[She doesn't turn around at first, fingers lingering on the door for a moment as she tries to figure out how to toe the line between honestly and vulnerability. It's a complicated thing, because she knows that in order for it to be real, it needs to be both, but she's not really willing to give that vulnerability yet.]

It wasn't really about you.

[Because nothing is, really. Ella was collateral damage in her quest for her mother's love, something she never really understood why she was denied, and then by the time the curse came around, she didn't care who got hurt so long as Victoria suffered.

And a curse needs heroes to break it. There was no way that Ella and Henry weren't going to be swept up in its wake, but she thought, at the time, that this would at least keep the curse being broken from being considered a win.

She would always win. But in the end, she lost, she lost long before she ever decided to cast the curse.]

After Ana, she made it pretty clear that I couldn't have both. And by the time I forced Regina to cast the curse ... I just didn't care.