A bit more angst and some possible trigger warnings for this chapter guys! x

Chapter Sixteen

'It did take you long enough to get here, didn't it?'

Regina stood alone in the centre of the clearing, her unshaking hands held out before her. With his bow still raised and aimed directly at the back of her skull, Robert was slowly circling around her. His heavy footsteps creaked against the bare ground. From their distance Henry and Emma watched as Regina struggled to inhale, her chest shuddering with the effort. She couldn't bring herself to look back at them, and so her gaze fell onto the empty ground before her. The ferocity of the Evil Queen that had returned to her only moments before had suddenly slipped away from her again, and it took every ounce of strength that she still possessed to simply not fall to the floor and cry.

'Lost for words?' Robert's mouth materialised against her ear, his breath hot and thick. She winced, closing her eyes.

'We got here as fast as we could,' she forced out through gritted teeth, turning her face away.

'And yet not fast enough,' Robert sneered, stepping between her and the two figures that were still struggling against their ropes. 'You know, in your absence, your majesty, I've gotten to know your son very well. I even taught him a thing or two.'

Regina's eyes flicked anxiously over his shoulder to where her son stood. He was shaking his head furiously.

'He… he taught me how to shoot, Mom. I'm sorry. I didn't know,' he forced out, shrinking back when Robert turned to glare at him.

Regina felt a frown begin to pinch at her forehead as she looked back at the weapon that was still poised directly between her and Robert. 'You taught him to shoot,' she said slowly. 'You.'

'Yes, I did,' he snapped in response.

She couldn't stop the casual snort of derision that escaped from her nose. 'I see.'

'What?'

'Nothing,' Regina said, shaking her head. From over Robert's shoulder she could see Emma gritting her teeth, silently pleading with her to just shut up and stop antagonising him. But she couldn't: she knew how this would end. Her being polite to him now would change nothing at all. 'I've just heard whispers about that little bow of yours. That's all.'

Robert's face twitched momentarily. 'And those whispers are amusing to you?'

Regina's lips quirked upwards into a cruel smile. 'No. Not exactly. I just find it mildly entertaining that my son had his hunting lessons from someone who is obviously so bad at shooting by themselves that they need a cursed weapon to help them along.'

Iron fingers suddenly clamped across her jaw and she felt her body being flung back against the nearest tree, the air wheezing from her lungs. Robert pressed his weight against her, digging dirty fingernails into her cheeks as he hissed into her ear, 'I do what I need to in order to survive. Because of your curse, Regina. This is all because of you.'

Choking for air, Regina didn't reply. Her gaze fell back across his shoulder to where Emma had managed to rise to her feet, throwing her whole body forwards with her hands still bound to the tree beside her. The ropes were slashing at her wrists and the pinched expression on her face let Regina know that she was undeniably in agony – but she still kept pulling. The brunette swallowed and shut her eyes to the sight, replying to Robert in the quietest voice that she could summon.

'I'm not the same person that I was when I cast that curse.'

His grip loosened in surprise. She snapped her eyes back open again and looked tentatively up at him, half expecting to see him wavering. Instead she found him smirking, his black eyes swimming with disgust.

'So I hear.' He suddenly let go of her, letting her body fall back against the tree with a thud. 'Your son has been telling me all about your newly reformed personality, your majesty. It's almost touching, really – if it weren't for the fact that it's all complete bullshit.'

Regina's lower lip trembled. 'You know nothing.'

'I know far too much,' Robert snapped in contradiction. He turned to face the struggling boy for a moment. 'What was it that you called her, Henry? What was it that you said? That she was… ah. That she's a good person now. That's she's changed.'

And Regina's heart shattered. Looking past Robert she met the gaze of her eleven year old son, knowing with one look at his desperate hazel eyes that the enormous man wasn't lying. He really had said that. Even when he had been angry at her and hating her and felt not only betrayed by her but utterly abandoned, he had still defended her. A tiny, pathetic smile quivered on her lips for just a second, and she felt her head fall back against the tree once more.

Whatever ends here today, she thought to herself, closing her eyes. That has to be enough.

'And on that note,' Robert burst through her reverie with his drawling, mocking tones. 'I'd like to test out this little claim of his. To see just how much the Evil Queen has changed.'

Regina's eyes slowly opened once more. As she looked up at him, Robert didn't see any challenge in her pupils: he saw only exhaustion. It was obvious that the woman stood before him was sick of fighting; was sick to death of battling with herself and with everyone around her - and that made her weak to him. He smirked to himself as she answered him in the flattest voice that she could muster.

'What do you want?'

'In the words of our mutual friend Rumplestiltskin, I'd like to offer you a little deal.'

Looping his bow over one shoulder, Robert reached a hand deep into his pocket and pulled out a tiny slither of blackness. Regina's eyes fell to it. Her heart plummeted.

'Where did you get that?'

Emma struggled to see what was in his hand, tearing at the ropes, trying to ignore the thin trail of blood that was creeping down the inside of her arm. But Robert's huge frame dwarfed everything, Regina included. All that the blonde could see was the desperate expression piercing through the queen's eyes.

'In my line of work,' Robert leaned close into her face, the words dripping from his tongue, 'I do a lot of… foraging. You see, in the shit heap of a world that you left behind, there are lot of desperate people. A lot of starving people. Not much goes on here and there isn't a great deal to buy or trade or even eat. So some people get paid to go out and find the things that we all need in order to survive – people like me. I get paid to hunt and to steal and to scavenge, in order to come back and give it to the needy.

'I found this one day,' he said with a sigh, holding the dead piece of magic up before Regina's eyes. 'It's useless to me. I have no way of getting it to work again. But you, your majesty – I'm willing to bet that you do.'

The caramel eyes before him didn't blink. Regina tore them from the dried-up bean and forced herself to look straight at Robert as she repeated, 'Robin. What do you want?'

'My terms are fairly simple,' he muttered, tightly curling his fingers around the bean before spitting his conditions into the queen's face. 'I want the heart of the woman who cursed us all to this hell.'

Regina blinked. She heard Emma's voice crying out before she had a chance to respond for herself. 'No. Regina, no.'

'You want my heart,' Regina slowly clarified, 'in exchange for that bean, and for the lives of my son and his mother?'

'That's exactly what I want.' A hateful colour was slowly, inexplicably seeping through Robert's black eyes. At first it almost looked purple: Regina eventually realised that it was a deep, vile red.

'Why?' she forced out, her voice cracking. 'What could you possibly want with that?'

Robert threw his head back as he let out a deep, terrible laugh. 'Why? My god, woman, you have gotten soft over the last twenty eight years, haven't you? Do you have any idea how much the people left in this land despise you? How much they would pay me and my men to bring them the beating flesh of the one person responsible for damning us all to live in this uncertain, dying misery for the rest of time?' He leaned forwards once more, his reddened gaze glinting. 'I could do anything with that sort of money. No more hunting; no more stealing. I could pack up and throw all of this shit away, and I could leave. I give them your heart to do whatever the hell they want with it – and I'm free. I'm free from your godforsaken curse forever.'

'And if I let you take it,' Regina managed to choke out the words. 'If I let you kill me – you promise that you'll let them go?'

'Regina, are you insane?' Emma screamed across the clearing at her, falling forwards onto her knees with the effort of trying to tear her wrists free. 'Don't listen to him! Don't you dare say yes!'

'Mom,' Henry wailed, tears running down his flushed cheeks. 'Please, Mom. Don't do it. You don't have to.'

Regina's startlingly dry eyes found her son's and, when she moved to step around Robert, he let her go.

'This isn't about me, Henry,' she said sadly, standing far enough away from him that he couldn't quite see just how her heart was breaking. 'It's never been about me – it's only ever been about getting you home again. And if… if Emma can promise to make sure that that happens – then that's all that matters to me.'

'No!' The sound of the young boy's scream echoed throughout the trees, crashing against their heavy trunks. Beside him Emma shook her head, her mouth hanging open, utterly speechless. She watched as Regina sighed, then turned back to the man who was stood with his arms casually folded across his vast chest.

'If you promise to let them both go free,' she said, 'then I accept your offer.'

His gaze darkened, a malicious smile spreading across thin lips.

'Well. Then you appear to have yourself a deal, your majesty.' Regina could barely hear his words over the sound of Henry screaming.

Robert held the dead bean up to his lips for one last moment, chuckling to himself as he pressed a kiss onto it.

'You two,' he sneered across the clearing at the two struggling figures, 'are very lucky indeed. Lucky that I am a man who always honours my agreements.'

He held out his hand and quickly took hold of Regina's, forcing her fingers open and pressing the tiny object into it.

'Go on, then,' he said darkly, no longer smiling. His face had an odd expression drawn across it – it verged on relief. Relief that he had actually won. 'Go and give them their precious winnings.'

Regina swallowed and took a small step back, the bean clutched in her damp palm as she waited for him to raise the bow to her head again. He didn't. She spun on the spot and stumbled the last few feet across the clearing, falling to her knees, at last, before the small boy who had brought her here and then brought her to finally, completely, do something that was good.

'Mom,' he said desperately, the words catching in his waterlogged throat. 'Please. Please don't do this.'

'I have to, baby,' she said softly, reaching out her hand and pressing it against the side of his hot face. His forehead creased in the same way that Emma's did when she was breaking, and she forced herself to take a deep breath, a small smile spreading across her lips. 'I have to do this for you.'

'No you don't,' he insisted, still struggling against the ropes. 'Please – Mom, I don't care about what you've done before. I don't care about the curse or the magic or any of those things – I love you. I need you and if you go away then I won't… I can't…'

'Shhh,' she said, leaning her forehead gently against his own. Her free hand found his against the rough bark of the tree. 'Shhh, sweetheart. It's okay. It'll be okay. I promise.'

'You can't know that,' he whimpered against her shoulder, squeezing his eyes tightly shut and inhaling the familiar scent that had followed him throughout his entire life.

'I can,' she whispered. 'Emma's going to look after you, Henry. She's going to love you hard enough for the both of us. As long as you've got her – you've still got me. I promise you that. With every inch of me, I promise.'

'Mom...' It was the only word that he could force out. His pink cheeks were slick with tears as she pulled away from him, pressing one final kiss on the top of his matted hair.

'Be good,' she whispered, rubbing a thumb underneath his eyes. And then she let go. She pulled herself away from her son, and she left a tiny piece of her heart tied to the tree.

Emma watched her all the while with enormous, pleading eyes. She had witnessed the whole exchange without a single tear rolling down her cheeks and yet, the moment that those caramel eyes finally turned to her, she crumbled. Falling back onto the ground with her bloody wrists pinned high above her, a howl of absolute agony ripped from her lips and she forced herself to close her eyes. Shaking her head, she let a sob tear through her.

'Emma…'

'Don't do it,' Emma choked out, her eyes still squeezed shut because, until she knew that she could open them and not see Regina about to sacrifice herself for her, she wasn't sure that she could bear the see the world before her ever again. 'Please. Do something. Use magic. Blow him apart. Send him a hundred miles away. Send yourself a hundred miles away. Please, Regina, you have to—'

'Emma,' Regina softly interjected, reaching out her hand so that she could rub her thumb along the swollen line of the blonde's jaw. Two green eyes snapped back open, rippling with tears. 'I have to do this.'

'Use magic.'

'We have a rule against that,' Regina smiled wretchedly. 'If you recall.'

'You cannot seriously be making jokes now, of all the times.'

'I'm not joking,' Regina sighed, glancing down at the ground for just a moment before she looked back into the magnificent, frightening eyes that were staring up at her. 'I have to do this, and I have to do this by myself. No magic. No help from you. Emma… you know, I've spent my whole life running away from everything. Fighting everything. Desperately trying to feel good about myself without ever doing anything truly good to get there. But this… this is good, Emma. This is what good does: they give themselves up so that the people that they love can survive without them. This is what I want to do, for you.'

Emma's bottom lip trembled furiously, tears spilling down her bruised face. 'But I don't want to survive without you,' she whimpered.

Regina swallowed, forcing a breath into her shallow lungs. She couldn't think of a word to say in response.

Reaching out for Emma's clammy hand, she pressed the bean between her fingers. Even as the blonde resisted, she forced them closed.

'Take that,' she said softly, 'and take our son home.'

Emma shook her head. 'I can't do that.'

'Yes you can.'

'No, I can't.' Her green eyes reflected the very trees around them as she spoke, the shaking leaves dancing across her pupils. 'Not without you. You are our home.'

Biting down on her lip to stop herself from falling apart, Regina leaned forwards and pressed a kiss onto Emma's forehead. She lingered there for a moment, her eyes closed, taking in for one last time the faint scent of the woods and of the air and of vanilla. Her fingers clung onto the bare skin of Emma's arms. When she leaned back again, rising to her feet, she looked down at the two broken figures before her and she felt the cracks that had run throughout her heart for so many lonely, painful years finally begin to heal. Her battered, devastated heart stopped glowing quite so darkly. A tiny smile tugged at her lips as she took a step backwards.

'I'll miss you,' she said simply.

And then she walked away.

She turned to Robert with a face that was streaked with tears, but was utterly calm. Her fists hung loosely by her sides, her dark hair blowing freely about her head. Robert had stood impatiently for the whole while, shining up one hateful arrow on the rough fabric of his shirt as he waited. When Regina turned to face him, his dark eyes clouded over once more. He ignored the frantic screaming coming from the tree just behind her.

'Well, your majesty,' he said in a low voice, threading the arrow carefully through his bow for one last time. 'This must be farewell. Though you are a fan of curses, after all – let's see how much you like this one.'

He finally raised the weapon and began to pull back on the bowstring. One of his eyes flickered shut, the other looking sharply at the centre of the queen's heaving chest. Henry howled as loudly as he could, hefting his entire weight against his ropes, tearing forwards to where his own discarded bow lay only feet away from him. The bindings cut at every inch of skin that they came across, but they did not yield. Beside him Emma was oddly still, but her face was sticky with tears and her heart was burning and breaking inside of her chest. She watched as Robert pulled the string firmly backwards, an odd buzzing feeling rising in her palms. It was only when he took a deep breath and started to loosen the arrow that the buzzing turned to electricity, and the young woman finally exploded.

A flash of purple broke her and her son free from the ropes that had been holding them back, and before she could think about what she was doing she had flung herself at the woman stood ahead of her. Knocking Regina's body to the ground with the same thud that had lead them into that world only a week earlier, Emma closed her eyes and felt the red-hot stab of a cursed arrow plunging between her ribs.

As Regina hit the ground, Emma landed on top of her. The brunette looked up, catching sight of Robert's bewildered expression, before finally seeing the burning shard of metal that was sticking out from the blonde's chest. A howl that ripped the very leaves from the trees escaped from her lips as she fell forwards onto Emma's body, wrapping her arms fiercely around her with her hands trembling.

Robert hissed in annoyance, but hadn't even reached out a hand for a second arrow before something whistled through the air towards him. He glanced up just in time to see that Henry had reached his bow first. The arrow struck him solidly in the centre of his forehead and, for the split second before his enormous body thudded to the ground, his black eyes truly did see colour: they saw a sticky, blood red.

Regina tugged Emma's body across her lap, holding her as tightly as she could against her chest. Air was wheezing helplessly from the blonde's lungs as she looked up at the empty sky above her, the arrow's point tearing through her heart and spilling its curse into her slowing blood. As Henry reached her side, her lips were going grey. Regina looked down to see that her grubby white tank top was dripping with red and she moaned, pressing her forehead down onto Emma's with her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

'No,' she whispered, rocking the shaking woman back and forth. 'No, no, no, no. Emma. Please don't do this to me.'

'Regina,' Emma choked out, her voice catching on the blood that was gathering in her throat. Her eyes were blinking rapidly, trying desperately to stay open. Henry grabbed hold of both of her hands and squeezed, his tears streaming down onto their interlaced fingers.

'No,' was all that Regina could reply with. She reached down to where the arrow was embedded in Emma's side and wrapped her fingers around its dreadful core, pulling it free with a hideous tearing sound. Emma groaned, blood gargling at the back of her throat. A dark spot had appeared at the corner of her mouth. The queen held out a trembling, blood-stained hand to the wound and begged it to heal, begged her magic to come back to her and to finally do something good. All magic came with a price and she didn't care what it was – she would lie down then and there and stab that abhorrent arrow straight through her own heart if it meant that the woman laying in her arms could rise up and take another breath and hold their son close, raising him in the way that she'd never been able to before. But the buzzing in Regina's palm ignited into nothingness, and the cursed blood didn't stop flowing. Emma rolled her eyes back, trying to get a glimpse of the woman who was holding her.

'Regina,' she choked out once more, her eyelids fluttering shut. Her lips had long since turned blue. 'I… please…'

'Emma, Emma, Emma,' Regina hissed out, hefting Emma's body upwards so that her head lolled back against her shoulder. 'Don't leave me. Don't you dare leave me. Look at me – please, Em, please look at me.'

The green eyes flickered open at her request, looking blankly up at the tear-streaked face of the woman who had her arms wrapped around her. For a moment, the corners of Emma's mouth ticked upwards into a final, pathetic smile. And then the light finally left her eyes, so that when Regina looked into them all that she could see there was her own broken expression reflected back at her.

'Mom?' Henry choked out, leaning forwards across her crumpled body. He released one of her hands so that he could take hold of her arm instead, shaking it, gently at first, then more desperately. 'Mom?'

The word came out as little more than a shriek. Eventually the boy could only fall forwards onto his mother's body, pressing his face into her stomach with his shoulders heaving and tears choking out of his throat. All the while Regina sat completely still, her mouth slightly open, staring down into the unseeing eyes of the woman that had simply stopped being in her arms.

She reached out a numb hand and pressed the eyelids closed. The green of Emma Swan's eyes, and the reflection of the sky and of the trees that Regina had so often found there, was lost. Leaning forwards, she pressed her forehead back against Emma's and gently rocked her body from side to side.

'I'm sorry, Emma,' she whispered into her matted, chaotic hair, pressing a kiss against the flesh of her ear. 'I'm so, so sorry.'

Her thumb unconsciously traced the cold skin around Emma's slightly parted lips. They still looked like they were smiling.

Regina choked, forcing back the suffocating sound of her heart being torn to pieces and swallowing it down into the dark pit of her stomach, where she always should have kept it. It was too late now, though: Emma had gotten under her skin, and then she had wormed her way deep into her battered, barricaded heart. Pain shot like electricity through her and she threw her head back, rolling her eyes to the sky.

'Henry.' The effort that it took to force out that one small word was nearly enough to break her all over again.

The boy slowly lifted his head from where it had been resting on Emma's stomach and looked up at her with reddened eyes.

'Mom?' he croaked out in response. Regina sighed, holding out a blood-smeared hand to him and watching as he placed his own in the centre of her palm without a moment's hesitation. She squeezed on his fingers. He looked so young all of a sudden: so tiny and broken and unsure.

'Henry, sweetie,' Regina took a deep breath, begging her voice to not crack for just a moment longer. 'I need you to go back to the cottage.'

'Why?' he asked, not letting go of her hand.

'Because I need to get Emma out of here,' Regina replied, as calmly as she could manage. 'And I can't do it by myself. I need you to go and get Ruby and Granny and anyone else who's still in the house, and I need you to bring them back here. Can you do that for me?'

Henry scrubbed a bloody hand across his cheeks, nodding. 'Yes.'

'And I need you to run, Henry,' Regina said, her voice suddenly firm. 'I mean it – run the whole way there, and if you see anyone, I want you to scream. Scream as loudly as you can, and I'll come find you. Okay?'

'Okay,' he said, forcing himself up onto his knees. For a moment he just looked down at the woman laying beneath him, his eyebrows knitted tightly together. And then he pushed himself to his feet, took a painfully deep breath, and ran.

Tears leaked out from beneath Regina's eyelids the moment that he had turned his back. She let her head fall forwards, the steady flow dripping down her cheeks and off of her chin, blurring the puddle of red that lay below her.

Eventually she forced herself to look back into Emma Swan's pale face: the creases in her forehead were still visible, even then, and a single blonde curl had slipped forwards across her temple. Regina swallowed, then gently pushed it back. Her thumb ran absently down from the side of her face to the hard line of her jaw, then up to her slightly parted lips. When Daniel had died, she had looked down at his calm face and had for a moment hoped that maybe he was only asleep. But one look at Emma tore this vain optimism right from her: Emma didn't sleep this soundly. In her sleep Emma would scrunch up her face, curling her limbs against her chest, and breath heavily into the crook of her elbow. Sometimes she would start to mumble to herself – that first night in their tent, Regina had listened to her talking. The woman who lay in her arms now looked so unlike that frantic ball of energy that she knew that it almost lessened the pain that was clawing at her stomach – this wasn't really Emma at all. Her Emma was somewhere else, laughing loudly and planting snowdrops; falling off of horses with her blonde hair streaming out behind her.

'Emma,' Regina croaked out, gently grazing her thumb down the side of her face, knowing that this was her last moment alone with her – Henry would be arriving back at the cottage any second now, and so within a few minutes she would be surrounded once more. She sighed, brushing more of Emma's hair back from her face like she was a child. 'You… you can't hear me.'

She rolled her eyes to herself, almost laughing. 'Though, maybe you can. You always did like to do things differently to everyone else – I can't imagine you'd even be able to do dying normally.'

She took a deep breath, leaning closer to Emma's pale cheek so that she only needed to whisper.

'The problem is… I'm not sure I can let you go.' She swallowed, her eyes flicking across each and every dent and curve that lay before her. 'Not now. Not ever. I can't just go back to being the same angry woman that I was before. You've done something to me. You've… you've torn all of my armour away. And I'm not sure I have the strength to put it back on again.

'You know that you saved me, Emma. You saved me today when you took the arrow for me and you saved me at the stables when you let me know that there was someone out there who actually cared about me. When you took the horses so that I wouldn't have to… I ran because you made me feel wanted. And you made me feel like I wanted you. That was terrifying, Emma – it still is. Because I still want you. I want you to open your eyes and laugh up at me for crying and to be rude to me and to demand some food because you haven't eaten in at least an hour. I want you to come back home with me and stand by my side as we show the town that, actually, good does always defeat evil – because you defeated me. Any time I closed myself up you tore me right back open again and I'll never, ever stop thanking you for that. No matter how much it hurts and it bleeds, I'll never be able to thank you enough for ripping me apart.'

Regina paused, swallowing down tears as she took a slow, lingering look at the trees surrounding them. They had gone still again. Everything about the forest had gone quiet.

'Emma,' she sighed, letting her tears drip down onto the mess of blonde hair beneath her. 'It shouldn't have been you who died. But you did – you died for Henry, and you died for me. That will never stop mattering. No one will ever forget what you did for us.

'And even when they take you away from me, I'll remember that first day down by the river when you told me that I was worth something for the first time in my life, and then you kissed me without knowing whether I would kiss you back. I'll remember when you put on a dress because you thought it would make me happy. I'll remember the night when we drank wine until the stars got lost and the nights when you held me as I slept and the nights when I woke up all of a sudden because I wasn't used to my bed not being so lonely anymore. Because you were right, as you infuriatingly always seem to be – everything that happened here has meant something to me. It's meant everything to me. You taught this blackened heart how to let in light again. And, Emma – Emma. I... I think I love you for it.'

Regina could hear the distant sound of approaching footsteps as she leant forwards, her mouth trembling, and kissed Emma Swan's blue-tinged lips one last time. Her blood-stained fingers clung onto the sides of a face that would never smile at her again.

And then the light. The coloured pulse of light.

As the dark shadow of the arrow's curse burst free from Emma's chest, Regina's eyes snapped back open. She looked down at the woman who lay in her arms, her body still and bruised and lifeless. The light swarmed through the surrounding trees, rocketing outwards until the leaves vibrated, but Regina still didn't look up. Tightening her grip on Emma's jaw, she watched with desperate eyes as a tiny flush of colour began to seep back into her cheeks.

'Emma?' she stammered, shaking her shoulders as urgently as she dared. 'Emma?'

She saw nothing. The blonde's body remained limp and utterly still, flung like a ragdoll against Regina's trembling arms. The former queen's eyes darted back and forth across her face, not letting herself blink, not letting herself breathe. She waited and pleaded and forced back sharp tears that were threatening to tear her skin apart.

And then the pair of slightly grey lips parted, a fierce gasp bursting from between them.

Regina choked as the green eyes snapped back open, Emma's chest heaving as she frantically tried to force air back into her dried lungs. She felt two hands on her arms, nails piercing against her pale flesh. She looked up at the woman whose arms had held her as she died and whose lips had brought her back again. The sad smile returned.

'Regina?'

Tears slipping down her cheeks, Regina laughed. She laughed and then she sobbed, leaning forwards to bury her face in the nest of blonde curls that it had always belonged in.

'Emma. Emma, Emma, Emma.'

She let herself breathe in the smell of vanilla, one that only moments before had been lost to her.

As Henry burst back through the trees, shortly followed by nine figures with agonised, pale faces, he found himself skidding to a halt. He watched as Emma pushed Regina away from her so that she could stare up into her broken face once more, curling her fingers through her thick, dark hair and letting a teary grin settle across her face.

'Regina,' she stammered, her eyebrows curving upwards. 'You saved me. Didn't you?'

Regina laughed once more, shaking her head. She leaned forwards to press a fierce kiss onto her dry lips.

'Not exactly,' she mumbled against her skin, her eyes closed. 'I'm fairly certain that you saved me.'

THE END

Hopefully this didn't destroy too many souls. Mega-angst - I can only apologise really. Hopefully it turned out okay! Please do leave a review to let me know what you thought.

Thank you so much for reading guys, seriously - it's meant everything to me. I'm going to focus on my university work for the next few weeks but my next fic will be out as soon as I get the time to write it. If anyone has any requests or ideas or comments based on this work, then just shout. All my love! xxx