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When Emma sacrificed herself to protect Regina from the darkness, the latter devoted herself to bringing Emma back. The Emma that she knew and loved, and the Emma that put her own needs aside one more time, when she allowed the vortex of evil to rip her away from her family. Regina kept trying, kept looking for something that would bring the Savior back, and she did. The only way for her to find Emma was to darken her own heart one more time. She had to become who she had been working to defeat within herself all those years, and to return to her old ways…
…and she did. She became the Evil Queen everyone once knew her to be. It led her to Emma, though it wasn’t the Emma she knew. It was a woman who lost her light, just like Regina once did. They found each other, but lost themselves, and nobody knew how to bring them back, because at the end of the day, nothing can stop the darkness.