Chapter 11

Emma didn't scream: she flew into the hole on the ground, her movement resolute, a strength of purpose all focused on Regina. She grabbed her hand before she had even hit the ground and the force of the queen's magic fought the magic hurtling out of the hole on the ground. Emma grabbed her wrist. Regina looked up, wild eyes and wild hair and wild fear.

"Get out of here, Emma. Step back!"

It was difficult to understand what Regina was saying. Around them, everything was sound and fury and wind. The ground was screeching, howling like a beast dying."No. I'm not letting go."

"I can't close it. I waited too long. You have to go, Emma. Take Henry." Regina looked down, her shoes gone and her feet dangling off a precipice of swirling, threatening magic raising like water in a well during a flood."Tell him that it's going to be okay. That I love him. Will you tell Henry that I love him, won't you? Get Henry, and get out of Storybrooke. Please get Henry out. Get in your car and leave. It's a strong sturdy car Emma. A lot of strong metal between you and danger. There is a good engine in there. Don't look back."

Emma's arms were on fire, the strain of the helpless weight stretching her muscles and joints, the pull of the magic swirling below them making it all the more unbearable. Regina's skin was mottled, white around Emma's fingers and she felt her hold slip. "Regina. Stop this."

"I didn't lie, Emma. I didn't. He is yours... I couldn't have you back and risk you as well as Henry. You should not have come back, Emma. And you must leave now and take Henry with you. He loves you already."

Emma felt as if her arms were being torn away from her torso, Regina's weight amplified by the pull of the vortex. Her determination steeled. "Regina, dammit, stop saying goodbye. If you don't help me close this, I'll fall into it with you."

Regina's eyes went wild with fear. "You'd leave Henry on his own?"

"I won't have to if you pull it together and help me close this. Come on, Regina, tell me what to do." She gave Regina's arms a tug and pulled her up, grabbed further up her arms. Her back screamed in agony."I got you, I'm not letting go. Tell me how."

Regina closed her eyes and looked down. Emma saw the same thing: the pretty colours of the vortex of magic, swirling, claiming them both, promising relief."It hurts. I'm tired."

No. Absolutely not. Emma ground her teeth. This was the one time she was not letting go. Emma focused on their hands and arms, joined together. A thread of white light began to envelop their hands, winding and winding around their arms like silk or rope and even when Regina's arm slipped from Emma's grasp, the thread was there and kept her from falling in, kept them joined, united.

Surprised, Emma opened her eyes and opened her right hand, tentatively. When Regina remained firmly in her hold, she reached back and used her free hand to pull herself up. "Come on Regina, I've got you. I've got you. Now let's close this. How do I do it?"

Regina's voice was weary and too low, all energy siphoned out of her. "I can't."

Emma could see sweat pearling her forehead and energy seeping out, as blood would, as if Regina had been wounded in her magic. It scared Emma and it gave her a first very real jolt of fear. "Are you really going to leave Henry?"

She saw Regina focusing, steeling herself. She saw her eyes open and sharpen and the line of her jaw set. "Focus on it. See it closing. See that hole becoming smaller and smaller, Emma. See it. You must see it." And yet, her voice was still little above a croak, a whisper in the wind that Emma had to strain to hear.

Emma focused. She closed her eyes and did as Regina instructed, just as she began to pull her up using her free hand as a lever.

Slowly but steadily, the fireworks of the open portal died down, the brilliant clouds of smoke swirling around them abated and the pull on her arm lessened. She rose, pushing her body from the ground bringing Regina up with her and once the woman's midsection had passed the lip of the hole, Emma threw all her might into falling backwards, bringing Regina's inanimate body with her and closing the portal.

If asked, she wouldn't have known how it was done at all.

… … …

She couldn't tell how long she stood there, Regina's unresponsive form in her arms, just cradling her, rocking her in her arms, holding viciously onto her and feeling like she was never letting go.

As the portal closed, the screeching and the howling subsided, the wind died down and the dust settled. Silence descended over the scene. When Emma looked up, the shelter was gone and a ring of people stood around them, just standing there, looking at them a waiting for something, a signal of some sort, a director's claxon to end the scene.

Snow was the first to move, slowly, towards them. Silently, she knelt by Regina. "She's going to be okay."

"What do you care?" Emma blurted but it lacked bite, it lacked aggression.

"I really do."

Ruby walked to them next, still holding onto a wooden crate. "Emma, can you move her from here?" She put the crate down next to them and touched her fingers gently to Regina's pulse point on her neck.

"I don't think I can." Emma held Regina tighter, feeling hopeless.

"Listen, Grasshopper, you have to. Use your magic." Emma was nodding with her head because no, she couldn't do it, she just couldn't. Everybody always expected great and many things from her. "You have to. There's magic in the air still. And it's making her weaker. It's killing her."

"Do it just like she taught you." Snow pressed, her hand on Emma's arm. "Get her out of here." She touched Emma's hair softly."Just take her home."

… … …

When she opened her eyes, Emma found herself on her bed, Regina still unconscious in her arms. She was breathing and her heartbeat was steady so Emma just pulled her legs from under Regina's body and deposited her carefully on the bed.

She wanted to stay there. She wanted to just lay flat and rest for a little but she couldn't. If she did that, she would sleep for a week. She was that tired. But Regina needed her. And there was that portal and whatever had been left of it. She stared at Regina, heart pulling her to stay, brain telling her to go and finish the job as Regina had been doing on her own.

The drain on her body was overwhelming, like feeling something vital being pulled away from her, making everything hurt. And she didn't even rely on magic as much as Regina did. She knew magic was like life blood in Regina's veins. Take the magic out of her and it was the same as bleeding her out.

Her heart won. She knelt on the floor by the bed. She wanted to touch Regina, to make sure she was okay, to just… dammit, she wanted to touch, she didn't have to justify that she wanted to feel her, the warmth of her skin, the silkiness of her hair and her breath and everything else about her. She wanted to touch everything of Regina because she had fucking missed her so much she couldn't,now that she was looking at her from this small distance, figure it out, why she had stayed away. Now that Regina had almost been lost to her, she couldn't, just couldn't forgive herself for ever thinking there would something more, something better than that touch. So damned stupid Emma Swan of the Summerlands. She could feel it now, she could touch and taste a violent hollowness in her bones, an ache so profound she couldn't, just couldn't, deal with it unless she touched, even if just a strand of brown hair.

Even if she had no right.

She settled for the basics. She got water from the kitchen, a wet cloth from the bathroom and switched on the heating. Regina's skin was clammy and cold and Emma didn't know what else to do.

So she put the water on the bedside table and the covered her with a comforter and took the wet towel in her hand and started cleaning Regina of what had happened by the Second Chance. She cleaned her hands, so dusty and scratched from her fall, her face, stained with tear tracks running in the dusty cheeks. She cleaned her feet, so, so cold, massaged them and stuffed them in warm socks from her drawer. She pulled out her business suit jacket and tucked in the comforter around her, brushed her hair out of her face.

Then, she sat there and waited.

… … …

The door downstairs opened and there were voices whispering and then footsteps pounding on the stairs to her room. Henry knocked on the door and when Emma whispered gently yes he put his head through the door and then his whole body. She stood, feeling an absurd urge to touch the kid and check him for bumps and bruises, to hug and pull him into her and just… make sure he was okay. But when she stood and tried to do just that, he pushed past her. This was not the Henry that had sat with her during the campaign and exchanged stories of a town where only they felt time pass. This was a hurt child. And she had done that.

"Is my mom okay?" He asked and his voice broke. He knelt on the floor and took his mother's hand in his and caressed it, a gesture so soft and tender that made Emma want to cry.

Emma had no reply to that. She hoped so. With all her heart. But she was truly scared. "Henry, I'm sorry… For…" She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. God, she was such a mess, she had made such a mess of things.

"You were mean to my mom."

"I was. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Henry."

"You're an idiot." Henry didn't spare her a look. He was too concerned with his mother, too worried and Emma knew at that moment that it had always been just the two of them, no one else. Just them on their own. Everything hurt in her chest.

"I know. She told me."

Henry adjusted the comforter around Regina's shoulder and tucked her hair away from her face. Emma looked at his hands, the long narrow fingers, the shape of them so similar to her own. "If you hurt my mom again, I'm going to hurt you too, do you understand me, Emma of the Summerlands? I don't care who you are, I will hurt you." Yes, everything hurt, her chest, her bones, her heart, her brain. She reached out her hand to him but Henry pulled away.

The kid was ten, but Emma believed him. There was a fierce protectiveness about him, a light of battle in his green eyes that left no room for argument or patronising.

"I… huh..."

But Henry shook his head cutting her off. "Can I be alone with my mom now?"

"Sure kid."

She dragged herself down the stairs. In the living room, her mother was surrounded by boxes of papers and animal feed and there was a tabby cat on the old sofa. She sat and pulled the cat to her lap and stroked its ears methodically, focusing intensely on the rhythm of her fingers because that was the only way to not feel her eyes and her throat burn burn burn with tears she had no right to now.

Ruby sat next to her and handed her a cup of tea and a plate of ginger cookies. "How are you feeling?"

"Like a failure."

Ruby pulled her into a sideways hug and squeezed her tight into her side. "Is Regina awake?"

"No."

Ruby bit a cookie and clearly mulled things over. "You haven't failed." Ruby reassured her, rubbing soothing lines up and down Emma's arm.

"No? Ruby, I didn't believe her… any of it."

"Yet. You haven't failed yet, Ducky. There's no point in this little pity party you're having here. Put on your big girl boots and deal with it. You haven't failed yet." Emma gave her a grateful look. "But there's time, so get yourself together, huh?"

"What do you know, Ruby?"

Ruby sighed. "Nothing that it's my business to talk about. I suggest you sit down with Regina and talk."

"I called her a liar." Emma rubbed her face and slumped further into the sofa littered with random things brought from the shelter before it all went to hell in a hand basket.

Ruby gave her a playful smack on the upside of the head. "You're an idiot. It's a miracle you managed to grow up."

"Ruby? How did you know?"

"Know about what?"

"Getting her out of there?" Emma gave up on the pretence of normal the cookies engendered and pushed the plate away.

Ruby took it from Emma and put on the table next to her. "Because I've seen it. We all have."

"What do you mean?"

"You can spit from one end of Storybrooke to the other, Emma! Things get seen, word gets around. We're not stupid, Emma. The town is dying. And Regina is running herself ragged trying to hold all it together because god knows what will happen to us if it goes down one of those portals that's been opening the town up like we're some god-damned Swiss cheese."

Emma had a feeling she was going to embarrass herself, that she was going to lose control of her bodily functions right on that couch."Since when?"

"11 years, give or take. It's fraying, tearing. The portal is just one of those things. Alright, maybe the worst, the most dramatic, but there have been others, so many others and we've all seen the Mayor patching things up. It seems like it's the only thing that can be done."

"Why?" Ruby's only reply was silence and a pointed look. "Is it because of me? Is it because I left?"

"There it is!" Ruby retorted dryly and then took pity on Emma's bedraggled face. "Oh Emma…. Look, I don't know anything about magic such as this. But what I know is that we lived eighteen years without incident and the day you left, the first portal opened and nearly killed Regina. She closed that thing with – mostly for our benefit, I think - an irritated scrunch of her nose but…"

"But she could have left. You guys could have left."

"No, Emma, we couldn't. And not just because this is home… You have no idea just how special you are, do you?" She was going to add something else but bit instead into her forgotten cookie. "Besides… You could have come back. Your mother asked and asked and asked…"

"I would have. If you had told me."

"Would you, Emma? You wanted so badly to be normal that you just left everything that makes you special behind. You left home and everyone in it behind. I had to go and get you."

"I thought home was the Enchanted Forest."

Ruby swiped away a tear Emma was not aware of shedding. "Don't deflect Emma. Home's here. We like it here. We like what we became- even if that's not what you had in mind growing up. It's not easy leaving Storybrooke. And besides… there's no telling what would happen if we left Storybrooke. If she left Storybrooke. We don't know if these portals opening would be limited to the town. What if they consumed Storybrooke and then moved on to the next town and next one after that?"

Emma put her hands over her eyes and rubbed.

"Have you guys helped?"

"The fairies couldn't do it. It seeps the magic out of them too, leaves them on the floor like flies. And no one trusts the Dark One to do this. Not that he's ever so concerned about it. And as for the rest of us… let's just say that safe for the virgin sacrifice there would be nothing we could do. It's one thing to magic away frost or speak to animals but something of this magnitude? No…"

"So she's been doing it alone." Emma felt bile raising and burning, burning.

"Yes."

"No wonder she's exhausted. No wonder she looks ill every time she closes down one of these things."

"It's more than that, Emma." Ruby sighed. "Whatever is poking at the fabric of Storybrooke, It's like it's bleeding her. Gold stayed away. I think that bastard is waiting for her to die so that he can be free of her."

"Is that why he wanted the title deeds to the Second Chance?"

Ruby tooted, much like Granny in the face of idiocy."He never wanted anything from the Second Chance. He's not stupid enough to want to be close to that or any other portal that's going to seep his magic away. He just wanted to chip away at her, drive a wedge between you two. I think- and don't quote me on this because I know fuck all about magic- the town needs both of you. Like…you two are the balance. If one of you is gone, then it's all out of kilter, everything goes awry."

"Why didn't you give her my address? My number? Now we'll never know if I would have come back or not…"

"She's had those since the beginning, Emma."

Emma's hands shook and her eyes filled to brim. "So, she didn't want me." There was no question there, just rejection. "She didn't want me in her life."

"This is the part of the conversation you really should have with her. Third wheels are so last year, don't you think? But just to save you time, let me say this: you are an idiot. And we all know what village is missing its idiot. Whatever you think you know, Emma, you don't. Now." She stood, dusted her skinny jeans still covered in dust and gave Emma a look that the princess could not quite define. "How about you go upstairs? She's awake. I can hear her from here. The town is okay. For now at least. You can tell her that. She will want to know that."

"What do I do, Ruby?"

"I'd so like to tell you to be true to yourself, but we both know that's some shitty advice." Ruby gave her a wink and kissed her hair just like she used to when Emma was a little girl. "Stop fighting against it, Emma."

… … …

Emma prepared a cup of tea and added a generous amount of honey. She toasted some bread and slathered it with jam. Then she took a deep breath and went upstairs.

When she opened the door, Henry was laying in bed, the little spoon to Regina's big one. Regina's scratched hands were tight around his, cupping them gently, reassuring the child. She was whispering to him gently, and he was nodding. When he saw her at the door, he sat up on the bed and issued his challenge: "Get away from her." The tone was so Regina there could be no doubt where he came from.

Regina sat up in bed and pulled the comforter tightly around her- defensively - if Emma had to describe it.

"It's okay, Henry. Emma and I need to talk."

"Are you sure mom? You don't have to."

Regina gave him a tired smile. "I know. But... would it be okay if I wanted to?"

Emma found herself being a little jealous of that wordless understanding between them. As if Henry knew all the secrets that kept eluding her and she was the fool here. He kissed his mother on the forehead and straightened his frame as he got up. When he passed Emma and her tray, he stood perfectly still in front of her, and there was no mistaking the look in his yes, the stance of his body for anything else but threat and warning. "Shout if you need me." He gave Regina a smile that excluded Emma and then walked out, closing the door silently behind him.

Emma stood there, tray in her hands, feeling awkward and not sure where to start. "Are you still cold?"

Regina clutched at the comforter a little tighter. "No… Henry is a little portable heater." Her voice was small and gruff and if Emma was sure of anything at that moment was that this was not going to be an easy conversation even if Regina had just extended her a peace offering.

"Can I?" Emma looked pointedly at the bed. As Regina assented, Emma sat down carefully- not only because of the tea on her tray but because she'd do anything not to disturb the fraught peace of that room. She offered the tray to Regina who took the dainty tea cup but didn't drink.

"Look, it's just tea. I made it myself. I didn't spit in, poison it, or use old tea bags. It's okay, I promise."

"Laxative?"

Emma smiled. "No."

Regina took a tentative sip and scrunched her nose in distaste. "It's still disgusting."

"It's all the honey in it."

Regina raised an eyebrow. "Are you trying to sweeten things up?"

"I should, shouldn't I? But no. I think you need the sugar. That's why you're cold." Emma slumped her shoulders. She deserved so much more grief than just his amused distrust.

Regina sipped on her tea with a pinched nose. "Thank you for the socks." She offered again when the silence was enough to make Emma fidget.

"Welcome. Drink the disgusting tea, though. It's warm, it will help."

Regina sipped it and Emma offered her the toast.

"Emma, I' not sick nor an invalid."

"I know. Eat anyway." Emma pulled her feet up and sat cross legged on the bed. "You scared me."

"Did I?"

"The whole thing did, actually. The whole menacing hole on the ground trying to suck you in. Pretty scary. The way you collapsed. How cold you were. I think I lost a drop or two in my pants.

"Charming!" Regina picked up a piece of toast and bit into it.

"Don't."

"I beg your pardon?"

Emma fidgeted. She didn't fidget, not usually, but here she was, unable to stop herself. "Don't be glib about this, Regina. Please. Don't."

Regina didn't answer, she simply worked her way through the first piece of toast. When she was done, she looked tired even from that small effort. "You want answers."

"I'm not sure I'm entitled to them but yes, I do."

"Emma… I…." Regina's hands shook slightly and Emma steadied the hand holding the cup with her own.

"Look… we've established that I'm an idiot. But I'm not stupid."

"No, you're not." Regina took a deep breath and then a sip of her tea to give herself time."What do you want to know?"

"Graham."

"I didn't kill Graham, Emma."

Emma looked at her, intently. "Okay." And it was the truth. No doubt. "You told me that before."

"You didn't believe me before." And again there was that hurt that Regina disguised so well.

"I know. I'm sorry. I was angry. And drunk. I was angry and drunk and jealous… The autopsy said he died of natural causes."

Regina stared into her cup as if she had been looking for something in it. "He did. He had a heart condition."

"The autopsy said he had his heart. But I thought you had it… for him helping my mom…"

"I did have it... for a long time." Regina's hand tensed around the cup, her joints going white from the pressure around the china. "I gave it back to him when Henry was born." She saw Emma's questioning look and took a shaky deep breath. "He was kind to me. He was there, and he did things I never commanded him to. He brought me ice cream I didn't want to crave. He helped me assemble the nursery and then child proof. He drove me to the hospital when I went into labour and he was kind to me in a way I didn't know anyone would be. I gave him his heart back because he was kind to me when he had no reason to be." Emma swallowed thickly and looked down at Regina's hand still cupped in hers. "Giving him his heart back made him vulnerable to his disease... He told me he preferred it this way. That this way he would make it count. I don't think he did, though. He was trapped here. Because of what I did."

Everything in Emma hurt, like a knife twisting in her chest and ripping out things she needed to live. She was jealous still, of a dead man. Graham had been there, had done things for Regina that she should have done herself. "Were you together for long?" The sense of shame was overwhelming.

"Not that it's any of your business, Emma, but we were never together as you imagine… Have you ever been so lonely that the only way not to drown was to cling to any ships passing in the night? So lonely that you will do just about anything for the hollow in your chest to stop… echoing you lost? Graham and I had that in common. It didn't matter that weren't going in the same direction."

"You were not in love with him?"

Regina opened her eyes wide, so wide trying to avoid tears spilling. "He was my friend, Emma, that was all. We kept each other less lonely."

Emma wiped her palms on her legs feeling relived and guilty for that relief. She heaved a sigh that made Regina look up expectantly."This portal thing… why? Why now?"

"Do you want the truth Emma, or a pretty fiction you can live with?" Regina wiped a furtive tear when she lost the battle against it.

"The truth Regina. I know you've been hiding stuff from me since I came back. Quite possibly, to spare my feelings. I don't deserve that kind of consideration from you."

"You're right: you don't." It was an attempt at bite but Regina sighed as if accepting defeat. "Since you left."

"So what, I walked past the town line and holes started opening?"

"Something like that." Regina heaved a sigh and avoided Emma's gaze for a moment. "There was some quite violent ones especially in the beginning… most, it was a sort of progression. Brief spurts of magic first, just here and there, not constant like now. As time passed, the frequency increased, the power behind each of those events as well. As if the magic that holds Storybrooke here is waning. This portal was not a first. But this was the first time it was this violent, this… strong."

"But you knew this was going to happen…" Emma ventured.

"I did, yes. I track these things."

"I thought they were random."

"In a way they are. But they seem to consistently have their epicentre at the shelter."

"Why?"

"I haven't figured it out. Maybe it's the place from where Storybrooke expanded from or maybe because it is a naturally thinner barrier between this world and whatever others are out there but I can't be sure."

"So… knocking down the shelter…"

"I know you think otherwise, Emma, but I was not after destroying it… I needed to be able to see what I'm dealing with. I needed to be able to access the source and try to close it before it opened."

"Ruby said it sucks magic out of you…"

"Not just me. The fairies have tried as well." Her lip curled in distaste. Everyone knew that Regina had, at best, a fraught relationship with the fairies.

"And still you were going there to deal with it. Knowing what it could do to you."

Regina sighed, tired. "Who else was going to do it, Emma? Rumpelstiltskin? He wouldn't throw his cane at it let alone any of his magic. I brought us here. All of this is because I couldn't leave it well enough alone back there."

"Is it because I left?" Emma picked at the blanket slightly raised by Regina's feet.

"Emma…"

"The truth Regina. Just that. I can deal."

"You have to understand, Emma. I cast the curse, I didn't design it. I didn't make the stipulations. I was stupid, I know… careless in not reading the fine print… but I never gave it much consideration. I just wanted out. I wanted out of the Enchanted Forest. Anywhere would do. Anyway I could… So careless."

Emma put her hand over Regina's toes under the blanket and gave them a small reassuring squeeze. "It's not… I get it. You wanted to leave that place as much as I wanted to leave Storybrooke."

Regina nodded. "I couldn't breathe. It was like being buried alive… I would have done just about anything to escape… So I did. I cast the curse and I brought us all here and I trapped you." Regina looked around the room, trying and failing to find somewhere she could anchor her gaze, draw strength from. In the end, she gave up and looked Emma straight in eyes. "I trapped you here. You were right. I know what you felt, why you wanted to leave. When we… when you kissed me, that first night… for the first time, that emptiness in my heart was filled and I wanted to free you… I had hoped that you would want to stay. I was that selfish that I wanted to you to want to stay for me but… it was all you wanted to leave and wanted you to have that…"

"Is that why you gave me the Bug?"

"It's a good car, Emma…" Regina's eyes were deep pools of sadness and loss, shining with tears. "But… it would seem that…" Regina took a fortifying breath. "That it takes two to keep Storybrooke alive, to keep it solid and…"

"That's you and me?"

"That's the light and the dark, the good and the evil, the Evil Queen and the Saviour." Emma furiously wiped at a tear of her own that had sneaked past her iron control. "That night you left… I felt it, I felt that first thread unravelling, fraying. Rumpelstiltskin took great delight in telling me exactly that when I went to him for help."

"Because…." Emma prompted when Regina fell silent.

"Because he knew that he had already won. He knew that you had wanted to leave since you were first sentient of Storybrooke's particular situation and he knew that whether I allowed you to leave or whether I made you stay, I would always have lost that battle."

"And Storybrooke falling apart would have allowed him to leave?"

"Yes. In a way..." Regina shrugged because Rumple's fate really was not at the top of her list of priorities.

"But people could have died."

Regina hummed in reply. Emma gave her back the tea cup and insisted Regina took some more.

"But what about Henry? What if something had happened to you?"

"I have made all the necessary arrangements."

"Arrangements? Regina, your son would have been an orphan. Why didn't you just up sticks and leave?"

"Because I can't, Emma. That barrier is not the same for as it is for you."

"What's the difference?"

"You can leave and go out and come back and nothing changes for you. But for me, it… I can go away but everything that I am will be lost. All my memories, all would be gone. The stories the curse gave everyone would have taken over. Your mother would be Mary Margaret Blanchard, you father would have been David Nolan and they would had never heard of you. They wouldn't remember having met, having a child. You would have been an orphan. I would be a mayor of a non-existent town, with no idea I have a son. My son would have been an orphan either way. I just can't." A lone tear escaped Regina's eyes and she seemed wholly unaware of it. To Emma it was like a knife twisting in her heart.

"But Ruby left and nothing happened to her…"

"Emma…"

"No, listen, okay, she left and she will do it again and return again. She just asked me for my apartment so that she and girlfriend…"

"Ruby didn't ask that for herself. She asked for her girlfriend... She can't go back… Emma. It was a one-time thing…"

"I don't get it…"

"Ruby took a risk, Emma. I used what was left in my vault to brew a potion that allowed to her pass safely. I wasn't certain it would work and I have nothing else to work with… and it was risky… If it hadn't worked…" Regina rubbed at her temple.

"Why did you do it, then? Did you know she was going to get me?"

Regina sighed and it was the saddest sound she could have uttered. "I had imagined… Hoped…"

"But you told me to go… When I first came back, you tried to make me go back…"

Regina held onto the cup as a downing person to floating debris. "I did. I wanted you to not come back. To be safe. Storybrooke is not safe. But I… missed you…" and it was as if those two words had been wrenched out of her. "I missed you and couldn't… And Henry wanted to meet you…"

Emma gave up on the stubborn tears that kept on escaping. She took Regina's hand gingerly in hers. There was so much, so damned much they need to talk about. "Tell me about Henry. I want to know about him." She saw Regina flinching and even more telling, she saw her reaching to the second piece of toast she was not going to eat. "I want to know about Henry, about those arrangements you made if something had happened to you."

"There is nothing to know about Henry. He's my son. He's the sun and the moon and the stars to me. He's sweet and clever. Gets in trouble a lot." That pulled a smiled into her face, a smile Emma hadn't seen since that first and last time they had made love.

"Just like me." Emma said and her voice broke into shards that cut her throat on the way out. Because she hadn't seen it, hadn't felt it, hadn't believed it.

"Emma." Regina pleaded quietly.

"He's my son, Regina, isn't he? He was telling the truth and I have a son." Emma spoke, unable to give Regina the reprieve she had nearly begged for with that whispering of Emma's name.

Regina worked something in her throat and the sound she uttered was limp and frayed around the edges.

Emma took the toast from Regina's hand and dropped it back on the plate with the dull sound of toast gone stone cold. Diligently, she took the tray and set it on the floor next to the bed, moving closer to Regina. She took that remarkable face in her hands and caressed the cheekbones with her thumbs gently, so gently, an apology in each fingertip.

"And you never told me." Emma fought valiantly against the tears but there was no way she was winning this battle.

"You never came back." Emma's stomach sunk, heavy, painful. She rubbed at the heartburn rising from her stomach. "He wanted to get to know you, Emma. Now he does. It doesn't mean that you have to be a part of his life. You don't have to worry." Regina lowered her eyes into her lap. "He doesn't need anything from you, Emma. I know you like your life uncomplicated. He won't go after you or make it hard for you."

"Just like you." Regina flinched and her breath hitched. "I know you couldn't get out of Storybrooke but… you could have called. You could have written, emailed, sent me a damned pigeon… I would have come back… Dammit, Regina, did you ever want me back?"

She could see Regina trying to lie. In the end, she saw her giving up. "I did. Every day for the past eleven years."

The answer was not what Emma had been expecting. Not that she had a plan for how miserable conversation was supposed to happen. It just took her by surprise and all she could do was to pull Regina to her, to lace her arms around her middle and release all the tension in her. Regina's declaration had been more than enough to break her control, to let go of her resentment, to open the flood gates to all that she always felt for Regina since that night when she had first kissed Regina in middle of a dewy orchard. "I'm sorry."

Regina let herself be hugged but she never let herself hug back. She closed her eyes and leant back against the pillows that smelled of Emma. "I'm not. I did what I had to do Emma. I knew how you felt, to not have any choice in what happens to you, in whether you stay or go. I couldn't do that, not to you, not when… Things had to happen this way."

"No, they didn't. Regina, you could have told me, you could have told me to come back. I would have."

Regina's smile was the saddest thing Emma had ever seen. "You would have hated me. You would have hated your life here." Her hand trembled as she took a lock of Emma's dishevelled hair and carded her fingers through it, so gently she could have been spinning silk. "I have held on so tightly to everything in my life only to see it all go away anyway. I wouldn't have been able to see it happening, to lose you while we were so tangled up with a baby and a town to take care of. I had to let you go Emma. You had to be free to go and see the world. It would not have been fair to take that away from you. You and Henry are the two people I have loved well in my life. I did, I promise I did."

Emma tilted her head until it was cradled in Regina's palm. She rubbed her cheek in that warmth, eyes closed in shame. "How am I going to fix this, Regina? How am I going to make it up to you and Henry? He seems pretty determined to put a few miles between me and him. And… Does he hate me? Not that I blame him... "

"It would be easier for him if he did, Emma." Regina sighed, her hand still cupping Emma's cheek.

"And you? Do you hate me?"

"It would be easier for me too..." She lowered her hand then. The air between them was thick and cloying.

Emma waited a beat. "I want to do something, okay? Don't fireball me or anything, please."

"What?"

"I want to hug you. Just a minute or so… Please, just for a minute. I won't ask for more, I promise."

Regina was struck silent. Emma took the moment and slid closer to her on the bed and slid her arms around that body she knew so well, gently, careful not to overstay her welcome – if that's what Regina's silence and rigid posture meant. But then Regina breathed deeply and her hands rose from her lap to Emma's back and Emma had an overwhelming need to cry.

"I'm so sorry."

Regina touched her back softly, gently, her hair offered comfort that Emma was sure she didn't deserve. "I know. I am too."

"All this time… All this time away, I never managed to forget about you. Like in the simplest things… like changing a tire on the Bug or getting coffee or lighting a candle. All those things. All this time, all the world that I saw, Regina, I wanted for you to see it with me. I wanted you with me in the pictures, I wanted your signature on the postcards we would send home... I wanted you clothes in my bags... I wanted you everywhere I went. I hated you for not going after me... I missed you like a foot or a hand... In the beginning I didn't know how to... how to be without you there..."

Regina's breath was ragged and unsteady. Emma felt her grab onto the belt of her jeans and the tears fall against her top and soak through to her skin. "I hated you so much. I hated you as much as I loved you. Every day. All the time." Regina sighed and Emma felt the rush of that warm air leave goosebumps on her skin "How? How did we make a baby, Regina?"

It took a while until Regina was able to answer. No matter, Emma thought, they had time, she was not going anywhere. "The same way we broke the curse." Regina answered, voice gruff and sore.

"We?" Emma asked when Regina pulled back, retreating into the pillow at her back as if she could make herself so small she would disappear. Emma mourned the arms around her, the hand on her belt, the breath on her neck.

"We. You didn't think that either would happen if only one of us was…"

"Regina, I'm Snow White's daughter, I was a brat to you. I was clumsy and sulky and resentful… I'm an absolute idiot… What was there about me to love?"

Regina looked up from her clasped hands, earnest, agitated . "All of those things, Emma. The defiance. The spark. Until that night you threw an apple at me, I had spent too many years feeling only hate and then feeling nothing at all. The nothing at all was slowly killing me, the emptiness, the loneliness... That night… I knew I would finally get to feel something, even if it was just pain. I wanted to feel something for a change."

"And I did that. I hurt you." Emma took Regina's hands in hers and was glad when Regina did not break the contact.

"You did. But for the first time, I was not alone. You weren't afraid of me. You didn't try to get me under your boot. You always treated me like an equal and the way you looked at me…"

"Like you were the sun and that moon and the stars to me…"

"Yes." Regina smiled, small and watery though it was."I never understood why."

"Because you treated me like an equal. You never looked at me expecting many great and wonderful things. I was Emma to you, not the Saviour. You were my open sky, Regina, even when I felt trapped here."

Regina stared at her, straight in the eye, an unwavering gaze. "And so we made a baby, Emma."

Silence stretched, easy like it used to be between them as if silence had been their true language and words only a poor translation.

"I missed everything. Can you ever forgive me?"

Regina was past any moment she could have controlled her tears, any reaction and so they simply slid down her cheeks. "You left me, Emma."

"There was a world to see. I wanted to see it." Emma rasped, she herself caught in that overwhelming moment.

"Did you?" Regina asked. "Did you see enough of the world?"

"Yeah." Emma wiped her face furiously. "It's shit. Turns out I like it here."

A smile bloomed in Regina's face, a smile so pretty and clean and hopeful that Emma would do anything to see it again. "Even with your parents and all the other lunatics?"

"Yeah." It came out as a hiccup."Will you let me stay?"

"Emma… can you really stay?" Regina's voice trailed off.

Emma saw her future in a heartbeat: she wouldn't be able to leave Storybrooke, not without leaving a part of herself behind and risking those she was leaving. She would have a son whom she wanted to be responsible for, she would have Regina if Regina would have her… she would have her parents, the townsfolk, the gossip and the same smallness she had always wanted to leave behind. She would have a life here, steady like the tides and the seasons. All she had never wanted.

And all she wanted so desperately now.

Regina took the Sheriff's star that Emma had left on the table next to her and held it in her palm. "You're already the Sheriff and I? I never had any power to make you stay."

"Yeah you did and we both know that. You just didn't use it. I know it's selfish, but thank you for not making me stay. You're right: I would have held it against you. But look at me, Regina, look at me now: Please let me stay. I know you told me to get out of Storybrooke, but―"

"To protect you, Emma, you and Henry. To make sure you didn't get hurt, to make sure Henry had a place to go when things got out of hand here."

"So those were your arrangements?" Regina nodded. "You were going to send the kid to me, in Boston?"

Regina nodded again. "Henry has known about you all his life, Emma. You may not have known this, but you have always been his mother. And he had strict instructions to get out of town, to go to you, introduce himself."

"And if I hadn't… Regina, I could have… not believed him…"

Regina cupped her cheek, the golden star between her palm and Emma's skin, marking them both. "You underestimate your son, Emma. He's so much like you... hardly ever takes a no for an answer... he's a very persuasive little boy."

"My son… I have a son…" Emma broke, eyes wild and urgent. Desperate she held onto Regina's fingers still around her face. Regina hummed again, her hand never leaving Emma's cheek. "Let me stay. Let me make it up to you and Henry. Let me…" Emma's voice shattered around the edges.

"Emma… Henry is a novelty right now, Please… I have to ask this because he's my baby: Don't treat him like a novelty. He is not a toy. You can't play with him and then get tired and walk away. I won't let you do that to him, do you understand me, Emma? I have loved you for a very long time and god help me but I love you still but I won't let you hurt Henry. I won't let you hurt our son."

Emma nodded solemnly. When Regina seemed to have hit a wall, Emma raised the palm of her hand to her lips, softly, giving Regina ample time to react.

The comforter slid into Regina's lap but she made no move to cover herself again. "What about you?" Emma looked up from soft that palm where the sheriff's star was still shining to Regina's face. Love shone out of that face, unadulterated love, unmoved by time and life and past and abandonment.

Regina didn't look away and neither did Emma. There was still love there and that was all that mattered. Emma would fight to deserve it again because the one thing she had learnt since she had came back home, the one thing that had been made very clear by the hole that had open on the ground sucking Regina away from her was that you could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye. And when it happened, you weren't thinking about all the shit that drove you crazy, all the reasons that made you stay away. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together, that brought you back home. Her heart broke, shattered, and she couldn't breathe. Here Regina was, looking at her like she used to, that mix of fear and curiosity and love and a million other things that made her the remarkable woman she was and Emma wasn't running scared, she wasn't pulling away. She just wanted to fall into her gravitational pull.

"What about me? Will you leave me, Emma?" She held Emma's face in her hands and she wiped the tears that were falling one by one down Emma's cheeks. "Will you hurt me again?" She brought Emma's face to hers, kissed her lightly at first, little touches of the mouth, gentle breath caressing Emma's skin but, with each kiss, with each touch, more and more want and greed, and want and pure desire.

Emma couldn't breathe. Her chest was tight and it hurt and she thought that she couldn't care less if this was the way she was going to die. "I won't. I won't go anywhere. I promise. Never again. Never…" She trailed off as Regina soaked up her promise, her words, her breath.

Regina opened her hand, the sheriff's star shining duly. "I trust you."

"I love you, Regina. All these years, all this distance and I never managed to stop."

Regina moved onto her knees and hid her face on Emma's shoulders, holding onto to her. "Did you try?" She spoke as she hid her face and her tears on unruly blond hair.

"I did. I tried so hard. But you're… in my blood, in my bones… I couldn't. I walked away from you but I never stopped loving you. It just got worse. It grew and it took every bit of strength in me not to come back. Now that I came back, I can't leave. I can't. Please let me stay." Emma begged. If Regina asked her to leave, she was not quite sure how she'd survive.

Regina pinned the star that Emma didn't take to Emma's belt. "Stay, Emma don't ever go away…"

Emma pulled Regina into her and closed her arms around her, tight, so tight that Regina couldn't breathe. Regina couldn't find any fault with it. "I won't. I promise. I won't."