"Honestly, Ms. Swan, you are so predictable," Regina jested in her deep voice, advancing further into the room. "At first I thought I'd have to find you myself, but when I saw you brought that wolf sniffing around in my mirror, I realized how silly I was. Of course you would come looking for her, all I had to do was wait. For someone who grew up with no family, you are surprisingly overprotective of them now that you've found them."

Emma reached instinctively for her gun and emptied her clip at Regina, but the queen deflected each bullet with ease until Emma felt the gun was empty. She tossed it to the ground and tried a different approach.

"I have magic, and I know how to use it now, just as well as you do," she threatened, hoping the fib would hold, but Regina only laughed, taking another step into the room.

"If that were true, you wouldn't have reached first for your gun," she said simply.

"Old habits die hard," Emma retorted, but Regina's only response was to take another step forward. Snow tensed.

"Stay away from her!" she growled, pressing herself against the bars and trying to sound intimidating, but really just sounding scared. "She didn't do anything, it was me."

It was nothing more than the argument she had used before, and Regina disregarded it as easily as she had the first time, advancing still closer with slow steady strides.

"You see, Ms. Swan, I made your mother here a little promise. A promise I intend to keep. I told her I would kill you. I told her she would watch as I ripped your heart from your body and crushed it like it was nothing."

Emma smirked. "You can try," she challenged, placing herself directly in front of Snow protectively. Snow stifled a whimper at the front Emma was able to put on as Regina advanced, now inches away.

"I can't imagine you've got much in there to crush," Regina taunted. "A child needs love to develop a functioning heart. I should know – I never got any, and look how I turned out. I did my research on you, Ms. Swan, when I adopted Henry. Sent back from your first home before the age of three. Nine homes in fifteen years, until you ran away from the system prematurely, isn't that correct?"

Emma pulled herself to her full height as Regina advanced still one step further, leaning in to whisper menacingly in her ear.

"Tell me, what was it that finally made you make a break for it? The way your foster mother's hand felt against her cheek as she hit you? Or the foster father who couldn't keep his hands off the pretty blonde teenager living under his roof?"

Emma held her breath as she heard the skeletons of her childhood retold, but Regina was not paying her any attention. She was watching Snow's reaction behind her shoulder as devastated tears rose to pool in her eyes and cascade down her cheeks. Regina smiled then at Snow before pulling herself back to face Emma again.

"Not a lot of room to learn to love in the foster system, is there, Ms. Swan? Or outside of it, either. That's a lesson you had to learn the hard way, though, wasn't it, when Neal knocked you up and sent you to jail for a crime he committed. After all of that heart break, I wonder if there will even be anything in there for me to crush." Her eyes flickered down to the left side of her chest before bouncing back up to meet her defiant eyes. "Let's find out, shall we?"

Regina thrust her hand into Emma's chest, causing her to gasp and tense as it closed around her heart. Emma was pressed backwards against the bars of the cell with the force of Regina's redemptive fury. Snow let out a cry as her mind flashed back involuntarily to beside lake Nostos, when she had watched the same thing happen before her eyes. But while then she had only known despair in those few moments, now Snow found herself clinging to a small ray of hope as remembered how those events had ended. Would the same thing happen again? Would Emma's heart prove strong enough to withstand?

Emma had felt the sensation before. A strange, tense pressure drawing her breath into short, tight spurts, but she was more familiar with it this time. She did not panic as Regina closed her grasp and attempted to tug, because she knew that it would not work. Just as it hadn't worked before. She felt a light tug within her, but her heart stayed stubbornly in her chest. Regina's eyes widened uncertainly as she felt the restraint. She looked up to meet Emma's.

"Your mother never told you what happened to her when she tried to take my heart, did she?" Emma whispered viciously. "Too busy plotting and scheming to play catch up? I'll give you a hint. It wasn't anything good."

Emma felt what had now become a slightly familiar pulse of magic emanate from inside her that cast Regina backwards, just as it had her mother in the Enchanted Forest the day she and Mary Margaret had returned. Only Regina seemed more braced for it, and she was only flung a yard backwards and able to keep her feet. As she stumbled from the force, Emma heard a jingle at her side and saw a flash of metal. In a stroke of magical instinct, she summoned the object, and the keys flew from Regina's belt into her hand.

Regina watched them slide from her possession as Emma caught them. She advanced with vicious eyes, her breathing still short from the strength of the pulse that had thrown her backwards. A white-hot spark of fire balled in the palm of her fist, but Emma was done playing magical games. This wasn't her, this wasn't what she did best. She knew what she did best.

Emma twisted herself around, supporting herself with the bars of Snow's cell, and dealt the queen a strong blow to the face with the heel of her boot. Regina stumbled to the ground, reeling, a line of dark blood sprouting from the corner of her lips and trickling down her chin.

Emma did not pause to watch or relish. She swung around and began to fumble with the keys, trying to find the one that fit the lock in the door of Snow's cell. She had not even attempted the first before Snow let out a cry of warning.

"Emma, look out!"

Emma spun just in time to dodge a fully-formed flaming ball of magic as Regina cast it towards her. It flew through the bars of Snow's cell, who backed away to avoid it.

Regina lunged forward, wrapping her fingers around Emma's throat, and squeezing tightly, but Emma had only to use the bars against her back as leverage and knee her in the gut to make her release them. She sputtered at bit as their hold slackened, and raised her hand to deal the queen another blow, but something caught hold of her wrist as she did and held it taught.

She looked up and saw the bars of the cell had come to life, expanding and shifting fluidly like iron snakes. One had grabbed hold of her wrist, and she felt another snatch her other hand, holding her back. She attempted to wrench her hands free, but the iron bars would not budge as she felt a third creep from behind her and wrap itself around her neck.

Somewhere behind her she heard Snow's pleading screams as her vision blurred from lack of oxygen. She was only just able to make out Regina's hazy form advancing one last time before she felt something hard collide painfully with the side of her head and everything went black.

Regina watched Emma's body slacken into unconsciousness from the blow she had dealt her with the butt of a candlestick she had summoned from the wall. She let out a long breath and released the bars of the cell from her enchantment. They sprang back into place while Emma crumpled to the floor outside Snow's cell. Snow fell to her knees with her and placed her hands gingerly over her daughter's form on the ground.

For a moment, Regina was silent. She kept her narrow eyes on Emma's body, slack and folded below her. She crouched to examine her handiwork, and breathed a sigh of frustration.

"I suppose this requires a change of plans?" Regina said darkly, straightening and casting a disappointed glance at Emma's limp form. She waved her hand nonchalantly. The door to the cell adjacent to Snow's opened and Emma's body slipped from beneath her mother's hands, tossed unceremoniously inside. She remained unconscious as the door swung closed and locked of its own accord. "But then again, every failure is an opportunity in disguise, wouldn't you agree Snow?"

Snow eyed the queen through damp eyelashes as she felt her tears drying on her cheeks. She was frightened by the beginnings of a small smile she saw on her stepmother's face.

"Yes, this makes things much more interesting," Regina pondered quietly, her voice slick and silky. "Sure, I was unable to take her heart and crush it, but now that she's here, I can see endless possibilities stretched out before me."

Regina began to pace. Snow inched her hand as far as she could through the bars separating her cell from the one her daughter had been thrown in. Emma was just out of reach. Snow winced at the blood that trickled from her temple, and sought a small bit of solace in the light, albeit pained, rise and fall of her chest that meant she was at least still breathing.

"I can think of many games I can play with dear Emma here," Regina continued "Games that would make her wish I had been able to crush her heart. Or I could poison her and you could watch her die slowly and painfully in the cell next to yours. Would you like that, Snow?"

"What do you want?" Snow asked her, lips quivering as renewed tears spilled down her pale face. She was begging now, she knew it, but she felt so helpless when she realized that there wasn't anything else she could do. "Whatever you want, I'll give it to you. I'll give you anything, please, I'll do anything."

Regina continued to pace, as if she hadn't even heard Snow speak. Then she paused as if something were occurring to her. She swiveled her head slowly towards her step-daughter.

"Or," she started wickedly. With a subtle wave of her hand, Snow's heart appeared in her palm, red and pulsing. She gave it a nudge and Snow felt herself forced from where she knelt to her feet involuntarily. Regina's smile widened. "I could make you kill her yourself."

Hello Readers,

I'm really happy so many people have taken an interest in this story! Your comments and requests for updates are really encouraging and motivate me to write more. I've already developed many more chapters in my head, now it's just a matter of finding the time to write them down.

I just wanted to let people know, though, that I'm currently living and working in Ghana. The four-hour time difference from the East Coast is why the updates come kind of early in the day and requests for more updates may go unanswered until the following day. At that point, I might already be asleep, or at least back at home, which only has power and internet about 50% of the time!

Up Next: The grown-ups may think they are being sly and sneaky, but it doesn't take much for Henry to notice that something is wrong. What will he do when he learns of his mother and grandmother's disappearance at the hands of his adoptive mother?

Happy Reading!