"Where are we going?" Regina asked when they were in Emma's Bug. "And why can't we go there in a vehicle not meant to transport clowns?"

Emma kept her hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road. She'd felt a lot of things toward Regina since she'd come to Storybrooke, but pity was a new one.

Worse, she actually wanted to do something about it. Mary-Margaret was rubbing off on her, twenty-eight years of missed parental influence hitting her all at once. Next she'd be talking to bluebirds.

"Do you trust me?"

Regina looked over at her wryly. "As far as I can throw you... which is very far, I have magic."

"So you do trust me?"

Regina rested her head against the window, a sign of weakness, or at least what Regina's family would take it for. Seeing it made Emma realize they weren't quite enemies anymore—there was some kind of détente between them, settled in when they went for so many weeks without sending poison apples or chainsawing a tree.

"Lately you've been developing into one of those 'never tell a lie, never hit a lady' kind of heroes. You have the jaw for it—but it's made you very boring."

Emma huffed, mock-impressed. "Wow. You manage to make me being Superman sound like a bad thing."

"At least you'll have an excuse to wear your underwear on the outside."

"You should talk," Emma glanced over at Regina and found her lips curved in a mutual smile. "I've seen your wardrobe. How many of your queenly dresses are just Wonder-Bras with skirts attached?"

Regina gave her an almost pouting look. "Emma, you know those Muslim women who wear hijabs? If they went on spring break, they'd dress like you."

"I don't even know what that means, but my feelings are still hurt." Teasing rather than mocking, which somehow made all the difference.

A thought occurred to Emma, and she had to slam the brakes to have it. If Regina hadn't fastidiously buckled her seatbelt, she would've had a face full of bobblehead dog.

"How do I know you're not faking this?"

Regina just looked at her, a cat-like look on her face as she decided between outrage and simple superiority. She settled on superiority, and almost purring, said "Unlike some, Sheriff, I never have to fake it."

Emma imagined a little cymbal clash, or whatever happened after Mae West made a dick joke on old TV shows. "You and Gold could've gotten together and come up with this whole thing to make me trust you."

"Clearly, you're working toward asking me something I would never tell the truth about, so fine. Out with it. Embarrass me."

Emma sighed. "That's not why I'm doing this. I don't want to embarrass you."

"Then trust me. What possible motive could I have to make myself look pathetic all day?"

"I don't know! You're smarter than me, alright, you come up with… schemes! And plots! I just make plans. Not even lists. I don't get gas until the little light comes on in my car."

Regina stared at her calmly and Emma felt like she'd just handed Lex Luthor the keys to the Fortress of Solitude. 'You're smarter than me.' She'd hear the end of that never.

But Regina simply said "Could you just ask what you need to ask? Idling the car like this cannot be good for your gas mileage."

Emma automatically looked away, out through the windshield, before forcing herself to stare at Regina. "What was Snow White like as a child?"

A smile bloomed on Regina's face—the same look she got when she thought of turning Emma into Howdy Doody. Clearly, Regina was going to use her license of total honesty to get creative with her feelings. Emma quickly revised her statement.

"Aside from the thing with Daniel, because that wasn't her fault and you know it."

Regina's eyes cut sideways to Emma like they were chainsaws going through paper mache. "Aside from Daniel's death," she started, grinding the words in her mouth the same way she'd repeat a dubious claim like 'the Earth is flat' or 'Belle and Ruby are just good friends,' "she was…"

And Regina faltered. For the first time in Emma's memory, she stumbled over her words. Regina worked her jaw and redoubled her efforts. "Snow White was…"

She stopped fully, now opening her mouth like a dying fish. She actually stuck her tongue out, curling it like she was trying to flick something off the end, before it suddenly retracted back into her mouth. Fuming, she ground her teeth together, next fixing Emma with a stare. Her mouth opened again and air rushed in. She wheezed and sucked like a tomb that'd just been opened.

"Aside from Daniel's death," Emma prompted.

"Aside from that—" Regina hissed.

"Snow White was…"

Regina opened her mouth like she was going to scream, then said in a perfectly pleasant voice. "Snow White was a perfect angel as a child. Very well-behaved. Good at math." Then she turned, opened the car door, and vomited on the street.

"Okay, you're not faking," Emma said.

Regina spat. "Thank you."

"Mom, you're not supposed to come in here yet!" Henry whined loudly, jumping up to block his desk with his body and cover up a bunch of widgets and geegaws that had to be, in some way, shape, or form, Emma's birthday present.

Emma looked over at Regina, concerned that hearing the M-word from Henry would have an impact, but Regina's poker face was still. Apparently she'd grown immune to that feeling.

"Henry, let's sit," Emma said, and sat down on the bed. Regina did as well, holding her skirt up a little as she did, as if demonstrating the proper way to sit on a bed.

Henry sat back down in his chair, trying to stay between Emma and his project. "Hi Regina," he said fitfully.

Regina nodded at him. She didn't have that look in her eyes she got when discussing Henry, that ASPCA commercial look. Emma supposed she wouldn't want Henry to see how much he could hurt her.

"Look, Henry, it's great you're making me a—" Emma squinted at the desk. "What is that?"

"It's a zarf," Regina said.

"Regina!" Henry cried.

"What's a zarf?" Emma asked.

"Don't tell her!" Henry insisted.

"It's very useful," Regina said after a pause. Apparently that wasn't good enough for the spell. "It, oh… Θα σας κρατά κούπα καφέ αν σας κούπα δεν έχουν μια λαβή."

"Holy… crap," Emma said, censoring herself. "What was that, Vulcan?"

"Greek," Regina shrugged.

"You speak Greek?"

"For twenty-eight years the Curse gave me eternal life; I spent it on improving myself."

Emma nodded and held back the many barbs that presented themselves, turning to her son instead.

"Henry, I know things have been… tough between you and Regina. And I think it's because she lied to you about some things. And she had her reasons for that, but… the point is, Regina's under a spell right now. She can't lie about anything. So maybe we could all clear the air and wind up trusting each other or something. Christ, I'd make a lousy family counselor."

"The Evil Queen's under a spell?"

"I'd rather be stabbed by a knife then have you call me that," Regina said. The words popped out of her like a boil had been lanced.

Henry just looked at her. Emma too. She had the same indomitable expression as always, but her lips didn't sit together right. It was an unreadable face, but not a happy one.

"I'm sorry," Henry said after a moment.

"It's alright."

"Now do you believe me?" Emma asked him.

"Yeah, yeah…" Henry looked at Regina again. "Where do babies come from?"

"When a man and a woman have sex, the man's penis ejaculates semen into the woman's uterus. One sperm fertilizes—"

Emma clapped her hand over Regina's mouth and felt lips working against the palm of her hand. "Now?"

"I guess."

Emma took her hand away. "…unless the woman decides to have an abortion," Regina finished. She looked over at Emma. "This is a stupid idea. You're just going to make things worse." And she got up and walked away.

Emma caught up with her in the hallway, closing the door behind her. "Regina, your son has no idea what you're really like."

Regina wheeled around like she was having a heart attack. "Good!"

"Just tell him the truth, Regina. That you've changed. He wants to believe you."

"No!" Regina said, stomping up to Emma. "He wants a shiny new mommy who lets him eat ice cream for breakfast and stay up until 2 AM on a school night."

"That isn't it—"

"It is!"

"He wants a mom he can trust!"

Regina reared back. Someone had just yelled in her face. She couldn't remember the last time someone had yelled in her face.

"Why are you so afraid of him finding out the truth?" Emma asked. "Because the truth isn't that you're the Evil Queen. It's that you're… okay, yeah, you can be a serious bitch, but for God's sake, you adopted a kid. Who does that? Nice people!"

"He read a book with my story in it and he went to Boston to get a new mom. He doesn't see 'nice'. Just good and evil."

"So tell him the good parts of you. Show him you're more than just a story in a book."

"He'll hate me even more than he already does."

"Or he'll trust you again. Honestly, Regina, you cast a spell you barely understood to move from a medieval world to the 1980s. Is it too much to ask that you talk to your son?"

Regina put her hand on her face and slowly dragged it down. She suddenly looked as old as all the years she'd lived. "If this doesn't work, I'm just buying a puppy. No one said kids would be this difficult. Cosby made it look so easy…"

Emma clapped her on the back as she went back into Henry's room. He was standing awkwardly behind the door.

"I heard yelling."

Regina said nothing. The two regarded each other.

"That was me," Emma said, and Henry unspooled a little.

Regina sat down on the bed, ankles primly crossed.

"Should I leave you two alone?" Emma asked.

"Yes, Sheriff Swan, although you're about a year late in asking."

Henry gave her an unimpressed look that he definitely got from his adopted rather than biological mother.

"What's the problem?" Regina asked. "It's a truth spell."

"I'll have some wine ready." Emma departed for the kitchen.

Regina just sat there, her hands on her knees instead of folded in her lap. It was the kind of thing Henry had been raised to pick up on. "Ask me something," she said, with just a little bit of challenge, more pleading, in her voice. "Or have you already written me off?"

"This is weird," Henry said plainly. "What would you ask your mom, if she couldn't lie?"

"Why I wasn't good enough for her," Regina said, and grew a look of surprise. She stood up, uncomfortable. "I'd be thorough about it. I'd ask her why power was more important than my happiness, things like that, but mostly I'd want to know why the things I wanted were always unimportant and the things she wanted for me were all-consuming."

"Mostly?" Henry pressed, after a pause. He wasn't used to seeing his mother like this.

"I'd ask if she loved me." There was a smile Regina had that kept almost everyone from knowing how sad she was. She wore it now. "It wouldn't matter either way, but I would like to know."

"Do you love me?"

"Of course I do!" Regina looked down at him, wanting to kneel down and embrace him, but not sure if she would let him. Unknowingly, she let her eyes implore him. "There's no one I love more in this world."

Henry stood there, with a look of consternation that Emma wore in difficult moments, emotions ganging up on her and messing with hard-worn cynicism. "Okay."

"Okay?" Regina almost laughed. "Yes. Of course. It doesn't matter either way."

"It does," he said. "You're not Cora. I'm not afraid of you. I just worry you'll hurt someone or someone will hurt you and things'll be bad again."

"Bad?"

"Like when I figured out what was going on and you tried to make me think I was crazy. You could've told me the truth! Emma believed me!"

"Emma didn't have an entire town of her sworn enemies thinking she was their humble mayor." Regina crossed her arms, some of her old poise back. "The first day the Curse was broken, a lynch mob came for me! What if you had been there? You could've been hurt! Or if I'd defended myself, what then?"

"You wanted me to be crazy for my own good?"

"No!" Regina's hand tightened on her own arm. "I wanted things to go back to normal. You went off to Boston, by yourself, and you could've been hurt! Or a dozen other times when you almost got killed, playing your little game. I could've told you, and maybe you would've accepted what I'd done, or you could've tried even harder to fight me. What if you'd come across Jefferson, or King George, or Ruby after she'd changed? I left them harmless, but if you caught them at the wrong moment…"

"So it was all to protect me?"

"No," Regina said. The word forced its way up her throat like the first spout of steam from a geyser. "No, I wanted to stay Mayor. I wanted them to stay in the endings I'd written them. Why should they all be happier than me? They never did anything to earn happiness. They never suffered the way I did. I wanted to win. That's all. And then Emma came and everything spiraled out of control."

"You tried to kill her."

"She would've taken you away from me. Don't lie to me. She tried to steal you, didn't she?"

Henry's eyes shifted, on the defensive a little. "She wanted to protect me from you."

"How would she have raised you? How would she provide for you? Henry, where would she even find time for you? Would she stop chasing bail-jumpers every night at nine to tuck you in?"

"You could've let her stay," Henry insisted, but there was something broken in his vehemence. He sounded unsure of himself. Regina didn't know which parent he got that from. "She wouldn't have fought you if you hadn't started it."

"All I knew about her was that she was a convicted felon, and I was supposed to trust her with my son?"

"You could've gotten to know her."

Regina stopped, a furious argument on her lips. They dried. She licked them. "I could've done a lot of things."

Henry calmed down a little. Subconsciously, he'd been expecting her to blow up. He didn't know where he'd gotten the idea, but somewhere in his psyche was an image out of a fairy tale—Regina going mad with power, striking out at everyone and everything. But the more Regina talked, the further and further away it got.

"Do you trust Emma now?"

"I trust her intentions," Regina said. "I think she's willing to put your needs ahead of her own. If I have to share you with someone, I'm alright with it being her."

"And what about Mary-Margaret?"

"What about her?" Regina asked, eyebrow raising warningly.

"Do you want to kill her?"

"No!"

"What about other people? Are you planning to hurt anyone in Storybrooke?"

"No," Regina assured him. "I'm not that person anymore."

"How come?"

Regina stood still, then chuckled. She sat back down on the bed and cracked her neck. "You."

"Me?"

She nodded. "You showed them I was capable of more than just pain and destruction. And once it became clear that, to some degree, they could pardon my behavior… well, I thought I could start over. Power never made me happy. I kept trying for more power, greater vengeance, but I just ended up hurting more people and having more people hate me and it went on and on… it's like your Batman comics."

"Batman?" Henry asked, his quizzical expression twisting as far as it could go. Regina imagined his brain popping out his ears.

"He can never get his parents back, but he keeps fighting and fighting. And for him, that's a good thing. He saves people. But for me, it was very unhealthy. I kept losing people. My mother, my father… And I realized that if I kept it up, I would lose you too. So I decided that no matter how hard it got, I wouldn't be who I'd been. They could hate me all they wanted, I wouldn't let it change me. Because I'd have you."

"But you haven't," Henry said, and his voice was small and weak. "I mean, I've been at Emma's… we barely see each other."

"You don't hate me," Regina said. "You don't look at me like I looked at my mother. That's a lot more than what I had as Mayor. It's real. I held onto the Curse just because it was mine, but you I hold onto… well, because you make me happy. You-" She stopped. "Henry, you're crying."

He cried like Regina would if she could. Silently, with tears running down his cheeks like blood from a wound. "I don't want you to go back."

"Go back?"

"You said that if it weren't for me, you'd still be the Evil Queen."

"Henry, that's not what I meant—"

"I don't want you to hurt people anymore! They always hurt you back and sometime they're going to kill you! I just want you to be nice!"

"I'm trying—"

"Everyone tries to be nice to you and you just make fun of them!"

"They don't try," Regina said, restraining herself to a didactic tone. The words flowed out of her, so easy, so true. "They handle me with kid gloves because I'm dangerous and I accept that. It's what I deserve."

"Emma doesn't."

"That's what I like about her." Regina paused, frowning. She tried clearing her throat. "I don't think this spell is working right."

"You like Emma?" Henry asked, full of hope.

"She's always honest with me. We fight, but I prefer that to her pretending to like me when she really can't stand the sight of me." Regina wagged her finger in front of herself, trying to signal something as she helplessly continued. "And now she's using this stupid goddamn spell to try and fix things between us instead of embarrassing me, like I would do in her place. I love her."

Finally, Regina stopped, blinking repeatedly like she'd just had a seizure.

When she spoke next, it wasn't compelled. She opened her mouth and sounded out the words and let them come to her. "I earned a chance from her. I hurt her, but she forgave me, and I made it up to her, and now she's being good to me. She's not afraid of me. She doesn't resent me. She knows what it's like to hit rock-bottom and she got back up. I want that. I want her to look at me like she looks in a mirror, and sees only the good stuff instead of what's in the past. I want to be good for her…"

Then, quite quietly, Regina fell to her knees. "Hellfire."

"So… you don't wanna be bad anymore?"

Regina shook her head.

"And if you could it all over again? If Daniel died again…"

Regina looked at him, shocked, and her mouth seemed to work without her. "I'd run away to someplace no one had ever heard of me, where Cora and Gold and all the rest could never find me, and I'd start a new life. Someone else would fall in love with me, because back then I was worth being in love with. And I'd have a son. I'd want him to be just like you. I'd take care of him like I should've taken care of you. I'd… Henry, I'm sorry."

He rushed in to hug her like a weight finally breaking free and dropping to the Earth.