"What the hell are we going to do now?" Emma asked immediately looking around at the area that surrounding them. All she could see was forest.
"You need to lower your voice." Regina answered.
Emma's head snapped to the side surprised at the tone Regina had taken to speak to her.
"We don't know what is here now." Regina answered in a much softer tone. "We don't want to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves." Emma checked her hip then. Her gun was firmly in place, and she was thankful for that.
"I think I know where we are." Regina answered. "Follow me." She said walking forward. Emma was amazed at how graceful the woman moved through the forest wearing a skirt and heels while Emma stumbled in boots. Emma gasped when they moved over the top of a hill. She couldn't believe the site in front of her.
The hill dropped to about a mile of forest, and she scanned over it until her eyes met the black castle that towered over the land. Emma had never seen anything like it except in movies. Huge towers rose to meet the sky with spikes displayed at the top. Darkness covered the castle, and Emma was surprised that it didn't have its own thunder cloud over it.
"What is that?" Emma asked.
"My castle." Regina responded with a smirk that Emma would soon recognize as her Evil Queen smirk.
After another half an hour of trekking through the forest, they entered the castle. It was in disarray from the years without anyone there to tend to it. The first main room that they entered didn't have any furniture in it. The ceiling was at least twenty feet above them. There was a huge opening in the middle of the room that held a circle of dirt. Regina was striding around the room with a fingertip running over the empty walls.
"What was here?" Emma asked pointing to the dirt.
Regina looked at Emma then like she had forgotten the blonde was even there. "My apple tree." Regina answered. Emma wasn't surprised by this at all.
Regina moved to a hallway then before opening a door that led into another chamber. This room wasn't empty. A huge four poster bed dominated the room with what appeared to be silk crimson colored sheets on it. Dust coated the entire room as the light from outside made it look more like a scene from a horror film than anything Emma had ever seen in a Disney movie. A small chest was placed against the wall.
Regina was standing in front of Emma all of a sudden pulling the blonde's head towards her for a searing kiss. Emma was lost in it immediately. When she felt hands under her shirt pressing to the pale skin of her bare back, she pushed back removing herself from Regina's grip. That same Evil Queen smirk was plastered on her face.
"I hardly think this is the right time for sex." Emma said, but her heart wasn't in it. Her heart was racing from the contact, and her brain was still recovering from her Regina filled haze.
"Oh dear." Regina said her voice an octave lower than it had been before. "There is always time for that." Emma saw the transformation before her eyes. Standing before her wasn't Regina. It was the Evil Queen seductive and confident in this land.
"We have to figure this out." Emma said quickly. "Henry is going to go crazy without us." Regina snapped to attention then remembering the land the two women had left behind. She straightened then.
"I need to change." Regina said looking down at her outfit. Emma watched as she moved then towards the chest that she had noticed earlier. Tan pants and a white cotton shirt were removed from the chest as Regina literally snapped her fingers to change. She turned around then, and Emma smiled at how much younger she looked wearing riding pants with a tucked in button up. She looked so casual in that moment that Emma wasn't sure what to think.
"You ride?" Emma asked.
"My father taught me." Regina answered simply.
"Was he in Storybrooke?" Emma asked.
"No, he wasn't." The look on Regina's face told Emma immediately that there was more to the story than that. Regina sank down to the bed then letting a tear fall from her face immediately. "I haven't let myself think about him in quite some time."
Emma stood beside Regina before gingerly sitting down beside her. She put her arm around the brunette who sank into her immediately. Emma imagined how it looked from an outside perspective. She imagined that the furious residents of Storybrooke had never seen the vulnerability that the mayor was showing in that moment.
"You can tell me if you want." Emma said after Regina's breathing started to even out.
"There is so much you don't know." Regina answered looking into Emma's deep green eyes.
"You can tell me you know." Emma said again.
"Emma, you are the first person I have let in in a really, really long time. When you weren't there that morning I woke up in Florida, I honestly was devastated, but at the same time I thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. You broke down my walls almost immediately, and that was terrifying. If I never saw you again, it would have been too soon." Regina had tears in her eyes again. "I'm the Evil Queen Emma. Everything you think you know about me from your worlds stories doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the horrible things that I have done." Regina's tears flowed freely down her face then.
"That was a long time ago though." Emma answered. "Everyone deserves a second chance."
"Oh I have had many." Regina answered with a bite to her words. "It's funny. If I tell you my past, you will understand me, but you will hate me. If I don't, you will never understand me which means you will never truly be able to hate or love me."
Emma didn't know what to say then. "This is all confusing for me too." Emma finally answered.
They sat in silence for a long time brown eyes locked on green as the two women just looked at each other. Emma's head was spinning. She had learned so much about her own life. The woman that was standing in front of her was responsible initially for all the hardships in her life, but all she wanted to do was hold her. Emma wanted to tell Regina that everything was going to be alright. She wanted to tell her that they would get through it, but she didn't know if that was true or not.
"I killed him." Regina finally said breaking eye contact with the blonde who was now staring wide eyed at the brunette next to her.
"Who?" Emma finally asked.
"My father." Regina answered. Emma didn't respond immediately at all. She was floored as to why Regina would fill her father, but she understood it too. She would never forget her foster father when she was twelve. He had been a drunk, and he had taken turns beating Emma's foster mother and their only biological son. He never hit Emma, but he had shoved her a few times. Emma liked her foster mother, and she remembered distinctly the night that she thought about entering his room and killing him in his sleep by suffocating him with a pillow.
"Why?" Emma asked.
"I needed the heart of the only person that I still cared about to enact the curse. He was the only one besides…well, he was the only one still alive that cared for me at all." Regina answered.
Emma gasped. Regina had killed her own father in cold blonde to enact the curse. That was something that Emma couldn't really comprehend. She moved from the bed then standing and pacing in front of Regina. There had to be more to the story. Emma refused to believe that this was all there was. She saw the love in Regina's eyes for her father. It didn't make sense to Emma at all.
"I don't understand." Emma said.
"I was too far gone at that point. I was obsessed with enacting the curse and with punishing Snow White. I literally would have done anything at that point to leave this life behind." Emma could see the pleading in Regina's eyes, but the mention of Emma's mother left her feeling colder and colder towards the woman sitting in front of her.
Emma didn't say anything. She moved towards the door of the large room intent on going outside to clear her head.
"I killed Graham too." Regina said from the bed. Emma spun on her heels then. She had been there for his accident. There was a deer. It was a car wreck. How could Regina have been responsible for that?
"The huntsman." Regina finally said answering Emma's unspoken question. "I sent him to kill your mother in this land, and he failed. I took his heart and made him my slave."
"Wait, you took his heart?" Emma asked.
"Yes. Rumple taught me how to do that. You can control someone when you have their heart. You can also kill them by squeezing it." Regina answered with the same cold tone she had earlier.
"You had his heart in Storybrooke?" Emma asked.
"Yes. I used him for sex until the week before I met you. I stopped after that." Regina answered simply. Emma was shocked at the straightforward mention of this from Regina.
"Isn't that rape?" Emma finally asked. The realization caused the breath to leave her body.
"When we were in this land? Absolutely. I controlled him. Like I told you, I had no regard for anyone else. I got what I wanted, and I punished those who didn't do what I wanted. It was how I thought I controlled my own happiness, but I really was just making everyone else miserable." Regina answered.
"And in Storybrooke?" Emma asked.
"That is debatable I guess. Sheriff Graham without question consented to sleeping with me, but he was also cursed. I also still had his heart. We could argue to nuances of it all day, but it doesn't change what I have done." Regina said.
Emma's back was resting against the closed door. She had no idea what to think. Regina had just admitted to murder and rape. Emma wanted to run from the woman sitting in front of her, but she again knew there was more to the story. She knew she needed to hear it. In that moment she also knew that all she wanted to do was hold the woman sitting on the bed. Regina wasn't the Evil Queen. Emma knew that. Her thoughts crashed back to what Regina had said earlier.
"How did you kill Graham?" Emma asked.
"I commanded him to drive too fast. I thought he would get injured, but he died. It was my fault." Regina answered.
"Why?" Emma said pleading eyes searching Regina's face.
"He wanted you." Regina answered like it was the simplest thing in the world. "You have to understand Emma. I lost someone I loved dearly once, and the only reaction I had when that was threated was to remove the threat."
"I didn't want Graham." Emma said tears now flowing freely down her face. She was yelling, and she was stomping around the room like an angry teenager. "I wanted you from the moment I walked into that town. He wasn't a threat to you."
"I didn't know that." Regina shot back standing to meet the blonde eye to eye.
Emma didn't say anything right away. She was furious. She wanted to slap Regina, but she knew she couldn't make herself do that. She wanted her to pay. She wanted to understand. She knew that the world she grew up in was nothing like this one, and she knew the rules were different here. However, murder was murder especially murder over a love interest.
"What is the plan?" Emma finally asked. She felt exhausted all of a sudden as the emotions made her head pound.
"We go to your mother's castle tomorrow. If any of my supplies are still there, we can start the process of finding a portal back to the other world." Regina answered. Emma had a million questions. Why would Regina's supplies be at her mother's castle? That didn't make sense. She was too exhausted to continue to question it.
Emma turned then striding toward the door. "If you turn left in the main room, there is another bedroom at the end of the hall. The bed should still be there. We will worry about food in the morning." Regina answered as she kicked off her boots and sat on the bed.
Emma glanced back at the woman who had rocked her world just hours before. Regina met her eyes. "I've conjured up some water. It's waiting for you. I don't have any clothes for you. We'll have to make due with these."
Emma left the room then and walking without looking towards the room Regina had told her about. It was much smaller, and she wondered who had lived there before her. The question was answered when she saw a portrait of a man hanging high above a fire place. Henry Mills was printing in bold letters below it. It had to be Regina's father. Emma smiled momentarily at the name printed there. Regina had cared for her father. There was no question about that. She had named their son after him.
Emma laid down on the bed that was surprisingly comfortable. She felt confused and empty inside. She loved Regina, but could she get over the Evil Queen that she had been? She shook her head then. There was no way she would be able to figure all of this out. She still needed to hear the rest of Regina's story. Even she knew that the Evil Queen hadn't always been Evil. She knew the tenderness she had seen the night that she had been pressed to Regina skin on skin so many years ago. She knew how she felt when soft hands had pulled her into a hug. She knew how she felt when crimson lips had pressed into hers stealing her breath instantly.
Graham was dead. Regina's father was dead. She assumed there was a lot more blood on the queen's hands. She wondered briefly at the lost love Regina had mentioned, and she knew she could just have to give it time to let the story unfold.
She thought of Henry. The son she had known she had but had just met. She thought of David Nolan. He was Prince Charming. He was her father. She thought of Mary Margaret She was Snow White. She was her mother. Then, she thought of the nagging sensation that had been in the back of her mind that entire day.
Her parents had abandoned her. She didn't know the details of the curse, but she knew Jefferson's daughter had been there. Sure, Jefferson had been separated from her, but they had been in the same town. Emma had somehow ended up out of this land and in another where she was alone her entire life.
She had been abandoned by her parents that she now knew had been alive and well the entire time. She had been abandoned by the first person she ever loved, and she had no idea where he was then. She didn't care. Now, she had found friendship in Storybrooke. She made a mental note to ask Regina who Ruby was in this land. That friendship had been stripped from her. It was now changed forever.
Worst of all, she had found love in Storybrooke. Love with the adopted mother of her son. Love with the Evil Queen. Love with someone who had murdered, raped, and hurt many people. Love with a woman that had seemed to change during her time in Storybrooke. Love with the woman who was sleeping yards away from her. Love for the woman that she still wanted to stand up and march back into that bedroom so that she wouldn't have to be alone.
Emma knew her decision was already made at that point. She would stick by Regina until they got back to Storybrooke. She would learn her story, and she would make her own decision. She had a feeling that no one knew Regina's story. She knew that no one had ever taken the chance to learn her story or try to understand her. Emma knew that she would because deep down inside she felt the same herself.
No, she had never murdered anyone. She had held a knife to a man's throat for twenty bucks. She had no intention to kill him, but she knew that any change in the situation could have caused her to do so. She had never raped anyone, but she had willingly had sex with Henry's father when she was seventeen years old. That was statutory rape in the world she grew up in. Was he any better than Regina? Sure, she had consented, but in the eyes of the law she wasn't old enough to make that decision appropriately. The laws didn't apply in this world.
Regina had unknowingly given Emma a second chance by letting her be in Henry's life. Regina had given Emma a second chance by bringing down her walls just a little bit to let the blonde in. Emma would give Regina a second chance. She would decide for herself if the queen deserved to be considered evil.
She drifted off to sleep that night peaceful with her decision. Emma knew it would be interesting and hard, but she knew that this place with Regina was somewhere that she was supposed to be. Emma knew that not giving Regina this second chance would be the worst decision she ever made.
Regina had drifted to sleep right as Emma had. She had vowed to herself that in time she would tell Emma everything. Sure, it could blow up in her face. Her solution was simple. At this point, did she really have anything to lose?