Chapter Ten~

I decided to switch to 3rd person POV for a bit, hope you enjoy 3

Summer was slowly melting into fall and the leaves on the trees dripped with the gold they'd been seemingly gilded in. There was a fresh, crisp feeling that hung in the air like electricity. Although the foliage was coming close to death, there was something about fall that made Emma feel so alive. There was something different about it; she thought that it was perhaps the one season where the world ever seemed real. The sky was a different shade of blue, the air was more full of vigor and life, and Emma's very heart seemed to pump with meaning for the very first time.

It had been two months since Regina had first been released from the hospital, and from each day after that, all 62 days, Emma had walked up the steps to Regina's mansion and knocked on the little door.

Sometimes Emma worried that she'd start to annoy Regina, but what she couldn't know was the way Regina felt dead during the times she wasn't with Emma. She always felt dead now that she couldn't remember anything. She felt like a robot. She moved, she functioned, she lived, but she never felt anything. It was all meaningless.

Unless she was with Emma.

Those few short hours she spent with Emma every day were the only times that dead feeling melted away & all wounds on her heart were healed as if they had never been there in the first place. A light that had gone out switched back on, and for a few moments at least, Regina had a reason. A reason to live, a reason to breathe, a reason to try to remember.

For these two months, Regina and Emma had become friends. For Regina it felt like the first time she'd been getting to know Emma, and for Emma it was almost the same. It was as if Regina was a new person she was just meeting and getting to know, and it was exhilarating. She had been so terrified that she might not love this changed, memory-less Regina. She was thrilled to find out that falling in love with her a second time was almost as precious as the first.

Emma was so grateful. She had almost lost the love of her life, and now she was getting to fall in love with her all over again. And this time, she was getting to know her even better thn the first. Regina didn't have any walls, any cold or tangled barriers meant to keep people out. This time, Regina and Emma had been granted a special gift unknown to them the first time around; friendship.

Regina had been feeling new, strange things for the past few weeks. It was something small, like the sunrise flickering on the horizon, that started in her chest, and then slowly went crawling up to her soul, pouring over her entire being the way the sunrise paints the world in light.

It was a feeling that controlled her, consumed her, rewrote the entire story she had known simply as "life". Waking up in the hospital with no memories, "life" had been a dull story indeed. But as soon as she had met Emma, her entire definition of the world changed immediately.

Although Regina might not have had any memory of what falling in love was like, she knew that she was definitely in love with Emma, no question about it. Regina had, despite all attempts not to, fallen head-over-heels for the savior (again). And she could tell that Emma was in love with her, too.

She had known since that first moment in the hospital. Emma wouldn't tell her how they were connected before the accident, but she didn't need to. She could tell in the way Emma's eyes swam like oceans when she gazed into her face. She could tell in the way Emma's smile raged like a fire when she opened the door to greet her. She could tell in the wedding ring draped delicately on a chain Emma kept tucked inside her shirt.

Regina and Emma were in love with each other, yet once again it seemed like it would be years before they confessed their feelings. Emma was oblivious to the fact that her former fiancé was in love with her again, but for Regina her reason for silence was much deeper than obliviousness. The bond she felt with Emma was aching, raging, a pain that throbbed inside her soul pulling her towards Emma. But it was also fear.

Regiina was terrified. Emma was the single most remarkable person she had ever met in her life. EZmma was special…. Unique…. Pure perfection…. And Regina didn't want to destroy that. She was scred of letting herself love Emma. What if Emma wouldn't love this new her? What if she couldn't give Emma what she had given her before the accident? While on one hand Regina wanted nothing more than to love Emma, she also wanted nothing more than to run away from her.

As much as Regina could see that she brought joy to Emma, she could see that she brought pain, also. Every time Emma looked into Regina's eyes, there was a heart-breaking sense of loss there, a hurt that Regina herself had inflicted upon the woman she was falling in love with. Regina knew that this situation had to be just as painful, if not more, for Emma than it was for herself. What would it be like to have someone yiou care about so deeply not remember anything about you? Each time Regina saw that pain in Emma's eyes, the more prominent her guilt grew. She didn't want to keep hurting Emma like this… she'd do anything to have Emma be the one to forget so that she could stop hurting.

Regina could feel it coming. It was an inevitable end coming her way. She had known as soon as she'd opened the door that morning and found Emma standing there with rosey cheeks and a nervous expression. Today would be the day. Today Emma would tell her how she felt. But Regina felt certain that one of them would only getting hurt if Regina returned any confessions…. Regina had made up her mind a long time ago…. This experience was already painful enough, and she was going to keep both of them safe from any more pain by telling Emma that she didn't feel the same way.

And after she told Emma that she didn't love her, she was going to leave. She had forgotten Emma. If Regina left, maybe Emma could learn to do the same. They could move on with their lives and build new memories that wouldn't cause any pain.

As she followed Emma along the pavement to a little park at the edge of town, she tried to calm her throbbing heart, reminding herself for the thousandth time that this was the only way to keep them both safe.