Chapter Thirty-One: Where She Keeps Her Heart

David caught up with her on the sidewalk.

"Regina, wait! Regina!" He grabbed her arm, pulling her to a stop, and when Regina spun around to snap at him, she was brought up short by the look of actual concern on his face.

And pity.

He was looking at her with pity.

She yanked her arm out of his grasp. She didn't want his pity. She didn't want him to be looking at her like that – with sympathy, with understanding. He didn't – couldn't – understand.

She'd known all along that Rumplestilskin had created this curse for a reason. Whatever other people thought of him, he was not someone who would mess with magic simply for fun. The price of magic was high, and the price of the Dark Curse was higher than most.

But despite knowing that, it had never occurred to her that he would have needed her to cast it, or that he would have manipulated her into doing it. And yet, hadn't he'd always tempted her, always pulled her back into her addiction whenever she'd tried to break free…? He'd promised her power and strength, and later, when the darkness had seeped into every part of her soul, he'd promised her vengeance.

Had she really been stupid enough to believe that he had been trying to help her?

She shook her head in self-disgust. She should have seen through his lies. She should have been smarter than that.

"Regina," David said again, searching her face intently.

"Don't," she snapped. "Just… don't."

Mary Margaret would have offered her some sickly sweet comfort, would have tried to hug her, tried to tell her that it would all be alright. Mary Margaret would have given her platitudes and some speech about love and faith and hope.

Mary Margaret was an idiot.

David stared at her for another moment, then nodded and took a step back, giving her the space she so desperately needed.

"Don't do anything stupid," he cautioned.

She gave him a bitter smile, and as she disappeared in a puff of purple smoke she thought inwardly that lately it didn't seem like she was capable of doing anything smart.

Finding her mother proved to be all to easy. Some part of Regina couldn't help but wonder if Cora had been waiting for her, waiting for this. Had she known all along that they would end up here?

Cora stared at Regina for a long moment, her gaze traveling up and down the length of her daughter's body. "You look," she tilted her head to the side, "peaky, darling. Are you ill?"

Regina gritted her teeth. Did her mother know this, too? Did she know the cost of absorbing the deadly energy that had covered the wishing well? Did she know that Regina had inadvertently saved her life?

Did she know that Regina had tried to kill her… again?

Regina had not seen her mother since their brief battle at the well, had not wanted to see her. She wasn't afraid of anything her mother could do to her physically, though she knew perfectly well that Cora was stronger than her, had more knowledge of magic than her. No, it wasn't the physical pain – wasn't even the very real possibility of losing in a fight – that scared her.

She was afraid of what her mother could say.

Did she really want to go down this path?

And yet, did she really have any other choice?

"What did Rumplestilskin do to me?" Regina asked, not bothering with pleasantries.

"To you, or for you?" Cora asked, her eyes darkening slightly. She stepped closer to Regina, close enough to reach out and touch her daughter, though she kept her hands at her side. "He taught you magic, showed you that you could be strong."

"Why?" Regina pressed. "Why did he want me to have magic?" This wasn't about strength or education or any of the other possible explanations that could be thrown at her. Cora knew what she was really asking, and Cora had the answers – Regina was sure of that.

"You were special," Cora answered softly, the unspoken words clear.

Regina closed her eyes for a brief moment, feeling the weight of that answer settle on her shoulders. She sank onto the sofa in the living room of this house her mother had commandeered and let out a breath.

"He needed me to cast the curse."

It wasn't that she had doubted Belle's words. But she had thought – hoped? – that something had gotten lost in translation. That perhaps Belle had been mistaken. Regina would never have considered Rumplestilskin a friend, and during the last few years before she cast the curse, he wasn't even an ally. But she had wanted to believe that she was more than just a pawn to him.

She had wanted to believe that there was more to the story than Belle's words.

How could she have been so stupid? How could she have believe that he had ever seen anything in her besides a mean to an end?

Their relationship had started out… not friendly, but not filled with animosity, either. Over the years it had changed – and she had assumed that it had changed because she had changed, that enmity had slipped into this relationship because it had slipped into all her relationships, because when she had finally embraced her Evil Queen persona she had been unable to feel anything but hostility to the people around her.

And yet… perhaps she had changed because the relationship had changed, and not the other way around.

"Rumple knew you were the one who would cast it," Cora said softly, interrupting Regina's thoughts. Regina felt the sofa cushions shift as Cora sat down next to her, felt the warmth of her mother's skin as Cora rested her fingers lightly on Regina's arm. "He had to make sure it would happen."

Regina opened her eyes and stared at her mother. There was no warmth of love in her mother's gaze, but there was something else, something that took Regina completely by surprise.

Pride.

"And look at you," Cora murmured. "Look at what you've done."

Regina bit back the urge to laugh. "What have I done, mother? What have I gained?" she questioned. "What has this curse given me? I won, and it didn't even… it didn't even make me happy."

She shouldn't have admitted to that. Any admittance of weakness in front of her mother was dangerous. But Cora's mere presence made Regina want to confide in her. After all this time, that hadn't changed.

The only secret she had ever kept from her mother was Daniel and…

Well.

That hadn't really worked out.

"You could be happy," Cora replied. "You could be strong. You could be…"

"What? The Evil Queen? I tried that, and all it got me was banished."

"Well…" Cora shrugged. "You didn't know what Rumple was doing," she said. "You weren't prepared to protect yourself against him. Now you know."

"What he was doing…?" Regina started, and then stopped. She rubbed at her temples, feeling far too exhausted for this conversation. And yet the pieces were falling into place, and she had to press forward so that she could finally understand everything. "He's the one who gave Snow the protection spell so that I couldn't hurt her in that realm. And he's the one who gave me the idea of forcing her somewhere else, somewhere I could hurt her."

"He needed you to cast the curse, just like he needed Miss Swan to break it."

Regina still didn't understand why Rumplestilskin had wanted the curse broken, or even why he wanted to be taken to this other land. But that didn't matter to her, at least not at the moment.

Once upon a time, Regina had thought of Rumplestilskin as a mentor. He had taught her so much, taken a special interest in her, encouraged her, refused to let her turn away from magic even when she wanted to give up. She had struggled with all of it, but had eventually given in to the temptation of magic, and the lure of his approval.

She hadn't wanted to end up like him, hadn't wanted to end up like her mother, and somehow she had ended up like them both.

Only weaker.

All those times she had nearly walked away, he had always managed to draw her back. But there was one time when she had gotten further than all the others, one time when she had come so close to giving it all up, to walking away, to being happy…

And she had to know.

"Mother… do you know… I mean…" she stumbled over the words. Did she really want to ask the question?

Did she really want to know the answer?

And yet… didn't she already know it? Didn't she just want confirmation?

"They never tried," Cora said, answering the question Regina couldn't bring herself to ask. "Your dear Victor and Jefferson never truly tried because of the deal they made with Rumple…"

It explained why Whale had tried to bring back Daniel in Storybrooke. She hadn't given it much thought at the time, but if he had truly tried and failed as he had said before – if the heart was not strong enough to withstand the procedure – why would he have bothered trying again? The problem was with the heart, and there was no reason to believe that it would be different in a different realm.

Unless he hadn't tried the first time.

Daniel had been the one holding her back, keeping her good, keeping her sane. Even in death, Daniel had been protecting her.

And Rumplestilskin had taken that away.

Because the person casting the curse couldn't have hope, and Daniel had been that for her.

"Love is weakness," Cora said.

Regina rose to her feet and stepped away from her mother. "It isn't," she said angrily. "I could have been happy, Mother. With Daniel, I could have been…"

"Are you happy with Henry?" Cora interrupted. "Does your son bring you nothing but joy?"

Regina faltered and looked away. Henry did bring her joy. But he brought her pain, too. And worry, and fear, and the perpetual dull heartache of being second best. Because nothing – nothing – had ever hurt as much as watching Henry so easily replace her with Emma.

"When you love someone, you give them your heart. You entrust it to them, and they can do anything with it. It makes you dependent on another, Regina. And that makes you weak."

Instead of answering that statement, instead of debating love with her mother, Regina chose the far safer path of asking a question of her own, "How do you know what Rumplestilskin did, what I did, after you went to Wonderland? You weren't there to see it."

"After I went to Wonderland?" Cora echoed, amused. "Don't you mean after you pushed me through the looking glass, darling?"

Regina glanced back at her mother, and saw that same pride in Cora's eyes.

"You know, I think that was when I first realized just how much potential you had," Cora remarked. "Before that, you were so sweet, so mild. I worried that you would never amount to much of anything, never learn how to be your own person. After all the effort I invested in putting you on the throne, I was afraid you'd be nothing more than a dutiful wife and stepmother, and I wanted so much more for you than that." She rose to her feet as well. "But then you took it upon yourself to call for Rumplestilskin – a very powerful, very dangerous man you had never even heard of, let alone met – and find a way to get what you wanted." She paused, an ironic smile curling her lips. "I can't say I liked the outcome, but… I was so proud of you in that moment."

This was the danger with Cora. Not that she would attack, not that she would destroy, not even that she would lie. No, the danger was that she would tell the truth, and that truth would be so enticing that Regina couldn't stop herself from reaching for it even when she knew it was dangerous.

"You were proud of me?"

Wasn't that what she had always wanted? Her mother's approval, her mother's pride? Buried beneath her fear and her anger and her desperation to take Daniel and get away from it all... in her wildest dreams, hadn't she always somehow earned her mother's love?

Cora nodded. "I watched you afterwards. Mirror magic is difficult, but falling through the mirror gave me a… oh, I don't know. An instinct, perhaps. An intuition. It became easy for me to use, and though I could never figure out how to get back to our world, I could still watch it. I could still watch you."

Regina didn't know what to say to that.

Despite everything, Cora still had a hold on her heart.

And that – that was dangerous.

"I have to… I have to go…" Regina said, lurching almost blindly towards the door. She could feel Cora's eyes on her, could sense the amusement in her mother's gaze. The panic was rising in her chest, the sudden realization that she had gotten in too deep, too quickly. Cora was the only one with answers, the only one who could explain why Rumplestilskin had done what he had done, but had she traded in one dangerous enemy for another? She knew couldn't trust her mother, and yet Cora still had this hold on her, over her.

She stumbled out of the door and into the blindingly bright winter sun.

She tossed the handheld mirror on the table in front of Sidney and demanded, "Connect me with Emma Swan."

Sidney gave her a look, his eyes unreadable. "Do you need me to call…"

"No," Regina interrupted quickly, waving aside his question. "I don't need David or that insufferable fairy. Just… use your power and my magic and connect me with Emma."

"We needed that insufferable fairy's magic last time, and that was before we knew that you using magic could kill you," Sidney countered calmly. "I can't just…"

"Do it!" Regina hissed.

She knew she was being entirely irrational. All of Sidney's points were valid. They had needed the Mother Superior's magic to form a lasting connection in the mirror, and even then Regina had been severely weakened. Further, they had never actually been able to talk to Emma, and there was no reason to believe that this time would be any different.

Regina didn't care.

She had been used. By her mother, by Rumplestilskin. She had unwittingly been a pawn in someone else's game for her entire life. And now David and Sidney and the Mother Superior were all telling her what she could and couldn't do… and the magic that she thought had been her strength, her protection, had been nothing more than Rumpelstiltskin's means of leading her to the end he wanted… And she couldn't even use that magic anymore without endangering herself.

Had any decision she'd ever made been hers alone?

She settled into the seat across from Sidney. "The risk is mine to bear," she said flatly.

Sidney raised an eyebrow. "You walked into my home and demanded my time and my energy. You aren't the only one taking a risk here, Regina." He touched the edge of the mirror almost reverently, running a finger over the glass. "This isn't easy for me, either."

Regina felt a prickle of unease she couldn't explain. He was talking about more than just the mirror, and the air between them was thick with a tension that had never been there before – not when he was a genie or a mirror, and not after the curse when he had no idea who he was.

But her frustration was clouding her judgment, and even if she knew that, it didn't seem to make a difference. She had to do this. She had to reach Emma, had to do it now for reasons she wasn't sure she could fully elaborate. As much as she might dislike the blonde, as much as she might fear the havoc Emma's return would wreak on her life with Henry, she had to get her back.

Somehow.

She gritted her teeth. "Just… just do it, Sidney. Just connect me with Emma… please."

Sidney held her gaze for a moment, then nodded reluctantly. He looked back down at the mirror as he said softly, "I can try. But even if we do manage the connection, Regina, it won't last for long. And…" he trailed off for a moment, then said softly, "you know what it will cost you."

Regina held his gaze steadily, and nodded. "I do."

The lake glistened.

Emma stared at the water. The surface of the lake was calm and still, perfectly reflecting the cloudless sky above. The air was hot, and she could feel the rays of sunlight dancing over her skin.

She dropped her bag onto the sandy bank and knelt down in front of the lake, reaching out to the skim her fingers over the water.

Her own reflection stared back at her. The same pale, ashen tint of her skin stood out to her, as did the shadows underneath her eyes. She touched her face, felt the dryness of her skin, and frowned.

"As soon as I get home," she murmured, "I'll sleep. I need to sleep."

She inhaled slowly. The air was fresh, and clean and clear, and the warmth in her chest increased, expanding slowly to fill her body. She could feel heat tingling at the tips of her fingers, and when she touched the water again, steam rose into the air.

She looked back at her bag. She still had the book, but since she had absorbed all of its magic, she wasn't sure if it would be any use. The vial of black dust and the mirror shard offered possibilities, but the water of Lake Nostos itself should be powerful enough to get her back to Storybrooke.

She hoped.

The idea had lodged itself in her mind. The water could serve as a portal, could take her back. She was building ideas out of patterns and pure faith, but she did believe it. Somehow, for some reason, she had faith in this strange instinct, in her ability to find her way home.

A laugh suddenly rose in her throat, and she leaned back on her knees, shaking her head as the irony of the situation suddenly dawning on her. After all her doubts, all her hesitations, she was now thinking about faith and hope, placing all her trust in the idea that if she just tried hard enough she could find her happy ending.

"I'm turning into my mother," she stated dryly.

That idea was too weird to contemplate, so she cast her mind about for something else to focus on, and found her thoughts wandering back to Regina's castle. She'd given little thought to it since she'd left, though some part of her missed the feeling of the magic seeping through the walls of that dark, hidden room. It had been overwhelming, and at times terrifying, but now that she was more familiar with magic, now that she could use it – well, sort-of – the magic of Regina's castle didn't seem quite as scary.

In fact, the memory of it was almost comforting.

Magic was making her strong.

But the overwhelming loneliness of the castle still haunted her. That feeling she hadn't been able to completely shake, though she didn't want to think about it. Her conversations with Mary Margaret before the disastrous storm had separated them had given her a feeling of… pity… for Regina. She still didn't fully trust the other woman, but hearing Mary Margaret talk about the person Regina had been, the person she would still be if things hadn't gone so horribly wrong for her, painted her as a far more sympathetic person than Emma had originally considered.

"On the other hand," Emma said aloud, contradicting her silent thoughts, "my life hasn't been all sunshine and roses and I didn't go off the rails and start murdering people."

Talking to yourself. First sign of insanity.

"Shut up."

She rubbed her eyes. Ever since the curse had broken and she had finally been forced to accept that everything Henry had said was true, her feelings towards Regina had wavered back and forth between anger and pity. But though the anger remained, simmering underneath the surface and threatening to break free every time she thought about the life she could have lived if Regina hadn't cast her curse, ever since seeing the emptiness of Regina's castle, pity had been the stronger emotion.

She knew what it felt like to be so completely alone.

She sighed, and turned her attention back to the water. It was time to stop analyzing her thoughts, and instead focus on using her emotions to get herself home.

She touched the water again, and concentrated on Henry.

She found herself staring at Regina's image instead.

Surprise flickered in Regina's eyes as their gazes met, and she opened her mouth to say something. There was no sound, of course – just Regina's image distorted by the sudden appearance of ripples on the surface of the water as the wind around Emma picked up.

"Regina," she gasped.

She reached out unthinkingly, but unlike her last attempt, she was unable to reach through the water, unable to create a portal and touch Regina. Her fingers disrupted the surface of the lake even more, causing Regina's image to distort until it was almost unrecognizable.

And then she saw Regina's eyes go black, and the image splintered and fractured, and the water bubbled abruptly, hissing and spitting and turning into steam.

Emma rocked backwards in shock, pressing her hands into the sand to steady herself. Regina's image was gone.

Regina slumped over, pain exploding behind her eyes. She heard Sidney calling her name, but his voice sounded distant, and faded. She gasped for breath, trying to push back, push through, the pain that flooded her chest. She opened her mouth to say something, but her throat was dry and thick, as though coated with cotton, and her tongue wouldn't work properly.

She felt hands grabbing her, holding her upright, and then everything went black.

She woke to the softness of a mattress beneath her and the warm, gentle weight of blankets pressing down on her. There was a dull ache behind her eyes, obscuring her vision, and a burning pain still filling her chest, but it was far easier to breathe now. She blinked, pushing through the fog that clouded her mind.

"Regina?"

That was David's voice.

She twisted around, trying to find the voice. She blinked again, and the room swam into focus.

Her bedroom.

She was tangled in the blankets of the bed, sprawled diagonally across the entire mattress. The pillows seemed to be haphazardly scattered about, one of them having fallen to the floor. The lights were off and the shades were closed, but even so the light from the hallway hurt her eyes.

She blinked once more, and tried to push herself into a sitting position. Something groaned and rolled over next to her, and an arm flopped over her chest.

Henry.

"He wouldn't leave you," David said softly, and stepped into her line of sight. "I tried to convince him that he didn't need to keep a vigil at your bedside, that you'd be fine, but he didn't listen."

Regna brushed her fingers over Henry's hair and smiled softly. He was curled into her side, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. He looked so peaceful, and so very young, and it reminded her how he used to snuggle in her bed when he was much younger, before everything had fallen apart.

Then the meaning of David's words hit her, and she looked at him sharply. "Did you tell Henry?"

"About the curse?" David shook his head. "No. I just told him that you'd tried to use magic to reach Emma, and it had backfired. He was distraught enough about that that I didn't see a reason to tell him why it had backfired."

Regina nodded gratefully, not wanting to burden Henry with that knowledge.

"What happened?" she asked, carefully extracting herself from Henry's embrace and sitting up in bed. She felt weak, confused, and the memory of her conversation with Sidney and attempt to reach Emma was only half-formed.

"You idiotically decided to kill yourself trying to reach Emma," David said harshly. "What were you thinking?"

Regina narrowed her eyes. "Don't you want your daughter back? Or is it easier to send her away… again?" she sneered. It was a low blow and she knew it, but she didn't want to talk to David about this. She didn't want to have to defend her actions, in part because she couldn't defend them.

Why had she risked her life for something she knew wasn't going to work?

But David refused to rise to the bait. "Don't," he said tiredly, forcing the word through gritted teeth.

Regina frowned. In the past, a comment like hers would have earned a tirade from David, and possibly an actual physical altercation. But David would looking at her with real concern in his weary gaze, and she noticed then that he had one hand still resting on the back of a kitchen chair. Had he pulled the chair into her room to watch over her? Had he been here, all this time, to make sure she would recover?

That possibility left her feeling uncomfortably vulnerable.

"You could have been killed, Regina," David continued. His tone bordered on patronizing, but even she couldn't ignore the obvious worry underneath. "What were you thinking?"

"That I wanted to do what was best for Henry," Regina snapped.

"Getting yourself killed is not what is best for Henry," David retorted immediately, and the fact that he said the statement, that he actually seemed to believe it, left Regina momentarily speechless.

It seemed to surprise David, too.

She licked her lips and looked around the room. "How long have I been… unconscious?"

"Just a few hours," David replied. "Sidney called me as soon as you collapsed, and I brought you here. I thought it would be safer for you here than at the hospital, and I didn't think Whale could do anything for you, anyway."

Regina flinched, and snapped instinctively, "Don't ever hand me over to him. I don't care how sick I am."

David raised an eyebrow, clearly intrigued by the comment. Regina had no desire to explain her reaction, however, and was saved from having to come up with a suitable distraction by Henry murmuring in his sleep and rolling over.

"Let's talk downstairs," Regina said quietly, "so we don't disturb him."

David nodded his agreement, and Regina pressed a kiss into Henry's hair before extracting herself from the tangled blankets and leading David out of the room. She felt weak, and her movements were jerky and uncoordinated. She had to grip the railing tightly to make it down the stairs without falling over. David walked behind her, and she could practically feel his concerned gaze burning into her back, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of indicating that she in any way noticed the toll her actions had taken.

In the kitchen, she leaned against the counter and turned to face David as he leaned against the wall.

David was staring at her, waiting for her to say something, but every possible topic was a minefield of things she didn't want to be forced to think about.

Finally, she said, "I spoke to my mother." David raised an eyebrow, and Regina elaborated, "She confirmed everything the bookworm said. The imp used me."

David accepted that in silence. She was absurdly grateful for that – she did not want platitudes.

She glanced away, towards the window. It was dark out. Night had fallen, and clouds had drifted in during the course of the day, obscuring the moon and stars from view.

The burning in her chest was fading into a dull ache, but the pain behind her eyes would not recede.

"Can you trust her?" David asked after a moment.

Regina gave a bitter chuckle in response to the question. "No," she answered, "but she was telling the truth about that." She closed her eyes, inhaled and then exhaled. "She's far more dangerous when she tells the truth than when she lies."

"And you decided to respond to her revelation by using powerful magic you knew could kill you?" David drawled.

She opened her eyes and glared at him.

"You can't do this, Regina," David continued in that ridiculously patronizing tone of his. "It was completely idiotic and…"

"Like you have any right to lecture me on idiocy," Regina snapped. Before David could say anything else, she pressed on, "I saw Emma. And I think… I think she saw me."

"What do you mean?"

"She's using magic. I could feel it. It was… strong. More than strong. It was…" She trailed off, unable to describe exactly what it felt like when her magic touched Emma's. Emma's had burned through her, brilliant white and scorching hot and so very good…

And so very dangerous.

"She can control her magic?" David asked eagerly.

Regina shrugged. "Or it is just bursting out of her whenever she gets emotional. I don't know. She's using it, but I don't know that she's controlling it."

As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt a sudden shiver of déjà vu run down her spine.

Hadn't the Mother Superior conveyed that exact sentiment to her, lecturing her on the difference between using magic and controlling it, warning her about all the ways in which magic controlled the user?

However insufferable the Mother Superior was, that warning has valid. And now she was echoing it to David.

"Did your mother say anything else?" David asked, interrupting her thoughts and changing the topic back to Cora.

Regina shook her head.

Her mother had said plenty of other things, but she didn't want to share any of them with David. He had no right to the details of her life, and more than that, she couldn't trust him with these vulnerabilities.

But David wasn't so easily fooled.

"She's playing you," he said flatly. "Whatever she said, whatever you don't want to tell me – she's playing you."

Regina gave him a withering look. She was well aware of the fact that her mother had been trying to manipulate her, but the fact that Cora wanted something from her did not change the truth in her words. And David pointing out the obvious didn't offer any clarity.

At least it was just David she had to deal with, though. If they ever got Mary Margaret out of jail, David would tell her everything, and then Mary Margaret would want to talk.

God, that was a horrible thought.

"So… is she trying to turn you against Gold?" David wondered aloud, apparently opting to ignore the obvious annoyance in Regina's glare. "Maybe she doesn't think you'll realize that she's using you, too?"

Regina pursed her lips. "My mother is far too clever to make that ridiculous of an assumption," she replied.

She'd known for years that her mother had been using her. The whys had alluded her, but it had always been her mother's goal to put her on the thrown, and not just for Regina's sake. Cora expected to gain something from it, too. Something more than simply being the mother of the queen.

"Then she doesn't care if you know that?" David continued the thought to its logical conclusion. "But she also didn't try to hurt you – I assume?" Regina inclined her head in his direction, agreeing with the statement, and he frowned. "Is she trying to get you on her side?" David paused, apparently considering that thought, and then wondered, "Or is she really just using you without any assumption that you'll ever return to her?"

Regina didn't have an answer for that.

"What does she even want?" David continued.

"To hurt Gold," Regina said. Her mother had a bigger plan than that, of course. The entire destruction of Storybrooke, probably, or at least the royalty and nobility in the town. But Regina was sure that she specifically wanted to harm Gold, though she had apparently also made a deal with him to avoid doing that.

What was her mother playing at?

They were both silent for a moment, then she heard David clear his throat, and she turned back towards him as he said, "Do you remember what Mary Margaret said? About Cora already knowing that you were… about you and Daniel?"

Regina narrowed her eyes dangerously as Mary Margaret's words echoed in her mind.

She also… she talked about Daniel. She said she… she already knew about him. That she had orchestrated things so that you would… you would blame me.

Regina curled her fingers into fists and practically snarled, "That hardly absolves Miss Blanchard – Snow – of the blame. It was a secret and she should have kept it."

David frowned. "It wouldn't have made a difference. If your mother already knew…"

"Don't," Regina spat out the word. David had no right to talk about this, to discuss Daniel's death so openly, so casually. He could try to defend his wife all he wanted, but Regina knew better. Snow had never been the innocently good child everyone had thought she was.

David let out a slow breath, but did not back down under the heat of her stare. "Look, all I am saying is that… back in our land, your mother sent you after Snow for a reason. And here, she framed Mary Margaret for a reason. We don't know what that reason is, but it is likely that it has something to do with what she wants from you. Her endgame has something to do with both Gold and Mary Margaret…"

He trailed off, and Regina ran a hand through her hair and started pacing again.

There was far too much logic in David's words to ignore what he was saying, but how could she accept it? How could she let him whitewash the past, pretending as though Snow had not betrayed her, as though she had not lost everything because of that foolish child?

It wasn't just the loss of Daniel. Her marriage to Leopold had led to a very lonely existence, but one that Mary Margaret and David would never truly understand. How could she explain to someone who was so loved and adored what it felt like to be constantly ignored? Perhaps as a child Snow could be forgiven for not seeing how unhappy her stepmother was, for ignoring the pain in Regina's life in order to make her own better. But then Snow had grown up, and a young adult could not be given the same leeway.

Why should Regina ever forgive Snow for anything when Snow had traded all of Regina's happiness in order to obtain a mother-figure for herself?

"Maybe this is why your mother isn't worried that you'll realize she is using you," David said suddenly, a hint of scorn creeping into his voice. "Because she knows it doesn't matter. Even when you admit that she is the one who hurt you – who killed Daniel – and even when you know that she manipulated you to hate a child, you still defend her. You can't turn against her, and she knows it, and she's using you."

For a moment, Regina was quiet, and David's harsh words lingered in the silence between them. It was so very Charming of him to stand in her kitchen, protected by her spell, and proceed to point out her faults.

Why had she confided in him?

She turned away. "Get out."

"Regina…"

"Now, David."

"You can't just ignore the truth just because you don't want to face it," David protested. "This is important. Fighting your mother is important. Figuring out how to stop her – figuring out what she actually wants from us. That matters!"

"Oh, I'm the one running from the truth?" Regina replied, whirling around to face him. "You and your precious wife were always so convinced that Good would win, and if we just had faith and hope and love then everything would work out for the best. You still think you can save the town and lead it again even when they've pretty much told you that they don't want your leadership. You think everything can go back to the way it was in the Enchanted Forest, and you think that back then everyone was happy. You were – and still are – so unbelievably naïve."

"I don't…"

"Get out, David!" Regina snarled. She didn't particularly care that her house was the only safe place in this town, didn't care that David was practically living with her and Henry now, didn't care that she was rapidly running out of allies and he was one of the few people that was still – tentatively – on her side.

She would not stand here and let him judge her relationship with her mother no matter how messed up it was.

David, to his credit, sighed and said, "Fine. But we're going to have to talk about this eventually."

He left, and Regina leaned her weight against the counter, eyes closed.

How dare he?

And yet…

Why had her mother sent her after Snow? What had she wanted, and how had Regina's hatred of a child helped that? Her mother had used her – and was still using her – and she needed to know why.

But could she let go of her hatred of Snow White long enough to figure it out?