Ah long time no see! Enjoy this super long update lol! And potentially a punch to the heart ;)

Henry walked in to his home to the sound of playful bickering and laughter and it had him breathing a laugh as he shook his head and locked the door behind him. Things had been going wonderfully their whole first two weeks of her amnesia. They had worked out a program of texting Snow before they left the house with the queen, letting her know where they were going so the pair of them would not cross paths. It worked like a charm and with the rest of the town clueless of the extent of her memory issues, she was never given a reason to go "Evil Queen" on anyone. In fact, Henry believed she was truly beginning to enjoy herself and find comfort in her own skin.

It was a delight to watch the Evil Queen find happiness. Henry was utterly thrilled for her and helped as much as he could with keeping her on track. She and David were getting along significantly better as well and while they were still sleeping in separate bedrooms, Henry didn't expect it to be too long before his mother let David back in to her bed. He was rather charming after all.

But he still missed his mother dearly, he really and truly did. His heart ached deeper and stronger than he had ever thought possible every time he thought of her and he yearned more than anything for the day he looked the queen in the eye and saw his mother looking back at him.

But it was such a joy to have the Evil Queen in their company that he truly couldn't stay sad for too long. She was really starting to feel at home in that big white house and it was such a gift to see her relax and enjoy herself and learn that she was safe. She and him grew closer with every passing day and for that he was eternally grateful for for he didn't think he could handle having her turn him away. But he dared say he was becoming the Evil Queen's best friend. Which was never something he thought he would ever say. If only his ten year old self could see him now.

Still though, he missed his mother.

His thoughts on the matter were interrupted though when David corralled her in to the foyer, the pair of them laughing as she tried to swat his hands away from her and he blocked her without a thought, only laughing more and making Henry laugh under his breath.

"Out!"

"Why can't I-?!"

"No!" David laughed with a shake of his head and she protested with a scoff of laughter.

"But-!"

"No!"

"What is going on?" Henry chuckled as he stepped up in to the foyer.

"Her majesty isn't letting me get any work done," David laughed and Regina grinned and tried to slink in to him to distract him further.

"The blonde surely won't mind if you are delayed another twenty four hours," she grinned with a low laugh.

"She will mind very much, she just won't say anything because she is terrified of you," David noted and Henry laughed beside them.

Regina only shrugged a shoulder with an arrogant and sly smirk, "same thing."

"And I am sure the matter will not be helped by your multiple doodles of Snow's twisted and bloody deaths on the margins of my paperwork," he laughed at her and she lolled her head back with a rumbly laugh low in her throat.

"Go help Henry with his homework," he directed with a point toward Henry and tried to step away from her but her fingers gently intertwined with his as he parted and didn't let go when their arms stretched straight. So he breathed an amused laugh and when he looked back at her she was smirking devilishly, her eyes bright and playful and he caved in an instant. He took one step back toward her as he turned their hands at the wrist and pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. One that had her head tipping to the side as she grinned wider and therefore had him grinning in return.

"Let me finish my work, your majesty, and then you may have me the rest of the evening," he told her and with a thoughtful hum, she let him step away.

Henry watched the pair with a special kind of jealousy. They got along as though nothing had changed and he was left standing with his whole world upside down. It wasn't fair and Henry longed to be in David's position of feeling as though everything was fine. But he was so happy that David was there, that he was making such a difference in her, that he was a steady constant that was able to ground her and love her and understand her as she needed to be in that moment. She would be lost without David and Henry loved David all the more for being there for her like no one else could.

And when she finally looked his way, Henry smiled at her and she smiled back but it quickly faltered and a curious look fell across her expression. It was almost as though she was confused as she slowly stepped toward him, looking him up and down as she did. "What?" Henry chuckled lightly and she stopped right in front of him, subtly shaking her head for a moment as she studied him.

Her mind was reeling again as it had been that morning while she had wandered the town. When she had run in to the Cricket and spoke with him. It was buzzing and causing her to frown for she couldn't figure out what it was chasing. But it was something just out of reach. Gently, she lifted her hands to hold the boy's face and he allowed it without a thought and it only made her head whir louder.

But even as her thumbs traced his jaw and the line of his nose and cheeks she could not put a finger on what it was that has made her pause.

"You okay, mom?" Henry asked softly with a tilt of his head to try and catch her eye but she kept studying him as though she didn't quite recognize him.

"You look different today..."

"Do I?"

"Older...? I think..." she frowned with a slight shake of her head for she knew he couldn't look older after just one day.

"In a bad way?" He questioned with a teasing tone and a raise of an eyebrow and it earned him a small laugh from her and a smile full of perfect white teeth.

"No, dear," she shook her head and breathed another laugh as she let her hands slip from his face, "not in a bad way," she smiled but the longer she looked at him the more she was convinced his face should look younger. That every one of his features should be softer and more that of a boy than a young man. It rubbed her the wrong way, made her feel as though she was missing something dear with him.

Like a lifetime of memories and suddenly she was looking at a man she had missed watching grow up. It was a miserable feeling and had her heart laying heavy in her chest as she frowned deeper at him and still couldn't quite put a finger on what it was that had her attention lingering on him. Perhaps she really had forgotten him.

"Are you sure you're alright?" He pressed as he took her hands in his and she looked him in the eye again, those beautiful dark eyes narrowing at him in thought as she tried to figure out how to answer his question.

"Yeah," she replied shortly and softly, a word that Henry didn't seem to believe but accepted it regardless with a lopsided smile that told her she was safe with him no matter her state of mind. It only made her heart ache more and she couldn't reason why.

"Well I do have homework to do that I didn't finish at Hansel's," he changed the subject and her seemingly frazzled mind seemed to cling to the idea of something tangible to focus on, "you can totally come help me if you like. Or don't and just keep me company and doodle brainstormed murders on my papers," he shrugged a shoulder with an ever widening smile and let it grow even more when she laughed under her breath.

"I would very much enjoy keeping your company I think," she told him with a nod and he smiled even brighter.

...

"What are you working on?" Henry inquired as he dropped his pencil on his textbook, allowing himself a small break as he looked toward his mother sitting with her back against his headboard while he sat at the foot of his bed.

She turned her drawing around without a moment's hesitation and Henry grinned at it in an instant. For where he was expecting something dark and twisted, he was shown a magnificent war horse. Black with rippling muscles and shining armour, his long mane and tail blown wildly with the tossing of his head and prancing body, his eyes wide, and his mouth open, a beast ready to charge in to battle. "That is awesome, mom!" He exclaimed with a laugh and she smiled with a slight shrug of her shoulder.

"Thank you," she laughed lightly and then nodded toward him with a smile, "how about you, what are you working on?"

"Physics. But are you finished with that? Can I have it?" He asked and she laughed once more as she shrugged her shoulders and handed him the drawing. Henry took it with a grin and gave it a closer look, admiring every piece of it with his smile never fading as he did. "That's so cool, mom," he complimented and she hummed softly on the other end of the bed, "was he yours?"

"He was actually, yes," she nodded, "very sweet tempered off the battlefield but like any trained warrior, quite comfortable with killing anyone I put in his path."

"A perfect war horse then," he offered and she smiled.

"Indeed," she agreed and he breathed a laugh and went back to looking at the drawing. It never failed to amaze her that they could speak so freely of her dark and bloody past and both he and David never batted an eye. Only smiled at her as though they cared for her even more than before. Talking about the lives she had taken went as smoothly as mentioning her favourite colour, if not smoother.

"What was his name?"

"Isadoro."

"That's a cool name," Henry smiled as his eyes studied the drawing. And then he laughed in delight and swung himself off his bed and walked to his desk so he could hang the piece on his bulletin board. He loved it, "I had no idea you could draw so well," Henry commented as he carefully hung the drawing where he could see it every day.

"Well I don't draw very often," she dismissed with a smile and pushed herself a little higher up the bed so she could sit taller against his headboard. And when she lifted her hand from the mattress, the light caught something on her fingers and made her pause. Glitter, upon closer inspection, was caught between the grooves of her fingerprints and the sight made her frown while her mind grew overwhelmingly foggy and incoherent.

"You should draw all the time," Henry told her without hesitation as he finished hanging the drawing and when she didn't answer, he turned to look at her. She was frowning hard and hadn't seemed to hear his last comment at all. She was completely lost in thought staring at her fingertips and it made him walk closer and crane his neck to try and see what had caught her attention. When the light caught the glitter, Henry scoffed a laugh and shook his head, "Hansel's idea of a prank. Glitter bomb alarm clock. I don't think I will ever get it all cleaned up," he chuckled but she didn't look at him, didn't acknowledge him at all.

Sliding off the bed, Regina stood and walked away from it just a few strides before she turned back around and surveyed the room with a frown as images flew through her mind that contradicted the state of the room she was currently looking at.

"Mom...? You okay?"

"True or false..."

"What?" Henry questioned as he cocked his head and frowned at his mother standing in the middle of his room.

"As a young child you were terrified of the tooth fairy," Regina started and Henry listened, "I told you she would take your teeth after they fell out and leave behind money as thanks. The whole concept of someone collecting human teeth horrified you beyond words and when you lost your first tooth you insisted we make a fort out of your blankets and sheets to keep her out and keep you and your teeth safe. So we did and I stayed in your bed with you, promising you that if she were foolish enough to try and take your teeth, I would fight her off and she would never return. In the morning when you woke, you did so to a bed full of glitter and coins and your tooth left untouched in the box next to your pillow. I told you she had put up quite a fight and spilled her pouch of fairy dust and coins but I caught her and made her promise never to return or I'd pull her wings off. And she obliged. True or false."

"True," Henry chuckled lightly, "I actually completely forgot about that. That's hilarious, mom," he laughed as he folded his arms and leaned back a little, "yeah I totally remember that. I thought that that was the most bad ass thing, my mom fighting off the tooth fairy while I slept. The glitter was a nice touch too, so awesome," he laughed with a shake of his head a happy nostalgia warming his heart at the memory, "you are the reason I believed so strongly in magic. I know you think it was the book that started it all but it wasn't, it only fed it. It was all on you," he smiled at her and she only seemed more troubled than before. And then it dawned on him, "wait...who told you about that?"

"No one."

"Did you read it in a journal or something?"

"No," she frowned as she showed him her fingertips and then pulled them back so she could look at them herself and the scattered pieces of glitter stuck to them.

"So you remembered it," he concluded with a hopeful smile and she looked at him with an odd and rather blank expression before looking back at her fingers. "Mom, that's awesome!" He cheered as he hurried to her so he could pull her in to a hug. One she returned rather awkwardly, "that is so good," he laughed happily, completely overjoyed by the news, almost to the point of tears.

And when he let her go she was still frowning at him and he gave her shoulders a light squeeze and offered her an encouraging smile, "that is so good, mom."

"It doesn't feel like a memory. It doesn't feel like me."

"Well that memory is still a really long ways ahead of where you are now as the Evil Queen, that's all," he encouraged with a slight shrug, "I'm sure as you start remembering more things it'll feel more like you and less like a stranger," he smiled but she kept frowning at her fingertips. And when she looked him in the eye once more, Henry could see that there was something else that was bothering her. Something deeper that he couldn't put a finger on.

And then she was reaching forward and her hands were gently cradling his face as she shook her head.

"You should be younger," she insisted, her voice almost a whisper as Henry frowned at her in sorrow and understanding.

"It's okay, mom," he assured as he put his hands over hers and turned his head so he could press a kiss to her palm before putting it back on his cheek, "I know you don't remember, but you didn't miss a single moment of me growing up," he promised and she shook her head, her eyes and mind wild with confusion and distress, "you were the best mother anyone could ever ask for," he pressed and her eyes grew teary, "and you will remember that," he told her and she shook her head as her thumbs mindlessly rubbed over his cheeks. And then she was withdrawing from him, letting her hands slip away as she stepped backward and hurried from his room.

...

"David."

David glanced up from his paperwork with his eyebrows raised and smiled at Henry standing at the other end of the table before looking back at his work, "yes, Henry?"

"I think mom needs your help," Henry told him with a frown and fidgety fingers. His words only made David frown as his pen stopped writing and he looked back up at him.

"What do you mean? Is she okay?"

"Well I don't know. But I don't really think so. She is starting to remember things," he told him and David watched intently, "and it is bothering her that she can't make sense of it. She seemed pretty freaked when she left my room and I've tried to check on her but her door is locked and she won't answer when I knock or call. I just think you should try and check on her. She just seems to be more receptive to you since the accident."

"What did she remember?"

"An old memory. When I lost my first tooth. I was scared of the tooth fairy so she built us a fort in my bed to protect me and my tooth and once I'd fallen asleep she staged a tooth fairy show down and in the morning I woke up to glitter and coins everywhere and she told me the tooth fairy had put up a good fight but in the end she won and told the tooth fairy that if she should ever try to take my teeth again, she'd pull her wings off," Henry chuckled lightly and David breathed a laugh of his own.

"Well I am glad she recalled a happy memory," David smiled at Henry and the boy nodded his head with a smile of his own.

"Me too."

...

Regina had not truly believed everyone telling her she had lost the last few decades of her memory until she stood there in the bathroom staring at her reflection. She was studying it. Studying it and learning that it was not the face she remembered. There were soft lines in her skin where there were no such thing before. Not wrinkles, but smile lines around her eyes and mouth, something that could only have come to be over a generous amount of time. And a generous amount of smiling. Something she had not been capable of over the years she could remember.

Sneers sure, but honest smiles and laughter that would leave such happy lines on her face, absolutely not.

And the contours of her face were sharper as well. Her jaw and cheekbones not as soft with the youth she remembered but rather sharpened with maturity. Also something that came with years and years of time. Her face upon first glance was the same as she recalled and what wasn't familiar to her lucid memory was familiar to the parts of her memory that remembered looking in the mirror every morning. The same parts of her memory that remembered how to function in this world.

But once she took the time to truly pay attention, the reflection looking back at her was someone she didn't quite recognize. And yet it was her. It was such a strange feeling to look in the mirror and not recognize yourself. Rather unnerving really. And having such vivid images of Henry as a young boy terrified of the tooth fairy and then so utterly joyous over her victory made her wonder what was real.

Once again her thoughts were pulled away from her current state and to the soft knock on the door. But where it had previously been followed by Henry's kind voice, this time it was David's that reached her ears.

"Regina, darling. May I come in?"

She hesitated as she looked out of the bathroom door toward the sound of his voice but ultimately let her magic turn the lock on her door handle and let him enter. The gentle click of the lock was followed by light pouring in from the hall as David opened the door and Regina slowly walked from the bathroom to meet him in the middle of her bedroom with a troubled frown on her face.

"Henry tells me you are remembering things," he told her gently and her expression twitched in to distaste with a slight quirk of her head. It told him she didn't wish to delve in to such things. But the fact that she had opened the door for him also told him she did wish to speak. "Or are you still unwilling to believe that they are memories you have lost?" He inquired kindly and she shook her head and folded her arms.

"I don't know what to believe anymore," she told him and he frowned at her in sympathy, "however, I do know that I do not wish to delve in to such ridiculous notions again. So how about we talk about this shirt you are wearing and how much better you would look with it on the floor," she grinned as she slunk toward him with her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

But he didn't bite. Didn't even smile. And when her fingers began gathering the hem of his shirt, his warm hands gently covered hers and brought her to a halt. They were big and kind and in an instant there was a sharp and sorrowful ache in her chest, balled up and climbing to her throat as his hands so gently gathered hers in to his care.

"Regina," he stopped her gently and for a moment she was the woman he had been married to for the last six years. For a moment she was soft and willing to be stopped, for a moment she seemed to be caught in something familiar, a place where she trusted him. But the moment passed as quick as it came and her expression hardened as she snatched her hands away and walked around him. Back behind the mask of the Evil Queen, unwilling to trust and show any vulnerability.

"Regina," he called again as he turned to follow her and gently caught her wrist in his hand. But she snatched it away in an instant.

"What?!"

"I just want to talk with you, make sure you're alright."

"I am fine, shepherd, I don't want to talk to you and I don't want to fuck you anymore either so get out of my room," she snapped as she walked away, turning her back to him.

"It isn't easy having two different lives playing in your head, Regina, and keeping it all bottled in only makes it more difficult," he told her gently but she wasn't receptive.

"I don't need to talk about my feelings, especially not to some obnoxious peasant."

"I think you just may, my wife," he insisted in the very gentlest of tones as he stepped up behind her.

She crumbled at the title. Wife. She had heard it time and time again since she had woken up in this world but right then it hit her hard. With everything that was on her mind, the title was the piece that broke her and brought tears to her eyes. For she wanted to belong to him. She wanted to be his. Even after only being with him for just two short weeks she knew she had fallen for him. He treated her with such kindness and such adoration and patience, she couldn't help but want to truly be his. And when his gentle hands came up to hold either side of her shoulders and slide down to her arms, her heart skipped and throbbed and pushed more tears to her eyes. And for a moment, she gave in. She let him press his body to her back, she let him wrap his arms around her middle, she let him tip the side of his head against hers. For a moment she revelled in the feeling of belonging somewhere. Of being wanted.

But reality, her reality, kicked in a moment later and she quickly pushed him off her as she jumped out of his care and tried to blink the tears away.

"Regina-,"

"Don't."

"Sweetheart-."

"I said don't, shepherd!" She roared as she whirled around to face him, "I will not let you do this!"

"What is it that you believe I am doing, sweetheart?" He asked softly and his darling queen spiralled down in her insecurities and it came out as rage. It was nothing he had not worked through before.

"I am no fool, shepherd! You think I am going to let this go on forever?! That I am going to allow you to play with me as your puppet?! That I will just let you waltz in and take my heart for yourself?! You think it will be that easy?! I don't belong to you, shepherd! I don't know you! I don't love you! You can't touch me! You can't hurt me! I am the Evil Queen! I hurt people, people don't hurt me!"

David merely nodded softly in reply as he gathered is words in preparation to counter the snarling queen. And when he did speak, his voice was calm and kind and with each word that left his lips he watched her unravel further. "Quite some time ago you once told me that evil isn't born. That it is made. Now, I wasn't myself at the time, I was cursed and had no idea what you were really talking about but over time I began to understand. Over time, I learned exactly what you meant. Over time, you told me exactly what past you carry. I know about Cora, I know about Daniel, I know about Snow, I know about Leopold, I know about Rumple, I know about your father, I know about every person in your life who has hurt you, every person who has let you down. You hurt people because it is what you were taught. It is all you know," he shook his head softly, his heart breaking over the thought.

And as she tried with all her might to keep her cruel and angry mask in place, he saw right through it as though it were glass. "Even the title of the 'Evil Queen' was thrown at you, you didn't pick it yourself. You became the Evil Queen because you saw no other option. You survived. You were angry and you were heartbroken. But despite everything that happened to you and despite everything you have done, you held on to just one wish. And you still hold on to it now, of that I am certain."

"Is that so?" She sneered with a slight quirk of her head, showing him nothing but malice even though not so deep down, she wanted him to calm her down and make her laugh just as they were before.

"Yes."

"What is this wish then that I carry? Hmm?"

"The only thing you have ever wanted, Regina, is to be happy in this life. To be wanted," he told her and in an instant her eyes were on the floor and she swallowed down her tears. Instantly. So he stepped just a little closer to his little queen with a frown of his own and ducked his head a little to try and catch her eye. "There is nothing to be ashamed of in that, my love," he told her softly, "it makes you human. It does not make you weak."

She did not say a word. She simply stood in silence with her eyes down and her arms folded. So he carefully reached forward and pulled her right arm away from her, turning her palm up as his fingers caressed her wrist, the wrist still free of the cuff blocking her magic. "Talk to me," he requested softly as he intertwined their fingers and her dark eyes watched the gesture, "please."

"I don't trust you," she breathed for that was all her voice could handle without her breaking and bursting in to tears. She hated feeling so lost and so confused. She hated not knowing where she stood.

"I know. But I will stop at nothing to make you happy, my darling queen. And you must know that you are wanted dearly. Not only by myself but by Henry as well. You are loved and you are wanted, I promise you. Even though you don't remember. We can be trusted, we are your people, your majesty, yours and yours alone."

"I don't believe you," she told him with a slow shake of her head and blinked her eyes back up to him.

"I know. But you can take a leap of faith. It doesn't have to be big, doesn't even have to be a leap. You can take a small hop of faith," he told her playfully but she didn't budge. So he hummed tenderly at her and lifted their entwined finger to his lips so he could press a kiss to her knuckles, "talk to me, your majesty."

She tried to stay strong and keep fighting him for her own self preservation but she found it harder and harder to do so with each passing moment. She found herself wanting to open up to him. And whether it was her current wish to open up to him and trust him or the pieces of her that remembered him, she couldn't say. But she couldn't seem to allow herself to do so though, "no."

"Regina-,"

"I said no, shepherd!" She shouted as she tore her hand from his, "You are not my person! I have no one! You belong to Snow White! That insufferable little wretch! It is utterly comical that you are trying so adamantly to get me to believe you would ever stray from her side! And stray to me no less! Do you think me so gullible and desperate for companionship that I would ever accept the concept of you filling such a void?! After everything the three of us have put one another through?! How stupid do you think I am?! I am not yours! I am not your pet! I do not have to talk to you! I do not want to talk to you! I do not want to talk to that boy! I want to be left alone!"

"Alone?"

"Yes!"

"...Regina, the day I gave you that ring you still wear on your finger, I promised you that you would never be alone again," he told her and he watched her mask fade with the sob she tried to swallow as she looked away from him. "Never," he told her firmly and her brow creased in distress, "you have spent your whole life alone. You have had no one to stand alongside, no one that you could depend on, no one that you could so much as talk to. You were alone, Regina. Always. And try as you might, you will never convince me that being alone is something you want from life. Especially right now as the Evil Queen you believe yourself to be," he told her and she pushed a hand through her hair with a shaky snarl and a bitter and even shakier laugh.

"You don't know me, shepherd," she snarled at him but every time she said it, she believed it less and less. Every time she said it, she believed more and more that he knew her better than anyone else.

"My darling wife," he shook his head softly and she clenched her jaw and tried her very hardest to look like the mighty queen she was so tired of trying to be, "do you really believe that to be true?" He questioned and she started shaking her head, holding his eye with her teary ones. And then with one more shake of her head, she started to turn away from him.

"Regina," he called softly but she didn't so much as pause and simply kept fleeing toward the door. So he went after her and grabbed her arm before she made it to the door, "Regina, talk to me!" He insisted, a desperate plea in his voice for he just wanted to make her feel better.

"I am sad!" she shouted at him and immediately there were tears blurring her vision and she had to look away from him. "All day my mind has been bothered with pieces of a life I don't recall! I don't know the woman who lives in these fragments! She isn't me! It is confusing and upsetting! But what makes me sad, shepherd, is you!" She cried out at him, her words quick and uneasy while his kind expression never faltered.

"How come?" He asked gently and was left with a crying queen in his company.

"Because I don't know you!" she cried out to him on a sob that caught her by surprise. And then she shook her head and tried to ward away her tears but it was a losing battle, "you are right, I have only wanted happiness from this life, I have only ever wished to be wanted! And now I am here! Thrown in to this life that I cannot possibly believe! A life where I am wanted! A life where people tell me I am happy! A life that is quite simply too good to be true! It cannot possibly be real! How could it?!

But now I have these flashes of memories that cannot possibly be mine! Memories of utter joy! Of beautiful moments! I see them as clear as you standing before me now! But I do not remember them! They are foreign to me! They are not me! And then there are the photographs! Hundreds and hundreds of photographs of moments in time that I want so dearly to belong to me but can come to no possible conclusion that they do! I can find no proof that they are not mine either but I have no recollection of any of them happening!

And everyone treats me as though I am their friend, as though I could never have tortured or killed or caused a single soul suffer! As though they are the ones that have forgotten! I am a monster, David! How could they possibly treat me with such kindness! Even Snow White is incapable of saying so much as one ill word toward me and I have nearly killed her twice in a matter of days!

And then I look at myself in the mirror and I do not recognize myself! My face is different! It is older and happier and I don't understand! And then I look at Henry and I know he should be younger! I know it!" She cried and there was no stopping the tears that came for the boy, she couldn't stop them and she couldn't understand.

"His room is different, his face is older, he is taller than me and something inside me is screaming that it is all wrong! I look at him and I don't recognize him, I don't know him, but my heart swears that he belongs to me! I feel like I have missed everything with him! He looks at me as though he is waiting for me to recognize him, to tell him that everything is alright, I know he is! But I can't! Because I don't recognize him, I don't know him, and I don't believe everything is alright! But I want to tell him that! I want to hold him and promise him that everything will be okay! But I don't know who he is!" She cried out and David stood before her utterly miserable for her with tears in his eyes. Tears that only made hers fall faster.

"My heart insists that he is mine. It leaps every time he calls me his mother, it soars every time he tells me he loves me, and it breaks every time he tells me it will all be alright because I am sure that I am the one who should be assuring him of such. Not him," she cried with a shake of her head and then laughed a miserable and tear filled laugh that aches in her chest, "but I don't know him, I don't recognize him."

Then she looked the shepherd up and down and sucked in a shaky cry, "and then there is you," she cried and gestured toward him. "I don't remember you. And that makes me sad. Because you love me. I can see it, I can feel it. Every time you look at me, every time you touch me, I know you love me. And every effort you have made to ensure that I am safe in this world I have no recollection of only proves it further. But I don't know you, I don't love you, I don't remember you. I look at those photo albums and I can see it, I see that you have loved me for so long, that you you built me up, that you made me strong, that you made me happy, that you built a life with me, and yet I stand here and I do not recall a single moment of it. I don't remember you. But despite that, you only seem to love me more than what has been captured in those images," she cried with a shake of her head and he stood quietly before her with tears in his gorgeous blue eyes.

"So I am left wondering if I truly have forgotten," she shook her head and slowly the hysterics returned because she didn't want any of it to be true. "What if I do love you and I can't remember? What if everything I have worked my whole life to achieve, I finally received only to have gone and forgotten it?! What kind of sick joke is that?! After everything I have lived through! I found love, I built a family, I made my happiness! And then I got hit by a god damn truck and lost everything!" She cried out furiously, hysterically, tears rolling freely down her cheeks, and the next thing she knew, she was being pulled in to David's arms.

The instant she hit his chest, she was sobbing. Her fingers clawed at his shirt and his tears rolled in to her hair as he held her shaking body and let his chest muffle her sobs. He hated seeing her in distress and right then he was almost as heartbroken as she was as she struggled to understand why the world seemed to work against her so adamantly. He didn't know what to say. All he could do was hold her and cry with her.

"You are a wonderful mother, Regina," he reassured her softly and she sank deeper in to him with a new set of cries, "that boy adores you. He would do anything for you. He is strong and he is kind and even though you don't remember it, you raised him through hell and back and made sure he came out the other side entirely unscathed. No one could have done a better job of raising that boy. He is yours, Regina, and there is no doubt in anyone's mind of that matter. He is not going anywhere. And he knows that you love him, even if you only believe you have known him for two short weeks, he's knows that you love him and knows that you wouldn't dare say it aloud," he told her and pressed a kiss to her hair alongside her head.

"And you are my wife, my darling queen. And I am your husband. I love you no matter what. I will always be here. There is nothing you can throw at me that will make me turn my back to you. I ruined my life for you and together we built a new one and I would have it no other way. I am happy with you, I love you, and I am not going anywhere, your majesty. Even if you don't believe me. It is a privilege to fall in love with you again, to earn your love again," he told her and then pulled his head back and waited for her to warily do the same so he could look her in the eye.

And when he did, she was flighty and insecure and afraid. But he only shook his head softly at her and lifted a hand to wipe away a tear from her cheek and then tuck her long hair behind her ear. "I love you, my darling wife," he told her softly, quickly learning that she held a special weakness for the title. And sure enough, new tears fell and she tucked her head back underneath his chin and against his chest.

She hugged him tight and she could feel that she loved him. She could feel it deep in her bones and throbbing in her achey heart. She could feel that she loved him. And she could feel more than ever that he loved her in return. Loved her more than words could ever express. Loved her so much it made her cry. But she could not find it in her to trust it. For love had never treated her well in the past and it had been so long since anyone had been good to her. That she could remember anyway.

She didn't know how to love. And no matter how badly she wished to trust the feeling, she just couldn't. So she hugged him tighter and hoped that he would stay true to his words and stay with her forever.

"I don't want to be alone tonight," she confessed against him and he pressed a kiss atop of her head.

"Then you won't be, my love," he promised and she sighed and relaxed even deeper in to him, "come to bed, sweetheart," he told her and then tipped away from her so he could take her hand in both of his and lift it so he could press a kiss to her fingers. And then her palm, and then her wrist where the cuff had once been. And then he laid her hand over the side of his face and tilted his head in to it as she ran her thumb over his cheek with a tender and teary smile, "I love you, your majesty."