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Rage unlike anything she has ever felt before fills Regina as she marches across the lawn. Emma smirks at her approach, tossing the chainsaw in her hands to the side as Regina's face contorts in a sneer. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Picking apples," Emma responds smugly.
Regina sees red. Her nostrils flare a scant second before eyes widen and she wraps a hand around the blonde's throat. Less than a week this woman has been in her town, and already Regina wants to slip back into a persona she had long since shed as she watches the life seep out of those terrified green eyes.
Slamming Emma back against the tree she'd just finished defacing, Regina snarls. "If you think for one second I will tolerate you coming into my town and doing whatever the hell you want, you have another thing coming, Miss Swan."
"Regi—" Emma tries to speak but Regina tightens her grip, cutting off her oxygen as she hisses.
"Madam Mayor, or Ms. Mills," she corrects with a snarl. "The day you earn the right to speak my name will be the day you stop giving my son false hope and leave. It will not be the day you decide to destroy something precious that I have nurtured and cared for since it was given to me by my deceased father."
"I…" Regina shakes her head, relaxing her grip but not allowing the blonde more than that single word as she continues.
"No. You will listen, or so help me I will stop resisting my desire to murder you where you stand," she warns and feels Emma swallow against the palm of her hand. "Your attempt to prove you're not afraid of me by committing a crime and destroying something of personal, sentimental value to me only cements my belief that you are not capable of raising a child and have no business being in my son's life."
Taking a breath and trying to tamper the rage inside of her, she adds, "It is one thing to challenge me, Miss Swan, it is another to hurt me. Do you honestly believe my son will want you when I tell him what this tree means to me and what you've done to it?"
Emma's eyes widen impossibly further than before and Regina smirks. "He may say he hates me, dear, but I guarantee that even he is not that petty."
Assured by the comprehension in those eyes, Regina feels a calmness descend on her emotions and releases the blonde, taking a step back. Henry may loath her very existence at the moment, but even his skewed perception of the world and his absolute belief in good and evil will make it hard for him to justify destruction; good people could not destroy, just as evil could not love.
He is perfectly wrong, on both accounts, but she knows how his mind works and in this instance, Emma is the faltering hero, too caught up in a feud she can't possibly begin to understand—a feud she really has no business being in to begin with, to think of a son with too much naïve hope and too sheltered an upbringing to know any better. She has protected and loved him far too well to expect him to understand that everything is not as black and white as he might like it to be.
"Regina, I—"
"You were caught up in the moment," she interrupts Emma again, ignoring the use of her name for the time being.
Regina, out of anyone, can understand the feeling; the need to prove yourself, to retaliate for a perceived wrong. Henry would not agree, but regardless, Emma is justified in what she's done and Regina would be the first to admit such. That, however, doesn't mean she has to accept the retaliation and if Emma believes otherwise, she will have no issue at all with alienating Henry from the both of them.
She may have been the Evil Queen once upon a time, but she is his mother and this woman? Well, this woman is no one—not yet. Emma Swan does not deserve to be looked up to, she does not deserve to be sitting up there on a pedestal created by a son she just met, who doesn't know a thing about her. Regina knows; every sordid little detail and childhood heartbreak, and if Emma Swan wishes to be in her son's life, then Emma Swan will have to prove herself to her first.
"I didn't know," Emma offers, bringing a hand up to rub at her throat. "I would have done something else if I had. I don't know what but I just—I thought you had some… weird apple fetish or something."
Regina purses her lips, eyebrow cocked and Emma shrugs. "There are some really strange people in the world."
"Indeed," she replies after a minute or two of heavy silence. "If you are quite done, then you may see yourself off of my property, Miss Swan."
"Hey no, wait." Emma doesn't so much as grab her shoulder as she does place her hand there when Regina turns, and she supposes it is that that causes her to still. "I am sorry, Regina. I know not knowing isn't an excuse, but I honestly wouldn't have come anywhere near your tree if I had."
"If I didn't hold the threat of telling Henry about this over your head, I might have believed your sincerity, Miss Swan." Shrugging the hand off, she steps out of reach and adds, "Unfortunately for you, I don't," as she walks away.