Epilogue

The walk back into town is the longest she can remember. There are no carriages anymore, she knows instinctively, no roads just for horses (and she closes her eyes for a moment and remembers the wind, the power in her hands and against her thighs and Emma Swan wrapped around her as they fly through the trees and the grass- closes her eyes because that is gone for now and perhaps for always), only streets with traffic lights and cars rushing past and–

She doesn't know this world, but remembers it all the same with the advent of a final stage to the curse. Had this been Rumpel's design all along, to thrust them into this alien world? She has knowledge, suddenly, awareness of the workings of this town that she's never seen before. She knows she can now drive a car and understands electricity and that there's a cell phone in her purse. She knows that she's the mayor of this town and that Snow is Henry's teacher and that her castle is now a spacious house on Mifflin Street.

She knows it all, and remembers nothing of it before the moment she'd awakened in a field beneath the Welcome to Storybrookesign. Her memories are of castles and monarchy and a ten-year-old prince and a kiss that had unraveled her world. But she knows this world like an instinct, like a habit she's had for years and never shaken.

She wonders if Emma would have run, had she known that the world had been changing around them.

Yes. Yes, she would. It hadn't been the world that had so terrified Emma; it had been the people within, the way Snow had looked at her and the way Regina herself had. Put us back together, they'd pled silently, and the woman who'd nearly had a panic attack the first time Henry had called her Mom had given up the moment she'd seen their faith written across their faces.

And now Emma is gone, and Regina's only solace is the knowledge that Henry is with her, that their son is safe from whatever comes next.

She walks slowly. There's nothing left to return to in a lonely house that won't feel like home, even if it had yet been a castle.

They spot her from a street away, a dull roar thrumming through the crowd that sends a thrill through her spine. There had been a time when she'd enjoyed a good mob. She's always been a faithful adherent to order, flushing out the elements of entropy in any situation and isolating them, forcing them into a structured whole. And angry mobs are chaotic by definition, begging for order to deconstruct them into individuals once more. They are anarchy, but she remains a queen.

Today she's tired, though, done with battle and done with this world that has no Henry and no Emma within it. She thinks longingly of her bed- a bed she's never slept in, but can visualize all the same, and for a moment she dares imagine Emma within it (Emma claims Regina's a cuddler but that's a bald-faced lie, she's never been one to curl up into a lover's embrace until Emma, so obviously it's all Emma's predilections bleeding out into both of them, as always) and she exhales sharply, once-twice-thrice, and then three dwarves are standing in front of her and brandishing pick-axes threateningly.

"She's here!" one shouts, and there's a surge of energy from the mob again, rage taking hold and driving them forward toward her, closer and closer until she instinctively reaches for her magic and finds nothing but a gaping hole within her.

Well, then. The dwarves deserve their vengeance, she supposes.

She can't quite muster up any regret for Grumpy even now, nothing that goes beyond the way the light had dimmed in Henry's eyes and Emma's face had been so wet, so angry and hurt and helpless. But she understands the bitterness of loss and family and she understands these dwarves and their grief and something twinges inside of her, something she'd thought she'd shut off a long time ago.

She's half disgusted with herself, half proud, and this is what love has done to her, pieced her together with half the pieces gone and she doesn't know what's right and what's wrong and which she really wants to be.

She wants–

–She wants Emma to look at her and not loathe them both for loving her.

And now the crowd is peeling in half like an angry bruise, coming apart as two people call out, "Stop, stop!" and Snow is suddenly before her, her eyes still betrayed and raw as she skids to a halt, blocking the dwarves from coming any closer. Her prince is behind her, no worse for the wear after nearly three decades of stone, and there's an acrid taste in Regina's mouth as she observes them. Ups and downs, it's always been with them. Snow finds people to love as Regina loses them.

"Where is she?" Charming demands, Snow grabbing his wrist as he reaches for his sword, and Regina remembers suddenly that Snow had loved them too. "What have you done with my daughter?"

"David," Snow murmurs, resignation already settling on her face, and Regina knows, knows, that Snow already knows.

Easier to allow the evil queen to share the news. "Gone," Regina says, and there's a new shudder of rage through the horde as they piece together the simplest cause behind this turn of events. And because Regina has no intention of making anything easier for Snow White, she adds, poisonously sweet, "Or hasn't your wife told you that already?"

There's a snarl behind her, a thump against her head, and she remembers nothing more.

She dreams of fire, of a room where she can barely move but the flames lick at her arms and face all the same and she's afraid without any rhyme or reason. Henry, she calls, but she's glad he doesn't respond, that he isn't here with her. Emma, she whispers, and she stops standing strong for one moment, allows grief to devour her at last in this quiet world where there's nothing more than flames and solitude.

She awakens on an uneven bed in a dimly lit room, and for a moment she forgets herself and murmurs, "Emma?"

A pause, a moment of hesitation, then– "No."

She recognizes the gruff, accented voice before she opens her eyes, recognizes it and swallows back her own regret and shame and I don't hate you/You're a fool not to and says, "It's the first day of the rest of your life. Can't you sound even a infinitesimally bit cheerful about it?"

The Huntsman- no, the sheriff, she knows at once that here he's the sheriff as certainly as she's the mayor- doesn't smile, doesn't scowl, just regards her with quiet eyes that betray no deeper fury with her. She sits up, ashamed again. "Where am I?"

"You're here for your own safety right now," another familiar voice puts in, and Regina blinks and stares out through reinforced bars to where Snow stands behind the Huntsman, a hand wrapped around her other arm. "We don't- we don't know what to do with you now. But you're safe here."

A single eyebrow, raised at her greatest enemy. "And you're so very concerned with my safety."

Snow's eyes settle on hers, empty but for resentment building at their corners. "She didn't…she didn't say goodbye, before…" She doesn't need to finish the sentence. "All she asked me was to keep you safe."

It's easy to muster up a sneer at Snow's face, even as her throat closes up at Snow's words. "Bleeding-hearted fool," she mutters. "In your place, I'd kill you where you stood."

"Really?" And it's another familiar voice. Red, long legs propped up against the sheriff's desk as she inspects her nails. "'Cause way I see it, you had twenty-eight years to do that, and you never bothered before."

Regina's brow furrows at the sheer audacity of it. "Are you…provoking me?" She thinks of Red at the tavern, wary but not unwilling to talk, and of the girl leaning forward and conspiring with her son in easily audible whispers. Yes, she can believe audacity from Red.

The people around her have suddenly transformed. Henry's Friend. Emma's Mother. Henry's Teacher. Emma's- (She stops, because she can still feel the sense memory of the rage she'd felt once, at seeing Emma close enough to kiss the Huntsman, and muddled possession and need and jealousy all stirring within her enough to set her aflame at the violation even now. Would Emma have loved the Huntsman, had Regina not taken him away? What is true love, were it given so freely to just anyone? She thinks of Emma and her arms around her and no, no, they were special even if her love had broken Emma in the end.) She's bound to these people by her foolish, noble, loving son and his mother, and the sneer fades from her face as quickly as it had come.

Snow clears her throat. "You're guilty of terrible deeds," she says, emboldened by Red's fearlessness. "But Emma trusted you, I think. Even after Grumpy," Her voice shakes, and that whisper of guilt is back, accompanied by disgust because since when does she give a damn about Snow White's grief? "She had faith in you. She didn't even believe in herself, but she believed in you." Since Snow White's grief is for her daughter as well, the woman they'd both loved far more than anyone else in this damnable town would ever comprehend.

"I'm through giving you chances to change," she says, and Regina is glad for that reprieve, at least. There's nothing quite like Snow's idiotic devotion to her to stir up old bitterness once more. "But Emma isn't, and I'll honor that. For her."

She wants to muster up scorn and sarcasm in return, but all she can think of is golden hair and a challenging grin and eyes never certain if they're meant to be blue or green.

She nods stiffly, and the Huntsman gapes at them both but Snow smiles, sad and understanding, and turns for the door.

Her magic is back again when she remembers to reach for it. Rumpelstiltskin has left town, Belle in tow, and the Huntsman has been fielding phone calls about it all morning. She sits silently on her cell cot, leafing through newspapers that he's slid between the bars to her with little interest in the situation outside of her prison.

A purple fog had swept through the town shortly before Rumpel's departure, enveloping every inch of space outdoors up until the town line. The Huntsman has no answers for concerned citizens, but Regina can feel power returning to her just as the phone calls begin rolling in. She doesn't volunteer the information.

Her magic feels…wrong, unclean in ways she's never been bothered with before. It's like black oil in her veins, clogging them up and leaving her heart diseased and sickly from the contact. She chokes on it, coughs it out of her system and doesn't consider attempting to feel it again.

True Love's Kiss. It's a magic beyond any other, white magic far stronger than the false enchantments of fairies and the intoxicating blackness of the Dark One. It's pure and it's powerful and with Emma, it had healed her heart as fully as it had broken her curse. She can't compare her own magic to it. It feels cheap and meaningless with the knowledge of what she'd had with Emma, heavy and sluggish and ugly when she can remember breathing in that kind of energy- true and good and loving- just hours before.

At times, she isn't certain that this hasn't been a dream, a last fantasy of a woman who'd given herself over completely to darkness. Henry…Henry can't be a delusion, not with ten years of detailed memories of love. She remembers chubby cheeks and a low gurgle the first time she'd seen him. He'd cried and cried and cried those first few days, all too aware of how terrified she'd been of him, and only once she'd stopped trying to be strong, stopped trying to control him as she controlled her kingdom, had his little eyes closed and his mouth settled into something nearly like a smile.

She stares at tiny printed letters in black and white until they blur and she can think of Henry again, of every moment they'd had that had been real. She remembers when he'd been three and found a puppy one of the servants had been keeping in secret. He'd brought it to her room, so excited to show her the pup, and they'd fallen asleep together on her bed while waiting, one little arm curled around the dog's body, one thumb firmly planted in his mouth. She'd been too charmed to dispose of the pet, and it had remained in the castle until that servant had been sent away years later.

She remembers the first time Henry had looked at her with fear, not long after his eighth birthday when he'd fallen off his first horse and broken his arm. She'd been furious in ways he hadn't understood then, hadn't seen from her before in their quiet idyll within her rule, and she'd hurled around magic and turned guards to stone pell-mell and had nearly killed the riding master at the time before Snow had reminded her that her son had been present. Henry had stared at her like the people did, fear that she knew would inevitably turn to loathing someday, and she'd been afraid to look him in the eye again for days.

She remembers nearly turning Emma to stone, that first day, and tears trickle from her eyes unbidden, turning the white of the newspaper splotchy and grey.

She hates this, hates regrets and self-loathing and the way she's become so soft. She hates how hard she's been in the past, how much evil she's wrought and how many she's wronged. She hates this simple town and she hates Rumpelstiltskin and she hates herself and she hates everything, everyone in the world except Emma Swan and her son.

And now there's nothing left to her but their love, and she's weary with the weight of it.

Emma had loved her. It's too much to comprehend, sometimes, too much to believe. There had been a part of her firmly convinced that the reason their kiss hadn't worked had been because Emma's love hadn't been real, hadn't been any more than misplaced affection and compassion. And once it did, once true love had been incontrovertible, Regina still can't quite grasp it.

Daniel had loved her when she'd been fresh and new, damaged but still good and perhaps worthy of love. But that girl had died with him, had been replaced by a woman with sharp edges and nothing within her but a broken heart blackened by revenge. Men had been infatuated with her, women captivated by her, all her falseness wrapped in pretty dresses and a commanding presence. She'd long ago resigned herself to life without love- and later to love only from her son, love she'd known deep down would be sacrificed to her darkness, too, in time.

And then Emma had stumbled into her castle and clashed with her from the start, her fire overwhelming her fear until she'd been challenging Regina at every turn. Regina had been irritated and angered and perhaps a tiny bit transfixed from the start with the woman who had been utterly unpredictable in a realm where there had been nothing erratic, nothing different for twenty-eight years. She'd wanted her in her bed and dared dream of no more than that.

Yet Emma had loved her, had awakened her with a kiss and held her as though she'd never wanted to let go. Emma's eyes still blaze with fire when she looks at her, but now it warms instead of destroying. Emma, who's spent so much of her life learning never to trust and never to love had thrown her faith and her allegiance behind the least reliable option and believed in the evil queen raising her son.

Emma isn't innocent, not like Regina and Daniel had once been. Not like Snow had been as a child and an adult before Regina had stripped it away from her. No, Emma had lost her innocence in childhood- a casualty of the curse that Regina both regrets for Emma's sake and can't, not when the curse had brought her Emma and Henry both- and somehow retained her principles, her goodness, and the stubbornness to keep going. She knows now that Emma had struggled and never told her of her indecision, understands it in her split allegiances between Regina and the resistance, and she can't blame her for it.

Emma might have been panicked to discover that she was the savior, but she'd been trying to save everyone since she'd entered the town, struggling to save Regina and save Henry and save the people of the town she didn't even know all at once. She's been the savior all along, a gift to the people around her before she'd ever been packaged up in noble names and destiny, and it's laughable that she believes now that it's too much when it's all she knows to do.

And of all the people in the town most unworthy of saving, it's Regina who'd been gifted the most precious piece of Emma of all.

She dreams of the room of fire every night now, and sometimes she thinks she can see someone else within it, a girl with skirts whipping around her as she struggles to push away the flames. Regina remains stock-still within them, never moving or attempting to make contact.

Once, her mother had enveloped her in fire after she'd crossed some unspoken line Cora had set for her. She been magically spared of any burns and hadn't shown any marks after the fact, but she remembers the way the flames had scorched her and peeled her skin away during and she'd felt as though her lungs had shriveled up and would never let her breathe without pain again.

This is bearable for as long as she doesn't move, as long as she doesn't attempt to react with this world she dreams of. The fire's burns are only glancing, the heat bearable, and she endures it night after night as the girl sobs in the distance.

The girl isn't Henry, and she isn't Emma, and she isn't someone they care for (except Emma seems to care for just about everyone, to save anyone she can regardless of whether they're strangers or enemies or evil queens) but Regina still awakens with an unease she can't name most mornings.

And now there's someone in her cell with her, and when she opens her eyes she can see that it's Snow. "Do you want me to kill you?" she demands.

Snow ignores the question, proffering a tub of lotion instead. "I got this salve from the apothecary. It should cool the burns." She nods at Regina's forearms, where blistered skin is barely visible under her blazer, and Regina tugs at her sleeves, scowling. Snow takes her arm regardless, pushing up the sleeve to apply the salve to her skin. It does lessen the pain instantly, and Regina sighs and leaves her arm in Snow's grasp. "I remember the dreams from after my…"

My sleeping curse, she doesn't say, and Regina doesn't know what to respond, because she remembers being so bitter and believing that cursing Snow would be enough to fix her, and she also remembers Snow knocking on her door one day and bringing her missing baby back to her at the cost of her freedom. Henry's Grandmother. Emma's Mother. Henry's Tutor. Emma's Friend. "Thank you," she says finally, and Snow quirks a small smile in response.

"We're still not sure what to do with you," she confesses. "I've talked down the dwarves and the royals- they all hate you, by the way-"

"Good." She sits back, pleased.

Snow rolls her eyes. "But you're the only one here who knows how to be mayor and we keep getting…paperwork, I guess? from the state, and people aren't doing whatever jobs the curse gave them but we think they might be afraid enough of you to get their act together."

"Lovely," Regina drawls. "So you want me out there to terrorize the townfolk? Don't tempt me like this, Snow."

"I told them you helped Emma break the curse," Snow retorts, and Regina's arm goes limp in her grasp. "They know…well, they don't know how much you've changed, but people saw you with Henry and Emma in town and you know how the villagers gossip and, well…they aren't as distrustful of you as they might have been once. And without your magic, you aren't the threat you might pose otherwise."

Is that all it takes? A few family outings and the evil queen is human again? No, Snow must certainly have been a large part of this, and she hates to owe anything to Snow (Emma's Mother, Henry's Grandmother) so she narrows her eyes and says, "Without magic?"

"It's a simple matter of-" Snow begins, and then she notices that the bars of the cell have disappeared entirely and Regina leans back, smug, as Snow lets out a very un-queenly yelp. "Regina!"

"I have magic." Regina channels it through her again, struggling not to show distaste on her face as she feels the blackness flow through her, and the bars reappear. "Sorry to disappoint."

"I don't understand." And Snow is looking at her and at the bars and then at her again, wary but with a glimmer of hope.

There's some back-and-forth between royals before she's released for good, sent back to a house she's never truly entered and warned that she's on strict probation. They don't need to worry, as she doesn't plan to leave her home. Snow delivers her paperwork and documents and she buries herself in them, discerning order from their disorder and sending them back intact. There's simplicity to the work that she enjoys, white noise that blocks out the rest of her intrusive thoughts.

She wanders through a home she knows but can't remember, traces Henry's face in the photographs on the mantle and burrows into the bed in the master bedroom, wondering if it's her imagination that she can catch the barest hint of Emma's scent in there.

Henry's room is smaller than his suite in her castle but it feels right all the same, packed with books and video games and a few old pieces of schoolwork lying on his desk. It isn't real- none of it is, but her breath still catches in her throat when she catches sight of it. It could have been real, if she'd been in Emma's world for the past twenty-eight years of the curse. It could still be real, if her son comes back to her.

She misses them now more than ever, now that she's no longer locked up and any danger to Henry has been minimized by the town's reluctant acceptance and Rumpelstiltskin's departure. She finds herself cursing Emma some nights, hating her for bolting like she had, hating her for believing so ardently in Regina when Regina had loved her enough to attempt to live up to that faith. Hating her for giving up. (She can't hate her, not really, but she understands her even now and hates herself because Emma won't hate her for them both.)

Giving up. That's what Emma had done when she'd run. Regina surrenders to destiny by lashing out, by finding people to hate and new blame to be cast around. Emma- daring, bold, stubborn Emma- refuses to surrender, would rather run and run and run until she's escaped destiny altogether. And yes, perhaps Regina can't truly hate her even for that, not when she's Emma and exactly one-half of Regina's meaning in life, but she's bitterly, bitterly disappointed when she's honest with herself. Why couldn't you fight for us? she wonders. It's not fair to expect it of her, not when Emma had been fighting for them for longer even than Regina, when Regina had killed her friend just hours before she'd left; but it sears Regina nonetheless, and she buries herself in paperwork most nights so she needn't dwell on the two absences in this house they'd never entered.

She's digging through one of her drawers one evening when she pulls out a neatly folded red jacket that isn't hers. She recognizes it at once, presses it to her face and sobs into soft leather that feels more like Emma than anything else in the town, and only then does she feel the light weight of a small wallet in the pocket.

She pulls it out with desperation for some final connection to Emma, something that's hers and real, more real than memories that are too much to be true, and she scrabbles uselessly at the wallet for a moment before she can pull out the two cards tightly wedged inside. The first is a driver's license, and it's Emma Swan, Emma's face squinting out from the tiny picture, her hair tucked behind her ears and a smile half-formed on her face and it's the most beautiful thing Regina has seen in three endless weeks of loneliness.

The second card is a neatly printed business card with Emma's name and a phone number just below it.

She stares at it, wonders if Emma even has the same phone number anymore (She must have left her phone behind, if she'd even still had it after months with no charger or service, and who's to say she's replaced it with the same number?) but as her mind wars with itself, her hands are already reaching for the phone by her bed and removing it from the cradle, stabbing at the numbers she needs.

Emma picks up on the third ring. "Hello?" she says, and a single strangled breath escapes from Regina's throat before she clicks the phone off, panting as though she's just run a marathon.

The phone rings in her hands but she recognizes the number, is incapable of picking up and talking to Emma just yet, not when she can't remember how words work and if she loves her or hates her or needs her, needs her more than anything, and why has she been away for so long?

The answering machine picks up the call, and Regina can hear her voice crisply identifying herself to Emma, can hear the beep and the pause, long and breathless, and then a whisper. "R-Regina?" The line cuts out, the phone disconnected, and Regina stumbles down the stairs to replay the message, again and again.

"Why couldn't you fight for us?" she whispers to the shaky voice in the machine, and when she falls asleep that night, it's on the couch, her head pillowed against Emma's jacket.

The girl is still flailing around in the fire, but she doesn't sob anymore. She endures the pain in silent resignation, only an occasional cry escaping, and Regina sees her eyes when the flames shift, sees her gaze rest on the woman across the room, and the girl still says nothing.

The fire licks at the side of her face and she gasps, and magic surges through Regina, shielding her from the flames as she makes her way across the room to the girl. "What's your name?" she calls out through the dull roar of the flames.

"Aurora!" the girl shouts, and Regina blinks, recognizing the name and the story at once. Maleficent's last act of cruelty had been for naught, it seems. The girl has escaped her sleeping curse and Regina had found Maleficent dead beneath the library earlier in the week, struck down by what appears to be one of the Dark One's trinkets. She'd been vaguely disappointed to see one of the few people she'd thought of as a friend gone, but she feels no loyalty to her cause.

She wants to help this girl, this girl who isn't Emma's friend or Henry's friend or anyone at all to either of them. This girl who no one would know if she ignores or aids, and she brushes aside her doubts and removes her shield and reconstructs it around Aurora instead. It won't cover them both while they remain in different realms, but Regina is accustomed to fire and burns and Aurora is still young, gentle and innocent as Snow had been when Regina had given her a poisoned apple and told her to take a bite, and she doesn't deserve this agony.

"Thank you!" the girl calls to her, and she's rewarded with a smile that twinges in all the wrong places. "Who are you?"

She awakens before she can answer, her skin burning still, and she's applying the salve to her sides when she realizes that the magic she'd used for Aurora hadn't felt wrong at all.

She takes her phone from its cradle again, hits redial, and waits until Emma's bleary voice mumbles a greeting before she speaks. "You stopped fighting for us," she accuses, hugging the jacket tighter to her. "You gave up and you fled. And I…I do understand that I'm difficult to love, and that I'd hurt you quite a bit before you'd gone." She hears Emma's breathing steadying out on the other end, attentive and silent, and she begins again haltingly. "I've never…I've never fought for anyone but myself." She'd struggled to endure as a child, as a bride, as a queen; and even the rare times when she'd cared for someone else, she'd put herself first, focused on her own needs because no one else seemed to. "And I haven't even been doing that since you left."

"Regina…" Emma sounds so weary, so helpless that it only firms Regina's resolve.

"I know you can't struggle through this anymore, Emma. And I won't force you to." She smiles a smile that no one can see. "It's my duty from now on. Fighting for you, for Henry, and for me." Lessening your burden, Emma Swan. Is that enough for you? "I refuse to forfeit everything that matters to me anymore."

She hangs up the phone before Emma can respond and heads to the kitchen to make some coffee. Then she finds her garage and starts her car, knowing without experience exactly where Town Hall is located.

Henry calls just after dinner.

"Mom drove all the way back to Storybrooke that night before she turned around and came back to Boston," Henry reports, and he's sunshine and magic in her life and everything she's ever dreamed of, the precocious, loving boy she'd somehow managed to raise and been empty inside without. "Sometimes she tells me to get in the car and we make it onto the freeway before she changes her mind. Again." He sighs with all the exasperation of an adolescent, and Regina feels her lips curl up into an involuntary smile.

"Don't tell her that!" She hears the faint protest from the other line and her smile falters.

She forces it back onto her face. "I do believe you aren't in any danger now, Henry. I suppose your mother will bring you back when she's ready."

"I miss you," Henry says, sniffling into the phone.

Tears spring to her face. "I know, love. I miss you too." She tells him about the town now, about this next stage to the curse where they're still themselves but in a new realm, where he'll be going to a formal school and the tavern is a bed and breakfast and he has something called an Xbox in his room.

He's dismayed by the information. "Wait, so all the other children in my year got the Avengers movie cursed into their memories? That's not fair. Mom says that we have to wait until next week to see it!"

"Maybe we'll move up that date," Emma acknowledges on the other end. It might mean nothing, Regina reminds herself, might be nothing more than Emma yielding to Henry's best pouting face. It certainly doesn't mean that they're planning on returning anytime soon.

And Henry goes on talking, oblivious- or purposefully so, perhaps, since her son is a master manipulator- to the tension between his mothers as he tells Regina about their weeks in Boston, about sightseeing and getting to know a world he's only really seen from afar. His home doesn't exist anymore, not as he remembers it, but he is unfazed. "I can still ride horses in Storybrooke, right? And practice archery with Snow and play with my friends by the water?"

"Yes, of course."

"So nothing changes except the castle. And Mother?" He lowers his voice, sounding embarrassed as he admits, "I don't think I liked the castle very much. It was… A house sounds nice. I like our family together."

"As do I," she murmurs, and wonders when they'll get their wish.

She doesn't speak to Emma again and Emma doesn't speak to her, but she passes on Snow's phone number when Henry requests and swallows down jealousy that Emma might speak to her mother tonight. No. Emma has spent long enough supporting them all, and now it's Regina's turn to silently support Emma, for as long as she stays away.

At night, the fire feels more subdued than usual and when Aurora asks for her name, she gives it and watches as the girl's eyes round. "Then you're…the evil queen?"

"I was," she says, and she doesn't feel very evil or queenly anymore, and even her hate is receding with her newfound determination to find her new normal in this town. She drives to work and the workers at her office have stopped flinching when she walks past, and she doesn't attract nearly as many glares as she had on her first day. She's gaining a reputation as a stickler for efficient work and an unforgiving attitude toward those who would shirk their duties, still a queen even without a kingdom. But the townspeople are working, the town is grinding along smoothly, and there are fewer and fewer challenges to her so-called authority each day.

She visits Granny's on her third morning working and Red greets her with a loud, "Good morning, Madame Mayor!" and a croissant as the other denizens of the diner watch wide-eyed. Snow sits across from her and asks her if she's spoken to Emma much. She doesn't respond quickly enough and compassion flickers across Snow's face, and for a moment she's right back to wanting her former stepdaughter's head on a platter.

Charming storms into her office one day demanding answers that Snow hasn't had the courage to give to him, and she says simply, "How do you think we broke the curse?" and he spits out a curse at her and leaves and returns the next day to apologize. Apologize, to her! She nearly laughs and sneers at the Charming family honor but instead (Emma's Father, Henry's Grandfather) she forces a smile and accepts with grace.

Henry calls every night to give her a detailed rendition of his day, and she can always hear Emma nearby, close enough to listen to their conversation even though she still hasn't asked to speak to Regina. It infuriates her and it frustrates her and it makes her want to demand answers and rage and weep, but instead she struggles to keep her voice steady as she finishes off her conversations, "And send your mother my love." She sleeps in Henry's bed most nights, wrapped in his blanket with Emma's jacket folded on her pillow.

"What happened to you?" Aurora asks, her eyes guileless and free of accusation, only curiosity.

Regina stares into the orange-white mass of flames around them. "I fell in love," she says.

Her dreams have no fire in them for the first time in five weeks, and instead vague memories spiral into each other and tell a story she's never lived. Emma, mouthing off to Cora as Daniel falls in the background. Henry riding the horse she'd once saved Snow from, as a child Snow ages in her castle. Emma kissing her forehead as she tosses and turns in bed. Henry sitting with Snow at Granny's, her father solemn in her study on Mifflin Street. Her heart aches and twists and she wakes up with a vague sense of emptiness she can't place and the strong scent of the pancakes she'd dreamed of in Granny's.

She sniffs, frowning, because that smell is more apparent now, and only then does she hear a thump coming from down the hall.

Intruders. She'd known it was only a matter of time before neighborhood hooligans targeted her house, and she scowls, tugging Henry's tennis racket out from its place and wielding it like a sword as she creeps out of his room and down the hall to the sounds of movement in her room.

She throws open the door and smashes the racket forward just as Henry shouts, "Mother! It's me! It's me!" Her magic reacts in time and she's bouncing the racket harmlessly off of a shield of light before she drops both, reaching for Henry as he throws his arms around her and holds on so tightly that she can't breathe.

"Henry, Henry, Henry," she chants, and she's pulling him even closer, kissing his cheeks and whispering, "I love you," over and over again, tears spilling down her cheeks as he whimpers, "I love you, too, Mother," and they don't let go for a long, long time.

"We got in after midnight," he explains. "Mom didn't want to wake you up so she tried to magic the door open-" He scrunches up his face. "I think you might need a new lock." And she laughs, she has to laugh because Henry is hereand they've found their way back to her and Emma, Emma is here at last and she can feel resentment dissipating at that knowledge alone. "Anyway, we saw that you were in my bed so we took yours for the night."

She remembers her dream, thinks back to Emma's kiss against her forehead and how real it had seemed. "I see," she murmurs into his hair. "Is Emma downstairs?"

He nods. "She's so happy, Mother. I haven't seen her smile- really smile- since you saved me and she saved you and we left the kingdom. And now she's making pancakes and she can't stop smiling and…" He grins up at her. "I think she missed you a lot."

"I'll bet she did," Emma says from the hall, and Regina twists around so quickly that Henry slides out from her embrace and slips past Emma, down the hall and the stairs to the kitchen.

"Emma," she breathes, drinking her in like a parched traveler spotting a mirage in the desert. Emma looks…different, somehow. Paler, thinner, with circles heavy under her eyes; but Henry's right, her smile is shining so bright that Regina can barely see the rest of her.

"Hi," she says, flapping her hand from side to side in a wave.

"You're here," Regina says dumbly, and of course only Emma Swan can leave her inarticulate like this, speechless and unable to do much more than stare.

Emma shrugs uncertainly. "So it turns out…I guess you calling me a fool all the time eventually stuck. Because I'm kind of an idiot." Her smile turns sheepish, a shadow crossing her face. "You were right. I did give up. I didn't want to disappoint anyone anymore. I fucked up so much…I fucked you up, too."

Perhaps it's too soon, but she's already pulling Emma to her, sliding her hands around Emma's too-small waist and feeling her exhalation in response. "No." She's so accustomed to blaming others for her faults, to shifting the blame to Snow or Rumpel or a dozen people who might have had a hand in her self-destruction but were never the hands to execute it. No, that had been Regina herself, and it feels sour and unfair to allow Emma to take on this burden. "You saved me, Emma. You changed me." She doesn't feel like a stranger in her own skin anymore, an evil queen with no future beyond the hopelessness of vengeance. She can look at Henry and Emma now and see a future, one she's been able to take the reins of on her own only because of the woman in her arms.

"I don't know where you got the idea that you're not easy to love," Emma whispers into her ear, her cheek pressed against Regina's. "You are a royal pain in the ass most of the time- literally!" she says, delighted with herself, and Regina knows Emma can feel the smirk stretching across her face. "But jesus, Regina, loving you has been one of the best things I've ever done in my life. And you…I don't know how I'm supposed to reconcile the fact that I love you with everything you've done before now."

"Ah." And there's the rub. It's why Emma's caved to pressure, why Regina knows that she can't hate her for running. It's the impossibility of loving a witch, a murderer, an evil queen.

Emma pulls back, her eyes pleading. "Tell me how, Regina. Tell me how I'm supposed to forget it all."

There's no answer that suffices, no defense worth giving, and Regina murmurs, "I can't do that," and holds tightly to her hands, longs to kiss her one last time. Because this is it, there's nothing to say that can change the reality of who she is and who she was, and she won't put Emma into another situation where she sees no other option but to run.

She isn't who she was, and it's enough for her right now; but she can't change the past that shaped her or that brought her family together. She won't give the people she loves a lie, not even when Emma is pleading with her for one, and she cares too much about this impossible savior who'd stumbled into her castle one day and rewritten her life to succumb to the easier illusion. Even if it means losing her. She's worth- they're worth- too much for that.

But Emma is leaning in again, the smile back on her face and her eyes bright with hope still, bright with the energy that Regina falls in love with over and over again, and she whispers against her lips, "I know, Regina."

And perhaps it's enough. Perhaps they're enough, not quite the people they're meant to be but well on their way regardless, and Regina's eyes are drifting closed in contentment and Emma's lips are so soft, curved into a smile and gentle, teasing, with the promise of so much more. "I know."

And we're done! (8

Loads of thanks to Liz, who persuaded me to write this in the first place, to NK and MM and Maia and all the people who've walked me through chunks of this story when I was stuck, and of course to all of you! Swan Queen fandom is intimidatingly talented and I admit to being super insecure about even trying to write anything for y'all, but you've been incredibly welcoming and enthusiastic and hearts- hearts in my eyes, guys. 333 Let's keep in touch! I'm scullysummers on Tumblr, and though I don't think I'll be writing another longfic for at least a couple more months, after life settles down, I do have some shorter fics in the works rn.

I'd still love to hear what you thought of the fic, if you're so inclined!