Regina doesn't offer to send them back to the castle with magic and Emma has too much on her mind to even consider asking it, so instead she leads the way through Belle's passage under the castle. Henry and Regina follow, Henry still tightly tucked under Regina's arm, and Snow trails behind them all.

Emma doesn't dare look back at any of them. Rumpelstiltskin's malicious laugh is still ringing in her ears, and her mind's eye wars between images of Snow's paling face and Regina's stiff back. Too much has happened today, and the picture she clings to right now is the only one that can keep her going- Regina, beaming at a little girl with a wreath crowning her head. Peace. Simplicity. Hope.

Three things she can't imagine having anymore, and she gazes far into the dimly lit cavern, willing herself to clear her mind, to calm herself before she panics and runs. She can feel the urge already, the terror of just too much that threatens to overwhelm her, and this time there's no Regina to steady her and keep her going or even care if she leaves. The silence is oppressive, her thoughts suffocating, and she thinks she'd have run already if she had somewhere to go.

They're nearly back to the castle when she hears a quickened pace behind her, padding along the corridor behind her with new urgency. "Emma." Snow's voice is low as she hurries to catch up. "I'd like to talk to you."

"Not now." She's too focused on listening to her own breathing right now, to block out the intrusive knowledge that dogs her every step. She isn't ready for this discussion.

She can hear Snow's voice crack. "Emma-"

"She said not now!" snaps a second voice from behind them, and Emma finally turns so she can watch Regina, the queen's eyes still dark and heavy with anger and confusion and desperation as she barks out the order at her former rival.

Snow's eyes flash with equal emotion. "Oh, yes, because you're the one she needs help from right now."

"She doesn't need a mother who's abandoned her and lied to her since," Regina retorts, and Emma flinches at the words she hasn't said yet, now echoing in the dark caverns around them. "What new sanctimony have you finagled to keep your conscience lily-white now, Snow?"

Snow takes a step forward to Emma, but she ducks away, concentrating on the road ahead of them instead of the way her…mother's face falls. "I lost her because of you!" Righteous anger, hot and reawakened. "You took her from me, and you would try it again now, you…you evil witch!"

A sob rises in Snow's throat, but Regina is unfazed, her lips curling into a smirk. "I never had to take her this time, Snow. She came to me running." Henry grabs one hand in time but the other is already lighting up with crackling magic, illuminating the shadows of Regina's face as a malevolent smile dances across her features.

"Okay! Okay." Emma rubs her temples, a new headache settling between them. "Enough already, both of you."

"She's a murderer, Emma." The grief for Grumpy still shines in Snow's eyes, and Emma swallows the bile that still churns in her stomach at the reminder. "Do you understand now what she's capable of? What she's done to you already?"

Regina isn't smirking anymore, and the magic is dissipating in her hand as she clenches it into a fist. "My quarrel was always with you, Snow. You made your own decisions regarding Em-" She pauses, inhaling deeply as the last of her magic winks out of existence. "Regarding the savior."

"I don't…I don't have time for this right now." Emma bites down on her lip so hard that she tastes blood. "We need to get Henry to a doctor." She's never been so desperate to see Frankenstein before, to get out of this claustrophobic tunnel with three pairs of eyes on her, knowing, fighting, expecting her to make decisions now after today's revelations.

Henry. Henry has to be their priority over these squabbles, and both of the other women start guiltily and nod, Snow shamefaced and Regina sharply determined. "Of course."

They're nearing the end of the passageway when Emma thinks to worry about Belle, imprisoned in that cell with no escape and a queen with a grudge dangerously close. It's too late to turn back, though, and when she pushes the door open with some trepidation, the room is empty.

"Rumpel knew we'd come this way," Regina notes in response to a question that Emma hasn't asked. "He's orchestrated everything we've done today. All according to his grand plan."

"I thought his grand plan was killing us all in the tavern."

Snow shakes her head. "Killing Regina might not break the curse." And their eyes are all back on Emma again, anticipating…something, some magical answer as frustrating as their desire for it, and Emma quickens her pace to the door of the cell.

It's unlocked, and there's the dawning knowledge again that they're all just following a blueprint set up by the only person in town more powerful than Regina, with an agenda they've barely glimpsed and can't possibly understand. All according to his grand plan.

If Rumpelstiltskin's grand plan involves getting Henry medical treatment, Emma doesn't give a damn about the rest of it right now.

"Stop pacing," Regina barks out, glaring at Emma, and Emma pauses for a moment before pent-up frustration has her twitching again, her feet circling unconsciously toward one end of the room and then the other. "Miss Swan!"

"How do we know he'll be safe here? Has Frankenstein ever healed anyone before? Is he going to have-" She traces stitches across her arm, remembering a movie and a stable boy both who'd been less than encouraging pictures of the doctor's abilities. "Can't your magic do more?" Regina had finally been able to start the healing process on Henry once they'd made it upstairs to the doctor, but now he's in one of the rooms sectioned off for patients, getting his arm wrapped properly and set up for the night.

Regina's eyes soften the barest bit. "I know you're concerned," she allows. "But the doctor is quite capable. This isn't the first time Henry's ever been injured."

"And no stitching together." She hasn't noticed any mysterious markings on Henry before, but she hadn't thought to look for them until now.

"No stitching together." Regina rises. "There's no need to remain here. I have the utmost confidence in Dr. Frankenstein. And we have more urgent matters to address now." She vanishes into Henry's room for a moment, speaking in a low voice to the doctor, and walks out past Emma and a silent Snow without a second glance at either.

"What do you think she's up to?" Snow ventures finally, after the doctor has returned to another patient and they both stop by Henry's room. "She can't defeat the Dark One. No one can."

"I don't know." Henry is already asleep, favoring his left side so his heavily bandaged right arm lies awkwardly across the rest of the bed. His forehead is creased with worry even in sleep, and Emma moves to smooth his brow, crouching down beside him and laying her head down against his mattress.

Snow watches her, hands twisting together and apart and together again, drawing patterns against her palm with her thumb. "He wanted to wait to tell you. He didn't think you'd accept the truth about yourself if you were told it too soon."

"I don't want to talk about this."

"I thought he was right," Snow presses on. "I should never have kept it from you, Emma. I know that now. But I thought…I also thought you needed time. And you were doing so much good without that pressure on you, without knowing about your destiny."

Emma stares blankly ahead, willing herself to allow the words to wash over her as she turns to the door. Not now not now notnow–

But Snow keeps going, encouraged by her silence. "I always needed hope as my crutch, always needed to believe in something better to be better. But you were so strong on your own. You were so good and so quick to become the savior you didn't know you should be that telling you would have only been a hindrance."

She stumbles over her words, stifling a choked sob. "I wanted nothing more than to let you know you were my daughter, Emma! I love you so much and I know, I know you're angry with me for lying to you until now, but-"

And to her horror, Emma can feel the tears threatening to escape, leaking through and obstructing her throat and closing their unforgiving grip around her heart. "Stop!" she cries out. "Stop saying this, stop making excuses!" She slaps ineffectually at her wet eyes. "I don't care about that. I don't care about the lies and the truth and the fucking destiny you all keep insisting I have."

"Emma…" Snow puts a hand on her shoulder, her eyes glittering with pain. "If there's anything I can do to make things better…I want to give you the life you've deserved until now. The life Regina stole from us."

"No," Emma chokes out. "No, this Regina didn't take from us." And how many times has she heard this story from Snow, has she wondered about a daughter so readily given up for the sake of the fate of the kingdom? She's comforted Snow when the other woman had called herself selfish, she's told her that she had no other choice…but it's another matter entirely when she knows that she's that daughter, that she had parents who'd claimed to love her but surrendered her all the same to an alien world where she might have died right there on the road. A decision for the good of a kingdom, not a family. Not Emma.

Snow had had enough faith in destiny and fate to believe that Emma would survive and return, the foretold hero. And Emma had spent twenty-eight years alone because of it, shuttled from place to place with not a soul to love or be loved by her in the meantime. "This was all you," she whispers, and maybe it's irrational when Snow has been right, when she's alive and healthy and back with Snow now, but she can't stop the flood of tears that finally emerge as she dashes from the doctor's lab and down the stairs, away from Snow's pleading apologies and justifications.

She has her hand on Regina's door before she remembers that she can't go there, either, that Snow's betrayal hadn't been the first of the day. That her own betrayal had immediately followed Regina's, and the queen would have no desire to give her her bed or embrace tonight.

She's never felt so alone here before, dashing through hallways with tear-clouded eyes and knowing that there's no one else, not a person in this castle or town who she can go to. She's on her own again after months belonging to a family she's loved, and it's never felt quite this painful before, now that she knows what she might have had.

She's already down the stairs and standing in the center of the hall, facing Prince Charming's statue, when she's able to gather her breath for the first time, to blink the tears from her eyes and focus on the features carved out of stone before her. She has his face, she thinks, more so than Snow's. She can't say for sure that they share complexions when his is grey and stiff, but their eyes are the same, and their noses, and lips…

She touches her own mouth, studying the pattern of his. The smile softening his features, building satisfaction out of his determination. He had been facing Regina right then, hadn't he? He'd known that they'd lost and the curse was on its way, the evil queen standing before him about to turn him to stone, and he'd smiled.

She understands with a sudden flash of insight. Because of me. Charming's face is the face of a man who's managed to complete his final task, to secure away the child meant to save them all. His faith is as unwavering as Snow's without the stifling presence of it, and she steps forward to press a hand against his chest.

The first time she'd seen him, she'd mistaken his clothing for armor, hard and the silver of stone, but now she can tell that it's only an open shirt, vulnerable and exposed. He hadn't been prepared for a battle the day he'd been turned into stone. He'd only been thinking of his newborn daughter.

His smile is for her and now she's leaking tears again, crying at something that isn't even real, a father she's never met who's just as distant now as ever, who'd wholeheartedly believed that sending her away had been the right thing to do. Who would smile for twenty-eight years for the daughter who'd managed to escape his fate.

She doesn't want the burden of this destiny thrust upon her, doesn't want to be reduced to the deus ex machina of the curse rather than a human being, a woman who'd been in control of her own life and decisions until now. She doesn't want to be an object, and maybe it's just as terrifying to contemplate saviorhood as it is the fact that Snow and Henry have known all along, that they've been looking at her through the lens of her purported destiny until now.

How much of their love and acceptance and eagerness has been about her, and how much has been about her destiny? How much of their image of her has been dependent on her breaking the curse?

How much of their love will she lose when they finally realize that she has no idea how to break it, that she's no savior, after all?

She inhales one deep, shuddering breath and retreats back up the stairs, trudging toward the room that is still hers, even though she hasn't slept there in weeks. She's tired, drained physically and emotionally, and it's probably time to follow Henry's lead and collapse into a bed for the night.

The sun must have set sometime during their trip through the mines and the upper floors of the castle are dimly lit and nearly empty- emptier, in fact, than Emma's seen them in a long time, and she furrows her brow, too tired to put much thought into that oddity. Had there been any guards by the castle doors, or outside the doctor's rooms?

No, there hadn't. The castle has been entirely bereft of servants of any kind since they'd returned.

If there's a coup in the works, Regina should know, and Emma sighs as she pushes open the door to her room, resigning herself to another confrontation she isn't prepared for. She just needs some water, something to force her awake, and she reaches out blindly in the dark of her room to find her way along the wall to her bathroom when she hears the sound of another person breathing.

"Who's there?" But now she can make out the figure on the bed, silhouetted in the moonlight trickling into the room, her hair free from its elaborate coif and her hands tight around herself as Regina rises from the bed to meet her. "Regina-"

Regina crosses the room in quick steps and then she's cradling Emma's face in her hands as she leans forward, pressing her lips against Emma's so quickly that Emma can only stand still without response. Her eyes close despite herself as she kisses Regina back with an urgency matching the queen's, forcing her lips apart and drinking her in desperately, tasting her with a helplessness she can't hold back.

Regina is an addiction, one she's needed today more than ever- and that's halfway because of Regina, because the woman still holding her so delicately as though she might shatter in her grasp should be out of reach to her forever; and whatever this is, Emma knows it can't last, knows that it's an illusion in the moonlight that will vanish again in the harsh light of day- and she can't let go, can't keep herself from clinging to the other woman and the fleeting comfort her embrace offers.

She winds one arm around Regina's waist, blinking back new tears as they come, and with her other hand strokes the queen's hair, reveling in the gentleness of this final embrace as Regina's lips attack hers again and again, the insistence of her kisses in direct contrast to the soft hands still pressed to her cheeks. "Please," Regina whimpers, and Emma doesn't understand, doesn't comprehend what Regina wants, why she won't stop kissing her, why she can taste the salty tang of tears on her lips with every touch of the queen's. "Please, I want…"

Emma catches a tear with her thumb and wipes it away, smoothing hair matted with tears behind Regina's ears as she struggles to recall why she shouldn't. "What is it?" she murmurs against Regina's mouth, and Regina shudders against her as she kisses her again, chaste and repeatedly as though there's something she's taking from Emma every time they touch, something she needs more than life itself.

"Freedom," Regina whispers. "Freedom from this wretched curse at last." She attacks Emma with teeth and tongue this time, and Emma's too startled to respond in any way but to mold herself against the queen, the tears now running freely down Regina's cheeks against her fingers and her heart threatening to burst as she manages to take in short breaths before Regina's lips envelop her again. "Freedom from queenship. Freedom from being loathed…" The tips of her fingers are moving in unconscious circles within Emma's curls as she murmurs, "Freedom from being loathsome."

"Regina." It's a sigh and a moan and a release all in one, and Emma wants to sag against Regina, wants to pull her down onto her bed and hold her forever. Instead she presses her cheek to Regina's neck, pulling free from Regina's hands as she buries her face in the queen's shoulder and they sway together in the moonlight. "Regina, what are-"

"Why won't it work?" Regina demands brokenly, and she's kissing the top of Emma's head now, kissing her hair and her ears and the back of neck, kissing every inch of Emma she can touch with her lips. "If you're the savior, why won't it break?"

"Oh. Oh." And now Emma really does guide them to the bed, too weary to stand anymore with the weight of this. She sits, twining her fingers with Regina's as she presses her lips against Regina's forehead, feeling the other woman trembling against her skin. "True Love's Kiss, right?"

"Can break any curse," Regina rasps through her tears. "But not mine." She pulls their intertwined fingers to her lips and presses another kiss to the place where Emma's palm meets her wrist, and Emma can still feel tears sliding down along her arm. "Not this. Not for us."

Her eyes are agonized, reflecting moonlight and despair and craving, craving for the freedom Emma's only ever wanted to gift her with; and now she knows that the tools are in her hands but they're not working, not saving the fallen queen or the savior who would love her. She dives forward, smashes her lips against Regina's with the same need and wills magic to come forth, to do whatever it's supposed to do to end this curse.

Okay, destiny, you win. I give up. Do your worst. But destiny doesn't take hold and soon bitter tears are slipping down her face, mingling with Regina's where they're still pressed together, and Emma pulls away to tilt her forehead to meet Regina's as she sighs out her defeat.

"True Love's Kiss, huh," she finally thinks to whisper, cupping a hand against the fine curve of Regina's jaw. "True…love?"

Regina shifts away from her, her gaze suddenly wary under the sheen of tears. "I thought it was worth an attempt."

"Mm." And it's unfair to do this now, now when she can finally summon up the image of Regina twisting a hand and ending Grumpy's life on a whim, when she finally remembers the horrific realization that Regina is evil, but it's just as unbearable to see her at her most vulnerable and keep a truth Emma can't deny from her. "Yeah. Yeah, it was."

Regina turns back, her eyes very bright. "Oh?"

"I'm just…" Emma stares down at their joined hands. "I never wanted to hurt you." She pauses. "Well. I did at first. But not once we…once you…" She struggles to find impossible words and settles instead on, "And you still thought True Love's Kiss would work, even after what you know about me now?"

Regina is staring at her when she looks up again. "I don't think I could ever stop loving you, Emma," she says quietly, and they sit in silence for a long moment, Emma toying with Regina's fingers instead of speaking.

When she finally does say something, it's regretful but firm. "You killed Grumpy."

"Yes."

"You've killed a lot of people, haven't you."

Regina's hands are still loose in hers. "Yes."

"I thought you'd changed. For Henry and…"

"And for you," Regina curls her fingers around Emma's, stilling them. "I would have done anything for you."

Emma's voice is hoarse. "Would have?" It's the one thing she fears even more than giving up on Regina- Regina giving up on herself- and she's out of ideas, out of reasons for Regina to change that don't involve promises she can't keep.

She receives only a sad smile in return. "I don't think it's enough, do you? It's time I became something better for myself." Regina shakes her head. "I despise this kingdom and I despise Snow White-" She barks out an caustic laugh. "-Your mother-" And Emma nearly laughs in turn at the absurdity of it all before Regina's face grows serious again. "But I've grown sick to death of despising myself."

"Regina…" And she has to be honest, she can't lead her on; and for herself and for Henry and for Regina, she can't base their relationship on her expectations. Not again, not after what had happened this last time she'd believed too deeply and fallen prey to hope. "I can't…"

Regina kisses her again, skims her hands under Emma's shirt as though she's memorizing the warmth of her skin against hers, and Emma closes her eyes and thinks of Regina staring down at the dwarf's body, thinks of her lashing out with anger at someone the queen herself had thought innocent days before.

He'd been as innocent as Emma, anyway, involved with the resistance but not the bomb they'd set off, and he's the reason Regina and Henry had survived when the…

The…

Something is niggling at her, something that doesn't quite add up, and she pulls away from Regina to ask, "That explosion…it wasn't magical, was it?"

Regina shakes her head, frowning at her line of thought. "If there had been magic in it, Henry and I would have been gone the moment it struck. Rumpel did mean for us to survive it, it seems."

"But it…" She remembers stepping over a metal shell as they'd left the tavern and thinking little of it, too distracted by everything else going on to worry about the machinery that had caused it all. "It wasn't from this world." The design had looked old-fashioned from the glimpse she'd gotten and the explosion hadn't been half as devastating as movie bombs were. "But if it wasn't magical, then that means…"

Technology. And there's only one person in this world with any access to technology and the know-how to put a bomb together, and she's off the bed and running for the door before she can say another word, Regina right behind her as she makes the same connection and they both fly down the stairs toward Frankenstein's hospital-cum-laboratory, only one thought on their minds.

"Henry!"