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"When I was given the dark curse- When I took it, I was told that enacting it would leave a hole in my heart that could never be filled. So I took it out. You can't put a hole in something that's no longer there." They were sitting foot to foot across from one another, backs against the cramped walls of the heart chamber. Henry's flashlight was clutched to his chest and pointing up at his chin, as one might do when telling stories in the dark, forgotten as he soaked up every bit of the new information she was imparting to him. She had her own head tilted back against the cold, unforgiving stone, so that she might stare at the ceiling rather than look him in the eye.

"I... I got used to it not being there. Everything was just so much easier with my pain muted and distant. So I never put it back. But Henry, if we break the curse and we get sent back to the old world and I don't have it-"

"You could die." He sounded so small, his eyes wide at the prospect.

Regina hadn't thought of that actually, more concerned with who might get their hands on it, but she supposed it could be possible. Everything she had brought over with her had been very carefully arranged prior to the curse's enactment. The same wouldn't be true in reverse. The heart in it's little golden box might remain behind, in which case the threads binding organ to body could very well be severed.

"Yes."

"Then we'll just have to get it back. Do you know who would have taken it?" His voice grew stronger, determined, at the prospect of a mission. A quest.

"I have an inkling." Who else really? Who else would guess at what actions she might take to preserve her heart and then know where to look? He knew her so well, had always done from the first time he had stood before her, offering power to a scared young girl who'd thought her only recourse was to run away. Because he was, as he'd said, 'Invested in her future.'

"Then let's go!" Henry scrambled to his feet, nearly tripping over his laces in his excitement. He'd left them untied again, though she had told him a hundred times and more not to. "What are you waiting for?"

"It's not that easy, Henry. He'll know we're coming." He had orchestrated everything else, after all. She couldn't imagine what his end-game might be but he obviously had a plan, one that he had been working on for a very long time. "He's going to want something. He always does."

She didn't want to say it, wasn't anywhere near self sacrificing enough to put it into words, but she suspected it was probably something that wouldn't be worth it in the grand scheme of things. Something simple on the surface that would only bring her little family further pain.

"We need Emma. She's the Savior, right?"

"Right." She had been hoping, really, that Emma would never know. Armed with her newly restored heart she would go to her, share their first and last kiss and it would be done. She would run if she was lucky (Or be executed if she wasn't.). She would never have to explain the things that she had done. She wouldn't have to see the look in the blonde's eyes when she realised fate had handed her a 'one true love' that was tainted. It would hurt; a life without the one woman in all the worlds who was meant just for her and the son they shared between them wouldn't be worth much at all, but then hadn't her entire life been about pain?

That wouldn't be happening anymore. Henry would never be able to sit on his new knowledge quietly. It might be nice, anyway, to have someone to support her, just this once. "Right. I'll have to tell her... Everything."

"True love is stronger than anything right?" Henry said, smiling in a sweet, hopeful way, completely unaware of the knife those words made to twist within her. Had everyone known before her? "So it'll be okay."

Maybe. Or maybe the truth would have Emma running for the hills and none of it would matter anyway.

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When Emma awoke, the repetitive music of the DVD's main menu just annoying enough to pull her out of her dreams in spite of her exhaustion (For all her bluster, Mary Margaret's words had stayed with her all night, causing her to toss and turn as she entertained dangerous 'what if's.) she realized she was alone.

Regina hadn't returned and Henry had presumably gone up to bed.

She stretched languidly, peering once again at the screen of her cell but there were no waiting alerts to tell her she had missed any calls or messages. She hadn't wanted to jump to any conclusions earlier, after all it wasn't so unheard of that her always busy lover would have gone off to run errands and lost track of the time. Now, however, with the hour growing close to nine, she was beginning to experience genuine concern. It seemed unlikely that she wouldn't be called if there had been some sort of accident, being the Sheriff, but that didn't stop the worry from niggling at her, gnawing at her stomach.

She made a few attempts at calling the other woman that went unsuccessful before resolving that there was nothing for it but to take the cruiser around town once. Just to make sure the Mayor's little black Mercedes wasn't off in a ditch somewhere.

Deciding to tell Henry, so he didn't wake and find himself unexpectedly alone, she clomped up the stairs and knocked gently on his slightly cracked door before peeking her head inside. "Hey kid, you're mom's still not back and I thought I'd drive around and see-" She trailed off, seeing that his bed lay empty, still neatly made. The fairy tale book was there, flipped open to some story illustrated with a picture of a wolf, but there was no sign of the little boy who loved it so much.

It didn't take much checking to determine that Henry was no longer in the house. For perhaps the first time she fully appreciated the panic Regina must have experienced each and every time the boy had snuck out on her. Shit. Where the hell would he have gone, so late at night?

Emma took the stairs two at a time as she ran back down to the foyer to throw the front door open, flicking through the contact list on her phone as she went. Regina's number rang and rang, finally going to voice mail for the umpteenth time, and Emma almost threw it in frustration. "Look, I don't know what the hell your deal is but Henry's run off and-"

There was a brief flare of head lights and then the sleek black car screeched around the corner, nearly blinding Emma as it pulled into the drive way.

"Never mind, there you are. About fucking time." Emma snapped her phone shut and shoved it in the back pocket of her jeans before she leapt off the porch. "Hey, what the hell-"

The car's back door flew open, emitting a little blur of brown hair and red scarf that rushed straight into her arms with a solidness that had the air rushing out of her lungs. Emma looked down to see Henry's big, dark eyes staring earnestly up at her, his hands clutching at the red leather of her jacket. "Henry? What-"

"Emma, Emma, we have to get it back! Her heart we have to get it- somebody stole it and- the curse! We have to get it!"

"Slow down, kid. Who stole what where now?"

"Henry, let her breathe. I think we'd best go inside for this, dear, you'd be better off to be sitting."

Emma glanced up distractedly to meet eyes so brown they seemed black in the lack of light. Regina was watching them from a distance, hesitant, almost as though she were afraid to get too close. "Yeah, okay. You alright?"

Regina's head jerked in a motion that wasn't exactly a nod while Henry continued to squeeze the life out of her and Emma was far from reassured.

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"This is crazy. You've got- You're ill, whatever it was Graham had somehow you've caught it. People can't live without hearts. Besides, I know you've got one." Emma glanced surreptitiously at Henry, sitting on the couch beside her, weary of innocent little ears. "I've felt it."

"You've felt the curse. Because you don't believe. You expect to hear it beating so you do but I assure you, there's nothing there."

"The curse? Are you seriously trying to tell me you're some sort of... Fairy tale evil queen? Really?" Emma looked round at Henry but of course he wasn't going to back her up, he believed in all of this too.

"Yes. Because of me, you were sent to this world alone while your parents slept unaware in a town that I constructed to be their prison. Because of me we're all trapped. Everything Henry has told you is true."

Emma was appalled to realize that her 'super power', the lie detector that had never, ever failed her before wasn't pinging. Not even a wiggle. Regina believed what she was saying, every word. There was nothing of the fever that had possessed Graham in her eyes, nothing but deadly calm.

"This is crazy."

"We can fix it. We can fix all of it. But first-"

"You have to save her, Emma, you're the savior you have to. I don't want her to die."

It was this last that moved her, made her reach out to curl her fingers against the breast bone she had thought herself so familiar with. The thought that there was nothing there, beneath the flesh and bone... She pressed her palm flat against the skin there, pushing the silky blouse the woman wore to the side so that she could shift to the left. She'd kissed Regina here, licked, nipped and marked, never really understanding the fixation her lover seemed to have but moved by the sweetness of it. Both of Regina's hands moved to cover hers, pressing it close. She waited, hardly daring to breath lest she miss it, but the sound she had grown accustomed to never came. There was no steady throb, no fluttering beat. Just thick, crushing silence.

"You see? Just an illusion. Like most everything else in this town. You have to understand, Emma... I won't apologize for what I did. I wouldn't have Henry and I wouldn't have you if I hadn't. But I am sorry that it hurt you."

Emma couldn't even begin to process the implications. If this was all true, if it was all real, then the woman sitting in front of her, the woman that she loved though she had yet to say so outside the confines of her own head, had ripped out the heart of her own father to set in motion the events that had brought them here. Her mother was across town, worrying about the roommate she thought was making a terrible mistake, completely unaware that said roommate was her daughter. The only shrink in town was a cricket. And somehow she was the one who was expected to save them all.

'You're the hero, right? Save her.'

She decided to focus on the immediate problem, the one she maybe had some hope of solving. She didn't know anything about breaking curses, but finding things she could do. "What do we do?"

"Tonight? Nothing. It'll keep. He's likely had it for a while now, if he wanted to kill me outright he would have done it." Emma wanted to ask who 'he' was but didn't think she could handle another revelation so soon. Was Marco's alter ego a kleptomaniac with a penchant for the hearts of evil queens? Leroy? Ruby? The more she thought about it the more ridiculous her brain's suggestions became.

"Anyway, it's well past some-one's bedtime. We can worry about strategy in the morning."

Henry groaned. "How can I possibly sleep now?"

Emma smiled, glad for something normal to latch on to. "Easy. You lay in bed and count sheep until it's morning."

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"What does it feel like?" Emma asked later as they lay in bed, facing one another but a good foot of space serving as a buffer between them. She couldn't quite bring herself to bridge the distance, still half terrified of what she wouldn't hear.

"Numb. My feelings are still there but it's like... Looking at them from a distance. Some are stronger than others. Love. Anger. That's almost like it was before. Some hit me fast and sudden but then they're gone again."

"Why now? I mean, what changed? Why did you decide to tell me... Tell me the truth? Was it just because of-" She gestured vaguely at Regina's chest, "It going missing or-"

"When I was young, I knew this boy. He was a sweet, kind, beautiful boy and I loved him dearly. After he died, I tried desperately to get that feeling back. Happiness. I did... So many things. None of them worked." Regina reached for her, trailing her fingertips through an unruly lock of blond hair. "Imagine my surprise to realise it had found me, after all this time. Right here. With Henry. And with you. This world has a saying, an old adage. I find it apt. 'When you love something, set it free.'"

Emma's breath caught in her throat. "I love you too, you know."

"I know."