A/N: Part character study and part relationship study on what would happen if Regina and Helena were to meet in second person perspective. I tried out some new writing things with this one, sort of testing the waters. I'm still not sure about it, but I think I like the way it came out. I left the ending open to a possible second part. Please do leave a comment, if you have any suggestions, questions, or whatnot.

You meet her just hours after you arrive in Boston.

You stop in a coffee shop, one that reminds you of Granny's and order the strongest espresso they have. Two shots. Three shots. You wish they were shots of whiskey, so you can burn the last bits of emotion threatening to escape your throat. But the hot the liquid is calming in the way it excites your tired heart. A juxtaposition, you know.

"Long journey?" She calls out, her voice smooth and rich, like aged honey. You don't recognize the accent, but there's a lot about this world you still don't know. You turn your head towards her, see her lips pursed in the question, the twinkle of knowing in her eyes. There's a steaming mug of tea wrapped in her fingers. You don't trust her immediately.

"Very. You say curtly, and nothing else. You are not sure if you're talking about the journey from Storybrooke to Boston, or from saving a little girl from a runaway horse and then running away from the curse you left them. Banishment was the most you'd ever get from them, you know. You deserve it, but you still hate them.

Or maybe it's the long journey between a young woman with bright green eyes and a red leather jacket rolling her yellow bug unasked into her life, and then leaving her over the town line. A kiss burned on her cheek. A little boy's fierce hug around her waist.

You take another sip. She nods, like she understands, perfectly.

"I've come from one too."

You're both silent for a while, she drumming her hands on the table in a light pattern. You stare at them, ever the slightest bit transfixed. There's a headache brewing by your temples, and growing fast.

"Helena." The woman offers.

"Regina." You say.

It's a rather conventional beginning for the likes of you.

You stay at the same hotel as her, just two floors up. It's a pleasant hotel. She has a room away from any rowdy children or lovers on their honeymoon, and the room's interior is bare and impersonal. It reminds you of your room at home, controlled and clean, but lacking any pictures of her son,

You see her at that same coffee shop every day at 4:00 pm. She doesn't ask you what you're there for, how long you're staying, and you give her that same mercy. You can't handle that question, because there is absolutely no answer. You've fallen down, hard against concrete and not a soul is there to offer their hand to lift your bruised and battered self up.

Evil Queens don't get that.

You have coffee, with a touch of honey. She has tea with no sugar. You talk about little things. Favorite authors, favorite music. It's unnecessary, but it's something like friendship. Helena always has something brewing in her eyes buried underneath those words. A storm. It reminds you of yourself, a ticking time bomb. You doesn't understand Helena's grief, but it must run as deep as ocean trenches for her to have the same eyes as you.

You find out accidentally. A little girl and her mother walk into the door, bantering and smiling and Helena's eyes turn impossibly darker. She starts playing with the locket around her neck, and then holds it like a vice.

"Did you have a daughter?" Regina asks before she can stop herself.

"Had." Helena replies simply for every lack of simplicity that statement as.

Because Regina understands everything now.

(His name is Henry. I was always going to lose him. He sees me as an entity of true evil. Perhaps I am.)

(My Christina, I lost her in a fire. I tried to destroy the world because she wasn't in it.)

(Daniel, my mother ripped out his heart and told me to forget about love and marry another man.)

(I then did the very same thing.)

(Did you succeed?)

(Would I be here if I didn't?)

(Myka. I haven't lost her yet. I will. She doesn't trust me.)

(No one trusts me with their heart.)

You're not meant for the beauty and peace love is supposed to reside in, and neither is she.

You're both inebriated, but your eyes are sparkling and so are hers, and you're not delirious in the slightest. Clarity, not real but for once present, fills your senses again. You're both chaotic, whirlwinds, untempered storms, once sailing boats slammed across rocky shores. A cataclysm. A black hole.

There's nothing in both of you that fits together. You're both the same type of magnet, meant to repel. But you're connected by lost children, lost loves, loss itself. When you kiss her, it's like drinking the richest red wine. It's only then that you lose your senses. Her hands come up to touch your hair, cup the back of your head. You kiss the pale and freckled expanse of skin, and remember the freckles spread across Emma's collarbones.

The tears leak, but you don't even notice as they mingle with the sweat. She isn't gentle. Her nails scratch your back, scrape across your hipbones. Your lips bit hers. You don't know if they draw blood. Sometimes it feels like you're always tasting it. The bitterness is a familiar taste. She doesn't ground you. She lets you soar. You growl as she shifts your position, and she looks at you from above, and smirks wickedly in the low light. She looks like a werewolf, her eyes are gleaming so.

Emma was like this, in a way. The same fire, the same fighting and biting, but the gentleness creeped behind every rough caress. She loved you and hated it, but she couldn't leave it behind when she took you to bed, (and visa versa).

Helena understands your darkness in a way few do. She wanted to burn down the universe once too, and is living with that desire still stuck somewhere in her ribcage, in a tucked away hole in her heart. She's living with the repercussions. She wants to love, but she is terrified. She wants to find home, but home doesn't want to find her. She responds. She kisses down your throat and you see stars. Her hands wander and so does your soul, and you lean back and think of blond hair and brown all at once, consuming you.

The morning comes and you finally understand Emma's specific need to run. But you don't. Helena's arm is draped across your waist, and you just want to sleep for a thousand years.

Two months later, and sometimes you sleep with each other, and sometimes she pushed you away from that, wide-eyed and full of a specific regret. You haven't done much of that these past two weeks, and she admits that she doesn't understand what happened and why, because the last thing on her mind is her sex drive. She's on a mission and she can't talk to Myka and it's driving her crazy, these thoughts all make themselves known at different intervals.

Perhaps it was comfort, she muses. You stay quiet, and fume for no reason at all.

It all tumbles out at once.

She tells you about her work in the Warehouse. About being over a hundred years old.

You decide tell her about being the Evil Queen in a Fairytale world. You don't mention the timeline.

"Myka would love you." Helena says with an awe she gets when talking about Myka. "She's a lover of literature, and characters."

"I've been sleeping with an elderly woman?" Regina says dryly, finding she doesn't like talking about Myka like she doesn't like talking about Emma. Both give her a sharp pain in her gut.

Helena laughs and Regina (eventually) joins her.

In all honesty, there is nothing not ridiculous about their situation.

You don't argue, oddly enough. Well, you banter. You tease and annoy.

You decided it's because you both argue and fight with everything else.

"Henry loves you." Helena tells you one day in the library. Helena is sitting in one of those bean bag chairs, and you have brought over a chair from the tables. She's reading Harry Potter, to catch up on 21st century literature, and it was one of Henry's favorite books. Your heart does a lurch.

You sigh. "It isn't that simple. He loves her more. Them more." Your lips curl into a sneer.

"Well, you love her too, darling." Helena says with an eyebrow raised and that same knowing look she had when you first met her.

"Shut up." You say, and your nostrils flare, and red has spread out across your neck and cheeks.

"I'm looking for a dagger." Helena finally reveals, while taking a sip of tea. "I don't know what it does, but my old boss said that it was very, very important. I have my suspicions, however." She hands you a picture of the dagger and you nearly drop your own mug.

You really do hate how destiny works.