A/N: Sorry for the delay with this chapter - with Christmas and New Year and work and everything things have been a bit busy, but I hope you guys enjoy :) x

Chapter eight

As she had expected, the queen was waiting for her when she arrived at the vault.

Regina reached the bottom of the staircase and found her stood silently in the centre of the chamber, her hands folded in front of her and her posture straighter than ever. She raised her eyebrows, but her face remained otherwise impassive. Regina couldn't help but notice the inky smudges under her eyes.

"Regina," the queen said, not smiling. "To what do I owe the pleasure this time?"

"We need to have a talk," Regina said, tugging her leather gloves from her hands and pushing them into her coat pocket. Her knuckle grazed against the heavy glass syringe. "A serious talk."

Without waiting for the queen to respond, Regina walked past her and approached the chaise lounge in the corner. She sat down without asking permission.

The queen turned to look at her, her eyes narrowed. "Well. Something's changed, it would seem."

"It has," Regina said, clasping her hands together and forcing herself to lift her chin. "Why did you come to Storybrooke?"

She asked the question bluntly and without preamble, because she'd finally had enough of skirting around the truth. The queen blinked at her.

"Haven't we covered this?"

"Many times," Regina confirmed. "But aside from a dozen sarcastic responses and endless threats to ruin my life, you've never given me a proper answer. So, I ask again: why did you come here?"

Quite unexpectedly, the queen fell silent. She looked down at Regina with narrowed eyes and tightly gritted teeth.

"Was it just a reflex?" Regina prompted. "Did you even think about it? Or did you just know that I would be here, and so you decided to follow me and end my life without really considering the details of how you would do that?"

"What point are you trying to make, Regina?" the queen asked, taking a step towards the couch.

"You came here without a proper plan," Regina said, looking pointedly at her slightly trembling fingers. "We both know how unlike you that is. And since you've been here, you haven't hurt a single person – we definitely know how unlike you that is."

"So?" the queen demanded, but her cheeks had turned pink.

"So," Regina parried. "Something isn't right. You've been drifting around not doing anything, not attacking anyone, not even making your presence known – apart from when you've been sinking your claws into Emma. But even that was wrong. You attached yourself to her rather than trying to hurt her and I haven't been able to understand a minute of it. Something is different about you."

"Of course something is different about me," the queen snapped, gesturing down at herself with venomous hatred. "I'm only half a person, remember? Things have changed a bit since we last crossed paths."

"Do you even want to be here?"

The queen looked around her pointedly. "Well, I can't say it's the most spectacular place in the world, Regina. You could have done much better."

There was a pause before Regina sighed, leaning back against the couch.

"For one second," she said, her voice suddenly softer than either of them were expecting it to be. "Can you drop this attitude and just have a conversation with me?"

The queen laughed. "Unlikely."

"Try," Regina said flatly. "It won't kill you."

"Like you tried to, you mean."

"Yes, precisely. Tried, and failed, because you can't just remove a part of yourself and make it disappear. I learned that the hard way. Whether I like it or not, you are half of me, and I can't kill you any more than you can kill me."

"To clarify, dear, I could kill you if I wanted to," the queen pointed out.

Regina sighed. "Yes, and if you did so then you would probably die too. We both know that, and neither of us wants it."

"I'm not so sure about that," the queen muttered. "Ridding the world of you would be the good deed to end all good deeds."

"And given your complete aversion to doing anything remotely good, I can rest easy," Regina shot back. She sighed, trying to pull back. "Please. I want to talk."

"We are talking."

"I want to actually talk. We can scream at each other all day long but nothing will be achieved unless one of us listens for a moment."

The queen squinted at her, and for a moment Regina was certain that she was going to continue shouting just to spite her. Then, with a deeply resigned sigh, she approached the couch.

"You really have gotten dull," she said, sitting down as far away from Regina as possible.

"I have," Regina admitted. "But actually, a lot of that only happened after you and I got separated."

"You mean you weren't this mind-numbingly boring before?"

Regina shot her a closed-lipped smile. "No."

"I find that hard to believe," the queen said. "But go on."

Leaning back, Regina sighed. She took in the queen's rigid posture, her dark make up, her crown-like hair.

"I shouldn't have done it."

The queen narrowed her puffy eyes. "Done what?"

"Separated us," Regina said slowly. "I thought I knew what I was doing, but since I got rid of you, nothing has seemed quite a clear as before. Things don't feel right. I don't have the same confidence I used to, and I think maybe you were the reason for all my... my determination, and my fortitude. Now that you're gone I just feel… angry. I feel confused. I haven't stopped snapping at Emma in weeks and half the time I don't even realise I'm doing it. I was never like this before."

She watched the surprise crossing over the queen's face like a cloud.

"You're being very forthright, Regina," she said.

"I know," Regina sighed. "And I will probably live to regret it. But we weren't getting anywhere, and this needed to be said at some point."

When the queen didn't respond, Regina took a deep breath, clasping her hands more tightly together.

"Why did you come to Storybrooke?"

The Evil Queen groaned. "Could you please stop asking that?"

"I will as soon as you've actually answered me," Regina said, crossing her legs over. "I have nowhere to be. I can wait for an answer for as long as it takes."

The queen glared at her, but all of a sudden she looked inexplicably small. The halo of rage that permanently hovered around her didn't seem as bright as normal.

She pushed her jaw forwards and muttered, "I came here because I wanted revenge."

"Okay," Regina said, not moving. "That's understandable. Did you know what that revenge would be?"

There was a pause, and then the queen said, "No."

"Isn't that unusual?" Regina asked, leaning forwards. "Even in our heyday we never steamed into something without some kind of plan, but you came here without even thinking about it. And since then, it's been weeks, and the best you've managed to do is redecorate my vault and distract my sheriff."

The queen smirked. "She wasn't difficult to distract."

"I don't doubt that for a second," Regina rolled her eyes. "She has the attention span of a flea."

For a split second, they shared a faint smile. Then Regina sighed once more.

"Why haven't you tried to attack me?"

The queen snorted. "I don't know why you sound so disappointed."

"Not disappointed," Regina replied. "Just surprised. You can't kill me, granted, but there's plenty of other ways you could hurt me. You know I have a son, but you haven't gone after him. You know I have friends, but you've left them well alone. The only thing you've done is follow Emma around, claiming that you were doing it to make me jealous. But given that I didn't even recognise my own jealousy until yesterday, I don't think that could have been the reason. I think you were doing it because of something else."

Again, the queen's flickering rage dimmed slightly. She swallowed.

"And what is that?" she asked.

"I think it's because she was kind to you," Regina said, watching as the colour drained from the queen's face. "You were cut away from me and you must have been furious, but you were probably also quite lonely. Everyone in this town was avoiding you and it's obvious that whatever fire used to drive us both has faded slightly. But Emma didn't seem to mind – she let you tag along. She actually spoke to you like a normal person. That must have been… nice."

The queen blinked, repeating that single, insipid word. "Nice."

"You don't have to pretend otherwise," Regina said. "You do realise that we once shared a head."

"I remember it vividly," the queen sniffed.

When Regina just stared at her, her eyebrows raised as high as they would go, the queen rolled her eyes.

"There is a chance," she admitted as slowly as she could, "that I appreciated it, yes."

"You love her."

The queen recoiled at the bluntness of Regina's words, blinking furiously. She opened her mouth, a dozen protests waiting on her tongue, but she found it suddenly impossible to sort them apart. Eventually she settled for the most pathetic response she could muster.

"I do not."

Regina scoffed. "That was not especially convincing."

"How can you—"

"I love her too," Regina said, her voice soft, and at once the queen fell quiet once more. "You were right. Everything you two did together was driving me mad and I didn't even realise why. But it's true, and it turns out that, for some ridiculous reason, I love her. And you do too."

The queen snorted. "Well, of course I do, you fool. We're the same person."

"How long have you known?"

To Regina's immense pleasure, the queen actually blushed. "Longer than you. I knew she was special from the moment we met in the cemetery."

Regina pressed her lips together. "I knew she was special when I first met her too. I just… didn't appreciate that fact for a very long time."

"Until I showed you what you were missing, you mean."

Regina rolled her eyes. "Fine. You made me jealous and it made me realise how I felt about her. Congratulations. You've managed to screw both of us over."

"And how exactly have I done that?"

"Well, look at us," Regina sighed, gesturing between them. "Emma clearly likes both of us, for whatever reason, but how can she have a relationship with two half-people? This can never work."

The queen swallowed. "I suppose not."

"We're two sides of the same coin," Regina said. "And Emma likes both of them. But she can't love half a coin – she deserves better than that."

"She… does," the queen said reluctantly.

"You know what I want."

The queen narrowed her eyes at her. "You tried to get rid of me, and now that things aren't going to plan, you want me back again?"

"Yes," Regina said simply. "I shouldn't have separated us. That was wrong, and I'm sorry. But I think you know that coming back together is the best thing for us, and not just because of Emma."

"Why would this be beneficial to me?" the queen snorted. "I'm free of you now. Why would I want to confine myself to your bland little head again?"

"Because we don't work separately," Regina said simply. "You know it as well as I do. I thought your rage and your maliciousness were holding me back all this time, but it turns out I'm really nothing special without it."

She could see the queen itching to make a scathing comment about how she was nothing special anyway, and so Regina pre-emptively cut over the top of her.

"Don't say it," she said, watching as the queen snapped her mouth shut. "I won't believe you. Everything you've done since you arrived has been all bluster and sarcasm but there's been absolutely no weight behind it. I'm not afraid of you, just like you're not afraid of me."

"I've never been afraid of you," the queen muttered, and Regina rolled her eyes.

"Shut up," she snapped. "I'm trying to build a bridge here. I apologised, and I actually meant it. Can't you at least meet me halfway?"

To her surprise, the queen didn't respond. Instead she sat very still, her hands clenched in her lap, and continued to look resentfully at the woman sat across from her.

With a slightly softer voice, Regina added, "Are you even happy like this?"

When the queen still didn't say anything, Regina had her answer. She saw the dark circles under her eyes and the slightly bitten lower lip for what they really were – they were sadness. The queen was just as lost as she was.

Regina sighed.

"I can't focus without you in my head, shouting at me to do better," she said quietly. "I don't have any drive anymore. It took me nearly three weeks to think of a solution to the problem I was having with you when it was in front of me all along."

She pulled the full needle from her pocket as she spoke, and the queen glared down at it.

"And what was the solution?"

"An antidote," Regina said flatly. "I never even thought about it. I was looking for old magic, dark magic, hidden loopholes in our story, and somehow I didn't even think about creating a corrective potion to counter this one. It was so obvious, and I never considered it."

"You're losing your touch," the queen said, laughing. But her heart wasn't in it.

"I am," Regina admitted. "And so are you."

"How, exactly?"

"Because you have no idea what you're doing," Regina said simply. "You still don't know why you're here. You can't plot, you can't scheme – you were marvellous at getting me to be jealous of you and Emma, but anyone could have done that if they had the same knowledge about me that you have. You came to Storybrooke because you didn't know where else to go, and you've been wandering around aimlessly ever since. You don't have a purpose without me."

She watched as the queen gritted her teeth. When she spoke, the bad taste of her own words was evident on her face.

"I suppose there's a chance that I didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to function without someone… grounding me," she admitted, closing her eyes. "Half of me is missing. And it may be the annoying, boring part that I never thought I'd miss – but it seems that I can't be myself properly without it."

"You need me in order to be you."

It wasn't a question. The queen's nostrils flared.

"Yes."

"That's it?" Regina prompted. "Just 'yes'?"

"That's all you're getting," the queen snapped back at her. Her eyes were still fixed on the purple potion in Regina's hands. "Does Emma know about this?"

"No," Regina sighed. "She knows I'm here but I didn't tell her what I was going to do. Just in case I couldn't convince you."

The queen snorted. "You haven't yet."

"Look," Regina said. "I made a mistake. I shouldn't have used this potion – I shouldn't have done that to you. You're a part of me and just trying to cut you off was stupid and selfish and lazy, but I'm trying to make it right now, and if we come back together I promise we will work together more. The good part of me will stop us from going down the evil path again – that, I'm afraid, I will not compromise on – but your part will give us the determination and passion we need again. Because I do need you, and if you come back we… we can work together. Okay?"

The queen was watching her curiously, her slightly raw bottom lip jutting out like she was trying to stop herself from crying.

"You're not the Evil Queen anymore," she said slowly, and it hurt Regina's heart to realise just how sad she sounded. "You don't want me there. You just need me."

"Isn't that even better?" Regina asked, reaching out and gently touching her arm. She felt the queen flinch beneath her fingertips. "You'll be back in my head, tormenting me all day long, and there will be nothing I can do about it. I'll have to listen to you. I will probably even carry on your tradition of zapping Hook out into the woods whenever I see him, because that did sound like fun."

The queen smiled in spite of herself. "I really did enjoy that."

"I haven't even considered doing something like that in a while," Regina sighed. "I have become boring. I don't like being this way, and I don't think Emma really likes me like this either. She's waiting for the mayor she knows to come back, but I can't give her that without you."

The queen pursed her lips, looking wistfully at the serum in Regina's hands. "Did you… kiss her?"

"No," Regina said, her heart fluttering. "Not yet."

"Not yet," the queen repeated softly. A sudden flash of longing glinted at the corner of her eye. "So if I come back… I'll get to be there when you do?"

Regina rolled her eyes. "Yes, I suppose so."

And apparently that was all the convincing the queen needed, because she nodded, her tongue darting out to wet her lips.

"Fine. Let's do this."

Regina blinked. "Really?"

"What, you're going to try and talk me out of it again now?" the queen snapped before she could stop herself. When Regina just raised her eyebrows, she forced herself to take a deep breath. "Yes. It's going to be painful in so many ways, but… you're right. It's time to do this."

Regina felt a skip of excitement inside her stomach. "Okay. Okay, let's do it."

For a moment they both just looked down at the needle in her lap, at the thousands of glittering stars that skittered across the potion's surface. Then Regina said in a quiet voice that neither of them recognised, "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For… everything," Regina said, her shame seeping from her. "Out of the two of us, you've always had it worst. I of all people should have given you a chance, rather than kicking you out into the cold."

"I survived," the queen said flatly. After a beat, she added, "I suppose I'm sorry too."

"For what?"

"For nearly destroying your relationship with Emma," she muttered. "Although, to be honest, I'm not sure there's anything I could have done to fully come between you. She really is devoted to you."

Regina felt her face go warm and soft. The queen noticed too and immediately rolled her eyes.

"Please don't be such a sap, dear. Just take the apology without crying about it."

And Regina couldn't help but laugh.

"Okay," she said, swallowing back the grateful tears because she knew they would be more likely than anything to make the queen change her mind. She held up the syringe between them. "Are you ready?"

The queen took a breath and held out one shaky arm. As Regina rolled up her long, velvet sleeve, the queen said, "I'm ready for anything."

"Excellent," Regina said, guiding the needle towards her. She paused, looking her twin dead in the eye for one last time, before she added, "Don't you dare mess this up for us."

The queen smirked, watching as the needle hovered over her skin. "Oh, my dear. I wouldn't dream of it."

Regina stayed sitting in her car for some time after she arrived at the sheriff station. She took a deep breath, her hands gripped around the wheel. When she closed her eyes, she could hear a crackling noise that she hadn't realised had ever gone away.

She felt heavier somehow. More solid. She knew that she must be imagining it, but it was a comforting sensation and she held onto it for a moment.

She sat back in her chair with her eyes closed and realised that her heart felt different too. It felt sadder, if that was possible – like she could feel the blackness ebbing back through it like ink. All the pain that she'd managed to cut away from herself weeks before had come flooding back in, and it sat densely in her chest.

But she breathed a sigh of relief. Her numbness had gone, and she wanted to submerge herself in this familiar fury.

The moment the queen had vanished in front of her eyes, she had heard the rattle of a thousand more thoughts making their way through her brain. It was harder to keep them quiet than she'd remembered. While Regina was certain she would get tired of them very, very soon, their presence was – for now, at least – inexplicably soothing.

She took a moment to settle back into herself, like her body was a new coat that needed wearing in, and leaned her head back. There was something unnerving about this new fullness, and it took her a moment to realise why.

There were new memories ricocheting around her head. When she closed her eyes, she could hear the whisper of the queen's voice muttering to herself as she strode around the vault, and she could feel the swish of an unfamiliar skirt against her ankles. Regina swallowed, trying not to think too hard, somehow knowing that if she grasped onto the feelings too tightly they would escape her. Instead she tried to hold them loosely in her mind like a bird between her fingers, and she waited to remember the things that her brain was telling her she'd simply forgotten.

"You think you know her better than you actually do."

Emma had smirked at her from across the kitchen table. Regina recognised the morning, and she recognised Emma's clothes – it had been moments before she had walked into the house, and Regina had ended up sitting exactly where the queen was now.

"Not possible," Emma said. "I know her better than I know anyone."

"Including me?" Regina heard herself say, her heart suddenly pounding. She tried to offer Emma a mischievous smile, but Emma didn't laugh.

"No – I know you exactly the same. You're still the same person to me."

The queen's heart squeezed. "Well, then you're even stupider than I thought. She's made it pretty evident that we are two very different people now."

"Maybe physically," Emma said, not backing down. "But you're just a side to her, and it's a side I knew very well. I liked it. It's a side I miss."

Shock reverberated through the queen's extremities as she demanded, "You liked her when she was like this? When she was bitter and cruel to you?"

"I could have done without it sometimes," Emma shrugged. "But yeah, I liked her. And I still do. She's just... different now."

Her voice was so soft, and it made the queen ache all over.

"You really do care about her," she murmured.

"I do," Emma said. "I always have."

"Even now, when she's snapping at you and chastising you and–?"

"Yes," Emma said simply. "No matter what she's like, the answer is yes."

Regina could see Emma saying those words, her lips twisted with an amused smile and her green eyes crinkling at the corners. As she watched her, she felt the memory of her own heart skipping. The queen's hands had been bunched nervously in her lap and at the time, she'd pushed past the feeling, pushed past the warmth in her chest and the faint bubble of happiness that she knew was just tempting her into another fall.

Regina groaned, her entire body locking onto that smile. Oh, god... Emma hadn't smiled at her like that in so long.

The queen's heart was pounding in her ears – Regina's ears – and Regina recognised the urge the reach across the table and grab Emma by the sides of her stupid, beautiful face all too vividly. The queen hadn't been able to drag her eyes away from Emma's lips as she spoke. Regina could hear the thought clattering around in her brain: how the hell has Regina managed to resist her all this time? If the queen had been in this town for that many years, the first thing she would have done would have been to seduce the sheriff.

In fact, it had been the first thing she'd done when she'd arrived.

Regina shook her head, hoping she could force the two voices inside her brain to crash back into one before this drove her completely mad. But in her memory – her delicious new memory that she wanted to bottle up and keep by the side of her bed – Emma just smiled again, and she felt herself melt.

It reminded her of another time. She hadn't been there either, and yet now she had.

Emma was sitting cross-legged on the bench, her hands clasped around a takeaway coffee cup from Granny's. The queen sat next to her. Behind them, the fluorescent sign that hung outside the diner was crackling, and the orange-red light from it was dancing off the side of Emma's face. The queen's stomach had melted then too, watching the softness on Emma's face and the completely unguarded, unconcerned smile on her lips. The queen looked down at them, a sudden, tight longing gripping at her chest.

"You won't tell anyone this, will you?"

Emma's voice startled her, and the queen tore her gaze away from her lips.

"Who exactly do you expect me to tell?" the queen drawled. "It may have escaped your attention, but I'm not exactly on pleasant enough terms with anyone in this town to let your secrets spill out over afternoon tea."

"I didn't think you'd say it to be pleasant," Emma said, smirking. "I wouldn't put it past you to tell someone just to be annoying."

The queen opened her mouth to protest this – she even felt slightly hurt by the insinuation – but then she remembered every single one of her actions up until that very moment. She sighed.

"Yes, well," she said, turning away from Emma and looking back out at the road that ran past them. "Maybe once I would have done."

She could feel Emma smiling without looking around.

"You've gone soft on me," she murmured.

The queen rolled her eyes back towards her as slowly as she could, and Emma laughed at her expression.

"I mean that in the nicest possible way," she clarified. The queen snorted.

"Even in the nicest way, that cannot be a compliment," she said, watching as Emma took a sip of her coffee. "Besides – why don't you want anyone to know? Surely you're not ashamed?"

Emma shrugged. "Not really. The only people whose opinions I care about are my family's, and I'm not sure they will be as freaked out as they should be. Henry, for one, will be over the moon."

"It's a shame I haven't had the chance to meet him," the queen said before she could stop herself, and the wistfulness in her voice was painfully obvious. Emma smiled.

"I know," she said. "I just think that would be a step too far."

"I realise that," the queen sighed. "He's not my son. It's not my place."

She could tell that Emma wanted to say something reassuring then, but for once nothing came to her. When it came down to it, Emma was happy putting herself at risk, but if there was even the slightest danger of Henry getting hurt, she would back off. He was not part of this game.

"Anyway," the queen said to save Emma the aggravation of having to come up with a lie. "You were telling me how completely unashamed you are."

Emma grinned at her. "Those weren't my exact words."

"Close enough," the queen waved a hand. "The question stills stands as to why you are so reluctant for Regina to find out about this."

Emma looked flatly back at her. "You're serious?"

"I'm always serious."

"My parents might not freak, but she would," Emma said. "Just because you like teasing me and flirting with me doesn't mean she does. She would never feel the same way."

"Oh, Emma. You really are a naïve idiot," the queen said, making Emma blink. "When are you going to see what's right in front of you?"

"Look, I know she's acting jealous, and maybe for a second I let myself believe that it meant something more than it does, but—"

"But nothing," the queen cut her off impatiently. "Any fool can see how she feels about you. Besides, I shared the same brain as her for long enough to be able to read her reaction to how you and I act around one another. If you won't listen to your own common sense, listen to me. Don't be so dense."

Emma glared at her. "I'm not being dense."

"You're being denser than a brick, princess," the queen said, and for a moment Emma looked like she was going to snap back at her. Then she deflated slightly, her spine curling forwards.

"How do I know I can trust what you say?"

"You're only worrying about that now?" the queen asked. When Emma just looked pleadingly at her, she sighed, "You don't. In fact, you're quite stupid to even consider listening to me. But I'm glad you are, because I'm actually telling the truth for once in my life. You've been blessed with a rare gift, so you might as well use it."

Emma snorted. "You have such a high opinion of yourself."

The queen smiled weakly. "Well. Someone has to."

She watched the concern flicker across Emma's face. After a moment she reached out, resting her hand on the queen's wrist. Her fingers were warm from the coffee cup. "You know, just because I like Regina doesn't mean I don't like you."

The queen's response was all ready – she was going to laugh and ask Emma why she thought her adolescent feelings were so important to her anyway. But a wave of tiredness hit her, and suddenly there was no point in saying any such thing.

"You should tell her how you feel."

Emma blinked, her fingers twitching. "I should?"

"Yes," the queen said, her voice flat. "I don't know why I'm encouraging this – it certainly won't work out very well for me – but god, I can't take this any longer. If you love her, just damn well tell her. If I have to watch you pussyfooting around for another second I will end up strangling you myself."

Emma's eyes had gone wide and somehow watery. "But… what if—"

"If she doesn't return your feelings," the queen interrupted wearily, "which she will, but if she doesn't, then that's her loss. It won't be you who's an idiot for telling her how you feel; it'll be her who's an idiot for not feeling the same way back. Either way, right now you are both being morons. It's very irritating."

As she spoke, the queen pictured Regina's face in the vault only an hour before. She had nearly choked the life out of the queen trying to convince her that she didn't care about Emma, and while it had been laughable, it had also been deeply sad.

"She probably hasn't admitted it to herself yet," the queen said quietly. "But the feeling is there. It might just need someone to drag it out of her."

When she looked up, Emma's lower lip was trembling. "Why are you doing this? You don't owe me anything, and you sure as hell don't owe Regina anything either."

The queen pressed her lips together. "But maybe I do."

"What?" Emma asked. "Her, or me?"

"Both of you," the queen said thoughtfully. "Truth be told, I did make Regina's life quite difficult for a long time. I suppose I could do her this one minor courtesy."

She looked like she was going to say something else, but she stopped herself just in time. Emma watched her patiently for a moment, before she prompted her to continue.

"And me…?"

The queen shrugged, her gaze dropping once more. "And you… I don't know, Miss Swan. You've been kind to me. That's a rarity. Maybe I just want to be kind back."

Emma didn't respond, just like the queen knew she wouldn't, and after a few moments she looked cautiously back up. Emma wasn't smiling, but god, the expression on her face was just as blinding.

"I knew that it was bullshit," she said softly, squeezing the queen's hand. The queen felt her own fingers tremble.

"What was?"

"The name," Emma said softly, tilting her head. "'The Evil Queen'. I never bought it for a second."

There was a pause, and Emma wouldn't have been entirely surprised if the queen had gotten up and stormed off just to prove her wrong. But instead she offered her a weak, watery smile – one that hurt Emma to her core because she knew the queen was sacrificing herself, her own happiness, yet again. But she was doing it anyway, because she cared about Emma and – against all odds – she cared about Regina too.

Regina let her head fall back against the headrest, swallowing down the sharp, sudden pain in her throat. It was a memory so vivid that it felt like it had been with her all her life, and yet it had just knocked the breath out of her.

She wished she had a television so she could replay that scene over and over again, taking in Emma's beautiful words and beautiful smile and her stupid, soft uncertainty. And the queen…

Regina closed her eyes, lifting up one hand and resting it over her pounding, freshly blackened heart.

"Thank you," she muttered. Part of her waited for an answer. The silence that followed made her feel strangely homesick.

And suddenly she couldn't wait anymore. She owed it to Emma, she owed it to herself, and Jesus, she owed it to the queen too. She was desperate to make it up to her, to make all of this stupid pain worth it, and at that moment nothing in that world could have stopped her from clambering out of the car and steaming across the empty parking lot.

She strode towards the sheriff station with a roaring sound in her ears and a newfound confidence beneath her feet. She hadn't felt like this for too long, and a small, glittering part of her wanted to run, actually run, into the building because walking was too slow, too damn boring for her. There was a power burning beneath her fingertips and it didn't matter that her heart was hurting and Emma still might say no to her – she felt miraculously complete, and comfortable, and she knew that whatever happened now, she could handle it after all.

She pushed open the door to the station and marched inside, her heels clacking against the tiled floor. Emma's office door was visible at the end of the hall and Regina let herself be drawn to it like there was a rope wrapped around her waist pulling her there.

She reached the door and threw it open, expecting Emma to look up at once, to fall into her arms and give her the kisses that she'd been waiting for years.

Instead, she opened the door to find Emma sitting alone at her desk with her headphones planted firmly over her ears. Her head was bobbing in time to whatever music she was listening to, and she didn't notice the door opening.

Regina sighed, her heartbeat thundering, and took a step into the room. She wanted to throw something at Emma to get her attention, but she faltered. Emma was totally in a world of her own, her head down and her foot bouncing up and down under the desk. Her long hair had fallen forwards and was shielding most of her face from view, but the mere sight of her was making Regina's palms tingle.

Emma was mesmerising, and in that moment when she didn't know she was being watched, Regina allowed herself a second to just stare at her, taking in all the tiny, messy details that up until very recently she had managed to convince herself that she hated.

So Regina stood for a moment, her hands hanging by her sides, and watched with an amused smile as Emma started to mouth along to the song that was playing in her ears. She couldn't have been watching for more than a few seconds, but in that brief slip of time she felt a unexpected rush of love for the completely idiotic woman sitting in front of her, so oblivious to what was going on around her.

Then the moment was over, and Emma finally felt the weight of a pair of eyes on her. She paused, her pen freezing in mid-air, and looked up. When she spotted Regina, she pulled her headphones off and placed them on the desk.

Regina took another step into the room, and she couldn't stop herself from smiling. Emma was examining her like she wasn't sure they'd met before, her teeth digging into her bottom lip.

She let her eyes run unapologetically from Regina's face all the way down to her dangerously high shoes. Her posture had changed – she was standing taller, her shoulders pulled back, and for the first time in weeks her fingers weren't anxiously tapping against her sides. Her lips were pursed, ready to speak, ready for a fight, and as Emma looked at her she caught a glimpse of those perfectly white teeth hiding behind them.

But the biggest difference of all was in her eyes. They were slightly narrowed, assessing her, and they weren't blinking as often as they had been recently. They looked darker than when Emma had been staring into them that morning, and when Regina lifted her chin, Emma saw a flash of fire sparking through her pupils that she hadn't seen in a very, very long time.

For a split second Emma merely looked hopeful. Then her face split into a grin, one that was all teeth and crinkles around her eyes, and she said, "Welcome back, Madam Mayor."

Without hesitating, Regina took four, strong steps across the room. Emma rose from her chair and stepped forward to meet her, and they collided in the middle of her office, their arms automatically finding their way around one another and their lips meeting like they had done it a hundred times before.

Emma could feel Regina's fingers threading through her hair and she sank into the kiss, letting her body curl forwards against Regina's with her inhibitions entirely gone. Emma looped her arms around her waist, pressing her fingertips into Regina's back. She could feel the delicate nodules of her spine, the rise and fall of her ribcage. When she slid her hands upwards she felt the bar of her bra strap and gasped, actually gasped, into Regina's mouth. She felt Regina grin against her lips, but she didn't say anything. She just nudged Emma back a step, and then another, until the backs of her thighs collided with the edge of the desk.

Emma felt herself being dipped backwards as Regina kissed her harder, her hands cupped around the base of her skull to keep her from falling. Her tongue, which was so wickedly sharp when she was talking, was unexpectedly soft as it curled through Emma's mouth, sending electricity shooting down her spine and through her fingers. Emma moaned, letting her nails scratch against the small of Regina's back as she dug her teeth into the beautifully pouty bottom lip that had been driving her crazy for months. Regina's groan of pleasure was almost a purr, and she pushed Emma harder, ignoring her gasp of surprise as the desk began to cut into her thighs. It didn't matter, because Emma didn't really mind – her entire body had become nothing more than a frazzled ball of sensation, and the biting pain of a wooden ledge digging into her legs hardly made a difference in the grand scheme of all the other wonderful things she was feeling.

Kissing Regina, she was certain she'd never felt properly alive before. Now every single one of her senses had come to life and the sparks of excitement that ran through her were delicious, almost terrifying. When she felt Regina's nails raking through her hair, somehow perfectly matching the motion of her tongue grazing across Emma's lower lip, she almost came undone. With a groan, Emma felt her head fall back of its own accord, and in an instant a pair of warm, smirking lips were on her throat.

Emma threw an arm around Regina's neck, using her other hand to support herself against the desk, and let herself fall entirely under the spell that was Regina's tongue flicking against her pulse point.

"God," Emma heard herself sigh as Regina buried herself in the hollow space beneath her jaw. Her toes curled somewhere within her boots and there was a furious pounding in her chest that couldn't possibly be her heart, not when it felt more like a jet engine.

And apparently Regina must have thought the same thing, because she pulled back from Emma's pulse point, looking momentarily concerned.

"Is this… okay?" she asked, rubbing one thumb along the edge of Emma's swollen bottom lip. When Emma immediately smiled, she felt her heart fill with light.

"This is so much more than okay," Emma said, snatching out one hand so that she could pull Regina's face back towards her for another kiss, and then another. "God, Regina. I've… I've wanted this for a really long time."

"You have?" Regina asked, trying hard to catch her breath. The vanilla smell of Emma's hair was filling her nose and it was getting increasingly hard to think straight.

"Yeah. Although I can't say I realised it until someone came along and started prying around," Emma said, tapping her index finger against Regina's temple.

She was still worried that Regina would have forgotten how to take a joke, and she waited to be snapped at, but Regina simply smirked back at her. It was an utterly dizzying sight – when Emma had been sat in her office earlier that day, looking up at the door every 10 seconds as she waited for Regina to finally come back from the vault and find her, there had been a fizz of panic in her stomach. A small part of her worried that this was the wrong thing, and when Regina came back – if she came back – things still wouldn't be right. Maybe Emma wouldn't see the mayor that she'd fallen so desperately and obliviously in love with all those months ago. Maybe she'd just see the same sad, angry Regina, only this time the queen would be trapped somewhere deep inside her again.

But the second Regina had appeared in the doorway, she'd realised that would never be the case. Regina was Regina again, and it was obvious in every wicked flash of light in her dark eyes. The queen was inside her, sure, but she was only below the surface, and Regina wasn't pushing her back anymore. The cool smile on her face had told Emma that right away.

Regina, her Regina was back. The only difference was that Emma suddenly knew her so much better now.

"Can you remember everything?" she heard herself ask, and she felt Regina's arms tense up around her.

"Yes," she said, then paused. "Is that weird for you?"

"A little," Emma admitted. "It feels like some crazy confidentiality agreement has been broken. But I guess it's probably much weirder for you than it is for me."

Again, Regina smiled. Every time she did Emma felt herself grow taller, brighter, seeing the smile that had been missing from Regina's worried face for the last few weeks.

"That's true," Regina said. "But, for what it's worth… Thank you for all the lovely things you said. I know you didn't say them to me, so I'm sorry that I got to hear them without your permission, but…"

When her sentence trailed off, Emma picked it up for her.

"But I'm glad you know," she said, rubbing her thumb over Regina's cheek. Her fingers were tingling, and she was all too aware of her own awe over the fact that she was suddenly allowed to touch Regina like this. That Regina wasn't just allowing it, but actually leaning into her touch and grazing her cheek against Emma's palm. "Besides, I was really telling you all along. I was just using a messenger."

Regina smiled once more before she leaned forwards and gently pressed her forehead against Emma's.

For a moment they simply stood there, not saying a word. Emma felt warm all over, although the worry that had been niggling at her stomach all day long still hadn't quite gone away. She squeezed Regina's arms, so painfully grateful that she was there, that she hadn't lost her after all the trouble they'd gone through. Something pricked at her eyes.

"I'm so glad you're okay," Emma murmured, causing Regina to pull away in alarm.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Emma swallowed hard.

"I was so scared," she said. "I didn't know whether you'd come back, and I didn't know what would happen to her, and… I'm so glad you're okay. All of you."

She pressed her hand lightly over Regina's chest as she said this, and Regina felt her heart flutter.

"All of me," she agreed. "Whether I like it or not."

Emma looked up at her. "You didn't just do this for me, did you?"

"No," Regina said, then hesitated. "Well, only about 40 percent. The truth is that you were right all along – I never should have separated us in the first place. The second she left me, I didn't feel right anymore. I didn't feel like me. So yes, I did this partially for you, but I also did it for me."

She paused before asking, "Does that make me selfish?"

"Selfish for choosing to actually accept yourself for once?" Emma laughed gently, tucking a strand of Regina's hair behind her ear. "Definitely not, Regina. You did the right thing, and I'm proud of you."

Regina felt her face burn with pleasure, and to try and hide it she leaned forwards, pressing her lips firmly against Emma's. Emma sunk back into the kiss immediately, sliding her arms around Regina's neck, and for a second Regina was so untroubled, so utterly complete, that it felt like Emma's grip was the only thing stopping her from floating away.

With her lips still pressed against the corner of Emma's mouth, Regina murmured, "Let's get out of here."

She felt Emma's face break into a grin. "Where are we going?"

"I don't know," Regina said, pulling back. She lifted one hand and cupped it against the side of Emma's overjoyed face. "We could go for a walk, or for a coffee. Or we could go back to my place. I just want to spend some time with you, and I want to actually listen to you for once. Would that be okay?"

Regina thought it wasn't possible for Emma to look any more delighted, but now she was positively beaming.

"That would be great," she said, leaning into Regina's hand. "I'd like that."

They stayed like that for a moment more, and then Emma reached over her desk and retrieved her jacket from the back of her chair. It was her red one – of course it was – and Regina couldn't help but raise her eyebrows.

"You're wearing that?"

Emma just smirked at her. "I am, and in all the world's I've been to, there isn't a place where you could convince me that you don't secretly like it a little bit."

Her smile broadened when Regina's cheeks turned pink. "You're as deluded as ever, Miss Swan."

"And you're as antagonistic as ever, Madam Mayor," Emma shot back, shrugging on the jacket. Regina's gaze automatically dropped to take her in, and Emma saw in the softness of her eyes that she met her approval. "Luckily I like you anyway."

Regina's cheeks blazed at that, and Emma couldn't help but grin at her.

"So, where are we going?" Emma asked. Regina paused, considering it.

"How about Granny's?" she suggested.

"Perfect," Emma nodded, following her out the door. After a beat she added, "We're getting grilled cheeses and tequila shots, right?"

Regina stopped in her tracks, turning to glare back at her. Emma managed to hold her stare for less than two seconds before she burst out laughing, watching as Regina's expression flickered too.

"I'm joking," she said, stumbling after Regina as she began to walk down the corridor, rolling her eyes.

"Your jokes aren't funny, Emma."

"I can see you laughing," Emma said, because it was true – Regina's face was blank, but Emma could see the tiny indent in her cheek where she was biting down on the inside of her mouth.

"I am not."

"You are, Regina. I can see you trying to hide it."

Regina's not-smile only deepened as she said, "I do not laugh. You're seeing things."

Emma snorted as they approached the door to the parking lot.

"You really expect me to believe that?" she asked, falling into step beside Regina. She hesitated for a moment, then she reached out and slipped her hand into Regina's, automatically waiting to be shrugged off again.

But Regina just squeezed back, like this was the most natural thing she'd ever done.

"Not really," she admitted, nudging the door open and waiting for Emma to walk through before following immediately behind. Their fingers never separated. "You may have made me laugh once or twice before."

She could feel Emma beaming without looking round at her.

"Maybe I can go for gold and aim for a third time today."

And just like that, Regina laughed out loud. She squeezed hard on Emma's fingers.

"Damn," Emma said, squeezing back. "Now what will we talk about?"

And Regina looked round at her, her eyes soft and amused, and she shrugged.

"I'm sure we'll think of something."

THE END

A/N: As always, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for reading and come say hello on tumblr if you want! I'm starsthatburn over there too xxxx