a soft pause; not overly uncomfortable, but not altogether relaxed. Regina pulled Henry's door shut and turned to walk downstairs. A tug on her elbow had her gaze shifting down to Emma's hand resting there.

"Regina," Emma seemed hesitant. "There are tons of stories in that book. The book. But not yours."

"The Evil Queen is entirely in that book," Regina snapped, a little louder than she intended. With a shrug, she dislodged Emma's hand and led the way down the curling staircase, missing the wounded look on the blonde's face.

"Maybe," Emma agreed. "But you are not the Evil Queen. Maybe you were, but you weren't always. And you aren't now. I've spent all this time fighting against you, and then fighting alongside you…"

Regina had stopped hearing what Emma was saying. It was rare that anyone acknowledged the fact that she had changed, that she was changing. That she wasn't evil anymore, or that she was at least trying to not be. She felt herself soften, just a bit. The lines on her face dissipated. Perhaps the woman truly wasn't as awful as Regina had always made her out to be. After all, Emma had come to Regina's defense more times than was necessary. They walked into the kitchen as Emma eventually trailed off, struggling to find the right words. Regina asked if she wanted a drink. At a reluctant acquiescence, she reached up to grab two glasses from a cabinet.

Emma subconsciously watched the way she lifted onto her toes to reach; half-noticing the way her right foot arched more than the left. Emma tried again as Regina sat one glass on the counter and reached for another. "All this time, I've been wondering…I asked you a long time ago how you got like this, like that. But seriously, how? Your story isn't in the book, Regina. What is it? What's your story?"

Regina froze mid-reach, the glass in her hand sliding from her grasp and shattering on the edge of the marble countertop. No one had ever asked what her story was before. And then her head reeled back and a resounding echo filled the room as if she'd been slapped. Her hands clenched the countertop, oblivious to the broken glass.

"Regina!" Emma's panicked call and clumsy lunge pulled her back to reality. "What the hell?"

The blonde grabbed a dish towel, crunching glass under the toes of her boots as she crouched to stop the blood flowing from Regina's calf. The shattered glass had sprayed out in all directions, nicking the brunette's leg. As Emma's hand curled around the calf muscle, she couldn't help but notice how soft, how smooth those legs were. "We were stranded in Neverland for like…days. How the hell are your legs–"

"Magic dear," Regina said. Leave it to Emma to notice that, she thought as she looked down at her nurse. When Emma moved the towel, she saw the wound. "Shit."

"Yeah 'shit', what happened?" Emma's eyes snapped up to her, hard and demanding. The moment was over, the story was forgotten.

Regina shook her off with a sigh, casting her hand over the bleeding cut. A slight tingle shimmied up her spine as the wound healed. "The glass slipped. I must have not had a good grip on it."

Emma stood; looking entirely unconvinced of the excuse she was given. "Well be careful. Henry is going to think I'm beating you up or something."

"That's completely illogical, dear," Regina smirked. "I can take you."

Emma raised an eyebrow, but the bloody towel in her hand distracted her from a retort. "Umm…where…?"

With a roll of her eyes, Regina snatched the towel and stalked out of the kitchen, leaving Emma to stare after her.

In Regina's absence, Emma took the opportunity to explore parts of the impeccable mansion that she had not yet seen. Every room seemed to be a study in black and white, except for the fancy parlor room she'd been accepted into on her first night in Storybrooke. The night she'd underestimated Regina's cider and run into the town signage. Not that the incident was entirely her fault. While the memory left her cold, the room itself was the only warm thing in the house. And that was where she finally ended up after realizing few of the other rooms held anything intriguing. Her fingers trailed over the leather spines of books that lined the shelves in the wall. Head cocked to the side, she tried to make out the titles. "What the hell is this? German?"

"Close," Regina startled her, making her presence known from the doorway. "Who gave you permission to snoop?"

"I got bored standing in your perfect kitchen," Emma squinted as if that would make the titles spontaneously translate themselves. "And I'm not snooping, I've already been in this room before so it doesn't count. I'm exploring. Why is every room in your house white?"

"Henry's in blue," Regina commented, pulling one of the books down as she avoided the question. "This is Latin."

"And you can read that?" Emma laughed sarcastically. Regina gave her a surly look. "Oh, damn."

"Language," that motherly tone slipped out.

The look she received should have elicited a laugh. "God. Damn."

Regina shook her head, "Honestly, why I let Henry near your vicinity is so far beyond me."

"Cuz you like me," Emma peered at the open book in her hands, trying to find anything familiar.

Brown eyes narrowed as Regina's mind tried to find Emma's angle. But she came up blank with the uncaring innocence that the blonde had tossed the comment out with.

"What does this say?" Emma tapped a finger on a line of text.

"Well," Regina started with that tone again, "if your head wasn't in the way, I might know what you were referring to."

Emma moved suddenly, narrowly missing Regina's chin. "Sorry."

When the blonde scuffed her foot on the floor and looked away, Regina let out a soft sigh, "You really can't read it?"

"They didn't teach Latin in the school of hard knocks, or prison," she muttered.

Something sparked in the darkest parts of Regina's heart and she took pity on the pathetic creature before her. Except if she was honest with her, Emma Swan was anything but the pathetic victim she made herself out to be at times. "A mari usque ad mare."

"What?"

"From sea to sea," Regina said.

"And this," Emma flipped to a random page, failing to contain her excitement. "Ab i-imo pectr-pectore." She winced at how common she sounded next to Regina, who corrected her pronunciation fluidly.

"From the bottom of my heart."

Emma pointed to another passage.

Regina read it, "amor et melle et felle est fecundissimus, love is rich with both honey and venom."

Emma regarded at her then, a strange look in her eyes. It lasted but a moment before she was propelling Regina on until finally her finger landed on a phrase that made Regina laugh.

"Post scriptum?" Even the most unlearned knew that one. But Emma shook her head. "P.S.?"

The look of shock and disbelief made Regina chuckle again. But Emma was furious. "That's what that means? All these years spent wondering and just accepting that it was some stupid thing that someone came up with to piss people off!"

Regina put the book away, they had gone over enough random passages to keep Emma's head busy for a few days. "I'm going to make a snack."

Emma stopped her rant at once, eyeing her suspiciously.

"Apple turnover?" Regina winked. "No poison this time."

"I don't know about that."

"Bus, Ms. Swan," Regina managed to sound offended. She kind of was. "You don't trust me?"

"Of course I do," the answer fell easily from Emma's mouth as she walked around the room, looking for something fun to entertain herself with. Like a secret passage in the wall. "I'll try it, but only if I get to keep snooping."

"As you wish," Regina quickly retreated. In all that time no incendiary remarks had been thrown, no snide glances, no cheeky retorts. And Emma trusted her? Probably about as far as she can throw me. Part of Regina wanted to poison the turnover just to make a point.

Despite expecting to find a secret door or a library with vaulted ceilings like that shown in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Emma had no such luck. The mansion was not as big as she'd thought and before she knew it she was back in the foyer, having had made her way through every room. With a lazy sigh she went off in search of the living room she had found with big overstuffed couches, testing the doors along the hallway one more time. When one opened to a staircase that led down, she grinned, "Jackpot."

Stealing down the steps, she felt along the wall for a light switch. When she found it, she took a breath to prepare herself for a Chamber of Doom or something equally Evil Queenish. "Holy shit."

A huge finished basement illuminated before her when she flipped the switch. Plush green carpet ran from the steps to a bar on the other end of the room; a fully and completely stocked bar that made her mouth water. A large pool table with red felt sat before the bar, gleaming cue sticks rested in a glass case off to the side. The biggest TV Emma had ever seen was against the opposite wall, surrounded by brown leather couches. "I could live here."

Instead of moving out to explore, she filed away the new information for later use and ran back up the stairs, leaving the light on. At the top of the stairs, she remembered. Being too lazy to run back down, she concentrated and with a flick of her wrist flipped the switch back off. She all but yelled out in excitement. She closed the door and wandered back to the kitchen, unaware of the proud smile plastered to her face.

"What mediocre feat have you managed this time, princess? Did you walk five feet without tripping?"

Regina managed to wipe that smile right off her face. "I just turned off the lights."

"Ecofriendly, perhaps you do have some redeeming qualities after all," the twinkle in Regina's eyes gave away the tease as friendly.

"With magic."

That wiped the smile right off of Regina's face. "You used magic?"

"I've been practicing," Emma thought of the Dark Hollow and shuddered.

"I see."

If she had assumed Regina would be proud, she was more than a little angry at the indifferent rebuff. "You're the one who taught me."

"Because there you needed it, here you don't."

"Because you'll protect me?" Emma scoffed.

"Because you're safe, and so is Henry," Regina checked the oven and pulled out the steaming turnover.

"You think nothing else in a town of fairy tale characters could possibly happen where magic might do me some good?"

"Magic has a price," Regina snapped. "And in this world, your gun works just as well, Sheriff."

Emma rolled her eyes. It was becoming a frequent occurrence during conversations with the reformed queen.

Eventually, after being coaxed to eat the turnover by her host, Emma made herself at home on her couch with a blanket. Regina, refusing to be the one who fell asleep, took up residence in the arm chair and dove back into a book she had abandoned long ago. The blonde teased her light heartedly and said she didn't mind keeping watch if she wanted to sleep. After a stalemate culminating in a staring contest that she won, Regina returned to her book and Emma snuggled down with her back against the arm of the couch. Brown eyes soon drifted up, and Regina's gaze lingered on the back of Emma's head. There was so much they didn't know about each other, and that unknowing fueled their spite, in the beginning. It fueled what had started as hatred.

She had detested the mere thought of the blonde's existence. Though necessary to her son' creation, Emma was yet one more person that could harm her, one more reason to constantly be on guard. Then the insufferable woman had actually shown up. And hatred bloomed like a late spring rose, and smelled just as sweet as love. But the more she fought with Emma, the more she learned about her, and the more she learned about her…somewhere along the way her adversary had become her ally, sticking up for her when the rest of the town wanted her dead. An underlying sense of fondness had begun to quell the hate. It disconcerted her, to recognize it. Having fondness led to having weakness. At times, she remembered what it was like to have a friend. Other times, she was sending the infuriating woman flailing across her lawn like a rag doll. It was a thin line.

"I don't blame you," she said softly, "for thinking I killed Archie. You had no other explanation for what you saw."

"Oh," Emma responded, slightly stunned. "Okay."

The silence engulfed them again as Regina turned back to her book. Emma sat up, rubbing at her eyes, trying to get comfortable. IT had been a long time since she had slept. Fatigue was slowly wearing at her determination. She studied the brunette, who seemingly did not need sleep, out of the corner of her eye. I guess twenty eight years is a long time to wait around with nothing to do.

She still couldn't get past the idea of Regina being able to read Latin, and she wondered what other languages she knew. This chick that she'd been seeing once was from Greece and the things that had been whispered in her ears during sex could have made her agree to just about anything. And she hadn't even the slightest idea what she'd said. That had been a majority of the problem with that budding relationship, lots of miscommunication. Kind of like her entire existence with Regina. Well, that wasn't entirely her fault as Regina had spent a majority of their time together lying, but that whole thing with Archie had gotten so blown out of proportion they literally forced Regina underground. She should have stuck with her gut. She'd probably never get over that guilt.

As much as she wanted to bring up the story again, Regina seemed content enough to pretend as if she'd never heard the question. So Emma pushed the thought away, again. Her mind settled instead on the mining shaft, and the look on Regina's face when she'd asked Emma to just let her do this one good thing. She'd thanked her lucky stars that Regina had chosen the perfect moment to attach her magic to that trigger. But now, she still wished she'd said it. The brunette needed to hear it. She'd offered up enough admissions today, what was one more?

"I forgive you," Emma said.

Regina slowly raised her head, turning to look at Emma, "For Archie. I thought I–"

"No. Why would I have to forgive you for something you didn't do?" Emma shook her head. Regina needed to get that through her head. Not everyone blamed her for everything bad that ever happened. "Remember, when you said what you said down in the mine and I turned to leave?"

Regina turned a little red with embarrassment at her moment of weakness. "Yes."

"I turned back, but before I could say anything, you had gone and damn near killed yourself," Emma animated her words with her hands. "I was going to say that I forgive you. For everything."

"Oh." It was Regina's turn to be stunned. She placed the book down on the table beside her. "Th…thank you."

Emma nodded.

Attempting to be pleasant, Regina asked, "How's Neal?"

Emma's back straightened. "He's fine, I guess."

"You don't know?" the question came out laced with a sneer and Regina cursed herself mentally.

"No, I don't. Nor do I know what Hook is up to," Emma snapped back, the easy banter between them quickly replaced with the usual tension. It was almost unbelievable how it happened every time with them.

"You don't keep tabs on your suitors?"

"The only one I keep tabs on is you," she said too quickly. "And Henry. The rest of them can fuck off."

"Well, at least you're selective," Regina said. There was more to Emma's words than she let on; things Regina had missed while cavorting with Gold to find a better way to beat Pan. She tried to not think too much into the reason for Emma keeping up with her. "You may want to tell them that though. They look like little puppies following you around."

Emma groaned, sinking in face into a pillow.

"'Can I get you a drink, Emma? How about my coat, Swan?'"

Emma liked her independence mocked about as much as she liked believing that Regina was once the Evil Queen and that her mother was Snow White, so she instinctively grabbed the pillow. With a second of ignored foresight, she chucked it straight at Regina, hitting the brunette straight in the face, "Shut up."

The thunderous look that clouded Regina's face made Emma fear for her life until guffaws of laughter interrupted them. Henry stood in the entryway, clutching his stomach as he laughed.

Emma smirked, most likely no one had dared engage Her Royal Highness in a pillow fight before. With a sly grin she found another pillow, jumped to her feet, and bashed Regina in the head again. "Come on, Your Majesty. Fight back."

Incredulity took its place on Regina's face as she gaped.

"Pick up the pillow and hi–"

Emma was knocked off balance as Regina returned fire. She squealed and sidestepped, lashing out with her instrument of torture.

Then it was Henry's turn to gape. His mom was laughing. And climbing on furniture. And running in the house. He pressed himself flat against the wall as Regina chased Emma into the foyer. "Well, this is new."

A few moments later, with Emma doubled over to catch her breath, Regina put an end to their excitement. "I think that's quite enough making ourselves a bad example for Henry, Ms. Swan."

"Fun sucker," Emma wheezed. "No wonder Henry ran away."

Regina tensed, "Well if sucking the fun out of everything is how I keep him safe, then so be it."

Emma beat her head against the wall as Regina stalked out of the room. "Why do you even open your mouth, Swan?"

They had actually, remarkably been getting along.

"Henry," she heard the call, "show Emma to the guest room. I think she needs a nap."