Not gonna lie...This chapter made me tear up a little. Reviews, favs, and follows are always appreciated (We're almost to 300 followers and 150 reviews!).

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Chapter 25:

Kylo Ren's theme flooded the guest bedroom as Star Wars VII advanced to the climax. Emma popped a quarter of a Crab Rangoon in her mouth, letting the crispy, fried corner melt and the cream cheese and crab coat her tongue.

Henry nestled under one of her arms, tucking into the remains of his Orange Chicken like Regina starved him. The brunette in question lifted the last of the lo mein noodles from a paper container, her slurping more delicate than should have been humanly possible.

As she chewed, Emma eyed the older woman, immune to the brilliant flashes of light sabers on the screen. Despite their night together that had chilled her so deeply, heat pooled between her legs. She must have made a noise because Henry's eyes jumped to hers.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Um." She shuffled her feet under the sheet. "Just a little sore. Sorry."

He patted her like she was a lost dog. "The Chinese food will make it better."

"It always does." She winked at him.

He refocused on the movie, and she refocused on Regina.

The structure of her cheekbones. The muscles in her upper arms. All that thick hair, perfect for me to pull.

The heat came back, stronger now.

The older woman glanced at her over the top of her son's head. She must have caught the explosive desire etched into Emma's gaze because her mouth parted in a subtle O. Emma clenched her legs together beneath the blanket in a vain attempt to stop the throbbing there.

"Henry," Regina said gently, "why don't you finish the movie in your room? It's time for me to give Emma her medicine."

"But—"

His mother leveled his words with a single look.

"Fine," he huffed.

He scrambled off the bed, knees and elbows managing to find Emma's bruises as he crawled over her. She grunted, in pain for real this time.

"Sorry." He grabbed her in a brief hug before he ejected the movie and disappeared from the room.

Without meeting Emma's eyes, Regina rose and collected a small cup of pills from the dresser.

"I don't want them," she said when the brunette walked over.

"But you're hurting."

"They make me feel weird."

And they did. They made her weak, even more susceptible to the other woman than usual. She couldn't be weak now. Not tonight.

"I'll leave them here in case you change your mind."

Regina placed them on the bedside table. Before she could think better of it, Emma's hand shot out, and she grasped the brunette's wrist.

Want you.

"Emma…"

She let go like the soft skin burned her. "Sorry."

Maybe it isn't the drugs that make me weak. Maybe I am just a weak person.

"D-did any of my stuff get saved from the Bug? My phone?"

"Yes, actually," Regina told her. "I'm afraid it's dead though. And I have an iPhone, so I don't have a charger that would work."

"There's one in my purse. Can you get it for me?"

With a nod, the brunette exited the room. Emma let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and flopped back onto the pillows.

Fuck.

She wanted Regina. She didn't know how to stop wanting her. But she had to protect herself.

You can't do this to your heart again. You won't survive it.

She steeled herself for the other woman's return. She waited. And waited. But Regina didn't come back.

Finally, she heard the doorknob turn. A head of short, spiky brown hair made its way back into the bedroom.

"Did you finish the movie?" she asked when Henry reached her bed.

"Yeah." He pointed to the pills. "You didn't take them?"

She shook her head. "They don't make me feel good."

"I hate it when I have to take cough medicine. It tastes gross. Sometimes I pour it down the sink before Mom can make me drink it."

She smiled. "Speaking of your mother, do you know where she is? She was supposed to bring me my phone."

He cocked his head. "Really? She's in her room. Listening to music."

Emma's heart seized in her chest. She sat up so fast the wound next to her ear throbbed.

The CD.

She'd forgotten about it. But of course Regina had found it. Of course she was listening to it.

I titled the damned thing 'For Regina' after all.

She could imagine the crisp plucks of the guitar and her stupid voice cracking as the song leaked from a pair of speakers. Her face flushed.

She kicked off the blankets and stumbled to her feet.

"What are you doing? You're supposed to stay in bed," Henry insisted.

"Miraculous recovery, kid," she told him.

Holding the back of her hospital gown closed, she lurched past the piano, through the hallway, and up the stairs to Regina's bedroom.

She threw open the door, imagining how insane she must look, like an escapee from a detox facility. She caught sight of Regina seated on the couch by the fireplace.

The music playing carried Emma to where the brunette sat, facing away, oblivious to her entry.

"From my bones, from my bones, from my bones." The recording of her voice sounded raw and unfinished to her burning ears.

She looked over the other woman's shoulder and saw the white CD sleeve captured in her grasp.

Where's the song coming from?

She scanned the room and found the CD changer on top of the dresser. She crossed to where the blue lights blinked. There, she pushed the OFF button so hard, her the joint in her finger bent back.

The sudden silence assaulted her ears. She flushed even deeper.

Slowly, Regina shifted to face her. The principal's impassive gaze froze her in place.

"What are you doing?"

"I turned off—"

"Not that," Regina cut her off. She held up the sleeve for the CD, and Emma could see where the other woman had clenched it so hard the paper wrinkled. "What are you doing with my poem?"

"Your…"

Everything clicked into place—the day she'd found the writing, her doubt that one of her students could have turned in the piece, her connection to both this woman and the writing, and—

"Does Henry use the printer at home to print off his chapters?" Emma asked. "The poem was on the bottom of the last chapter he turned in to lit mag. I had no idea whose it was."

"It's mine." Regina blushed, her cheeks filling with the color of dark wine.

Not even in the throes of their lovemaking had Emma ever seen a flush like this claim the other woman's face. She'd never imagined she would see such vulnerability carving its trails through her lover—yet, here it was, taking over every inch of professionalism and bravado and replacing it with a lost, young woman who mirrored Emma's recent years so closely it hurt to look at her.

"Well, now you know everything," Regina murmured.

"What do you mean?"

"Henry, lit mag, tennis, me."

"Regina." She walked to the couch and plopped down beside her. "I'm always fucking clueless when it comes to you. Just start from the beginning, and tell me everything."

"Oh. Okay." Her lover surged forward and swept the messy blonde hair back from where it caught in the bandage on Emma's face. "My love."

The tenderness in the touch softened her more than it should have. She took Regina's wrist and pulled the brunette close, then rotated her, so that the smaller woman lay nestled in her lap.

"If I'd been born in some other family to some other parents, I wouldn't be a principal, and I wouldn't be in Storybrooke. I would be in Boston or New York City," her lover said. "I dream about that sometimes—the life I could have had and the person I could have been."

"You would have been a poet?"

"Yes. A poet, a writer, a barista, a professor, a person with an unafraid heart, an open heart that I could share.

"But I was born to Cora and Henry Mills with a different life already mapped out. I was to be a good, quiet daughter who married wealthy to help fill our family's failing bank accounts.

"Storybrooke isn't what is used to be. Industry moved West and overseas. Buildings here sit empty. Residents no longer have the means to pay for tuition at a prestigious private school.

"And Zeleno, my brother, they had determined he would finish a degree in business, have a son, and carry forth the legacy of the Mills name. Then he died."

When her lover stiffened, Emma placed a kiss on the crook of her neck, causing her to relax once more.

"With his death, my small dreams of escaping my fate died, too. I now carried my family's legacy on my shoulders alone. When I was young, I knew two things early on that would make my entire life a tragedy—I liked looking at pretty girls more than dirty boys, and I loved writing more than my own mother.

"I've already told you how unsafe I found out telling my parents of my sexuality was. Writing was much the same. When I got to college, I told my father I wanted to major in Creative Writing, but he insisted on Education. He told me I would never make it as a poet, told me that all writers were degenerates, even Shakespeare, just look at his themes. Education, however, was a noble field, and I had a duty as his daughter to work at Storybrooke Preparatory Academy, just as a I had a duty to marry someone with an impressive pedigree.

"He sent some of my work to his friends who worked in publishing and called it helping. My poems came back drenched in red ink. His friends marked me a failure, said I would never find a foothold in the writing world. So I went into education and became a teacher at Storybrooke as I was told to do. At that point, I got pregnant in part to avoid marriage.

"Thank God for my Henry. All my tomorrows looked so dim at that point, I could barely see them. He lit my world up again. It was around the time I had my son, I realized what my father had done. He had betrayed me, crushed my muse, so that I would be the puppet that my parents needed.

"When my Henry began telling stories, then writing them, pouring all of his energy into them, I saw my life repeating all over again."

She turned tear-filled eyes on Emma. Her hands were clammy as they closed on the younger woman's shoulders.

"He has a duty to our family. He is our legacy. So I have to stop him from writing now. I have to redirect his dream while he's young. I can't allow my parents to break him the way they broke me."

"But Regina." Gently, Emma gave her lover a shake. "Don't you see?"

"See what?"

"You're saving your parents the trouble," she said, "You're telling him not to write, taking away lit mag, and forcing him to focus on a sport that he hates…By trying to protect him, you're doing what they did to you."

The other woman covered her mouth with a shaking hand. "No."

"Yeah."

Emma could see the pain that assaulted her lover, making her rock back and forth on the couch.

"I'm trying to save him. I want to keep him safe."

"I know you do. But even after all your father did, even after how he hurt you…" She plucked the crushed CD sleeve from Regina's fingers. "…the ghost of your muse is still slipping through. Henry will continue to do what he's called to do, and you—you can either choose to lift him up or grind his dreams down until one day, he wakes up an unhappy adult, chasing the dust."

Like you. Like me.

She placed the sleeve back on the other woman's lap. "Which would you prefer?"