Author's Note:
1000+ reviews and 1000+ follows? You guys are fucking awesome, oh my god.

Also another heads up that I agreed to participate in the SQ Secret Santa on Tumblr, and because I'm me I procrastinated like hell until, well… right now, lol. So I have to get that fic done by the 25th, which means I don't know if the next chapter of this will be out on time. Although next Wednesday is Christmas so even if it was done I'd doubt I'd be posting it on time anyway, since I'll be busy doing family things. Anyway point is that it'll most likely be late, so this is me apologizing in advance for that. Sorry!

Oh and FYI, there's another alternate scene (aka, just stuff I scrapped) to this chapter posted on my tumblr (obsessionisthenewblack). It'll be under the tags 'alternate scene' and 'TotH'.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Apologies

"So… David said you guys wanted to talk."

It had been at least ten minutes into dinner and neither of Emma's parents had said a word outside of meaningless small talk about the weather and work. They had been stealing wary glances at one another from across the table, but that was about the extent of it; and yeah, Emma's patience was starting to wear thin. It wasn't like she had had the most stellar evening as it was; and if it were up to her, she would have preferred to barricade herself in her bedroom for the next twenty four hours just to save everyone else the misery of being around her.

But Emma had promised her father that she would come to dinner and, well… here she was.

Mary Margaret cleared her throat a little awkwardly, pushing a piece of broccoli around on her plate. "Honestly, honey, we're just a little concerned about… your mood." And, okay, that was probably fair; it was complete shit right now, after all, and practically storming into the apartment while mumbling under her breath probably didn't help anything either. "And we aren't sure if having this conversation right now is the best time. Is everything… alright? Did something happen over at Regina's?"

Silverware scraped idly against porcelain. "We just… got into it. It doesn't matter." Her jaw tensed then, and Emma had to push down everything she was feeling so she didn't start crying again at the damn dinner table. Shaking her head, she stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork and amended emotionlessly, "Well, she kind of kicked me out for the night. I need a place to sleep, so can I maybe…?"

"Of course," David answered without thought, and as Mary Margaret nodded in agreement, Emma shot them a tightlipped smile in gratitude.

"Thanks."

Silence; uncomfortable, long.

"Do you…" Mary Margaret tried, shooting a hesitant look over at her husband. "Would you like to talk about it with us?"

Emma looked up from her food then, a disbelieving look plastered on her face. "What is that, a joke?" she snapped without thought to how rude that probably sounded, but seriously? Wasn't their motto, 'the more miserable Emma is with Regina, the happier we are?' Why would they try to comfort her when it ran the risk of her becoming less upset with the woman that they hated?

"Emma!" David chided her as Mary Margaret made a big show of looking wounded over her words. But come on, really?

"You seriously expect me to believe you care?" Emma asked them, still looking at them like they had both gone completely mental for even asking about it. But then something clicked and she looked accusatory and she asked, "Or do you just want to know because you get some kind of sick satisfaction in seeing our relationship fail? Because I swear to God—"

"No, of course not!" Mary Margaret exclaimed, looking offended that Emma would even think that. "Look, your father and I are aware that we weren't the most supportive people in the world when it came to your relationship with Regina, but if you're upset about something that happened, honey, we're not just going to stand idly by and allow you to continue to be hurt by it. If it helps you then… then we would like it if you talked to us about it."

"Believe me," Emma told her strongly, thinking about why this entire fight started in the first place. "You really don't want that."

"We do though, sweetheart," Mary Margaret continued to try, unable to get the hint. "We don't want you to feel like you need to keep anything from us anymore, Emma, even if does happen to be about Regina. We're your parents, and—"

"Mom," Emma stressed without thought, slamming her fork down on the table as she looked at the woman across from her. "I'm still sleeping with her, okay? And that's why we're fighting, so can you just believe me when I tell you that you don't want the details? Christ."

Silence fell over the table again, the look on her parents' faces appearing torn between being surprised and absolutely horrified. Emma sighed heavily and tangled her fingers in her hair as she avoided eye contact, internally berating herself for even admitting that to them out loud. But Jesus, could they not take the hint? They were the last people she needed to talk about this sort of thing with.

Mary Margaret cleared her throat awkwardly. "Well," she began, sounding a little distant. "I have to admit, that wasn't the first sentence I imagined you using when you finally called me 'Mom'…"

What?

Emma blinked, replaying her words over in her head. Oh, shit. She hadn't even noticed; she was just frustrated because they wouldn't drop the subject and the word just… popped out. Guilt washed over her face then, as yeah, that probably wasn't the best 'first time' memory for her mother, and the blonde quickly tried to apologize, "I'm sorry, I just…"

"I think I need some air," David said suddenly, apparently still stuck on the fact that his daughter was currently sleeping with the Evil Queen, and his chair scraped loudly against the floor as he abruptly stood. Nobody stopped him as he left the apartment, and the front door slammed loudly in his wake as he took out his internalized aggression on it.

Fuck.

"I'm sorry," Emma repeated, hating how she always managed to make a shitty day even worse. It was like a talent at this point. "I shouldn't have said—"

"No," Mary Margaret interrupted, looking back up at her daughter. "Even if it was an accident, or a one-time occurrence, I'm… I'm still very glad you called me that, Emma. No matter what form it came in." She gave her a soft smile then, but in an instant it was replaced by a resigned purse of the lips before Mary Margaret admitted, "I'm not thrilled that you're still sleeping with Regina though, but… it's not like I can pretend that's surprising either."

Emma's brow furrowed. "You knew?"

"I had a feeling," Mary Margaret admitted, although didn't sound particularly happy about being right. "You've spent so much time with her lately; I assumed something was bound to happen sooner or later. And besides, despite what you tried to convince me of, I still don't buy that Regina was wearing that turtleneck because you strangled her."

Well, technically the strangling thing was true, but as Emma wasn't about to admit to her mother that Regina got off on asphyxiation, she kept her mouth shut. Mary Margaret assuming that she was just hiding hickeys was the lesser of two evils, in the long run.

"Then why the hell did you let me stay with her this week?"

Mary Margaret stayed silent, suddenly avoiding eye contact.

"Oh my god," Emma realized, her eyes widening. "What is this, some kind of reverse psychology shit?"

"At first…" Mary Margaret hesitantly admitted, making Emma's jaw drop in offense. She held out her hands though to try to ward off her daughter's impending screaming match. "Emma, please, don't get angry with me. I just thought that if you… if you got her out of your system, if you had some proper closure, then it wouldn't hurt you as badly this time around when she had to leave again, but I was—"

"If I 'got her out of my system'?" Emma interrupted disbelievingly. "Are you kidding me right now…?"

"—I was wrong."

That made Emma stop. "…What?"

"I was wrong," Mary Margaret softly repeated, like that would somehow make the sentence sound any less insane. "Emma, even though I may never approve of Regina, I—" The sound of the front door opening made Mary Margaret's gaze flicker upwards, to what no doubt was her husband coming back into the apartment as she amended, "we, were wrong in focusing all of our efforts on keeping the two of you apart. We thought that… after everything that had happened, that maybe just trying to exorcise something so toxic from your life might…"

"Make us feel less guilty," David finished for her, taking his seat once more. He was still a little stiff, but he didn't look like he wanted to smash something anymore as he looked over at his daughter. "I'm sorry. I just… I needed a minute. I know you're in an adult relationship but… no matter how old you are, to me you're always going to be my little girl. That was not something I ever wanted to hear."

"It's not a relationship," Emma murmured as she looked down at her plate of food, still trying to wrap her head around the fact that her parents were apologizing. It seemed kind of surreal, and completely out of left field; wasn't Mary Margaret just lecturing her about Regina the other day? "It's a codependent mess."

"Which was why we were concerned," Mary Margaret told her, which only caused Emma to roll her eyes at that blatant lie. The brunette let out a resigned sigh. "Well, that and your father and I's history with her, of course. I won't lie to you and say we were never biased, because we were; if we were to pick anyone for you in the entire kingdom, the last person we would ever consider would be her."

"But she is your True Love," David interjected, although didn't sound exactly thrilled by that fact. More resigned than anything else. "And unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about that. You cannot help who you're bound to; your mother and I know that more than most."

"And we're… we're sorry, Emma," Mary Margaret stressed, the urgency in her tone causing the blonde to look back up at her mother, "for selfishly focusing on the only thing we thought we could fix, the only way we thought we could make a difference in your life, instead of addressing the one thing we really needed to. The one thing you needed us to."

Emma's brow crinkled at that, her heart beginning to pound in her throat as she realized what the hell this might actually be turning into. And she… she didn't know if she could handle it; if she could handle letting go of that anger and resentment yet. It was the one constant she'd had in a life continuously full of change. "What are you talking about…?"

"I was supposed to go with you… when you went through the wardrobe," Mary Margaret admitted softly, emotion starting to strain her voice. "I was pregnant with you when it was being built, and your father and I… we didn't believe you'd be born before Regina's curse was cast; we believed that we had time. But as fate would have it, you were born just as it was washing the land. And I tried – believe me, Emma, I tried to keep you within me long enough – but you were demanding entrance into the world and there was nothing… nothing I could do. By the time the wardrobe was finally finished, you were too far along and I couldn't be moved."

"I got to hold you in my arms for only five minutes," Mary Margaret continued, her sorrow starting to take hold as her eyes brimmed with unshed tears. "Five minutes until I had to let you go, and never know if I'd even see you again. And it kills me inside, every day, because it's… it was my fault. After you were born your father… he believed our plan to be a failure, and that we would all be overtaken by the curse together, but it was me who suggested that we put you through the wardrobe alone. Me who believed it would be your best chance, but I was wrong, wasn't I? You grew up terribly, and it was… it was entirely my fault. I thought I was protecting you, Emma, I thought it was the right thing to do, but it was only the right thing for our kingdom and not… not for our little girl…"

Mary Margaret was weeping openly now, her husband's arms around her in some vain attempt to comfort her. And Emma was just sitting there, staring at them both with a painful lump in her throat and tears in her eyes as she struggled to connect this to reality. She had spent so long convinced that her parents didn't want her, and even longer still wondering why she was given up. And then even after she knew, even after she realized she had been wrong, and that her parents had wanted her, Emma never expected them to express any kind of regret over it. 'The Greater Good' and all that… sending her away saved their Kingdom, so what was one little girl in comparison to that?

"No, Snow, no matter how Emma's life may have turned out, it was the right thing to do; I know that now," David insisted, which made both his daughter and wife turn sharply towards him; Emma's in accusatory disbelief, and Mary Margaret in utter perplexion. "Because at least this way, she had a life," David explained, before turning towards his daughter. "To get you into the wardrobe, I had to fight off at least a half dozen of Regina's men, and… Emma, your mother and I are truly sorry that your life didn't turn out in the way that you would have wanted, or that we would have wanted, but at least you were alive. And if Regina had gotten to you that night… you wouldn't have been; and I will never regret saving your life. I'm sorry, but I can't."

"No," Emma breathed, feeling a tear fall down her cheek as she seemed to be staring through her parents, rather than at them. "No, Regina, she… she wasn't going to kill me; she was just going to take me from you. I was supposed to be her—" But Emma couldn't say it, and it didn't matter anyway, for the two people before her seemed to understand.

They looked shocked. Appalled. Disgusted, probably because of how her and Regina's relationship turned out. And Jesus, Emma felt like she couldn't breathe. This was just too much.

"I'm sorry, I just can't—I can't do this right now," Emma stammered as she got to her feet, pushing the chair she was in backwards across the kitchen floor. First she gets into a fight with Regina, and now her parents were actually apologizing for the life they had subjected her to and it was… her emotions couldn't really deal with that right now. She was already upset enough as it was, and now it felt like something else was getting dumped on her that she didn't know how to accept, because it just seemed so out of left field. Both of her parents had done a complete one eighty when it came to Regina and to talking about the past, that it just felt so—

Oh my god.

"She told you, didn't she?!" Emma exclaimed, realizing how this must have come about. Her eyes locked on Mary Margaret as she accused, "That's what Regina was talking about with you in the kitchen, that's—"

"Emma, please don't get angry," Mary Margaret tried, but it was too late for that. Emma felt like Regina had completely betrayed her trust; the entire point was that her parents shouldn't have to be told to do this. It had to come from them, and this… this hadn't. This had come from Regina.

"Regina was just concerned about you, and she was… she was right," Mary Margaret admitted, although sounded hesitant to even admit that fact out loud. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, she continued emotionally, "It was… very selfish of us to never speak about this with you, solely because it made us feel terribly guilty. You deserve to know that you were loved – that you are loved – and that we never wanted to give you up; it pains us every day to know that you grew up alone, and we are so sorry for subjecting you to that. It wasn't at all what we—"

"It doesn't matter!" Emma exclaimed, furious and upset as her eyes brimmed with fresh tears. "It doesn't even matter if everything you're saying is true, because she went behind my back and—!" A frustrated noise slipped past the blonde's lips as she tangled her fingers in her hair, just finding everything far too overwhelming right now to properly function. She just needed to get the hell out of here; get some air, get some space.

"I have to go," Emma said in a rush, turning on her heel as she headed for the door. The world blurred as tears distorted her vision, and emotion choked up in her throat as she tried to run from everything she just couldn't handle.

Problem was, it was hard to run from your own thoughts.

"No, Emma, please don't leave—" David tried, but once his hand clasped imploringly on her arm, Emma immediately shoved him off. She was furious with Regina, upset that something she had so desperately wanted from her parents had come from somewhere it shouldn't have, and she just didn't want to be here. She couldn't be here. She just needed to be alone; it was the only way she might be able to handle this without feeling like she was suffocating.

"I just need some fucking space, okay? Please," she begged, the words choking up in her throat as she ripped open the front door. Her parents kept begging her to stay, but the words sounded far away as the blood pumped in Emma's ears and she ran out into the night.

Why did Regina have to ruin it? Why couldn't she have just left it alone…?

[x]

When Emma had taken to drinking mouthwash for its alcohol content, she had thought she had hit rock bottom. But as it turned out, there was rock bottom, fifty feet of crap, and then her.

It hadn't been a conscious decision on her part. In a way it was just an instinctual reaction that Emma had adapted as a way of coping with her problems, and right then she felt like she was being suffocated by them. Fighting with Regina in the morning, stress at work, then sex and emotions and more fighting with Regina, followed by a betrayal of trust and words Emma desperately wished to believe but found that she couldn't because of how they had come about seemed to weigh down on her all at once, and so yeah… she ran. She ran to the only thing she knew would always be there for her, should she need it.

And the worst part of it all wasn't that she was currently huddled in the backseat of the town's patrol car drinking her weight in cheap whiskey, it wasn't that she was crying so hard that she could taste her own fucking snot mixed in with the booze; it was that Emma hadn't realized the magnitude of what she was doing until it was already too late.

It hit her all at once, you know? The guilt, the disappointment, the feeling of being an absolute failure as she brought the bottle to her lips and allowed the liquid to scorch its way down her throat. It made Emma hate herself, and yet she had already started, so what the hell was the point of stopping now?

So she drank; she drank until the tears stopped, she drank until the world blurred, and until she finally blacked out in the backseat of the cop car, allowing the pain of the waking world to fade to nothing around her.

[x]

The doorbell rang loudly through the manor the next afternoon.

Regina was practically frantic as she hurried through the foyer to rip the front door open, and she finally exhaled a relieved breath once she found Emma standing on her front porch. She looked entirely worse for wear however; she was still in the same clothes she had on yesterday, her hair didn't look like it had seen a brush since she slept, and she wore large, dark sunglasses that she kept fiddling with uncomfortably as she leaned heavily against the porch bannister.

"Where the hell have you been?!" Regina demanded, her worry laying waste to anger as she realized the woman was okay; or, well, alive at least. "When your mother came by to pick up Henry she said you didn't come back to the apartment last night! Do you have any idea how worried we were? You could have been—!"

"I slept in the patrol car," Emma told her as she ran her fingers through her tussled hair, unable to make eye contact with the woman before her. "Needed the space, okay? I'm fine, so can you maybe not shriek at me right now? I have a killer headache, and I want to just get inside and take some aspirin or something before Archie shows up, okay?"

"Oh, you have a headache?" Regina snapped back without registering the faint sound of warning bells in the back of her mind. She was just too angry right then; she had been calling Emma since this morning and her phone had continuously gone to voicemail. "I've been beside myself all morning; how difficult would it have been for you to just turn on your phone and let me know that you're alright? Honestly, Emma; do you think of no one but yourself?!"

"You kicked me out last night, Regina," Emma reminded her flatly, this look of disbelief on her face as she stalked past the woman in the doorway, heading towards the bathroom. "So excuse me if my first thought wasn't to call the woman who literally screamed in my face that she didn't want to see me."

"Then you could have at least called your parents—!"

"Fine, I fucked up!" Emma exclaimed in frustration once she grabbed the bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet, the pills rattling loudly in their container as she gestured dramatically. "Okay, I fucked up; is that what you want to hear? That's basically going to be what this whole therapy session is going to be about anyway, right; 'let's count the ways Emma has fucked up' so… Jesus, I can't— You have no idea what happened last night, and the last thing I want to fucking do is talk to you about it right now, so can you just piss off and give me five minutes of space until we're forced to hug and cry out our feelings? Christ."

Four pills were popped into the blonde's mouth then by a trembling hand, before she filled up a glass with water and began to drink. And drink. And drink… And oh god, what Regina was seeing in front of her started to make sense, this horrible kind of sense that made her stomach twist into knots and her heart beat harder in her chest and suddenly Regina felt like she couldn't breathe.

"…Take off your sunglasses."

"What?" Emma asked, rounding on her as she tried to look confused, but only seemed to look panicked instead. "No, I—I have a migraine, Regina; and the lights in here are bothering me, I don't want to—"

"Emma," Regina interrupted sternly, her voice wavering with upset as she struggled to keep her emotions in check, not wishing to bring the house down around them solely on a hunch that she wished, desperately, was wrong. Her voice was dangerously calm as she ordered, "Do as I ask, or I'm going to assume you have something to hide."

Emma stared at her for a long time, looking terrified beyond all measure as she chewed anxiously on the inside of her cheek. The wait was agonizing and did nothing but further the brewing disappointment in Regina's gut as it pointed to nothing else but a truth she didn't want to hear, yet needed to know all the same. And then slowly, finally, Emma reached up and slid them off the bridge of her nose. She wouldn't look at her though, and Regina's heart hammered in her chest as she reached forward and gently coaxed the blonde's gaze to meet her own.

She was immediately met with bloodshot eyes and a look of shame that left no question as to whether or not Emma's many symptoms were merely coincidental. It caused a tightness in Regina's chest that ached so fiercely that she couldn't even find it within herself to be angry; she was just so terribly disappointed and saddened. She was supposed to be better than this; stronger than this.

"I'm going to ask you this once," Regina began softly, her voice still level as she kept her fingers stilled on Emma's chin. She needed the physical connection, as it enabled her to keep her magic under control. "And if you lie to me, you and I are finished; do you understand me?"

Emma swallowed, her jaw beginning to tremble as her eyes brimmed with tears. But she nodded her understanding while Regina tried to ignore the growing pain in her chest, and as the first tear slid down the blonde's cheek, Regina quietly asked, "Did you drink last night?"

A shuddered sob echoed through the expanse of the tiny bathroom, and the question was followed by a nod that broke Regina's heart completely in half. And then suddenly Emma was grabbing for her in a frantic desperation, afraid that her admission had condemned her. "I'm sorry, Re—Regina," Emma pleaded through her tears, "Regina, please… please don't hate me…!"

She wanted to. Regina wanted to hate her, she wanted to be angry with her; to scream at her and curse and make the woman before her feel badly about what she had done. But she didn't; she couldn't. In a way it just made Regina feel completely empty, the disappointment that had seeded into her gut hollowing her out and just making her feel rather lethargic.

She shouldn't have gotten her hopes up.

"I don't hate you, Emma," Regina assured her in a voice that was detached and lifeless as she stared past the woman who was clinging to her to view their reflection in the mirror. It was such a tragically pathetic sight, but that was probably synonymous to their relationship at this point. "I'm disappointed in you. I thought you wanted to get better, but apparently… apparently I was wrong about that."

"I do!" Emma insisted, grabbing onto Regina's shirt in a desperate need to make her listen. "Regina don't—God, don't make me feel worse about this when I already fucking hate myself, okay?! I don't want this, I don't! This is shit, all of this is shit and yet I don't know what the fuck else to do anymore!"

Regina wanted to snipe that she could try not drinking herself into an early grave for starters, but she didn't have the effort. In a way it was like all of the hope she had inside of her that one day maybe, just maybe, they would be alright drained out of her all at once, leaving her kind of hollow and uncaring. Yes, Emma fucked up. Yes, it was terrible, but really… what else was new?

She should have known better.

The doorbell rang, and Regina pulled away from the crying woman who had been clambering all over her. "That would be Dr. Hopper," was all she said as she turned without another word on the subject of the blonde's mistake, allowing the numbness she felt to just settle in and take over.

And as Emma just fell to her haunches and tangled her hands in her hair as she continued to weep, Regina found that it was probably best this way, because feeling things was far worse than not feeling anything at all.

[x]

"You both are aware that I charge by the hour, correct?"

Silence.

It had been that way for nearly fifteen minutes now. The three of them were situated in Regina's parlor; the women on opposite sides of the couch, and Archie in an armchair across from them. Neither Emma nor Regina seemed to want to speak first, and Archie allowed the silence to go on, probably for curiosities sake as to how long it could continue. As it turned out, that was fairly long. However, this was clearly getting them nowhere, and so Archie tried to steer them into an actual conversation.

"Would either of you care to enlighten me as to what you were fighting about before I arrived?" Archie tried instead, which only made Regina straighten her back and side-glance the blonde beside her.

"We weren't fighting."

"No?" Archie questioned disbelievingly, his gaze landing on Emma for a moment. Her cheeks were still tear-stained as she leaned her elbow on the arm of the couch, fist pressed tightly up against her lips as she looked out the far window.

Still, they hadn't technically argued, and so Regina responded simply with, "No."

Silence fell over the room once more, except for the faint sound of sniffing from the blonde next to her. And then finally she spoke, however did not move nor turn to face them or the conversation. "I fucked up." The admission was soft, the words breaking in her throat from the shame and self-hatred they carried.

Regina wished that made a difference.

"How so?"

Emma pursed her lips, her thumbnail digging into her chin as she continued to avoid eye contact with the both of them. "I drank last night. I was supposed to… I had stopped. Before."

"I see." Archie straightened in his seat then and addressed, trying to get her attention, "Emma." She still wouldn't look at him though. Or at her. She just continued to stare out the window, and so Archie continued understandingly, "It's not uncommon to relapse during recovery; seventy five percent of alcoholics will relapse within their first year because they're still developing the coping skills needed in order to live a sober life. What's important, however, is that you recognize that it was a mistake."

Emma still said nothing, but Regina's chest constricted at the high percentage. She hadn't… she didn't realize it was that common. In the end though, did that really change anything? Emma still knew what she was doing was wrong while she did it; she still made the choice to drink. She had made the choice to destroy her own sobriety for the sake of making one singular moment in her life easier.

"Failing is not the same as being a failure, Emma."

"Really," Emma responded flatly, followed by a bitter laugh. "Because it sure as fuck feels like it."

Archie didn't contradict her feelings on the matter, only responding with a professional suggestion. "If you're not opposed to it, I think it might be beneficial if you allowed me to council you separately," he tried. "We don't have a drug and alcohol program in Storybrooke at the moment, but it seems to me that you're having trouble developing the tools you need in order to succeed with your sobriety. We could go over some coping skills to find what works and what doesn't for you, and perhaps with some help you might find your addiction a little easier to manage."

Emma chewed on the inside of her cheek as another tear slipped down her cheek, but as she sniffled and wiped it away with her hand, she turned toward him and nodded. "Yeah," she said softly. "Yeah, I can do that."

"Good," Archie replied, giving her an encouraging smile. And in a way it just made Regina feel terrible; watching Archie support Emma so freely when her first thought had been to completely give up on her. But God, she was just so tired of having to pick up the pieces of both herself and Emma, and should the blonde have continued binge drinking, it would have dragged Regina down to a place she didn't know if she could ever get up from. She didn't want that. She was terrified of that.

"I'm curious, however," Archie continued, now turning his attention to Regina, who immediately stiffened in defense, "about why that didn't seem to cause a fight between you both. I'm assuming this is a hardship in your relationship?"

Regina suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at that stupid question. "Obviously."

But before Archie could ask her to elaborate as to why it didn't cause an all-out screaming match, Emma interrupted with a sullen sounding, "She expected me to fuck up; that's why she didn't get mad."

"Of course I didn't!" Regina denied, even though saying it out loud made it feel like even more of a lie because yes, on some level, she did expect this. Not particularly that Emma would fuck up her sobriety, but that something would go wrong; because in their relationship when it rained, it poured. That's just the way it was.

"Then why the hell was your first thought that I never even wanted to get better?" Emma challenged, looking as though that, more than anything else, cut her into pieces. "God, you fucking— you practically reject me yesterday, betray my trust again, and now I find out that you don't even believe in me? And you wonder why I'm fucked up, Regina? Jesus fucking Christ!"

"Reject you?" Regina repeated disbelievingly, practically laughing at the woman's ludicrous claim. "Since you've clearly forgotten, it was you who fucked me and then left like I was nothing more than what's between my legs! How on earth do you think that made me feel? If you want to talk about betrayed—"

"You told her!" Emma shouted, pointing at her accusingly as upset washed across her face. "I trusted you and you told her! And now I don't know if what they're saying is even true, or just some bullshit to try to make me feel better! You took that from me, Regina; you fucking took that from me!"

"Ladies, please!" Archie interrupted, trying to slow down the blame game for one moment before everything exploded. Quite possibly literally. "Please," he repeated, a little calmer now that both women were just staring at one another; Emma's expression filled with blame, and Regina's with surprise and upset. God, she didn't think Snow would have been so stupid as to tell her… "Let's try to focus on one thing at a time."

Emma bit the inside of her cheek as she shook her head and looked away, looking thoroughly betrayed. Regina swallowed the lump in her throat, suddenly feeling guilty for what she thought at the time was the right thing to do. Clearly, however, she had been wrong; it seemed to have upset Emma more than if she had just left it alone.

"Emma," Archie addressed first. "You spoke of feeling rejected; do you want to elaborate on that?"

Emma took a deep breath and rapidly blinked her eyes, no doubt trying to keep her tears at bay before she answered him. "We had sex yesterday afternoon, and she… okay, we've always had violent sex, you know? That's just what we've done since the beginning of our relationship, so it's not like I hate it or whatever but just—fuck."

Sighing heavily, Emma continued, gesturing wildly with her hands, "Like I thought that the whole fucking point of all this, of her trying to get me to forgive her, was so that we might actually stand a chance at being normal again, and yet when I'm finally in this place where I want her for her, and not just some kind of fucked up escape for my problems, it's like she put up this wall to keep me out. And that's just screwed up because now I'm starting to think that she's just trying to hurt me like I hurt her, and—"

"Not everything is about you, Emma!" Regina snapped, offended that she would ever think that she would be so callous. "You're not the only one with trust issues now; you're not the only one who got their heart broken that day! How can you honestly expect for me to allow you to make love to me when you still can't even forgive me for what I've done? I have the right to only give myself in that way to someone I'm in a relationship with, to someone who's committed to being with me, and not just someone who's latched on to me solely because it's the only thing they know!"

"I'm sorry," Archie interrupted, his brow furrowing in confusion. "You're saying the two of you are not in a relationship anymore?"

"Do you blame her, Bug?" Regina shot back, trying desperately to keep her anger and upset under control, but she could feel her magic pulsing at the surface, begging to be released. It was a fight she knew she would lose, yet struggled with all the same; for their sake, not for her own. "The Evil Queen is not loved by anyone. Of course she left me; I'm everything the goodness inside her despises."

"Right, because the drunken, self-loathing Savior of your stupid fairytale is obviously made of fucking rainbows and sunshine," Emma snapped back furiously, like she couldn't believe Regina would separate them like that; at least not anymore.

But why wouldn't she? Emma might be a miserable alcoholic, but Regina was a murderer and a tyrant. They were not on the same level; they weren't even close.

"I'm not here to judge, Regina," Archie reminded her calmly, keeping focused on the former queen for a moment. "And I'm certainly not here to persecute you. You asked for counseling for yours and Emma's relationship, and that is what I'm here for; it is your opinion that matters right now, not my own."

Regina merely pursed her lips and stayed silent as she shook her head, leaning back against the couch. She didn't want to look at them. Weighing herself next to Emma like that reminded her quite quickly of her own lack of self-worth, and in an effort to not revert back to feeling as though she were beneath Emma and unworthy of her affections, Regina turned her attention to the large window in the corner. The mantra of you are good enough was repeated in her head over and over, in the hopes that maybe, at least once, it would finally ring true.

Emma may no longer be on this pedestal of goodness and light, but she was hardly down in the depths with her either. Still, nothing good came from Regina acting as though she was less than the alcoholic mess on the couch next to her, as it only furthered the broken nature of their relationship. They were both fucked up; perhaps in very different ways, but neither of them needed to be placed above the other, as relationships were about partnership. Equality.

It seemed that as of yet, however, they had both been unable to come to an agreement upon which equal footing to stand.

"Before we continue, however, there's something I need to know," Archie addressed them both, causing two heads to turn in his direction. "I was under the assumption that you were still in a relationship, but that clearly isn't the case. As such, I'm wondering what you both are hoping to achieve with therapy; are you merely wishing to coexist peacefully for the sake of your shared son, or are you hoping to mend your broken relationship and be together again?"

Silence.

This time it was deafening, suffocating; it felt as though it pushed all the air from Regina's lungs as Archie posed a question that sounded simple, yes… but was so very, very far from it. Both she and Emma had agreed that they were clearly bound together, and as such there was no escaping each other's lives, but did that mean that they had to be together? Did they even want to be together anymore, or would they rather just learn to deal with each other's presence in their lives without complicating it with romance and sex?

Archie seemed to notice the panicked expressions on both of their faces, and tried to assure them, "There is no right or wrong answer; it merely determines how I will approach our counseling sessions, that is all."

No, that certainly was not all.

If they answered differently, things were not going to get better; they were only going to get worse. One if not both of them were bound to get hurt, and as such, neither women seemed keen to be the first to speak. They kept stealing hesitant glances towards one another, Regina chewing on her bottom lip until it nearly bled, and Emma wringing her hands together in her lap with an extreme sense anxiety and fear that practically enveloped the rest of the room.

And yet, in the end, it was she who spoke first.

"I want… her. I need her," Emma said finally, sounding as though her nerves were shot to hell from drudging up the courage to be the first to speak. Her hands were starting to tremble and her gaze found Regina's, her eyes screaming with so much fear of rejection that it stole the breath from the brunette's lungs. "I need you," she repeated, trying to sound stronger. "I—I love you… like more than anything in this whole fucking world, you know? And—"

"Emma…"

"And I want—I need this to be fixed," Emma corrected herself halfway though, her anxiety only coming to light now in the tight way that she continued to wring her hands together as she spoke, for her voice had finally become steady and firm with a sudden conviction. "I need to learn to forgive you."

Regina felt like she couldn't breathe. After everything that had happened, she didn't honestly expect—

"Because I want to be with you again, Regina. I want you to be mine again…"

TBC…