Chapter 8 – And Finally They Meet

Regina lifted her head at the knock of the door.

Hmm, angry mob or pleading doctor? Hell, it might even be a werewolf trying to feed her to the Blue Faerie.

Regina winced when she pushed off the couch and to her feet. She grimaced when her muscles twinged and her joints clicked. She had spent most of the day doing as little as possible. She still felt drained and weak, despite having been healed by Rapunzel's hair. The burst of energy that had granted her had been false. She'd furiously cleaned yesterday in order to distract herself and had paid bitterly for it this morning.

The door was hammered again and Regina growled. If they had damaged the paintwork, they were going to get a piece of her mind. A nasty piece.

She fumbled the key into the lock, swung the door open, her mouth already open to tell them to leave her the hell alone and the words died a hoarse croak in her throat.

Daniel.

"Regina!"

His smile nearly undid her. He looked so happy to see her. So overjoyed. He looked as happy as she had felt when she had brought him back. He took a step forward and the fear reared its head.

She slammed the door shut, jamming the key around in the lock and falling against it.

"Regina!" Daniel knocked on the door again. Calling through it to her. "Regina, please, open the door."

Regina's chest heaved, her eyes wide in shock and fear and so many other emotions she couldn't put them all together. She felt her legs buckle and she slid slowly down the door, crumpling to the floor.

She couldn't. She just couldn't.

"Regina, I know you're scared, but you need to talk to me."

Regina clapped her hand over her mouth to choke back the sob.

She wasn't strong enough for this. She was so weak. She hurt all over. Exhaustion plagued her. She felt her magic roil, flipping her stomach over and over.

"Please?"

Regina squeezed her eyes shut and fisted her hands in her hair.

"Henry came to see me."

Regina's shoulders sagged. Of course he had.

"He's a wonderful boy, Regina. Clever and confident. A little confused, but I can sympathise with that." He had lowered himself to a crouch. He knew she was sitting on the floor. Of course he knew. "We talked about you, he wanted to know about you."

Regina pressed her lips together.

Henry would have told him everything. He'd have read that damn book cover to cover, extolling her every sin…and it didn't even cover half of them.

"He gave me the book to read." Daniel's voice changed as he sat down on the porch, leaning against the door.

He was so close. So close. All she had to do was open the door and…and…and watch his face fall when he realised what she was now. She wasn't that girl, not the girl he had fallen in love with, not anymore.

"We read it together. For every story he told me about the Evil Queen, I told him one about you. About how we first met, how we fell in love, how you saved Snow's life…about how I died."

Regina pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She would not cry. She was sick of crying. All she ever seemed to do was fucking cry.

"I died loving you, Regina. I died for loving you. I know what that cost you. I know how much it hurt you." He was quiet a moment. "Maybe I'm the only one that does. I'm the only one that knew you then, knew you before Cora broke you, the only one that knew the real you. All everyone else sees is…the mask."

Regina snorted. He was wrong. The Evil Queen couldn't have come about unless she was there to begin with. Regina was bad, she always had been. Daniel had brought out the good in her, so had Henry, but they had both ended up leaving her. Regina was the mask, not the Evil Queen.

"Don't dismiss me." Daniel warned her. "I know you think I'm wrong, but I'm not. Open the door, Regina. Let me in and I'll prove it to you."

Regina hugged her knees.

"Please?"

Regina huddled even smaller into herself if it was at all possible.

"Regina, I love you. Please let me in."

Regina leapt up suddenly. She tunnelled her fingers through her hair, pacing back and forth. She scrambled frantically for strength. For anger. Something to keep her from breaking down.

"Go away!" She rounded on the door suddenly. "You're not welcome here!"

Her chest heaved and she weaved under the effort it had taken her to summon the words.

"Regina…"

"No!" Regina thumped the door with her fist. "Go away!"

"I love you. Let me in."

"You can't." Regina paced back and forth, wringing her hands. "Go away, Daniel!"

She paced some more and slowly lifted her head after a moment.

"Daniel?"

Meanwhile

Daniel slipped around the side of the huge white house, looking for a way in. Yeah, sure, he was just going to leave now that all that separated them was a couple of measly doors and walls. He smirked when he came across the patio and a set of double windowed doors. He snapped the lock on the back door with minimal effort and pushed it open. The hinges swung with a well-oiled silence and he smirked. Trust her to have everything running smoothly.

He snuck through the kitchen, admiring the house. It was all smooth lines and cream walls. Not what they had talked about having, but it was nice. Saved from being cold by the bowls of red apples and the various nods to there having been a child in the house at one point.

Henry, the boy who had pestered Daniel at the hospital. Her son who had abandoned her.

Daniel's sharp ears pricked at the sound of clipping footsteps. Even after decades, murder, death and rebirth, he'd recognise her footfalls anywhere.

He slinked into the hallway and just stopped when he saw her. She was pacing, prowling back and forth in the hallway. She had her hands on her hips and her head down, watching her steps.

She was beautiful. She had matured into a stunning woman, the innocence of her youth gone but she had changed from fresh faced and pretty to a sultry and mature female of striking presence. It was easy to see that she had once been a queen, despite her wishes against it, she commanded every room she occupied.

"Oh hell." She broke suddenly and dashed for the door, which Daniel thought was inadvisable in those shoes.

She threw it open, tensing when she saw the porch empty and finally sagging. Her shoulders slumped and a slow breath rushed from her. Daniel smirked.

"I knew you still loved me."

Regina gasped and whirled, her hand lifting to do who knew what and a look of utter shock painting her features.

"What are you doing here?"

Had Daniel not been against such a thing, he'd have been impressed by how quickly she commanded herself. She hauled her regal mask up almost instantly, quashing her surprise and straightening her posture, meeting him head on.

"You have no right to be here. Get out."

"No." Daniel planted his feet and stared her down.

"This is breaking and entering. Against the law in this land. You will be arrested."

"In the Evil Queen's house? I doubt the Charming sheriff will do that. I sense a bit of bias there." Daniel shrugged his shoulder and couldn't help himself. He drank in the sight of her, even as she angrily advanced on him as if she intended to bodily throw him out the door. She stopped short of grabbing him by the arm and swept hers out towards the still open door instead.

"Get out. You're not welcome here."

Daniel shrugged his shoulders and started for the front door, not missing the stricken flash of emotion in her eyes when he did so. The anger made a reappearance when he gripped the door with one hand and slammed it shut with a flick of his wrist and a boom of sound. He turned and leaned against it, folding his arms over his chest.

He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Get. Out." She advanced on him again, her hands flexing at her sides and Daniel leaned down so they were at eye level.

"No."

"It's my house. You can't be here. Get out."

"No."

"Why not?" She demanded between gritted teeth.

"Because you can't avoid me forever." He spoke with an infuriating calm. "Not if you ever want to go outside again."

"I'm hardly welcome out there." She shrugged a shoulder.

"It makes no difference. I'm not going. I'm not your servant anymore. I don't have to do what you tell me."

"You were never my servant and well you know it." She snapped at him, pacing back up the steps to the main floor of the house. Her heels clicking on the polished stone floor. "Get out."

"Why should I obey you? Because you're the queen? The mayor?"

"Pick whichever grants your unflinching obedience." She growled and he smirked when he realised he found it attractive.

"I'm sensing a particularly circular trend to this conversation." Daniel confided in her, he pushed away from the door and approached her cautiously. She had the same look in her eye of a flighty mare prepared to shy and bolt at the least provocation.

"We can't do this." She backed away from him but he followed her, speaking in that low and steady voice.

"Do what? We're just talking."

"You can't be close to me. It makes you a target."

"I can look out for myself." Daniel shrugged on a smile and very real rage flashed in her eyes then.

"What? Like you did when my mother murdered you? Ripped out your heart right in front of me? Like that, Daniel?"

"Things have changed." Daniel's voice was firm.

He knew she was angry at him for leaving her. Then guilty that she felt that way. Horrified at the memory of his death and broken by the feeling that it had somehow been her fault. He knew it all.

"Yes," she continued blithely, hauling on a new face, the callus and blasé one, "now you have one of my hearts. From my vault. One of the hundreds I've collected over the years. I have so many, such pretty little things, perhaps I should have labelled them." She lifted a hand and tapped her finger against her full lips. "At least that way you might know whose heart you had because I certainly don't! I've taken too many to count!" Her voice sharpened with her anger and Daniel accepted it.

"Regina…"

"They're incredibly powerful, you know." She slipped back into the congenial tone, civilised and polite once more. Making it clear she had plenty of practice hiding such rage. "One of them –just one- fuelled this entire curse. Built an entire town from nothing, stole an entire world full of people and filled their heads with dreamlike memories. Thousands of people and hundreds of artefacts from the Enchanted Forest all brought to this world by ONE heart…my father's heart." Regina shrugged her shoulders with a small smile, though her eyes were screaming, begging him to stop this. "It was heavier than I expected. When I ripped it from his chest. You know, the same way my mother took yours."

"Regina, stop."

"Oh, I'm sorry, what a poor host I'm being. Are you tired, do you need to lie down? Perhaps I'll whip up a little something to help you sleep. How about a nice enchanted apple?" Regina clapped her hands together once and smiled brightly, nodding at him. "I'm good at those. Experience earned through sending Snow White into a sleeping curse. A haunting place filled with her deepest regrets. You remember Snow, don't you? Sweet little girl, bit empty in the head but –as her mother by marriage- I think I was actually supposed to look after her rather than destroy and entire realm trying to murder her!"

"Regina…" Daniel tried again, tried to take her by the shoulders and ground her but she shot backwards, dancing away on those ridiculous shoes of hers.

She held her hands up as if to ward him off. Like she was contagious. Toxic.

"Oh no, dearest Daniel, you don't want to get too close. I'm a terrible lover. I use and loose men like you read about –hah! Literally." She shook her head, grinning inanely and wiping the tear from her cheek as if it was part of her amusement. "Like Sidney, the man I manipulated into killing my husband. Tricked into murder and then cursed into a mirror. Ooooh, or maybe Graham. Would you prefer that? To have your heart taken but be left alive, a slave to my every whim so I could use you again and again and AGAIN…"

Daniel cut her off when he thought she was about to break.

"Like you were used?"

The sob seemed to catch Regina completely by surprise and she convulsed with it, her arms catching herself around the middle. Daniel caught her by the waist when he thought she was going to just crumple to the floor.

"Should I hold you?" His voice was quiet. He knew she'd hear him though. Her pain, her tears, were silent. "Like you held your son when he needed it? Should I take your pain? Like you took mine? Shall I kiss you –with true love- as you did me?"

She sobbed again, a sound torn from her throat and chest and right out of her heart.

"A love you so obviously still feel or I wouldn't be standing here. A love I feel too and will feel forever and years beyond that. No matter who or what you are, no matter how far apart we are, I will love you. It is a love that never died, Regina, even when I did."

She whimpered at that and he pulled her closer, tucking her against his chest. He held her tightly, trying to get her to understand that he wouldn't ever leave her again.

"Just stop, love. Stop hurting yourself and let me in. Let me love you."

"You," she choked on her tears against his chest, still refusing to hold him in return, "you don't even know me."

"Of course I do. You're Regina. You're mine."

"You can't know me!" She shoved him away, tears streaming down her face but she was still beautiful. "How can you say that? The girl you loved, that Regina is GONE! She died when you did. If you ever loved me, if you really do care for me, then go now and never come back. Mourn the loss of your love, of that girl of yours because she's just not here anymore!"

"Yes she is!" Daniel seized her by the shoulders and hauled her close so his eyes bored into hers. "She's in there, screaming for help. You wouldn't be killing yourself over what you'd done if she wasn't. I helped you before, when we were young and before the world got to us and –by the gods- I shall help you again in this new world. I didn't come all the way back from the dead to let you go again."

"That's sweet," she seemed unmoved, unwilling or unable to let herself hope, "but this is the 'real' world and happy endings are in such short supply. I am not that girl anymore."

"You could be."

"No." Regina shook her head. "I couldn't. The magic has me, Daniel, just like it had my mother and it's going to drag me right to my grave and…that's okay. It's the end of the road," she reached up and cupped his cheek, smiling like the Regina he had known once upon a time, "I brought you back. You can live on…my last good deed."

"What are you talking about? What's happened?" Panic seized him. She talked like the hangman was at her shoulder. What did she know?

Something flickered in her gaze. Barely realised –a half formed thought tidied away before he could see it. Her sad smile never faltered.

"The mob, sweetheart. Henry bargained for my life but it won't last forever. I'm on borrowed time and everyone knows it."

"No. I won't let them."

"You can't stop an entire town, dear."

"Yes I can. I will protect you."

"Oh, like you did before?" Her hand dropped from his face. "Was that before or after you died in my arms and shattered my soul? I can't quite recall."

Daniel jerked back as if slapped and she smirked at him.

"I probably should have mentioned that I'm cruel now. It's part of the whole Evil thing I've got going on." She waved her hands to encompass everything around her. She sobered after a moment. "Evil means that I cannot love, Daniel. If you're stupid enough to stay with me than that just means that you'll learn to hate me too and…I don't think I can take that. I can handle the rest of it. The rest of the whole WORLD can hate me and that's just dandy but, if you did, I do believe it would destroy my very soul." Regina spoke with a calm business-like tone.

"So, go. Being evil means I'm selfish now too and I just can't stand the thought of you…despising me like everyone else does. Consider it a last request."

It was the acceptance that did it. The calm resignation towards her ill fate that she had. His Regina wasn't like that. Not the girl he remembered and he knew –in his very bones he knew- that she was still in there. Still there and surrounded by so much more. This fierce, strong, terrifying woman who felt with everything she had. Who loved so well that she didn't know how to stop and she was tired, exhausted. She wanted to give up and she couldn't. Not when he had found her again. Not now that they had a chance at being together.

Daniel didn't want a happy ending. He'd had enough of endings. He'd take a hopeful beginning and an uncertain future over a happy ending any day.

"ENOUGH!" He surprised even himself with the depth of that bellow and she actually hopped back a step from him.

"You are NOT going to die. I will not allow it!" Daniel pointed at her viciously but he wasn't really angry at her. He was angry with himself for leaving her.

He should have known not to trust Cora. He hadn't loved her blindly, helplessly, the way Regina had. Whenever he had looked into that old bitch's eyes he'd seen a gaping chasm of nothing looking right back at him. She was good, he'd give her that, but he should have been better. Because he'd been a stupid idealistic boy, she'd killed him and shattered the love of his life.

Never again.

"I'll destroy anyone who tries to harm you." The words seethed from him on a growl and Regina blinked at him, fooled for a moment before she shook her head and smiled at him.

"No you won't." She shrugged. "You're too kind. Too gentle. You'd never hurt anyone."

"That was before. This is now." He looked her in the eye and willed her to see the truth. "Do you think dying didn't change me? Do you think there isn't darkness in me too?"

Regina opened her mouth to tell him no. She didn't but he sliced his hand through the air and startled her into silence.

"If your mother wasn't already dead and stood before me now, she'd be in bloodied pieces all over this house. If I get half a chance I'll make a gift to you of Rumplestiltskin's head. I could desecrate Leopold's mouldering corpse for taking the woman who was to be MY wife!" The rage gaped wide in him, sucking in every other feeling and feeding off it. Growing fat and hungry for more.

This was what it was like. This was being a man and feeling the helpless rage in the face of life itself taking its toll on his loved ones. Knowing that his loved one had paid more than most.

"Did you really think that you were the only one who would be broken without our love? Did you honestly believe that you loved me so much more than I did you?"

"You didn't break!" Regina couldn't stand this pouring out of him.

All this pain and rage that she had made him vulnerable to by bringing him back to life. Her selfishness had caused him this agony. She had thought she'd managed to take the pain but she'd just supplanted it with another.

"If it had been me that had died, if I had lain in your arms and breathed my last, YOU would have moved on! There isn't anything inherently wrong with you. You wouldn't have cursed a whole damn world because you couldn't stand the thought of being in it without me there."

Daniel sagged suddenly, his shoulders slumping and he stared at his hands.

"No." He agreed softly, examining his hands like he was seeing them for the first time and then clenching them into white knuckled fists. When he looked up at her again, his eyes were on fire. "Regina, without you, I'd have burned it."

"What?" Regina actually took a step back from him but he was tired of her fleeing from him, from what she felt for him, so he followed her, backing her up against the wall.

"You have the greatest capacity to love. Whatever you do, you do with every fibre of your being and every spark in your soul. You love so intensely it's like basking in sunlight to have it shone on me and –when you feel pain- that sun burns you just as fiercely. How could I not love you with everything I have? How could I not love absolutely everything about you? Even the things that I shouldn't even like? To do anything less –anything less than give you everything I have- would be unworthy." He reached out gently, taking her hands in his and searching her face.

Past all the masks she wore, one on top of the other, peeling them back until he got to the core of her and begging her to be as truthful with herself as she wanted to be to him.

"Am I not worthy?"

"Of course you are. I didn't say…"

"Then what's stopping you?"

"Me." She searched his face for understanding praying she both would and wouldn't find it. "My past."

"Is exactly that, you can't do anything but accept it and try and move on. With me. Build a future with me, Regina. We can't have the life we wanted but that isn't to say we can't have a damn good life. We can be happy."

"Any happiness I have is torn away. It's always been that way."

"Not anymore. Not with me here."

"Why are you so sure you can protect me?"

"I'm stronger now." He knew she didn't realise the full extent of what he meant but –if she only gave him a chance- he'd spend the rest of their lives showing her.

"Not stronger than me, nor Rumplestiltskin or an entire town full of angry villagers complete with social networking and pitchforks." She waved her hand wildly.

"Try me." He bared his teeth. "I'll shuck them like prawns and eat them raw."

Regina went pale, paler than she already was, and pulled her hands from him. She stepped back, her eyes going wide.

"What did you say?" Her voice was a hoarse whisper and Daniel gentled his smile, shrugging.

"I didn't really mean it, Regina." He smirked to let her know he really was joking. "I probably couldn't eat them all in one sitting."

"No." The word left her on a rushed breath of horror and Daniel was left grasping at purple smoke when she disappeared.

Regina reappeared across town and deep within the catacombs of her vault. She threw open the door to the inner sanctum and tore open the closet with the hearts still stored there. She could see the little glimmers of pink light peeking out through the gaps in the drawers and began yanking them open.

She was right, she really should have labelled them. Gods damn her and her psychopathic need for power, for trophies.

Regina hauled the drawers out, one after the other, they clattered to the floor, hearts plinking like glass balls and rolling awkwardly away. She knew none of them would shatter, it took a particular kind of intent to crush a heart. You had to really mean it.

She was looking for the odd one out. She found several empty drawers, Whale must have taken more than one heart for his attempts, but that wasn't really what she as looking for. She was looking for one particular heart and her fingers hesitated when she reached drawer with the ivory box inside. The reinforced one. It was bigger than the rest and she could sense, even through the wood and bone surrounding it, that what she was looking for was right there…or rather, that what was missing wasn't there at all.

She pulled the drawer, tugging carefully like the contents might attack her at any moment. She pulled it right out, as if the heart inside might have crammed itself into a corner or something as equally foolish.

Regina stood, her hands shaking violently, the box shuddering between her palms and her legs folded beneath her. She sank to the floor. The box tumbled from her lap and she covered her mouth with her hand, trying to convince herself that she must be mistaken that the Curse had been blessed with the sense not to bring an object of such terrifying power with her even if she hadn't…but she knew that was not the case.

Regina tilted forward and her head thudded against the cabinet of hearts. She could feel them pulsing in a steady throb, radiating magic onto her in a steady drumming of guilt.

So many, so many, she hadn't been lying when she had said that she didn't remember who they all belonged to but she remembered this one.

Of course Whale would take the biggest heart. He'd want the best chance of success and the biggest would more than likely mean the strongest wouldn't it? Typical doctor, governed more by logic than sense. Still, she understood his reasoning…

…but why, oh why, oh why, had he had to take Hyde's?