A/N: Thank you all for the reviews, favorites and follows!

Emma stood outside for half a heartbeat before she opened the door slowly and went inside. She found Regina in the kitchen standing by a counter next to a large tray of brownies.

"Are those…?" Emma started to ask.

"Your brownies." Regina said as she turned and started cutting into them.

"Couldn't sleep?" Emma asked.

She only asked because she knew when Regina couldn't sleep she'd get up in the middle of the night and come into the kitchen to bake. She would just bake whatever and for some reason it relaxed her. A few hours later she'd come back to bed smelling of flour and sweetness and fall right to sleep.

"After you left earlier, I talked to Tina but it didn't help me all that much." Regina said to her as she moved the brownies from the baking sheet to a tray.

She turned to look at Emma, "She really dislikes you."

"I imagine so." Emma said, "I hurt her best friend. It's a wonder she hasn't put a hit out on me."

"I wouldn't put it passed her." Regina told her, "She may be small but she's mighty vengeful and very protective."

"What did you talk about?" Emma asked as she stepped closer to Regina.

"She doesn't believe you're sincere about staying here or about loving me." Regina told her, "She thinks you're going to use me for a little while then take off again."

"She said she never really trusted you either."

"What about you? Do you believe that I still love you, that I'm sincere about wanting to stay here and share my life with you?" Emma asked, "Do you trust me?"

Regina sighed, "I trusted you before Emma. I believed everything you said to me and look what that got me?"

"You weren't happy here." Regina said to her, "Why should I believe now will be any different?"

"Regina, leaving was a colossal mistake that I will regret forever because I wasted all those months in a crappy little apartment, miserable and without you." Emma told her, "If I could go back in time and change it I would. I would have never left I would have stayed here and built a life with you."

"I know my promises might not mean anything to you anymore but Regina, please give me another chance to show you that I'm here, I love you and I'm not going anywhere." Emma asked of her.

"I went to San Francisco." Regina said out of nowhere.

"What? When?" Emma asked surprised.

"After my dad…." Regina started to say but her voice faded. She cleared her throat, "We had talked about you a few days before. He told me I needed to fight for you."

She let out a small chuckle then looked at Emma, "Can you believe that? You left me and he's telling me I'm the one that had to fight for you."

"Regina…" Emma started to say but Regina continued on.

"I told him he was nuts if he thought I was going to chase after you." Regina told her, "Then he told me a story I never heard before."

Regina paused to suck some caramel off her thumb then continued to squeeze it over the brownies.

"He and my mother were only married a few months when she told him she couldn't handle being in this small suffocating town." Regina said then looked at Emma, "Sound familiar?"

Regina gave Emma a small smile.

"She told him she couldn't be a star here. But my dad suspected she was also afraid of not being enough for him." Regina said, "So one day she left a note, packed a bag and took off."

"My dad was beside himself. He loved her so much and he couldn't believe she'd just walk away like that."

Regina moved passed Emma to put the caramel sauce away.

"So what did he do?" Emma asked, "Did he go after her?"

"You bet he did." Regina told her, "And when I asked him why he would go after her when clearly she didn't want to stay, do you know what he told me?"

Emma shook her head no.

"He said, 'Because to me she was a star. She filled my heart with love, brightness and warmth and there was no way in hell I was going to let that fade away.'"

"He went to New York, found her and told her what was in his heart and how empty he felt without her." Regina told Emma.

"They came back to Storybrooke a couple days later and for the next 35 years never left each other's side for more than a day."

"So when he… you know." Regina said still not being able to say the words, "I thought long and hard about what he had said. I thought maybe if I found you, if I told you what was in my heart that you'd come back home."

"But, you never came to see me." Emma said confused.

"Oh but I did see you Emma." Regina told her, "You were in a little dive bar on stage playing guitar. I stayed in the back and watched. You finished then headed off stage and into the arms of a guy in a black leather jacket with douchebag facial hair."

"Neal." Emma said quietly.

"I don't need to know the douchebag's name." Regina told her as she took a tray of the brownies and pushed through the kitchen doors.

Emma followed her behind the counter, "No, you don't understand that was the guy I lived with." Emma told her, "He was nothing more than a friend Regina."

"Wait, how'd you know where to find me?" Emma asked her.

"Mulan."

Emma raised an eyebrow.

"She has her ways and she knows a lot of people." Regina told her, "Some are a little sketchy but they help when she asks. She told me that she found out you were preforming at a little bar on West Portal Ave."

"I took the information she gave me and I booked a flight as soon as I could." Regina told her, "I didn't know what to expect but I didn't expect to see you all over some guy."

"I promise you it was nothing like that at all. Neal, though he hoped, was never more than a friend to me." Emma told her, "My heart, my love was here with you."

Emma stepped closer to her, she reached for her hand and when Regina didn't pull away, she took it.

"Please believe me when I say I'm sorry for ever leaving you." Emma said as she looked into Regina's eyes, "I told you I'd do whatever it takes to make it up to you and I will, every day till you forgive me."

Regina pulled her hand slowly out of Emma's, "How about we start with dinner first and see where it goes from there?"

Emma dared a smile, "You mean it?"

"Only if you do." Regina said to her.

"I do." Emma said, "With all my heart I do."

As promised Emma did whatever it took for Regina to forgive her.

So after months of dates, bickering, and more than a few tossed pies Emma and Regina's relationship became what it was meant to be.

"Wow." Emma said quietly to herself as she sat down on the bed.

Regina came into the bedroom with a box, "I'm not going to get unpacked with you just sitting on your butt."

"You kept them." Emma said as she looked up at her, "All this time, you still had them?"

Regina set the box down and took the photo strip from her, "As mad as I was at you Emma, I couldn't throw them away."

She went over to the bureau where she had put a picture of Henry. She rested the pictures against the frame and turned to Emma.

Emma pulled her pictures from her jeans pocket, "On my way back to you, I'd pull these out and stare at them." Emma told her, "I felt as if I was carrying a piece of us with me. It gave me hope, hope that I could make you that happy again."

Regina took the pictures from her and looked at them before putting them on the other side of the Henry's picture.

"It took some time." Regina said as she went over to Emma, pulled her up from the bed then wrapped her arms around her waist.

"But I'm happy." She said then kissed Emma on the lips.