A/N: i tried to redo this with capitalization, but it somehow didn't work with the style of the fic? so i apologize if the lowercase is troublesome. if enough people are irritated with it, i'll try switching it again.

title from "drumming" by florence + the machine. i definitely recommend listening while reading.

(also this is the first day i haven't had writer's block in three weeks, yeah!)

regina mills hates emma swan.

she says it like a mantra, that she hates this woman with sunshine hair and ridiculous red leather jackets like she's still a damn teenager. (regina realizes with a start, that she only knows this because of the television.) the way she strides with all her weight in front of her, her brash attitude, the way she shifts from side-to-side like she can't stand still. the confidence she exudes, the false kind coming from a place of deep insecurity, one regina knows all too intimately, and hides like the beating hearts in her vault.

unfortunately for ms. swan, this means that regina knows all her invisible sore spots. all those tears into the soul that never quite healed and bleed from time to time. and so she'll make her bleed. to keep her on her toes and at an arms length, to see that flush in her pretty cheeks and how there are words pressing at her pretty pink thin lips, waiting to explode.

and hopefully one day to keep her permanently away from her son.

this woman, who has nothing, who is nothing, who is uneducated, uncultured, un-everything, who gave up her son, who stormed into her life like she has some god-given right to (and who does that remind regina of?), and yet henry loves her with absolutely no effort on emma swan's part. who has the love of the town. this criminal, this vagabond, this-

regina isn't jealous. she's just deeply irritated.

(that's a lie.)

envy is a weakness, like love, because often love is mixed up in the emotion. and she loathes herself for feeling it as she watches her son smile at emma swan, watches her smile back. she has a beautiful smile, when it's real and full and bright. (daniel used to say she had a beautiful smile, and why in the world is she thinking about ms. swan in the sacred part of her mind and heart where daniel lives and breathes?) henry' smile, however. she can't help the one tugging at her lips, but it wavers. to anyone else it might look like a grimace.

she can't remember the last time he smiled at her like that. the last time he smiled like that in general.

no. she can. at mary margaret when she last picked him up from school.

she watches emma smile again. and then laugh. henry is laughing too. maybe it's okay that she's here. if only it gets henry to smile and laugh like he used to, to not be so full of melancholy and coldness.

she entertains the thought until henry opens the book; the book that is like a stain on this entire promised happy ending, that holds the story of the winners and so she is nameless and evil, like a prop to their goodness, her story conveniently left out.

the evil queen, her son calls her.

the name hurt at first until she owned the moniker with every fiber of her being, but it didn't hurt so much until he stopped calling her mom in favor of it.

she scowls, snarls, waits for the tug of magic in her veins and there is nothing, absolutely nothing. it's like her veins are running dry even as she hears her heart beat, beat, beat.

then henry gets stuck in the mine.

and emma holds her arm.

asks what do you need?

her hand feels like burning, even through the fabric of her turtleneck. regina wants to shake it off, push her away, crush her trachea with a flick of her hand. and she also wants to sink into the touch. allow comfort. but it's not comfort emma is offering, emma is hardly someone to offer her comfort. it's desperation in that touch. regina knows desperation too.

she rid herself of it. rid herself of the need for it.

it's strange how startled she is by a touch that means nothing. or could mean everything, she doesn't know, doesn't want to know. she looks at emma, tracks the movement of her eyes from her own down to her lips. twenty-eight years ago, regina would have smirked in knowing. oh she knows what the queen would do. lean in, sultry smile, empty, shining eyes. a few well timed caresses and emma swan would be putty in her hand.

but the queen wasn't a mother. so regina has another role to play.

she steps in, eyes soft, and watches emma's vibrant ones turn softer as well, watches her mouth go a little slack-jawed. she's close enough to feel her breath. close enough to kiss her. emma's breath smells like cinnamon and emma herself smells sweet and rough, probably her pleather in the sun, but it's intoxicating and regina ignores it.

she allows the hitch in her breath, allows her worry for her son to dictate her actions, henry, her little prince trapped, no air, the fear coiling through her gut and tightening second by second, she should have given him away, she destroys everything she touches-

just bring him to me.

emma looks down. she breathes, once, twice. she probably thinks this is some turning moment for them. where they become allies instead of enemies. does she think this will end up the clinking of glasses? in bed with lips attached and sweat building?

emma swan knows nothing.

(and yet regina hates the truth, the one that's waiting in this particular lie.)