Archive of Our Own

I can't save us, my Atlantis, we fall

We built this town on shaky ground

I can't save us, my Atlantis, oh, no

We built it up to pull it down

The hurt just leaves me scared

Losing everything I've ever known

It's all become too much

Maybe I'm not built for love

If I knew that I could reach you, I would go 

-Seafret, Atlantis

Once upon a time, Emma Swan had thought that she wasn’t the kind of girl that could end up in a relationship like this.

But it turns out that there is no such thing as being a certain kind of girl.

All it takes is opening up your heart to the wrong person to end up crumbling your walls.

The problem is, of course, that no matter how paranoid a person is, no matter how much they might look around every corner, no matter how much they think they're paying attention to every warning sign and red flag, they will eventually think they’ve found the right person.

And that’s where the trouble starts, and where the black hole threatens to devour every fire that you ever considered sacred.

---

I will give your story back to you, he says, eyes full of hope, and it sounds like a threat.

All she wants is to be forgotten. All she wants is to live, with her son, and his mother, and Neverland is as long and dark and deep, and Emma is kissing Captain Hook, a man who once loomed over Neverland, and Peter Pan is making his curse, and they are all going to die, but thanks to a quirk of the curse, Regina can let Henry and Emma go and be happy.

All she has to do is erase herself from the narrative. To give them memories of a happy human life that will be false, but will be happy.

Happy, because it’s without her.

All Regina Mills can think is all I ever wanted I was never going to get.

Everyone has read the storybook. Everyone knows how the story ends for the villains. The princes and princesses get their True Love’s Kiss and their happy endings and the villains dance in red hot shoes off the page to their graves.

Regina was born a princess, of course, and that should have been something. That should have been worth something to the writer of the story.

But she supposes that by the time her story began- the only story that the world ever cared about- she was a queen, not a princess. A queen with a dead body in the basement, the only man she had ever loved crushed to death by her mother, Regina herself a stepmother. ANd everyone knows what happens to stepmothers.

(Except—

Before the storybook, before Snow White’s story’s pages touched hers, throwing ink over her entire life, she was a princess, and her mother a queen, and her mother killed her true love, because Daniel wasn’t a prince, he didn’t get to have a fairytale ending, he just got to have his heart crushed so that Queen Cora could have her own happy ending, of a sort.)

And instead, she finds herself standing at the edge of Storybrooke as a curse barrels down from the heavens, watching as Emma Swan and her son leave in Emma's yellow car, tears in both of their eyes, as Regina gives them the gift of the sort of life they could have had without her: one mother, biological, the other not needed, not remembered, not ached for at all.

And the backs of Regina’s eyes burn as she thinks: I should have told you the truth. I should have told you about the thing beating its way through my chest, threatening to strangle me whole, tight as the vines around Sleeping Beauty’s castle, tight as the rope that bound Belle for twenty eight years, tight as the hold I tried to have the curse until you two were both too full of hope and faith that it burned my hands and set everyone free.

And the tear hits the corner of Regina’s eyes as she thinks: I was his mother. I should have been able to be good. I should have been able to have had my happy ending, because I loved him, and I loved you, and I’ve spent so long trying to be good by the book said I was bad and so my fate is to— 

The curse swallows them all up, and Regina’s tear doesn’t even get to hit the asphalt before they’re all gone.

---

There is a woman on Emma’s front doorstep, and there are tears in her eyes.

That is the first thing that Emma notices, of course. The tears. The way that the woman’s dark brown eyes are shining bright with liquid before she’s even said a single word.

And then she flings her arms around Emma’s shoulders, squeezing tighter than Emma would ever let anyone inside of her personal boundaries. “God,” the woman says, her voice nearly breaking over the words, “It’s been so long. I’ve been doing everything I possibly can to get back to both of you—"

The woman turns her mouth towards Emma’s—

And Emma jerks back.

Maybe, once a long time ago, she thought that she might be interested in something like this, in women, in someone but her boyfriend—

But she’s with Killian, now, and she’s not a cheater, especially not with a fucking stranger like this, no matter how beautiful she might be.

It took years for Emma to even let in Killian. Why would she ever let some random stranger kiss her?

And so Emma pulls back quickly, sharply, and demands: “Who the hell are you?”

The woman swallows, hard. “That’s right,” she says, and her voice sounds a little bit broken as she says, “You don’t remember who I am. Of course you don’t.” Her posture immediately pulls tight and back into the sort of stiff, elegant sort of thing that you only get when you grow up either rich or with power, like the child of an old-money millionaire or a politician. “Regina Mills. I’m the Mayor of Storybrooke, Maine. And I need to speak to you about you and your son’s past.”

In an instant, Emma’s haunches pull back, tight. “What do you have to say about my son?”

Regina- if that is her name, but she doesn’t seem to be lying, according to Emma’s instincts, so Emma guesses that she has to believe her- flinches, as if she isn’t expecting the accusation. But she still takes a deep breath and says, “You two- you were in danger, before. And I sent you away, but I shouldn't have—"

This Regina sounds like she's losing her mind. Emma would remember something like that, she's sure. She would remember if there was ever a circumstance in which she and Henry were in danger. She never would have let that happen, she knows it.

“So we’re not in danger anymore?" Emma's brow furrows. The woman sounds insane. What the hell is this Regina even doing? "Why are you even here?”

Regina swallows, wringing her fingers together in front of her stomach, and there is something about it that doesn't feel quite right. Regina doesn't seem like the type of person to shiver and tremble and fall apart, there is something in Emma that is sure of it. “I helped you get out of it. And I don’t regret that, I’d do it over and over again, but I also promised myself that I’d find a way to get you both back. To give you back what you forgot."

There is something desperate in Regina's eyes. Something that needs to be believed.

Emma knows it, because she recognizes it in herself. Recognizes it in the parts of her that she sees reflected in the mirror on the nights after bad dates or when Killian pressed too hard in the bedroom or when Killian casually assumed that he knew best and that she would follow, like he was the captain in the relationship and she was just some sailor carried along by the waves. Recognizes the dark circles under the eyes, the desperation in the gaze, the need that blisters through every shaking finger and tense shoulder and tears threatening to fall in shining eyes—

Killian comes out of the bathroom and his eyes narrow as he sees Regina. "Who's that at the door, love?" he asks, and there is something in his tone of voice that makes Emma think—

(A flash of dark brown eyes, a deep red lip smiling sadly, a woman reaching out a hand that will never be caught.)

Regina doesn’t exactly seem pleased to see him in return, her own dark eyes piercing as they settle on him.

(Some part of Emma thinks- that is the first time in years that anyone has not been charmed by him.)

"I think you need to leave," Emma says, and she tries to keep her voice from trembling. She's normally so good at it. She remembers a time when she was a bail-bondswoman who took no shit and let no one rattle her until she met Killian, and the world started to crack, and she started to soften, and she always thought that it was a good thing, that she was letting someone in, that she was letting her walls down, but—

Regina swallows, hard, and nods. "Fine," she says, but there is something in her voice that is clear as to the fact that she is refusing to give up.

To such a point: Regina presses a piece of paper into Emma’s hand as she leaves. Killian arches his eyebrow at their hands pressed together, but Emma was a thief, once. She knows how to hide things.

And later on, after several exchanged kisses that make Emma feel hollow, Killian leaves, and Emma opens up the folded piece of paper that she'd shoved into the pocket of her dress to find that it contains a phone number.

---

When Regina ends up in the Enchanted Forest, she curses the name of the Author.

She shouldn’t have had to give up Henry and Emma. Not now. Not when they’d finally gotten Henry back from Neverland, not when Regina had done everything that she could to prove herself, not when she has watched everyone that she has loved die.

They tell her that dwelling on Emma and Henry is picking a scab and keeping it from healing.

They’re happy, everyone says, They have the life that they deserve.

And Regina has lived long enough with such words to know that what so many people are thinking is they have a happy ending that would only be ruined if you showed up. That so many people believe, still, that once a villain, always a villain, that once the author writes your fate, that is all that you can ever have.

But Emma had the audacity to believe that Regina should get a happy ending, and so did Henry, and Regina has to believe in the two people she loves most in the world, right?

“Fuck this,” Regina says, “I should be able to get a happy ending. I’m done letting some ink in a story book determine where this story ends."

So she tries to seek out a way to end the curse. A way to get them all back.

And she will do it.

She needs to find her son. She needs to find Emma. She needs to hug them. To tell them—

The words have always caught in her throat, but now that she knows they are living out there, without a memory of her—she cannot let that continue. She needs to find a way to get them back.

As the months tick by and Regina buries herself in her work, paging through every book in the castle and beyond, searching for answers, the Charmings get anxious. That little red riding hood looks at her like she’s going to light off a fuse and burn the kingdom down. Even Rumpelstiltskin grumbles about her single-minded focus.

(The only one who even begins to support her is Belle of all people, who Regina never would have expected to after everything that Regina did to her, and yet—Belle understands a thing or two about looking for answers in books. In putting faith in people who might not deserve it, but are trying their best to make themselves better.)

Regina wishes she didn’t know why. She’s not hurting anyone, after all. She’s just buried in the library of the castle, magically searching for an answer, any answer, to get back to Maine and to Emma and Henry.

But she knows that no one trusts her because of her history. Because no one truly gets a second chance in this world. Because no one expects a villain to find their way into deserving a happy ending.

But she's going to do it. There is no other option but to burn the world and herself down, if it means finding her way home.

---

Emma is sitting at a diner with Regina. Meeting in a public place, and all that.

Emma doesn’t know why she’s here, of course. There is no real reason why she should be. Killian is her boyfriend. She loves him. She doesn't know this Regina from Adam.

And yet—

There was something in what Regina was saying that almost felt real. Or, at least- it has itched at Emma for the past day, and so she’d texted the number that Regina left.

But according to Regina—

There's no way that this story is real. There's no way that there is a memory potion on the table between them. A woman with bright brown eyes begging Emma to take it.

Regina has to be lying, right? 

Emma knows that she loves Killian. Of course she loves Killian. This is the sort of thing that is rooted deep in her stomach, braided up into her guts. She loves him. She has a future with him. She would not have wasted these past few years with him, letting the parts of herself that she clung to for so long get carved away, if she didn’t love him. If she didn’t trust him.

Killian broke down her walls, and that is a good thing, right? Because if it wasn’t, then everything that she’s done for the past several years, everything that she’s given him, every part of herself that she’s turned over- it was all for nothing.

And it can’t be for nothing.

Regina Mills is a stranger. Someone that she doesn’t know. Why the hell should she believe her when she speaks of magic and curses and a world in which fairytales are true and not just the product of a romantic imagination that wants to believe that bad men can redeem themselves with good women? Where you don't have to accept the love that you think you deserve, but rather the love of people who prove to you that they are doing everything they can to better themselves?

“How the hell am I supposed to know that you’re not trying to drug me?” Emma demands, and it almost feels- well, relieving, in some strange way, to feel her tongue sharpened in the way that it used to be with everyone. She hasn’t gotten to feel like that shrapnel girl in so long, and for ages, she thought that it was a good thing, that she was softening, that she was growing gentle in the way that a mother should, in a way that a girlfriend should, but this feels natural in the sort of way that she hasn’t felt in so long.

“You don’t,” Regina says, simple as that, and there's something refreshing in that honesty. “You just have to believe me. And I know you’re not the best at believing in things on faith alone. That you need proof. That that’s just the sort of person that you are, and in some ways, I’ve learned to appreciate that.”

It’s an insight that you only have when you really get to know Emma, Emma knows.

(The sort of thing that sometimes she doesn’t think that Killian has of her.)

You’re the one who tried to kiss me, Emma wants to say, and there is something in her chest, between her ribs, that shivers at the notion.

Regina is here, and her lip is trembling, but her voice is as strong as steel as she says, “But what he’s doing to do you, Emma- you deserve better than that, whether you take the potion or not. I need you to know that."

---

It works. It fucking works.

They all arrive back in Storybrooke, and Hook is missing, but Regina can’t bring herself to give a shit about where he might have ended up.

No, what matters is that she is so fucking close. She is in the same world as Emma and Henry, now. She did everything that she had to in order to end up in Storybrooke with a memory potion in her pocket.

There is a spitting-distance difference between the town that was once supposed to be her happy ending and the wide, wide world beyond.

It is a world without magic out there. A world that seeks to take that which is the only thing that ever mattered to her.

For so long, her magic was her power. Her freedom. Her chance to right what the world had taken from her, even if she wielded it to cause great damage.

But now, after everything that she’s done, everything that she’s given up—

What is one more sacrifice of power? What is one more piece of her heart carved up and put on the altar for some greater power to devour?

Regina has been the queen of nothing for so long; why not embrace that? 

She is going to find a way to cross the town boundary, regardless of what it takes from her.

The Charmings protest, but they don’t have what it takes to stop her. No matter how much she is the only remnant of their daughter and grandson in their lives, they never truly cared about her. Not after what she did.

(And to be honest, she can't blame them for that.)

So she steps through the barrier, a memory potion in her pocket, and she can feel the way that the barrier rips at her. 

It is a tornado tearing through her, slicing through her, tearing pieces of her very being out from under her.

Regina feels herself unravelled, the strands of her magic and her heart and her very being cut from her, her mind dissolved, her being torn and thrown out into the world to be devoured whole by the barren land that has hungered to satiate itself on what little taste of magic it can get its teeth on.

For a moment, it feels like she might lose herself down to her very core. That every part of her that was once Queen Regina, that was Regina Mills, is going to dissolve into the very air here in Maine that was designed with misery in mind for so long.

Wouldn’t that be what she deserves, the barrier whispers. Wouldn’t that be the right payment for all of the damage that she’s done to so many others over the years?

Let yourself fall apart, the barrier whispers, let yourself get ground down to nothing by the lightning strike. Let yours atoms be split and become something less than matter. Wouldn’t that make everyone else happy? Wouldn’t that give everyone what they've always wanted, your blood soaking into the soil, your bones buried six feet under?

But that voice wars with the part of her that is keyed for self-preservation. The part of her that held onto her magic when ending up in this world, even when she didn’t let anyone else have any.

What is Regina without her magic? What is she without her power?

Every cell in her body is begging for her to step backwards. For her to retreat. For her to be safe, and powerful, and never again risking losing any part of her to what is demanded of her.

But she sees them. The gold of Emma’s hair. The glint of determination in her son’s eyes. The way that Henry had begged her to stay, and yet, she’d had to hug him and say goodbye, because she has always been from a different world from him.

But right now, she has to latch herself onto the sort of faith that doesn’t come naturally to her. She has to allow herself to give into the blood.

She has to accept whatever comes next. She has to accept whatever it takes to get what matters to her.

She has to ignore all of the voices. The barrier, the townspeople, her own self-preservation.

She has to throw herself into the ocean and hope that she is strong enough to drown.

And so she shoves through the barrier, regardless of the agony, regardless of the consequences.

She will face whatever she needs to. She will be whatever she has to.

Her skin is peeled back. Her magic is stripped away. The very air from her lungs is stolen, napalm-fire burning away the oxygen until there is nothing of her left.

Lightning licks through her veins, stripping away everything that makes her her.

Regina Mills falls to her knees on the other side of the boundary.

Her pantyhose tears. Her knee bleeds into the pavement, one final sacrifice to the gods of this faithless land.

And her magic is gone.

Regina is a human, now. As powerless as any member of town, as any random mortal wandering about the streets of New York.

But when she stands, she is alive, and she has her memories, and maybe her veins feel more hollow than they have in years, but she is here. She is here, and it is far less of an obstacle to get to New York City from here than it was to get here in the first place. A car ride, a train, a plane—she will take whatever she has to in order to find Emma and Henry's apartment.

But that’s okay. That’s fine. As long as she can go to New York. As long as the potion in her pocket works.

She is going to get her son back, and she is going to tell Emma how she feels, and she is going to get them all the happy ending that the author denied them for so long.

---

Her entire life, Emma has been dreaming of arson. 

Or, to be more accurate, she has been dreaming of smoke. Of the way that it rolls over the hills, blanketing everything until the entirety of the world is swallowed up by the darkness.

Of the fact that she has spent as long as she can remember suffocating. Giving birth in a prison, figuring out how to raise Henry on her own, learning how to navigate relationships after being abandoned, searching for the answer as to how she can stand on her own, always finding herself desperate for air but unable to find it.

But also—

Dreaming of what it would be like to snap her fingers and send the world up in flames. What it would be like to finally say fuck it and send the sparks flying into the tinder. 

Maybe, if the smoke was accompanied by fire, she’d at least be warmed by the blaze.

And here, at this table, staring down at the the supposed memory potion offered to her by a woman with warm brown eyes that are kinder, older, more haunted than Killian’s, Emma finds herself faced with the possibility of fire.

Here comes the question, then- does Emma believe Regina? Does she believe that there is something wrong in her world? Does she believe that there are memories that need to be knocked loose and set on fire so that she can dance in the ashes?

There is some part of her, the teenage girl that once vandalized buildings and hot-wired cars and ran from foster parents and did anything if it would just make her feel something, that thinks—

I would rather burn myself up than watch myself turn to cinders, never able to light again.

Except:

“Tell me,” Emma says, “If I drink this- Henry’s still mine, right?”

It’s the one thing that matters. The only thing that matters. If Regina isn’t entirely off of her rocker, and there are memories contained within the drink in front of her, then the only thing that matters unlocking is her son.

For so long, he has been the one light in her life. The one anchor to life beyond Killian. He’s been the reason that she’s stayed. The reason that she’s continued.

To have her memories be unravelled and to lose that one anchor—

Emma doesn’t know how she would continue. How she would be able to stand the loss.

As a matter of fact, she knows that she would not be able to.

Killian did everything he could to knock down her walls, so carefully constructed. If she was to lose Henry, she would be swept out to sea by the riptide and smashed against the rocks, drowning without a lighthouse to focus her eyes on.

“Henry’s still yours,” Regina says, and there is something choked in her voice. Something haunted. There is something in her that aches at the statement, even if it rings true to Emma’s blistered, scarred ears. “He always has been. But Hook-” She swallows and corrects quickly to: “Jones- you don’t mind if you lose your memories of him?”

For so long, Emma’s love for Killian has been woven into her. She genuinely has no idea who she would be without that feeling there. How many walls he has knocked down? Will she have anything to stand on?

But she has to believe that as long as she has Henry, has the anchor of her son, of her job, then her universe will remain standing in all of the ways that matter. That has to be true, right?

So she nods. “I don’t know who I’ll be without him,” she says, “But I’m okay with finding out.”

Regina seems to almost take a breath of relief at that, and she nods. “Then if you trust me—I can promise you won't lose the things that matter. You won't lose Henry. You'll only be gaining part of yourself back. So, Emma Swan—what will your bargain be?"

---

Regina had thought that the worst moment of her life would be the moment that Daniel died, then the moment that she had to kill her father, then the moment that she had to give up Emma and Henry—

But no. Of course none of those were the worst moments of her life.

No, the worst moment of Regina Mills’ life is when Emma Swan opens the door to her New York City apartment, and she’s wearing a girly pink dress that doesn’t suit her at all, ponytail piled high on top of her head, and she looks Regina up and down like she is a stranger.

And to be honest, for a moment, Regina looks at Emma like she is a stranger. She doesn't look anything like the woman that crashed into Regina's life, ruined every one of her plans, and then made her fall in love.

Behind her, Killian Jones looks at Regina like she is an intruder, all of the memories still there in his eyes, but that isn't what devastates Regina. Of course it's not.

What does her in is as she's leaving, after she's left her number with Emma with hope threatening to strangle her tight, Henry asks who’s at the door and Emma, with no malice at all in her eyes, none of that spirit that made Regina fall in love with her, calls back over her shoulder, “Oh, it’s no one!”

The door falls shut behind Emma, and Regina can’t figure out how to choke out words past the knot in her throat.

But she is determined to make sure that Emma hears what she’s saying. She didn’t come here after so long, give up so much, in order to go home without fighting for what she wants.

She learned that lesson from the best, after all.

---

Emma tilts the bottle back and it burns more bitter than beer against her throat.

A cough itself rips itself from her throat, an involuntary response, her body convulsing under her. Regina reaches out a hand to soothe Emma’s shoulder, but Emma is too busy gasping for breath. “What the hell is that?”

And then—

---

Regina’s phone lights up with a message from an unknown caller. I want to know the truth. Meet me on the diner at the corner?

And hope surges in her chest, an impossible gasp of air.

---

The rose petals burn and fall. The rose-tinted glasses are washed away.

Emma Swan locks eyes with Regina Mills, dread washing across her lips, sees the woman who was once a monster who Emma was the first person in the world to see the truth of who she forgot, she forgot because of a curse, she forgot because Killian Jones wormed his way into her life at the exact moment that Emma was burying Neal’s ghost and accepting that the person she’d wanted all along was Regina, was always Regina, Regina of the striking mouth and the flint-strike heels and the determination to do what she believes is right, damn the consequences, damn what anyone else thinks, the very woman who burned through every wall of Emma’s long before Killian ever did, the woman that Killian replaced himself with—

And she turns and she vomits.

---

Regina finds herself offered the sofa in Henry and Emma’s place, and she takes it gladly.

She is here. She is finally here, and Emma has her memories back, and it will still take some effort to make sure that her son can remember her, but it turns out that she’d forgotten what it was like to exist in a body without the pulse of magic singing through her veins, and so she is more tired than she’d thought she was, especially after she’d knelt down outside of the diner, napkins in hand, to wipe Emma’s mouth, fingers tender and trembling and sorry that Emma was suffering but also— 

Regina knows herself. She knows that she is a villain and was for so long. So she knows that she should be ashamed for her relief, for her joy, that Emma knows who she is, that Emma remembers, but Emma had looked up at her after puking, and had taken Regina’s offered hand, and that connective tissue between them had been enough to keep Regina going until the ends of the earth.

When Henry’s brow furrows and he asks, “Who’s that, mom?” it’s still like a dagger buried in Regina’s chest.

Her son doesn’t know who she is. Her son doesn’t know what she’s done, what she’s given up, to get back to him.

But Emma looks at Regina as she says, "An old friend. A trusted friend," and it's not all that Regina wants, not all that she's dreamed of, but it is more than she'd dared to truly believe in for so long.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't stab Regina in the heart when Henry grins at Regina and says, "Nice to meet you, ma'am," all of those manners that she taught him still there, even beneath all the memories, because both she and Emma are both good mothers. She's known that for a very long time.

Henry goes to sleep after a hand of cards and some ice cream—skills and habits he picked up from both of them, Regina knows—but before Regina can speak to Emma, Emma grabs a knife from the kitchen and takes it to the bedroom, and for a moment, Regina’s a bit worried. After getting her memories back, who knows whose blood Emma wishes to taste? What sort of damage might she inflict?

But when Regina comes into the bedroom, she finds that Emma Swan, that shrapnel woman that had entered Storybrooke all those months ago, is wielding her sword. She is making use of her weapon.

She is carving the pink dresses to shreds.

“I hate him,” Emma's muttering, dressed in nothing but a tank top and underwear, looking like something primal, looking like something feral, more dragon than woman, “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him,” but her voice is breaking in the sort of way that it only breaks when something in you truly loves someone and you can’t believe that they’ve hurt you in such a way.

Regina knows such things. She knows how she sobbed in the stable when her mother killed Daniel and then wielded Regina like a prop for her happy ending instead of Regina's, bending her daughter into a shape that she could use for her own means. Regina knows what she did to put herself together after the fact.

And Regina knows a thing or two about fashion and what it can do for the brain. What it can do to stabilize the heart when it feels like it has been crushed and turned to dust inside of one's chest.

So she goes for the closet without being told to.

Inside, it breaks her heart just a bit to see only one leather jacket left. She remembers how much she admired the confidence of those jackets as much as she hated them when she first saw them. The way she grew to admire, to covet, the way that Emma’s neck looked against the collar of the leather jackets, blue and red and black, the way that Regina wanted to kiss the column of Emma's throat and make her mark on the woman she had come to love more than anything.

But still, there is one.

And sure, the only one left is the least striking one: a brown one, the one that looks most like a classic leather jacket, the one that would least out of place paired with a pink dress or a white cardigan.

But when Regina pulls it out and tosses it to Emma, Emma still clings to it like a lifeline.

"He took so much," Emma says, and her voice breaks in a way that Regina has never heard from her as her fingers fist in the leather. Emma slips it over her shoulders and as the jacket settles on her shoulders, she exhales, this jagged, aching sound. "I've stayed with him for so long because I loved him, but also because he’s a stabilizing force in Henry’s life,” Emma says, but she doesn’t even sound like she believes it, “I knew Henry was attached. That he loves Killian. But god- it should have been you. It should have been fucking you. If you had let me keep my memories, I would have been hunting for you in an instant, you have to know that. I would have found a way to undo the curse."

---

The door opens.

Not a knock in warning—just Hook stepping in, because Emma gave him a key, because she trusted him, even as she could feel herself scraping herself hollow to turn into the sort of woman that he would want, someone who would listen to him, someone who would be the sort of girl that a pirate needed.

Now, though, she knows who she is, who she wants, and most importantly, what he has done and what he’s refused to do. The things he’s refused to trade to save the people that she loves.

Regina, on the other hand—

Emma’s fingers reach out on instinct to grab Regina’s in hers. To tug her back. To keep her safe.

Because looking at him— 

Emma can’t be sure exactly how long she’s been living here with Henry. She thinks it’s been a few months, but it might be longer. She is still sorting fact from fiction, when it comes to the edges of false memories bleeding into real ones.

But what she does know is that Hook stole from her. Twisted the existing memories in order to fit the narrative ending that he wanted for himself, the girl given to the pirate in order for him to have his happy ending. 

She kissed him, over and over again. She’s slept with him.

He took advantage of a lack of memories, breaking down a woman whose emotional walls were taller than skyscrapers, and used them to carve her open and mold her into the person that he wanted her to be.

That’s the nature of a curse. Emma had known that before her memories were warped.

She doesn’t have any magic. She doesn’t have a sword. She isn’t her prince of a father, fighting dragons and riding noble steeds.

But she doesn't have to be.

Because she doesn't have to be the Savior; she just needs to be her own hero.

Hook scowls at Regina. “She’s lying to you,” he says, and Emma doesn't believe him.

“I’ve no idea how you managed to break the curse,” Emma says, “But you are going to get the fuck away from her,” and her hand is scrambling back for the kitchen drawers, for some sort of weapon, but Regina gets to a defense first.

Regina’s hand goes up, flying forward, the instinct to gather a spell on her fingers, but she has nothing. She gave up her power in order to make her way back to the people that matter.

And Hook’s lips curl up in a smile. “You don’t have any magic left in you,” he says, “People might not be able to leave town, but they can call. If you left Storybrooke, you gave up all of your magic. You’ve got nothing left, Your Majesty.” He spits Regina’s title like it’s poison on the tongue, like he has less respect for it than he does for Rumpelstiltskin.

Hook reaches out a hand to grab for Emma’s hand. “You know she’s the Evil Queen. You love me—"

But he doesn't get to reach Emma's hand, because Henry enters the room just in time to say, "Get away from my mom,” and for one brief flash of a moment, every adult in the room is unsure of which woman he is talking about.

When he glances up, he’s clearly talking about Emma, not Regina, but for a moment, it is still the three of them against Hook. And god, that has to be worth something.

Hook scowls. "I will get you back," he says, "Once you realize that she's not right for you, that you and your boy need someone like me—"

"Sure," Emma says, "There's about as much chance of that as you finally defeating the Dark One."

Hook moves forward, as if to slap her, but she catches his wrist in her hand. She is done letting him do what he wants with her, molding her into the love interest that he thinks that he wants. She doesn't know if he has a thing for bad girls or saviors, for breaking down criminals until they are good girls or if he wanted the good girl all along, but she's done playing this game. She's done being the good thing he gets at the end of his path to redemption.

"Get away from me, Hook," she spits, "No one wants you here."

Hook turns on his heel and storms out, and she can see the glint of the hook, the shadow of Neverland and its pirate passing over him, but unlike when they were actually in Neverland, she doesn't need him. Not anymore. Never again.

And Henry turns to both of them, letting out a deep breath. 

"Whoa," Henry says, "That was crazy." He looks up between both of them, and it catches Emma's attention that Henry is nearly as tall as both of them—certainly a growth spurt from when Regina last saw him.

Regina looks to Henry, and her eyes are glistening with tears, and if Emma isn't sure how long she was in that farce of a relationship with Hook, then she definitely doesn't know how long Regina has been without Henry.

And regardless of how everything has broken down, Emma knows that Regina's number one motivation is Henry—

And maybe, just maybe, Emma, too.

Hook is gone. Hook is gone, and Emma can finally restart the way that she should have lived in the first place.

Emma flings her arms around Regina's neck and pulls her in for a kiss.

And Regina Mills kisses like a fire.

When Emma presses her mouth to Regina’s, she knows what it feels like to commit arson. To burn the entire house down. 

Regina flicks open the lighter. The flame ignites.

The wrong person becomes the right person as the chemicals react and the magic spills forth, reflected, refracted, through two shrapnel, diamond-edged women—

Emma feels it hook into her chest. True Love’s Kiss, breaking not through her own memories, but through—

She feels arms wrap around both of their backs.

“Mom,” Henry says, and she can hear the tears in his voice, and both her and Regina pull back in an instant.

He’s staring at them both in such a way that makes Emma realize- True Love’s Kiss.

It seems an impossible thing, the sort of thing that relies on the sort of faith she finds so difficult at times, and yet, it makes sense, at the end of the day. That she would find true love in the other person who loves Henry as much as she does, someone who understands being the reflection of shrapnel as much as she does: Emma Swan, the shrapnel woman forced to pretend like she's made of diamonds, and Regina Mills, a woman made of diamonds who forged herself into a weapon so that she could taste blood.

But it seems as if Regina, the woman who normally storms into any situation full of faith that her stubbornness will be enough to take her anywhere, isn’t sure if she felt the same thing.

Because Regina looks fragile, like her heart is on the verge of her heart breaking if one single thing goes wrong as she says, “Henry, I-”

But Henry’s eyes are lighting up as he throws his arms around Regina specifically as he says, “God, I missed you, Mom. I mean, I didn’t have my memories, but I know I did.”

Regina leans down and presses a kiss to the crown of Henry’s hair, and something in Emma is unfurling, fragile petals turned towards the light of the sun burning, warming, setting on fire, lighting a lantern that will guide her ship forever.

---

I will give your story back to you, the author promises, except the author doesn’t make the offer at all. Regina seizes it for herself, wrests the grasp of her own fate away from the pages of s a storybook as she realizes that she doesn’t want to be forgotten. At least- not by these two. Never by these two. The loves of her life.

Memory rushes in

Then washes you away

I am losing you to the sea

I'll break from the weight of my mind

But your ghost I will gladly bear

I'll keep my lanterns lit 

-Son Lux, Lanterns Lit