Please be warned, this chapter contains sex and violence. Not at the same time. :)

I was going to hold onto this for a little longer, but it seemed apt to post it tonight. Just one ficlet, but a super long one, and the next chapter will be one ficlet as well.

xix. devastation

The baby is a boy.

She breathes, relief washing over her when she first sees him. It's stupid and childish and she's trying to think of anything else but her suddenly unstable magic again, but everything gets a little quieter when it's a blue blanket wrapped around the child in her mother's arms.

Regina stands further back, shoulders rigid and face bent into the kind of smile that she used to get when Henry would move from her back to Emma. Happy and afraid and uncomfortable all at once, but she keeps her eyes on Emma and Mary Margaret and remains silent just beyond the doorway. Henry is between them, hovering behind Emma but too uncertain to approach any closer.

And, of course, the sense of suffocation returns moments later when David takes the baby and Mary Margaret watches it with such naked longing that the air around Emma settles back down again, heavy and oppressive and sluggish, and everything around her seems to waver and Henry-Mary Margaret-David-Regina are all too far to catch her when she falls–

No. She blinks. She isn't falling. Regina is watching Mary Margaret's face and David and Mary Margaret are looking at the baby and no one seems to notice that she's shaky with lack of contact and her magic is whispering insecurities into her heart. No one except Henry, whose eyes flicker from the baby to her and back and he has the same face as she does now, she suddenly realizes. And that blue blanket is a dagger to the throat for him.

"Regina, why don't you come hold him?" Mary Margaret says, eyes still on the baby.

She can't know what reprieve she'd just offered them, but Emma says anyway, "Henry and I are going to go look around for a bit," and sleekly dodges Regina's worried glance as she presses her hand to Henry's shoulder and steers him out of the hospital room, anchoring both of them at once.

They walk down to the cafeteria and Henry still hasn't pulled away from her, which makes this their most successful exchange since he'd found out about his lost memories. And she knows what he's wondering, what he's grappling with as strongly as she is, and she thinks it'd be easier to pretend it doesn't exist like Mary Margaret does. To hide away resentment in favor of smiles and promises of happy families in the future. To build anew on top of crumbling stone.

But Henry's eyes are dull and she knows- she knows- that she can't bear a world where he becomes her, unstable even when surrounded by love. She can be impotent for herself but never for him. Not anymore.

She hesitates by a bench in the hall and he sits, staring at the wall. "So they have a new baby now," he says flatly.

"Yeah."

"And they're your parents."

"Yeah."

He turns to her, eyes suddenly bright with righteous fire. "That sucks."

She laughs, hoarse and choked. "Yeah, it does."

"I just…" He bites his lip. "I don't understand. If they did it to you…and then…with me…"

Her insides are on fire, her eyes already getting fuzzy, and she doesn't know how to explain it to him. How to tell him, I spent seven months in prison afraid to talk to you. How to explain how little a seventeen-year-old with no prospects could have done for him without him being catapulted into that foster system that had failed her, already damaged and unwanted.

She tries anyway before she can't speak at all. "I…uh." She clears her throat. "I guess when you spend so many years wondering about the parents who gave you up…you start thinking about why they would. And you think that they're…weak, I guess. That they couldn't give you what you needed."

Henry listens, silent and as dark-eyed as the mother who'd actually raised him, and she swallows again. "I didn't know about fairytales or saviors and I sure as hell wouldn't have believed in them by the time I was locked up. All I knew was the way I'd thought of my parents until then. Weak. Helpless. Terrified. Incapable of…of loving right. And I was seventeen and I thought I was all those things, too, and I guess I knew history was repeating itself and didn't believe it couldn't."

Henry is silent, still chewing on his lip and Emma blinks back tears and waits until he says, "But it didn't."

"It didn't," she agrees. "You had Regina. And…screwed-up as this whole story is, you had Regina and you had…I mean, you came for me. I know I wasn't there from the start, not really, but you were healthy and loved and you were happy for a long time before things went sou-sour." She chokes on her words. "And you became this amazing, driven, stubborn kid who was too smart for his own good and believed in people who didn't deserve you and…" Her voice trails off and Henry is watching her, his little hands toying with his scarf and they're already so much bigger than they'd been when they'd first met. She remembers them being tiny and wrapped around her finger but that was all a lie that scrapes her chest raw when she thinks too much about it.

His voice comes out as a whisper. "And when you wanted to take me away from here again…that was because you felt weak?"

"Henry…" The tears are spilling from her eyes and he isn't crying but he's so serious that she wishes he would, that he'd give her some reason to pull him into her arms and hold him forever. That they can bridge this gap again and go back to who they'd been. "Henry, I'm sorry. I never thought you'd even know. I thought you'd be happy again where we'd been happy before. And yeah. Yeah, I was weak."

"Okay," Henry says, and he slides closer and pats her shoulder timidly and it isn't forgiveness, but maybe it's acceptance for now. Maybe they need to start here.

She takes a deep breath. "Listen, how about we…" Her voice trails off as she looks up and spots Regina coming down the hall. "What's up?"

Regina's jaw tightens. "Henry. How'd you like to stay here tonight with David? They're setting up a cot in the next room and he says you can take the hospital bed."

"Hospital bed! With controls and everything?" He brightens, as glad to be removed from their conversation as Emma is, and tilts his head and squints at her, then Emma. "And you're going on a secret mission together? What about Zelena?"

"Zelena doesn't want the baby tonight." They'd never confirmed that, but Regina pronounces it with certainty, and Henry pouts and says, "I miss everything fun," but runs off anyway, the lure of an adjustable bed stronger than mom superheroes, apparently.

She grins to herself before she turns back to Regina. "How are you two doing?" the other woman asks.

"We're okay." She always feels guilty talking about the tension between her and Henry with Regina. He's on edge around her and distrusting, but it seems a hell of a lot milder than trying to redesign Mary Margaret's loft into a fort to protect them from his other mother. Regina might have had more to answer for with him, but she's fought and fought for their relationship and Emma's misery now seems to…pale in comparison.

But Regina has noticed anyway, of course, observant of every twitch and jerk when Henry is involved. She brushes aside Emma's dismissal and gives her a look that says something between I can see right through you and You're going to be okay and then slides down to sit next to her, closer than is probably normal for two people who are…not publicly in any kind of relationship.

Which, it occurs to her, is something they should probably talk about. They haven't even thought to discuss it with anyone except Henry, who'd taken it as a given, and they haven't really discussed what they're doing beyond the agreement that they're doing it. "It" has never been defined as anything from friends with benefits to permanent life partners and they've been coasting along just like this, but maybe it's time they admitted it to her parents, at least.

But this is apparently not the time, since Regina is close just to murmur in her ear, "Whale got a call."

"Was it Ruby, because she swears that she is done with that disaster–"

"No, you idiot." It's affectionate. Ish. "I don't know who or what. He turned them down, said he couldn't break curfew with Snow White in the hospital tonight. And then made some colorful references to my sister."

Emma sits up, adrenaline replacing the fuzziness of the past few hours. "Zelena is involved in something tonight. Some meeting after curfew." She glances at her phone. "It's less than an hour to sunset."

"Shall we?" Regina rises, smooth and graceful, and extends a hand to her. Emma takes it and stands too close, belligerently so, and Regina rolls her eyes. "Control yourself, Miss Swan." But she sashays off, leading the way toward the hospital exit.

They're set up with coffee cups and the patrol car a half hour later, urging stragglers inside as the sun dips low in the sky. Outside, the air is clean and Regina's perfume is oddly comforting, and Emma thinks for a moment about how fucked up her life is that woman who'd once terrorized her family is the one who lets her breathe and her mother is the one she's so afraid to be around.

To be fair, most of her early time with Regina had served as stress relief before the more euphemistic stress relief had kicked in, and bygones have been left to the past with them. With Mary Margaret, they're always at peace she doesn't dare question and then suddenly there's a new baby in her arms and Emma is terrified to come any closer. She'd never allow any confrontation there, and she doesn't know how to cope when there isn't confrontation except to press it all down until it comes bubbling out in an ugly mess.

Regina's eyes are on her and she keeps her own gaze on the road, driving up and down the blocks near Zelena's farmhouse and tracking the monkeys circling overhead. They're out on a mission now, no time for her to take stock of whatever emotions are swirling around in her heart right now. She's thirty years old. She isn't going to be a mess over her mother having a new baby.

"So!" she says brightly. Regina looks at her askance. "Who would Whale hang out with in town? Does the guy have any friends?"

"Emma," Regina says, her hand sliding onto Emma's arm, and suddenly Emma feels like crying.

Which is absolutely unacceptable. She breathes in through her nose, out through her lips, and thanks whoever looks out for fairytale idiots as she sees a figure cross the road toward Zelena's land. "Hey. Look at that. Whale's buddy."

The man is stocky, something long and thin in his hand, and Regina says in an odd, strained voice, "No. That's Robin Hood. You have him monitoring Zelena, don't you?"

"Hm." She leans forward to squint out the windshield, watching with disappointment as Robin Hood moves toward the woods instead of the house and fades into the dimness there. "You know anything about him?"

"No," Regina says quickly.

She can't possibly remember the year before, the first time they'd ever met, according to the memories she'd pried from Robin Hood's mind. But there's still something suspicious in the way Regina won't meet her eyes, like something else had gone on between them beyond the one encounter she knows they'd had here. "Regina."

"It's a long story," Regina hedges. "Aren't we supposed to be out pretending that you're not distracting yourself from your new brother?"

Emma's eyes narrow. "Okay, that was a lower blow than usual. Tell me."

Regina sighs heavily. "It really doesn't matter."

"My mother just had a baby who she freely admits was her second chance because I'm all grown up and I'm so unstable about it that we nearly had to deliver him on our own." It's easier to talk about it like this, irritated like these are silly little trivialities instead of enough to stop her in her tracks and have her shaking and suffocating. "Humor me. I'll take a long story."

She pulls over to the side of the road and kills the gas, waiting for Regina to speak. "I…when I was a young queen, Tinkerbell promised once to find me my soulmate. She stole some pixie dust and it led us to a man in a tavern with a lion tattoo on his wrist. I never saw him then. But that same tattoo is on Robin Hood's arm."

"Oh." Emma's skin prickles all over and no, this is worse than before. Everything is worse now, Regina has a soulmate, and apparently she buys into that crap enough to be troubled over it even now. She laughs helplessly. "Maybe you could have mentioned that you were dealing with this back before we started with the kissing?" Today is not going to be the day that she loses everything. Today is the day she captures Zelena and finally feels like she's back in control of her life and returns to the hospital the triumphant savior.

"Don't be ridiculous. I don't even know the man."

"Maybe you did last year." Horrifying suspicions are creeping up and he has to be working with Zelena, that has to be the only way, he'd gained Regina's trust last year and he's supposed to be seducing her and this is all a lie. "Maybe you fell in love with him last year and you're going to get your memories back and–"

Regina kisses her and she stops talking. Regina kisses are head-spinning, everything at once, demanding like Mayor Mills on her desk with legs crossed and gentle like Regina holding her hand at the town line and promising her happy memories. Regina kisses her and it's all she is, all both of them are, and Emma hangs on and struggles to remember that this isn't going to last.

"Idiot," Regina says again, fingers light against her cheek as she pulls back for a moment. "Why would I want anyone else when I have you?" She kisses her again, short and sweet, and Emma tugs up the armrests between the seat to crawl over to Regina, pulling her up onto her lap. "Whatever happened with that tavern, that was for someone I don't believe I am anymore. A missed chance, nothing more. Once of thousands. It was just…startling." Her arms slide around Emma's back to steady herself, her legs dangling over the side of Emma's lap and her cheek pressed to hers. "And no, of course I wouldn't have fallen in love last year. I imagine I was in mourning throughout."

"For Henry."

"Right."

"Did you ever…before…" She stumbles over the words, closing her eyes and feeling the comforting warmth of Regina around her, soft angles against her palms and playful teeth at her neck. "Did you think about this?" She knows she had in that back-of-the-mind Emma stop obsessing over the sociopathic mother of your child kind of way, back before the curse had broken, and then it had been…different. Too many external factors fucking up whatever progress they'd made, portals to other lands and Cora and Pan and even Mary Margaret, and she'd pushed it all aside until they'd started interacting like friends and it had been impossible to avoid.

Regina licks her lips. "I thought about it when you cut down part of my apple tree." Her eyes are suddenly hungry, dark and dangerous. "I wanted to take your chainsaw and throw you up against my tree and…punish you for your insolence."

She's suddenly all too aware of the stickiness between her legs and she shifts, letting one of Regina's slide between them. Regina turns, pressing her knee against Emma's center. "…Yeah?" Emma manages.

"Mm." Regina bites down on her earlobe and hums, "I wanted to punish you all the time that year. And sometimes–" Her leg slides back up, then down again, a gentle pressure against Emma's clit. "Sometimes I thought about you punishing me."

"Throwing you down on your desk," Emma agrees, trapping Regina's leg in place. She wiggles in response and Emma gasps, "One- one arm cuffed to the cell bars in the station." She pulls up Regina's dress and feels wetness beneath satin, fingers sliding in easily and curling against a bundle of nerves she's becoming intimately familiar with. "I wanted to do you right up against those columns on your porch."

Regina's voice sounds strained. "And here?"

"Backseat." A dozen scenarios she'd tried with little success to tamp down when everything had been terrible and she'd hated Regina much too much to be this attracted.

"Yes," Regina pants, grinding her leg against Emma as she rides her fingers. "Over the hood. In your damned Bug. My god, did I think about anything else? No wonder I lost," she sounds irritated and breathless and amused all at once and Emma kisses her neck and pushes her back for a new angle.

A bare toe presses sharply against her clit and Emma comes hard, yanking her fingers up as her body clenches and unclenches and a strangled cry is torn from Regina's throat. "Em-maaa," Regina groans, tugging her down on top of her, and they're all tangled up somewhere near the steering wheel and kissing again, Emma peeling away Regina's dress to bury her head between her legs. "Emma, Emma, Emma," Regina chants above her, voice rising and falling with each swell of her abdomen like a song, and she tastes like home.

Regina's walls begin to clench around her three times before Emma lets her come and by then, Regina's threats have gotten creative and her magic is winding phantom circles around her nipples and through her belly and down to her own center as well, and when they come it's together in a shower of sparks.

"What's a wooden pony? Do I want to know?" she asks after, sliding herself up to kiss Regina's lips again.

"Mm. Someday." Regina pats her rear promisingly.

She snorts. "I can't take us anywhere, can I?" An instant later she remembers their mission and jerks up so abruptly that she bangs her head on the steering wheel. "Fuck! Did we miss Zelena?"

"Less than a minute and she's back onto my sister." Regina sighs, but she's still sluggish and sated as she sits up, an edge to her voice that promises more if the stakeout is abandoned. "The lights are on in there. And I can feel…malice. A lot of magical energy." Her voice darkens, serious again. "Zelena's entertaining."

"So we go in there. Break it up."

Regina shakes her head. "We don't know who we'll be up against in there. And if she has Rumple with her…"

"We can take them. We did fine last time, didn't we?" Emma nudges her, watching familiar caution settle onto Regina's face. It's here more and more since she'd returned to Storybrooke, the Regina who would willingly charge into any trap and wreak havoc all but buried under an obstinately controlled demeanor. "Stop that. You were talking about fucking me with my nightstick in the backseat minutes ago and now you're suddenly afraid to lose control?"

"Nightstick?" Regina brightens for a moment before she shakes her head. "Emma, no."

"We're so strong together," Emma coaxes. "Give 'em hell with me."

Regina's eyes glitter for a moment like temptation, dark and rich and alive with promise. And then it's gone as quickly as it had come, that secret Regina gone and buried. "You know that doesn't work out well for me. And Henry–"

"Henry doesn't even remember what he wants from you." She catches Regina's hand and holds it. "Come on, I'm here. We'll look out for each other." It's a promise she doesn't know she can keep, her skin already buzzing with the need for a new victory, victory after victory after victory tonight because that's what keeps her going now through the uncertainty. Her mother has a new baby and now she's going to go savior the fuck out of Zelena because that's who she is, even when she doesn't know what else she can be. "You don't need to be afraid of relapsing into murderville all the time, okay? We're the good guys."

"The good guys," Regina repeats as though she doesn't quite grasp it, and there's a sneer on her face for an instant before she folds. "Fine, Emma. What's your plan?"

So easy. It's oddly reassuring that Regina's still the same Regina, ready to go with the mildest of assurances. Not everything has changed. "Go in. Grab Zelena. Or the dagger."

"Remarkable in its simplicity," Regina says dryly.

"You got a better idea?"

Regina opens her mouth as though to retort and then seems to reconsider. "No. That sounds…satisfying." Her eyes gleam again with deadly anticipation and Emma licks her lips, certain that her own eyes mirror Regina's.

They creep out of the car and walk down the road, Regina leading the way and Emma watching behind her for any stragglers.

The house is lit dimly and there are shadows behind the windows, too many to be just Zelena or Gold or Whale's friend, and for a moment Emma is uncertain. No. She straightens, reckless energy returning, because they're pretty much invincible together and nothing else in the world matters right now except defeating Zelena. Well, that and Henry.

Nothing else. "What are you thinking?" she whispers to Regina.

Regina tilts her head. "I'm thinking that if we die, Henry's going to grow up with Snow White." She clenches her fists. "We're not dying."

"Damn straight."

They rush the house as one, the door flying open with a bang with a wave of Regina's hand, and there's a moment where they all stare at each other in startled indecision. Zelena is standing in the center of the room, Gold in the background, and arrayed around the living room are shadowy figures, only some of whom Emma recognizes. Albert Spencer, Jefferson, one of the principals from Henry's school, the flower shop owner…it's people she's arrested or wanted to, felt malice from them before.

"What is this, a meeting of villains? And I wasn't invited?" Regina scoffs, gesturing toward a woman seated cross-legged on the couch. "She sells ice cream! I cast life-ruining curses!" She strides forward, magic erupting from her hands, and the room scatters.

Zelena waves the dagger lazily. "Regina, Regina, Regina. Get rid of them!"

And then Gold is rushing toward them lightning-quick and Emma lets the magic that's been building within her all day explode at him, white and blue as it combines with Regina's purple and throws him backward.

Spencer makes an odd strangled noise in his throat and the ice cream lady sits back and watches interestedly. There's a puff of black magic as someone disappears, and another few make a beeline for the door.

Emma charges forward, eyes only on Zelena.

Behind her, Gold is rising again, but he tosses only a glance her way before he charges for Regina instead. "Get the dagger," he growls, passing close enough to nick her with red energy that makes her whole arm weak. She focuses hard, remembers what she's learned about healing magic, and presses forward.

Zelena throws her backward and she vaults into the air, remembering one of Regina's lessons from the past week that she hadn't been too tired to internalize. She isn't quite as graceful as Regina but her shields do the trick and she's bouncing back into Zelena a moment later, hand at her throat. "I'm going to kill you."

Across the room, someone in the shadows transforms, and Emma sees it only out of the corner of her eye before there's a lion- a lion!- pouncing across the room, batting her aside as Zelena straightens. No, no, no. She's not done here, she's going to stop Zelena tonight, she's going to win and she's going to save this fucking town and why are there lions?

Zelena snaps out a new command to Gold and Emma turns frantically, too much happening around her to keep track of. The lion is growling like it's about to charge at her and from the corner of her eye, she sees Regina with a hand outstretched, a pixie-tiny woman Emma doesn't recognize struggling against bonds that hold her to it. She's struggling for breath and Regina looks positively gleeful about it.

"Well, look at that," Zelena drawls, looking interested again. Because Regina, Regina, all she cares about and Emma lashes out wildly at the lion to get past it to the witch. Zelena cackles once and the lion roars and there's blue light everywhere and then–

Zelena is gone, Gold with her, and the lion is shrinking back into a man and slipping out the door. "No!" Emma snaps, hands still surging with energy. From the corner of her eye she sees the ice cream lady still on the couch, head tilted and eyes bright. The pixie kicks at Regina and Regina laughs, low and deep, and spins around to rejoin Emma.

"We're not done. What did she want from you?" There are only a few guests remaining who haven't managed to run, and Regina's eyes light onto Spencer, hiding shamelessly behind a recliner. "George! Get out here."

He crawls out and Regina stalks forward, and Emma feels a new surge of hatred toward the man. Easy hate. Simple hate, like standing on a battlefield and seeing an enemy with nothing in his eyes. He's tried to hurt just about everyone she loves, and now he has the audacity to ally with Zelena? "Tell us what Zelena's planning," she growls.

He laughs. "You? I don't think so."

Fury fills her, so easy when it's directed at him. She'd held his heart in her hands before and she'll do it again, take it from him and squeeze until he's lying on the floor and screaming for mercy, and there's a fuzziness in her ears and blood in her eyes and Regina is hissing something beside her and when she looks down, there it is. There's the heart in her hands.

She squeezes it and he howls and she squeezes it harder, blood thumping against her hand and she suddenly feels too removed from this situation, Spencer is too distant and holding a heart isn't close enough and she wants him to hurt.

She hands off the heart to Regina without a thought and throws Spencer against the wall with a flash of deep blue magic the color of the night sky. "Tell me."

He laughs, shuddering with terror and defiance, and she punches him in the face, punches him in the gut, drives her fingers into his empty chest and calls forth fire until he howls. Regina clenches his heart and he screams and coughs blood all over Emma and she suddenly notices just how oldhe is, looking more and more aged by the moment. She thinks she should be taken aback but instead she's satisfied and craving more, more, to hurt someone she can hurt without losing herself.

It's like battling Walsh except it's simpler, less emotion and more…stress relief, again. Spencer grunts out a curse and Regina squeezes again, tight and loose and tight and loose and every time he breathes, Emma sends blue-hot fingers raking down his neck and chest and face and it feels so good.

Spencer laughs again, like frail little puffs of air, and looks up at Regina. "So…you've corrupted the so-called…savior…at last."

Regina recoils like she's been slapped. Emma says, "Fuck you," and punches him in the mouth. "Tell me what she wanted you for."

"Early…alliance," he croaks. Emma presses her fingers to his throat. "For when she takes over this town."

Her fingers light on fire and burn his throat and then suddenly there's a hand on her shoulder, pulling her away. Regina's face has taken on an unnatural pallor and she shakes her head. "Emma. We've gone too far. We were supposed to…Emma." Emma is still struggling forward and then Regina's dragging her backward, away from Spencer as he sinks to the ground, unconscious.

And she finally sees her handiwork, Spencer a mess of bruises and burns and unrecognizable under a latticework of purple that covers every inch of exposed skin on his body. His face is swollen and his expensive suit is all but disintegrated and he looks defeated, utterly defeated, and Regina cradles the heart in her hand and gasps out a sob. "Oh, no, Emma what have we done?"

Emma had promised that they'd look out for each other and she thinks she should feel guilty for letting Regina down, but all she can see when she looks at Spencer is another man who wouldn't hesitate to murder her family. A worthless, wicked man who doesn't deserve their mercy. "Give me his heart," she says.

Regina jerks. "What?"

"Give it to me." She's aware suddenly that the ice cream lady is still on the couch, hunger in her eyes, and then Emma turns for a moment and she's gone like she'd never been there at all. "We get…we get rid of him. Leave him here for Zelena to find."

Regina shakes her head violently. "Emma, I'm not going to let you kill someone else! I shouldn't have even…" She looks helpless, lost like she hadn't when she'd been attacking the pixie or Spencer earlier. "I'm trying to change. I thought I was changing."

"He's a bad guy. We know he's a bad guy." She touches Regina's arm. "This is what we do."

"Like this?" Regina shudders. "No. This is what I did." She presses the heart into Spencer's chest very suddenly, down to a crouch before Emma can stop her. And she turns and looks up at Emma like she's broken something unforgivable. "Maybe it's what I do. But not what you do. Never what you do."

Irritation bursts free in a wave cast days ago, from every disapproving look and hesitation, and Emma clenches her fists. "What do you know about what I do? You don't know what I'm capable of. This isn't some…falling off the wagon, Regina, he was working with Zelena. He'd watch us all burn and laugh over the ashes. Why shouldn't we kill him and keep everyone safe?"

"I don't know." Regina stands up, rubbing the heels of her hands into her eyes and pushing her hair back with unsteady fingers. "I don't know what I should do anymore. I don't even–" She shakes her head. "I just know what you do. And it isn't any of this." Her eyes are downcast, pained like they'd been the first time she'd whispered You can use magic over a year ago on her porch and it's unfair, it's Regina pushing ideals on her too, and she's so tired of it.

She holds out a hand. "Please, Emma. Let's just go." She looks down at Spencer with distaste and waves her other hand above him for a moment. "He won't remember anything from before we entered the room. Maybe he'll survive. Maybe not."

Her hand is still out and Emma grits her teeth and walks past her to the door outside, her fists still shaking like she's been left impotent again, strangled by her own inability to finish anything. Some savior, she thinks, reminding herself again of stories of Spencer as King George with David in his grasp, of Spencer who would frame Ruby and put Mary Margaret in prison and who's absolutely vile.

Maybe Regina's right and this isn't how she'd gone about things in the past. But she hadn't won anything in the past, either, and any regret or horror she tries to summon up for Spencer feels fabricated, emotion she's trying to emulate instead of real concern.

With Walsh, it had hit hard. With Spencer, it's beginning to feel like a habit. And she's never felt more capable of protecting the people she loves than when she acknowledges that. No matter how far she is from whoever Regina thinks she is.

She heads for the car, a smile settling onto her face like a frightening simulacrum of satisfaction.