A/N: The prequel takes place around 1.12, while the rest of the chapter the night between 2.09 and 2.10. This fic is currently rated T, but it will likely change to M for later chapters, but be warned. This is very slow burn.

Prequel

"You could at least pretend to dress like an actual sheriff."

Emma groaned as she was zipping her jeans and trying to find her socks. Why was it that her socks always ended up flung about in the strangest places after these encounters.

"You have an obsession with the way I dress, Madam Mayor."

"Sue me for wanting city employees to dress like adults, and not in tacky leather jackets bought at thrift stores."

The insults usually happened not long after the sex. When both the mayor and the sheriff tried to remember despite what had just happened that they in fact hated each other. And they did hate each other. Regina had made that abundantly clear. From the moment she came into town.

How they ended up in these encounters Emma tried not to think too hard about. The first time had been in the mayor's office. There had been yelling. And then there was kissing. And other things. And as comfortable as that couch was, the desk and the table and the wall were less so. So they found themselves at Granney's. Regina apparently kept a room here.

Probably for Graham originally.

Now for Emma.

This wasn't a relationship. Emma was clear on that. Regina was clear on that. It was sex. Meaningless sex. With a woman she hated. With the woman who was the mother of her son.

Okay, perhaps not quite meaningless sex.

And damn it was good.

"Don't knock thrift stores. You find the best stuff in things people throw away."

Regina smiled, having slipped back into her own clothes as if Emma hadn't practically torn them off her an hour before. She smiled and kissed her. "That you do. Now go back and do your job Sheriff. Try to be an adult for once."

Chapter 1

Emma walked up the path to the mayor's house the night after getting home with some trepidation. If it had been two weeks ago, right after the curse broke, or really just about any time she'd been in the Enchanted Forest she would have said that she was going to storm up this walkway and perhaps even kick down the door. She was a bounty hunter it wouldn't have been the first door she kicked in. But she'd landed in that well with Mary Margaret and crawled out and there was Regina Mills sprawled on the ground and Henry telling them that she'd saved them.

It took a while to get anything like a story that made sense out of Henry, and that was being generous. Gold wasn't talking obviously and Regina...

She was still mad at Regina. And she wasn't. She used the door knocker and heard the footsteps approaching. Regina wore heels in her own home. She'd teased her about it once. When she was tentatively trying out teasing her lover without meaning to hurt her. That hadn't lasted long.

Her lover. She had been sleeping with Regina on and off for months before the curse broke. It had started after August came to town. After she started to wonder if Regina perhaps wasn't the uncaring monster she thought. But it had also started as angry hate sex. The first time it had been in the mayor's office. Well the first several times. They usually started as fights. Their tendency to get right up in each other's face to intimidate each other seemed to lead to other things as well.

It started with kisses they'd pretend didn't mean anything. They'd even pretended the first few times didn't happen. The sex came quickly though. Full of anger and passion and absolutely nothing like what Graham had described sex with Regina was like. Though the fact that he was a man and she was not might explain that. After the sex there would be a brief moment when Emma thought anything could be said and meant, before either she or Regina would close that door and they were Sheriff Swan and Mayor Mills again.

Two women who loathed each other having meaningless sex. Who had a son between them. And it wasn't exactly meaningless. The problem was it had way too much meaning. At least from Emma's point of view.

Regina seemed to take a moment at the door before opening it, and Emma wondered if she was schooling her expression for a lynch mob. Either way she was annoyingly put together for it being past ten in the evening with god knows what kind of magic she'd absorbed. "Miss. Swan."

"We need to talk." Emma said bluntly.

"It's late."

"I've been tramping through the forest for two weeks, you aren't avoiding this conversation longer."

"Do your parents know where you are?"

"I'm not five Regina."

"No you aren't, but knowing Snow she's likely to try and treat you like you are."

"I'm not here to talk about my parents."

"Of course not." Regina stepped aside. "Can I get you a drink?"

Emma knew she should say no. She knew that Regina mixed drinks stronger than anyone she'd ever met including sailors. "Yes, please."

Regina lead her to a side room and poured them both glasses from a decanter. Regina was the only person Emma had ever met who kept her liquor in fancy bottles. If you had fancy liquor in most places Emma had been, you wanted to be able to show off the label.

It made a certain amount of sense that she would be a queen. Except nothing about this made any sense.

Regina handed her a glass. "Are you here to kill me, Miss. Swan?"

Emma blinked, several times, "What part of we need to talk wasn't clear. Kill you?"

"You've just come back from our home. You've seen a lot of our world. Deposed queens are inconvenient and your parents don't have the heart. Not Snow certainly. David thinks he does but I'm not even sure he does." She moved to sit down in a wing backed chair.

Emma stood stock still where she was with her glass still trying to articulate how crazy that just sounded.

"You were sleeping with me."

"We didn't actually sleep you know."

"Stop playing games." Emma growled. "Was that what it was to you? A game? Sleep with the woman who is supposed to break your curse. Distract her?"

"I think we were distracting to each other, Emma." Regina said with a sigh and used her first name for the first time in the conversation. "Yes... and no."

"That's not an answer."

"It's frequently the answer." Regina took a long swig of her own drink.

"You spent the last year using every weapon in your arsenal trying to protect your curse."

Regina actually laughed at that and Emma didn't know how to respond. "Emma... you will never know what hell that curse was for me. Everyone else at least didn't know they were trapped for twenty eight years. I attended the same school board meeting more than four hundred times. I know. I counted once. During the same meeting."

There was something odd about the way Regina was acting. Not drunk. Though given how strong her own drink was when she tasted it one could wonder. "Alright, so what was all that bullshit?"

Regina smiled. "What do you want to ask Emma, really? I've had a long day. Absorbing a mine full of fairy dust will make you tired."

"Did you really save our lives today?"

Regina actually cocked her head to the side. "I did. Henry asked me to trust him."

"Why were you trying to kill us?"

"I wasn't. I agreed with Gold that the portal needed to be closed to prevent my mother from coming through. She'd destroy everything I have. She's done it before. He wanted my help... though never actually asked me to do anything. Which should have been a clue..."

She swirled her drink and finished it off.

"A clue to what?"

"Best guess? He was going to blame it on me. I had the motive for wanting you and your mother dead. It wouldn't have been the first time I fell into the trap of being one of his pawns."

Emma desperately wanted her to explain that remark, but now didn't seem the time.

"So you saved us for Henry."

"I saved you for Henry."

Emma nodded, accepting that. She might not have a few months before, but she had seen Regina the day he ate the apple turnover. Whatever kind of warped heart Regina Mills had, she loved Henry as much as she was capable of loving anything.

Which come to think of it was frightening intensely.

"And me? Was that all a game too?"

"I told you already, yes and no."

"Sometimes I just want to punch you in the face."

Regina smiled. "Careful Emma, last time we came to blows we both went away wounded. Besides, I'm not quite so defenseless now."

Emma remembered now why so many of their conversations resulted in threats.

"Explain it then."

"I loathed you, and I hated you and I found you the most fascinating thing that had walked through my life except for Henry in twenty eight years. And I tried to pick you apart, find the best ways to destroy you, and make you run away. And you would find ways to counter me. It was like a very grand chess game. Except the cost of me losing was you taking my son."

"He's my son."

"Can we defer that argument for when I have more energy? Because you know I'll dispute that to my dying breath."

Emma was silent, half angry and half ashamed, and she had no idea where that second emotion was coming from.

"So maybe when you kissed me the first time I thought it was an interesting opportunity. But I'm a woman who obsesses over things easily."

"Like a decades long murderous vengeance spree against Snow White for being prettier than you?"

That actually made Regina laugh more than Emma had ever heard. She might have even called it hysterical. "Is that what she's saying? I thought it was only the Disney version..."

"She wont say why. I don't think she knows."

"She knows." But apparently Regina wasn't in a sharing mood.

"Perhaps I should go..."

Regina looked up at her. "So it's over?"

"What's over?"

"The thing between us."

Emma looked at her, not for the first time, as if she was crazy. "You aren't who I thought you were."

"You are."

"It needed to be a two way street. Listen... I believe you when you say it wasn't malicious. But you are ... not someone I really want to be having sex with. Not now." Part of Emma knew that was a lie. She'd have to sort her feelings about that out later. "Listen... there is going to be this thing tomorrow. At Granny's. You should come."

"The victory party? I don't think I'm on the invite list."

"You are on mine. Come. Henry wants you to be there."

Something lit up in Regina's eyes and for a moment Emma wondered about that woman. The one behind the masks.

"Listen Regina... I don't care what happened in that other land. I'm going to give you your second chance. Just don't waste it."

The former mayor, and former evil queen just nodded. "I wont."

Unfortunately for them both her mother had other plans...