A/N: If I'm honest this chapter is never going to be as good as the RAGING FANFICTION WET DREAM that was last night's episode, but I hope you like it all the same...!

Chapter Forty

Regina's heart shot up into the papery flesh of her throat as soon as she heard that knock at her office door. It was loud, and it was obnoxious. It made her stomach roll.

It had been a week, and it had to be Emma. It had to be.

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. Wetting her lips, she called out, 'Yes?' There was only the faintest tremble to her voice.

But almost at once, her eyes narrowed. The door opened and the figure who appeared at the threshold wasn't who she had been waiting for at all.

'Mr Booth,' she muttered, gritting her teeth together. Her fingernails released their pained grasp on the arms of her chair. 'What are you doing here?'

'I need to talk to you,' he said, shutting the door behind him and beginning to edge his way over to her desk without invitation. She arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow at him, her gaze falling to the increasingly more noticeable limp that was beginning to slow him down.

He reached the chair that was sat opposite her desk and collapsed into it, forcing a breath out from between his teeth. Regina frowned. His skin was greyer, somehow. Small beads of sweat were gathering along his hairline.

'Are you okay?' she asked reluctantly, edging backwards in her chair as if his agony was catching. He tersely nodded his head.

'I'm fine,' he said, adjusting his position and relaxing ever so slightly as the pain began to subside. 'I just need to speak to you.'

'So you said,' Regina said, tilting her head to one side. 'Well. Go ahead.'

'It's about Emma.'

Regina resisted the urge to wince.

'I'm well aware that it's about Emma, Mr Booth,' she said, folding her hands in her lap. 'We hardly have anything else in common that would require discussing.'

August gritted his teeth. 'Regina. Jesus. Can you stop being so obnoxious for five minutes, please? I'm in a lot of pain here and I'd rather get this over with.'

Regina's back immediately straightened, her every nerve bristling and her tongue sharply poised and ready to snap back at him. But the slightly faded look of his bright blue eyes stopped her, and she sighed. She slumped back in her chair as far as her need to constantly sit bolt upright would allow her and nodded.

'Fine,' she said flatly, gesturing for him to continue. 'Go on.'

He frowned momentarily, but chose not to question it.

'When was the last time that you spoke to her?'

She flinched. 'Well. I suppose… About a week ago.'

'Okay,' August said. 'And how was she? How did she seem?'

He watched as Regina shifted nervously in her seat, sliding her hands beneath her thighs so that they couldn't keep twitching.

'She was… the same.'

'The same as when?' August asked flatly. 'As just after our favourite florist broke her ribs in?'

Regina glared at him. 'Why are you asking me this, Mr Booth?'

'Because I saw her yesterday,' he said, creaking to one side in his seat. 'And the day before. And the day before that. It was 5 o'clock in the morning and I was trying to walk off this goddamn pain in my leg, and she was there. She was running around Storybrooke in the darkness and she didn't even notice me. She just kept running.'

Regina forced her facial muscles not to move.

'Maybe she's training for a triathlon.'

'Regina,' August snapped. 'Will you stop that? I'm not an idiot! She's gone back about fifteen steps. She's not sleeping again and she's not talking to me and I'm worried about her. Now will you please just tell me what the hell's going on?'

'No I will not,' Regina bit out in response. 'I do not explain anything to people who barge into my office demanding things like you do.'

'So, what?' August spat. 'This is it? You're going to bury yourself in your office and ignore the fact that she's depressed just because you're too stubborn to admit that, actually, you are just as miserable as she is?'

'I am not miserable,' Regina bristled. 'I have my work. I have Henry. I'm fine.'

'You know as well as I do that, aside from the kid, nothing means anything anymore,' August said. His voice had gotten softer. 'Not without her.'

Regina faltered. When she failed to come up with a response, August sighed.

'What did you two talk about?' he asked quietly. 'When you last saw her?'

Regina could feel her forehead slowly starting to crease up in panic. Her eyes darted across August's face, reading it, trying to work out how to get away from it. She wetted her lips and tried to speak.

He noticed her alarm at once, and he shook his head.

'I haven't got an agenda, Regina,' he said gently. 'I'm not going to use any of this against you. I'm… worried. Really worried. She was doing badly right after she found out about you, I know, but all of a sudden, she's just… She doesn't look like Emma anymore. She looks…'

There was a pause, and Regina finished for him.

'…angry.'

He blinked. 'Exactly.'

Sitting back in her chair with a sigh, Regina rapped her knuckles against the edge of the desk.

'She was running,' she said quietly. 'And she said that she… She just found herself there.'

'Where?'

Regina swallowed. 'At my front door.'

'And what did you talk about?' August asked, leaning forwards. He winced at the pressure of his bodyweight resting on his knees.

'I… I don't know,' Regina stammered, shaking her head. 'Nothing. She was just there and neither of us knew why and then… Then she…'

'…then she what?'

The memory of that hot, desperate kiss slammed into Regina's body for the thousandth time that week and she instantly shivered. She shook her head.

'It doesn't matter.'

August sighed, leaning back once more.

'But why the running?' he asked, scratching his chin. 'I don't get it. Before when she couldn't sleep, she just waited it out. Why has this started now? Is she trying to tire herself out?'

Regina wetted her lips. Emma's face, fiercely angry and flushed red with the effort of keeping herself moving, flashed through her mind.

'No,' she said softly. 'She's… she's trying to fight it.'

'Fight what?'

A half-smile, sad and deeply regretful, slipped over her face. 'Feeling useless. She thinks that she's broken, Mr Booth, and she's tired of it. So she's trying to fight back.'

August blinked. 'She told you that?'

'She didn't have to,' Regina sighed. 'She doesn't need to tell me anything.'

She went very quiet all of a sudden, her dark eyes fixed upon the pen that was dangling from between her fingers.

August watched her for a moment; looking at that great force of evil which had somehow been reduced to a lonely woman sat in her office with no one left to talk to. He could see her missing Emma. With every sweep of her dark eyelashes he could see her remembering what it felt like to be happy with her, and a sudden, sharp pain hit him in the centre of his chest. It was worse than any pain that could shoot through his useless, rotting leg, and it nearly suffocated him.

'You have to talk to her,' he said quietly.

Regina almost laughed. 'She doesn't want to talk to me, August.'

'She talked to you last week,' he said firmly. 'She came to you.'

'And that's because it was on her terms,' she replied flatly. 'I'm in the wrong here, remember? I don't get to make her do anything anymore. If she wants to talk to me, then she'll come to me. Otherwise, I just have to…'

There was seemingly no end to her sentence. August raised an eyebrow at her.

'What?' he asked. 'You just have to sit here by yourself, waiting for her? Worrying about her? Feeling miserable about her?'

Regina opened her mouth to argue, but somehow a dismissive gesture of August's hand immediately quietened her again.

'Give me a break, Regina,' he scoffed. 'You're the Mayor. You're the Evil Queen. You didn't get either of those titles by moping around waiting for other people to come to you. You want her to talk to you? Make her. You want her to come back to you? You have to make her want to.'

Regina's face turned sour. Sour, because he was so, infuriatingly right.

'I don't take orders from you,' she muttered, stabbing her pen into a sheet of paper like it was a blade.

'No,' he said, leaning forwards. 'You take orders from you. Stop being weak, Regina; it doesn't suit you. So go and find her and make her listen.'

He watched as she wetted her lips, shaking her head slightly. It was funny how tiny she looked all of a sudden.

'She hates me,' Regina whispered miserably.

'Right,' August shrugged. 'She hates you already and she's depressed already. So you going to see her can hardly make any of that worse. Can it?'

She had never hated herself more than when she actually found herself standing outside Emma and Mary Margaret's front door. Rocking back on the heels of her boots, she shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and shuddered.

You're actually doing what he told you to do, she muttered to herself. The wooden imbecile is bossing you around now, you fool. You really have gotten weak.

And yet she still found herself standing there, staring down at the cracks in the wooden floorboards. She had been there for five minutes already, her mouth growing progressively drier.

It was quiet inside the apartment. She wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not.

Several times she raised her fist and stepped up to the door, ready to knock. On every single occasion she sucked in a breath, closed her eyes, and waited for courage to take over. Instead it stayed coiled up, frightened, somewhere deep inside her stomach. On every occasion she sighed and slowly lowered her hand once more, letting it scurry back into the safe depths of her pocket.

It was only when she heard somebody climbing the stairs below her that her eyes shot back open again.

She prayed for it to be someone living on one of the floors below, but she knew that she just didn't have that sort of luck. It was Emma. It was Emma coming home and she was going to be tired and moody and she was going to find Regina skulking guiltily outside her front door, and it was going to make everything so much worse.

Regina found herself spinning around on the spot, actually looking for somewhere to hide in the empty stairwell.

Why didn't you bring magic with you here again?!

The footsteps were getting closer, and she realised that she didn't have a choice but to accept her dire, miserable fate. She turned towards the stairs, pushed her hands back into her pockets, and she waited. She waited with her eyes on the ground and her bottom lip caught painfully between her teeth.

She saw a shadow passing over the railings, and then there was a pause. She thought that she might be sick.

'…Mayor Mills?'

The nausea instantly got worse.

She looked up, sighing. Mary Margaret was stood watching her, an expression of absolute confusion scrawled across her face. A pile of books was resting in the cradle of her arms and Regina knew that she was struggling not to drop them, but even so – she stood still, and she stared at her.

Regina nodded. 'Oh. Miss Blanchard.'

'What are…?' Mary Margaret started to ask, shifting the books in her arms so that they stopped tipping to one side. 'What are you doing here?'

Regina blinked. She wasn't quite sure how to answer that.

Glancing over her shoulder at the closed, flaking door, she tried to look as casual as she possibly could.

'Well,' she said calmly, forcing herself to look back at the swaying schoolteacher before her. 'I came to speak to your roommate.'

'And she's not home yet?' Mary Margaret asked, taking a halting step forwards. Her keys were dangling from one finger, but how she planned on actually accessing them Regina had no idea.

She wetted her lips. 'I'm not sure,' she admitted. 'I hadn't quite… I hadn't knocked yet.'

With that, Mary Margaret's face relaxed. Regina was never fooled by the dopey softness of the schoolteacher's face: deep beneath that flowery exterior Snow White was still waiting, with her bow poised and a dagger strapped to her hip. Regina could still see it, even if no one else could. And Regina knew, even if Emma seemingly didn't, that the woman who stood before her wasn't as naïve as she seemed: she suspected something. She probably didn't know quite what, but she knew that there was something there.

Mary Margaret saw the sadness in Regina's face then. She sighed, shifting the books once more, and she tried to smile.

'You two really fell out, huh?'

Regina grimaced. 'You… you might say that.'

Nodding, Mary Margaret glanced down at the mayor's nervously twitching hands.

'Regina,' she said softly. 'I know that you're worried about her. I am too. And I don't know what happened between you two or why she's suddenly so… angry all the time. But I think she needs you. She needs to talk to you.'

'That's why I'm here,' Regina bristled. But Mary Margaret was already shaking her head.

'No,' she said gently. 'You're here because you want her to listen to you. That's not what she needs – she needs to talk to you. She's angry and she needs to say it.'

Regina swallowed. 'She won't say it to you?'

'She won't say anything to me,' Mary Margaret said. 'She hasn't spoken to me properly for weeks.'

Something sharp twisted through Regina's stomach. 'Oh.'

Mary Margaret watched her for a moment. She saw how her hands had stopped fidgeting, and her eyes had gone dark.

She couldn't look at it for very long.

'Come on,' she said, taking another step forwards. 'She should be home already. You two can talk.'

She was struggling to hold the books in one hand so that she could lift the keys up to the lock. Regina watched her from two steps away, a frown on her face.

'And where will you…?'

'I have places I can go,' Mary Margaret said, catching the books at the last moment just before they tumbled out of her arms. 'It's okay.'

Regina watched her for a few more moments, waiting for that familiar irritation to creep up the back of her neck as she was forced to witness that silly woman's absolute ineptitude for the thousandth time. But instead, she just felt herself grow heavy. Watching her, she felt sad.

'Here,' she said, reaching out to take the books from her. Mary Margaret blinked, jolting back half a step. 'You get the door.'

Nodding, Mary Margaret released her grip on the books and watched as Regina balanced them more securely against her own chest. After a moment she reached up, slid the key into the lock, and let it quietly swing open.

She turned back to Regina and nodded at the pile in her arms. 'Are you sure you're…?'

'I've got them,' Regina said, looking into the dark apartment. 'It's fine.'

Mary Margaret nodded. 'Okay.'

She turned away, hitching her purse up onto her shoulder. Taking three steps away, she made it to the top of the stairs and reached out one hand to the metal handrail. There she paused, turning back to where she knew that Regina would still be watching her.

'I'm glad you came,' she said with a smile. 'And she will be too.'

'I'm not so sure about that,' Regina said darkly, all of a sudden aware of the sounds of distant footsteps coming from the first floor of that apartment.

Mary Margaret laughed. 'Well. She probably won't actually act like it. But… I'm glad you're trying, Regina. She needs it. She needs you.'

A sad laugh escaped from Regina's lips before she could stop it. 'Nobody needs me.'

But Mary Margaret just smiled. She knew from the permanently sad look in Emma's watery eyes alone that that wasn't true.

'Good luck,' she said, then finally started to walk back down the stairs. Regina was left in the open doorway, the books biting into the crease of her elbows and the faint sound of angry music dragging her reluctantly inside.

Nudging the door shut behind her with the heel of her boot, Regina let herself look around the apartment. The lights were off and it was growing dark outside, but from somewhere up the stairs there was a dim light leaking out from beneath a closed door.

She swallowed and edged over towards the kitchen, dropping the books in a neat stack on the counter. After a few moments, she found an ancient light switch buried in the wall and hurriedly snapped it on. Light trickled through the apartment, and the twisting feeling in her stomach got worse.

She walked to the bottom of the stairs, peering up into the darkness. The music was throbbing through the walls. Placing a hand gently on the handrail, she found herself wondering if this is what it was like for Mary Margaret now – forever standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Emma to reach back out to her. Drowning in the sound of someone else's angry music.

Regina sighed and released the railing from beneath her fingers, taking two steps back into the kitchen. With shaking hands she began to unbutton her coat, peeling it away from her body and folding it neatly in half. She reached out for the nearest stool and dragged it backwards, ready to drape the coat over the top of it – but the sound that rang out of splintering wood scraping against the floor made her stop. She froze, her muscles tight as she waited for the sound of movement upstairs. Instead, she heard the sound of the music being shut off.

Footsteps moved across the bedroom towards the closed door. It was thrown open, and from somewhere upstairs Regina heard a voice calling out, 'Mary Margaret? Is that you?'

Regina couldn't respond. Her body had gone rigid, her arm still hovering over the chair with her coat dangling down from between her fingers.

She waited, and for a moment there was nothing. Then the silence was abruptly broken by a furious muttering of, 'For Christ's sake…' that made Regina inwardly recoil at the thought of Henry's soon to arrive angry adolescent phase. More footsteps followed – footsteps that were crossing the hall and making their way over to the staircase.

Finally Regina dropped the coat, folding it as neatly over the chair as her trembling hands could manage. Taking a step back from it, she reached down to straighten her shirt and to brush a fleck of lint off of her pants, before she forced herself to stand bolt upright with her hands folded in front of her. They kept shaking, and she squeezed them together.

A pair of bare feet padded down the stairs. The sight of that familiar chipped black nail polish made Regina's heart turn.

'Mary Margaret?' the same voice called, reaching the bottom step and turning to look into the kitchen. For a split second, she smiled: she saw Regina and her face lit up. She forgot.

And then she saw the terrified look in Regina's eyes; the nervous wringing of her hands, and her green eyes darkened. She swayed on the bottom step.

'How the hell did you get in here?' she asked. Regina's stomach dropped.

Swallowing against her dry mouth, she said, 'Your roommate let me in.'

Emma blinked, looking around her. 'She's here?'

'No,' Regina responded. 'She just… let me in.'

Narrowing her eyes, Emma stepped down onto the solid floor of the living room. 'Just like that?'

'Yes,' Regina said firmly. 'Just like that.'

She held open her arms to show Emma that she wasn't hiding anything.

'Look.' Emma noticed with a painful jolt that she already sounded tired. 'No skeleton keys. No crowbars. I didn't bewitch her and I didn't threaten her – she let me in.'

'Why would she do that?' Emma asked, edging across the kitchen. She was still eyeing Regina warily, but her face had less anger in it than Regina had been bracing herself for.

She found that her stomach was still hurting nonetheless. 'She wants us to talk, Emma.'

A dry laugh escaped from Emma's throat. 'I really don't think we have anything to talk about.'

'And I think that we do,' Regina said, watching as Emma moved across the kitchen and buried her head in the fridge. She resurfaced with a beer. 'Emma. I'm worried about you. Everyone is worried about you.'

Emma cracked the beer open, scoffing. 'Just because you feel guilty doesn't mean that anyone is—'

'Your roommate is,' Regina interrupted flatly, edging closer to the island. 'August is. Henry is. And I am. I feel guilty, of course I do, but that's not why I'm worried.'

'So why are you then?' Emma asked, taking a sip.

'For one thing,' Regina said, looking pointedly at the drink in her hand, 'because you're drinking at five o'clock on a Tuesday. Because you're running around town at all kinds of ungodly hours of the morning. Because you're ignoring your son and your ignoring your friends, and because you have this constantly furious look on your face that makes me genuinely worried that you're going to go to a bar and have one too many shots and get yourself arrested for assault. And that doesn't look good on me, you know, if my Sheriff is running around town accosting the locals.'

Emma narrowed her eyes. 'Did you just make a joke?'

Regina tried desperately hard to hide her nervously twitching hands. 'I… yes. I'm sorry. I'm just…'

Emma kept watching her for a few moments, swigging at her beer with an expressionless face. But eventually she sighed, moving forwards so that she could lean against the counter.

'Don't apologise,' she said quietly, digging her thumbnail under the corner of the bottle's label. 'I just haven't heard you joke recently.'

'You haven't heard me say much of anything recently,' Regina pointed out. Emma snorted.

'True,' she said, then fell quiet once more.

Leaning on opposite sides of the island, Regina realised that she was standing closer to Emma than she had done for a very long time. She let her eyes crawl hungrily over her face, drinking in the sharp lines around her mouth and the faint sprinkle of freckles across her nose. When she was this close, she could see the tiny gold flecks in her blue-green eyes. She swallowed, memorising it; absorbing it all as far as it would go.

'Mary Margaret said that you aren't talking to her,' she heard herself say. The concern in her voice startled them both.

Emma looked up with her eyebrows raised.

'Why does that matter to you?' she asked dryly. 'You're meant to hate her, remember?'

'I realise that,' Regina responded. 'But that's not like you, Emma. You love her – why, I cannot comprehend, but you do. You're meant to be friends, aren't you?'

Emma narrowed her eyes.

'We were friends,' she said quietly, ripping strips of paper away from the bottle. 'I don't know if you recall, Regina, but I also recently found out that she's my mother. That makes it slightly harder to talk to her, somehow.'

Regina flinched. 'But…'

'She gave me up,' Emma snapped, her teeth gritted. 'That's all I can take from this. Yes, she's my mother and yes she's my age and yes we're friends and yes that's all really, supremely fucked up – but she gave me up. She just… left me. How the hell am I meant to talk to her now, Regina? That's all I can think of when I see her and I can't even tell her about it because she doesn't fucking remember it. If I'm not allowed to be angry at you, am I at least allowed to be angry about that?'

Regina's mouth had gone dry.

'You're allowed to be angry, Emma,' she said slowly. 'And of course I understand that—'

'You don't understand that,' Emma interrupted. Her voice was quiet, and it cracked. 'How could you possibly understand that?'

And Regina knew that she was right, of course. But it still pained her to admit it.

She looked down at the counter that stretched out between them. If she had been brave enough, she could have reached out and taken Emma's hand in her own. It was that close.

But she wasn't, and she didn't. Her hands kept trembling by themselves.

'I realise that this is all my fault,' she said quietly, her voice stopping just short of breaking. 'I know that and, believe me, I hate myself more than you do. But… Emma… You can't hate everyone else as well. They haven't done anything wrong.'

Emma's eyes suddenly flashed. Regina felt herself flinching under the assault of it.

'You know that that's not true,' Emma said darkly.

'What?'

'It's true, they didn't curse anyone,' she said, taking another swig of beer. 'And they didn't murder anyone, as far as I know. But they didn't do anything wrong? Come on, Regina. You know that this self-deprecation thing really doesn't suit you.'

'What are you—?'

'Mary Margaret,' Emma interrupted, standing suddenly upright and beginning to pace around the kitchen. 'Yes, she was cursed and scared and was trying to save me – I've read the book. I get that. But she sent her new-born child out into the world by herself with no one to protect her. No one at all to care for her. She made me grow up thinking that the reason that nobody loved me is because I was utterly unlovable, and so I have always felt unlovable. So don't tell me that she did nothing wrong, Regina, because she damn well did and we both know it.'

'Emma…'

'And August,' she snapped, dragging her fingers through her hair. 'He came here to try and get me to break your curse. He tried to get us together to try and get me to break your curse. For some reason he thought that he could use me as some unknowing little chess piece in his game of trying to bring you down, and it worked. Here we are – we're both unhappy and we're both a little bit broken and how the hell do I know that it wouldn't have happened like this if he hadn't have gotten involved?'

Regina swallowed. 'Emma…'

'So yeah – I'm angry, Regina. I'm angry all the time, and it hurts,' she spat out. 'And you know what hurts the worst? Do you want me to tell you?'

'Emma, you don't have to—'

'It hurts that I'm not with you,' Emma finished nonetheless, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. 'I'm angry at you, but am I as angry as I should be? No. I'm not. Because I'm too busy loving you and missing you and telling myself that I could actually excuse what you did if I really, really tried to.'

Regina paused. 'You… you could?'

'No,' Emma snapped. 'But I want to. And it's maddening, Regina! I want to forgive you just because I want you back and it's absolutely sickening that I would even consider doing that. It's driving me crazy. The old me would have killed you by now, you do realise that? I would have killed you and taken my son and that would have been it. But I'm tangled up in you now, and I miss you too much to hate you properly. So yes, I'm angry – I'm angry at you and I'm angry at myself for not being angry enough. I'm angry at everyone. I'm angry because I can't sleep and I'm angry because even in my goddamn dreams you're not there anymore. Is that what you wanted to hear, Regina? Is that why you're here?'

'Emma,' Regina said, walking around the counter to stand in front of her. 'Listen to me.'

'I'm sick of listening to you, Regina,' Emma snapped, trying to move past her. Regina immediately grabbed her by her tensed forearm and pushed her back again, holding her in place with strength that neither of them knew that she still possessed.

'Just for two minutes,' Regina said firmly, her fingers digging into Emma's thin arms. 'That's all I need. Two minutes to talk to you and then you can go back to screaming at me as much as you like.'

'Regina, get off of—'

'Because you know what the old Emma also wouldn't have done?' Regina interrupted, her face suddenly inches away from Emma's. '…she wouldn't be complaining quite this much.'

She watched as the air disappeared from Emma's body. She took a halting step backwards, pulling herself out of Regina's grasp.

'…what?' she spluttered.

'You're angry,' Regina said firmly. 'I get that. Believe me, I get that. But you're not cutting down apple trees anymore, Emma – you're not chasing me across town with your car. You've set up camp in a corner and you've turned off your own light switch this time, and you're right: this isn't Emma. You've lost your fire and you're choosing to blame everybody else for that instead of maybe considering that it was you who decided to throw water on it in the first place.'

Emma's mouth dropped open. 'How dare you—'

'How dare I what?' Regina interrupted, taking a step closer. Her face was inches away and there was no anger there, but there was a challenge burning deep within her dark, dark eyes. Emma bristled at it. 'How dare I call you out on something? How dare I remind you of something that really hurts? This is what we do Emma, if you recall – we challenge each other, and we drive each other crazy. And so now you're angry. You're pissed and you hate me – so damn well use it. Stop moping around town with your eyes half closed and just hoping that eventually things will work their way back onto your side again, because the world doesn't work that way, dear. If you want to show me that you're angry then show me that you're angry. If you want to love me, then show me it. Don't just show up at my doorstep with a half-hearted excuse as to how you just 'found' yourself there, because Emma Swan doesn't just find herself anywhere. Emma Swan goes where she needs to go and you went to my house because you need me.'

Emma suddenly reached out, placing her hands on the flat plane of Regina's shoulders and shoving her fiercely away from her.

'Get out,' she spat, sweeping past her. She stormed over towards the staircase without looking back.

Regina turned to watch her, her mouth hanging open with absolute dismay.

'You're running?' she demanded, immediately following her. 'Are you serious?'

'Get the hell out of my apartment, Regina,' Emma threw over her shoulder. Her eyes were prickling and she could feel her throat tightening, and if Regina thought that she was going to be allowed to see her cry then she could damn well think again.

'Hardly,' Regina snapped, climbing the stairs after her. 'Emma. For god's sake. You aren't going to say anything? You're just walking away from me?'

'Yes, I am,' Emma shouted back at her, reaching the top stair and quickly heading towards her bedroom door. 'Which most normal people would not take as an invitation to fucking follow me.'

'Luckily for you, I'm not quite normal, dear,' Regina said, catching up with her at the open threshold to her bedroom. 'And I'm not going anywhere until you look at me.'

Emma stormed into the bedroom, trying to kick the door shut behind her but hearing the irritating slap of Regina catching it with her open palm. She growled, marching towards the bed, and didn't turn around until she realised that Regina had actually had the nerve to shut the door behind them.

'Regina—'

'This isn't anger, Emma,' Regina interrupted, clenching her fists by her sides. 'If this was anger, you would have hit me by now. You would have pushed me down the stairs.'

'Then what is this?' Emma snapped, blinking back the stupidly stubborn tears that were still piercing at the backs of her eyes. 'You know me so well – tell me. If I'm not pissed, then what am I?'

Regina just looked at her for a moment, her body completely still. When she sighed it sounded like the weight of the entire world was escaping from her heavy lungs.

'You're lonely.'

It was a word that Emma hadn't realised just how much she hated, and it hit her in the centre of her chest like a truck that hadn't remembered to slam on its brakes.

She swallowed down the urge to scream. 'I am not.'

Regina let out a sudden bark of laughter. 'Unconvincing, dear. Try again.'

'Regina,' Emma snapped. 'Get out. I mean it.'

'You mean it?' Regina asked, arching one eyebrow. 'Good. I want you to mean it. Stop pottering about with these stupid half-hearted lies and say what you need to say. Do what it is that you need to do.'

Emma took a step forwards, digging her nails into the palms of her hands.

'And what if what I need to do is to punch you in the face?'

Regina didn't flinch.

'Then do it,' she said, turning her cheek towards her. 'If it'll make you feel better, then do it.'

She watched as Emma's face began to twitch with absolute unfathomable rage. Her fists were shaking by her sides.

'Regina…' she bit out, gritting her teeth together. 'I really, really, need you to leave.'

'No,' Regina responded, crossing her arms over her chest. 'I told you – say what you need to say.'

'Regina…'

'Do what you need to do.'

'Regina,' Emma growled. She took another step closer.

'Do it.' Regina's eyes were flashing and she knew, she knew, that Emma's fist was coming. She didn't bother to brace herself for it – she wanted it to hurt. She wanted to know that Emma meant it. 'Do. It.'

There was a pause, and all that Regina could hear was Emma's breathing. She could see the rage bubbling behind those teary green eyes. And then suddenly she was rushing towards her, one hand outstretched, reaching out to wrap itself around Regina's throat and throw her back against the door.

Regina felt the air getting crushed from her lungs as she collided with the wooden surface, but she didn't make a sound. She watched Emma bearing down upon her, fury bleeding through her face. She felt her grip on her throat tightening and she knew that she was supposed to fight her off, but she didn't move – she waited. She could feel Emma's anger and she waited for her to use it.

And suddenly a pair of lips were pressed against her own. She blinked, the overwhelming scent of vanilla now creeping through her skull, and felt the fiercely tight grip on her throat starting to loosen. Emma's lips moved slowly, and her left hand had found its way onto the curve of her waist. She pushed her hips forwards and held Regina against the door, and as soon as she let her tongue slide forward and between Regina's slightly parted lips, she sighed.

The delicious, familiar feeling of her was intoxicating, and before she could tell herself not to Regina felt herself kissing Emma back. Her hands crept up to the fabric of Emma's shirt and she pulled her closer, parting her lips to let her tongue dip further inside, and she moaned out loud in a way that she never thought she'd get to again.

'Emma,' she panted, forcing herself to tear her mouth away for half a second. 'What are you…?'

'You said to do what I need to do,' Emma said breathlessly, tracing her thumb around the outline of Regina's swollen lips. 'This is it. I need to kiss you.'

'But—'

'Shut up.'

'Emma…' Regina could hear the self-hatred in her own voice and she had no idea why she was protesting this. Her hands were still clinging desperately onto Emma's shirt, pulling her so close that she could feel her heart beat thundering against her own chest, and she knew that she couldn't let her go. Not now that she somehow had her again.

'I love you,' Emma bit out, burying her face in Regina's neck and sucking on it so fiercely that Regina let out a gasp. 'I fucking hate you, but I love you. And this is what I need to do.'

She bit down on the skin below Regina's ear and listened to the familiar moan that she had missed so, so much.

Regina released Emma's shirt and found her hands crawling around to her back, digging her nails into the sharp jut of her shoulder blades so that the could pull her even closer.

'I've missed you,' she groaned, shaking her head.

Emma's tongue flicked out against her pulse point and she shuddered. 'Stop talking.'

'Emma. We can't just—'

Suddenly Emma pulled away, placing her thumb over Regina's mouth in a half-hearted attempt to get her to shut up.

'Just for once,' Emma muttered, leaning so close that Regina could almost taste the vanilla of her hair. 'Just for now – can we just try to pretend that nothing happened? Please?'

Regina swallowed, waiting for Emma to release her mouth before she slowly said, 'But it did happen—'

Emma's whole hand suddenly replaced her thumb, and she stopped talking once more.

'I know that it did,' Emma whispered, removing her hand and replacing it with her lips. 'I know.'

She let her hands crawl up to the sides of Regina's face, and she began to tangle her fingers through the silky hair that she hadn't realised that she'd managed to perfectly memorise the feel of. Regina groaned, and without another word of protest she raked her fingernails down the curve of Emma's spine until she felt her shiver. Her hands reached the bottom of her shirt and, when she curled her fingers around the hemline and started to tug it upwards, Emma didn't resist. She inched backwards to give Regina the space to get rid of it, and then she collapsed back against her like she was stuck there.

Regina sucked in a breath the moment that she felt Emma's hands leave her hair and start to touch her body. They found her breasts through her shirt and squeezed them, rolling against them, and all too quickly she could hear herself moaning into Emma's mouth. Those hands then crawled downwards over the silky fabric of her blouse, tiptoeing towards the waistband of her pants. They curled around it in one fierce, possessive movement, and suddenly Emma was pressing her entire body against the length of Regina's. She popped open the button on Regina's pants and dragged the zipper downwards with a rasp that mad both of their toes curl.

For a split second Emma pulled away from her, their eyes meeting in a hazy moment that told Regina just how much she wanted her, and just how much she wanted to make sure that she still wanted this too. Regina nodded sharply, reaching one hand out to grab the back of Emma's neck. As she pulled her back towards her, Emma groaned and, wonderfully abruptly, slid her hand down the front of Regina's pants. She felt her wetness glossing over her fingertips and moaned louder than she had ever let herself before.

Regina's teeth sank into her neck as Emma began to run her finger up and down the wet slit of her pussy, sighing out loud with every stroke. Emma could feel the marks that Regina was leaving in her skin, but she didn't care: she'd wear a scarf for the next week if she had to. Smothering the urge to scream, Emma reached out and pushed Regina's pants and underwear down until they were resting somewhere around her thighs. Two fingers were thrust swiftly inside of her, and when Regina's legs buckled, Emma caught her.

With her thumb pressed firmly over her clit, Emma carried on driving her fingers inside of Regina until she could feel her body starting to shake against her. Her fingers were tangled in Emma's curls, clinging desperately onto her, as her mouth continued to work its way along the pale column of her throat, leaving a trail of inky bruises with every fiercely possessive kiss and bite that she rained down upon it. Emma sighed, returning the favour with a kiss directly against Regina's collar bone that was so ferocious that she nearly cried out – and then all of a sudden she was gone. She pulled herself away from Regina and paused, her left hand still resting beneath the hard line of her jaw and her right planted firmly between her legs.

Regina swallowed, shaking her head.

'What?' she asked breathlessly, reaching out to try and touch Emma's face. But Emma had gone again; sliding down to her knees with her hands suddenly holding Regina's hips against the door.

'Emma, what—?'

Regina's words were cut off by the sounds of her own moaning as Emma's tongue suddenly flicked out and grazed over her wet, throbbing clit.

'Oh, god.'

Reaching out to grab fistfuls of blonde hair, Regina pulled Emma as close to her body as she physically could. Emma moaned, drinking in the smell and taste and the feel of Regina against her mouth, and slowly began to drag her tongue up the centre of her cunt. She heard the thud of Regina's head falling back against the door, but she didn't look up.

'Emma…' Regina gasped, knotting her fingers through the roots of Emma's curls. No matter how fiercely Emma's hands were pushing her hips back against the door, they couldn't stop her from grinding them forwards against the flat of her tongue. Her knees were buckling and her hands were shaking against Emma's skull, but the electric feel of Emma's fingertips bruising her hips and her tongue snaking its way between her legs somehow kept her upright. They kept her conscious even when she exploded outwards, bursting into a mass of stars; gasping Emma's name out loud like it was the only word in the English language that she could possibly remember.