A/N: Ok, I'm not sure if this is still technically considered Teen but considering it takes a rather violent and graphic turn immediately with mentions of child abuse and loosely mentions rape (if you can put two and two together) I'm changing the rating just to be safe. If you fear you will be triggered, please please please do not read this chapter.

None of us are sure what Cora did to Regina as a child but she used some sort of abuse to manipulate her daughter. Considering Cora has never really loved Regina just loved the power she had over her, I'm stepping away from the fanon that Cora has always loved her daughter deep down.

The show must go on…

"Why?" a little girl asks her mother with fear carved into her adolescent features, forever scarring her.

"Why what?" a mother, hand raised formidably as if she's ready to strike more fear into the already frightened little girl. "Why what? Speak!"

The girl, no more than six, shakes in the cold of her mother's shadow, eclipsed from the only source of warmth her room provides, as her knees ache on the hard floor beneath her.

For a moment she sees the flash of hate in her mother's eyes and then she doesn't see her mother at all anymore. Just…an evil woman.

"Why do you hurt me?!" she screams.

"Because I am the only one that will ever love you and you defy me!" Her mother screams back, surpassing her child's volume and reaching one that summons footsteps outside the girl's bedroom door.

A hard knock sounds then the door opens and a melancholic voice stops the hand about to strike the young girl. "Cora…"

xxx

Pain in her back, icy and yet hot and it stings variously like tiny droplets of acid being sprinkled on her skin. Again, the pain restrengthens and there's a lash in the air. Leather snaps against her back and she bites down on her pillow to keep from calling out.

"Does it not hurt my darling daughter?" her mother asks mockingly.

"No…"

"No what?" the whip cracks against her skin once more.

She grunts and her fingernails dig painfully into her palms. "No Ma'am."

"Will you be seeing that pitiable boy again?"

"No…" she's breathless and sleepy but the whipping stops and she feels relieved for only a second until she senses her mother raise her hand. "No Ma'am."

The woman drops the whip and it falls heavily beside her bed, landing with a cruel and taunting thud. She sits next to her daughter and runs her fingers through her long hair in a disturbingly comforting manner.

Immediately, the young girl relaxes into her mother's tender touch against her better judgment.

"Only I love you, my love. He would have only used you."

xxx

A hand tight around her throat, her hands bound behind her back, and her knees aching from the broken shards of glass digging into her skin; she finally speaks. "I…I'm sorry, mother."

"For what?" An unloving voice, hidden by the dark, demands.

A sob threatens to break throughout the darkness and almost shatters around her. But it doesn't.

She feels alone, and she hopes she's alone, but she still feels her mother's hand around her throat. She knows she's not alone. She'll never escape her mother. Not even in death. "Leaving."

Satisfied for now, the mother's voice changes and her grip slackens. Her daughter inhales sharply at the suddenly granted access to air once more. "Don't you ever leave me again. Please?" she pleads, innocence unnervingly color her words. "I…I love you. What have I done to deserve such an unworthy daughter?"

"I won't leave mother. I'll do whatever you need." She reaches for her mother but her hands are bound magically and she's slammed against the wall painfully as a consequence of moving against the bounding. She cries out.

A wicked sneer overtakes the mother's face and she whisper in her daughter's ear. "Do you remember the King of Gryvnor?"

A weak nod is her only response.

"He wants you, my love."

xxx

"You are worthless!" Pain. She feels it everywhere and nowhere all at once. First it's like a flash, like lightning in the sky…bright, and then it's gone in that same instant and she thinks she may have just imagined it. Maybe….she hopes….maybe her mother loves her enough not to hurt her.

She doesn't respond. She's learned to stay quiet by now.

"You are a worthless whore!"

Desperately she wants to respond. Beg her mother to understand. It was just a kiss…and he…he made her do it. She was still pure. She could still marry the King. A King. Whatever King that would have her now.

"What is it? Do you not want to see your mother prosper? Do you not want to prosper? You should be a Queen and all you seem to be is…" Her words trail off at her daughter's reluctance to respond and it only infuriates the mother even more.

The pain captivates the girl and her head falls back as she lets out a loud gut-wrenching sob bearing nothing but the emotional pain she feels at disappointing her mother and only wanting her to love her, to please her mother; she then falls weakly to the floor. Lying there with her cheek to the cold surface and praying to the higher powers for everyone and everything in the world to stop.

Her mother pulls her back to her knees and she looks up through the veil her black hair has created over her eyes and sees the red whip…

No…not the whip. "Please," she begs, tears spilling instantly in fear, in violent remembrance of the pain that whip once caused her. "Please! No!"

"Get. Up."

"Please!"

Her mother doesn't aim for anything specific she just aims the whip at her. The leather cracks against the back of her neck and skull. Pain resounds through her head and she loses sight for a moment before it readjusts on the patterns on her gown.

Through bleary eyes she hastily tries to crawl across the floor in a seeping escape but something hard, her mother's foot perhaps, presses down on her back and keeps the girl in place.

The girl's pathetic attempt to escape only enrages her mother even more.

"This is why a King could never love you." She whips her daughter again and ignores the disturbing sound that derives from the girl. "You are selfish and contaminated and stupid!" This time the whip draws blood. It tears her gown and the small of her back is exposed. The cold air exacerbates the pain.

She cries out, sobbing when her mother pulls her hair. Head forced back and on her knees now, she squeezes her eyes closed and her hot tears roll with an excruciating slowness down her cheeks.

The mother speaks into her daughter's ear tenderly. "You will never escape me." She promises.

"Daddy!" The girl screams. "Daddy please!"

A devilish laugh, her mother's she thinks, resonates within the walls and the candles flicker.

Daddy doesn't come…

"Daddy!" She screams once more, louder, at the top of her lungs like a screech. She can only see shadows now. She sees the light beneath the door shift but then it disappears. "Daddy…" her voice is soft and broken.

An arm around her throat, the grip much looser than it was a second ago, Regina's closed eyes clench for a long moment; trying to process the information; find a lie in the words.

"She loves us." She hears again in her head.

The words, three simple words formed menacingly to elicit some sort of reaction from her, resound in her mind and bounce around her skull painfully causing a concentrated headache to form everywhere.

Or, she thinks, it might be the lack of oxygen to her brain.

The words echo around her head and she hears a taunting laughter coming from the other woman. It sounds strikingly familiar to the one she's heard from her mother more than a dozen times in her childhood.

"Don't tell me you're surprised," the Evil Queen takes the other woman's continued silence as disbelief. She looks absolutely captivated and tickled by the possibility Regina never even realized it. "My, my. That is very fascinating." Something dark flashes behind her purple eyes as if she's gotten an idea or pieced information together.

"And…you love her as well."

"I…" Regina's words die on her tongue. It's certainly given her something to think about. Years of abuse has conditioned her to believe no one could ever love her. At least…no one but her mother. But now, she knows what her mother has felt for her has been nothing but power and control.

It wasn't until the last seconds she held her dying mother in her arms that she finally witnessed, that her mother finally felt, a mother's love for her daughter.

But still…Miss Swan of all people? Surely, she believes, fate can do better than that. How could it give her the loving Daniel then Emma? He was so patient and kind with her. He believed her without a second thought of doubt. All the while, Emma's never had a moment of not doubting Regina.

Though…that has something to do with Regina more than it does Emma. She's conditioned the woman to doubting everything she says and every movement she makes. She's a threat to these people, even when disarmed, she should expect anything else.

Which is why she never expected Emma to love her.

There was a time, once before the curse had broken, Regina remembers the soft, lingering glances and the way Emma would let her win an argument. She remembers now, the way Emma had immaturely provoked her and teased her just as she had been teased as a child by the boys that liked her.

She thought the woman childish but now…

"What's the matter, Regina?" the Queen is front of her now and the Mayor can't remember how or when that happened she just knows she's crammed between Emma and her evil counterpart.

"D-do you love her?" she asks only to have something to say. She has no real interest in how her other half feels for Emma, she just needs to buy time without appearing to.

The Queen looks thoughtful but bored with the question. "I…wouldn't mind having her loyalty and allegiance." She brushes a strand of hair behind Emma's ear over Regina's shoulder. "And she is rather alluring isn't she? I'm sure you've noticed." She adds with a lecherous smile.

"I haven't." Regina lies but blinks too long and her counterpart catches it.

But she has no interest in what Regina feels for Emma or what Emma feels for her. Only what those feelings could make each of them do for the other. She squeezes the heart in her hand, kept behind her back – away from the other woman's reach.

Emma's hold on Regina loosens completely and she falls to the floor in one loud, painful thud.

Regina turns at the noise and immediately responds by kneeling next to the Sheriff's unconscious body. "What have you done?!" she assesses the other woman for wounds, knowing fully well the cause of the blonde's problems is her removed heart and whatever the Queen is doing to it.

Perched on the desk again, the Evil Queen bites her bottom lip and grins wickedly, immeasurably regaled by the scene, the woman, unraveling before her.

Regina's hands are on both sides of Emma's face. "Stay with me." She demands to a body that doesn't hear her. "Fix her! You can do whatever you want to me but please…please…" She sounds like the little girl she was before. Begging her mother to make the pain stop.

Like a roll of film expanding behind her eyes, she sees all the times she's witnessed her son's eyes light up to the mere thought of Emma.

And knowing that she has done this in some way, if even by undeservingly being the subject of Emma's love, it makes her heart ache and she knows her son could never look at her the same.

Even if she killed the Evil Queen. Even if she and Emma's corpse even made it out of that godforsaken office…he would know that some part of his mother killed Emma. A woman, with the same memories and experiences and body as Regina, killed Emma.

She casts a preservation spell on the body, desperately hoping it stalls the process long enough for her to retrieve the heart.

"Please…" She looks over her shoulder at the smirking Queen. For all her life, Regina has been the only child. Taking her mother's abuse and blame and her father's guilt. For all of her life she's never once had a real friend besides Daniel. She doesn't remember what the friendship felt like, she just remembers loving him.

But looking at her, looking at the woman taunting her…Regina thinks for a moment she knows what it feels like to have a sister.

And she knows that's the only appropriate way of describing what they truly are to one another.

Sisters.

Forever competing against each other for their mother's approval and now that mother is dead, by the hands of Regina no less, the competition is over and it's about punishment.

The Evil Queen is punishing her.

For what she did to their mother…

A/N: Remember reviews are my bread and butter...for confidence...to write. Or something along those lines. I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I am sorry if you feel triggered in some sort of way.