A/N: AGAIN, MASSIVE DELAYS WITH THIS CHAPTER AND I'M REALLY REALLY SORRY! Maybe from now on just assume it's going to be at least two weeks between updates and then we'll all be pleasantly surprised if I somehow manage to get my shit together in the meantime...

Also, I've had LOADS of people sending me really, really nice messages on tumblr this week. I have no idea why, there must be drugs in the water or something. But I wanted to say a huge thank you because it really means a lot to me :)

As always, thanks for reading! I bloody love the lot of you. I hope you enjoy!

Chapter Twenty One

Regina had never been late in her entire life. She had never been simply on time before, either: up until that moment, she had always been exactly ten minutes early for absolutely everything. Emma had laughed at her for that on more than one occasion; at her ability to be punctual even in her earliness. But given that Emma fell at the complete opposite end of the spectrum to her, tumbling in and out of doors and windows and people's lives as late as she liked, Regina had had a hard time paying much heed to it.

And yet, after only a few months of the sheriff's irritating influence, Regina now found herself tripping down Main Street in her highest heels, not driving because she had forgotten to fill her car up with gas yet again, and trying not to break into an ungainly run for the last hundred feet towards City Hall because her latest meeting was starting in exactly three minutes and she wasn't even in the building yet.

The look that Emma had flashed towards her before she had clambered out of the window that morning almost made it worth it. If only Regina's heels would just stop slipping on the damp concrete whenever she tried to speed up, then she might even be able to forgive her.

City Hall finally appeared before her and she cut down the side path, her heels sinking into the perfectly manicured lawn as she made her way towards the back entrance to the building. Glancing down at her watch, she decided that being ten minutes early for her own meeting was probably excessive anyway: as long as she could make it into her office before the councillors arrived and were forced to wait outside of it for the second time that week, then surely that was more than good enough.

Oh, God, she groaned to herself as she reached out a hand to open the back door. She really is ruining you.

She rolled her eyes and turned the door handle, going to take a step into the darkness of the building. Then something caught her eye, and she stopped.

The clock tower was chiming nine o'clock and she was officially late, but she still let the door swing shut so that she could start to walk back across the grass. At first she moved slowly - then her steps progressed into what could almost be called a run.

'No,' she muttered to herself, her purse dropping to the grass beside her. 'No.'

She reached out a hand before she had even ground to a halt, plucking the nearest apple down from its low branch. Her fingernails immediately sunk into flesh that was soft and warm, decaying beneath a red skin that had turned black overnight. She gasped, watching as something brown oozed out onto her palm, and dropped the object to the ground. It rolled to her feet, the indents of her fingers still bruising its rotten surface.

Dark eyes, blinking furiously, snapped up to look at the rest of the tree. She spotted at least ten other rotten apples at first glance, then another dozen when she peered more closely. She quickly realised that the whole tree wasn't dying – not yet. The vast majority of its fruit was still glisteningly red and waiting to be picked. But Regina's mouth had gone dry and her stomach was turning at the mere thought of biting into one.

The tree why dying. Why was the tree dying?

She took half a step backwards, away from the rotten apple that was still resting at her feet, and swallowed. For some reason everything suddenly seemed completely, worryingly still.

The same thought kept flashing through her mind and she closed her eyes, trying to ignore it.

You're being ridiculous, she told herself firmly, shaking her head at the ground. It's just… the weather. We've had a warm summer and the tree isn't used to it. It'll be okay again in a few months. It's not dying. It is not dying.

But Regina had learned to be a realist, and her stomach was already twisting into knots as that one sentence that Emma had uttered to her all those weeks ago stubbornly clawed its way back inside her mind.

'Henry seems to think that if the Evil Queen is no longer evil,' she had said, her lips twisting into an amused smirk, 'then her curse won't last very long.'

Again, that plummet of her stomach like a stone tumbling through cold water. She pressed a hand over her eyes.

It's absurd. It's not possible.

'And, given that he's apparently realised that you're not actually evil – congratulations.'

No.

'Consider your curse effectually weakened.'

No.

She snapped the last word at herself so firmly that she had to question for a moment whether she had said it out loud. Forcing her eyes back open, Regina sucked in a breath and stood up straight once more. The rotting apples didn't catch the sun in the same way that the healthy ones did, and yet they still seemed to wink at her.

'Stop it,' she muttered under her breath, taking a slow, steady step away from the tree. 'You're being ridiculous. You know that you're being ridiculous.'

She turned back to the side door of City Hall and started to walk towards it. After a few steps she bent to pick up the purse that she had dropped.

'It's unbreakable,' she told herself. Even to her own ears, it didn't sound especially convincing.

She kept walking with her chin thrust into the air. Noises were slowly coming back to her.

'It's unbreakable,' she repeated more firmly. The ache in her stomach lessened ever so slightly.

She reached the door and, for the second time that morning, went to walk inside the building. She stopped at the last moment, turning her head so that she could gaze back over at her beloved tree. Its branches were still strong, its bark was still thick. But it had been damaged. It had been weakened. She had dragged it over to this world and now it was dying.

She sighed, pushing the door open without looking back again.

Realising then that she felt more guilty about hurting her tree than she did about any of the other things that she had done, the twisting in her stomach returned.

You're still that person, she told herself sadly. Congratulations. The curse still stands.

Regina was halfway up the stairs, ready to go to her bedroom and change out of her uncomfortably tight heels, when she heard the knock at the front door. Her stomach plummeted: she was exhausted, and the very last thing that she wanted to deal with right then was having to field off yet another desperate, pleading visit from Sidney Glass.

Regina turned on herself and walked back down the stairs, straightening her back. She took a breath and pulled open the door.

When she saw Emma waiting for her, the aching in her stomach turned into something else entirely.

'Emma,' she said. She couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice, nor could she suppress the smile that always stubbornly tugged at her cheeks. 'Is everything okay?'

Emma was fidgeting from one foot to the other, her hands behind her back. As Regina watched her shuffling about on her doorstep, her green eyes pinned to the floor between them, a familiar feeling of warmth flooded through her. She almost didn't want it to: the image of her tree, lonely and dying, was still bothering her, and part of her wanted to blame Emma for that. She couldn't explain what had happened, but somehow she knew that Emma was responsible for it.

And yet the fluttering in her stomach wouldn't stop and suddenly the headache that had been plaguing her all day long had started to ebb away. She watched Emma fidgeting and felt such an overwhelming affection for her awkwardness that instead of getting angry, she found herself smiling all the more.

'Yeah,' Emma eventually said, not looking up. When she turned slightly Regina could see that she was holding something behind her back. 'I just… I wanted to ask you something.'

'Okay,' Regina said, folding her arms across her chest. 'Would you like to come in?'

'Mm,' Emma said. She didn't move.

Regina sighed, leaning one shoulder against the door frame. 'Are you sure everything's alright?'

'Yeah,' Emma responded too quickly. She looked up then, and Regina noticed at once that she was blinking too rapidly. 'I'm fine. I just… sorry. I don't know why this is so difficult.'

That plummeting feeling returned to Regina's stomach like a sledgehammer.

'…why what is so difficult?'

Emma bit down on her bottom lip. 'Don't… don't laugh at me, okay?'

'Okay…'

'I mean it.'

'Okay. I won't laugh. What have you done?'

A sigh escaped from Emma's lips before she quietly said, 'I've been trying to do this all day. I was at work and I had nothing to do, so… but I couldn't do it. I don't know why. So I was wondering…'

As her sentence teetered off into nothing, Regina took a small step forwards.

'Emma?' she asked softly. Emma's eyes immediately flicked back up again, absorbing the concern in Regina's expression, and she forced a smile.

'Sorry,' she mumbled. Finally she pulled the object out from behind her back. 'Will you… will you help me with this?'

Regina looked down and blinked: it was the photo album that she had given to her.

Relief flooded through her so quickly that she found herself laughing out loud.

'Jesus Christ, Regina! You promised that you wouldn't laugh!' Emma glared at her. She went to turn away and march off down the path, but Regina managed to snatch up her wrist and tug her backwards.

'I wasn't,' Regina said, still smiling weakly. 'I promise, I wasn't laughing at you. You just… you had me worried. I thought for a moment that you were going to break up with me.'

Emma frowned. 'Why the hell would I do that?'

'I can think of a vast array of reasons,' Regina said, letting go of Emma's wrist and stepping to one side. 'But none that would have arisen overnight.'

Emma finally walked into the house, her shoulders still tense. Regina shut the door behind her and leaned back against it.

When Emma turned to face her, clutching the book to her chest like Henry did so often with his, something inside of Regina melted into a warm pool at the base of her stomach.

'So,' Regina said quietly, nodding towards the album. 'How much have you done?'

To answer, Emma opened the book to the very first page. It was blank.

'Ah.'

'I don't know why I'm finding it so difficult,' she shook her head, snapping the book shut again. 'I just… any time I get the photos out, my chest starts to hurt. And then I tried to lay them all out, to work out some kind of order, but they all sort of… I don't know. They blurred into one. And then I got frustrated and then I tore half of them up and then I had to spend the next half hour taping them back together again. So my progress hasn't exactly been outstanding.'

Regina's lips twisted into a smile. 'No. It doesn't sound like it.'

She took a step forwards, reaching out to squeeze Emma's hand, and started to lead her into the living room.

'Come on,' she said. 'Make yourself comfortable and I'll get you a drink – what would you like?'

'Do you have any scotch?'

Regina raised an eyebrow. 'I do, Emma, but it's barely 6 o'clock.'

Emma pulled a wodge of photos wrapped up in a brown envelope out of the back pocket of her jeans before she sat herself down on the couch. 'So that's almost six hours where I could have been drinking but haven't been. So I'll have a scotch, please.'

Regina rolled her eyes and left the room, moving across the house to get the drinks. At first she went to pour one glass of scotch and one glass of water. Then she found herself pausing, shrugging, and picking up two empty tumblers and the entire bottle.

When she returned to the living room she was expecting to find Emma exactly where she had left her. Instead, she walked into the room to find her sat cross-legged on the floor with the book laying closed in front of her and her jacket tossed onto the sofa.

Regina placed the bottle and the glasses on the coffee table and surveyed her for a moment.

'There is a couch, you know.'

'I realise that,' Emma said, not looking up. 'I prefer the floor.'

'You look like Henry.'

'Thanks…? Where is he, anyway?'

'With Archie. I have to pick him up in an hour.'

Emma nodded, her eyes still on the closed album. The photos remained in their envelope to one side.

Regina sighed, moving over to the sofa that Emma's back was resting against. Perching herself on the very edge of it, she leaned forwards and waited for Emma to do something.

She was waiting for several minutes.

Eventually Regina reached out, poured out the two drinks, and eased one into Emma's bunched fist. Even then she let it sit in her lap, tilting it slowly from side to side without drinking it. The photo album remained closed. The photos never left their envelope.

'Emma,' Regina finally said, trying to speak quietly as if she was afraid of making Emma jump. 'What is it?'

She heard Emma swallow worriedly before she responded. 'I… don't know.'

Regina couldn't see her face behind her usual curtain of blonde curls, but she could hear from her voice that Emma was frowning.

'You've looked at them before, Emma.'

'I know.'

'You know what's in there. And you know how it all worked out.'

'I know.'

'So you don't have to be afraid of it.'

'I'm not afraid,' Emma snapped, suddenly putting her glass to her lips and draining it in one swig. 'I'm just… kind of…'

'Terrified,' Regina finished for her. When Emma didn't respond, she sighed and looked down at the floor. She took a deep breath before she moved again.

Emma nearly cried when she looked round to see that Regina had joined her on the carpet; cross-legged with her posture as straight as a rod. It didn't look right, but it felt like someone had just wrapped a blanket around her. She smiled weakly.

'Yeah,' she agreed softly, reaching out to trail a finger over Regina's knee. 'Maybe terrified is about right.'

Regina watched her for a few moments, trying to get used to the feeling of her legs being curled up so tightly beneath her. 'I don't understand what you think there is to be afraid of.'

She spoke softly, without judgement, and Emma was surprised by how little her words grated on her. In response she held out her glass and let Regina refill it for her, sipping her second serving more sparingly.

'Emma?'

'I know,' she eventually responded, leaning back against the sofa and rolling her eyes to herself. 'It's pathetic. I'm pathetic. I get that.'

'You're not—'

'But it's hard,' she said, gripping the glass between her fingers and glaring down at the closed book. 'Because I try not to think about it. About any of it. Growing up in the foster system is… It's lonely. It's scary. And whenever I think that I've outgrown it, that I've become braver and stronger and so much less alone, I just take one look at those photos and realise that I don't actually feel like anything's changed at all. Not really. The lights are still off and these waves of sadness still come out of nowhere, and looking back at actual evidence of what it was like to feel like that – so pathetic and utterly worthless – for every day of my goddamn life… it hurts. That's… that's all there is to it. It hurts, Regina. It's painful to have a reminder of it.'

Regina's breath had caught in her lungs. What Emma had just said… the cold, hurt look in her eyes as she had said it… Something about it had struck a chord within her. It made her chest tighten as if leather bonds were once again magically wrapping their way around it.

'But it still doesn't deserve to just be all lumped together in a box,' was what she eventually said. Emma's eyes crawled over to meet hers. 'Your childhood was painful. Excruciatingly so. But it's still a part of you – rather that hiding it away beneath an old blanket, you should let it out. You may never be proud of it, but maybe you can accept it: maybe you can put it somewhere where you can always look back at it and be reminded of what you've survived any time that you need to.'

Emma blinked, her forehead creasing slightly.

'That's why you want me to do this?' she asked.

'You survived what Moe did, Emma,' she said quietly, ignoring Emma's automatic flinch. 'That's what you do: you beat things. I just think that maybe it's time for you to appreciate yourself for just how good you are at it.'

A faint smile flickered across Emma's face. It was tinged with gratitude, but also unfathomable amounts of doubt.

'I'm not—'

'No,' Regina said firmly. 'For once, stop fighting. You don't have to keep doing that.'

'Don't I?' Emma sighed, nudging the photo album with the side of her glass. 'Because it's the only thing that's ever worked for me up until now. Even fighting with you was the only thing to actually bring us together. Why give up the habit of a lifetime when it's always worked so perfectly?'

Regina reached out to place a hand on Emma's knee. 'Perfectly?' she asked softly. Emma shrugged.

'Close enough.'

'Emma—'

'You're not going to get it, Regina,' Emma interrupted, placing her hand over Regina's to take the sting out of her words. 'You never will. I mean, I don't know what your childhood was like. Obviously. But at the end of the day, you at least had parents. If nothing else, you had someone to look after you. Someone to love you. That's all I ever wanted, all I've ever fought for, and I was never even good enough to have that.'

Her eyes flicked over just in time to see Regina flinching.

'Yes,' she muttered in response, her lips set in a tight smile. 'I suppose… yes. You're right.'

But Emma's eyes had already narrowed, taking in the way that Regina's shoulders had tensed up.

'Regina…?'

'No. You're right,' she quickly repeated, trying to smile. 'I shouldn't be telling you what to do here. It's not my place. I'm sorry.'

She suddenly got up – to leave, or simply to return to her more comfortable position on the couch, Emma wasn't sure. But either way, she found herself reaching out and quickly snatching up Regina's hand in her own.

'No,' she said, tugging on her fingers. Regina looked down at her with a sigh. 'Please don't walk off.'

'I'm not walking off,' she said, raising one eyebrow. She was partially hunched over from the weight of Emma hanging off of her arm, but she didn't try to shake her off. 'I just want a glass of water. I'm thirsty.'

Emma narrowed her eyes once more. 'You're not mad at me?'

'Why would I be mad at you?'

'You usually are,' Emma said. Then she sighed. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… I wasn't hinting about your childhood. It was an accident. You don't have to freak out on me.'

'I am not freaking out,' Regina groaned, although Emma could still feel her fingers trembling slightly. 'I really just wanted a glass of water.'

'You're sure?'

'Quite sure.'

'You're not going to storm off upstairs?'

'Only if you keep on badgering me with ridiculous questions.'

Emma slowly released her hand, pouting. 'You are mad at me.'

Groaning loudly, Regina collapsed back onto the couch. 'I am not mad at you – you're just very, very annoying.'

Emma spun around on the spot so that she could rest her chin on the edge of the sofa cushion. 'Didn't we both know that already?'

'Sometimes I get a painful reminder of it.'

'True. But that wasn't exactly painful – not by our usual standards, anyway,' Emma said, running the back of one finger across Regina's knee. 'But I can probably up my game a bit though, if that's the sort of thing that you're after.'

Against her will, Regina could feel herself beginning to smile. She shook her head, hoping that Emma wouldn't see it.

'That won't be necessary right now.'

'You sure?' Emma insisted. 'A few scraping fingernails? A bit of teeth? Nothing sounding appealing?'

'No.'

'Really? All of my bruises have faded from last week. I'm sure you could do with some of your own this time.'

'Emma,' Regina finally gave in and laughed loudly, reaching forwards to put her hand over the blonde's grinning mouth. 'Please, god, just stop talking.'

Her laugh turned into a squeal as she felt Emma's tongue suddenly pressing against the palm of her hand. She snatched it away again, wiping the wetness off on her leg.

'That's disgusting!'

'Is it?! Well - I'll be sure to remember that the next time that you're begging me to put it between your—'

Throwing herself onto her knees on the carpet beside her, Regina silenced Emma in the only way she knew how: by pressing her lips against hers and waiting for her to stop smirking.

When she pulled away again, Emma's cheeks were slightly pink.

'You can't always shut me up by kissing me, you know,' she pouted. Regina laughed, wiping a trace of her own lipstick away from the corner of her mouth.

'Oh, I know,' she said smoothly, running the tip of her index finger down the side of Emma's throat. 'But don't worry – I have a few other methods stashed away as well.'

Emma raised one eyebrow. 'For a rainy day?'

'Something like that.'

'Pretty sure it's raining right now,' Emma said, twisting her lips upwards into a smile. 'Feel like making good on some of those?'

'Not especially,' Regina shrugged, leaning forwards to kiss the disappointed pout off of Emma's lips. 'Because I'm thirsty, and I still want that glass of water that you seem so intent on denying me.'

A snort of laughter erupted from Emma's nose as she reached out to grab hold of Regina's wrist, tugging her back down to the floor again before she could fully clamber to her feet.

'I'll get it,' she said. She threw Regina a smile before she pushed herself up from the carpet and started to walk away.

Regina curled her legs up beneath her, watching as Emma moved towards the door. A familiar, anxious feeling was squeezing at her stomach and it was starting to make her mouth go dry.

She somehow knew from the line of Emma's shoulders that she was still worried that she'd upset her. That tense line made her stomach hurt all the more.

She swallowed, glancing down at the carpet.

'Just so you know,' she said quietly, watching as Emma stopped in her tracks. 'Having parents and having people who love you… they're not necessarily the same thing.'

Emma was frozen in the doorway, looking out into the hall. Regina felt her heart stop beating as she waited for her to turn around.

When she did, her face was pale.

'…what?'

Regina bit down on her bottom lip, fixing her eyes on Emma's photo album. 'They're not… they're not the same.'

Emma slowly began to walk back over to the centre of the living room, her fists clenched by her sides. Regina refused to let herself watch her. She had to get the words out before the roaring sound in her ears drowned them.

'I know that your idiot roommate is under the impression that simply believing in the possibility of a happy ending will change the whole world,' she muttered as Emma's feet appeared on the carpet before her. 'But that's not the case: we both know that. Believing that something good will happen, or that things are about to change, or that someone might actually bring themselves to love you… that doesn't make anything any better. It just gives you false hope and puts you on a higher pedestal to fall from. So you may have spent your whole childhood fighting, Emma – fighting for happiness, fighting for yourself – but I can promise you, that's better than a childhood of sitting around and just hoping. Of not being able to fight at all.'

As Emma slowly seated herself on the ground before her, Regina sighed.

'I believed in happy endings for a very long time,' she continued in a voice that barely passed for a whisper. 'And it got me nowhere. It did nothing but hurt me. Because while you were fighting with the world and refusing to let it break you… I think I was already a bit broken.'

'Regina, stop,' Emma finally reached out, grasping her hands between her own. A shaky breath shuddered from Regina's chest. 'You don't have to do this. I… I didn't mean to push you. You can stop. I'm letting you stop.'

Regina looked up, trying to smile. 'That's all I can… that's all I can say. For now.'

Emma nodded fiercely, falling forwards so that she could kiss her with as much desperation as she could physically muster. 'And thank you for saying it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.'

As soon as Regina felt Emma's cool hands on the sides of her face, she felt the muscles in her stomach stop tensing. Her shoulders relaxed once again.

She'd never told anyone… anything like that before.

'I'm sorry,' she mumbled against Emma's lips, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. She heard Emma hiss slightly.

'Stop it,' she replied, kissing her again and again, pushing herself up onto her knees so that she could hold onto her face more firmly. 'Don't be sorry.'

As she pulled her closer she felt Regina's fingers starting to crawl up the fronts of her thighs. They settled against the flat surface, her thumbs rubbing those same soothing circles that they always seemed to whenever she was worried, and a small sigh trembled from her throat. Emma edged closer, tilting Regina's head back so that she could dip her tongue into her mouth. Her fingers began to slide upwards, tangling through her dark hair, as she felt a pair of hands gripping hold of her waist.

Regina could taste the apology in Emma's kisses. Her mouth moved somehow slowly and furiously at the same time, trying so hard to say sorry for inadvertently asking her the one question that she knew she wouldn't want to answer. But Regina was begging for just as much forgiveness as she kissed back – for not being able to tell her enough, not matter how desperately she wanted to.

She buried her teeth in Emma's bottom lip and listened to the whimper that followed. It was then that she felt fingers fumbling for the button on her pants, and she groaned. She forced herself to push Emma away again.

'Emma. I have to go and get Henry.'

Emma rolled her eyes, groaning. 'Sorry. I forgot. I must have been distracted.'

Smiling wickedly, Regina tugged her hands away from her hips. 'You usually are. I never know whether that says more about me or about you.'

'You,' Emma said firmly, leaning forwards to kiss her one more time before she clambered to her feet. 'Definitely you.'

She held out her hand, pulling Regina up to join her. After a moment of silence, she tentatively held out her arms. Regina fell into them without hesitation.

As she held her, Emma was reminded for the hundredth time just how tiny Regina actually was. Even now, still wearing her towering heels inside her own house, she was still shorter than Emma was and her head nestled perfectly into the crook of her neck.

She didn't know much more about her childhood. In fact, she was almost sure that she now understood it even less. But with her newfound knowledge of just how fucked up Regina truly was tugging away at the back of her mind, she tightened her arms around Regina's tiny frame and hoped that she knew that she would try and protect her. However she could. Whatever it took.

Regina felt it. It made her heart ache.

As they walked to the front door together, no longer touching and without a word passing between them, Emma shrugged her jacket back on. She offered Regina a tiny smile before she stepped out onto the porch.

She took two steps down the path, feeling Regina's eyes on her back as they always were whenever she left. Then she stopped. She sucked in a breath between her teeth.

'Just so you know,' she echoed Regina's own words from moments before as she slowly turned around to face her. Regina was stood in the centre of the doorway, her hands clasped in front of her. Nervousness was pinched across every one of her dark features. 'You may have been right to worry about some things – not all endings are happy. Not all bad things go right. But worrying about whether someone will ever manage to love you…'

Her sentence wisped off into nothing as she swallowed, tugging at the sleeves of her jacket. Regina's heart clenched as she watched her.

Eventually Emma sighed again. 'You're worthy of love, Regina. And you're worthy of happiness.'

She smiled then, her slightly crooked teeth showing from between nervously parted lips.

'Believing in the possibility of a happy ending may be complete bullshit,' she said, shrugging. 'But letting yourself believe in that… now that is a very powerful thing.'

Regina blinked, feeling a familiar scratching at the back of her eyes.

'Emma…'

'Keep the photo album,' Emma said, tilting her head to one side. 'I'll be back. Next time, we'll do it together.'

'…together,' Regina choked out, swallowing down tears. 'Yes. Of course we will.'

Emma smiled again, nodding. Then finally she disappeared down the path, leaving Regina to shut the door behind her.

The clock was nearly striking seven o'clock and she knew that she needed to leave for Archie's office. But her spine had found the back of the door, and suddenly she was sliding down to the ground with her hand clutched over her chest.

You're worthy of love, Regina.

She wasn't sure that she believed it. But she was certain that Emma did.

The sight of Emma's eyes as she had said it, flashing almost blue with sincerity, had hit her harder than she had imagined possible. They somehow reminded her of another pair of eyes, from another lifetime.

...she hadn't thought about Daniel's eyes for a long time, she realised. After a moment she started to wonder what colour they had been.

She groaned to herself.

Love is weakness, her mother had once told her, and she had believed it for her entire life. So why was it that, the moment that she actually let someone see that weakness inside of her… there was that flash of blue in their eyes? That flash of certainty, and affection, and…?

Regina's head thudded back against the door.

She had told herself once that she didn't love Emma. Not yet, anyway – but she could. And now her heart was hurting and her stomach was knotting and that same flash of blue was hanging before her eyes like a curtain of stars.

You're worthy of love, Regina.

She buried her face in her hands. Tears dribbled down her cheeks even as they began to tug upwards into a smile.

The image of an apple, half-red and rotting from the inside, dangled before her.

Oh, Regina, you foolish woman - what have you done?