NOTE: I do not own OUAT or its characters

Regina sat in her porcelain tub, her ankles crossed, her knees up, her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She could no longer differentiate her tears from the shower water that cascaded her body.

She could feel each drop of water hit her and she could only wish that she didn't feel anything at all.

Her mind flashed back to a stable from a lifetime ago. Daniel's gentle touches, his first confession of love, their lips pressed to one another. Then her mother, Cora, ripping his heart out. The heart that was meant to be hers for all time crushed in her own mother's hand.

She might as well have taken Regina's heart with it.

But she had found love again. Her son, Henry, the reason for her existence for so many years. His laughter as a baby, his first steps, marking his height on the inside of his door, seeing him look at her and knowing he loved his mother.

Then that book changed everything. Her son began to look at her as the Evil Queen. He sought out his birth mother. He saw her as the villain. And again she didn't want to feel that. She didn't want to know that her son no longer looked at her with unconditional love.

Her sister came and she did the one thing she swore she would never do – took her own heart out. She saw what her mother was without her heart and she didn't want to become that. She wouldn't. But to protect that part of her she took it out, but Zelena found a way to get it anyway.

But she defeated Zelena. She did it. She was a hero. She got her heart back intact. She could feel again fully.

And that was why she was sitting in her tub as the water began to run cold. Her tears never stopping, her sobs audible only to her in her empty house.

Her son was gone. Emma was gone.

Back to New York they had gone. She had pleaded with Emma, argued with her, but Emma still left.

She had done everything …

Not everything. She never told Emma how she felt. She never told her how she wanted to run her fingers through the softness of her hair. She never told her how she wanted so much to taste those lips. She never told her that she wondered what it would be like to wake with those strong arms wrapped around her.

She never told her how the heart that beat in her chest belonged to her.