Okay: I think this is going to be a wrap!

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Rumplestiltskin barely has the chance to twitch the finger he needs to turn Henry into whatever creature he chooses before the words reach his ears, words that make his heart actually feel for the first time in… far too long.

"You might think I'm stupid, but your son said I'm brave."

Henry clamps his teeth together after the words leave his mouth, clenching his jaw to prevent it from quaking. This had better work.

Sure enough, Rumple freezes with his wrists hanging limp in the air. "What did you say?" he whispers, his narrowed eyes dangerous but also, thankfully, alight with thirst to hear more.

"Your son. Baelfire." Henry opts for simplicity, his jaw unclamping more confidently now that he sees he has Rumplestiltskin's undivided attention. He does not look down at his mother's body.

It will break him.

But suddenly he is no longer on the ground with her, no longer feeling the dull, sharp poking of hay poking into a hole in his riding pants. The back of his head is suddenly stinging, the pain reverberating, oddly, in his nose. His breath leaves his body as he is tossed up, apparently by the air itself, his back and head slammed unceremoniously into the nearest stall door.

He takes his eyes off of Rumplestiltskin, whose glimmering hand is now wrapped around his throat, only to glance down and take account of his own body. No blood that he can detect, everything seems to be in order. Good.

"How do you know my son?" Rumplestiltskin is asking him, shaking him by the throat, his toes barely on the ground. He makes a small choking noise, though strangely, he is no longer afraid. He has Rumple hooked, and he will get what he wants.

The sorcerer seems to realize that Henry can't possibly tell him about Baelfire with his throat closed off. He releases him abruptly, and Henry slumps down, not knowing whether to massage his neck or rub the dully throbbing back of his head. He opts for his neck, and forces out words before Rumplestiltskin can lose patience again.

"You know he fell through a portal to another land," he croaks, staring up at his bio grandfather, knowing he's not one to trust on site, so he'll need to establish his credibility. "I'm from the land he fell into. From… from the future. I know him in…" He dances carefully around the fact that Rumplestiltskin's son is dead. He hopes desperately that it won't show in his face. "I know him in your future. And I need to get back there. With my mom… with my mom's… body."

His voice cracks, and he thinks hard of Neal. He thinks hard about what he would have wanted.

"In my land, your son's called Neal. And Neal – your Baelfire – Neal would want you to get my mom back there. You know he was a good boy. He… he turned into a good man."

His voice crackles again, and he shuts his mouth, trying not to snivel. Rumplestiltskin's lips curl into a sneer. "The future?" He repeats himself, as if he's trying it out. He swoops down, close to Henry's face. "Do I find my boy? Do I… do we make amends?"

Henry's heart twists, but he nods confidently. "Yeah. You do. But he won't ever forgive you if you don't help me get back there. You… when you see him again, you're going to need to prove yourself to him." He stretches the truth a tad. "This… this can help you."

"I do this, and one day, I'll find my boy," Rumplestiltskin repeats, consuming the words as though they're the only things that have offered him any sustenance in hundreds of years. And maybe they are.

Henry nods fiercely, tears stinging his eyes. He's not sure if it's desperation, nerves, grief, terror, or… well, probably just everything.

"I can help you. For a price," Rumplestiltskin says. Henry nods even harder, not trusting himself to speak, terrified that his words will set the man off in another direction, away from the Baelfire-inspired trance he seems to be in.

"Bae," Rumplestiltskin whispers as he draws a long, serrated knife from a pocket Henry hadn't noticed. The boy flinches, but the sorcerer is watching him with narrowed eyes. Henry bites his lip, knowing, somehow, to keep quiet despite knowing, also, what's next. He sticks out his arm and watches Rumplestiltskin cut into its crook. He grunts as the pain sets in, but it's not as bad as he expected.

The anticipation is always worse.

Rumplestiltskin collects a small vial of the red liquid leaking out of Henry's arm and, after capping it delicately, summons a long black wand into his hands.

"You tell my boy I'm coming for him," Rumplestiltskin says, and again, Henry nods, not trusting his words, not trusting his voice not to betray that talking to Neal isn't something he can do anymore.

His heart lurches. If this doesn't work, talking to Emma won't be something he can do anymore either.

He doesn't have time to reflect on that. He only has time to grab Emma's wrist and pull her body, already growing cold, close to his as they fall into the growing portal that is spewing out of Rumple's wand.

"Thank you," he calls weakly when he can barely see the stable anymore, when Rumplestiltskin is the size of a match and he can feel the freezing Storybrooke air tossing his hair and chilling the back of his neck.

He thinks he hears a faintly distorted giggled coming through the portal, but he can't be sure because now he's falling, falling, Storybrooke materializing before him. He twists his body so that Emma's lands on top of him. It hurts, but not as much as the deadened thump of her limp body hitting the ground had back in the stable. He never wants to hear that sound again.

So it hurts when he hits the ground, sandwiched between his mother's body and a thick sheet of icy snow, but not as much as it could.

The sound that reaches him next is what hurts the most.

The sound of his other mother screaming for him. And for Emma.

Storybrooke, Present Day

She doesn't like to think of herself as someone who panics; she likes to think of herself as poised, collected, even as devastatingly dry and witty in life-threatening situations.

She doesn't like to think of herself as someone whose chest seizes up and threatens to knock her over with the force of breath that's left her lungs; she likes to think of herself as being made of steel wrapped in a body that is always hers to command.

She doesn't like to think of herself as someone who loves so hard that it has broken her time and again; she likes to think that maybe, one day, it won't.

Break her.

When she got Emma's text – H in trouble, come 2 barn – that potential to break, and to break hard, washed over her again. She hadn't wasted time with driving, she'd wrapped herself in a shroud of purple smoke and whisked herself right there.

But even that had been too slow. They'd been gone already, Zelena's time travel portal beaming with the afterglow of activation, mocking her for being too late.

Again.

Again.

She is on her knees – damn the cold, damn the fact that she's starting to lose feeling in her legs – in the snow in front of the portal when that damned pickup truck pulls up.

She knows David is driving from the erratic sound of nearly crashing, of trying to break too quickly on ice. She doesn't look up. She just stares at the portal. She just wonders where in all of time and space they could be. Not wanting to accept that she probably already knows. She probably already knows.

She just desperately needs to know how she can get to them.

"What happened?" Snow's hardened-with-panic voice reaches her ears as the doors to the pickup slam. Still, Regina doesn't look up.

"Emma and Henry got sucked into that damned portal, I don't know how. I don't – " she repeats louder, with emphasis, because she feels rather than hears more questions forming on David's lips. "I don't know anything else. I just got a text from Emma, but when I got here, they… they were gone."

She feels David's hand hovering behind her back. Is he like his daughter, or is she like him? When did he get so protective of Regina, anyway? She's not dying, she hears Emma's voice in her head, and she thinks that maybe it was somewhere around then that David started protecting her… so, he is like his daughter, then, not the other way around…

Regina blinks, hard, calling her mind to focus on the present. She feels the crunch of snow as Snow drops to her knees next to her. They glance at each other.

Snow's worry threatens to send Regina back into a tailspin. She hopes it doesn't show on her face.

"They'll get back," Snow whispers, and Regina fights an eyeroll. She puts her hand onto where Regina's have frozen over. "They'll get back."

"I don't need a hope speech, I need my son and my – "

Snow raises her eyebrows and she feels David still behind her. The wind, too, goes silent, as though all of Storybrooke is waiting to hear the end of Regina's sentence.

She lowers her voice, abashed. My what? Emma is… Emma's not mine. "I need my son," she murmurs, and swallows irritation as Snow exchanges one of her classic significant looks with David.

"Regina!" he shouts, then, and for some reason – she wishes she knew why: is it because she, somehow, seems so much more vulnerable, so much more distraught, than Snow, despite her best efforts to contain her agony? – David is tugging her, not Snow, up off of her knees, is pulling her, not Snow, out of range of the now glowing, now wind-spewing, time portal.

Regina stumbles in the snow and finds support in David's chest as the three of them watch the portal burst open, watch two intertwined figures – one blonde and limp, one relatively tiny and sturdy – fall out of the whirlpool, Emma's body squarely on top of Henry's.

She tries to run forward, tries to wrap both of them in her arms, but something is pulling her back, strong arms around her waist, around her arms. She's always hated being restrained, but somehow, this doesn't feel suffocating. Somehow, this feels safe.

Sure enough, she turns and David is holding onto her tightly, nodding toward the portal, which is still active, still has not closed behind mother and son. Regina nods, agreeing silently to wait for the portal to close before going any closer. She stops struggling, but David does not take his arms away from her body. She finds that she doesn't want him to. She finds that she needs him close.

The portal opening disintegrates with one final inward pull of wind, and this time, she does need David's arms around her to steady her, to keep her from being yanked along with it.

Snow doesn't have the same problem. "Emma!" she screams as she launches herself forward, immediately understanding what Regina's mind is numbly refusing to.

She turns to David, whose hands have turned to ice around her. They say nothing, they just stare for a moment. Snow's agonized cries rise up between them like a cloud of breath, even though neither of their lungs are working. As though on cue, he releases her and they rush forward together.

Snow is peeling Emma off of Henry's winded body, but his hands are refusing to let go of his mother's body. Snow is weeping, weeping, and tears are tracking down Henry's face, but he seems somehow calm. He seems somehow, impossibly, hopeful.

"What happened, Henry?" David chokes out as he collapses to the ground, unsure whether to embrace Henry or to tend to his sobbing wife or to touch Emma's body himself or to wrap his arms around a stunned-looking Regina, whose hands are all over Henry, checking him for injuries, kissing his temple over and over, but whose eyes have not left his daughter's face, whose eyes are wide and horrified and full of grief and terror and pains that David's not quite sure he has the words for. He's not quite sure anyone has the words for anything right now.

Henry chokes out his explanation, his resolve to not break down seeming to weaken with Regina's proximity, with Snow's cries, with David's wild eyes.

"It was Cora, she crushed Emma's heart, but we can – "

And that is what breaks Regina.

"No!" she screams, keeping one hand on Henry while the rest of her – Snow be damned – splays onto Emma's chest, gathering the woman up with her eyes, with her free hand cupping her face, trying to protect her from the cold, from the snow on the ground, from everything, from… from death.

"Henry, did – did she lock Emma and I up in… in the loft first?"

Henry looks bewildered at first as he nods in answer to his mother's desperate croaks, gravel heavy in her voice. He glances at Snow and David for an explanation, but they look as confused as he does until… until the same realization washes over all of their faces at once.

Regina's first True Love… She didn't just have the same name as Emma… She was Emma…

"No, no, no, no, no, not again, no, no, no, no, no."

Regina is moaning now, rocking back and forth on her haunches over Emma's body as she tears her ragged eyes up to look at Henry.

"I am so sorry, Henry. I should have… I never told anyone, I should have warned her, this is all my fault… again… Henry, I am so sorry, my brave boy, I –"

He grimaces and reaches his hand down to meet hers, which has fallen to rest on his leg, just above his knee, a fistful of his riding pants in her hand as though that can keep him, too, from falling away from her.

"It's gonna be okay, Mom – Emma just needs another heart, she just needs someone to split their heart with her. She can live, Mom, she can live and… and it'll all be okay, she just needs someone to split their heart with her. That's why I brought her back, it can work, Mom – "

Snow interrupts, her voice steadier than his, but softer, too; more defeated, more hopeless. More sorrowful. "Henry, I'm so sorry, honey, I am so, so sorry, but that only works with – "

"With True Love, I know." He's staring at Regina, who's shaking her head as she leans down to rest her face in the crook of Emma's neck before righting herself, as though unable to bear the closeness, drawing Henry to her.

"But Henry, honey," Snow tries again, her face contorted with the effort of not breaking completely. Only David's hand on her back steadies her. Even looking at Henry himself is difficult. Because Emma… Emma can't be… and now she has to crush her grandson's hope that he will ever see his mother again… She clutches her stomach and concentrates on swallowing down the wave of nausea that overcomes her.

The agony of losing her daughter – a fresh pain, renewed after all these years, cruelly ripped away from any hope, this time, from any possibility of joy. Because she knows beyond a shadow of doubt that she will never be joyful again.

The desperation in Henry's voice – the torture of losing a mother. She remembers that, too, and it starts to rip open in her own chest.

She has done her share of screaming, but she has not cried yet; now, she feels tears from David's face tracking onto her own cheek, onto her arms.

She forces herself to keep talking.

"Honey, Neal's… Neal's dead. So we can't – "

A soft whisper comes from her left, just above her ear. David. She dimly registers that there's hope in his voice. She dimly registers that Regina, aside from clutching at Henry, has not moved one of her hands, nor her eyes, from Emma's face, her hair, her body.

Just a body, now.

But then there's David, saying, "He's not talking about Neal."

Something stirs inside Snow, and she wonders vaguely why Regina is not the one to jump to say this, why Regina is not the one to protect Henry. Because Regina is always the one to protect Henry. Her hand is still holding his, wrapping around him to bring him to her chest, sure, but why she is not objecting, Snow cannot fathom.

"Absolutely not. Henry, you are not splitting your heart, you are not – "

"He's not talking about himself, either," David tells her, and she doesn't look up at his face to see where his gaze is. She realizes, suddenly, that she doesn't need to. She realizes, suddenly, why the woman on the ground next to her has not stopped caressing Emma's still face.

"Regina."

Her voice comes out ragged, harsh. But the syllables bring a whisper of hope back into her body. The syllables contain the possibility that she might just, now, begin to feel some joy in her bones again.

"Regina," she says again, louder, and she feels David nod and she watches, as though from a distance, as Henry disentangles himself tearfully from his mother's grasp. Regina keeps a fistful of his sweaty tunic in her hands, but she lets him shift away, her eyes still locked on Emma's close ones.

"Mom," he says simply, without a trace of trembling. Gently, like he's calling her back from the underworld itself. Because that's exactly where she feels like she is, and he knows – he knows – that aside from his other mother, he is the only one who can summon her back.

"Henry," she breathes, and her eyes snap off of Emma's body all of a sudden. "You're too brave, my sweet little boy." Then – only then – does she start to break completely. "I convinced you that you were crazy, then your parents spent a year trying to hurt each other, you were kidnapped to Never Land, Neal, and now your – now – " Her voice completely breaks, now, and she tries to gather him to her again. He resists gently, putting his hands over hers as they cup his face over Emma's body.

"Mom, you can save her."

A shudder runs through Regina, a shudder that might crack open the earth and absorb her with its power. "Oh, Henry. My truest believer. I want to, Henry, more than anything, I – all these years, I've spent wishing I could save her, wishing – and vengeance against the husband and child –" Her voice roughens when she says husband, and gets gentle again when she shoves her head toward Snow – "my mother forced on me afterwards felt like the only thing I could – but Henry, none of it, none of it worked, I can't – "

"Mom," he says calmly, having been nodding with her words like Archie does to him when he's rambling, when he's sad, when he's talking about how terrified he was when he was in Pan's clutches, when they were trying to force him to shoot at that other boy… "Mom," he says again, and she breathes, and refocuses on his face.

"Mom, do you love Emma?"

A silence rises in the field, a hush so intense that it threatens to drown everyone in it. And though everyone ensconced in the hush knows the answer – knows the answer as obviously as they know that their daughter, their mother, their… whatever she was to Regina… is laying between them, dead – though everyone knows the answer, they also know, just as much, that Regina has to be the one to say it. That she has to say it.

More silence. And then, Regina says, strained but crystal clear, her eyes never leaving Henry's face, "I love Emma Swan more than I've ever loved anyone except you, Henry."

Snow swallows, David smiles softly through a face full of tears, and Henry just smiles, his desperation from earlier fading. He knows this will work. That's why Pan put him through all of that, isn't it? Because of his faith.

"Then you can save her, Mom. Your heart. It can be for both of you."

Regina breathes out an agonized laugh, tears starting to spill now. "Oh, Henry. Even if I thought it would work, I couldn't give my heart – my heart, Henry, your mother's too good for… mine is corrupted and evil and – "

"And full of love, Regina. Full of love for her." David speaks only at a whisper, like he's afraid of scaring her off. And maybe he is.

"Yes, and also full of hatred that made me… unspeakable things, David… you know what I've done, you know – "

"Yes, Regina," and Snow's using her best teacher voice now, because she's always thought that sometimes, Regina just needs to be handled, "you have done terrible, terrible things. But you – you love more fiercely than the rest of us, don't you? You know you do. So what are you afraid of, Regina? You're giving us all the reasons in the world for you to not save her, when we all know that you also have all the reasons in the world to save her –"

"I destroyed everything because she died, because my mother murdered her. The number of people I killed, the number of people I – " she glances at Henry, and swallows the word tortured – "hurt, and all for…"

The hopelessness of it all… If someone had told her, all those years ago, that the reason there was no body to be found wasn't because Cora destroyed it, but because Henry had taken it back to her future self, because Henry had found a way to save her in the future… if someone had told her all those years ago that she just had to wait decades and decades to see this woman again, that she wouldn't stay dead, that she would just stay dead to Regina for a period, then she could… come back…

If someone had told her all those years ago, she wouldn't have cast the Curse, Emma wouldn't have met Neal, neither of them would have Henry, so Emma wouldn't have died temporarily in the first place…

She stopped trying to rationalize. Time travel made her head spin.

Henry cuts in, the earnestness in his voice trying to forge a path through the overwhelming sense of futility, that all her grief, all her life, had been based on a lie, on a lack of knowledge… His voice reminds her that yes, sure, maybe all these things are true; but it's also true that if they hadn't happened, she wouldn't have this chance, right now, to get Emma back…

"You're different now, Mom. I know you think you don't deserve her, but you do. You do."

Regina tries to speak, fails, wets her lips, and tries again. Henry is starting to tremble with cold. She touches his tunic, sending a warming spell through him. He stops shivering. She gives him the smallest of smiles.

"And you deserve a mother, and Emma – " Her voice breaks. "Emma deserves her life with you." She says it softly, steadily, like she's steeling herself for something. And… she is.

She looks down at Emma and caresses her face one more time. She thinks about kissing her mouth, but she's always found that creepy, kissing someone when they're unconscious like that. Dead like that. She wants Emma to be fully conscious when they…

Her eyes snap back up, locking into David's this time. "For this to work, she has to love me back. True Love can't work only one way. She has to love me back."

Her quiet desperation makes her statements into questions, and David lets go of Snow and kneels in front of Regina, taking her hands into his own and holding her eyes so she can't look away.

"She loves you back, Regina. I can't imagine what you've been going through all these years, learning to trust her even though she had the face and name of the woman you'd loved – but Regina, it's the same woman. It's the same woman, and she loves you. You know she does. Think. Think of everything."

She thinks.

The door had been ajar – idiot Charmings – when they'd left the room after interrogating Regina about Archie's apparent death. Emma's voice rings in her ears.

"I know that look. I know her. I believe her."

And before that.

"Let her go, let her go, let her go."

"She's not dying."

Saving her from falling into a portal.

Emma's eyes meeting hers over Henry as they hugged him back to life when they saved him from Never Land. The look in those eyes, speaking of… of trust, of relief, of joy. Of… family.

Of love?

But most of all, most of all, the thing that did it for Regina – she loves me, and if I do this, if it works… it will work… she can love me, we can love each other openly, no more denying, no more holding back – the thing that did it, the last thing on her mind when she took her hands from David's, caressed Henry's face, and plunged her hand into her own chest… the last thing on her mind was Emma's hand.

Emma's hand, protectively hovering behind her back whenever she was in danger. Reaching out for her, always. Never touching, never overbearing, never wanting to take power, control, away from her. Knowing that's been done too many times in her life. But being there. Always being there. She always caught it from the corner of her eye, always felt it. And it was always there. Whenever they were in danger, there was Emma's hand, hovering near her back. Protective.

Of course this will work. Of course they love each other.

She does it quickly. It hurts – holding her own heart in her hand, yanking it out of her own chest – it hurts like she cannot describe. But she does it, and she does not flinch, because she is too hopeful to mind the pain. Too hopeful that all the pieces are coming together. This woman, this Emma… has been her Emma all these years.

And now, they will all know. And now, they can all… be.

She doesn't hesitate. She stares, not at her work, but at Emma's still face as she takes her heart into both hands and tears it in two. Her chest throbs, her eyes swim. She ignores it all. She plunges one hand back into her chest, almost casually, almost carelessly, and then, tenderly, gently… lovingly… she slips her other hand – holding a piece of her own heart, the red pieces glowing insistently amidst the black, into Emma… her Emma… into Emma's empty chest.

Nobody breathes. Everyone stares at Emma's face. Regina links her fingers through Emma's left hand: Henry's grip is like iron on the right.

There is no rise and fall of the chest. There is no fluttering of eyelids. There is nothing.

Regina lets out a strangled sob.

"Kiss her, Mom," Henry whispers. "She doesn't know. She doesn't know you're ready to admit that you love her. Kiss her. Let her know."

Regina squints at him slightly, but she trusts him. Her son, her son who unknowingly led Emma to her death all those years ago – today? – when he wandered into that portal. Their son, their son who brought Emma back all those years ago – today – so that Regina could bring her back to life. Bring them all back to life.

Here, it wouldn't change the past. Her younger self had always assumed that Cora had desecrated the body before getting rid of it. It had fueled her fire.

Here, it wouldn't change the past, but it would become their future.

She licks her lips. She's never been nervous about kissing anyone. Not since she tried to kiss Emma all those lifetimes ago.

But she's nervous now.

She licks her lips again. She runs a soft finger across Emma's lips. The snow, the very earth itself, around them disappears as she kisses one eyelid, then the other, then brings her lips to Emma's left ear.

"I love you, Em-ma."

Her lips graze Emma's, gently, softly, barely touching. A tear splashes from her face onto the resting woman's cheek.

She withdraws. She swallows. Humiliated hopelessness descends on her like the air itself is choking her.

And then she hears the breath. And then she watches those lips curve into a twisted smile and sees those eyes, those eyes that she'd never thought she'd see again, twinkling underneath her.

Her voice is hoarse, but it is hers, and Regina would happily listen to it for the rest of her life. "Took you long enough."

"Mom!" Henry's strangled cry rings out into the night, and he thrusts himself down onto Emma's chest, bear hugging her prone figure.

David laughs in relief, in joy, in ecstasy, as he tugs gently at Henry's shoulders. "Whoa, Henry, let your mom breathe a little."

Snow is sobbing, grasping at Emma's legs, the only parts of her she can reach since Henry's claimed her entire upper body.

Most of her upper body, anyway, because Regina's fingers are still linked with Emma's. Tears are tracking silently down her face, unstoppable, but she's withdrawn, now, leaning back instead of forward into Emma, the only physical sign that she did, in fact, just kiss her back to life being their connected hands. Snow glances at Regina's face through her tears, and she looks… almost embarrassed.

"Regina," she half-whispers, cautiously, knowing what dangers lay in prodding at the woman when she's feeling particularly vulnerable.

This time, though, she has eyes only for Emma. They won't leave her face, as though if they do, she'll go back to being… dead.

At the sound of Snow's none-too-subtle whisper, though, Emma turns her face away from Henry and toward Regina. She grunts in exertion as she shifts around in the snow to lean up on her elbows. Four sets of hands reach out to support her, and she laughs shakily.

"You okay?" she whispers, her eyes as soft as her voice.

"You… you…" Regina chokes. Emma nods, a twisted grin forming on her face.

"I was dead for years but also for only a few minutes, and you feel every single way that it's possible to feel about it all, huh?" she asks, losing her breath with the sentence because, yes, she was just dead for decades or for minutes, depending on your point of view. Recently dead, either way.

She grunts again as she shifts most of her upper body's weight to one elbow, lifting the other hand up gingerly to touch Regina's face. Regina gasps as though she's considering flinching away from the touch, but she steadies as Emma's eyes lock into hers.

"You love me?" Emma asks, and Regina scoffs.

"Are you really so needy as to have to be told after I brought you back to life, Miss –" She interrupts herself as four sighs erupt around her, David's soft and with a trace of laughter, Snow's loud and long and irritated, Henry's tinted with a bit of an affectionate groan, and Emma's almost undetectable, her lips closed and pursed into a resigned smile, absorbing most of the sound of her adoring exasperation.

"Alright," Regina swats out with her voice, and it sounds more her teenage self than it has since… well, since Emma… She's safe now. She's safe, and she's going to always be safe, now. I'm never letting her go again.

Regina smiles broadly, fully, lighting up her whole face in a way it hasn't lit up since before Snow gave Henry that damned – that blessed – story book.

"I love you, Emma Swan. You idiot."

She gathers the beaming woman into her arms again, but this time without a trace of despair; this time, she feels only the thrill of Emma's lips moving against hers, smiling into their kiss, the ecstatic way their hearts – their heart – finds each other's rhythm and swell in their chests in unison, the pooling heat in her belly as Emma's hands tangle into her hair and their tongues start to flirt with each other.

They both hear Snow loudly clearing her throat, and Henry and David's laughter outweighs Snow's groans as they only hold each other tighter, kiss each other fiercer, until Emma runs out of breath and collapses into the crook of Regina's neck.

She pulls back wearing the brightest grin any of them had ever seen on her, and her voice is both shaky and sturdy when she says it: "I love you too, Regina."