Chapter Thirty-Six

At least if nothing else, Regina was suddenly able to catch up on all of the work that she'd missed over the past few months. She hadn't fully realised just how much of a distraction Emma really was until it came to facing the teetering stack of papers that were supposed to have been read and signed weeks ago. She had been there for hours, the scratching of her pen the only sound in the enormous office that had always been quiet. The silence was different now, though. The silence made her write slower, and it made her temples throb, and it made her heart hurt.

She placed the pen down on the desk and gently squeezed at the bridge of her nose. When she opened her eyes again, there was a figure stood in the doorway.

It took a moment for her to absorb that flash of red and blonde. Not because she couldn't recognise it – but because the black and white of her office was suddenly scarred by it, and she couldn't quite explain why that feeling of disruption was just so wonderfully welcome. An injection of chaos was stood in the doorway of her perfect office and all she wanted it to do was tumble inside and turn over all of the furniture.

She raised her head and softly said, 'Emma.'

It had been nearly two weeks since Regina had last seen her. She had forgotten how pale Emma could get when she was furious at the world and so no longer wanted to step out into it.

Emma had her hands thrust uncomfortably into the pockets of her jeans and she was looking around the room with distrust piercing through her green eyes. She eyed the furniture like she was expecting someone to be hiding beneath it. She never once looked at Regina.

Regina swallowed and slowly, cautiously, stood up behind her desk. She wetted her lips before she asked, 'Can I get you a drink?'

Emma's nod of assent was short and impassive. As Regina moved out from behind her desk and made her way over to the drinks cabinet on the other side of the room, Emma edged her way towards the couch with her eyes still focused sharply on what might be hiding underneath it. She never spoke. She never lifted her chin.

Regina took a breath and began to pour out two glasses of cider, throwing minute glances over her shoulder at the woman who was sat on her couch. Emma's shoulders were slumped but still absolutely rigid, and her hair had fallen back into its unwashed disarray that reminded her so painfully of those many months ago. Looking back down at the filled glasses, Regina swallowed. She placed the glass bottle back down onto the cabinet and waited for her hands to stop trembling before she made her way over to the chair opposite Emma.

She reached out and waited for Emma to take the glass for her. After a moment a pale hand shot out and snatched it from between her fingers. Green eyes never looked up.

Regina lowered herself down into her seat and crossed her legs over, clutching the cold glass against the flat surface of her thigh. She watched Emma as she hunched over her own knees, rolling the glass between her palms. Her eyebrows were tied angrily together and her lips were moving, as if she was trying to spur herself on. Regina didn't say a word. She watched the way that the darkening light outside was turning her eyes from green to grey and she watched the way that the sad lines around her mouth were only ever deepening. She wondered how many of those she could attribute her own name to.

Eventually Emma sucked in a breath and closed her eyes. When she snapped them back open again, she was looking at Regina for the first time that evening.

'So,' she said. Her voice cracked. 'You've killed people.'

Of course that would be her first question. Regina had been waiting for it.

She straightened her spine and nodded. 'Yes.'

'How many?'

'Personally?' Regina considered it for a moment, her shoulders pulled taut behind her. 'I can't be sure. Dozens.'

'And indirectly?' Emma asked, her eyes sharp. This was a test, and Regina knew it.

She didn't falter. 'Hundreds.'

She watched as Emma's body crumpled slightly. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she huddled back against the sofa cushions and drained the golden liquid from her glass in one easy flush. She was shaking her head, almost without realising, with her eyes fixed firmly on the untouched liquid between Regina's hands. Hands that had taken hearts, and then taken hers.

She gritted her teeth together. 'Why?'

That was a question that Regina had not been expecting.

'Excuse me?' she asked.

'Why did you kill them?' Emma said, still not looking up. 'What did they do to you?'

'They…' Regina started, uncrossing and then re-crossing her ankles. Her mouth had gone dry. 'They didn't do anything. They were just… they were in my way. They disturbed me. They disappointed me. I had power and I chose to use it. I don't… I don't have any other reasons for why I did anything because I didn't need a reason. I could, and so I did.'

Emma nodded like this didn't bother her.

'You were heartless,' she said flatly. Regina flinched.

'I was,' she admitted. '…I was heartless and ruthless and thoughtless. I was unhappy and so everyone else around me had to be unhappy as well.'

All of a sudden Emma's eyes snapped back up to meet hers and Regina jumped at their intensity.

'And did it help?'

Regina smiled wretchedly. 'What do you think?'

There was a sad silence where Emma just blinked. Then, finally, she nodded like her insides had turned to lead.

'Right,' she said flatly, her eyes flicking back down to her empty glass. She fell silent, and the air around her grew cold.

Regina watched her for a few moments, taking in the childlike curve of her posture and the slight wriggling of her booted feet against the edge of the couch cushions. Everything felt heavier all of a sudden. Her jaw was aching and she knew without a doubt that if someone didn't say something soon, she would cry and cry and she wouldn't be able to stop.

'Emma,' she said weakly, swallowing against the lump in her throat. '...please talk to me.'

Eventually Emma looked back up again and, against her will, Regina winced. Anger, she could take: she was expecting it. But the look on Emma's face was infinitely more painful than that: that sad, lonely look told Regina just how badly the edges of her world had been torn apart, and how terrified she was of slipping through the gaps. Emma no longer looked angry – a week of raging and drinking and punching her bedroom walls with bruised fists had exhausted her of that. Now, Emma simply looked afraid. Emma looked alone.

It made the back of Regina's neck go cold.

'I…' Emma started, but the terrible expression on Regina's face stopped her. She had never felt pitied by her before. She swallowed, glancing down at her pathetically trembling fingers, and felt a fresh wave of hatred crashing back over her. 'I want you to tell me about it.'

Regina nodded at once, almost too enthusiastically. 'Yes. Of course. What… what do you want to know?'

She watched as Emma sucked in a breath, waiting for the roaring sound in her ears to ebb away again.

'I want to know what happened to you,' she eventually forced out. She looked up just in time to see the stars fading from Regina's eyes.

'…okay,' she said slowly. 'That might be quite a long story.'

Emma responded by holding out her empty glass with the absolute smallest of smiles. 'I've got time.'

The familiarity of that gesture jabbed suddenly Regina in her throat, and she found herself snatching the tumbler from Emma's hand just so that she could hide her pathetic tears on the other side of the office. Her hands were shaking as she poured the cider. Emma could hear the clatter of glass trembling against glass from her position on the couch, and it made her flinch.

When Regina returned to her seat, Emma was looking down at the floor once more. Regina managed to hand over the brimming glass with hands that were suspiciously steady before she sat back down again, picking up her own untouched drink and crossing her legs as gracefully as she could manage. Emma stared down at her refilled glass, her lips moving silently once more as she told herself, over and over, to just say what needed to be said. To ask what she needed to know.

She did neither, and finally Regina broke the silence.

'Emma,' she repeated softly. 'What do you want to know?'

The tortured looked on Emma's face told her that she didn't really want to know anything at all. Eventually, though, she muttered, 'I just… I want you to make it make sense.'

Regina smiled sadly. 'I don't have magic anymore. I don't know if it'll be quite that easy.'

Emma watched the slight curve of her lips with a dropping feeling in her stomach: she'd missed it. She'd missed Regina's unlikely smiles.

There was a pause before she asked, '…you really had magic?'

Regina's smile faltered slightly. 'I did.'

'Always?'

'No,' Regina said. 'I had to learn it.'

'How?'

Taking a deep breath, Regina replied, 'Mr Gold taught me.'

'Mr Gold?'

'Yes. Although he was called Rumplestiltskin then.'

Emma scrunched up her nose. 'He doesn't look much like a goblin.'

'Not at the moment,' Regina sighed. 'His real form, however… He's an imp. He's the only person who's ever truly made my stomach turn. But I needed him. I needed power, and he had it.'

'So he taught you?'

'Yes.'

Emma nodded. 'He taught you how to take hearts?'

Regina swallowed before she repeated, 'Yes.'

For a moment Emma looked like she was considering this, her tongue tracing a line against the backs of her teeth. And then she said thoughtfully, 'You must have been weak.'

Regina blinked. 'I'm sorry?'

'Were you always evil?' Emma asked.

'No. No, I… I had…'

'But you became evil,' Emma said, shrugging. 'Like it was that easy. When Mr Gold taught you how to do the heart thing, did you even question it?'

She watched as Regina bristled.

'Of course I did,' she said, placing her untouched drink back on the table. 'I said no. Endlessly. But eventually things were too hard and it… I don't know, Emma. Eventually…'

'It was the easy way out,' Emma finished flatly. Regina had never heard her sound so emotionless before.

She swallowed. 'I suppose so.'

Emma's top lip curled as she said, 'So you were weak.'

'I… Yes, in some ways, I was.'

'And in what ways weren't you?'

'Sorry? I don't—'

'You were weak "in some ways". How were you strong exactly? For not killing people at first? For only doing it when it was easier than just being a good person?'

'What? Emma. That's not how—'

'I want to understand, Regina,' Emma hissed, her fury suddenly gone. She sounded desperate and confused and, even more frighteningly, she sounded sorry. 'That's all. That's all I need from you. So if you're going to tell me that you were once a good person and then Mr Gold somehow corrupted you – you, the strongest person I have ever met – then at least cut the bullshit and tell me the truth about how it happened. You were good, and then you weren't. You were miserable. I get misery and I get wanting to escape from your shitty shitty problems – but I don't get how you could turn like that, from the person I know into this… this…'

She couldn't finish because there was still no image in her mind that outlined the awful, terrible woman that Henry's book had told her about. Regina was the Evil Queen, and Emma knew that. But she still didn't believe it. Even then.

'Emma,' Regina sighed, knotting her fingers together against her knees. 'I don't know what to say. It doesn't make sense – even I know that. I mean… I'm a character. I'm a cartoon. I'm this imaginary villain with magical powers and I—'

'What?' Emma suddenly interrupted, her eyebrows knitting together. 'Regina. Christ. That is not what I don't understand.'

'I'm sorry?'

'I mean, obviously that makes no fucking sense whatsoever,' Emma said, rolling her eyes. She took another agitated sip of her drink, shaking her head as she swallowed. 'And I'm still pretty sure that you're insane. But it's not that – it's the hearts. The killing. The fact that you're Regina, and yet suddenly you're not. My Regina is soft and kind and she raised my son and she held me when I couldn't sleep. She promised me that everything would be okay, and I believed her. I just don't understand how she can suddenly go from that, to this.'

She saw Regina flinch, and she saw her dark eyes melting with the tears that she was trying so hard to blink back.

'I'm still the same person, Emma,' she said quietly.

Emma sighed.

'Exactly,' she said. 'And that's what I don't get.'

Regina fell silent. She watched Emma with eyes that were huge and sad, and after only the tiniest of moments Emma found that she had to look away from them.

Eventually Regina cleared her throat.

'If I tell you,' she said, her eyebrows pulled tightly together, 'are you sure that it won't just make things worse?'

Emma blinked. '…how could that possibly make things worse?'

'What if it's not good enough?' Regina asked. 'What if all of my reasons are just… excuses to you? The way that you're looking at me now already makes me feel nauseous, Emma. I don't know if I'd survive it if you thought any less of me.'

Emma frowned. 'I really don't know if that's possible right now.'

'Emma.'

'What?' Emma rolled her eyes. 'I don't know what you want me to say. My opinion's pretty low right now but I'm still willing to listen. So you may as well tell me as many gruesome details as you can before I walk away and refuse to hear you out ever again.'

Regina fell silent. She was tangling her fingers together in her lap, over and over, with eyes that were almost molten with worry. When she spoke, her voice was tiny.

'…I just don't want you to hate me anymore.'

Emma's face suddenly softened.

'You know that I don't want to either,' she said quietly. 'But… I need to know these things. All of these things. If I'm kept in the dark any longer I don't think that I'll ever be able to find my way back out again.'

Regina nodded. She took a breath.

'Tell me where you want me to start.'

Emma paused, considering it. And then she sighed, raising her glass back up to her lips.

'Let's try at the beginning.'

A/N: My stupid douchey life has led to stupid douchey delays between chapters again, and I'm really really sorry! Please remember that I still love you all and every time I get a message on tumblr from any of you my heart dies a little. In a good way. In a hopelessly romantic and slightly miserable way. In a slightly worryingly emotional way... IT'S GOOD. I LOVE YOU.