Cora opened her eyes, interrupting the gathering of energy. Her body went into spasms she couldn't control. A rusty groan came out of her throat. The groan became a scream, and suddenly she vomited dark purple organic matter. She couldn't stop the flow of matter spilling from her throat. It became more and more solid. Cora was now on her knees to ease the flow. The dark matter was now mixed with blood and bits of … flesh?

Regina ran to her mother, but Emma grabbed her wrist with what was left of her strength and stopped her.

"Do not touch me! Let me go! Something's wrong, I have to help her!"

"Regina." Emma's voice was just a whisper, but there was no weakness in her tone. "You can't do anything. I think the creature is trying to escape your mother's body."

"And that's supposed to stop me?"

"No. But you don't know what this creature can do outside a vessel. Look at what it's done to me through Cora's body. This… blob could explode or whatever, and for what we know, it could be toxic and poisonous. Do you want to take the risk?"

Regina looked at her mother. The flow was slowing. Regina sighed heavily.

"I can't stand here doing nothing and watching my mother suffer like that!"

"She was ready to go, Regina."

"But this was not –"

A primal sound came from Cora's direction and interrupted the two women. This was not Cora's voice, though. The sound didn't come from her, but from the organic mass on the ground.

The creature had left Cora entirely and discovered with horror what had happened to itself. It had a physical form! Its vessel must have corrupted it - what else could be the cause of this? The wicked bitch! The creature couldn't move, lying on the floor like a giant jellyfish. It thought about flying, or crawling or whatever else, but it remained still, unable to move, a useless larva. Was that blood it smelled? It wasn't Cora's. Well, it was, but not entirely. There was a new smell mixed with Cora's scent, a newly created smell, like… like a newborn! The creature born from magical leftovers was now reborn in blood and flesh! It screamed at the realisation. At least… it tried to. The scream came from all of its body, vibrating in its cells, resulting in the primal and quite inhuman sound Emma and Regina heard.

Cora was recovering from her release; it was a relief and a suffering at the same time. The creature had left its toxic trail when leaving. The older woman was coughing, her body weakened but still surrounded by the energy she had called earlier.

She looked at the bloody mass at her knees. This was what caused so much pain? It looked like those grotesque organs she saw in the jars lined in the lab she let Frankenstein keep back in the Enchanted Forest. It was such a long time ago. Another time, another life.

She could feel the poison of the creature speeding through her veins. She had to be quick, for she didn't have much time left. As long as it stayed in this form, the creature would no longer be a threat, but it would soon understand that its new organic body had other powers: growing, developing a shape, becoming its own vessel. She had to stop it before it came to this realisation.

Before she died.

She turned to Regina. Emma was still holding her wrist. She could see the anxiety in her daughter's eyes. She could also see her fear. Cora closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The energy she had gathered earlier vibrated again, creating little sparks at the tips of her fingers.

"Regina."

"Yes, Mother?"

"This won't be long now." Cora was crying, letting a flow of tears cover her face.

"I know, Mother." Regina's voice was breaking. She was sobbing, but she never let her eyes stray from her mother.

She could feel the waves of energy rolling around Cora. She herself was creating them as well, fueled by her own magic. She unconsciously tapped into Emma's magic to do so, but the blonde didn't say anything, aware of what was happening. Her magic was all that Emma could offer right now. Her body was too weak, her pain was too strong; she couldn't have fought otherwise.

"I want you to protect the area, Regina. I know the spell, but I never used it. I can't cast it and protect you at the same time. And now that the creature is out of my body, I don't know how it will react. It might explode before I've finished or counterattack one way or another."

"I'm going to put you in a magical dome. I'm strong enough to hold it until you... until it's over."

"I know you are," Cora said with a smile. "Now… I guess this is goodbye. Oh, Regina... there is so much to say. When I jumped in that portal after Emma and Snow White, I was determined to get you back to me, no matter how..."

"Let's not talk about it, Mother. Please. You've got me, here and now. We'll never know what you would have done, what I would have done."

The two women looked at each other for the last time and smiled through their tears.

"Goodbye, Mother."

"Goodbye, my sweet child."

Regina then placed herself in front of Emma.

"I want you to hold me, Emma. I know you're in pain, but I will need your magic."

"You're already using it, Madam Mayor."

Regina turned to Emma, surprised. She saw a weak smile on the blonde's face and realised she was indeed tapping into her magic.

"I'm... I'm sorry. Will you be strong enough to hold it until we're finished?"

"It's excruciating, Regina, but do we have a choice?"

She was not talking about her own physical pain, and Regina knew it.

"No, we don't."

Emma grabbed Regina's hips while the brunette stretched out her arms to cast the protection spell, or rather — to create a magical cage to isolate her mother and the creature.

xxxx

The crypt sheltered both her parents now.

One whom Regina sacrificed to cast the curse that would bring her the happy ending she craved – the other, one who sacrificed herself while heartless to let Regina live out this happy ending.

Regina wanted to be alone. Her last moments with Cora were carved in her retinas, and she was afraid her son could see in her eyes what she had to witness.

Once Regina and Emma had finished securing the area with a magical shield, Cora was able to cast the spell. What Regina didn't know was that it was one of the ugliest spells ever known, one of the messiest, one she would never forget, and one she hoped no one would have to cast aver again.

At first, when she was still the vessel of the vile creature, Cora wanted to make herself implode. But once it was out, things were different. Its organic form was toxic, and trying to simply destroy it with fire balls would have been like setting off an atomic bomb. It had to be destroyed from the inside, and there was only one way to do it : Cora had to merge with the creature, possess it as it had possessed herself; this time, the creature would become the vessel.

Cora drew from all the energies at her disposal – that of elements and electricity (Storybrooke wound up losing its power for a week), as well as the physical power of those around her – counting on the strength of her daughter to help her finish the spell.

The creature fought back, its larva form stronger than it looked; it was quickly learning it could evolve on its own. Cora wouldn't let it know further stages of evolution. She threw herself inside the gelatinous mass. A shockwave shook the shield, but it stayed strong – Regina was making sure of it.

A sudden sound, however, broke all of the glass within an area of several kilometers. Dark magic colliding with a creature from the void was so unnatural, so unprecedented, that the land was not prepared for such a shock and had no way of expressing it – especially not in a world like this, a world without magic.

But the truth was, this place did have a power of its own: a magic buried so deeply that the world had forgotten it had ever existed. This impossible encounter was waking up very old energies, powers forgotten for centuries, and the veil between worlds began to tear.

The shield resisted. Not Cora.

Once inside the creature, she intended to annihilate it by burning it to death, reducing it, and herself, into ashes. She didn't know she would wake up ancient powers, powers that didn't want to be awoken.

Emma had read the Mists of Avalon; the stories about the power of the Goddess and her priestesses had made her smile. It was good entertainment, but she was living too rough a reality to find comfort in the belief of higher powers. Since she arrived in Storybrooke, though, her beliefs had been shaken. She was now aware of a different world, one of magic. However, what she had not realized was that her own realm was once, in its own way, the same. Cora's spell had awoken powers that only Wiccans and druids and a few else still believed in: the powers of Mother Nature.

Cora had disappeared in the creature, taking it over quickly. It had struggled, but it was just a newborn, after all, and it couldn't do anything against its mother. And Cora couldn't do anything against Mother Nature.

All of the powers became concentrated under the protective dome. The soil split open, burying the larva form of the creature. Within the barrier, the earth shook and the floor collapsed, cratering the space.

And for a minute, nothing happened.

Emma and Regina were still maintaining the shield when a projectile burst out and went crashing against its wall.

Then, everything was silent. The air had stopped vibrating, the energies were at peace, and Mother Nature had gone back to sleep.

"Mother!"

It was Cora's body lying crumpled at the base of the dome. Regina broke her link with Emma, causing the shield to disappear, and ran to her mother.

Emma already knew Cora had not survived; her body went painless the second the earth had given her back. She saw Regina take the lifeless body in her arms. She was crying silently, holding tightly to the distorted body of her mother.

Distorted.

Swollen.

Cut.

Crushed.

Clearly, Cora had suffered, her body living proof of the fight. Regina looked at Emma, despair in her eyes. Emma rushed to her side, her body now free of pain, and held Regina in her arms.

The woman once feared as the fierce Evil Queen was nothing more than a little girl in Emma's arms. She had lost her mother, and the reality of it was just falling on her.

xxxx

Nothingness.

Darkness.

It was back into the void. No more Cora, no more body. Only the silence and the ferocity of the void.

The emptiness.

And the creature felt a tear rolling on a face it didn't possess anymore but could still feel.

He felt, he had a heart, he was a new born, and he had an existence that made a he of itself.

He knew nothing would be the same again. His life in the void would be a curse and a burden from now on, and forever.

xxxx

Emma couldn't tell the whole story when asked what happened. They wouldn't understand and some were already blaming Regina for Archie's death, the monstrosity was after her and it was her mother after all.

Emma knew there was no use of trying to explain what they saw, what Regina had to do. For the first time she realised the former Evil Queen was still considered as the Evil Queen by most of Storybrooke inhabitants. No matter what she would do, she is still the monster.

And Emma never understood that for she only knew Regina, the Evil Queen was only pictures in a book, a story. And which Evil Queen would cry in the arms of her enemy? Emma couldn't stop thinking of Regina holding her mother and the urge to go to her when she saw how lost she seemed in this instant.

She knew this look though. She had the same for years. She wouldn't admit it, she dismissed the idea numerous times now she had Mary Margaret and David, but the fact is, she is an orphan, it's how she grew up, it's part of her. This is what she saw in Regina's eyes, that now she was an orphan as well. Although she'd lost – killed – her mother years ago now, Regina never thought of herself as an orphan. Until this precise moment in the middle of the battle field.

How could she explain that to a population who see the world in black and white? She, for herself, had always swum in the greyer areas of life, in the real world, not a fairytale one. As real as the Enchanted Forest was for Storybrooke inhabitants, it was a world of good and evil, with nothing in between, even when the good used evil to get things done, they were still the good guys. Will she ever ask her mother one day what she had to do to get her kingdom back and rule it ? Mary Margaret would dismiss the conversation as quickly as she could…

Curls of purple smoke interrupted Emma's trail of thoughts.

"Regina, you're back ! Are you.. Is there… Can I – "

"Spare me the puppy eyes Miss Swan." There was a smile in Regina's tone that Emma didn't miss.

"Pardon me Madam Mayor for feeling concerned. You were away for days and… and Storybrooke didn't miss you, see it's still standing, I think Leroy is having his usual sober up at the station"

"Of course they didn't miss me, I'm not the Mayor anymore, Miss Swan, I trust your mother to get things back to normal. What are you doing in my house ?"

Emma stayed at the mansion when Regina locked herself in her crypt. She thought Henry would rather be in his room, in his house waiting for his mom to return. Plus it was a good excuse for her to have a break from her parents. They were the only ones in Storybrooke who wanted details, and it was not her story to tell.

"Mom ! Mom is that you ?!"

Henry had heard voices and rushed down from his room to see his mother.

"Mom are you okay?"

He ran into her arms and held her tight. Regina was not prepared to such a reaction and for a second she didn't know what to do. She gave a quick look at Emma who gave her the puppy face, she rolled her eyes and embraced her son as strongly as he held her, inhaling deeply the scent of her little prince.

After a moment, she let him go or rather, he let her go.

"I'm okay, Henry. I… I had to say goodbye properly to my mother but now I'm here." She smiled softly. "But what about you, Henry? Archie and you were close…"

"I will miss him a lot, Mom. But, the… the thing that did it, you stopped it, right?"

"Yes, I did."

"And it was your mother?"

"No Henry, it was not my mother, not exactly".

She wondered what the two idiots told him.

"What do you know exactly, Henry?"

"Hum, Regina?"

"Yes Miss Swan?"

"I think it's better if we keep this story for another time, right kid? Your Mom will tell you what happened, later. Why don't you go back upstairs and try to break my score?"

"Easy! This race is not even difficult Ma !" He gave a last look at Regina, and ran to his room.

"Ma?" Regina arched an eyebrow. "Did I miss something?"

"The kid and I spent some time together and… well I guess it was time… He missed you, Regina"

"And I him. Listen Miss Swan – "

"Emma. You were calling Emma before this"

"Emma" Regina was nervous, her eyes were drifting away. "What we must learn from what happened is that we have to give you more magic lessons."

"What ?! It's all that we learnt? What about your mother? Don't you want to talk about that instead?"

"No, Miss Swan. We have to give you more lessons because this… incident proves Storybrooke is in danger. It is now a place of magic, and it will attract people, the wrong people from the wrong places; It's not safe anymore."

"You don't have to do that you know."

"Do what, Miss Swan"

"Emma. You know what I mean."

"No, I don't, Emma."

There was something in Regina's eyes that made Emma stop. The woman was wounded, deeply, and right at this moment, Emma knew better than insisting. She tried to let her sorrow in the crypt, but Emma could see it in a flick of the brunette's eyelids, and the purse of her lips.

"Right then Madam Mayor, let's toughen up this magic of mine! But can we wait until tomorrow? The kid hasn't seen you in days. Why don't you use this magic of yours and make us…hum… him some lasagnas? I'll go back to the station now you're back, and I'll check upon you later, what do you think?"

Emma grabbed her jacket and went to the door, her hand already on the knob.

"Emma?"

She turned around in a flick of blonde curls.

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

Emma smiled this bright shining smile of hers. Tomorrow they would talk. Tomorrow they would plan how to protect Storybrooke, how to protect Henry, but tonight Regina would have a quiet night with her son, something she didn't think she would get back. Because tonight, Emma knew monsters existed, and there were not former Evil Queens nor plotting mayors. Monsters were heartless lonely creatures, something Regina was not anymore.

"You're welcome!"