A/N: Got a lot of feels from this post and these spoiler pics of 3x12. Had to write something because the mommy in me made me.
The first thing she notices is how warm the vial is from being held in his hand. As she takes it from him, her mind is screaming at her that this is stupid—you don't talk to someone who is basically a stranger, let alone drink something said stranger gives you along with some absurd tale about memories and magic and fairytale lands. But he has all those pictures of Henry, and he promises everything will make sense once she drinks the potion—potion, really? And they're right outside the police station so it's not the most intelligent place for a criminal to attack her. And he's not lying (she'd know, she's got a superpower for that kinda thing). And something deep within her is screaming equally as loud that she needs to drink it. Breaking her stare from his hauntingly blue eyes, she squashes down her doubts and figures "Why the hell not?" with her "Bottoms up!"
The second thing she notices is the iciness that floods her mouth and unfurls in her stomach, so at odds with how the vial had felt, and the shiver down her spine has warning bells clanging that this isn't good, this can't possibly be good, what the hell is this stuff, what did she just d—
Burning. Cold building, intensifying. It's everything. It's everywhere, raging across her chest, blackening her sight, shooting up into her head like a brain freeze that flares and consumes like a wildfire. God—how does something so damn cold actually burn?
(But then it reaches a new pitch when the inferno actually starts to consume, not in any physical way, but even worse because it's all in her head. She loses all form of coherent thought, her body and mind on total lockdown. A rippled warp, then a blooming boil…then two then tens and hundreds…until the carefully stitched together essence of who she thinks she is starts to fall away in smoking chunks. New York—wrong, Storybrooke. A weekend drive through Maine, it being hers and Henry's tradition—wrong, a curse and purple smoke and saying goodbye to… Their little duo against the world—wrong, they had to leave everyone she'd ever loved in the whole, wide world behind. Orphan Emma—no, her mom's kiss on the forehead and her dad smiling to help her be brave. Unloved—wrong again, in each second they kissed, each second he shared his secret, each second he stayed because he wanted to be a part of something…. And instinctually she knows that no matter how fast she runs, not that she could, or how far she goes, the final truth is coming, one final swooping backdraft so strong it explodes inside her very heart: She kept Henry. Absolutely wrong.)
The last thing that she notices as she seeks out the eyes so earnest, so bright with something that in itself seems significant; and as she shakily reaches to steady herself against the familiar black leather whose scent has haunted her all this time; and just before his arms crush her to him (did he move first or did she?), she hears herself mourn with all the pain and self-loathing that eleven wasted years bring, "I didn't keep him."