A/N: Just a friendly reminder that you're all excellent human beings and I love you. Now carry on.

Chapter Nineteen

'No. I don't cuddle.'

Emma ignored this feebly-voiced protest, continuing to drape her legs across Regina's lap. She heard a frustrated groan coming from Regina's throat, but she knew that the glass of red wine that was clutched in her hand would stop her from pushing her away too vigorously. In the end she slumped back against the couch, defeated, as Emma's legs curled contentedly around her own.

'You're insufferable,' she muttered. When she looked around Emma was grinning at her.

'You do so cuddle.'

'With Henry, yes.'

'No. With me.'

'I do not.'

'Any time we've had sex. The other night I tried to get up for a glass of water and you practically tackled me back to the bed because you said that I was more comfortable than your mattress is.' Emma took a moment to raise one eyebrow. 'Thanks for that, by the way.'

She noticed then that Regina was blushing.

'That doesn't count.'

'Why not?'

'Because after we've… Afterwards, I'm always a little bit delirious. Cuddling doesn't offend me so much then.'

'Is that a compliment?'

Her green eyes flickered over Regina's face as she watched it trying not to smile.

'Absolutely not.'

Emma leaned towards her and planted a kiss on the small exposed patch of skin on her neck. 'I think it might have been.'

'You would. Like I said – you're insufferable.'

'And yet you're still cuddling me.'

'I am not cuddling you,' Regina replied, though even as she spoke she realised that her empty hand had found its way to the top of Emma's thigh and was rubbing a circle against the denim.

Emma noticed this too and snorted. 'If you say so.'

Regina simply rolled her eyes, saying nothing. Emma watched as she leaned forwards to place her wine glass on the table, deliberately not looking round at her, with a smirk on her face.

'Henry seemed happy tonight,' Emma said after a few moments, leaning her head back against the sofa.

Regina nodded, looking down at her lap. 'Yes. He did.'

'…is that not a good thing?'

'Of course it is. Why would you ask that?'

'Because as soon as I said it you looked like you wanted to strangle me.'

'I usually do.'

'Oh, hilarious. Come on: what's up?'

'Nothing.'

Emma nudged her with her elbow, waiting until Regina had finally looked back round at her before she spoke again.

'You're not still worried about him getting hurt, are you?'

'I always am,' Regina replied, biting down on her bottom lip. 'Aren't you?'

'It's a concern,' Emma said slowly, rolling her wine glass in her hand. The red liquid drifted dangerously close to the rim of the glass and it took all of the self-restraint that Regina had to not snatch it out of her hand. 'But there's no point in worrying about it until it actually becomes a problem.'

'It's always a problem, Miss Swan,' Regina snapped, her eyes still on the wine glass.

'Hey,' Emma frowned. 'Since when did I become Miss Swan again?'

'Since you went back to being your old thoughtless, pig-headed self.'

Emma narrowed her eyes. 'I'm not sure, but I think that that might have just gotten a little bit personal.'

'As astute an observation as you've ever made.'

'Stop picking a fight with me,' Emma sighed, leaning her head against the back of the couch once more. Regina's hand was still on her leg, but it had stopped moving. 'Just tell me what's actually bothering you.'

She looked at the muscle that was pulsing away in Regina's jaw for a few moments. Regina was still watching the glass that was tilting in her hand, her dark eyes narrowed and unblinking. But eventually she sighed, leaning back against the couch with her head only inches away from Emma's.

'Do you think that we're being selfish?'

Emma blinked.

'No.'

Regina looked across at her. 'That's it? Just, no?'

'Just, no,' Emma repeated. 'Not even at all. Regina… Jesus. Of all of the people in this town – of all of the people I've ever known – we are the least selfish people I can imagine. I don't know about you, but I've lived through twenty eight years of being alone and sad and not having a single reason why I should trust anyone. I've never had a reason to be happy, and so I just got used to feeling empty. And now… I'm giving myself the chance to feel something else. I'm giving you the chance too. That's all it is. No one can judge us for that.'

Regina turned her head towards her, pursing her lips for a moment as she considered this.

'You're so sure of that?'

Emma half-smiled. 'Well. Some people could probably manage it.'

Regina let herself laugh. She didn't feel much better – the thought of what it would do to Henry if he found about them never really got any easier for her. But she knew that Emma was, in some way, right: they deserved to be happy.

Or Emma did, at any rate.

She still wasn't entirely sure whether an ex-Evil Queen could ever truly redeem herself enough to deserve happiness, and love, and all of the things that she really, desperately wanted. But she still allowed herself to watch the easy smile that was tugging at Emma's lips and, for a moment, told herself that she was right. That she must deserve it, somehow.

She leaned towards Emma and pressed a small kiss onto her cheek. And then she quietly asked the question that she'd been putting off asking for weeks.

'Will you tell me about it?'

Emma frowned. 'About what?'

'Your life before Storybrooke,' Regina said, picturing the angry, bony child in the photograph that was locked in the bottom drawer of her desk. 'Your childhood.'

The transformation was immediate. Emma's eyes darkened, her shoulders tensed, and Regina could feel her trying to pull her legs away from where they were intertwined with her own.

'Hey,' she said, reaching out a hand to stop her from wriggling away. 'Emma. Wait. Okay, I shouldn't have asked. I just… I'm sorry. I just want to know.'

'Why do you want to know?' Emma muttered, taking an ungainly swig of her wine.

'Because I want to know what made you… you.'

Emma swallowed, looking surprised. Regina watched her carefully for a few more moments, taking in the uncertain frown on her forehead and the tense line of her jaw.

Eventually, she replied in a low voice. 'A lot of douchebags. A lot of people who didn't give a damn about me.'

She took another drink, and then she spoke again.

'A lot of feeling abandoned, being abandoned, and then abandoning others.'

Regina frowned. 'You didn't abandon Henry.'

'I let him go,' Emma said flatly. 'That's exactly what I did.'

'Yes, but—'

'It's okay, Regina,' Emma interrupted, draining the rest of her glass and leaning forwards to place it on the coffee table. Regina was too busy watching the way that the corners of her mouth had suddenly spiked downwards again to comment on how she hadn't used a coaster. 'Really. I mean, abandonment is what I know. My parents left me, then all the kids in my first foster home left me, then four foster families left me, and then Henry's dad left me. Someone had to carry on the tradition.'

'Emma…'

'It's fine. Really,' Emma continued, seemingly not even hearing Regina's feeble interruption. 'It all worked out alright. Henry got you. You deserved him a hell of a lot more than I did.'

'Emma.'

But Emma was ranting, and she couldn't stop. 'Obviously I never deserved him, because there has to be a reason why all of this stuff keeps happening to me. Why everyone fucks off the moment that they get close to me. Why Moe decided to take a gun to my head of all the people in this godforsaken town. God, can you imagine what I would have done to Henry if I had raised him? If Neal had never left me and I'd never gone to jail and we'd raised the poor kid in the back of a wrecked-out Beetle? Jesus. You know, it really is okay, because maybe I had to suffer a bit for Henry to have a good life. And that's alright. Because I abandoned him but he found me again anyway. I abandoned him and it led me to you. Maybe that's okay. Maybe I should be grateful for my lazy goddamn parents and Neal fucking Cassidy. Maybe I should be grateful for Moe, because hey, even though I haven't slept through the night in nearly four months, at least I have someone to hold onto when I wake up.'

It was then, in the moment that Emma's eyes started to fill with tears, that Regina leaned across and grabbed hold of her wildly gesticulating hands. Emma bit down on her bottom lip, cutting herself off from saying anything more, and let herself catch her breath. Regina tugged on her wrists, pulling her in.

Eventually Emma stopped resisting. She let her legs slide back over Regina's, and she collapsed against her shoulder.

'That was his name?' Regina muttered into her blonde curls as she carefully smoothed them down. 'Neal Cassidy?'

Emma winced against her side. 'Yes.'

'He left you?'

'He… he did worse than that,' Emma replied, burying her face in the soft silk of Regina's shirt. 'But that's one thing that I really, really can't talk about. I'm sorry.'

'You don't have to apologise. I shouldn't have pushed you.'

'I'm sorry for ranting at you.'

'You don't have to apologise for that either.'

'And I'm sorry for spilling wine on the carpet.'

'Emma, you don't—wait, you did what?!'

But she heard the giggling coming from Emma's smothered face only a second later. Rolling her eyes to herself, Regina reached down for her chin and forced her to look back up at her again.

'You really are the most infuriating person that I've ever met.'

'I get that a lot,' Emma said, her teary eyes creasing at the corners. 'But I know that you still wouldn't change me.'

Regina leant forwards, pressing her lips softly against Emma's for just the tiniest moment.

'Not even a little bit.'

When she looked at Emma then, at the thin lips that were curved upwards into a weak smile, Regina couldn't help but blink a little at just how young she looked. Her blonde hair was a mess of curls streaming down her back and, pressed up against Regina's side with a shroud of tears still clinging onto the fronts of her eyes, she looked just like a child. She looked so much like the very child that Regina had seen in those torn, battered photographs that it startled her for a minute.

Emma saw the uncertainty that flickered across Regina's face in that moment, and she bit her lip.

'I do know that you looked at my photos.'

She said it quietly, but it surprised them both. Regina felt herself flinch.

'Oh,' she said, swallowing. 'How... how did you…?'

'Mary Margaret told me.'

'Oh,' Regina repeated. For some reason, it was all that she could think of to say.

Emma's green eyes flashed with interest as she watched the uncertainty that had appeared in Regina's face. They both waited for her to say something in response; to ask the next question – did you take one?

She opened her mouth to ask it. She wasn't sure if she even wanted to know the answer: if Regina did have it, she wasn't sure that she would really care that much. The only person who would care would be Regina herself, because she would flush with embarrassment at the fact that she had been caught out. Caught needing something so small and sentimental just to remind her of Emma, even though she suddenly, inexplicably, now had Emma herself.

Emma knew that if she asked the question then she would have to watch Regina's cheeks burn, her body tense, and her eyes darken. She would watch her pull away.

She wasn't sure that she could handle any of that.

Seeing her slumping back against the couch once more, the question dying on her lips, Regina released the breath that she had been holding. Then she decided to ask one of her own.

'Why do you keep them hidden away?'

Emma blinked. 'What?'

'The photos,' Regina said, reaching out to tuck a stray curl behind Emma's ear. 'Why are they always buried in that box?'

'I…' Emma swallowed, her forehead creasing. 'I don't know. I guess that I just don't really like looking at them.'

'You were looking at them that night,' Regina pointed out.

'Because I was blind drunk,' Emma replied. 'That's the only time that I do look at them.'

Regina frowned. 'Emma. Surely that's not—'

'I know,' she said flatly. 'It's unhealthy. I'm repressing shit. I know all of that.'

'Then why—'

'Because the beginning of my life really, really sucked,' Emma sighed, removing her hand from where it had been tracing a pattern across Regina's stomach. 'They were the first and worst eighteen years of my life, and thinking about them is just the most painful thing I can ever bring myself to do. So usually I don't do it at all unless I'm already miserable and feeling sorry for myself and have nothing else to lose.'

Regina considered this, already missing Emma's touch against the fabric of her shirt. 'You're not grateful for any of it at all?'

Emma's face fell flat. 'I don't know. I'm guessing for some reason that your childhood wasn't exactly a fairy tale either – are you grateful for any of yours?'

The very moment that the words had escaped from her lips Emma could feel Regina's body tensing up beside her. Her dark eyebrows pulled together, her fingers stopped skittering across Emma's leg, and her lips pursed forwards into an angry pout.

'What?' Emma asked.

'Nothing,' Regina replied, trying to suck in a breath through her teeth. 'I just… I don't talk about my childhood.'

'I had noticed,' Emma said, nudging her. 'Regina. Come on. It's only me.'

'You could be Dr Hopper if you liked,' Regina said. 'It wouldn't matter. I don't talk about my childhood.'

Emma fell silent for a moment, watching the muscle that was ticking away in Regina's jaw. And then she quietly said, 'But I've told you about mine.'

'I know,' Regina said. Her stomach was beginning to hurt. 'And I am sorry. But I don't talk about my childhood.'

'But I—'

'Emma,' Regina interrupted as calmly as she could. 'I mean it. I do not talk about my childhood.'

Emma opened her mouth to argue. To shout at her. To call her every hurtful name under the sun and then storm out of the house altogether. But then she saw just how little colour was left in Regina's cheeks; how her fingers were suddenly tangling anxiously together in her lap. How she couldn't quite bring herself to meet Emma's gaze because she knew that her eyes were dangerously close to filling with tears. Emma suddenly caught sight of all of this, and she bit down on her lip. There was a time to push: this wasn't it.

She squeezed down on Regina's hand just before she swung her legs off of her lap.

'I should go,' she said quietly.

Regina head immediately snapped up again.

'What?' she demanded. 'I thought that you were going to stay over tonight?'

'I think that might be pushing it a bit,' Emma said, rising to her feet. 'Knowing our luck, Henry will catch me and then he really will be scarred for life. I think I should probably just go home.'

'But,' Regina stammered, blinking furiously. 'I don't want you to leave.'

'You don't want to talk to me either,' Emma said, smiling in an attempt to lessen the bite of her words. 'It's okay. I get it. I just think I should go home now rather than later.'

'Before you start to resent me, you mean?'

Emma began to shrug on her blue jacket. 'Something like that.'

Regina sighed. 'Emma…'

'It's okay,' Emma said, looping her thumbs through the pockets of her jeans. 'You have issues that you aren't ready to talk about yet. I get it. I do. I just wish…'

'…what?'

'I wish that you would trust me as much as I trust you.'

Suddenly Regina was on her feet as well, reaching out to squeeze one of Emma's hands in her own. 'I do trust you. You know that I do.'

'Not enough to actually talk to me.'

'I talk to you all the time!'

'About Henry,' Emma said, smiling sadly. 'Or about work. Or about how annoying I am. But never about you. Never about anything real.'

'Emma—'

'And that's okay,' Emma said, finally squeezing back on her hand. 'Trust me; I get not wanting to let people in too deep. I just have to hope that one day you'll be brave enough to tell me these things.'

Regina swallowed. 'I—'

'It's just a bit concerning, though,' Emma continued quietly, releasing Regina's hand and pushing her own back into her pocket, 'because, right now, your face is telling me that I could be waiting forever.'

Regina couldn't argue. She had no right to argue. Not when she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the moment that she told Emma about how she grew up would have the be the exact same moment in which she told her about the Evil Queen whom she knew nothing about.

'Not forever,' she eventually managed to choke out. 'But not… yet.'

Emma smiled weakly. 'That'll have to be good enough, I guess.'

She turned towards the door, her shoulders slumped beneath her jacket. She wasn't exactly surprised – she was just disappointed. Regina had built walls so impossibly high around her that it was inevitable that it would take Emma longer than those few weeks to chip her way through them. It was just so disheartening to realise that the dent that she had managed to make was so very, very small.

She reached out for the door handle, fighting the urge to sigh. Then she felt a hand on her arm, spinning her around until her back was forced up against the wall.

The kiss that Regina planted on her lips was close-lipped and desperate. She cradled Emma's face in her hands as she kissed her, holding onto her as tightly as she could physically manage with her eyes squeezed shut. Emma blinked in surprise before she let herself feel it. When she started to kiss back, Regina almost melted against her with relief.

Her kiss told Emma that she was sorry. That she hated herself, and that she was so, so sorry.

Eventually Emma was the one to pull away again. Regina took a tentative step away from her, looking terrified by the possibility that, by giving Emma the space to leave, she would run from the house and never look back. But, as she usually did, Emma lingered. She leaned forwards, pressing her forehead against Regina's, and closed her eyes.

'I'm not angry. I promise.'

Regina nodded. 'Okay.'

'But I am here,' Emma murmured. 'And I deserve for you to be too.'

She felt Regina tense again for a moment before she forced herself to nod once more.

'Am I still coming round on Friday night?' Emma asked, looking up again just in time to see Regina quickly scrubbing a finger beneath her left eye.

'Of course,' Regina said, trying to smile. 'I'll try and cook something that you'll actually eat.'

Emma laughed. 'You're too good to me.' She reached down to squeeze Regina's hand one last time, and then she finally turned to open the door. This time, Regina let her go.

Emma arrived home from work the following evening to find Mary Margaret doing the dishes. Emma immediately froze in the doorway – her roommate's face was creased into a vicious frown, and her hand was scrubbing so furiously at a plate that she feared for more than just a moment that she was about to break straight through it.

'Everything okay?' she asked slowly, shutting the door behind her as quietly as she could.

Mary Margaret didn't look up from the invisible spot that she was scratching at. 'David and I had a fight.'

'Oh,' Emma said, her stomach sinking. 'What about?'

'The same as ever,' Mary Margaret muttered. 'Kathryn.'

'He… still won't leave her?' Emma asked, sidling over to the breakfast bar and leaning against it.

'No,' she muttered in response, finally giving up on the plate and dropping it into the rack with a clatter. 'He says that he doesn't want to hurt her. He doesn't want to hurt her.'

'Mary Margaret…'

'You don't have to say "I told you so",' Mary Margaret sighed. 'I know that you're right. You've always been right. I just…'

'You love him,' Emma shrugged, much to her roommate's surprise. 'And he says that he loves you. I suppose you have the right to be a little bit pissed.'

Mary Margaret leaned forwards against the edge of the sink, sighing. 'Not quite as much as Kathryn would be, though.'

'No,' Emma admitted. 'Probably not.'

Mary Margaret began to slowly drain the water from the sink, now abandoning the other already clean dishes for the evening. 'I think I need a drink.'

Emma leapt to attention. 'I can help with that. Scotch okay?'

'Fine. Thanks.'

Emma walked across to the other side of the kitchen, seeking out the bottle that lived in the cabinet nearest the living room. As she approached it, her gaze was momentarily distracted by a parcel that was sitting on the coffee table.

'What's that?'

Mary Margaret glanced up, following Emma's gaze and spotting the packet.

'Oh. That came for you today.'

'Who's it from?'

'I have no idea. It was outside the door when I got home.'

Emma frowned. Grabbing hold of the bottle of scotch with one hand, she carried it over to the kitchen and poured out two glasses. The moment that Mary Margaret had settled down at the table with hers in hand, Emma slipped back over to the coffee table to take a closer look at the package.

She recognised the handwriting before she had even read her own name.

Making sure that Mary Margaret wasn't looking her way, she peeled back the wrapping and reached inside the parcel. Out of it she pulled a thick, leather-bound book with a note taped to the front.

Regina's swooping handwriting covered the small piece of paper:

I may not be able to deal with my childhood yet, but I want to help you start dealing with yours.

Whenever you're ready to look at those photos sober, I'll be here to help.

She hadn't signed it. She hadn't needed to.

Just as a unfamiliar warmth began to spread through her chest, Emma grasped the note between two fingers and pulled it away from the book's leather cover. Two words, embossed in a perfect gold script, appeared from beneath it.

PHOTO ALBUM

Her lips curved upwards into a delirious smile; one that made her cheeks hurt and her heartbeat thunder. She read those words over and over again, ignoring Mary Margaret's confused calls from behind her, until her eyes began to fill with tears, and the letters turned to a golden blur before her.