Emma stood in the doorway of the master bedroom and shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Regina was still reclined on the same side of the bed she had been when Emma went to shower, she was still reading her book, and she was completely ignoring the blonde.

Finally deciding the older woman wasn't going to ever look up and acknowledge her, she walked over to the chair positioned not far from Regina's side of the bed and plopped down, giving a grunt as her body made contact with the surprisingly hard chair cushions.

"If you break my furniture, Ms. Swan, you will be paying to replace it," Regina stated from behind her book. "I promise you that you can't afford it."

Emma rolled her eyes and shifted to throw her legs over one arm while leaning against the other so she was comfortably looking at the former mayor. "Probably not. My boss keeps refusing to give me a raise."

"You should speak with your mother about that. I'm sure she'd be more than happy to increase your budget," Regina replied without missing a beat.

"She is not my boss," the sheriff's mouth twitched with the effort to not start ranting about her parents. "Anyway, what are you reading?"

"Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe." Regina continued to keep her eyes on the pages of her book. "It's about a tribal leader who falls from grace in the eyes of his people, and then his village is culturally destroyed when the Europeans move in and begin to dictate to the local inhabitants how things ought to be as opposed to how the natives have always lived their lives."

Emma blinked. "Sounds depressing."

Regina frowned. "It's realistic in how it handles the subject of what is and is not," she replaced her bookmark and finally looked up, "considered acceptable behavior in one's society, and what are you wearing?"

"What?" The younger woman glanced down at her outfit. Her multicolored fuzzy socks clashed a little with her red flannel pajama bottoms, which looked odd with the ribbed white tank top she was wearing. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

"Where to begin?" The brunette gave a sigh that said she thought Emma was a hopeless case. "At least you're wearing pants this time as opposed to the red thong you had on the first time I saw you in your sleep attire."

"Would you rather I had on nothing but my tank?" Emma rolled her eyes again. "Besides, I didn't have any changes of clothes, and I didn't even know I was going to stay until I decided I was, and by then it was too late to go back home and pack." She waved a hand in the air. "Whatever. It's all water, but, if you must know, I don't prefer to sleep like this." She motioned down her body.

Regina gave her an annoyed look. "I suppose you think it will shock me when you tell me you sleep in the nude?"

Emma's eyes widened. "What? No! I mean, I would never… that's just not… Why do you do that? No, I do not prefer to sleep in the nude. I prefer to sleep in shorts, but the weather up here is too cold for that most of the time. I feel like I'm always cold. God!" She let out a frustrated grunt.

"I suppose the weather doesn't bother me. In the Enchanted forest, we had no central air or heat, and my castle was always a bit drafty." Regina gave a small shrug. "At least here there is warmth or cooling when you need it."

"Yeah, if you can afford it and you're not living in your car or on the street," the blonde shot back. "It's not all great here either."

"No, I suppose not," Regina answered quietly. Tilting her head to the side, she considered the other woman for a moment, and it looked as if she was going to ask a question but decided against it at the last moment. Instead, she reached over and opened the drawer in her nightstand to pull out what looked like Henry's book. "Before you ask, no, this isn't Henry's. I made a copy of it once I realized I needed to know what he knew and that he'd hold it against me if I continued to keep custody of his book."

She plopped the book down in her lap and opened it to the story about Prince Charming and Snow White. Running a finger along the page that began with "Once upon a time," she let the turmoil of emotions she felt register on her face for a very brief moment. "Your mother was a beautiful child," she began, her voice soft with thought and emotion.

"Lovely dark locks that bounced with natural curl, bright eyes, a contagious smile, a soft demeanor that spoke of her good heart, and," she glanced up, "skin as white as snow." She chuckled at the eye roll that received. "She was intelligent but naïve, and she was terrible at riding horses." Regina closed the book and handed it over to Emma, who took it without a word. "There was a time, Ms. Swan, when I genuinely loved your mother. I was a teenager, and she was a young girl. I saved her life after an incident involving a horse."

Regina's eyes grew glassy as she remembered. "We became close, and I trusted her, but my trust was misplaced."

"She told Cora about Daniel?" Emma shifted, placing the book down on the ground.

"Yes, and you know what happened from there." The brunette looked down at her hands where they rested in her lap. "I think I might have been able to deal with the death of Daniel if not for the fact that I was, days later, forced to agree to marry Snow's father, a man old enough to be my father and who saw me as a prize and a babysitter for his young daughter." She literally shuddered in her bed. "There is nothing, no training one can have, to prepare you for a wedding night in which you had no desire to participate."

"Wait a minute," the young woman cut in. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"It was a different world and a different time, Ms. Swan. Royalty rarely married for love. They married for financial security and unity of kingdoms. I can think of very few queens who married their kings because they wanted to. They did so because it was their obligation to do so and then to have their king's heirs." Regina's eyes sharpened. "If you ever believed that being a royal was something to be wished for, let me assure you that it is far worse in some regards than being a peasant."

Emma shook her head. "That's messed up."

"Yes," came the flat response. "Your grandfather wanted a male heir, and he did everything he could, as often as he could, in order to ensure he received one." Another shudder ran through Regina, briefly slouching her posture. "He really didn't care whether I wanted to participate or not in the matter."

"How long?" Emma's voice was rough with her rising emotions at this new knowledge. "How long did he do that to you?"

"A while," she shrugged. "A few years, until I talked the man you know as Sydney into killing him for me."

"You didn't have him killed to gain the kingdom?" Though the question was harsh, Emma's curiosity was honest. It was clear she wasn't being malicious. She wanted to understand.

"That, too." Regina gave a bark of a laugh. "It was an added bonus to get rid of a man who was making my life a living hell."

The sheriff narrowed her eyes. "Mary Margaret said the man who killed her father disappeared. What happened to him?"

"If you're insinuating I killed him, you'd be wrong. I tried to talk him into leaving my kingdom, but he was a love sick fool. He made a magical wish to be with me always." Again, Regina gave that same bitter laugh.

"And?" Emma tilted her head and waited.

Regina shrugged. "And he got his wish." She made a vague gesture with her hand as she said in a haughty, overly dramatic voice, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"

"You're joking? Are you for real? I mean, seriously?" The young woman sat up in her chair and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "Sydney was the magic mirror?"

"Yes, and I hate that Disney portrayed me as being so shallow as to care how pretty Snow White is." The brunette rolled her eyes. "Please. I always had more suitors, and it wasn't simply because I was the Evil Queen."

"Please don't get us into a conversation about how pretty my mother may or may not be. I really don't want to think about my parents in a sexual way." Emma shuddered.

"Really, Ms. Swan." Regina rolled her eyes. "How do you think you arrived here? Magical fairy?"

"Magical tree, actually," the sheriff shot back with a grin. She leaned down to pick the book up again and flipped through the pages until she found the one about her parents. "You know," she said quietly as her eyes scanned the story. "I would have killed the bastard, too."

Regina raised an eye brow. "There it is again."

"What?" Emma looked up, her eyes wide in question.

"That part of you that surprises me. Charmings don't kill for revenge, Sheriff. They kill to protect others, but not for the sake of killing when the end is to only make their own lives better." The older woman's eyes were full of a candid curiosity regarding the woman before her. "If your parents, or the town, heard you say such things, they'd accuse you of having been corrupted by me in some way."

"Everyone has good and evil inside of them, Regina." Emma stood, walking over to place the book back in the hands of the other woman. "If someone claims to be mostly good, or mostly evil, they're only fooling themselves, and any bastard who would, on a regular basis, rape a woman young enough to be his daughter in the name of trying to get a son doesn't deserve sympathy in my opinion. I don't care how he might be related to me. The same goes for a woman. Rape is rape, and it's wrong. What?" She narrowed her eyes at the look that passed by on Regina's face. It was a look of guilt, which was odd to see on the other woman. "What don't I know?"

"A great deal," Regina answered as her face shut down again. "I'm not a good person, Ms. Swan. I've done terrible things. I've killed people simply to do so, and I've," she hesitated. "Sometimes, when you're hyper focused on things that only make you happy, you tend to turn into the people you most hate."

Emma backed up until she could sit back down in the chair. "You raped someone?"

Regina looked away, unable to make eye contact with the other woman. "In the other world, yes, I suppose you could consider it rape. In this world, he came to me willingly and sometimes when I didn't even know he was planning be here. In the other world, sex was a tool for power," her voice was low and cracked from time to time. "Kings used sex as a way to overpower and subjugate willful women." She sighed heavily. "And so did I with willful men."

"You've got to be kidding me." The blonde shook her head in disbelief. "Why would you do that after knowing what's that like? How could you do that, and to who?!"

"I did it because I knew precisely what it was like," the brunette's voice began to hold an edge, and her eyes finally met the younger woman's. "I knew how it pulled away the other person's sense of power. I knew what it meant to be humiliated and not be able to do a thing about it. I knew how effective it was as a tool to break someone. I learned, and then I used what I had learned to create my powerbase and secure my kingdom. By the time I had reached the point of using sex as a tool to dominate and destroy, I didn't care about anyone else's feelings." She scoffed. "I cared about three things – killing Snow White, destroying everyone's happy endings, and gaining more powerful magic. I would do anything to reach those ends."

Emma ran her hands through her hair as she processed. "And what about now?"

"Now?" Regina's voice held a mocking tone. "Now I have nothing, I'm no one, and," she glanced around the room, "I'm trying to not increase the power of my magic, so, no Ms. Swan, now I would not have sex with someone against their will. In fact, I stopped doing that the day the curse was enacted."

Emma gave a grave nod of her head. "You never told me who."

Regina shook hers in turn, the gesture saying the blonde was still being foolishly naïve. "There were many, some you know and some you don't. Does it really matter?"

"It does to me." Emma leaned back, crossing her arms.

"Fine." The brunette's eyes gave off a look of defiance. "Graham was one. He was the huntsman I sent to slay Snow White and return with her heart as proof of the deed. When he came back empty handed and refusing to kill her, I took his heart and then had my guards escort him to my bedchambers."

"God, Regina. I just don't know what to think about this." Emma ran a hand over her face. "Graham was basically your sex slave?"

"To put it crudely."

"So why would he come willingly to you after the curse? Wouldn't he want to stay as far away from you as possible?" The young woman stood and paced the room, unable to look at the other woman. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I honestly don't know." Regina watched her pace. "I do know he stopped coming when you arrived."

"You mean just before he," the blonde stopped pacing and turned to look at the woman in the bed. "You took his heart." It was a statement of fact.

"Yes." Regina didn't blink; she waited.

"That means you still had his heart after the curse happened." Again, it was another statement of fact.

The reply was just as blandly returned as the first. "Yes."

"You killed him." Emma pointed down at the other woman. "You crushed his heart when he decided to stop seeing you and be with me."

Regina closed her eyes and stilled her breathing, which had gone up just a slight notch as she waited for Emma to draw her conclusions. "Is that what Henry told you?"

"Yeah, but I didn't believe him at the time. Regina, did you kill Graham out of spite?"

"Do you really want to know that answer, Sheriff?"

"I… no." Emma shook her head. "No, I don't want to know it, but I do anyway. I'll never be able to prove it. There's no law on the books that would apply to this situation. Christ, Regina, how many people have died because you were having a crappy day?"

"Hundreds," the brunette gave a nonchalant shrug. "Thousands if you count the war."

The sheriff was livid. "How can you be so indifferent? All those innocent lives gone just because you weren't happy? How can you just sit there and…"

"Ah, there it is." The volume of Regina's voice went up to counter Emma's, but her tone remained unconcerned. "There is that Charming righteousness. For a moment there I was beginning to wonder where that might be."

Emma stopped talking and glared at the other woman. "How many people live in your head?"

"What?" The older woman looked confused. "Are you accusing me of multiple personality disorder?"

"Maybe," the blonde replied as she tried to calm herself down. "There's nothing I can do about all the people you've killed, but, going forward, if you kill another person, I'll take care of you myself. No more, Regina, I mean it."

The other woman tilted her head in question. "Just like that? You're going to make an idle threat and then do nothing else after knowing all the supposed atrocities I've committed?"

"They're not supposed. What you've done is atrocious, but trying to punish you for it now is a like trying to decide how to punish Pol Pot. I mean, sure, we could put you under house arrest, but does that really justify the amount of crimes you've actually committed? How do you punish someone who has done something on the level of mass genocide?" Emma's face was contorted with conflicting emotions.

Regina offered, "You could kill me."

"Yeah, but that wouldn't really accomplish anything either, now would it? God, Regina, how can you be this messed up? I don't even know what to do with this information. You turned into this woman," she gestured at the brunette, "because your mother killed your first love?"

"My true love," Regina spat back.

"How do you know? He was the first person you loved, but that doesn't make him your true love. It makes him someone you loved who loved you back, but it's not the same thing." The younger woman stood up and walked to the bedroom door. "You spent 28 years stuck in this town with people that I would consider idiots on the best of my days when I was working in the real world. That kind of house arrest will have to do because I honestly don't know that there's a punishment out there to fit the crimes you're responsible for committing or having committed." She opened the door. "Good night, Regina."

As the door silently closed, Regina wiped at her eyes, trying to keep the tears from spilling over as she swallowed down the bile that had come up as she had confessed her crimes. Her mind swam with what had just happened and with her past as a whole. Guilt ate at her, and she wanted nothing more than to turn it into hate to fuel her, as a way to justify destroying those who would stand in her way. The magic within her churned, and her eyes fell to her spell book that sat innocently on a shelf not far from away. She took in a deep breath and crawled out of bed.

Stopping in front of the shelf, her eyes fell to the book. Her hand lingered over it for long minutes before she reluctantly pulled back and headed to her bathroom to take a long, hot bath. She was too tightly wound; there would be no sleep for her, but, then again, there rarely was.


OMG FEELS