A/N: First semi-graphic SwanQueen. Probably 4-5 chapters. Hope you enjoy. Much thanks.

The former mayor is exhausted. Every bone, every muscle, every part of her. The hours she has spent reading and researching, desperately trying to find any way to bring Snow and Emma home, have been long and tiresome. Sleep has come rarely to her, and she supposes there's some grace in that. Especially after what had occurred in the stables.

Regina tries not to think of that now because doing so can only lead to feelings she's not yet ready to deal with. It's more than love – she will always love Daniel deep within her, deep in a place that contains only hurt and pain. It's about her genesis, though, too. With Daniel finally really gone (and by her hand this time), she's left with nothing but the emptiness and loneliness of her vengeance.

She's left with nothing.

It's been almost five days since the incident in the stables. Five days since she's spoken to anyone. Five days since she's seen Henry.

She thinks every day about calling him, but chooses not to. There's only one thing he wants from her, she imagines.

Emma.

He wants his mother back.

She swallows the pang of hurt that cuts through her, and instead focuses on the slightly bewildering realization (buried deep beneath the jealousy and pain) that she, too, wants the blonde sheriff back.

She tells herself that she wants Emma back so that maybe Henry will forgive her, and yes, it's that, but it's more. She tells herself that she misses having the company of a worthy adversary, even one that makes her blood boil. Until Emma had rolled into town, she'd been bored and listless, as caught and trapped in the mundane nature of sameness as everyone else. Emma had lit a spark.

A spark that had infuriated - and exhilarated - her.

Still, she knows herself well to know it strange that she'd allowed Emma to exist for so long before truly attacking. Sure, she'd manipulated and twisted and turned to try to get the blonde to leave turn, but she'd never really gone all in.

Not until the apple turnover incident.

And yeah, that'd turned out oh so beautifully.

So why then is she fighting so hard to bring Emma home? This pain in the ass who owns her son's heart without even trying? Why does she care if the sheriff lives or dies? It's Henry, but again, so very much more. The answers are fleeting, and they slip from her grasp even as the exhaustion and depression of another fruitless night of research weight heavily upon her body and soul.

Reluctantly, fearing sleep and the nightmares that come with it as much as she does the angry townsfolk who'd still like to see her dead, she makes her way up the stairs. She stops briefly at Henry's door, looks in and stares at his empty bed for awhile. She's not getting used to his absence. Not even a little.

She doesn't think she ever will.

She shuts the door and heads into her bedroom, taking one quick glance at the mirror over her dresser. It's large and clear. Almost like a window. Once upon a time, back in the other world, it'd been exactly that – a way to look at everything beyond her normal sight. Now, even with magic back, it's cold and still.

And all it shows her right now is the tired face of a broken and lonely former queen. Not so evil any more. Not so much anything.

"Damn you," she growls, staring right at her own reflection. She's not cursing herself, though. She's cursing the woman who'd come to town and turned everything upside down. The woman who'd ruined everything.

She's cursing Emma.

And wondering why the hell she wants her back.

The first thing she realizes with a spark of mild annoyance is that her eyes are closed. No, that's not right. She's lying on her bed, on her back, her arms stretched out wide. She should be seeing what's happening around her (because her dark eyes are very open) but there's something soft tied around her face.

Soft and velvet. Ah, a blindfold.

Wait, what?

Regina tries to pull in a hand so as to move the blindfold away, but before she can manage to move even an inch, a palm settles gently over her wrist, lightly squeezing, but firmly holding her in place.

"Stay," she hears.

She blinks because dammit, she knows that voice.

"Miss….Miss Swan?" Her tone is surprised but indignant.

"Emma," the woman atop (yes, Regina realizes with a sharp start and an instant thudding of her heart, Emma Swan is actually straddling her waist) her whispers.

"What?"

"Considering our positions right now, Regina, I don't really see the value of titles and last names. Unless that's your kink."

"What?" Regina demands again. A voice in her head reminds her that this is a dream, and therefore not to be taken seriously, but a different voice is telling her that there is something very unusual about whatever is happening here.

Unusual and important.

"You about to tell me that you're not into kink, Your Majesty."

"I'm about to tell you to get the hell off me," Regina growls, bucking her hips a bit. It's a badly thought out move, and one that immediately backfires because all she ends up doing is grinding herself up and into Emma.

Which is way too much physical contact.

"I think you mean 'on'," Emma chuckles. And then, as if to prove her point, the blonde leans in and presses her mouth against the former mayor's pulse point.

"What are you…what are you doing?" Regina gasps out. And then, almost as an afterthought, she hisses out, a shaky "Miss Swan."

"I'm enjoying you," Emma answers, her voice rumbling against Regina's suddenly feverish and entirely too sensitive skin.

"No, no you're not. This is…this is quite inappropriate."

"Well, you would know."

"I beg your pardon." She's moderately amazed that she's still able to speak at all considering the way Emma is sucking on her pulse point. The contact is positively intoxicating, and it's driving her damn near to madness.

Well, if she wasn't already just a little bit mad in the head.

"Beg. I like that," Emma growls out. The sound is primal, and Regina finds that just the vibration of that is enough to send an electric charge through her.

Still, she manages out a weak, "You…no…bad…"

"Very," the blonde agrees.

And then quite abruptly, Emma's lips (slightly chapped, an odd detail to notice, the sensible and still somewhat in control part of Regina's mind muses) are on the former mayors' much softer fuller ones. Regina whimpers in protest, but even she hates the pathetic nature of the sound, the blatant insincerity of it.

She feels cracked and non-moisturized hands moving down her, and then, without permission requested nor given, she feels rough and unpracticed (but not unpleasant) fingers sliding under the hem of the light blue silk nightshirt that she's wearing. Determined digits tease their way up her warm bronzed skin, dancing their way towards her embarrassingly swollen breasts. She hasn't much time to consider this, though, because suddenly, there's a tongue pushing its way into her warm mouth.

Owning her, consuming her. Enjoying her.

And dammit if she doesn't like it.

Dammit if she doesn't like this woman – Emma Swan - touching her.

Oh, she does. She really does.

Which is a big problem. And one that makes no damned sense.

She cries out then as one of Emma's hands settles possessively over her right breast, lightly squeezing, kneading and pinching. A thumb drifts back and forth over her nipple, teasing it to a painful peak, and then abandoning it for just long enough to make her want to scream in frustration.

She cries out again when Emma's mouth is removed from hers and then dropped down to cover her left breast, wet lips and teeth grazing her other now quite hard nipple. Why, she wonders, does she feel everything so damned clearly in what is quite clearly (it must be, she reasons desperately, franticly) a dream.

Why?

The hand not on her breast slides down her hip, fingers again dancing out a spicy step as they descend. One finger slides beneath the waistband of her silk bottoms, sliding over Regina's hipbone. And then it continues it's voyage south.

"Emma," Regina stammers suddenly, the words choking hard in her throat as multiple sensations overwhelm her. She feels a flood of emotion surging through her, the desire to continue with this strong, but terrifying. She's close to losing control, and she can't let that happen. "Emma, no, you have to stop."

"I can't," the blonde says suddenly, sitting up (though her hands only move to Regina's waist as opposed to leaving her completely). Regina feels the absence of her touch, feels a sudden chill slide over her like a phantom.

"Why not?" Regina queries lamely, her voice little more than a hoarse gasp. She thinks she should be delighted that the strange sexual assault has abated, but she's not. And this troubles her terribly.

Actually, this whole damned dream troubles her, but that's for later. When she has possession of her waking senses again. For now, she focuses on finding out why Emma is claiming she can't stop when she clearly can. And has.

"I can't stop because I'm not here," the blonde answers, her voice gravelly, and suddenly exhausted sounding.

Regina blinks beneath the darkness of her blindfold. "What?"

She feels the hands move from her waist and then slide up to touch her face. A palm lightly – almost lovingly - grazes her jaw, and then makes it's way up to the blindfold. "Look," Emma says. "I need you to look."

She pulls the blindfold loose; flooding Regina's vision with moonlight and…well, flesh. Though she hardly means to – and is actually quick humiliated to - the brunette gasps as she takes in the lean muscular body atop her. Emma is clothed for the most part – wearing jeans and a tank – but she's still a sight to behold, a visual wonderland of sorts.

"Look," Emma says again,

"I…I am," Regina answers, her voice throaty and uneasy. "And you look like you're right here. With me. Miss Swan. Sitting on me."

"I'm not."

"Then I've clearly had too much to drink," Regina responds dryly. She's trying to return to herself, trying to use her wit to regain control of this bizarre situation.

"You have, and you are dreaming. But this is real. This is happening."

"Of course it is. It's every day that I have sex with the biological mother of my son who happens to be trapped in the world I came from."

"Dammit, Regina, stop fighting me for five seconds. Trust me. Trust us."

"There is no 'us' to trust, Miss Swan. And this is just the fevered and delirious dream of an exhausted woman. Nothing more."

"Fine. Think what you want, but humor me, okay?" She actually sounds irritated, annoyed that even here, even now, the brunette is fighting her.

"If I must," Regina answers. "If it means you'll get off of me."

Emma growls in frustration at that, then reaches out, grabs Regina's jaw and yanks it upwards, forcing her to alter her sightlines, forcing her to look over the blonde's shoulder. Towards the mirror. "Look," she demands.

And that's when Regina sees Emma and Snow, the two of them both sound asleep on the floor of the castle that the brunette had once called home. It's dark and worn, showing the signs of decades worth of decay and negligence, but Regina still recognizes it as her former domain.

"I'm there," Emma says. "But right now, I'm also here. And we need you. We need you to bring us home before time runs out."

"I…I don't understand."

"I don't completely understand, either. I don't know what's happening here. I don't know why this is happening. It makes no more sense to me than it does to you. What I do know is I need you to let go and use your emotions, Regina. Allow yourself to feel. Allow yourself to feel this." She leans in then and presses another kiss to the brunette's lips. Soft, but passionate.

And then she's gone.

Regina wakes up thirty seconds later.

The former mayor pushes herself up from her bed, her legs wobbly and unsteady. The passionate images from the dream keep assaulting her mind, but it's more than that. She can still see Emma above her, but she can also still feel the blonde's hands touching her.

She can still feel Emma's mouth on her.

The hell?

Sure, from a purely physical point of view, Emma is an attractive woman. In that obnoxiously macho won't shut up and go the hell away kind of way. And sure there's always been some kind of odd magnetism between them, but Regina has certainly never viewed it as a sexual kind of thing.

Because that…well that's just absurd.

They've always been enemies, adversaries. Not…lovers?

It makes no damned sense.

So why the dream then? And more importantly, had it been more than a dream?

She tries to separate her mind, tries to pull the images apart. She moves the unsettling sexual content aside (with more difficulty than seems right) and tries to study the mirror above her dresser instead.

Mirrors have been a part of her life for a very long time so there's a good chance that her past is simply informing her present, she tells herself. Perhaps her exhausted mind had simply merged her worlds together. And perhaps that's all that bizarre visual display had been.

Unfortunately, that doesn't explain why Emma had been kissing her. And why she'd enjoyed it so damned much.

And it doesn't explain why she'd felt so much.

She stops then, staring directly at the mirror. The last thing Emma had said had been about letting go and feeling something. Is that the key to this?

Is there actually a lock or is this just a silly chase her mind is putting on in order to battle the feelings of loss and helplessness that have overcome her?

She walks over to the mirror and studies it intensely. In the dream, she'd seen Snow and Emma slumbering on the floor of the castle she'd called home. It makes no sense for them to be there. If they are there, though, she knows that there's a massive silver mirror in that very room. One that she hadn't brought to Storybrooke with her. If they are there, then just maybe there's a way to open up a door, and bring them home.

And then maybe, once they're home and safe, perhaps then she can figure out why the hell Emma had chosen that particular rather steamy and invasive dream as her way of sending out her urgent plea for help.

Which means that maybe she can figure out why she'd actually felt something when Emma had been touching her.

Feel, she thinks to herself.

She places her hand against the mirror and closes her eyes.

Let go and feel.

She tries, she really tries. She tries to press everything inside of her - the rage and the hurt and the fear - out. For a moment, she thinks she senses a crackle of energy – magic even – winding its way through her, coming from the mirror.

And then she sees images flying at her. Hands, mouths and legs. All wrapped together, all tangled up in a heap of sweat and passion.

But that's not what makes her pull back. That's not what makes her almost violently break the connection. What does is one simple flashing image.

It's of them lying together in her bed, her wrapped up tight in Emma's impossibly strong arms, the blonde's chin resting lightly – almost carelessly - on her shoulder, her hands laced around the front of the brunette's belly.

It's not rage and hurt and fear. It's not even passion or sex.

It's comfort and serenity.

It's peace and forgiveness.

And love.

Regina steps quickly - almost abruptly - away from the mirror, tears in her eyes. She hopes that she's having a complete mental breakdown, prays that that's all this is.

Because if it isn't, if Emma is really trying to reach out to her, really trying to make an emotional connection, then both she and Snow are doomed.

Because what she just saw, what she just felt, well that's just too much to feel.

TBC…