A/N: WOW! Only one chapter left to go… I mean, wow. This is crazy. I can't believe everyone has been so supportive and positive toward this story, let alone ANYONE at all. Thank you all so much! I love seeing a new favorite or a new follow, and I absolutely love reading all of the reviews you guys leave me! It's astonishing to me that there are people out there that like reading my work! I LOVE you all, even though I don't know you, because you are what drives this story forward!

That being said, I put extra work into this chapter just for you guys. It will be a shocking chapter, but it will be interesting. Some of you may hate me for this chapter, but please stick around ~ we're one chapter from the end, and I think the last chapter may bring you all some peace.

Again, I love all you guys! I will put a chapter at the end when I post the final chapter tomorrow to thank each and every one of you personally

"What happened to you, Emma?" Regina asked her, stepping forward.

Emma smiled and twisted her arms so that she could admire her dark jacket. It looked like something Regina might've worn as the Evil Queen, with sleek, black leather and a dramatic collar that rose sharply to her cheeks.

"I'm different," Emma said honestly. She paused. A confident look arose in her eyes, and she looked at Regina before speaking again. "I'm better."

It was obvious to everyone that Emma had irrevocably become the Dark Swan. The Dark One. It wasn't Emma and the Dark One anymore, separated within one single carrier. There would be no waffling back and forth anymore, straddling the line between good and evil as Emma had been doing. It was just Dark Swan now. No more, no less.

"As the Dark One? You're better?" There was no inflection in Hook's voice, but in his disappointment, he couldn't help but wrinkle his nose a little at this. His love had merged with his former enemy.

Emma frowned lightly at him. "I- I used to be scarred, and judgmental, and closed off," she said to him. "It took me forever to see the magic in Storybrooke."

There was something raw and real about the way Emma spoke. The wall she normally put up to keep people out had fallen, gone crashing to the ground, and there was nothing but truthfulness written on her face. There wasn't even malice or revenge in her eyes, only pure, unabated honesty. She broke her gaze away from Hook. "Now, I… I see things clearly." A smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she stared at the carpet. "I'm not scared anymore."

Hook reached out to stroke Emma's cheek, but Emma took a step back, away from him. "What did you ever have to be afraid of, Love?"

"Being the Saviour." She took a deep breath before looking up at the group again. "Whenever there was a problem in Storybrooke, who did you always call to stop it? Mary Margaret?" She shook her head gently, and her pain was evident in her eyes, even through her brown contacts. "Do you know how difficult it was to be the one that everyone relies on?" Her voice wavered. "To think, 'What if I mess this up?' It's not like I was making a pizza. I couldn't mess up; people's lives were resting on my shoulders. I just-" She swallowed, wrapping her arms around herself, and pressed her eyes tightly closed.

The group remained silent. They had expected Emma to be malevolent; vengeful, even, but this- this was unexpected. Even as the Dark One, they were seeing Emma was just Emma, if you dug deep enough, on the inside.

"How is this better?" Hook finally said after a long while, shattering the delicate silence they all shared.

When Emma finally opened her eyes again, the suffering in them had vanished. She furrowed her brows so that they met her eyes. "Well, think about it. Rumple was born a coward-"

"I don't think you should use the Crocodile as your example," Hook interrupted her through gritted teeth.

"You told me how the man he was groveled and cried on the deck of this ship," she continued. Hook looked down in shame. "He changed for the better, too," Emma said, a light, carefree hope evident in her eyes and in the slight upturn of her mouth.

"You're wrong," Hook breathed harshly at her. "I was the villain in that little drama, Swan." Swan, he called her. Not Emma, not Love. Swan, because she wasn't Emma anymore. Swan, because she wasn't the person he'd fallen in love with. She'd been blinded by the Darkness. "He was a good man, trying to keep his family together, and I took a sword and-" He shook his head and swallowed. "And I put it to his head. And taunted him." Hook paused to let his words sink in. "I was the only one there who's changed for the better," he bit out. "He became an evil, manipulative killer."

"Killian-" Emma tried.

"I just don't want to see you do the same," Hook admitted, avoiding Emma's gaze.

Emma's eyes moved back and forth, scanning his face, her mouth agape. "I-I'm sorry," she said. "But there's something I need to do."

With that, she pushed her hand into Mary Margaret's chest and tore out her heart. Everyone immediately moved forward to help Snow, but Emma quickly held her hand up to stop them.

Emma held the sad little thing in the palm of her hand, half of a heart, half of a life. She turned it over in her hand and rubbed her thumb over the tiny black spot forming on the heart, smiling at the thought of her Mary Margaret's own internal demons.

Mary Margaret was bent double, watching her own heart pulsing persistently, defiantly, in Emma's hands. She breathed heavily through the pain and clutched her palm to her chest. "I'm your mother," she reminded Emma.

Emma slowly turned her head to look at Mary Margaret, her face as cold and as unmoving as stone. "I don't care," she said quietly.

Emma crushed the fragile heart in her hand. It turned to dust beneath her fingers. She turned her palm sideways, and Snow's life floated, piece by piece, to the ground. The ashes settled on the carpet with devastating finality.

Emma had thought she was getting what she wanted, ridding herself of Mary Margaret. But, as she crushed Mary Margaret's heart, something, an emotion, broke out on her face. Her brown contacts fell away, and she blinked her green eyes in shock, watching what she was doing as she did it, unable to stop it.

Her hair lengthened, turning back from brown to her natural, shining golden. As she let Mary Margaret's life drift away from her hands, Emma staggered back. She collapsed to the ground at the exact moment her mother did, her knees hitting the ground with a hard thud. She bent forward, pressing her forehead to the ground. She rocked herself forward and backward several times, pressing her forehead to the ground and lifting it up and pressing it back down again.

Nobody came to her aid. David caught Mary Margaret mid-fall, cradling her in his arms and pushing her hair back from her face even though she was dead, as dead as they come. Everyone else, freed of Emma's trance, rushed to be at Mary Margaret's side.

Nobody cared about Emma anymore. Nobody could care about Emma anymore because Emma had shown she didn't care about them.

Right as the group thought to direct their attention to Emma, to look at Emma, a cloud of grey smoke swirled around the blonde. When it was gone, she was gone.