Yo! So this chapter will be a little shorter, but putting it all in, in the last chapter just didn't feel right, so here we are. Hope you're all enjoying the new updates, don't forget to review, you know how much I love those! ^-^

Breaking Glass: Part II

The Snow Queen stood calmly, completely in her literal element, in the ice cave that she'd inhabited these last few days. Being alone was never something she'd enjoyed, but she had to admit that it suited her.

Company had never boded well for her...

But that didn't mean she didn't still crave it at times.

As she gazed into the former mayor's little magic mirror, she contemplated everything and nothing; sometimes it was soothing to just allow your mind to be completely and utterly blank, void of any thoughts or feelings or emotions.

"You're free." She heard her voice echo in the chamber as she addressed the only other being in the room. "As promised."

"Thank you." The man sounded sincere, and while most would have turned to try to run after having their dearest wish granted, out of fear that whomever had granted the wish would change their mind, loyal Sidney remained, and instead asked what she would have him do first. It would seem his 'Queen' was no longer the Evil Queen, but now the Snow Queen, instead.

Without turning around, the blonde woman simply said,

"I wish nothing from you."

Sidney, as a former genie, before he had gotten mixed up with Regina, was baffled at the idea that there was someone that wished...nothing? From him. It was simply unheard of.

"I don't understand." He said. "The deal was that-"

"It wasn't you," The Snow Queen gently cut in. "That I wanted, Sidney."

She turned and gracefully lowered herself to sit on one of the many furnishings that she had conjured for herself; what were a few chairs to someone with as much power as she?

"It was the mirror itself." She explained. "You, more than anyone, should understand a mirror's importance."

Gazing down once more, she proceeded to trace the outer rim of the mirror with only the barest tips of her fingers, never touching the glass, therefore smudging it.

"Mirrors reflect our..." She went on, her voice softening evermore as she spoke. "Mood, our desire, our essence."

The Snow Queen glanced up, and though Sidney wore a slightly perplexed expression, she paid it no mind, and instead adopted a look that made it seem as if she were gazing straight through the man standing before her, and into the wall behind him.

"They are-" The blonde paused, searching for the right analogy. "A temporary receptacle for some...tiny fraction of our soul."

After being trapped in a mirror for so long, Sidney, of course, knew and understood exactly what the beautiful woman before him meant. He'd just never heard a human put the analogy to quite like that before.

"Well-" He stepped forward. "You have other mirrors."

"I have many." Her voice, for some inexplicable reason, dropped. It dripped with something akin to disgust, but on what grounds, Sidney couldn't say. "Hundreds. But none as important as this one."

Her words were emphatic, almost obsessive as she tapped the mirror gently to mark her words as she spoke.

"For what I want to do?" The Snow Queen's expression had turned cold again, her voice no longer high and light, but low and passionate. "Your former home should do quite nicely. The person who trapped you in here imbued it with much dark magic."

She trailed off, and if Sidney didn't know any better, he'd think she was glaring at him, but something told him that his new Queen merely got stuck in her own head, and sometimes lost track of the world around her, in light of her own dark memories and emotions.

"My Queen," Sidney spoke with trepidation, as he asked a question he wasn't even sure he wanted to know the answer to. "What are you planning?"

"What I'm planning?" There was that tone again. Cold, determined, ruthless, hard, but also haunted. "Is to get what has been denied to me for. Too. Long." She inhaled, but didn't seem to regain any of her former calm. "What I deserve."

Sidney couldn't contain his curiosity; this woman fascinated him. "And what's that?"

Just like that, the passionate, low tone had disappeared, instead replaced with a voice that, with its higher pitch and melodic sound, belied the storm that he was starting to see, always roiled just beneath the surface.

"That's between me and..." She laughed, giving a coy smile. "Well, my reflection."

With a wave of her hand, she opened the door behind Sidney and bid him to enjoy his freedom as he bowed to her one last time before he left the cave.

Sidney didn't understand the Snow Queen's motives, far from it. But there was one thing he did understand. For too long he'd served under a Queen he secretly despised, but had come to know her as she truly was. Such was his curse. His former Queen had never made any secret of her anger, hurt or frustration. She simply allowed her emotions to explode at a moment's notice, a quick burst of passion that destroyed everything in its wake.

But the Snow Queen was much different. No, the difference, Sidney saw now, was the fact that, for whatever reason, this woman had learned to bottle her emotions extremely tightly, to the point of being repressed, if he had to take a guess. Something had happened to that woman to make her force her to have such a iron grip on her sentiments.

It was that sort of woman, Sidney supposed, that held that much more power because she was able to control her actions and reactions to a very fine degree. After all, a passion-fueled response was nothing compared to a cold, carefully calculated one.

It was that sort of woman, he thought, that was not to be trifled with.

Ingrid didn't wait long after the man had left before she gracefully stepped towards a part of her cave that she had segregated for this exact moment, the small mirror cradled gently to her chest. A pedestal, of sorts, that was destined to hold the most important part of her plan.

Her plan, that would finally gift her with what she had yearned for, longed for, for too many years to count.

With a sweep of her hand, in mere seconds, a large mirror materialized before her, one that was as elegant in appearance as any of the others she owned, she supposed, but none with a purpose so significant, so vital, to her. It also helped that the current appearance of the mirror was shattered, just like her former life had been.

The mirror she had conjured was something of a jigsaw puzzle that she had been working on for many years now. And, at long last, she now held the final piece that would render the mirror flawless.

"So close..." She murmured into the mirror. "Soon I will have what I want."

Using her magic, she purposely broke the small handheld mirror in her palm, levitating one of the bigger, sculpted pieces into the single hole that was left on the landscape of the larger mirror. As the piece joined its brothers, the magic that had been accumulated into the rest of the mirror as a whole finally set in motion the reaction that left the substantially larger mirror flawless.

The former Crown Princess of Arendelle gazed at herself in the newly-finished mirror as she breathed,

"A family that loves me."

Emma sat in her desk chair at the station, thinking about everything that had happened. She and Elsa had found their way back to Storybrooke after Regina had, predictably, left them to fend for themselves after the Snow Queen had vanished.

Now she had nothing to do but sit here and ponder why (why?) she was unable to remember anything about the Snow Queen...how exactly did they know each other?

She'd been an orphan (well, she had thought she was) and had been bounced from foster home to foster home ever since she was a kid. Passing faces were nothing new to her, but she always remembered people who'd made an impact on her, good or bad.

Something told her she wouldn't have forgotten 'Sarah Fisher'...or whoever this Snow Queen really was.

On impulse, she reached below her desk and retrieved a medium-sized, unmarked white box and just stared at it. She wanted to open it, but the contents always made her depressed.

A knock came at the door. "Hello, love."

Now there was a face that she'd usually be happy to see. Right now, though, she just couldn't seem to muster more than a slight smile.

Hook seemed to get the idea, and offered her a drink from the canteen that he always carried around.

Old habits died hard, she supposed.

"You look like you could use it."

"That's putting it lightly." Emma griped as she took a swig from the bottle.

"What's that?" Hook asked, nodding towards the box.

Emma sighed. "What's left of my childhood."

"...May I have the honor?" Hook sounded as if he wasn't sure he should ask, but he did anyway.

Emma stared at him for a long moment, but then gave in. She'd heard the request for what it'd really been: a request to know more about her, to let him in.

She placed the box on her desk and slowly, reverently, rifled through her old stuff. All of the items contained memories or sentiments that her dear to her: her baby blanket (her only link to her parents), a photo of her and Neil, Henry's father, her glasses, a testament to old inhibitions.

Finally, she stumbled on a video camera that she hadn't touched since she'd last used it, which she had thought had been when she had been when she was a teenager between foster homes.

Turns out, she was only half-right. As Emma and Hook stood together to watch the recording, Emma watched as a scene played out in front of her that she'd never seen before.

Or, at least, she thought she hadn't.

The first thing that appeared in the clip was an adolescent boy, who was teasing a younger Emma by saying, "Look what the new girl brought with her!" It looked like the boy had swiped Emma's camera from her, and was showcasing it around the room, which was occupied by other children as well.

"I don't remember any of this."

Then suddenly,

"Give it back, Kevin." A familiar voice called from the screen.

Emma and Hook froze.

Holy...

"Bloody hell..." Hook swore, as they watched the Snow Queen, under the guise of Sarah Fisher, calmly say to 'Kevin', "The camera is Emma's, not yours." Sarah then turned to the younger Emma on-screen and said, with a reassuring squeeze to the girl's arm, "We respect property in this house, Emma."

The woman then strode towards the camera and Emma paused the video. There, smiling out of the television, in broad daylight, was the Snow Queen, in the flesh.

Jesus Christ. Emma thought. That's how she knows me.

Now they knew how the Snow Queen knew Emma, and this would certainly explain why the woman had remembered Emma. Now only one question remained:

Why the hell couldn't Emma remember her?