Once Upon a Time I Was Always Coming Back

**Notes: Part 12 of the "Moments" series. I try to make each installment stand alone, but there is a progression developing and reading them in order does lend a bit of insight.**

For the briefest of moments Regina feels nothing. That spot deep in her chest where her emotions constantly rest against her diaphragm and make her feel like she's drowning more often than not, it's completely empty. It's a respite for sure but as far as they go, it's as brief as it is odd. The rage that's been her constant companion for so many decades surges up quickly and fills the void, threatening to spill out of her in waves of uncontrolled and dubiously protective magic.

She fights it down, down, down as she has for so many years now, keeping herself and the magic tightly controlled and her tone somewhere between _angry_ and _pissed_ \- nowhere near homicidally unhinged. As a former Evil Queen she's learned this is a very important distinction to make, especially so now that she fighting with her lover - one of the most important parts of her world but so incredibly dense sometimes that it's completely astounding.

"Emma," she grinds out through partially clenched teeth, voice a calm tenor that doesn't match the turmoil roiling through her. "You can't possibly expect me to be ok with this."

"Of course I can. I do!" Emma's tenor is not calm.

"Exactly what part of my recent history makes you think that taking Henry camping for two weeks is something I can bear?" Even voicing the thought out loud makes her throat constrict and the final words come out strangled broken.

Emma doesn't notice. Where Regina has learned to channel her negative emotions inward as much as possible to limit their damage, to those around her at least, Emma lets hers erupt outward in satisfying bursts of whatever's handy - fists when appropriate, angry words when they're not. The gratification she gets is questionable at best, but no less distracting for it, and when she looks back on the altercation later she'll recognize this as the moment where she really fails, even though the most hurtful words are still yet to come.

This is where she lets that damn questionable gratification obscure the undeniable fact that she's about to wound Regina deeply with almost no effort at all.

"It's not camping, it's 'wilderness training', and I'm not taking him, I'm chaperoning - him and the tons of other kids who are one curse away from ending up in the Enchanted Forest where everything either wants to pummel you or eat you."

Emma's voice rises as her poor excuse for a filter becomes less and less functional under the onslaught of adrenaline that fighting with Regina always produces. It's like a drug, really, and she knows it's twisting her into something she's not but can't seem to wrestle out of it's grip. "Obviously he needs to know this stuff. How fucking selfish are you?"

Emma's more agitated than Regina's seen her in quite some time, and the fact that it's directed towards her is even more distressing than she would have expected, seeing as this is who they used to be to each other. But things are truly different now, and if Regina ever doubted it before, she certainly has her proof. She's come to rely on on Emma to be her safe haven in storms like these and, without that, Regina can feel her breathing starting to take on a gasping, helpless quality that reminds her all too much of a time in her life she tries desperately to forget. When Emma flings her hands up in exasperation Regina has to contain her urge to flinch away.

The fact that she feels the need to hide this reaction, even more so than having the reaction in the first place, hits a nerve somewhere deep inside her most insecure place (_Love is weakness_, she can hear it rattling around her head in a familiar voice) and causes her voice to deepen and calm to a level that she can't deny is pretty damn scary and closer to the Evil Queen she was than to the Regina she is.

She can sense the edge of her control just over the horizon and redoubles her iron control but continues on despite a niggling warning just out of reach. Somehow she has to make Emma understand.

"For two weeks, Miss Swan. After the most hellish year of my life, alone and forgotten by the only two people who make my life bearable, I finally have my family back and you want to just leave me again?"

"Well who's fault is that, _Your Majesty_?" Emma all but spits, feeling vaguely uncomfortable with her own words but unable to stop them from passing her lips. "Maybe if you didn't use curses to solve all your problems Henry wouldn't have to learn how to build shelters in the woods and you wouldn't have wasted a year of your son's life alone in the Enchanted Forest with nobody but my parents for company!"

For a split second before the tears cloud her sight, Regina thinks she sees a stricken look cross Emma's features. But it's gone too soon to be sure, and is replaced by so much disgust that it can't be mistaken for anything else, no matter how watery her view. Regina's breath catches and then stills completely, the sudden and familiar ache of betrayal pushing out all traces of the rage which threatened to consume her mere moments prior and compressing her lungs until they're useless.

Regina's next breath is nothing more than a weeze, causing Emma to blows out an angry puff of air and scrub her hands harshly across her face. "That's it. I'm done. I can't do this anymore."

Before Regina can do anything beyond register the words, Emma's pulling the door decisively closed behind her with a reverberating slam and storming out towards her Bug without the slightest look back.

Regina feels her will to exist leave with her.

~~~~SQ~~~~

The house has an odd feel to it that Henry notices before he's even closed the door completely behind him, like the air is heavier than it should be, and cloying in a way that makes his mind drift back to forests and Neverland and the fear he felt every second he was on that God forsaken island until his moms brought his safety back. It's disconcerting on a visceral level and instead of dropping his things and making a beeline for the kitchen, he stops and listens and tries to pinpoint what's amiss. Because this isn't Neverland, this is his home - shelter to the things that make him whole - and sometimes now it's his duty to secure the safety it affords them all.

He's practically a man, after all.

It takes only a moment of stillness before he hears an odd sound from the general direction of the downstairs bathroom. But it's not odd, not really, and he's just labeling it as such in his head to avoid acknowledging the tendril of panic it's sparked within him. Acknowledged or not, it has him hustling towards the bathroom door, somehow stopping short of bursting in and managing to knock instead, calling out hesitantly as he does so.

"Mom?"

He hears a shuffling definitely, and a moan maybe, but certainly no real answer and the panic he's been battling since returning home is finally to great to ignore. He flings the door open with more force than necessary and almost catches it in the face when it bounces off the wall guard and swings back towards him. But he has Emma's reflexes and Regina's determination and makes it into the small room, finally laying eyes on what he knew deep down he was going to find all along.

His curiously fragile but surprisingly unbreakable mother is huddled on the bathroom floor, completely and obviously broken.

~~~~SQ~~~~

After hours of driving around the outskirts of town, encountering exactly nobody and working desperately to clear her mind, Emma is just about ready to return to her love and cling to her for as long as Regina will let her. From the minute those hateful words left her mouth and she fled to halt their flow, it's the only thing Emma's been able to think about more than fleetingly.

It had taken only minutes before she'd called David, unapologetically breaking every cell phone law on the book, and begged him to take her place as chaperone and learned that it really didn't take any begging at all. And then she'd totally pulled Henry out of math class (on Important Savior\Truest Believer business) to see if Henry could make do with one week of wilderness training instead of two. That had taken a bit more prodding but when he'd finally read between the lines and realized why she was making the request he'd relented in true Henry fashion - with a smart ass remark and a smirk.

With those two issues solved and the Bug back on the road she'd continued driving her circuit of the town even though her heart pulled her towards the mansion at every turn. Her emotions were still running high - her shame just short of crippling - making return impossible before she'd figured out how to somehow right this unrightable situation. Her words had been deliberately hurtful, to Emma's utter dismay, and you don't get to bask in the warmth of your love's embrace without apologizing for that sort of thing. Not when you can dole out hurt the way Emma had.

Emma's no good at relationships, but even she knows that. So she'd circled the town and crafted and re-crafted her apology until finally having something as close to decent as she can get, and just enough confidence to point the Bug towards the huge house on the outskirts of town that she sometimes calls home in her head.

Tossed haphazardly on the seat next to her, her phone begins to buzz incessantly.

~~~~SQ~~~~

"Ma!"

Henry points to the downstairs bathroom, tears wet in his eyes. His panic fuels Emma's own and she bursts into the bathroom mere moments later, no thought to propriety, and then stops short less than a step in. A breathless "Oh God" slips past her lips unconsciously as she takes in the sight before her - Regina huddled against the wall by the toilet, a clammy sweat visible against her unnaturally ashen skin and wracked with chills that Emma can see from the door.

She wonders idly if Regina's in shock.

"What are you doing here?" Regina's voice is utterly dead and Emma can't understand how someone in so much emotional pain that they're reacting physically could possibly sound so empty. "You gave up."

A tear tracks down Regina's cheek and she continues so softly that Emma begins straining to hear, moving closer and kneeling down. "You left me."

Emma stares at Regina blankly for long moments as tears continue to track down her face before it dawns on her with the force of a thousand suns what happened.

"No Regina. No No No." Emma scoots closer and pulls an alarmingly unresistant Regina against her. She's mortified that she's so effortlessly added herself to the list of people who've broken Regina's faith in love and begins to search desperately for words to fix this, her previously composed apology speech woefully and completely off the mark and immediately discarded.

"I said 'I can't do this anymore'. I couldn't keep fighting with you. I was so angry and I couldn't think straight and I was just saying things I knew would hurt you and that's not us, not anymore, so I left to cool off."

Emma runs a hand against the damp hair clinging to Regina's brow, hoping to sooth at least one of them with the action. "I was always, always coming back."

"No," Regina shakes her head weakly but doesn't pull away from the embrace and Emma can't tell if it's an internal conflict that keeps Regina safely in her arms or apathy. "I know what disgust is. I see it every time I look in a mirror and today I saw it in you."

Praying to a God she doesn't even believe in that Regina hasn't already given up on her, or herself, Emma digs deep for an explanation that will make Regina understand. "I said horrible things to you sweetheart. Horrible, unforgivable things just to hurt you. You saw disgust but it was only for myself."

A deep breath then, "I know you know what it's like to hate yourself for something."

Regina looks at her then, really looks at her for the first time since she burst into the bathroom. And, with no ability to stop herself, Emma looks back and takes in the damage she's manage to cause this strong, resilient woman with mere words.

The shame she'd carried with her since leaving the house, momentarily buried under her panic, rises to the surface again and steals her voice so that she can only whisper, "I was always coming back. I swear it to you."

A moment or an hour passes, it's hard to tell trapped in hell the way they are, but Regina eventually deflates even more completely against Emma, and mutters the first words with any emotion behind them since their argument hours earlier. "You didn't leave me?"

"No Regina. Never. I promise."

~~~~SQ~~~~

It had taken some coaxing from both Emma and Henry (it was Henry's plaintive "Please Mom, let us help you." that tipped the scales in their favor) but they finally have Regina resting on her bed instead of the cold, hard bathroom floor. Emma had ended up carrying her most of the way which, under different circumstances, would have made her ridiculously proud.

But despite the location change and the conspicuous amount of covering draped across her, Emma can still feel random shivers passing through the slight form pressed tightly against her. Reminded with each tremor how much damage she caused with just words, Emma pulls her somehow closer and dusts her head with gentle, loving, and above all, apologetic kisses.

"I can't believe I was so... " It's hard to get out, and Emma stumbles badly before she manages to get the word past lips suddenly gone numb. "...careless with you today."

The words are said softly, more to herself really than to Regina but she's immediately rewarded for them with a comforting warmth spreading through her belly. Despite Emma's constant prodding, Regina still keeps an iron band of control over her emotions and very rarely lets them travel across their bond to be a nuisance (Regina's term, not Emma's). With that knowledge, Emma is fairly certain the fact that she's feeling such warmth now is nothing short of Regina trying to reassure her.

Emma feels the shame burn across her features immediately. She's hardly even begun apologizing and already Regina's trying to take the burden of mending the damage from their quarrel upon herself. Before she can protest, however, Regina's speaking and Emma can't bring herself to interrupt.

"I've given you all my secrets and you know just how to hurt me. You can end me, if you choose to." Regina offers the brutal words without malice and Emma works very hard to remain silent, knowing by the cadence of her breathing that Regina has more to say.

"And you certainly hurt me. For a time I- I wasn't sure how I was going to go on. Without you. But you came back for me; You didn't leave me, you didn't end me. I'm still here and you're still here and that's more than I've ever gotten from anyone in my life… except maybe Henry. And really, I have no right to more than that."

Emma hears the words but they just aren't _right_ and they stir the fierce protectiveness that Emma feels for Regina, always slumbering just below the surface of her thoughts and actions, the last six hours or so notwithstanding. She knows that Regina loves unreservedly, and does so desperate to receive just a fraction in return but experience having trained her to expect nothing.

She knows it, but to hear her actually say it is devastating.

"Please don't say things like that. You deserve so much better than today… than **me** today.

Surprising Emma slightly, Regina turns in her embrace so they're facing each other on the bed, tucking her head under Emma's chin and almost burrowing into her. Her words are muffled against Emma's collarbone. "I understand mistakes. The Gods know I do. Please just… I don't know if I could survive that again."

Emma rubs gentle circles across the back now resting under her fingertips and she sighs, knowing that convincing Regina she's worthy of real, unselfish love isn't something that can be accomplished with one exhausted conversation. So, instead of even trying, Emma simply gives Regina what she can, and hopes someday they'll each feel worthy of the other.

"I can't promise you we'll never fight again. That would be insane. We're us - we'll fight again. But not like this. Never again like this. That I promise you."

**End Notes:**

**I wrote a thing! I'm still in a slump so every complete piece gets exaggerated fanfare. It hasn't worked so far but at least having an excuse to pat myself on the back is nice.**

**This one got super angsty, super fast because that's how I feel about the show at the moment (hence my complete lack of regard for canon). But, since my goal is to always leave you with something just a tiny bit _more_ satisfying than the show (from an SQ perspective anyway), I pretty much guarantee that all angst herein and henceforth will culminate in Emma and Regina being somehow "ok".I do so solemnly swear.**


End file.
