The lingering, uncomfortable silence around the table reminds Regina all too much of the times ten-year-old Henry and she shared a meal. She would look on in helplessness and frustration as he would bow his head over his unwanted broccoli in sullen, stony silence, while his mind no doubt raced with the storybook and condemning her as nothing but an evil queen. The saddened memory causes Regina to look up and steal a glance at her memory-affected son, now nearly nineteen years of age. Though the sullen dinners had been an incredibly hard and sad time in her life, the memory is somehow bittersweet, because it was at a time where she hadn't missed six years of his precious life, where he hadn't gone and left her, growing up without her into a man more beautiful than she could have ever imagined. For the thousandth time, she wishes, wishes she'd found another way to defeat Pan's curse, where she could have been there to watch him grow taller than her. Looking at him now, dark eyebrows furrowed, the shadows of the room nestling deep into the perimeters of his thin, angled face, and stiff short hairs coating his prominent jawline, it's a shocking, unimaginable difference to the small, sullen boy she so remembers sitting in the same seat at this exact dinner table.

And then, of course, there's the girl sitting right next to him, the sole cause of the quietness surrounding the table. Regina keeps her mouth shut, though she longs for the silence to be broken by somebody, but she feels strongly that it's nowhere near her place to question Iris, as Regina herself is the only person in the room who knows that she's Henry's mother. It's Emma's job to bring out the protective mom, but she's engaged in the roast, and it's all Regina can do to keep herself for kicking the blonde in the shin under the table.

The only sounds to be heard is the clink of cutlery against expensive dishes, the occasional sniff, and faint chewing and swallowing sounds from Emma who'd never quite learned how to eat slowly and soundlessly. Finally, just as the silence becomes deafening to Regina's ears, nearly unbearable, Emma gulps down a large mouthful of water and speaks.

"So, Iris. Where're you from?" She crosses her arms, leaning back in her chair, staring at Iris with a leveled, unblinking gaze. She'd been looking at the girl for quite some time, considering which question of the vast amount she possessed to launch first.

Iris starts in her seat, raising her deep brown eyes with curling lashes to look at the blonde woman, stomach churning slightly at her gaze. "Um," she begins, clearing her throat after the first initial sound had come out as a croak. "New York. I'm a traveler, like to visit new places, and this town sparked my interest."

"Traveler, hmm?" Emma echoes, her angled eyebrows shifting down only slightly as she seemingly challenges her. "So, you move around a lot, then?"

"Yeah, pretty much--" Iris begins, before clamming up as if realizing the underlying meaning in Emma's question. "But I--not a lot," she adds quickly, feeling beads of sweat form on the back of her neck. Beside her, Henry shifts to send his mom an annoyed glance.

"Ma," he says, a small warning note in his voice. Emma's arms unfold and she shoots him a slightly apologetic look before schooling her gaze back on Iris.

"I see. How long you plan on staying here?"

"Ma!"

"Alright, alright. I mean, we're only visiting, anyways, as well." Emma sighs, finally tearing her eyes away from the dark-skinned beauty to flicker down to her roast. Iris lets out a silent, relieved breath, and closes her lips around a forkful of mashed potatoes.

Regina coughs into her napkin, and lifts her eyes to Henry where they exchange small, knowing smiles about Emma's protectiveness. And for the briefest moments, as the two of them share a private moment, the weight on Regina's heart seems to lift, and for a moment, she feels better.

---

Regina stands in front of the sink filled halfway with hot water and plenty of suds, but neither she nor her soap-covered forearms are facing the dishes. She doesn't consider herself nosey, or a snoop of any kind, but Henry and Iris are standing within easy seeing and hearing distance, and she can't help herself. She feels she owes at least this much to herself to see how her son is really acting with his 'friend' when he believes no one is looking. She justifies it somehow, and watches intently as Henry fetches Iris's jacket from the closet.

Iris stuffs her arms into the stiff sleeves of her new brown leather jacket, while schooling Henry with a quirked eyebrow. "So, your mom hated me, and her girlfriend could barely look at me. Am I really so unlikeable?" She asks the last statement inside a giggle, but Henry takes it seriously, a furrowed brow shadowing his handsome features.

"My mom did not hate you! She just has a hard time with new people, apparently. Don't take it too seriously; she's a bail-bonds woman, grilling answers out of people is kind of her thing." He cocks his head to the side, his shoulders raising into a slightly sheepish shrug.

"Bail-bonds, huh? Great, so she was treating me like a criminal." She says it with a straight face, but then her mouth cracks into a grin, and she's throwing a punch into Henry's bicep, making him feign exaggerated pain. Both laugh, and Henry places a gentle cuff on the girl's ear.

"Oh, come on. She couldn't have been that pissed that I brought a friend over for dinner." Henry reasons, watching as Iris's eyes widen in something like playfulness with a dash of uncertainty and nervousness.

"Friend, huh?" She repeats, shifting her mascara-heavy eyes across every inch of his face. Henry makes no reply. Her face falls slightly, and her hand drops from it had been resting on his bicep. "Not something more?"

Henry starts, as if woken from a sort of trance, or if he'd been just waiting for a certain green light. Regina watches, eyes fixed in a sort of horrified wide eyed expression, as if knowing exactly what's about to happen without being able to tear her eyes away.

Henry lifts his large hand from his side to push her black curls away from her ear, then sliding down her jawline before gently pushing her chin up to reach his bowed head. He watches her eyes droop as if with sleepiness before he deems it right to shut his own eyelids and find her plump lips with his own. The kiss is neither short nor long; but the perfect amount of lingering for both to be sure that the other is certainly kissing back. Henry's heart has either stopped or is beating too fast for him to register, and the only thing he can think about is the fact that her lips are much softer than he ever imagined, and holy shit she's kissing me, and---

And then they break apart, their faces still inches apart, breathing a little too heavily for it to be just from the kiss, and a flush on each of their cheeks not caused by the thermostat in the mansion needing to be bumped down a few degrees. They seem to read each other's eyes--either that or they're each following their own simultaneous selfish desires--because then they're leaning back in, kissing more fervently than the first time, and Henry's not sure when his hand had moved from her chin to both in her hair, or when her hands had started moving up and down his back.

Somewhere during the second kiss that had no doubt began to turn into something much more than an innocent join of two lips, Regina had spun around to face the dishes, mind forever burned with the image of her baby boy making out with a girl in the middle of her foyer. Her eyes are stinging, and she's not sure whether it's from the lack of blinking, or the threat of tears. A slightly soapy palm is raised to her forehead and brushes away the hair falling into her eyes, leaving plenty of bubbles in its wake.

Her discomfort, or more accurately, her horror, is not only brought on by the utter shock of being slapped with yet another blatant reminder that Henry is far from the little boy she so remembers. She's also realizing, with her heart pounding in her ears loud and warm enough to trigger a migraine, that this is the absolute worst situation that could occur. Now, no matter when she finally removed Iris's memories and sent her away, Henry, sweet, sensitive Henry would be burned with what she's positive won't be his first heartbreak. She digs her palms into her eyes, warm dishwater tickling her eyelashes, as she curses herself with all the foulest words that come instantly to mind. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid! Thanks to Regina's selfishness about wanting to keep Emma to herself, Henry has already been hurt, although tonight he'll be lying in bed, starry-eyed with a grin tugging at his features.

She realizes with a pang and a jolt that the longer she puts off taking away Iris's memories, the more Henry will be affected by her disappearance. She knows that she needs to get the deed done as soon as possible, but also knows that with Iris's loss of memory, means Emma's regain.

She can't very well take away Iris's and renew Henry's while excluding Emma's. How would that look to the town, to Snow and David? She would be--has been--actively robbing them of their daughter. And even if she could lie and say she ran out of potion, she knows deep in her heart that she needs Emma, the savior Emma, to aid her in removing Iris. She needs the Sheriff, she needs one who knows the dangers, one who knows how to work from the inside, she needs Emma Swan, as much as it kills her.

She hears the front door shut signaling Henry and Iris's departure, and Regina knows what she has to do.

---

Regina stretches up and grabs two glasses with long stems nearly out of reach and fetches her good scotch she has hidden away. She then raises a red manicured hand and thinks of the small vial resting in Henry's bedside drawer where she'd magicked it hours ago. Within seconds, the vial appears in her palm in a small, faint puff of smoke, and she quickly slips it up her sleeve before gathering the glasses and bottle. She meets Emma in the sitting room, where she's already nursing a bottle of beer, staring intently into the unlit fireplace. The blonde looks up when Regina makes her appearance, and sends her a sheepish expression.

"Hey," Emma greets quietly, setting her bottle down on the glass coffee table from her position on the couch.

"Hi," Regina responds, setting everything in her hands down on the same table, save the hidden vial. "I was hoping we could talk about--"

"About us, about what I said in the study. Look Regina, I really am sorry that I assumed you would do something so terrible to me. I guess I was just feeling unsure, insecure, out of my element...? It's hard to describe; I know I was out of line." Emma cuts her off, twisting a decorative silver ring around her slender thumb.

Regina gives her an easy, forgiving smile as she begins pouring generous amounts of scotch into the two glasses. "It's alright, my love. I'm sorry I've been.....distant. With everything that's been going on....well, it's been really hard on me, but that's no reason at all for me to treat you like the second most important thing. I love you, Emma."

Emma stares at her with watery green eyes, blinking fast as if trying not to cry. "Gina," she whispers, continuing to stare in something like awe at the brunette a few paces away from her. "What did I do to deserve you?" She asks the last portion as a joke, but the sentiment in her voice is clearly there, and she digs her palms into her eyes.

Regina doesn't hesitate before taking the moment of opportunity of Emma with shielded eyes. She swings her arm forward, hand splayed, casting a short time freezing spell on the other woman. Emma stays unmoving on the couch, hands still over her face, single strands of her hair suspended in mid-air, a golden haze surrounding her as the magic works. Fumbling a little, Regina fishes for the vial in her sleeve, uncorks it, then pours the small amount into one of the glasses. The nearly clear liquid dissolves almost immediately into the scotch, and Regina sighs in relief and something like resignation before she stretches her hand out again and reverses the spell.

Instantly, Emma's hands drop from her face, and she looks on at Regina, having no knowledge of anything happening at all. Regina smiles at her, picks each glass up by the stem, carefully keeping the location of which glass has the memory potion, and settles down on the couch next to her girlfriend. Emma's hand reaches out to take the stem of her glass, but Regina withholds it for a moment. She closes her eyes, leans forward, and goes in for one more kiss.

Emma complies, soon forgetting about the scotch, and kisses her back fervently, obviously still apologizing through her motions and her tongue slipping between Regina's teeth. The blonde thinks without question that this is a making-up kiss, that they'll both nurse their scotch in a moment, laughing and chatting away the evening before soon heading back to New York.

There's nothing in her mind that makes her think that it's a goodbye kiss. But Regina knows, god, she knows and it's fucking unbearable, and she's memorizing the way Emma's thin soft lips feel on her own, the way she tastes and the way she likes to suck on Regina's bottom lip because she knows Regina likes it, though she denies it. She's memorizing the way Emma leans into her touch, the way her freckled nose presses gently against her own, the way her long blonde hair tickles her face. And as Regina's kissing her fervently for the last time, she hopes--prays--that somehow, Emma's memorizing her as well.

Memorize me, Emma. God, please, memorize me before we lose it all.

And then Regina has to pull back, and she knows, knows it's time. She ignores the stinging in her eyes and squares her shoulders preparing for the hell that's sure to come, the very flames licking their feet. And then, she does what takes the most strength she has buried deep within her. She hands Emma her glass.

She watches as Emma chats mindlessly for a minute or two before she, without thinking, tips the glass back and soaks her tongue with its magic.

She watches as Emma freezes, brings her head back up, stem held tightly in her hand as shadows from a million memories of another life come whipping back to her mind at a dizzying speed.

And then, she watches as Emma opens her eyes, a completely different look and feel to them than they had only a few seconds ago. And Emma looks at her, and Regina knows, without a single doubt clouding her mind as her tongue loses all its moisture and her brain rams against her skull.

She knows that Emma remembers.

AN: so, it was still a longer wait than I would have liked you all to endure, but here's a new chapter much sooner than the recent ones! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, as I put a lot of work into it. And, yay, here's what you guys were requesting! Emma has her memories back now. Any thoughts on how she'll react? Only time will tell...;)

Please vote or comment, you have no idea how much you all can impact my day for the better by doing that.