Flames from burning logs licked the pale stonework of the fireplace in 108 Mifflin Street. It was a Saturday evening and Henry was spending the night with his grandparents - the second in a row. It seemed that he couldn't get enough of camping, and whilst neither of his mothers had fond memories of sleeping rough in the wild, the Charmings were more than keen to show him the ways of the forest.
Over the past 2 months of their relationship, things had moved quickly for Emma and Regina. Although everything was still quite new and the two were still having deep conversations and getting to know each other more as lovers, with their unique family arrangements they did not see much need to pause for normal formalities. With "I love you"s being exchanged early on and an excited young boy upon hearing of his mothers' relationship, both decided it made sense for Emma to move in permanently, and she had made herself quite at home.
On this particular night, things were no different. Emma lounged along their deep, comfortable sofa with Regina lying between her legs, her back against Emma's front. An almost empty bottle of red win sat on the coffee table at the end of a dark autumn night as the fire opposite them crackled, illuminating the room with the help of a tall lamp glowing in the far corner.
Emma sighed deeply and contentedly, running her left hand lightly through dark locks, her right hand dangled off the sofa holding the last few sips of wine in her glass.
"What are you thinking about?" Emma asked softly and lazily. Neither of them had spoken in the last 15 minutes or so, both enjoying relaxing in each others company. Emma could tell though from Regina's soft stare at the fire that she was thinking about something.
Regina took a deep inhale at the question, breaking her daydream.
"This. Us." she slowly exhaled.
Emma intertwined her fingers with the brunette's as she patiently waited for her to explain her thoughts.
"You know, I never thought anyone would ever love me again.." she said with a soft, thoughtful smile, adding matter-of-factly "I still don't think that anyone else ever could." She continued to stare at the fire, slipping back into her own thoughts.
At the reply, Emma furrowed her brow. Though the brunette couldn't see her, she felt Emma stiffen behind her, sliding up from her slouched position behind regina and sitting upright against the arm of the sofa. Her head was head turned away and eyes downcast, looking remarkably like her sensitive 11 year old son and the expression he wore when something was not quite right.
Regina sensed the change in her girlfriend and turned round, blinking herself out of her own pensive stare. "Emma?" She reached for the blonde's hand but it was quickly moved out of her reach. Emma was clearly upset about something but not ready to vocalise her thoughts. She seemed to be processing as she turned back to Regina with a pained look of realisation.
"Is that why you say you love me?" The croak in Emma's quiet voice was unmissable in the silence of the room.
Regina turned fully now, setting her glass down on the coffee table and pulling her legs around so she sat with her legs crossed, back uncomfortably straight with tension as she faced Emma.
"What do you mean?" She spoke softly, knowing that whatever was going on, she was treading on shaky ground.
Regina Mills had built an existence on being able to read people and manipulate them to her advantage. She was often two steps ahead of anyone else thought process at any time. Emma, of course, was the exception to this rule. Usually she found it exciting, exhilarating, to have found someone she was on a level pegging with.
However, as she opened up her heart to the blonde she discovered that she would often find herself in the vulnerable position due to an unanticipated turn in conversation.
With Emma Swan, she was engaging with a person who thought about things as deeply as she did, and not knowing what was going on in Emma's head in situations such as this made her somewhat nervous.
"Did you just decide to love me because you think no one else will? You think you have no other options?" Emma looked back at her with a soft sadness. This woman, this brilliant woman was more than most people in this town realised. If she took the time to get to know people, she would have her pick of almost anyone.. Is this the only reason they were together?
"Because thats not true Regina.." She looked down at her hands as she continued, regaining her strength and determination as she looked up again.
"..And its not enough. You need to be with someone and be IN love with them, not just decide to love them."
Regina stared at her still, but her stoic confidence had faded. She looked back at Emma like a confused child who didn't understand why she was wrong and almost whispered "but, you decided to love me?"
"Decided?!" Emma receded from Regina and rose to her feet, hand on either sides of her own temples with and incredulous look on her face, not believing how far they were from being on the same page. She closed her eyes and her hand flew back down to her sides as she turned once more to the former queen who was now looking decidedly vulnerable and unsure of herself. This was unfamiliar territory for Regina. She had bottled her emotions for a long and she knew that they could be a problem, but she had never once challenged her own beliefs or what they might mean.
"Regina, I never DECIDED to love you!" Her hands now waving about in the air as she tried desperately to shed her frustration.
The blonde began to pace the room and eventually starting the ascent to their bedroom as she continued to spew out her feelings, face going red as she desperately tried to express herself. Regina followed one pace behind her as she watched the blonde spiral out of control.
"It hit me like a ton of bricks coming straight at my chest! That's how I feel when I look at you. When I think about you. Like my heart is going to explode inside of my chest, all. the damn. time!"
Emma continued to wave her hands emphatically after each point as she quickly made her way up the stairs, down the hall and into the master bedroom, Regina in tow and not entirely used to being a person who followed anyone around or walked in anyones stride, but so out of her depth that she couldn't really do anything else.
She undressed in silence and climbed into bed, not knowing what else to do as Emma disappeared into the ensuite bathroom, presumably to get a glass of water. She emerged a minute later, continuing her rant.
"I did not DECIDE to love you. That's how real love is, it just happens. That's why they call it FALLING in love, Regina, you don't jump, you fall. and you cant do a damn thing about it." Her hands fell to her side then, before one returned to cradle her now throbbing forehead in one hand as she closed her eyes tight in an effort to stave off the migraine she felt coming.
"You sound like you don't want to be in love with me..". Regina quietly uttered from the bed, Emma suddenly realising that the brunette hadn't got a word in edgeways in quite some time.
Emma lifted her eyes slowly to meet Regina's "Well now I think maybe it would be better if I wasn't, after all of this..…" Regina's heart sank, she was now so confused, she didn't know what she felt anymore. The emotions that were now threatening to spill from her eyes had been so deeply hidden inside her that not only did she not quite know what they were or what they meant, but she had no idea that they had been there at all. She had CHOSEN this after all, like she said.. and therefore she could just walk away from it at any moment if she needed to .. right?
"….But still, here I am. Falling." Emma exhaustedly forced out the last of her feelings, leaving her stripped of any hidden cards left to play. She lifted her clothes and left the room, the woman she so desperately loved sitting on the bed, wondering exactly what was happening.
"Emma…." All of a sudden Regina stilled, eyes going wide in panic, hand reflexively raising slightly off the bed to the other woman as she sees blonde curls passing beyond the door. It took a second or two before her breathing became ragged as a rush of panic overcame her. The usually calm and composed brunette threw the covers off her bed and scrambled towards her bedroom door after the blonde. In her panic, all she could hear was her own pulse thumping in her ears and had failed to hear Emma going into the main bathroom just next to her own room. If she had been thinking logically, she would have realised that the saviour would at least need to get dressed before she walked out on her forever.
She threw the door open as she finally began to vocalise the words running through her brain at a million miles per hour; "Emma! Wait! Please!"
Tears began to escape her, she sobbed and gasped for short breaths as she hurtled out of their bedroom and towards the landing. Dressed in only a large white half-buttoned shirt and her underwear, hair mussed and looking thoroughly disheveled, she desperately pleaded, "Don't leave me!"
Blubbering and wheezing loudly now, she was just about to launch herself down the staircase two steps at a time before a hand grabbed her at the elbow, spun her around and into a firm, muscular body that held on to her tightly.
"Hey, hey!" Emma held the smaller brunette's head close to her chest and shushed her softly, moving them a few steps back from the top of the staircase, whilst the other woman continued to draw in short breaths and tremble against her.
"Hey, baby, what's this all about? Look at me. Look at me please."
Even without thinking and at haste, Emma couldn't help but protect the woman that she loved. She gently coaxed the former queen's chin up with one finger to look at her questioningly, a worried expression on her face. The broken stare looking at her was soon accompanied by a small, shaky, unfamiliar voice.
"Please," a few more shaky breaths before she could continue, "Please, don't leave me.."
On those last words, Regina's eyes squeezed shut again as she began sobbing loudly, brokenly.
Her legs started to give way and Emma moved backwards keeping her girlfriend against her and holding her up, sinking down against the wall with Regina in her arms, cradling her softly as the brunettes little body shook raggedly against her in her lap. .
It was as though those broken brown eyes had just opened up to show her all of the pain, the doubts and the confusion that she felt. She thought back to the day when the brunette told their son that she didn't know how to love very well, and well, maybe it was really true?
"Babe, I just went into the other bathroom for two seconds, I left my stuff in there this morning when I was getting ready, what happened?"
Emma took her love's face in her hand gently as she wiped away tears to calm the beautiful woman. She had never seen the other woman like this, frantic.. Regina had really believed that she was leaving? They were on such different wavelengths, Emma was totally exasperated. She rubbed her thumbs along Regina's cheekbones and looked straight into her eyes, speaking to her with more honesty and sincerity than she thought she ever had to anyone in her whole life.
She wanted Regina to be able to understand. Not only this, how they could work, but how love worked. It would seem that whilst they had both declared their love for one another, they both meant different things, or perhaps understood differently how that came about.. The initial shock terrified Emma, that perhaps Regina had been ticking a box rather than following her heart or a true feeling.
Regardless, with big confused eyes looking back at her, she decided hat no matter what Regina felt for her at the end of it, she would help her to understand what love really was.. that it was a feeling, not a decision. Not a choice. That to feel was not weakness, to trust ones feelings was not unwise or foolish.
This incredibly strong, wise woman had been running on mere fact and circumstance for decades, with black and white, her heart hidden away from her empty chest. She wanted regina to live in the grey, to know what it was like to feel something with her whole being, to be desperate for it, to need it, to know it without question.
She would rid regina of every horrible thing she was taught about love in the dreadful childhood she spent with her mother, one which Emma knew little about, but enough to realise now that Cora was the problem. To her, "love" or the impression thereof was a pawn that could be played to gain power, to thwart enemies, to manipulate. To this end, it wasn't difficult to imagine that real love, for Regina, could be very hard to decipher.
Emma braced herself, taking a deep breath before she said anything, unsure how to best explain even a fraction of what she had been recklessly ranting about earlier in the evening.
"Regina, I'm going to be really honest with you, okay? Because I believe you. I believe everything you said earlier. I believe that you believe that.. I'm actually scared it might be true, and I hope that you might be wrong. Because you need to know that real love, it doesn't work that way. It is not just a choice or something you can switch on. You can choose when to show love or be loving, but you cant choose wether or not you feel it.. You have been lied to Regina, I think. and the only way I'm going to get you to understand the truth is by being 100% open with you from now on. Okay?"
Regina nodded slowly, staring up into green orbs like a lost little girl, as if the rest of her life hung on the words that the saviour was about to say, as if she truly believed that nothing she knew would ever be the same again.
"Okay. The truth is Regina, I could choose to leave. At any time, this argument, the next one, or for no reason at all.. I could physically walk out that door and never look back."
She felt the beautiful woman stiffen in her arms and heard her draw in a shuddering breath. Cupping the back of the brunettes head, she moved closer so that their foreheads and noses were touching, never breaking eye contact.
"..but I love you. I will always love you. That's true too. So I don't want to leave. I won't ever want to. So I won't. I love you and I cant help it. The truth is, I might not always love that I love you, Regina, but i always will. That, is the absolute truth.. Regardless of how you feel about me." She swallowed away the shake in her own voice, wanting to finish what she had started.
"The thing is, Regina, you deserve to be with someone who you feel that way about too.. You are so brilliant. You're brave, smart, caring, loving, you're amazing. You're a total catch, and you don't have to just acquiesce into the first relationship anyone offers you. I don't think anyone has every said this to you before, but you really do get to choose who you get to be with, but that choice should be based on what you feel."
"I do.." Emma had looked down briefly but her eyes shot back up to owner of that tiny, croaky voice.
"I really choose you, Emma, because I love you.. I didn't understand earlier, but when I looked up and you were gone, I felt it in the depths of my very soul. I love you.. I don't think I even knew how much..I can't be without you" she paused for a few seconds, searching for words in the green eyes she had grown to trust. "I know I'm not good at this stuff, I'm so sorry." More tears spilled from dark lashes, mirrored this time by those of her lover as they held each other tight.
"Regina.. no one expects you to be perfect at anything, God knows I have so many flaws. But I love you. We are a family, we can work on this together. Nobody is going anywhere, you don't ever have to worry about that." Regina sniffled and curled closer to her, looking up at her as she continued to speak;
"I'm sorry i scared you honey, just what you said earlier, it triggered something for me and i know you didn't mean to. I guess for me, I'll always worry that all of the people around me can do better.. It was my own insecurities that made me fly off the handle, I'm sorry. All the way through my childhood, people picked me from a group and took me home to get their meal tickets, I was always picked but never really loved.. You see, its not just you that has things to work on." Regina reached up and stroked the side of her face, making sure that Emma knew she was listening to every difficult word.
"I really do love you Emma Swan, and that is why I will always choose you." She couldn't help but crumble once more, such a levy of emotions had not been broken in Regina's heart for so long, yet she felt lighter, as if with every tear that trickled onto Emma's soft shoulder she was releasing all of the feelings she had held back for so long.
"I love you too Regina, so so much." She placed soft kisses in brunette locks as she gathered up her exhausted wife into her arms, lifting her up off the hard landing.
"Lets go to bed baby, I'm not going anywhere, not ever." With that, Emma felt the former queen sigh and relax in her arms, safe.
She carefully placed Regina into bed, taking care not to go too far away. When she climbed in beside her, the brunette bolded against her in a way that felt so new, so intimate. It was as if their raw and vulnerable hearts were knitting together and could not bear to be apart, both of them felt it, their broken and battered hearts starting to heal together, piece by piece.