A/N: The song for this chapter is "Coming Down," by the Dum Dum Girls. You can listen to it on YouTube. Just add /watch?v=sZdbNMDH8hc after the YouTube URL.

Also, now that I'm caught up with canon, should I continue this story, don't expect updates so often. I just had a lot of the later chapters prewritten.

"Regina, I would like you to meet—" But Emma never gets to finish, and after that, everything seems to blur together until it is one long, never-ending slideshow of moments Regina would rather not witness.

"Marian? Marian!"

"Robin?" (And oh, looking back, she knows that this is the moment that things fall irrevocably apart.)

"I thought you were dead. I thought I'd never see you again!"

"And I you!"

And then Roland, sweet, beautiful Roland, is looking up at this victim of Regina's past with wide eyes. "… Mama?" he says, all childish hesitance and uncertainty, and it shouldn't hurt, not now that Henry remembers her, but it does (She thinks it might always smart, this idea of children not knowing their own mothers, even if that mother isn't she.). And she wishes she could begrudge this woman her reunion, but she can't bring herself to do so, not when she knows how it feels to hold her own son in her arms.

Regina can't hear anything over the sound of the blood rushing in her ears, her own pulse pounding out a steady drumbeat that vibrates inside her head against the confines of her skull. The dichotomy of this moment to 30 seconds ago makes her want to scream, and she thinks that she might if that didn't mean that Emma would see her weakness. Because she was happy. For the first time in what seemed like forever, she was happy. Not as happy as she could be. But happier than she had been.

And she wasn't in love with Robin. She knows that. She isn't stupid. But she could have been. One day, she could have been. And that's more than she can say about any moment or person in her life since Daniel.

"You..." she says, and at first, she doesn't even recognize her own voice. "You." More certainly, but only for a moment. "You did this?" Broken. Her voice cracks when she asks it, and she would curse herself if she hadn't moved on from that form of revenge a long time ago.

More than anything, the question comes across as disbelieving. Because Emma was the last person Regina expected to hurt her, and she tries not to think too hard about what that might mean.

Emma looks as stricken as Regina feels, and there is a sharp clench in her gut as Regina realizes that Emma genuinely didn't know. She didn't know.

Emma struggles to explain herself: "I just wanted to save her life." Like that makes it okay. Like that erases what this means for Regina (And gods help her, she thinks it just might, and that thought is like yet another twist to the knife. She really must be changing.).

But Regina shakes her head, hurt making her vindictive, because as a matter of pride, she can't forgive this kind of a transgression against her, not yet, maybe not ever, no matter how much she wants to. "You're just like your mother," she hisses, knowing that this, more than anything else, will hit the mark (And how is it that they know each other so well?) when the woman in question has spent her whole life striving to become her own person and be nothing like the parents who abandoned her, and the thought comes to her, sudden and unbidden, a result of the look on Emma' face: You abuse the ones who love you. A line from a song from a mixtape from a girl. Regina remembers being a girl once. She wonders how similar they are, one a bastion of strength, willing martyr, hurt glowing in her eyes, and the other, just as lost, just as afraid of being unwanted, dark and alone in the depths of her soul.

"I didn't know," Emma says, and it comes out quietly. She doesn't say it like an excuse, and seeing the way the fight has been taken out of her longtime nemesis/part-time... (Acquaintance? Ally? Friend? The words flash through Regina's mind before she can stop them.) something, someone who has always been willing to retaliate, might shock Regina the most.

"Of course you didn't!" Regina snaps, and she doesn't know if she means it as affirmation or as damnation.

A moment of silence as they both ruminate on this newfound development, and then Regina protects herself the way she knows best, perhaps the only way she knows how: "Well, you just better hope to hell that you didn't bring anything else back." An implied insult at Emma's competence before she turns away and walks out of the diner. Regina hopes that it is enough to shield from view how much she is shaking.

He was her second chance. Robin was her second chance.

Was he really? a voice whispers, but she shakes her head to clear it of such thoughts. Yes, he was her second chance, and now, once again, she is left with nothing more than a bruised heart that struggles to even beat through the pain.

A/N: Although I've been writing fanfiction for several years now, this is my very first OUaT fic, so feel free to let me know if the characterizations I've got going on are wrong or if there was something you didn't like. I'll never improve without your help.

Also, obligatory comment about how the version of this story on AO3 is more complete because it contains the song lyrics I drew on. It's under the same username.

Thanks for reading!