Author's note: I need you to suspend disbelief. I need to you to believe – at least for a little while- that time is fluid and that magic works in mysterious ways. Can you?

Thank you to MarieYotz for her most excellent betaing services and kind comments.

Much love to you all

Jane

…

You cannot be three years old and understand why mommy and daddy are sending you away. Not when the bedroom is big enough for one more baby, one so tiny that no one has seen it yet and you are aching to have a little brother or sister to play with.

Parents have imaginations like yesterday's bread. Emma's never could see with their minds' eyes Emma and the baby playing together in the garden or going to school together, holding hands. Emma could. She could see it, as clear as the water in Joseph the goldfish's bowl and it was good as peanut butter and honey sandwiches.

Children deserve parents with fresher imaginations because you cannot be three years old and understand how come the arms of a family do not stretch enough to hold two children instead of one.

At three years old, what you do understand by the time the lady with the sour face has you sitting quietly, dear in her office, full of dry papers and not one blanky or dolly, is that something broke and it's never going to be alright again.

The lady with the sour face gives you black pencils that you can't yet hold properly without mommy's hand steadying yours and paper that is boring and blank and then starts talking to the phone in her hand, really upset because, really, couldn't they have pulled this stunt earlier in the day when it would have been easier to find someone to take the kid in.

At three years old, you understand that sometimes what aches in your chest is your feelings, not the stuff inside.

So Emma stands up and asks to go potty because the voice of the lady with the sour face is sharp and it makes her chest hurt harder.

She doesn't have to, not really, so she carefully climbs onto the green, hard chair in the corridor and does her best to be a good girl even if no one is looking.

… … …

You cannot have your heart blackened and understand patience. The Evil Queen sits in her parlour and waits for the Huntsman to bring her the heart. She does her very best not to fidget even if no one is looking. No one but the mirror, that is. When you have a blackened heart, you cannot understand time. The Evil Queen wants that heart in her hands. She wants it because she thinks, no, she knows- that everything that's broken in her life will be alright if the Huntsman plunges that knife and brings her the heart in a box.

When you are the Evil Queen and your heart is black as soot, you don't understand that two wrongs don't make a right any more than two rights don't make a left.

The Evil Queen sits in her hard chair and though she has magic, she doesn't really believe in it. She thinks that she has to fight and fight and rip and tear everything she wants or she will never have it. When you are the Evil Queen, even if you have magic coursing through your blood, you don't really believe in magic.

When you are the Evil Queen, you don't understand what is wrong with people that they simply don't see what is inside you, the beauty and the kindness you are saving, like acorns for the winter. You don't understand how someone can fear you so much when it's love that fills your heart. Fear of being alone is a terrible, terrible thing. Makes you do terrible things.

So when you are the Evil Queen, even with power coursing through your veins, it takes a little while to understand how come, suddenly, you are sitting in a hard, green chair fit for peasants with only a small blond child for company.

… … …

Emma looks up from her hands on her lap. The woman sitting on the chair next to her has appeared out of thin air. She likes the expression. Who managed to measure air to say if it's thin or fat? But the woman is sitting right there with her and two is better than one. She looks up from the huge, huge black skirt up, up and there are diamonds on the dress and this is probably the prettiest dress Emma has ever seen. And when she looks up, there is a face that is sad and angry.

"Did someone send you away too?"

The woman in the black beautiful dress looks at her and Emma- because she is only three years old – and that is still very small, Emma knows- she doesn't understand why the woman looks at her in fear and confusion and then anger and something even worse than that.

Emma fills her chest with air and juts her chin out. "Well? Did they?"

"Did they what?" The woman asks her. "And how dare you address a queen like that?"

"Like what?"

The Evil Queen stands up. She wants to know what treachery this is, who is behind it and if they think they will survive her wrath. Whatever this magic is, wherever this place is, she doesn't like it. It smells like sweat and old and fear and it is not a place she cares to stay any longer. But for all her magic, she sees only a long corridor extending from one side and the other too, with no doors. Only her chair and the child.

"Do you smell that?"

"What?" Emma sniffs the air and the Evil Queen finds that the child is quite adorable- there are dimples in her cheeks and her dishevelled hair is sunny and jolly. Truly beautiful. For a trap, that is. She looks away trying to identify the smell or at least the source. The child stands and follows her.

"Sit!"

For a second she thinks that the child will cry. She can see the chin wobbling and the eyes close dangerously and for a second she feels like the worst person in any world. Then she remembers that Rumplestilskin, that her mother, they are cunning and dangerous and that love is weakness.

She pulls back.

The child bites her lip and pushes her chin up.

"You're not the boss of me!"

"Sit!"

"No!" The Evil Queen measures the little crumb of a person. She's fairly sure she is not supposed to like the gumption on the girl. Not one bit. "I like your dress."

"Good for you!" The Evil Queen remarks with a smile cold as a snake.

"Do you like mine?"

"No." The Evil Queen says with a sneer.

Emma shrugs. Mommy said that there are very mean people in the world and that she should not speak to strangers. But of course, Mommy said that she is not her mommy anymore, so she is not the boss of Emma either.

She straightens her dress and sits back in the chair.

"Who sent you?"

Emma doesn't understand the question. She looks at the woman and studies the dark eyes and the dark lipstick. Mommy had lipstick too, but a nice pink. Red is good too, Emma thinks.

"Why are you here?" The woman asks and she is angry and Emma is a little scared now, because she is on her best behaviour. But at least she understands this question.

"I need a new mommy. She's going to find me a new one." Emma points with her chin at the door that the Evil Queen can't see.

"Oh? What happened to the old one?" Regina asks and there is a bitterness in her that she just can't disguise. Or care to. "Did she die?" She mocks the child. Better that than to pick her up and sit her in her lap and start getting notions about children and happiness. All lies…

"What does that mean?"

"To die?" Emma nods. "Means that she's gone. Forever."

Emma shakes her head. "No."

"Well?"

"She's going to get another baby. One of their own."

The Evil Queen is interested now. Merely interest, she tells herself. Nothing else. "And you're not of their own?"

The child shrugs again but draws a blank when it comes to the reply. "Are you going to be my new mommy?"

The Evil Queen can't stand the hope in the child's blue green eyes. "And why would I want a brat like you?" It hurts in her blackened heart and it scares her. She has worked very hard at becoming impervious to emotion.

Emma thinks it through. "I give good hugs and kisses. I can be real quiet. I know how to go potty on my own." She stuffs her hands in her pockets. "I'm a good girl."

"What's your name?"

"Emma."

"Emma what?" The child shrugs again. The Evil Queen thinks that if this were her child, she would stop that because it's not becoming of a young lady. And then she has a vision of her mother and her lessons. She shivers and it makes her uncomfortable and antsy. And she is no good to anyone when she's antsy.

"What's your name?"

"I'm the Evil Queen, dear."

"That's not a name."

The Evil Queen doesn't know what upsets her the most, if the fact that it failed to suitably cower the child Emma or that the remark is so accurate.

"Yes, it is!"

"Is not!" The child fights back.

The Evil Queen doesn't even know what comes over her. "It is! I'm right and you're wrong, I'm big and you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it." Grown men have cowered before the Queen's tantrums. The child just stands there.

Emma is about to fight but the lady with the sour face comes out into the corridor and chooses a chair in which to sit as if she were real tired. She chooses to sit right where the Evil Queen is sitting.

The Queen stands up, and she is, all of her, hate and irritation that she would be so ignored. No one ignores the Evil Queen. No one!

"I've got good news, Emma!" The lady with the dour face is all business like as if she were about to embark on some explanation when Emma pushes her away from the chair.

"You can't sit there. She was sitting right there!" And she pushes and pushes but she is a tiny thing and the woman is a grown up and she simply takes the child by the arms and stops her. The Evil Queen wants to believe that it's not mean and intentional, but her whole childhood tells her differently. She stands up and walks to stand on the other side of the corridor.

"It's okay, Emma." Emma looks at her and stops resisting the hands around her arms.

"Who are you talking about?"

"The Queen. The queen was sitting there!"

The woman has a moment of panic and then anger. "There is no one sitting here, Emma! It's just your imagination!"

The Evil Queen is beyond indignation and she paces around. "She's real!" Emma insists.

Miss Hannigan of the dour face has worked hard all day and she is in no mood. She is out of patience too. But she has just enough left in her to know that this is a three year old that was just been abandoned by the only parents she's ever met and probably needs all the help she can get. She sighs deeply. "Emma, I found you a nice place."

"Did mommy come to pick me up?"

The Evil Queen finds that she doesn't know much about this world- make that a nothing at all. She travelled to many worlds with the Hatter but never to this one. But she knows that mommy wouldn't know what a mother is if it hit her in the head with a bucket of snakes.

"No." Emma deflates and the Evil Queen feels her blood boil. "But I did find you place in a group home for tonight and then we'll see what to do about you tomorrow."

"What's a group home?"

Whatever it is, it's not good, the Evil Queen just knows. The woman, however, doesn't explain. Instead, she gets up with a sad nod. "Stay here, Emma. I'm going to get my things and then we'll be on our way."

The Evil Queen returns to the chair, green and unwelcoming, next to Emma. She knows she should say something. Some word of comfort for a child. It doesn't even matter if this is a trap. She thinks of her castle, her fortress. Were she to take this child there, no one would ever take her back. Even if they could possibly know she was there, the castle is an impenetrable fortress. They would never get to her.

She wonders if it's appropriate to touch the child. Daddy does that sometimes. His hand on her arm, on her cheek centres her, gives her peace. "Emma." She calls softly and she is struggling for words to say when the child jumps from her chair to the Evil Queen's lap and laces her small arms around the Queen's neck. The Evil Queen hesitates and then her arms close around the child. She's doing this. She's going to take the child home with her and she pities the fool that tries to stand in her way.

She summons her magic to her. She's ready to go back, the child in a tight grip in her arms. It feels warm and something else that the Evil Queen can't quite put into words.

Except nothing happens. No magic transportation, not even from one chair to the other.

And then Miss Hannigan is out of the dreary door she'd disappeared into and she is taking Emma, kicking and screaming from her arms and the Evil Queen, the all powerful sorceress can't do a thing about it because the doors the woman goes through do not exist for her. She is stuck in a corridor with only Emma saying goodbye to her, being pulled by the hand by the harried Miss Hannigan.

… … …

Miss Hannigan's sour face comes eye-level with the crying Emma. "Stop it. Stop it this instant. You must be good now. You must be good or no one will ever want you. Stop this nonsense." It irritates her that she is too tired to deal with the child, but there you have it, ten hour days do not make for easy sympathy and she gives the child another shake that she immediately regrets but has no energy to make good on. She needs to drive the child to the group home and then forget about it. If only the child stopped looking backwards and minded herself.

… … …

The Evil Queen finds her way out of the doorless, windowless corridor the moment she stops hearing the child's cries and finds herself in her parlour with no idea how she got there. What she knows is that she wants to find a dark place to mourn the child and to mourn one more missed opportunity. She knows she can be happy. But it continues slipping though her fingers.

So her blood boils hotter and angrier and when the Huntsman comes in with a heart that is not that of Snow White, her revenge is swift and decisive: an eye for an eye. A heart for a heart.

A body for a body.

Until she more than believes- she knows- that it was all one more cruelty of her mind.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Emma is confused and scared and the only thing she wants is mommy. She wants to cuddle up to mommy and her bed and her dolly. Instead, a woman picks her up from the floor and puts her on a table. The woman looks her up and down and tickles her tummy- and she doesn't like that one bit- and then ignores her. Miss Hannigan hands over papers and whispers something. Both women nod and then the new one, Miss Mitchell, takes her to a big kitchen with sharp lights and puts a plate of food in front of Emma and a spoon and tells her to be a good girl and eat.

Emma is not hungry. Her tummy is full of fear and confusion and those feelings leave no space for food that does not even smell nice. The woman does not feed her. Mommy used to do that when Emma didn't want to eat. Emma misses mommy something fierce that hurts in her chest and in her tummy and in her eyes. The woman takes her to a big room and shows her a bed. It's not her bed and it smells like someone peed in there and all Emma wants is her own bed with the pretty princess quilt.

She tries hard not to ask when mommy will pick her up. She thinks she knows mommy will not come back for her and that her bed will go to the new baby, same as her mommy.

When Miss Mitchell goes away, she switches off the light and closes the door. Emma is afraid of the dark. She cries then. She cries because at three years old, she knows the world is a bad place and no one can be trusted. Not even mommy.

… … …

The Evil Queen cries because Snow White still lives and she still doesn't have her happy ending. She doesn't quite know how she came to believe that her happy ending will only come when Snow White moves out of the way, but she believes it with all her heart. There is, after all, nothing else to believe in.

Alone in her chambers, heavy, dry sobs wreck her body. She wishes she could still wish for her mother, but the only lesson she learnt at her mother's hand was that the world was a bad place and that people cannot be trusted. Especially not her mother.

She thinks of Emma.

She thinks that she should try to find her and bring her here.

She gets up from bed and lights candles and gets her books. She peruses through the valuable volumes without a care for the binding. She wants to find a way to… What is she thinking? Why would she want a child? Children turn on their mothers. She did. She turned on her mother. She tosses the books aside. Then picks them up again and flicks through pages, scans the words, skims the sentences. The child is little more than a baby. And the Evil Queen? Well, she's bored. Maybe she could, at least, make sure the little one is okay. She doesn't think anyone else in the world will worry about that sunny child. Not that she should. A squalling, irritating child is not what she needs right now. A child could not possibly be her happy ending. She needs only to concentrate on eliminating Snow White, on finding her impossible happiness.

There is nothing in the books. In any book.

She tosses them on the floor.

And then she's sitting in the dark and it smells of stale fear and mouldy sorrow. She recognizes the smell as the same she smelt in the empty corridor.

She tries to stand up but her night gown warps itself around her like a rope and it scares her enough that it takes her a while to figure out that she found Emma.

The child is awake in her bed and sits up. The darkness becomes less dark as the Queen's eyes adapt. She too is scared and anxious and she doesn't understand how she's here. Why she wanted to be here. And when she's scared, the Queen is truly evil. She is about to fire up a cutting remark about big girls not crying when she realizes that they do. Big girls cry their hearts out because, sometimes, it's what you have left.

Emma reaches out to her, a finger, a hand, and then her whole body. She sits in the Evil Queen's lap and closes her arms around her neck. The Evil Queen's heart beats anxiously like a rabbit in the jaws of a fox. Her arms flay around in her panic, but Emma doesn't let go. Slowly, the Queen surrenders. She closes her arms around the small body.

Then they cry together.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

It takes enough time to find Emma a home that the bed she sleeps in now smells only of her. Miss Mitchell aired out the mattress and the pee smell has started to fade. Then, one sunny afternoon, Miss Mitchell comes in, pulls a chair to the bed and sits with a comforting smile on her drying face.

"We found you a family, Emma."

Emma is scared. She had a family before and then they sent her away to live here. It's okay. There are cartoons and chocolate Rice Krispies and Miss Mitchell is nice most of the time. But Emma doesn't know who Miss Mitchell is talking about and she doesn't want to go with strangers anywhere. She is almost four years old now but she still remembers stranger danger that her old mommy used to tell her about.

Miss Mitchell tells her all about how nice they are and how she will have her own room and how there is a nice doggie that will love her very much. But all Emma wants to know is if they will have another baby too small to see and if that baby will get her room and her mommy from her. She doesn't dare ask. Miss Mitchell keeps on telling her how lucky she is and how she should be on her best behaviour so that they can get to know her.

Emma is really scared. They will be here in the morning to take her to her new home. Emma tries hard not to cry. Miss Mitchell sends her to brush her teeth and when the room is fairly quiet- it never really is, not with four other children in it- the light goes off and the taunting begins. Children always do that when someone gets a home. They do that when someone gets a nice toy inside the surprise chocolate eggs too. It's just something children do.

Emma curls up and waits for the room to go silent. She is desperate to see the Evil Queen. She always comes, every night when the room gets silent and the other children go to sleep. It's like magic. Emma believes in magic. Or she believes in the magic of the Evil Queen. She believes everything about the Evil Queen. When she feels the mattress dipping under the weight of a grown up, she calls softly "Is that you?"

The Queen replies softly "You should really call me Your Majesty. I am a queen."

"But you're not the boss of me."

The Evil Queen snickers softly and pulls Emma to her. "What's wrong?" She asks when she feels the little body tense and almost stiff under her hands."

Emma resists the hug and the comfort. Grownups call it sulking but really, it's just like you can't move because all your worries are so tight around you that they leave no space for your arms and your legs to move or for your heart to beat. "Miss found me a new mommy."

The Evil Queen wants to burn down the town. Failing that, she wants to eviscerate that Miss Mitchell of the dried-up face for trying to take Emma away from her. She's so angry she might just find a way. Emma is the one good thing about her life and she hasn't stopped trying to find the magic, the spell, the enchantment that will let her pick up the child in her arms and spirit her away to her castle. But then again, magic never did anything for her. She could not bring Daniel back and Snow is untouched by her best efforts. And she doesn't think about her mother's magic because it's the past and that has to be enough now.

She has magic in her but doesn't believe in it.

The Evil Queen has magic coursing in her, and she can do despicable things with it, she can hurt and torture and kill but the one thing she can't do, the one thing she can't make it do, is to safeguard those she loves. Because she loves this little snit more than anything and, quite possibly, more than anyone else.

She loves the little snit more than she hates Snow but she won't really understand that until it's far too late.

This world, however, has no magic. Magic is silent and cold in her when she comes to Emma. She has made her peace with it. Enjoys that. Like when your ears stop buzzing. The quietness of the power, the softness of Emma's arms around her neck and her babyish breath is a sort of peace she can never have in her world.

She tries and fails to be happy for Emma. She has the night time with the child, like a ghost that only comes when it's dark. It cannot be good for the child. Children need mothers and someone who is always there. The Evil Queen wishes she could always be there.

She wishes with all her blackened heart.

She tightens her arms around Emma.

"Will you come and find me? When they take me, will you come and find me?"

Hope blooms in the Evil Queen's chest and pushes rather painfully at the edges of her stolid heart. "Would you like that?"

"You are my friend."

"You'll have others."

"But you are the bestest one."

The Evil Queen is a fool. She knows this with the same certainty and calm acceptance she reserves for the sun rising in the east and setting in the west: the child Emma has her wrapped around her little finger.

"I'll find you."

"Promise?"

"I will burn the world down if I have to, but I will find you."

Emma thinks she shouldn't believe; that people break promises like bread, deliberately. But she likes this queen of the sad eyes. She even likes the mean things she says sometimes. "Okay. I believe you." She says solemnly.

They fall asleep together.

… … …

Miss Mitchell is impatient and harried. Emma doesn't yet know the meaning of the word, but she will learn to recognize the look of it, the wildness and the bitter hope. She will see it in the eyes of countless Miss Mitchells through the years until she finally leaves the foster system only to swap it for the stinky end of the legal system. It makes her nervous and she hides in a corner asking, begging the Evil Queen to come and sit with her, to come and hold her hand.

She should know better than to wish for it. The Evil Queen is a creature of the dark. She only comes during the night and now it's nearly lunch time and the sun is shining like a drawing in a children's book but it doesn't stop the wishing.

The Queen is suddenly there, dark as Emma has ever seen her, angry, sad, empty like a used balloon in Johnny Kane's birthday party. Emma stands there looking at her friend. She never sees the Evil Queen's face because it's always dark and still, she knows that there is a difference today. She doesn't know that today something died in the Queen, a residual hope of redemption. She doesn't know that the Queen does things, real bad things that she doesn't know how to regret. But she knows something broke inside her friend. She is a little scared but then she squares her shoulders and juts out her chin. "Evil Queen?"

It takes the queen a little while until she gets her bearings. She misses Snow the bandit, she misses being that girl of the careless days. She misses not having to live in her own face, in her own title. The look of disgust on Snow's face when she discovered the butchered village was the last of hope dying in her. She feels lost and alone and very, very scared. Some truths about yourself are more than you can bear. The child Emma calls her, calls her Evil Queen but right now, she feels like she is Regina all over again and she is scared of that too. She doesn't want to be Regina ever again. She wants to be the Evil Queen because she is invincible and unbreakable.

She looks at herself, her clothes, her hair, her hurt. Like a monster whisperer, Emma whispers in her ear, calms the storm, settles the wind and the thunder. She takes Emma in her arms and presses her face to the blond half hearted curls.

"I really need you, little Emma." Here, she can cry. Here, holding onto this child, there is still some goodness in her. And no one can see it. No one can see her.

"I need you too. Stay with me. Please." And Emma's voice is small. The Evil Queen is used to the little unflinching thing that Emma is, the defiance and purpose in her, but the little girl is scared of the world. She's going, she decides right there and then, wherever Emma is going. She is not leaving her. "You're my friend. You're my only friend."

Emma does. The child Emma sees her.

The Evil Queen snorts. She is pathetic in so many ways. Emma is her only friend too. "You're my only friend too, little Emma. But I have done so many horrible things…"

… … …

Miss Mitchell watches and worries from a distance. The child is a problem. The child is adorable but a problem. She has one single imaginary friend that dresses like something out of a nightmare from what she can understand from Emma's incipient drawings. There is something not quite right when your friend is mean to you, dresses in black and threatens to leave you. She worries because she doesn't have the means to help this child and she is fairly certain all that's needed is a good home. She hopes the Morgenstens are a good fit. They seem a little too wholesome and conventional for a child like Emma that needs so much and has such darkness around her, but maybe they can bring out the light in her. She has to hope because she is getting tired of the kids not having a home and if any of them can get it, Emma, with her dimples and shiny eyes is the one. Miss Mitchell just hopes that Emma minds herself.

… … …

Mr Morgensten is a religious, pious man. He believes in hardwork, discipline and prayer. He does not like imaginary friends. He doesn't want to be dramatic or alarmist but that's evil lurking around, waiting to claim a soul. His wife reads from the same charter. So when Emma shows very little interest in the family's activities- the wholesome sports, the church, the work and instead talks to her imaginary friend, it bothers them. It bothers them greatly. They have wanted to help a little orphan for a very long time. Charity begins at home. In the home. But Emma makes it very difficult. It scares them that her imaginary friend is not a princess or a puppy or a unicorn but the Evil Queen and one that confesses to terrible crimes. How messed up must a child be to befriend the Evil Queen instead of Snow White?

He finds that little orphan Emma of the pretty smile is a little scary. He can hear her at night, whispering to her Evil Queen imaginary friend and the certainty slowly cements that the child is dangerous to him, to his family. He starts to believe that such an imaginary friend is the voice of evil, grooming Emma to join the army of darkness.

One night, he walks into the small room that they decorated for whatever wholesome orphan they'd get to use their charity on and tried to hug Emma out of her friendship. He tried, like he was sure the Lord expected of him, to love it out of her. And maybe evil was already taking root in his home because he has all these thoughts and feelings coursing through his veins and he hates them, he hates Emma for making him feel those things because he's a man, a good, pious, hard working man and he can't have those thoughts in him. And still they are there and his hands reach out to Emma to rid her of the evil whispering in her ear.

If only the child would stop talking like there's someone there. He reaches for her and his hand closes around the skinny arm and he pulls the child to him. The child cowers into a tight ball on the floor. He pulls her up again.

"If you touch her, I will kill you. I will eviscerate you and feed you your entrails while your heart is still beating, I swear to you!"

He hears the words and he feels the lash across his skin, the piercing hate and the hot fury of whatever is in that room with them. He lets go of the child and stands up. He has known it all along that there is something wrong with this child. There is a darkness that follows her and he doesn't know what it is, but he is afraid of it. He's terrified of it.

Almost as much as Emma of him.

… … …

The Evil Queen doesn't know much about this world, but she knows that look in a man's eyes and she thinks it's the same no matter what world you are in. She will defend Emma from looks like those, from intentions like those and she will never let her feel like she did. Emma will never feel that way. She coaxes the child up from the tight ball she was one the floor. The Evil Queen refuses to remember Regina's childhood.

Emma regards the Evil Queen with curiosity. She feels the Queen vibrating like a jack in the box but she knows this is what love feels like. It's odd because she has this distinct feeling that she should be afraid of that look, of that voice but the only thing she knows is that the Evil Queen would never, ever hurt her. And that, Emma thinks, is love.

"Would you really do that to him?"

"And more."

"Evil Queen is not a really a name."

"It's who I am." The Evil Queen replies, anger and hate still volatile in her veins.

Emma looks at her, head tilted to the side trying to understand words that are beyond her years. "My name is Emma. Your name is…" She waits patiently for the reply.

Eventually, the Evil Queen gives in and completes the statement. "Regina. My name was Regina. Please don't call me that."

"You don't like it?"

"I don't like who I was."

Emma is unsure of what it means. Grown-ups are full of oddities and quirks but this is the Queen, her bestest friend and she takes it in stride. "I like it. But if you don't…" She shrugs and the subject is not mentioned again.

In the morning, she is all packed up. The family is returning her to the group home.

… … …

It was a good run, Miss Mitchell thinks. Four months is a good run for a foster family. She had hoped for more. She had hoped, in her wildest dreams, for a head over heels kind of event where they would fall in love with the child and call her theirs forever and sign the papers that said so. There weren't many such cases. Life seems to have very little to offer to someone who has already been rejected twice. Like it's on a roll and once it started it can't see why it should stop. She can see Emma's life from the door where she picks her up: rejection after rejection until she has grown up enough to get out of the way before that happens.

… … …

Her bed is not waiting for her. Some freckled, spectacled boy, too long for his pants has taken it. Emma gets another bed that smells of pee and it's like nothing had ever happened. Except it takes her a while to get used to the pee smell. Not enough to make her almost five year old self miss the pink and white bed at the Morgenstens. So long as she has the Evil Queen. Nothing can touch her, hurt her, upset her if the Evil Queen comes when she needs her. She only needs one of those eye-smiles of the Queen. There is something that Emma has learnt at almost five years old: You can fake a smile with your mouth. You can't fake one with your eyes. There is a light that shines that you can't fake with an eye smile and that is all too easy with a mouth smile. This is how she knows that when the Queen smiles at her, she does so with her heart. Emma is happy that she understands this. It's her secret. Even from the Queen who is her bestest friend.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

The Evil Queen has magic in her, but she stops believing in it and that's when magic dies in her. She has been watching Emma grow up alone, she's been watching that smile getting smaller and her body cowering into tight balls on the floor when the shadows loom over her. She's been watching Emma losing her sense of magic without being able to find the spell that brings her over. Being someone's imaginary friend, having a child be her imaginary friend is better than nothing, but it is the cruellest thing life has ever done to her. She never did find out who entrapped her into meeting the child but she can't bring herself to hatred anymore. She is, however, tired of losing. She keeps on losing: against Snow White, against life, against fate, mostly, against herself. The day she finds out about Snow White and her pregnancy, she loses what's left of the solidity of her mind. She considers things, she considers terrible things. She goes to Rumplestilskin, she goes to Malificent. She would have gone to her mother had it not been too late. The void in her heart takes up more and more of her.

… … …

Emma has slept in almost every bed in the group home. Every time she goes to a new foster family, she loses the bed where her own smell pushed away at somebody else's pee and sweat, that stink of fear and rejection. At almost seven, Emma finally understands that she is one of those kids, the kind that gets taken back over and over because there's something wrong with them.

She knows what's wrong with her: she's crazy and creepy. She talks to people that are not there. She talks about people dying and she knows what redemption is and she knows that sorry is beyond the word that you're supposed to say when you break someone's toy.

People that come to group homes to chose a child want sunny and happy and rainbows and unicorns. Emma has learnt to draw those instead of the blackness of the Evil Queen but she can't stop talking to her only friend. She has stopped talking back, fighting back and learnt to be rally small in a corner when she's scared. People that come to these places do not want complicated. And Emma is.

Miss Mitchell tells her that the Evil Queen is not real. That Emma has just made her up and she shows her books and pictures but those pictures are nothing like her Queen of the eye smiles. But Emma is seven years old and people have told her once too often that there is no Evil Queen, that she needs to grow up.

Emma is tired of pee smelling beds and Miss Mitchell asks her to give it a go, to not talk to the Evil Queen.

Emma decides one night after she was pushed and prodded by the other kids and by the doctors of the head to try. She does not wish for the Queen to come but the Queen comes anyway. Emma does not talk to her but she listens to her anyway.

And it breaks her seven year old heart.

… … …

The Queen knows because she was told so many times, that she is rotten to the core, that she is evil and doomed. That she deserves nothing good in her life. She goes to Emma because a seven year old child is her one, true friend, the most powerful magic in her life but Emma remains silent as if she couldn't see her. Emma, she knows, is leaving. She is leaving her. Emma is losing the ability to believe in her, to believe in magic because she is not looking for it any more. Emma is choosing to not see it.

Whatever broke in her all those years ago comes apart now as the stitching of good intentions that held her together simply comes undone, pulled at by the one loose thread in her: Emma.

She loses touch with what was left of goodness in her, the goodness she saved for Emma.

She loses one more person.

Something is broken and scattered in her but hope is the last thing to perish: she can be happy. Just not here. Maybe a different world. The Hatter has shown her many but there is only one she is interested in: the one where Emma is.

So she lunges her hand through her father's chest and as her fingers close around the warm softness of his heart, she prays that she too will be allowed to forget. That she will be allowed to forget what she has done to her Daddy.

She wants only to remember Emma.

To find Emma.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

It doesn't matter what you give up, what you trade in because, at times, life just has no space for the happiness of an abandoned child and an Evil Queen.

Emma gave up her one friend and no one cared. She was seven years old and people that come to group homes looking to adopt a child want something they can pretend it's their own. A seven year old knows she is not. They prefer babies, will settle for toddlers but will look elsewhere if all the home has on display is a seven year old.

For all the others, the foster parents willing to take in grown kids, they are little more than a paycheque at the end of the month, a free ride and an easy buck. Mostly, free hands on deck to clean, cook, scrub, be a punching bag.

And now, there is no one to scare away people who would hurt Emma, no one to pull her up when she curls into a tight ball of fear and loneliness.

Time takes even that memory away from her. She can't stand to remember what good she had once for fear of breaking under what she has now.

She forgets all about the Evil Queen.

… … …

When The Evil Queen wakes up, in this world at last, in Storybrooke, a winner at last, she has to make her peace with the fact that all magic comes with aprice. Her payment plan includes knowing that there is something important, something vital, that she forgot and remembering everything else: Daniel dying in her arms, her wedding night, the first heart she crushed, the stench of the slaughtered village, her daddy's last breath against her neck as she held his heart in her hand. And all the times Snow White won.

It doesn't matter what you give up, what you trade in, because, at times, life just has no space for the happiness of an abandoned child and an Evil Queen.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

A boy rings Emma's doorbell and she knows everything's changed.
By the time she gets to Storybrooke, Maine, she has managed to shake off that feeling. She chalks it up to the shock of seeing her son for the very first time. She hadn't looked when the doctors pulled him out of her, when they had offered her the chance to change her mind.

Emma knew his best chance was to be adopted while other people could pretend that he was theirs alone. She made a wish- that whoever adopted him needed him desperately, that they couldn't let go of him. Ever.

Standing in front of this white house, she needs to make sure he has what she wished for him, what she gave him up for.

A woman comes running down the path to him and she is fierce, fierce and Emma thinks she knows that everything is as she wished and still she can't just turn away. When the kid's mother looks up at her, she just knows that she can't go just yet. Not just yet.

There is something about the quiet desperation of that woman that pulls at her, something familiar, like a song in the radio that you can whistle but have forgotten the lyrics to.

… … …

The Mayor is scared of this woman that has come to steal her son. Maybe, she concedes when enough time has gone by, the woman is not here to steal her son, but there is something frightening about Miss Swan. Something familiar, a scent, a feeling that you can't define, can't name. And she is very scared of that familiarity. No one knows her. No one is to know her. Here, she is Madam Mayor. Miss Swan looks at her like she is about to list her deepest secrets, her darkest sins.

Worse: Madam Mayor feels like she is ready for it, for the unveiling. She is afraid of being ready.

… … …

Years go by where they both feel the pull and they both fight it, tooth and nail, kicking and screaming. As Henry grows between them, they get comfortable. Things have happened between them, around them, to them: the evil curse, the Evil Queen's life's work breaks, and their son is taken from them. Those are things that bring them closer, that calm the fear, that remind them of feeling something like this a long time ago, warm, safe, happy. Those are things that close the distance until they're so close one night that they're touching. So close that one heart beats and the other echoes.

If you're lucky, it doesn't really matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, what you've been through- so long as someone sees you- you. In the dark of the night garden, when they touch- the magic they haven't believed in for so long crackles like a fire between them. All the promises, all the secrets are in their skin, in their memory, in their heart, in the air around them.

They don't quite understand what's happening but it's okay. People have all sorts of reasons for believing in love - the least of which is the feeling that the person standing in front of you knows all your secrets somehow, all the times you have been punched to the ground, all the times you have been humiliated, all the times you have been ridiculous and cruel and ashamed of yourself and is still okay with it. The important thing is that you believe.

When they kiss, the dregs of the curse that bound them in solitude break. There are stars and sparks and soothing rain between them. There is magic. They see it, spreading out from them, spreading out in waves and ripples.

The lonely child never really recognizes her one friend. The Evil Queen never really recognizes her one hope. Life takes things away from you and is reluctant to give them back. But they see magic.

They see magic because they believe in it. They see Regina and Emma.

And it's perhaps okay that they don't really remember. See, sometimes, it doesn't matter that life has no space for the happiness of an abandoned child and an Evil Queen. All that matters that is that you're willing to risk what little you have and make life make room.

And then be happy.