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“Rumpelstiltskin was the one who convinced me to enact the curse, he has the ability to see the future and he planned the curse in a very specific way. He needed someone who was willing to sacrifice the heart of the thing they loved the most. By then he was the Dark One and he didn’t love anything. He needed my thirst for revenge. He needed me to create Storybrooke but that is another story,” she shook her head at the thought of it.

“You had to sacrifice the heart of the thing you loved the most for the curse to work?” Emma asked.

“Yes,” Regina nodded and Emma could see the tears in her eyes reflecting the light of the fire.

“Your father,” Emma guessed.

“How did you..?” Regina stuttered.

“You’ve gone out of your way to not mention your father,” Emma explained, “but I’ve seen him in the book and Mary Margaret has mentioned him. And his coffin is in your vault and your son is named after him.. aside from Daniel he must have been the thing you loved the most..”

Regina nodded, “I killed him for all this,” she waved her hand around the room, “he probably knew I was going to do it and he let me anyway.”

She took a deep breath, “aside from that, my crimes are fairly well documented in your book, unless you want chapter on verse on them too?”

Emma shook her head, “no.. I know what happened next,” she said quietly and watched as Regina sipped on more wine, “so, what I’m hearing is, that you have been manipulated into doing other people’s dirty work your whole life..”

“No,” Regina shook her head as she firmly issued the denial, “no, I cannot pretend that I am not responsible for my own actions. I did those things, people died during our war and I did terrible things, destroyed lives.”

“Your mother controlled you with magic, Gold taught you magic so you could cast a curse for his benefit,” Emma implored, “yes, you did bad things but you cannot be blamed for everything. You were controlled by the people around you.”

Regina shook her head and took a deep breath and swirled the wine around the glass.

“What about the rest of it?” Emma asked.

“The rest of what?” Regina frowned.

“That was how you became the Evil Queen, I also want to know how you managed to get back to being Regina,” Emma gave a soft smile.

Chapter 61

Regina nodded, "well," she paused as she thought about it, "after you broke my curse," she mock glared at her and Emma sniggered as she took a sip of wine.

"After you broke my curse I had a lot of free time," Regina sighed, "Henry was gone and I wanted to take him back so badly. I wanted to march up Main Street throwing fireballs until I got my son back."

"But you didn't.." Emma said softly.

"Because I knew that if I did he would never want to come with me," Regina dipped her head, "he saw me as the Evil Queen and who would want to be with that. So I decided I needed to take a different approach, I made a promise with myself that I would not use magic to harm people and that I would try to be the person that Henry wanted me to be."

Regina laughed, "but he never came back. I tried to contact him but," she looked at Emma, "well, you know all that, it was so painful and I knew.. I thought.. I wasn't going to get him back. So I went to Gold.."

"Yeah," Emma interrupted, "I don't get that, why did you go to Gold?"

Regina nodded her understanding at Emma's confusion, "magic is a powerful force and there are many things you can do but there are also many things you cannot do. Bring people back from the dead is one example. Effect your own body and mind is another. Like the sleeping spell I cast on you, I cannot cast that on myself because magic has rules and it won't allow me. Likewise I could never create the potion that would allow me to forget my own son, magic wouldn't allow me to do that. It's cheating."

"Magic doesn't like cheating?" Emma laughed.

"It's the way it is," Regina shrugged, "imagine if Gold could heal all his own injuries, bring himself or another back from the dead, remove unwanted memories.. he'd be more dangerous than we know him to be now."

Emma nodded her understanding but had a further question, "why did he help you?"

"Gold has a son. Had a son. He lost him through a portal a long time ago and he has been doing everything he can to get back to him. He knows the pain of your child not loving you, not wanting to be with you. He also knows that he brought us here for his own benefit, that he twisted and manipulated my entire life to bring us here. He owed me," Regina bit out, "and we'd been fighting so long and I was just.. so.. damn tired."

"I called a truce," Regina said simply, "well, I threatened to kill us both and then I called a truce. We spoke, buried a few hatchets and agreed to work together, to help each other."

Emma wasn't sure she liked the sound of that but she nodded anyway.