Author's note: This is the story that first made me want to write for OUAT. It took longer because I wanted to understand the story before I wrote it.

Note 2: "In medias res" means "in the middle of the thing", so heads up on that. I'm not losing the plot.

Note 3: This will be the last chapter betaed the lovely MickeyBoggs. So, my darling MickeyBoggs, thank you for all the time you have given me over the years. Your patient help has taught me so much.

Much love

Jane

Prologue- In medias res

The curse broke when Emma's smile sank into Regina's pupils. That moment shone star-like, a diamond in the pitch black of the night sky. It shone like a perfect diamond. For that one moment, Regina was light and goodness and nothing could ever be broken or wrong. Nothing would ever hurt again.

Guess some promises are not meant to be kept.

The embrace started when Emma gathered the courage to push a damaged, unbeating heart into the Queen's chest, in cold blood, pushing against flesh and bone and logic and all that she knew. Emma pushed that heart into its long empty cavity, into a body unused to the demands of a pulsating heart.

It deepened with Regina's longing for Emma's presence, solid, calm, true in her wretched life. For a moment, when it first sat inside her chest, she could not remember why on earth she would have ever wanted that heart out. For a moment, all was warmth and fullness and completeness. And then the pain hit her. Square in the chest, in her gut, in her heart. In her limbs and in her head. In her very soul. All of it. All the loss, all the betrayal, all the loneliness. And still, she clutched at her returned heart. Clutched at it so not to let go.

Her body jerked, writhing in pain. She held on to Emma, so as not to lose herself. All she knew was the guiding light of green eyes that pushed at the darkness of all that her heart had in its memory. And gradually, there was also warmth of a body so tight against hers and the solidity of the hands that held her through the wrenching in her body, the shattering and breaking and realignment of her whole self . And that was new. That someone was there for pain and held her, kissed her hair, smoothed her back, rubbed compassionate circles in her back.

Kissed her tears as they fell.

.

.

Her heart broke anew at the flavour of kindness. To have it returned only to have it broken again. Ah, Emma, how little you know. What use is a heart until it is made unbreakable?

Emma second guessed her quest. She had gotten the Queen her heart back. Was it really a good gift? She held Regina in her arms as if with her heart. The Queen's pain seeped into her as if by osmosis, permeating her skin as it rolled off Regina in waves.

All her logic, all the laws of biology and physics blasted to dust right in front of her. How could she have doubted Henry, the book, the curse? How could she have doubted Regina and her dead eyes? She held on tighter, a bone crushing vise, because the pain she could pinpoint in her body was so much easier than the pain that was of her heart, of her soul, of each of her cells and of her blood.

It would have been easy to break her promise. It would have been easy to let go, to walk away and spare herself the pain- hers, Regina's. It would have been so easy because she had nothing but practise at the going when the going got tough. She had thought that was savvy. She had thought it was smart and practical. It turned out her own heart knew nothing of practicalities. Harder, she clutched harder and rode the waves of heartbreak with Regina as her heart mended itself, reknitted the wholes and grew tendrils of muscle and tethers to Regina's soul. No one had told her it would be this painful.

I'm not going anywhere. Not going anywhere. Notgoinanywhere, she repeated the mantra, persuading each of her molecules to still, to resist the impulse to leave.

.

.

As the Queen's tears dried, Emma's volatile molecules stilled. Life, it seems, begins on the other side of despair. Her arms tightened, her body became conscious of the bed under it, of another body pressed into hers. And then, of the absence: of the sobbing, of the ragged breathing, of the shaking.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Regina. I though… I thought … I didn't know I believed it. I thought you needed your heart back. I'm so sorry"

"Why?"

"Why? Because I thought I had it all figured out. I thought it would make you happy… No, not that… I thought it would make you easier to…" She hesitated because she couldn't quite pluck up the courage. But Regina's hair was still plastered to her face with the sweat and the tears of her ordeal. She owed this to her. "I thought it would make you easier to love…"

"Why are you sorry?" Her voice was hoarse, gravelly. She took Emma's hand and pressed it, palm against heart. She had never missed it before. She had never missed it until Emma. Hearts are commodities. Superfluous. Easier to live without. "Thank you". Her thumb rubbed circled on the back of Emma's hand. "Thank you".

Because she knew, from the moment Emma set foot in Storybrook: If she'd had a heart to break, her number was – finally- up.

.

.

Regina's heart was beating under Emma's hand. It beat wildly, just like a bird's, so fragile. It had not been a thing of the body until then. Not until the moment that brave thumb pressed against Emma's hand. The fact that they had been in a tight lover's embrace for the last god knows long only became flesh when Regina's breast felt solid under her palm, complete with a beating heart. Then, her eyes focused on the full lips in front of her, on the skin mottled by old grief and new pain, on the eyes ravished by tears. Regina looked more beautiful than ever and Emma understood the ditty the fairest of them all. She couldn't help herself. Her head tilted forward and she placed a light kiss on the other mouth. Light as rain.

And then on one eye, and then on the other and the more she kissed them more difficult it became to hold back and she never even had the time to think that it might not be something that Regina would want as well, because by the time she got some semblance of control, Regina was burrowing against her, in her arms, childlike, asking for more. Her head tilted up to Emma's and demanded more. Demanded to re-tribute, to give back.

Regina's smaller hands cupped Emma's cheek and she took a moment to marvel at the feeling of warm skin under hers. The feeling of feeling for someone. The feeling of having a heart beating in urgency for feeling of having a heart beat in joy, not fear.

Emma's smile was radiant. Open, warm, welcoming.

"Thank you. Thank you for giving me back my heart."

Her eyes absorbed Emma's smile, soaking it up. It was a smile so open that you felt like you could get inside it and walk around bare foot like you do a home.

How could it not be physical? She had a heart, an honest to goodness, bona fide, beating heart. And sometimes, happy is not just a word, it's an abundance of body and breath and it can only remain happy if it overflows, if it overcomes the barrier of your skin. It is only happy if it escapes the confines of your body and spills over into somebody else.

Regina's happy was all wrapped up in Emma. In a mouth she hadn't known she wanted to kiss, in a body she hadn't known she wanted to touch. In a heart she did not know she wanted to belong to.

Out of the need, her magic was reborn, not that she quite noticed: Emma's bloodied clothes vanished, and one by one the cuts and bruises, all the evidence of her encounter with Regina's vengeful past on her skin became points of shimmering light, of good magic, magic that did not cost her a thing. Regina had never experienced magic that did not come at a price. It would have been exhilarating had she noticed it. But the feel of the other woman's skin under her finger tips, and her appreciative sighs and the weariness she could feel going away as surely as if it had been her own quite unexpectedly gave her back the time when she had been only a girl waiting for someone to love her beyond nothing but herself. No magic, no title, no gold, no power. That simple magic tasted like love. Felt like love. Surprising, so very surprising.

She had been lied to. Not all magic came with a price.

How could it when Emma gasped when her hand slid from cheek to breast, from face to hip? How could it when instead of horror or scorn, Emma was nothing but light, like she too had a magic of her own?

How could there be a price to this aliveness of her body, of her mind, after so, so long she had forgotten how it felt to be touched in love rather than as a thing or as a nothing at all?

Emma's hands pushed back at the numbness inch by inch, moving in reverent exploration, the kisses from her mouth absolution, every single one of them.

There were legs that entwined and heat that rose in waves from two bodies that became one in strands of saliva and beads of sweat. There was a momentum that fed on itself and grew until they were a mess of limbs and skin none of them knew exactly where she ended and the other began.

And then there was the explosion. As if all their molecules had been scattered and then pulled back together, rearranged, realigned. And maybe, quite possibly, Emma thought, with some of them in a new body to call home.

Emma's smile sank into Regina's pupils. That moment shone star-like, a diamond in the pitch black of the night sky. It shone like a perfect diamond. You see, those two, Regina and Emma, they made love. And the simplest of math was indeed what broke the curse: one and one equals one.

Emma submitted to Regina's sleep. Regina's eyes closed with Emma's exhaustion. She knew- not consciously, not right there, not then – but she knew and her lips curved in a smile that was nothing short of pure: her barren, wasted body had conceived a child.