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They’re in the Enchanted Forest for a solid week before she lets herself look. Her magic mirror is still where it always hung, and one night she can’t take it any more. It’s been 7 days since she saw her son drive away with his mother, forgetting all about he woman who raised and loved him for 10 years. 7 days of convincing herself it would only make things worse to see them--him--happy without her. But with the dark around her and the empty chambers screaming that this loneliness was always her fate, she needs to feel something, even pain.
She sees herself when she approaches the mirror. Not her as she is now, as she’s been for the last 28 years, but the Evil Queen of her past, taunting her. Reminding her that she was never more than this.
She waves her hand, and it’s not her son she sees. “Emma,” she breathes, struck with an ache she didn’t know she could feel for anyone but Henry.
There’s a man before her, half naked on a bed, and she’s dressing hastily and even with no sound Regina knows she’s making excuses. She knows in an instant that this is what she gave Emma: a decade of meaningless one night stands and awkward goodbyes; a decade of shutting out the world even more firmly than she had before Storybrooke--except for Henry, who had always been the exception. And she knows in an instant that she wants more than this for her nemesis.
It’s not until weeks later, when she watches Emma tuck Henry into bed--even though he insists he’s too old-- and then collapse onto the coach alone with a beer and a sad smile that she knows she wants to be the one to make Emma’s life more.
She cries that night, after a month of a heart too empty for tears. She cries as she watches Emma sit alone on the couch, cries as she watches her crawl into an empty bed, cries as she crawls into her own and allows herself to pretend that there’s a warm body and blonde hair beside her.