TW: for mentions of marital rape in this chapter

Chapter Twenty Three

"Stop!"

Regina's outcry was enough to snap Emma out of it and back to reality. Her heart was pounding loudly in her ears, and she was panting and breathless, but her eyes snapped open and met Regina's as she pulled her head back.

For a brief moment, she just stared. What she saw in Regina's eyes hit her like a punch to the gut. She'd seen this look before, on Regina's porch, when she'd grabbed her arm without thinking. Regina's brown eyes were watery and panicked, and Emma was sure this was the only true emotion she'd ever really seen from the woman. Usually, Regina was so guarded, so schooled in her features and expressions that whatever was going on below the surface never really showed, other than in split-second fragments.

But this, right now, this was different. Regina wasn't guarded and Emma knew she was seeing raw emotion pouring through the cracks in Regina's polished exterior. It took another moment for Emma to come fully back to her senses and become fully aware that she was still gripping Regina's wrists.

She let go, and started to push herself up with her forearms that were barely holding any of her weight off of Regina as they rested on the arm of the couch. As hurt as she was, as angry as she was, deep down she knew she still didn't really want to hurt Regina back - and certainly not like this.

"I'm sorry," Emma said as she pushed herself upward, lifting her body weight off of Regina and hearing the woman below her draw in a quick gasping breath. To her surprise, Regina grabbed her by the shoulders at stopped her, her dark eyes imploring Emma in a way she'd never experienced from her before.

"I was married once," Regina said, quietly.

"I… know," Emma replied, relaxing slightly as she saw the panic start to dissipate from Regina's face. "You told me."

"No… you don't know anything," Regina said, sighing as she closed her eyes a moment before pushing Emma's shoulders back gently so that she could shimmy herself upwards and back into a sitting position. Emma took it as a cue to back up and give her some space.

"Okay. So tell me, then. I mean… if you want to."

Regina nodded. "I think it's time."

Emma chewed on her lip as she watched the emotions changing on Regina's face. She could tell the other woman was trying hard to keep her expression neutral, but whatever demons she was fighting below the surface now were winning, for the moment.

"It was… a long time ago, and I was very young. I was eighteen, so older than you were when we first met, but younger in a lot of ways. My mother kept me very sheltered, until the day she sold me off into marriage."

"Sold… you?" Emma asked, scrunching her face in equal parts confusion and disgust.

"Essentially, yes. He was… much older than me. Older than my father by a few years, and he… oh, Emma, I don't know how I'm supposed to make you understand this when you won't even believe me."

Emma swallowed. "Because I don't believe you about this curse?"

"I come from a different world, Emma, and if you can't believe that, then you're not going to believe any of this."

Emma drew in a breath, studying Regina's face as she did. On one hand, she was sure Regina had to know what asking her to believe something as crazy as this curse was just that: crazy. But on the other hand, Emma wasn't getting any signals that Regina was lying, which meant she, at the very least, believed what she was saying. Whether it was true or not, Emma knew Regina needed to get whatever this was out of her, and she also knew, from her short time in Storybrooke, that Regina had no one else to confide in. It had to be her.

"I could… I could try," Emma offered. She wasn't really sure she could try to make herself believe, but she was sure she could at least pretend to, for Regina's sake.

Regina nodded again, though her expression didn't change, and Emma had to wonder if she knew she wasn't all that committed to trying to believe. "Alright," Regina said, turning her eyes down to her own hands as she continued her story. "The man, my… husband, he was the King."

Regina paused and glanced up at Emma, attempting to assess her reaction to that statement.

"Okay," Emma said, nodding.

"Yes, okay," Regina sighed, nodding as well. "He, um… well, my mother orchestrated the whole thing. She used… magic to create a situation in which I would have to save the King's daughter."

"Snow White," Emma said. "Mary Margaret."

"Yes. She was ten at the time, and her mother had died, and the King was looking for a new wife to become her step-mother."

"And your mother set it up so that he'd find you?"

"Yes. So that I could become Queen. There was… needless to say, I young and I didn't want to marry a man old enough to be my father, King or not. I didn't want to be Queen, that was just what my mother wanted for me ever since I was born. It's the reason she named me Regina."

Emma nodded. As much as she wanted to hold on to her disbelief, the emotion on Regina's face seemed to raw and real to be rehearsed, and she was also sure that she'd glossed over something in her story already, though she wasn't sure what could be so much worse than what she was already saying, that she'd opted to leave it out.

"The King came to ask for my hand in marriage, and my mother accepted on my behalf. I didn't want it. I wanted to run - I tried to run - but she had magic and she made it impossible. I was a prisoner in the Kingdom and even moreso in the palace."

"The King kept you locked up?"

Regina shrugged. "He didn't have to. He owned me, Emma, plain and simple, especially in the beginning. I was so young and so inexperienced and innocent, even, and he was a lonely old man with a shiny new plaything. I'm sure you can connect the dots."

"He raped you."

Regina inhaled sharply at Emma's words. "I've never… I've never called it that. It didn't… the concept of marital... rape... didn't exist there. It was just what was expected of a wife. A woman didn't deny her husband she certainly didn't deny the King. I never fought back but he used to hold me down anyway. He had all the power and I was nothing and I think he got off on that."

"And that's why you don't like being touched."

"I don't like… giving up control. Please understand how difficult it is for me to tell you this, Emma. I've never told anyone about any of this, but… it doesn't matter that I know you wouldn't hurt me like that. It doesn't matter that, even after everything, I trust you to stop if I say stop. It's not enough because if you touch me like that, if you pin me down, suddenly, you're not you anymore. I'm not me and I'm not here, I'm that girl again, in that palace again, in his bed and I… I…"

Regina's voice was lost as the tears started to fall, fast and hard. Within seconds, her shoulders were shaking and she was hugging her arms tightly around herself and Emma knew she'd been holding this in for an eternity already. She was sure she'd really only barely scratched the surface of everything she'd gone through, and it was already too much.

Emma's initial impulse was to reach out for her, wrap her tightly in her arms and tell her she was safe, but she worried that would do more damage than good at this moment. Given what she had just confessed, Emma knew she had to let Regina call the shots on this one.

"Regina…"

Before Emma could even ask what Regina wanted her to do, Regina moved to unwrap her arms from herself, and wrapped them around Emma instead, all but falling onto Emma as she did so. She squeezed her tight, her forehead nestling in against Emma's collarbone as sobs wracked her body.

Emma hesitated for a moment, before snaking her own arms around Regina, and resting her cheek against Regina's hair. "Is this okay?"

Regina nodded against her chest and let out a long shaky sigh as she started to relax, albeit it just a little. Emma took it as a cue to hold her a little tighter, stroking one hand up and down her back, hoping that it might offer at least a little comfort.

"I've got you," Emma said, as Regina's sobs began to let up a little. "It's okay. You're safe."

She hoped it helped, but her head was spinning with the new information. The thought crossed her mind that if Henry were right, and Regina were telling the truth that the curse was real, then she'd been living with this pain and this secret for twenty-eight years in Storybrooke, on top of all the rest of the time in the Enchanted Forest, where Henry had insisted they were all from.

Curse or not, Regina's emotions were real, and Emma had to start to wonder if there really were worlds other than her own - places with magic where fairy tales were real. It seemed absurd, and yet, here she was holding the so-called 'Evil Queen' as she clung to her and cried about her past. There was no way Regina was this good of an actress, Emma was sure.

As she held on to Regina, and continued to whisper a constant string of reassurances to her, she thought about what it must have been like for her to come to this world, and learn that what happened to her was not okay. She wondered what it must have been like to learn that, and have no one to talk to about it. It was no wonder to her now that Regina had just pushed it down, and no surprise that she was so opposed to letting anyone get close to her.

"I'm sorry." Regina's voice came out choked as she lifted her head from Emma's chest, drawing Emma back from her thoughts. She didn't go far though, as she let her head fall again onto Emma's shoulder, clearly exhausted.

"Don't be sorry. I'm glad you told me," Emma insisted, as she raised a hand to brush Regina's hair back from her face, and then wiped away what she could of her tears with her fingers.

Regina nodded absently against Emma's shoulder, and Emma could tell she was likely about to fall asleep right there. She could only guess that Regina had gotten as little sleep as she had the night before, and she'd just cried herself into utter exhaustion.

"I've never told anyone before," Regina reiterated in a hoarse whisper. "I should have known it would be you."

Emma didn't ask what Regina meant by that, as she listened to her to breathing even out and realized she was right, and Regina had fallen asleep against her. She smiled absently to herself remembering the time Regina had warned her not to fall asleep on her in the bathtub. They'd come so far since then and Emma couldn't help but think maybe this morning, as terrible as it had been for Regina, was something that needed to happen.

Whether or not she believed in the curse, she couldn't deny that something - some force beyond her control - seemed to be keeping her life and Regina's on a collision course with each other.

For once, it seemed to her like they might actually be on the same page for the first time. And maybe it was time to stop fighting it.

AN: I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who's been following this story so far! I have over 1000 follows, which is so unreal! There's still several chapters more to come, I'm not sure just how many, but there's still more of this story to tell!

And, as always, you can find me on tumblr as rowark-sq if you so choose :)