A/N: This chapter brought to you by the word "tatting". Tatting, for just about everyone who will be unfamiliar with it is a kind of highly complex knotted lace work that is both very difficult to do and very difficult to teach. A pass time of upper class ladies with a lot of time on their hands.

A/N: This story is set in the immediate aftermath of the Cora plot, Regina took Snow's heart recently, and although it departs from canon this is the same time that in canon she was deciding to kill everyone in town and return to the Enchanted Forest with Henry. This is late season 2 Regina. Regina is not redeemed at this point.

Mary Margaret had been driven to distraction all week. Given the state she'd been in since... the thing with Cora... and the thing with Regina... Emma was starting to get concerned. The best way to figure out what was going on in her head, especially when she was like this, was always to ask David. So she did what people did when they wanted to get information from her.

She brought food.

It was David's turn to work the late shift and he was sitting at her... their she guessed now... desk in the sheriff's office. With Regina back in the mayor's office they suddenly had to make sure they did the paperwork a bit more reliably, she sent back a box of police reports her first week back as inadequate. David was sitting at an old electric type writer hunting and pecking out a better explanation for how a fairy accidently set Prince Eric's boat on fire. There were dwarfs involved she remembered.

"I brought a turkey club and coffee." She held up the Granny's bag. Her own lunch was a box of pop tarts in the desk drawer but he ate better than she did.

David gave a wide smile. "You are a life saver. Was Regina this bad before?"

He gestured to the pile. "A bit, but I was bit better about doing the paperwork before too. Things kind of slipped."

She sat down slumping into a chair opposite him and watched as he dug around the bag.

"Can I ask a question about Mary Margaret?"

"Sure..."

"How is she doing really. I mean we used to talk a lot and now..." there is this mother thing that I am not ready to take and she's so excited about, or was. "... it's more complicated."

David smiled. "She's doing better. Regina just... has a way of destroying her and you just have to give Snow the time to pick up the pieces again. We just have to be there for her and let her know we believe in her."

Emma grunted. She was actually sure that was probably not all she needed, but it wasn't the time for that argument. She'd tried it several times already. "Do you know what... how all of this stuff started between them?"

David shifted. "It's really not my story to tell, Emma. You should ask your mother."

She shook her head, "She wouldn't say. And Regina either, she said to ask her."

David pressed his lips together. "It was a long time ago Emma, why does it matter?"

"Well, for among other reasons we're all sitting here in Maine because of it. And for another I can't figure out what the hell is going on with either of them."

"Regina is... as she always is." David shook his head. "Maybe there is a human being under all that evil, but too many people's lives have been lost to try and risk more trying to get through to her. Your mother tries and tries but ... it destroys her every time. The last time, when we exiled her in the Enchanted Forest, she cried for days Emma. I'm just hoping she snaps out of this faster."

He picked at the sandwich and dug around in the desk drawer for a packet of mayonnaise. One of her drawers was just full of condiment packets. She might be able to supply a small country with them. "Regina wants me to move out of the loft."

He looked up sharply. "Well that's not really her place to say."

Emma shifted a little. "It kind of is... there isn't really enough room for Henry. I was thinking... the basement apartment in the building is vacant after all the dwarfs moved in together."

"It was Bashful's, so it wouldn't be too bad..." He nodded, but still seeming on guard.

"And I wouldn't be too far."

"Can you just... maybe wait a bit. Let your mother recover some more. And ... perhaps leave off that Regina is making you do it? She's helping Kathryn with her wedding planning and I think some normalcy and stability would do her some good."

Emma just nodded. "Regina just has a way of getting in your mother's head. I'd like her to be a bit more recovered before the Queen does it again."

"The Queen, really, are we calling her that now?"

"Sometimes, it's right to call a spade a spade."

Emma meant to catch Mary Margaret the next day to talk, but she up and out before Emma crawled out of bed, and not back until Emma had gone off to work the late shift. It wasn't until she noticed that just about everyone else in town seemed busy too that she decided to ask someone and was informed that Kathryn Nolan's wedding was taking on biblical levels.

People wanted something to celebrate and it was a chance to merge Enchanted Forest traditions with their new home. A royal wedding.

Emma wondered if she had to wear a dress to it.

Probably. She'd have to buy pantyhose. She hated pantyhose as much as she hated heals.

And apparently Mary Margaret had taken to arranging everything. Which had to be a first. Playing wedding planner to your husband's not exactly but sort of ex wife you were once accused of murdering. But then she remembered trying to explain Henry's family tree to Neal. Which hadn't exactly been helped by the booze they had been drinking.

Her thought process was interrupted on its way to crazy town by a text message. She pulled the bug over to the side of the road and frowned. "Damn it Mary Margaret..."

She turned the bug around and headed back home. She was the sheriff after all, who was going to tell her she was late. Besides Regina. She bet Regina was the one who was calling in all those cat stuck in tree reports.

Hell Regina had magic. She was probably sending the cats into the trees to start with.

Emma shook her head before she got more mental images like that. Parking in front of the building she took the stairs two at a time and entered the loft.

"Okay Mary Margaret, what do you think you are doing?"

For her part she was sitting in a chair in the corner, some Joan Jett playing on the stereo and she seemed to be working with some sort of lace doily in her lap with two silver tools. "Tatting."

She held up the doily as if that was self evident.

Emma squinted. "What?"

"Tatting. A wedding gift. It's bad luck for a royal bride not to have received something tatted for her wedding."

Moving closer Emma had to admit it looked very complicated, but not really what she was here to talk about. "You went to Regina's house today."

Mary Margaret narrowed her eyes. "How do you know that?"

"You think we don't have people keeping an eye on her these days after everything? Ruby was on watch and saw you go into her house. And thankfully come out. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that no one in town was likely to have any tatting shuttles except Regina."

"Wait ... what?"

She held up the two silver and ivory tools she was using to make the lace. "Tatting shuttles. I told you it's bad luck for a royal bride to not have something tatted for her."

Emma looked confused and sat down on Mary Margaret's bed. "So you borrowed them from Regina? And she gave them to you?"

"Well, Regina's really amazing at tatting. She taught me when I was little. It's very complicated and not many people can do it. It's kind of ..." Snow paused looking for the right words, "The kind of thing a princess is taught how to do."

"It's a princessy thing." Emma nodded slowly. "And Regina taught you."

"Well, she is my stepmother. And you should see some of the things she used to be able to make. I don't trust myself to try anything big. It's been too long and I was never as good as she was."

Emma was still trying to figure out what this was so important. "She could have killed you."

"Not by teaching me how to make knotted lace she couldn't."

"I mean today."

"Oh, no. She might kill me if I lose her tatting shuttles. But no she wants to see me suffer not die."

"Well that's reassuring. I'll be sure to let Henry know."

Mary Margaret shook her head. "Regina liked Kathryn. She respects the tradition. That's why she loaned me the shuttles."

"If attempting to have you murdered is how Regina shows she likes you I'd hate to know how she shows love," Emma realized immediately that she'd put her foot in her mouth at the look on her mother's face, "And there was really no one else in town you could get them from?"

"Regina loved tatting. It was one of the few things we did together that I think made her happy." She gestured at the piece in her lap. "It takes a lot of concentration and patience."

"Regina has the patience of a five year old."

"I think... perhaps Emma... you don't understand her as well as you think."

Emma waved to Ruby from her car as she passed the position she was staking out the mansion. She was sure Regina knew she was being watched, but at least had had the grace not to say anything about it. It was strange for Emma to think about Regina as graceful, or like those pictures in Henry's books full of feathers and weird dresses.

Or spending her afternoons by a fireplace making lace with little Snow White.

Mary Margaret had even sounded like she was lost in fond memories when she'd described it. Emma felt like she was a good judge of character, but for the life of her she didn't think she'd ever understand either her mother or Henry's.

She walked up the path to Regina's front door and used the knocker. A few minutes later Regina answered, it was late, but she was still in a suit. "A bit dressed up for a night at home."

"I had a school board meeting to terrorize."

"You go to school board meetings?"

"I'm on the school board."

"Well that would explain going to meetings. Can I come in?"

"That depends, who is Miss. Lucas going to report your comings and goings to?"

Emma shifted.

"I figured it was your doing."

Regina stepped aside but picked up a wine glass she'd obviously just put down to answer the door.

"I suppose this is about what evil I did to your mother today?"

"As far as I can tell the only evil you did was loan her some silver... thingies."

"Thingies. So articulate. Silver and ivory tatting shuttles. Wheat on one and an apple blossom on the other. My father gave them to me when I was thirteen."

"She did say you'd kill her if she lost them."

"I would."

Something caught Emma's eye behind Regina and she tilted her head before moving over to the dining room table. There was a piece of lace four times as big as the one Mary Margaret had been working on. The knot work was intricate and there was gold thread mixed in. She had to admit, when it looked like a doily in Mary Margaret's lap she had a hard time taking it seriously, but this was actually beautiful.

"Trying to one up my mother?"

Regina was watching her and shook her head. "No, that's what I made for Kathryn."

"But Mary Margaret is desperately working her fingers because she's afraid she won't have one for this stupid tradition."

"There are many silly traditions from our world, but this one is relatively harmless. I finished it before Snow asked for the shuttles."

"So why not tell her you'd already made a piece."

"I'm ... not really sure Kathryn would take a gift from me. And I wanted to make sure something got made for her."

Emma raised an eyebrow and Regina turned around to set her wine glass down. Or to deny the Savior a chance to judge that a truth or a lie.

"What do you want, Miss Swan? It's late."

"I want to understand."

"Understand what?"

"A woman who cares enough to make the fanciest doily I've ever seen for a friend she tried to have killed."

Regina turned and gave a small little smile. "Madness isn't something to be understood, Emma."

"You aren't mad."

"I am sometimes."