Chapter 5

Regina Mills was not helpless. She worked too hard, hated too much, lost far too much to be helpless. But. (Buts are horrid words, aren't, they so full of excuses and platitudes…) But. Even the strong need a paladin, sometimes, even if they don't want one. But. This time, Regina broke on the outside, where everyone could see. But. This time, Emma was there. But. This time it was too late to fight the need. You can choose whichever on you prefer. But here is what I know happened when Regina needed a saviour:

1. Spells, curses and their fine print (also known as "the price of magic")

Spells are so tricky. They are not just words and props. They are, mostly, intent. And when casting the curse- and was spell was so wrong a word here- there had been no planning and only one very amorphous intent- MAKE IT STOP.

You see, pain is distracting, makes you careless, robs you of words. Pain makes you anxious for a resolution, impatient for an outcome.

Spells are tricky because you need to consider all the ramifications. You need to weigh the gains and the losses. You need to calculate and, like any contract, you need to define the terms, leave nothing to chance. But pain? Pain leaves no space in you for that calculation. You could actually say it makes you stupid and you wouldn't be far off. Regina had cast the curse, thinking of nothing but "Make it stop" because all the space there was in her was taken by a void, some place where her hopes and dreams had once lived. Someplace where love had dwelled and filled her and given her joy and certainty.

When Daniel died, she had cried young tears- for the loss of the boy, for the loss of what could have been- the little white house and the horses in the back, the children running around the hem of her skirts. She had lost a future of happiness. She had cried then and hated Snow for what she had cost her.

It was a young hate, not meant to last. A hate in the heat of the moment, at the peak of loss. She had loved the child Snow was mostly because she was meant to love. She needed someone to love. She could not love her husband. She had been given to him, all but tied down with the binds of filial duty, wrapped in a pretty dress that suffocated her. Her love for Snow was beyond her. It just was. When her husband's dutiful nightly exertions produced a pregnancy, she was quietly happy, even if it meant nothing to the king. He had his beloved child. He had Snow, he needed no one else. Not her, not her child.

It didn't matter. She loved that child enough for both of them. There would be no little white house with horses in the back, but there would be a child around the hem of her skirt. She needed nothing more.

2. When there is nothing left to lose (You are free of what you are)

The child died inside her. And so did her heart, her resilience, her love. It all shrivelled up and withered thoroughly at the touch of the husband that patted her hand in what should have been her birthing bed and told her "Hush now, no need for tears. Don't worry, dear, I still have Snow." Do you know what is the only other thing love can be? Hate. Love can only become hate.

She cried then, alone. One after the other, the last few tears she would ever cry, plopped on her pillow, one after the other, a celebration of all the things she lost with that child. Love. Joy. Innocence. Faith. Hope. Like her tears, those things all left no trace.

It broke then. That something that binds what you are with what you have lost and keeps you inside yourself. It broke irremediably. She didn't know it then. She was too tired to see it for what it was. She did find out though, when all her father could offer to save her from the king was nothing more than his usual cowardice. He could have taken her away. She'd begged him to. He could have killed the king himself. She had nothing to say if he had. But in the end, his cowardice had cost her her one final- unexpected- hope: the Genie of Agrahbah. It had cost her her illusion that she was good and deserved better, because when she could wait no longer, she would have let a man that truly saw her go to his death.

She had lost everything. And as people who have lost everything will know, when you have lost everything, you are finally free of what you were.

Nature abhors vacuum. In the place where love and kindness used to live, hate made a home. Grown up hate, calculative, quiet, seductive. A hate that promised to fill all the empty spaces left by Daniel and her child and Snow. After a while, she was giddy on it. When she weakened, it gave her strength. When she hungered, it fed her. When she would sit and give up, it propelled her forward. It hurt.

She gave up her heart. And yet the pain remained.

When news arrived that Snow was to marry and latter that Snow was to have a child, that fracture in her became a chasm, a river, an ocean. When she imagined that child, she let hate fill her because she was out of tears to grieve her own. And yet, the pain lingered.

When she exacted revenge, it was on the whole of her loss. Not just of Daniel, not just of her child- her children. When she exacted her revenge, it was not for the husbandless wife or the childless mother she had become. Nothing she did could have been payment enough. Only oblivion was.

3. 8.15 Storybrooke time

So it was that this love story did not begin at 8.15 Storybrooke time (which is to say that no one really knows because it was forever 8.15.) It would have been so easy to say that it was love at first sight. It was not. Even the hate it began as was not instantaneous. It took work. Regina Mills worked hard at being hated. Because who knows what lurks behind affection. One moment you are loved, the other you are nothing.

The pain was gone. There was a comfortable numbness of days ruthlessly organised, of a routine that left no space for memory. Memory is a cruel thing, you see. It will eat at you, rob you of what you have left. You have to guard yourself against it. Take precautions. If you don't, every day you lose again. Have you ever felt yourself losing over and over again, everyday? You don't really live and if you don't, nothing will outweigh the loss. You are trapped.

Regina buried her loss in her new days. But she had not read the fine print. Where there were no happy endings, she would be no different from anybody else. The joke was on her.

There was no pain, but there was no happiness either, it seemed. People laughed like they would run out of breath, children played as if there were no games left. Life got lived but there was no magic. Her initial elation at a job well done soon faded. Memory became her enemy. She wished she had been left memoryless. She wasn't. She was the one who remembered everything. Memory was a curse. She had it all but nothing was really hers. It was just one more way she kept on losing.

Ever the fighter- she could not help herself- she put away her memories, slowly, deliberately. She worked hard at it. She blocked them behind a simple belief system: if she pretended long enough, hard enough that nothing had ever happened, eventually, it would be true. Who else would know, anyway? She worked diligently at it, at that belief system. Every day she did not let herself remember was a day that nothing had happened. And eventually, it became second nature to her. She had not been the Queen. She had not been Snow's mother. She had not stolen hearts. She had not killed her father. She had never had a mother that hurt her. It was almost as good as the real thing. So long as she remained here, in this little town, she could control her past. It could not come back and chip at her. Eventually, with the years passing, none of those things had truly happened. Until Emma Swan. Until Henry.

4. 8.16 Storybrooke time (or the Emma Swan effect)

One day she would learn to control her actions under duress. Henry, her heart, came with fine print too. The fine print was his birth mother and her inability to be coerced.

Regina had let herself love Henry because this was a new land and what were the odds that she would not succeed at it? She had always been a mother without a child. Henry had come to fill in the gap. But Emma Swan was a part of the deal that had not been disclosed. And when she drove into her life, unwittingly, Regina recognised in her someone just as lonely, someone just as much at odds with the world trying to fit in. And she was scared then because it was so very hard to fight seeing the world according to Emma Swan. Scared that Emma might see through her. She had such fear of finding another like herself that it was only equalled by the desire to find one. What would she do then? Alone was all she knew.

The trouble with Emma and Henry was that Henry was right and Emma indulged him. Their eagerness for answers did not let them do otherwise. Her world of compromise began to fray. She mended it diligently but she knew: she was doomed to fail at that as at every other thing. She would lose and Henry would see for himself the clusterfuck she was and that he had been right all along. She did not want that for him. For him she wanted only the best. The best life, the best house, the best clothes, the best education. The best mother. She was not his best mother. She was not.

She didn't want her half life for Henry. Eventually, she did not want herself for Henry either. She wanted him to start a new, away from her, from Storybrooke from the curse and all that could harm him. She wanted him far from her when mending was no longer an option. She wanted him safe. The fact that Emma wanted to go away only helped things along. Away he would be safe. But Emma misunderstood. As if she would ever want to be alone. Emma misunderstood but when she would have left her to her delusions, Emma followed her upstairs. How was it that such a trivial decision can change everything? How is it that a split moment decision can break what took years to accomplish? Emma followed her upstairs and told her she didn't have a heart. Emma decided in a split second to follow. Regina decided in a blink to admit the truth. It was the first time. She thought that she could get Emma to leave faster.

Emma stayed. Emma stayed and promised her her heart back.

It was like reversing the course of a river. She didn't think it would be possible. It hurt so much. But the hope that had been absent from her life for so long flickered in her. The shock of having someone wanting to do something for her broke her to pieces because for a moment she could not hold back the memory of what had been and to think, just for a fraction of a second that if Emma had been there all those years ago, they would not be here now.

Emma wanted to save her. She shook then, her hands, her arms, her feet, her legs, her whole body taken by tremors she could not control. Like her own body was being torn apart between the past and for the first time a future, a ripping motion.

As she broke at the seams, the dam that held the past at bay broke. She was left alone with it, buried under it, devoured, flattened, destroyed.

And then Emma came back. Emma came back and told her hands what to do, closed her shirt. Emma came back to fix her as sure as she had fixed the buttons of her shirt closed. Emma came back and told her she was going to get her heart back.

She remembered then. She remembered killing Mother. She remembered the death and the threats that came after that. She remembered and she knew how mother would lash out, gnaw at anyone who would help her. She knew letting Emma go was to condemn her to be another Regina walking dead. She wanted her heart back. She wanted to feel again. It would probably kill her to have it back. If it felt like this now how would it feel with her heart back? What good could her heart do for her now? She was weak. Mother was right. She was not worth it. And then she was back there and unable to return to Storybrooke.

5. Killing kindness

Snow stood before her impossibly young, a child again. And then it was Mary Margaret Blanchard and then the Snow that had lived in the woods, cast out. There was the Snow in mourning, the Snow she had held to her for a last time, because Snow was her child too and she was grieving. The child she had to hate when all love had died inside her.

Something was not quite right with her. She was the Mayor. She was Madam Mayor and Mary Margaret Blanchard should not be in her house, looking slightly afraid, slightly pitying her. She was Madam Mayor and there was nothing wrong. She had it all. Mary Margaret Blanchard or Snow, young or not, should not be sitting here holding her hand. She looked at their hands together and pulled her back, because Snow could not mean anything but her destruction.

And when Snow held the pill out to her, it was a poisoned apple in her hand. She fought then. She fought because even heartless, childless, loveless evil queens have a survival instinct and they do not want to fade away gently.

But this was Mary Margaret Blanchard and there was no magic left in this land and the apple became a pill again. Mary Margaret Blanchard was not Snow. School teachers and Storybrooke did not poison evil queens. They handed pills that would numb the pain and leave you trapped inside with only your screaming for company. No, this was Storybrooke, there were no happy endings, no poisoned apples. Cruelty wore a gentler mask. It looked like a pill and it would not kill her.

She took the water and she took the pill and Mary Margaret Blanchard smiled then, her child-reassuring smile. Mary Margaret Blanchard was Snow, the older one that hated her and the younger one that loved her. And she held her hands and said "Don't fight it. It's going to be OK. Shush, hush now."

The pill loosened all her muscles, all her cells, all her conscious thoughts. The pill broke through her careful barrier, the one that stood everyday between the Evil Queen and the Mayor. It plunged her into sleep and all her nightmares, so alive, all at her throat like dogs. She could not breathe and she could not fight them.

That pill in Mary Margaret Blanchard's hand was a killing kindness.

6. The prison within

Emma's voice brought her from where her mother kept on ripping her heart out of her chest over and over again. Emma made her stop. Emma with her golden hair and the bad manners. She wanted to grab her hand and not let go. "What happened to your mom?"

Oh that was simple. She had killed her. She had run her through with her spell as surely as with a sword. She had killed Mother. For all the good it had done her. She had killed Mother. She had defeated her, exiled her. She felt relief. She felt herself go back to her nightmare, but because of Emma Swan, she went back knowing she stood a chance of surviving.

.

Time passed in a blur of faces: Mary Margaret Blanchard, Mother, Snow, Mother, King, Genie, Father, Mother. Mary Margaret Blanchard. One more pill. One more pill to trap her inside herself, unable to escape. Past or nightmare. Same difference. Time passed and she endured because between the pills and her mother, she was still Regina and she kept on losing. Even if this was Storybrooke and Mary Margaret Blanchard was no longer Snow. She still lost every single time. Even against herself.

"Whatever it is, you'll get over it" Mary Margaret Blanchard murmured softly as if it could help. It was Daniel and her child and Snow. How could she get over it? How do you get over those that were your life just because you will never get them back? It was an obscene thing to say but Regina could not explain why, and this was Mary Margaret Blanchard and she had no clue why it was such a gross wound to inflict. Something that burned and burned and burned and because Mary Margaret Blanchard kept on mumbling she would get over it, the burning only grew and her body was not her own anymore, not to rebel and scream and shout that getting over it was not possible. Because she had tried and, like at everything else, she had failed.

7. The courage to scream and cry

A hand, a cold, cold hand was the first thing she felt that was not the numbness of her body or the burning in her soul. It was a cold hand that guided her to where she could fight, to where she could resist. Against all she had believed, against all she had hoped and worked for, that hand, that welcome hand belonged to Emma Swan.

And that hand did not sooth and the voice that came with it did not shush her. The hand held her arms and the voice called her by her name and ground her to where the kind pill could not reach her and her mother's hands had no strength.

Emma had come back. The impertinent, rude, unwelcome Emma Swan had come back, bloodied and wounded. She smelled of blood and sweat and of new magic. She smelled of her mother's sweet rose powder scent and she could not fight the fear and revulsion that smell caused in her and she recoiled into herself, trying to close herself shut because she was weak Regina again, not the Queen, not even the Mayor. She was just the daughter again, and the daughter was afraid.

But where she would have stayed, wounded and afraid, Emma pulled her back. She gave her a box and inside, she knew because her whole body recognized it, was her heart.

But even heartless, childless, loveless evil queens- or mayors- have a survival instinct. That heart could kill her. As surely as a poisoned apple. When she had given up her heart, she had given up her love, her hopes, all the things you need a heart for. Getting it back would not bring Daniel or her child or Snow back. So she would have a heart and she would have the love and the hopes but no one to love and no one to hope things for.

She cried then, all tears she had not allowed herself to cry since her child had died inside her so many years ago. Having her heart there, knowing she could love again, love Henry like he needed, love again, someone else and being too scared to take it, it was like dying of thirst standing by the water.

"Do you want it back?" Emma asked, her cold hand still in her arm, not holding her back, just supporting her. She shook her head. No. She lied. She wanted to feel something else beside the numbness, something besides the absence of feeling. No.

"It's OK to be afraid, Regina." Was it? Was it OK to be afraid? It had never felt OK before. It had never been OK before, because when you're scared, mothers and kings and fathers, they take that fear and turn it against you. "It's OK to be afraid. I'm afraid too." The hand that held her arm held her shoulder and then her face and Regina wanted to believe the words so much because it is such a great burden to not believe anyone. It is so lonely. And she was just so tired of not feeling anything because the alternative would be fear and death and loneliness. She was the most tired woman in the world.

"And it's OK to cry" Regina felt them then, the big fat tears rolling down her face as if they had been waiting for the endorsement, soaking her white shirt. "It's OK to be angry. It's OK to scream. You're entitled to scream. I don't know what she did to you. I have no idea. But I felt it, what she hated and how she hated, I felt it all inside me when she was inside my head. I don't know what happened, but it's OK to scream because sometimes it's all you have left."

She wanted to. She really wanted to, but her throat did not. There are certain things that are stolen from you. The strength to open your voice, the courage to scream, to show that you're angry and devastated, that had been taken, snuffed out of her. But there she was, Emma Swan, and she was not shushing her and she was not feeding her pills. Here she was, Emma Swan who would have stood with her even if she had screamed and shouted and wailed for all she had lost. Emma Swan, who held out her bloodied arms for her to crawl into when the sobs came instead of the scream that she didn't have. Emma who had hated her and told she did not have a heart was the only person that had stood there while she lost her mind and her composure, the only person that did not turn away from her when she was at her worst.

She sobbed and chocked into those arms and then she opened her shirt when she felt brave because she had a heart and she wanted it back even if it meant she would died poisoned by her own wants and needs. She wanted it back because Emma had gone for it and returned holding it as if it was precious. Tough Regina knew better than that.

8. Precious

Emma took the still heart from the box and held it with great care, the grey ashes becoming red embers in her hands. She knew what to do then, with certainty if she had ever had any, she pushed her hand and the heart it held against Regina's ribcage, over the mark Cora had left when she had taken it. She pushed and the flesh offered resistance at first but then Emma squared her shoulders and pushed harder, against logic against biology and against all she knew before this. And then she felt it, the body opening up to her, to the heart she carried. With her left hand she pulled Regina to her, holding her steady, holding herself too because she was terrified that she had lost her ever loving mind. But then, like a puzzle, the heart fit into its place and then it began beating, once, twice, stronger.

Regina gasped. She felt full and warm and complete. For a moment, she couldn't understand why she'd ever wanted it out of her, why she had given it up. And then there was only pain again. Absurd, all encompassing pain in her body, in her soul.

Can you imagine if everything that has ever hurt in your life- from the most modest to the most grievous of hurts- came back at the very same pin point in time to hurt you all over again? All those rejections, all those embarrassments, all those things that were taken from you, all the ones you lost on your own, all the hurt you caused and regretted, all the stumped toes, all the broken bones, all the accusations, all the slights. All the small ways your soul is broken. All the small ways you die every day. All of it, all condensed into that one moment: the moment she got her heart back.

But Emma had her in the stronghold of her arms and Regina knew then she needed only to hold on. She held on to Emma, a tether to life and Henry and hope. She held on as her body broke and mended itself to a heart she had grown unaccustomed to having. She held on during the excruciating pain and the despair so fresh of all those things her heart remembered. She clutched at her heart because, even if it had been black and deformed and old and dead, it had looked and felt precious when Emma held it her hands. She clutched at it because at the same time it mended itself it broke anew because for the very first time, there was someone that did not walk way to give her privacy to deal with things.

Pain is rarely private. You may think you do a good job at hiding it. Don't fool yourself. There is no hiding it. There are just people around you willing to not see it the same way you look away from someone with a deformity. People look away because they there is no dealing with it. Pain is obscene and ugly and no wants any part of it. You are truly on your own.

But Emma? She held her and cried with her and told her she should cry and the only thing she did was rub circles in her back that told her she was still there, circles of a compassion she had never sought, circles of warmth that told her she was not alone. For the very first time- even with Daniel- she was not alone. Emma tightened her hold as if she too needed comfort. That, more than anything, was her undoing: that somehow Emma needed her too.

9. You needed me

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Regina. I though… I thought … I didn't know I believed it. I thought you needed your heart back. I'm so sorry"

"Why?"

"Why? Because I thought I had it all figured out. I thought it would make you happy… No, not that… I thought it would make you easier to…" She hesitated because she couldn't quite pluck up the courage. But Regina's hair was plastered to her face with the sweat and the tears. Her bravery deserved the truth. "I thought it would make you easier to love…"

"Why are you sorry?" Her voice was hoarse, gravelly. She took Emma's hand and pressed it, palm against her thrumming heart. She had never missed it before. She had never missed it until Emma. Hearts are commodities. Superfluous. Easier to live without. "Thank you". Her thumb rubbed circles on the back of Emma's hand. "Thank you".

Her hurt subsided, the tears dried, the sobs relented. A kiss that started at her eyes migrated to her mouth. A kiss that became light and strength. A kiss that became a smile in Emma's bloodied face.

"Thank you. Thank you for giving me back my heart."

Everything was new. She felt more. As if all her senses were heightened. What had been numb was all feeling. What had been ordinary was exceptional. Yes, it hurt. It would all hurt for a very long time.

The curse broke when Emma's smile sank into Regina's pupils. That moment shone star-like, a diamond in the pitch black of the night sky. It shone like a perfect diamond. For that one moment, Regina was light and goodness and nothing could ever be broken or wrong. Nothing would ever hurt again.

The comfort of the embrace became desire of the body then. A desire to heal, to sooth. Regina touched each of the wounds on Emma's body, knowing well what had caused them, but never recoiling. This was the time to bloom, because there was too much to lose by remaining in bud. Her fingers, her palms, shed soft magic, a magic she was not aware of possessing, not here, not in this land. A magic that paid no price. With each touch, a desire as intense as the pain, as strong as they both were bloomed. The first tentative touches became eager response. The first soft kisses were soon a feast, a pull and tug at the centre of her, that demanded more and more. Each strand of saliva brought them closer, each bead of sweat made them more generous. Each inch of skin she touched awakened something in her, something she had never felt before, because she'd been so young with Daniel she'd had no clue that this could happen, where she had no idea where Emma's skin ended and hers began, what was her pleasure and what was Emma's. She had honestly never thought that her body could give or take so much pleasure. She had never quite believed that flesh against flesh, flesh inside her could release in her the love she had squirreled away despite herself. The sighs became moans, the movement became storm, the tender became demanding, the plural became singular until it all exploded around them, all their molecules shattering, scattering rearranging themselves in a new and quite extraordinary order.

That magic, Emma's and hers, that love made like bread with your hands, with your heart, with salt and sugar, was not, after all, there greatest gift she could ever have hoped for.

When Emma submitted to Regina's sleep, when Regina's eyes closed with Emma's exhaustion, she knew- not consciously, not right there, not then – but she knew and her lips curved in a smile that was nothing short of pure: her barren, wasted body (what was left behind when death had come for her baby) had conceived a child.

So you see, it doesn't really matter that things are not meant to last. Sure, it would be wonderful if some of them did. But in the end, what good we lose, if only you have the courage to stand after you have fallen, you can find it again.

Because life shrinks or expands in proportion to your courage. And Regina was done hiding inside herself.

Here is what I know of when Regina needed Emma: Emma needed her right back. There is never a time or a place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single throbbing moment. But. (Buts are strange words, aren't, they so full of promises and courage) But this was theirs.

I know because I was there.