The light from the fire cast a flickering glow on Regina's face as she spoke. Her voice seemed like a relentless energy, cutting through the night air and into Emma's brain. Her tone never wavering and always steady and the blonde found that she had to believe her.
"So Cora hated my grandmother, Ava?"
"Yes."
"And so she killed her?"
"Yes." The brunette said again.
"To manipulate your marriage to the king, my grandfather?"
"Yes."
Emma slid off the log to sit on the ground with her back pressed to it. "Was it uncommon for a man that age to marry an eighteen year old girl?"
Regina regarded her carefully. "I suppose not all that uncommon."
"He raped you." Emma said dully and watched the woman shudder slightly.
"He did."
"And you killed him."
"I did."
"I would have too." She surprised them both by saying. "Did Snow know?"
"Never."
"Why didn't you tell her? Wouldn't it have hurt her? She believed her father a saint, right?"
"Exactly, she wouldn't have believed it anyway." The brunette said bitterly.
"You pushed your mother through the looking glass just before the wedding and she became the Queen of Hearts." Emma murmured. "But not before she took Daniel's heart."
Regina had skimmed over this part but knew the relentless blonde would want all the details. "Yes." She grudgingly explained the circumstances to Emma in a dull, emotionless voice.
"You hated my mother." The blonde stared into the fire when the woman had finished talking. "But you hated more what she represented, I think."
"How so?" At the same time that Regina felt a sense of mortification at handing her once-greatest enemy all the information she could ever want, she also felt something…right about the circumstances. It was as if it was all finally out and open and that now, perhaps, with all things understood, they could move forward. Perhaps, Regina herself could move forward.
"Well," Emma glanced up to see curiosity and not hostility on the woman's dark face. "She betrayed your most precious possession to your worst enemy. She solidified your fate with the king and by extension, your fate of being under the control of Cora. Her actions didn't just lose you Daniel, they lost you everything."
"True. Up until this point, I could write off my Mother's actions as having good intentions. After she killed Daniel, however, I couldn't justify murder and especially not his murder. I was now completely under her control and trapped in a loveless marriage." Regina felt bare and vulnerable before the blonde and fear plucked at her stomach.
"Henry needs to know all of this, Regina."
The brunette's head snapped up. "No-"
"I'll keep it to myself." Emma interrupted. "But he needs you to open up to him like this."
"I was simply giving you a history because you asked for it."
"That's fine." Emma dismissed with a roll of her eyes that did nothing but serve to agitate the brunette further. "But as I said before, your history is our history. It would mean a lot to him to hear your side of the story."
"You believe me, then?"
"Do you care?"
"Of course not." The brunette huffed slightly but the blonde smiled knowingly.
"Yes, I believe you because you're not the same woman that cursed an entire population of people, Regina."
"Oh?"
"No, I'll not forget that you saved us as we came through the portal or that you were willing to sacrifice yourself for the entire town by soaking up that diamond's energy."
"I think you are forgetting all the evils I committed while my mother was in town."
"Yes….but…" Emma sighed. "But people do crazy things when they're trying to earn love. I was a kid in the system; I know what that kind of desperation looks like."
Regina found that the blonde's words hit too close to home. "I was not an orphan, Miss Swan."
"You might as well have been." Emma shrugged. "You and I are not so different, you know?"
"Oh yes, other than grace, style, tact, and maturity I would say we are exactly alike."
"Exactly." Emma smirked.