Remember how I said to throw out everything you know about Zelena? Do it. Throw it out. Throw it tonight's episode most of all. This is not an opportune time for this lmao but I wanted to get this out anyway and focus on this AU so!

Here there be backstory, some mentions of events of 2.05, and some callbacks that explain bits of chapters 5-6 of hearts left bleeding!

Emma's had plenty of practice at finding her way through the dark, seeing with her hands and footsteps alone. She trails her fingers along dusty walls and senses faded grandeur, people determined to keep up its wealth until the only one who'd really cared had gone and so had the pretenses with her. Expensive wallpaper, long peeling. Doors that are ornately carved but hollow at the very center. Thinning carpeting that almost betrays the sound of their feet as Regina pads through the dark hallway.

It's dry thundering outside, a lightning storm accompanied with little rain, and Regina has already assured her that this isn't unheard of here. "Just here," she'd said, a light frown on her face. "My mother's doing, perhaps."

So this is Regina's home. They haven't lit it up enough for Emma to see it properly, relying on the element of surprise, but Regina pauses now and opens her hand to reveal a little ball of light hovering in her palm. She spreads her fingers and it grows brighter. "My room," Regina says, nodding to the door in front of them. They've already checked the master bedchambers and the room Zelena had slept in as a child, and there's been no sign of her. "Zelena used to stay up here with me. I'd had nightmares and Mother had thought me weak to need any companion, but even weaker when I'd scream. I didn't scream around Zelena." She inhales for a moment, presses her free hand against the door, and breathes, yet again, "My sister."

Emma has had some experience with unexpected siblings and the wonder that comes with discovering now much you might love one, and she very nearly smiles fondly at Regina's wide eyes.

Then again, David has never tried to kill her. She shoulders her bow and says, "Think she's in there?"

Regina traces swirls into the dust on the door. "It seems unlikely. Actually, Zelena living here at all is beginning to seem unlikely."

"You think she's been staying here for a different reason."

"I think she's waiting." Regina pushes the door open. "She meant to extend an invitation to me, and she knew that I would come if she was here. Zelena!" she barks out, but there's only silence in the room.

Emma squints in behind her, catches sight of a simple bedroom exactly how she'd have imagined Regina's to have looked, once upon a time. There's a single ribbon on the wall beside her bed- "I sneaked out once when I was fourteen and won a riding competition. Mother was furious and sent my horse to a farm. I took the roughest horse in the stables and made him my Rocinante," Regina says, not without some pride even now- and there are books stacked on the shelves, fairytales and adventure/romances unobtrusively stuffed in between larger, more proper volumes. Regina's closet is nearly empty, and when Emma slides open a drawer of her night table, she finds a small stack of envelopes addressed to Regina in shaky, childish script.

"Daniel's letters." Regina turns to the window for a moment. "I didn't bring them with me. I thought I would never have privacy in the king's castle. I came back for them once- near the end, on the day of the apple- but I didn't take them. I wonder if I was terrified of reading them and understanding what he'd have thought of who I'd become." She stares at the letters and laughs, low and halfhearted. "He was a good man. Good men don't love evil queens."

You might be surprised, Emma almost says but thinks better of it. She might have loved Regina just days after Daniel's death and has yet to make that stop, but that seems to be just as easily contested by Regina as Daniel's love. Regina and her one true love- the one who'd spurred her into hate and vengeance and despair and a heart seized from Emma's chest- aren't any of Emma's business, not anymore. Maybe not ever. Instead she says, "I bet he'd love you now," and regrets it immediately.

Regina doesn't respond, just stares at her with eyes that flicker in the light of her palm, and Emma turns away to run her hand across the wall. She pauses at the groove in the wall that indicates a second closet in the room. Slowly, in the dim light, she traces her fingers along it until she finds what she'd known to expect- a tiny metal bar and lock on the outside of the door.

There's only one reason why these rooms exist, and Emma's jaw tightens when she thinks about it. She'd had her share of them in some of her stricter homes, and she'd always been glad to run off or be passed on from those. Hours and hours in silence and darkness had never inspired much good behavior or anything more than reckless fear in her.

She looks at Regina for permission and Regina nods, the orb in her hand growing brighter. "Mother had worse punishments that that. It wasn't as bad as it could have been," she allows. "Just boring." Emma slides open the door and her eyebrows shoot up.

Where all the punishing rooms she'd been in had been empty and dull, this one sports a spinning wheel at the center of it and a chair beside it. There's a pile of little tapestries laid out on the floor beside the thread, and Emma kneels down to squint at it as Regina follows her in.

"Mother had once been locked into a room in Father's kingdom and had spun straw into gold during her isolation. I only ever spun ugly samplers." She laughs, only a trace of bitterness in her throat, and Emma hates Cora a little more for Regina's resignation.

She pauses on one tapestry, greens and browns in the background and a collection of what looks like men on horses in front of it, all centered around a man at the foreground of the group. He stands tall and his grey cloak appears to be whipping around his body and Regina growls, "Not a word, Emma."

She says it anyway. "You were a fan of Swan Hood!"

Regina huffs. "You were a mere legend. Someone for incompetent travelers to blame their woes on. I was a girl besotted with legends." Emma's smirk widens. Regina says, "I had no idea what an idiot you were or I might have reconsidered that sampler."

"Yeah, yeah." Emma rolls up the tapestry and slides it into her bag while Regina glowers. "You wanted Swan Hood to show up and sweep you off your feet, didn't you?"

The pink tinge comes and is replaced with a roll of Regina's eyes. "You still have no measure of the girl I was, Emma. I didn't want Swan Hood to sweep me off my feet." Now a smile is playing at the corners of her lips. "I wanted to run off into the woods and become a Merry Man."

"At which point I'd have swept you off your feet," Emma suggests pertly, and Regina rolls her eyes again and turns to stare out the window opposite the punishing room. "What? I was charming."

"You were crass and childish and very, very stupid," Regina says, shaking her head, but the words are downright affectionate to anyone who's listening for it. She clears her throat. "Anyway. It doesn't seem as though Zelena is in the house."

"You think she's still somewhere here, though, right?" If Zelena really is lurking out here, waiting for Regina to come to her, it could be anywhere on the grounds. There are servants' quarters outside the house, too, and the stables and–

"Daniel's grave," Regina says slowly. "She might be waiting for us there." At Emma's frown, she mutters, "It's at the top of the hill. We tried on Mother's slippers right under the tree where he's buried."

"Oh." Emma blinks several times, unsure where she fits into this segment of the hunt. The Daniel part. No one questions that the two of them work together, and they've known how they work best from the beginning. Henry- a shared grief. Snow- a shared mission. They offset light moments with intense awkwardness and they both know that there are some intimacies that aren't to be shared anymore.

Intimacies like Daniel, and Emma says, "Do you want me to stay here for backup while you go?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Regina says sharply, and her hand finds Emma's wrist in the dark and tugs her along.

Daniel's grave is illuminated by occasional bursts of lightning behind the tree, and Emma glances up at them warily as Regina kneels down beside the tombstone. There's no sign of Zelena here, either, but Emma keeps wisely silent and wonders again about the boy who could spur this kind of still-consuming love from Regina, who loves more than anyone she's ever known.

Maybe it was only that he was a boy who'd loved her.

"He isn't here anymore," Regina murmurs suddenly. "I preserved his body with a spell and there was a man- a doctor, or…Jefferson called him a wizard here, though he loathed magic- he brought him back to life in Storybrooke."

An arrow slips out of Emma's hands and to the ground. "Oh," she says, struggling to sound casual. "He was there during the curse?"

"After." Regina glances down the hill, toward the stables in the distance. "For a brief time. He was in great pain and he begged me to let him go. I was forced to turn him back to dust." Her voice had been dispassionate until it had quavered on dust and Emma stares at the carved heart visible on the tombstone and says nothing.

She doesn't realize that Regina's watching her until she looks up abruptly and catches a gentle gaze, sorrowful but knowing, and if they weren't…whatever they are now... she would have taken Regina into her arms right then. Instead, she hurts for Regina and hurts for herself and hates that she does both.

And then there's a distraction, a flash of movement behind Regina, and her brow furrows as she squints into the dimness. There's a glow about whatever creature it is, long and shining, and she identifies it finally. "Hey. Unicorn."

She hasn't seen one of those since the curse had broken, maybe even before that, and she's smiling at it when Regina says, "No, unicorns."

Unicorns are more solitary than horses, she'd thought, and she blinks with surprise as she makes out another one racing in their direction. And another, coming from another angle.

She turns in a slow circle, reluctant to raise her bow at the animals, and she counts at least a dozen of them, all running in their direction, but coming from the west, the north, the south…and none of them from the east. "We're being herded," she says disbelievingly. "Zelena's trying to force us to run to…"

The stables. They stand to the east, a little building unlit and open, and Regina shakes her head. "No. I have magic, I'm good with horses. I can take care of these unicorns."

There's a thread of desperation in her voice. Emma is unimpressed. "They're being sent to hurt us. These aren't normal unicorns. We need to go."

"I won't go back there!" Regina snaps.

"We don't have a choice!"

"Trust me." But her voice is high and afraid and the unicorns are bearing down on them and Emma fires one arrow before she grabs Regina's arm and yanks her as she runs. Regina wrenches it free and lets out a low curse as she whirls back around.

"Regina, for fucks' sake–" Emma raises her bow again and the unicorns are already too close, moving through Regina's magic as though it doesn't exist and snarling as they rear up. Regina finally bolts, Emma right behind her, and the unicorns follow them, tightening their ranks around the stables until Emma and Regina finally stumble inside.

There's another crack of lightning, a crash of thunder above them, and it finally begins to rain against the roof of the stable. And Zelena steps out from behind one stall and says, "Hey, sis," and sends a green bubble of light toward them.

Regina's purple one emerges instinctively and the shockwave from the two meeting splinters the wooden arches above them and sends rails crashing to the ground. Emma ducks and Zelena laughs. "Watch your pet, Regina. Don't want to take off her head, do you?"

Regina snarls out a response and hurls a fireball at Zelena. Zelena dodges and a stall bursts into flame instead, orange flames casting new shadows on the wall. Zelena fires more magic at Regina. Regina fires back. Rain batters the roof of the stable.

"Why did you come here?" Regina demands, their magic meeting again. This time, posts crack and fall around them and Emma is so busy dodging them that she nearly misses Zelena's answer.

"You have something I need," is all Zelena offers, and Regina's eyes flash as she fires again.

She digs into her pocket and retrieves the weapon they'd come here with, the reason why they'd gone after Zelena in the first place. Blue's vial of the potion meant to stop Zelena gleams in Regina's hands and she says, eyebrow quirking, "Not this, is it?"

Zelena freezes, stiffens and goes rigid and actually shrinks back against the wall as though she's terrified of Regina. "What…" she croaks. "Where did you get that…?"

Emma steps in. "Listen, Zelena, we don't want to have to use it. Hand back the curse and we'll–"

Zelena lashes out again, throws what looks like an enormous ball of energy in slow motion toward them. It's larger and it crackles with murderous intent, stronger than anything she's sent at them before, and Emma ducks down as the stable begins to fly apart from the force of it.

Regina meets it with growing energy of her own, large and clumsy and unlike anything Emma's seen her use before. This is a shield thick with magic, strong enough to repel Zelena's weapon, and she's shaking with effort as she holds out her fists and lets magic escape from her knuckles.

And then there's a crash of lightning above them at the least opportune time, arcing through the ruined roof to hit the energy that must have drawn it there, and for a moment, everything is fire and light and destruction. A pillar of wood spins through the air and the last thing Emma feels is it smacking her face as everything goes black.

She wakes up what must be moments later, judging from the buzzing of the magic around her and the pieces of the stable still falling nearby. Someone is screaming and she can't quite focus yet, isn't back in the waking world completely and can't open her eyes to see. Regina. Regina is screaming.

She struggles to move and discovers that she can't, that something large is resting across her chest, and Regina is still crying out her name. "Emma! EMMA!" and there's another voice she knows she recognizes speaking in irritated tones, loud and anxious, and Regina is sobbing and cursing the stables they're in- Daniel, Emma, my first love and the love of my life- Emma doesn't know what she's saying or even if she's imagining it all- and shouting Emma's name again.

Emma opens her eyes and Regina lets out a gasping sigh as she does. "Regina?" Emma whispers.

"I'm here. I'm right here. How are…are you all right?" Regina manages, and Emma turns her head so she can see her. There's a piece of the wall between them, but Emma spots her through the slats of it, gazing at her through air that seems to glow different colors between them. Her eyes are red and her face has lost all its color and her hands look bloodied and are pressed to the disturbance in the air. Zelena is a few feet away, her hands reaching for Regina's arms like she's been about to pull her away, and the vial lies shattered on the ground between them.

"I'm okay. My head hurts," she offers, shutting her eyes again. It hurts to have them open too long. "What happened?"

"Our magic…burst. Zelena and I are trapped in some kind of sphere of our combined magic. We're going to have to wait until it fizzles out." Regina sounds uncertain and irritated about it at the same time, and Zelena sighs deeply. "Can you get out on your own? My magic isn't working in here."

Emma tries shaking her head but it pounds in protest. "I'm tired," she mumbles, cracking her eyes open again.

"Concussion," Regina decides. "Best thing you can do until I get you is rest. Close your eyes, darling. It won't be long." Her voice is still soft and wet and she reaches out again, braving the energy that burns her palms to touch the edge of her bubble. Emma catches Regina's red eyes with her own as hers flutter shut again.

Zelena says, snippy and low, "Are you quite done?"

"You're a nightmare," Regina growls back, but the bite of it is gone, relief in every cadence of her voice. Emma can hear them murmuring back and forth, arguing on whose magic had done what, but neither one is trying to kill the other so she thinks it might be okay to sleep.

She hovers somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, Regina's voice present in both states. "You didn't like the stables," Regina says.

"The horses didn't like me," Zelena corrects her. "Too much magic made them antsy. I rarely rode without them bucking me. But I knew you'd come here."

Regina says, "Why did you want me here?" Emma strains to stay awake for the response.

Zelena is quiet for so long that Emma thinks she might've drifted off to sleep when the witch finally says, "The Dark Curse, Regina. Why do you think I need you?"

The heart of the thing you love most, Emma reminds herself with a moment of terrible clarity, and Regina says, "Ah," and is very quiet then.

There's another long pause, and then she murmurs, "It doesn't have to go this way, Zelena. If you chose to join us instead of–"

"Shut up," Zelena snarls, angry again. "Shut up and don't you dare suggest it. Do you think I trust you now? Do you know what it means that the one I…that I need you for this curse? A girl I loved two decades ago? Do you know what you did to me?"

"I have an inkling," Regina allows. Zelena lets out a frustrated noise and Emma thinks, It's different, it's different, and she struggles against the posts holding her down until exhaustion sets in again. "Why the curse, Zelena? What good will it do if I'm already dead?" Emma hears the fear behind the question and Henry in her voice.

"Do you think you're the only one who deserves my punishment?" Zelena demands, and Emma is afraid with Regina for Henry. "She is in that land, I'm sure of it. Whatever she did with the slippers, she always wanted to return there."

"The slippers," Regina echoes, and there's an odd note of understanding in her tone, as though she's asking a question she's already gotten the answer to. "Who took the slippers?"

"Dorothy," Zelena spits out, and with the name comes so much agony and hatred that Emma braves past her headache to open her eyes. Zelena and Regina are sitting now on either side of the bubble, the spilled potion glowing a toxic green between them, and Regina is nodding with dawning realization.

"Tell me," she says, her voice firm like Emma imagines it'd be while talking to Henry, and Zelena laughs caustically.

"There is no story you deserve, Regina. There's nothing to tell. Dorothy was an agent of the wizard."

"The Wizard of Oz?" Zelena's eyes narrow and Regina adds, "There was…a tale. In the Land Without Magic. He was in Oz after my time, I suppose?"

"Glinda was…Glinda took me under her wing. She recognized my talent and nurtured it. I know you saw her as our tormentor, but once I had nothing else, she was there for me. She taught me even though I had dark magic and all of Oz loathed me for it." Zelena drapes her hands on her knees and stares into space. "I was an abomination and she treasured me regardless."

Regina looks sick at Zelena's declarations. "She told you that? Even Mother never really…" Her voice trails off as Zelena glares.

"She treasured me," Zelena repeats. "And then came the wizard." She sneers. "Arrogant, obnoxious, and he built his little empire on the promises that he would kill the Wicked Witch of the West. People flocked to the Emerald City, and Glinda warned me to stay safe." She shrugs, blue eyes bright against skin that is devoid of green today. "It was all she could do against him, I suppose. I was afraid, and I finally tried to take back the one thing of mine she'd kept."

"You tried to take the slippers and run. How old were you?" Regina still looks ill. "How long were you with Glinda?"

"A long time." Zelena stares down at the vial. "I must have been twenty at least when all of this went on. I wasn't…I hadn't hurt anyone back then, not intentionally. I just wanted to flee. So I went to find the slippers. I stole the slippers. And Glinda banished me from her kingdom for it."

"They were yours. She had no right."

"She had every right." Zelena bows her head. "Glinda only ever wanted me to be good. Glinda never abandoned me," she snaps, eyes accusing on Regina, and Regina doesn't look away. "And I failed her."

Regina is diplomatically silent about her opinion on that. Emma's pretty sure she shares her opinion. But Regina is being careful now, tugging out the information from Zelena with all the gentleness of a mother with child. "Where did you go?"

"To an abandoned castle in Winkie Country. Glinda and I had fought and the slippers had been thrown…somewhere with magic. Somewhere we couldn't find them." She winces. "I had nowhere else to go. I stumbled into the castle and locked myself there for as long as I could, guarded myself with all the beasts of Winkie Country and learned how to strike back against those who hated me, and the Wizard of Oz sent a girl wearing the slippers to destroy me."

"Dorothy."

"Dorothy." It's the same anguish in Zelena's voice again. Regina looks as though she's about to reach for her and thinks better of it. "She was a bit younger than me, but she had a quick wit and a pretty face and I thought the world of her. I had been suspicious of visitors and even more suspicious of a girl with my shoes on her feet. But she'd been kind to me."

"No one had been kind to you," Regina whispers. "So you loved her."

"She wanted to go home. She spoke about it all the time, about a Land Without Magic and the family she'd left behind. A grandmother, an aunt and uncle…" Zelena's face darkens. "I didn't tell her what the shoes could do. I didn't want to be alone again. But I wasn't the only one hiding things." She shakes her head. "It took her weeks to make her move. I never understood it, if the Wizard had sent her to earn my trust. She'd had it for ages when she struck. She didn't need to stay, not unless she'd…"

She's biting her lip, staring down at the spilled potion that still glints in the light of their magic bubble, which- if Emma isn't hallucinating- appears to be thinning. "She used that on me. Poured it over my head and told me I was dark and twisted and she had no choice but to destroy me. She told me she was working for the Wizard and he was going to send her home if she killed me. And so…" Zelena raises her hands, and the green spreads across her skin again like a bruise, until all she is is green skin and blue eyes and orange hair. "She poisoned me and I woke up in the Enchanted Forest, dying."

Regina does touch her now, leans over the spill to trace curved fingers along Zelena's jawline. Zelena shudders and doesn't pull away. "That's what the potion does? Turns you green?"

"It showed the world who I truly was on the inside and left me tainted with my own magic." Zelena touches her skin, just below Regina's hand. "And it went too deep into me. I nearly died, and when I woke up I was no longer green, but…changed." She shivers. "Rumplestiltskin found me. I told him everything, and for a time he took me on as an apprentice- I was his, he told me. Mother had promised him her eldest daughter and double-crossed him because he hadn't known about me until then- but then he saw the virus beginning to spread over my skin again and I began to lose my magic. And then I was deemed useless and tossed aside. I lived in poverty as a green-skinned novelty in Sir Maurice's village for a long, long time."

"The potion," Emma croaks, making the connection. "The one you had under the Dark Castle."

The sisters glance at her in surprise, as though they'd only just realized that she'd been awake. "I'd finally been able to use Rumple's castle to figure out how to undo it. It took me seven years and it's still only a temporary solution." Zelena turns stubborn eyes on Regina. "And that's what you consigned me to, Little Sis. Agony. Pain. Powerlessness. You and Dorothy and the damned Wizard. And you will pay the price for what you did." She lunges forward suddenly and only then does Emma notice that the bubble is gone, the magic around them no longer holding them in, and Zelena is able to sidestep the potion on the floor now to reach her hand into Regina's chest.

Emma shouts out a curse. The room is dark without the bubble and it's impossible to see much, but Regina is laughing and she sounds victorious. "What kind of fool do you take me for?" she says, and Zelena shrieks with fury. "Mother taught me one thing: never bring your heart to a witch fight."

They'd left it with Mulan at the castle, just in case, and Emma had thought it was a reckless decision but now it seems like Regina had been the prudent one. Emma pushes against the posts lying across her with little effectiveness, calls Regina's name as Zelena turns and there's a flash of lightning and a flicker of something bright, maybe a unicorn's horn- had the animals made it inside?- and Zelena's hand is wrenched free and there's movement in the dark, the sound of unicorns braying and rain and Regina calling Zelena's name.

And then- a splash that could have just been a puddle except that Emma sees it hit Regina on the side of her face, sees Zelena jump back with wide-eyed terror and betrayal. The unicorns are leaving the stable, the glow has faded, and Zelena is gone with a whirl of green smoke and Emma can't get free, not until Regina staggers over to her and forces the post off of her. "Emma," she breathes, and Emma stares at her in horror. "Emma, can you move?"

Emma sits up slowly, unable to understand how Regina is so focused on her now, right now, and she ignores the pain of a few cracked ribs in favor of gaping at the spot where Regina had been struck.

Regina touches the side of her neck and draws her hand away, blinking down at the tips of her fingers as they come away wet. With her other hand, she creates a new orb of light just in time to watch the purple swirl to the surface, spreading along her hand and fading away as the poison- the poison that should be gone, that still lies on the ground around a shattered vial- sinks deep into her pores.

"How is this possible?" she wonders, and Emma catches her as her eyes roll up into her head and she drops to the ground.