Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Emma Swan worked quickly and quietly, packing up her meagre belongings. She had managed to fit her whole life into just two boxes and her old duffel bag in under thirty minutes. Looking down at them, she lightly clapped her hands together and felt an odd sense of pride. Very efficient, AND that was two boxes more than she’d had when Henry brought her to Storybrooke. Some upward progression was better than none, she figured.

Of course, there were also two trash bags holding all of her clothing, a holdover habit from her childhood in the system. Her pride did not extend to the trash bags. They just made her already aching heart hurt worse. She was never going to outgrow being that lost little girl who didn't matter and didn't think she ever would. She realised that now. She couldn’t outgrow her, couldn’t chase her away, and as it turned out, she couldn’t fake her being gone either, no matter how hard she tried. All she could do was run away from feeling like her, which was exactly what she was doing.

It was late at night, close to two a.m., and Emma was leaving Storybrooke. She knew that it was beyond cowardly of her to bounce like this in the middle of the night, but she also knew that everyone would get over her absence quickly and with relative ease, so the first truth didn’t weigh very much on her shoulders. Besides, it’s not like she was disappearing. She’d call once she got settled. She just couldn’t stay here anymore. She couldn’t take feeling all alone when she was surrounded by the very people who should have made her feel at home.

“Home,” Emma bitterly chuckled, shaking her head as she stowed her belongings away in the bug. She turned around to look at the ‘home’ she’d lived in for the last year and a half. A cute little two-story not far from her parents’ place. She hadn’t slept properly there for several months now. It was too big and empty for just herself. The silence made her skin crawl.

She’d shared the house with Hook for a short time before he’d fucked off for parts unknown. Which was mostly fine to Emma. She’d never really loved him anyway, not like he’d wanted her to and not like she’d hoped she could. And she’d definitely never felt the kind of love that she was looking for coming from him. It just wasn’t meant to be. Still, the way he’d left, under the cover of darkness, much like she was doing now… It hadn’t just hurt her; it had been embarrassing. She’d gone to bed one night with her “soulmate” and woke up to a short “Dear John” letter. And then she had to tell everyone that she couldn’t even keep a pirate.

Henry, of course, had had a bedroom inside the house, and he’d slept in there every single weekend for a few months even. But after things had really started to settle down in Storybrooke, he’d returned to staying at Regina’s full-time, and Emma could not fault him at all for that. Regina’s house was warm, cosy, and filled with life, while Emma had never even gotten around to putting up curtains. And more than that, now Henry was part of a real family in that house, a whole family– greeting card picture perfect.

Emma had packed up the few belongings left in Henry’s room too. She put the box containing them into her back seat before turning around to look at her house one last time. And then, stubbornly fighting back tears for now, Emma got in the bug and left it behind.

She headed for her parents’ place first and pulled to a stop across the street from it. There was a dim light on in their bedroom, which actually wasn’t all that surprising to Emma. Even though it had been an exceptionally busy day, she figured her mother was dutifully up nursing one of her younger siblings. There were two of them now, with a third one already on the way.

Emma hated how jealous she was of them. They were just babies. It was stupid and made her feel like a jackass, but she couldn’t help it. Her father liked carrying Neal around on his shoulders, and it made Emma’s throat really tight every time she saw them together. A few months ago, her mother had decided to nurse little Ruby while she was over, and she hadn’t been able to go back to their place since out of fear of it happening again. She’d nearly started screaming at her mom about things from her childhood that she’d had no control over. They were a large part of why she was leaving, Neal and Ruby and the third one. She didn’t want them growing up feeling like their older sister hated them simply for existing.

After a few minutes, Emma put the bug back into first and quietly pulled away. There was no way she was going to go in there and tell her parents goodbye, of course. She knew exactly what would happen if she did. Both of them would immediately feel guilty about the entire situation, and then they’d try to turn that guilt onto her to get her to stay.

And then they’d make promises about renewed bonds and big plans that would all be quickly forgotten about as soon as she was out of their immediate sight again. Because they had a real family now, not just an adult daughter they had no hand in raising. No, it was better for her to just leave. She’d call them eventually once she settled. And she was willing to bet all of the tea in China that when she did, they wouldn’t ask her to come back.

As much as Emma wanted to floor it out of town then, she headed towards the Town Hall. The building was empty at this time of night, and her footsteps sounded impossibly loud on the marble floors as she made the familiar trek to Regina’s office carrying Henry's box in front of her like a shield. She wondered how many times she’d walked this same path, from the door to the stairs, to Regina’s office. Too many times to count for sure. They’d eaten lunch together every day there, for a little while at least.

Emma took a deep breath before using the key Regina had entrusted her with to let herself in. Pointedly avoiding looking towards the couch they used to sit on together, she made a beeline for the stately desk and gently put the box down, as if it held priceless items instead of a few comic book doubles and spare PJs. Shakily, she ran her fingers over one of the PJ tops, as if she were stroking Henry’s cheek and not just old clothes he’d probably outgrown by now.

And then she pulled two envelopes from out of her back pocket and added the one with Henry’s name on it to the box. Henry was the only one getting any kind of explanation about this. Of course. She couldn’t not explain herself to him. The idea of him thinking for even one second that her leaving had anything to do with him was heartbreaking to Emma. If she didn’t think she would have sobbed like a baby, she would have done it face-to-face. She knew that she should be doing it face-to-face. She just couldn’t.

So he got a letter, explaining probably a little bit more than she really needed to tell her own son, but she trusted that he was both mature enough to read it and trustworthy enough not to share the contents. That said, she’d put a magic lock on the envelope, ensuring he was the only one who would be able to open it. She liked to think that Regina would be proud that she was able to figure out the spell all on her own. At the end of the letter, she promised him that she would call him in a few days, a promise she intended to keep, and that as soon as she was settled down somewhere, probably far out west by the Pacific, he was welcome to visit her as soon as he wanted to; in fact, she sincerely hoped he would. She could not stress that enough.

Throat tight, barely holding back those tears now, Emma then removed her gun and badge and set them down next to the box. She also left her town keys and the other envelope, which contained her official letter of resignation and the deed to her house. She was sure Regina would have a family moved into it quickly. They were facing a bit of a housing crisis after the last curse had rounded up every stray Disney character on the books it seemed.

Emma nearly ran out of the office then. Like she was primed and ready to go. But then her eyes trailed over the desk a few inches too far to the left and ended up landing on the small collection of framed photos that Regina kept there. Nestled between a picture of Zelena and one of Henry's latest class photos was a picture of Regina cuddled up with the main reason that Emma was leaving. Robin Hood. Or rather, Regina marrying Robin Hood. Eight hours and twenty-four minutes ago to be exact. Not that she was hyperaware of the time or anything.

Emma had forced herself to suffer through their wedding and the reception and all of the preparations that had come beforehand with the very best smile she could muster. And it had mostly been a sincere smile. She really did want Regina to have her happy ending after all, and she’d leaned heavily on that want to keep herself going. She’d even agreed to be one of the bride’s maids. And, privately speaking, Emma would admit to the right audience that she had a pretty deep masochistic streak.

But there was no way in hell that she was going to subject herself to staying in Storybrooke to watch Regina’s happy ending play out with Robin Fucking Hood. She just couldn’t. Ripping her heart out straight out of her chest and feeding it to a pack of hungry wolves would have had the same effect.

The tears started up then, big and heavy, rolling down her face like a river. Already on the verge of hyperventilating, she skipped walking back out to the bug in favour of poofing straight to the driver's seat. She left tire tracks four feet long tearing out of the Town Hall parking lot.

Emma drove as if she were being chased all the way to the town border and then slammed on her brakes a few yards ahead of it hard enough to rattle her teeth. Breathing hard, tears streaming down her face, she stared at the invisible line like it were the edge of a cliff. Only the line wasn’t invisible, not to her. Even in the inky darkness of night, she could see Regina’s magic shimmering here and there. Regina had taught her how to see it during a magic lesson that felt like a different lifetime ago.

There had been a time, a short, brief window, before Hook and Hood, when Emma had felt like her and Regina were on the brink of something too big and important to put a name on. It was time that they’d spent together after Neverland but before she had to take Henry and escape another curse. She knew Regina had felt it too. She’d been able to see it in her eyes, and she’d been able to feel it every time the woman touched her, always so gently, with care. A warm touch to her shoulder, the brush of her hand while they sat next to each other. Before Emma knew it, she’d been hungry for those touches. She wanted something out of Regina that she didn’t understand, but she knew that Regina wanted to give it to her all the same.

And then there was almost a kiss. The moment had seemed so right for it. Emma hadn’t even realised kissing was part of what she wanted until it almost happened. But Regina had pulled back at the last moment. And then she'd apologised to Emma. “Maybe someday, just not right now,” is what she’d said. The townspeople, Emma’s parents, they were all just starting to really believe that Regina was a non-threat at the time. She didn’t want to jeopardise that. It just wasn’t the right time for them.

Emma had accepted that at the time. And by God had she fucking CLUNG to that “maybe someday”.

And then the curse had happened, and when she’d come back, Regina had found her One True Love in Robin. It was as if nothing had ever almost happened between them. So Emma had settled with Hook, and she’d tried with all of her fucking willpower to get over that “maybe someday”. But she couldn’t. Obviously.

Emma’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. She didn’t know if she was ever going to leave that lost little girl behind for good. She didn’t know if she was ever going to really matter to anyone beyond what she could do for them. She didn’t know if she was ever going to find her home or the kind of love that she didn’t understand, but was so desperate for. Maybe someday she would. But she did know that none of that was behind her in Storybrooke. And so, with tears in her eyes, Emma Swan left Storybrooke to all of the happy endings she’d brought about for them.

Chapter Text

Emma Swan set her cellphone down on the thrifted iron-wrought table in front of her and looked out at the sun setting over the mountains with a deep, exhausted sigh. She had just gotten off the phone with her parents, the first time she’d spoken to them since she fled Storybrooke two months ago, and the call had gone exactly how she had predicted it would. They loved her so, so much, they missed her so, so much, and they had very noticeably not asked her to come back to Storybrooke. Not even a “they wish she would”.

Instead, she’d gotten double hit with, “We didn’t know you were so unhappy, and we just want you to be happy”. And then her father got off the phone to go take Neal to the park, and her mother gushed about Ruby taking her first steps for the last fifteen minutes of the call. She did say she wished Emma had been there to see that. She also made her promise to keep her phone nearby at all times though, and to actually pick it up or at least call them back when they called from now on. Just in case another crazed Disney villain with a score to settle rolled into town and they needed the saviour again. Not her words exactly, but Emma was pretty adept at reading between the lines. Once a hero, always a hero.

“Typical,” she grumbled, reaching across the small wooden table in front of her for her third beer of the evening. In hindsight, she really should have drunk it before the call, and a fourth one for good measure. She would have if she hadn’t promised Henry she’d call him as well. That call could wait a bit longer though. She knew Regina usually had dinner on the table at seven sharp their time and thus, he was likely sitting down eating still. She allowed herself a single moment to wonder what they were eating, and then another to miss Regina’s cooking, before rubbing her face with both hands and sinking down into the lawn chair that she was currently planted in.

Emma had run as far as Las Vegas, Nevada, before deciding that she’d put enough distance between herself and Storybrooke. Her original plan of going all the way to the California Coast had been trashed somewhere around Kansas City. Because, when you get down to it, an ocean is an ocean, and she was too afraid that she’d look out at the Pacific and just be reminded of sitting on the pier with Regina looking out at the Atlantic. No fucking thanks to that. Vegas though? Now this was where it was at. Nothing to remind her of Storybrooke here, just sand, casinos, and strip malls.

She’d stayed in a hotel for the first couple of weeks that she was in the city, living off her savings and admittedly drinking way more than she should have. Like way more. But Emma had never had the follow-through it took to become addicted to anything, and hangovers hit her a lot harder these days than they had in her twenties. So, after drying up and taking the world’s longest shower, she’d gotten her shit together and made a plan. It was very unoriginal, become a bail bondsman again, but it was a plan. And then her plan hit a big ass brick-wall of a roadblock immediately.

Fun fact: In the state of Massachusetts, you do not have to have any type of special license to be a bail bondsman. You just gotta be an adult, with no felonies, and “some training in law enforcement”. You meet that criteria, then all you have to do is head down to the Superior Court and register as a bail bondsman. And then you can legally tackle bail-jumpers, toss 'em in your car, and take 'em to jail. When Emma signed up for the job back in the day, she hadn’t really questioned the process. In hindsight, she probably should have.

Anyway, in the state of Nevada, on the other hand, you have to live in the state for a year first. And then spend four to five months on state-mandated training and testing before you can even apply for the license. Reasonable. So that plan was on the back burner for now. Another maybe someday for the pile.

Emma had admittedly been very put out, “woe is me”, about her plan going tits up right out of the gate, but she had not been worried about money, at least. Thanks to the rather unique nature of Storybrooke, her savings account was more than padded. Nobody ever came right out and said it, but they were fully operating on a Magical Democratic Socialist system in that town. Nobody had paid any rent since the first curse broke, and even after all the subsequent curses, they all just kept getting paid. Regina had explained the magic behind it all in depth once to her, but it had gone over Emma’s head. Something about "pocket realms" and her intentions when she cast the first curse. Emma tried hard not to spend too much time thinking about the micro-economy that was Storybrooke, and was just relieved that every time she used the ATM with her First Bank of Storybrooke card, real money came out.

Still, she had to find a job. She knew that she just couldn’t sit around like a bump on a log. She’d go fucking insane in her misery with nothing to keep her busy. She knew she wasn’t cut out for a major career change, so after some brainstorming and googling, she started thumbing through the classifieds for security guard jobs, figuring that was close enough to ex-sheriff and ex-bail bondsmen. Thankfully, she’d quickly found a gig at a dingy little nondescript casino, way, way off of the strip, that she was fairly certain was a front for the mob. The pay was lousy and the hours were long, but no one asked her any personal questions, and there were enough things to do that her mind couldn’t wander to Sad Town; long corridors to walk, shady players to watch, etc.

Along with getting a job, she’d moved out of the hotel. Wanting to make this move feel very permanent, and again, padded savings account, she decided to buy a small place instead of renting one. After more thought than she’d put into the job, she found a place she liked on the outskirts of the city, not far from the casino. In a very masochistic way that an army of psychiatrists would fail to fully psychoanalyse, she was pretty amused with her choice, imagining Regina’s face if ever she saw it. A trailer park, of all places. The former queen would shit herself.

It was a nice trailer park, though, in Emma’s defence. And it was well affordable, only carving out a portion of her savings. A brand new development, with sturdy, modern trailers, encroaching on the surrounding desert, filled mostly with retirees and snowbirds. Everything was nice and tidy and quiet at night. There was even an extra bedroom for Henry to stay in when he visited. And it came furnished. Emma had seen the picture online and wrinkled her nose at first, but then she’d looked past it being a trailer to the majestic view of the mountain range right beyond it and decided to drive out and see it in person. She’d bought it that day. She couldn’t wait for Henry to see it someday.

In true Henry fashion, he was taking this entire thing very coolly. At least Emma really, really hoped he was. She talked to him every three days like clockwork, and he was obviously sad that she wasn’t there, but he didn’t seem choked up sad. When he said he just wanted her to be happy, Emma actually believed him. They’d also talked more about her reasons for leaving. Not in depth, because Emma couldn’t just say “your grandparents make me small and unimportant, and your mom drove me literally insane with unrequited love”. But surface level. He seemed to understand, or again, at least she hoped he did, that she’d been very lonely in Storybrooke, even though she definitely shouldn’t have. He actually seemed really kind of pissed off about that on her behalf. She would never get over how cool her kid was. One of the lines of thought she spent her waking hours trying to avoid was how she felt like she had reabandoned him. Thankfully, they’d already made plans for him to visit over his spring break, and a longer one come summertime. Emma couldn’t wait.

Feeling an intense pang in her heart and unable to wait any longer to talk to him, Emma quickly picked up her phone and called him, turning on the speaker. It rang three times, and she was getting ready to hang up and try again later when she heard the line pick up. And then her heart and her stomach switched places when she heard the voice on the other end that was definitely not Henry’s. It was like getting punched square in the face.

“Hello…Emma?” Regina said, her voice tentative and unsure-sounding. There was a moment of silence, presumably her waiting for Emma to respond, and then she cleared her throat lightly. “I’m sorry, Henry’s asleep,” she explained softly.

The only thing in the world that could have distracted Emma from the fact that she was talking to Regina for the first time since her wedding night was her instant worry for Henry. Quickly, she sat up in the lawn chair as her eyebrows furrowed together. “Asleep?” She asked, her eyes darting to the time to make sure she hadn’t zoned out for several hours just then. She had not. It was barely eight p.m. in Storybrooke. On a Friday night. “Is he okay?” She asked immediately, her voice quickly filling with worry.

“He’s okay. It’s just a little head cold,” Regina said, quickly, soothingly, her voice oh so warm. “He’s on the first day of it, and it knocked him out. You know how well he handles PM cold medicine,” she explained with a soft chuckle.

“Oh, okay,” Emma said simply, breathing a sigh of relief and closing her eyes. Two months in the desert and she’d begun to think hot and sunny was the norm everywhere. She forgot it was starting to get chilly in Storybrooke. For a brief moment, she also forgot who she was talking to, and then, crisis averted, it came back to her like a train hitting her and dragging her down the tracks. “Well, alright, will you please tell him that I called, and for him to call me back as soon as he’s on the mend?” She asked, politely but very quickly, desperate to end the call.

Regina was silent for a moment, and then Emma heard her clear her throat again. “Of course,” she said. “And Emma, how-”

She was clearly about to ask Emma something then, but Emma cut her off. Quickly. Fearfully. “Alright, well, I’ve got to go. Talk to you later. Bye,” she rushed out, trying her hardest not to scream it out like a full-on freak before frantically ending the call.

She tossed her phone back down onto the table like it was red hot. And then she jumped to her feet and half power-walked, half ran, several yards away from her trailer out into the desert landscape. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she squeezed them shut as she took deep, greedy breaths of the hot, dry air around her, trying to will her emotions back under control. She suddenly felt like her heart was breaking all over again, as if she’d just left Storybrooke five minutes ago. Boy, what a moment that had been.

When Emma had crossed the town border a month and a half ago, doing seventy miles per hour when she hit it, she’d completely forgotten that she was about to lose her magic. Like she knew no magic beyond the border, obviously, she honestly welcomed it, but she’d forgotten how uncomfortable it felt to suddenly have her magic stuffed back inside of her body, for lack of a better term.

That feeling wasn’t what almost made her wreck the bug though.

It was the fact that she couldn’t feel Regina anymore. Emma had not even been aware, up until that moment, that her magic had become so attuned with Regina’s magic that she could feel it. But she did. Or she had. Suddenly cutting that feeling off had felt like having a bucket of ice water thrown over her body in the dead of winter. And like being electrocuted. And like a significant chunk of her heart had just been ripped out and left behind.

Narrowly avoiding swerving into a ditch, Emma had skidded to a stop in the middle of the highway, gasping for air, clutching her chest, and crying even harder than she had been on the other side of the barrier. It was a physical loss, a fucking painful one, one she had not been prepared for in any sense of the word, and one she could still feel just as vividly three thousand miles away. The only way she could describe it was like missing a body part. Something had been there once that was tangible, and now it was gone.

And worse than all of that, she knew Regina had felt something as well when she'd crossed that border. She'd called her, Regina had, right away. Emma had been sobbing so hard that she'd missed the calls, but when she looked at her phone hours later at a gas station, she had three missed calls from the woman and half a dozen increasingly frantic text messages asking what had just happened and then, where she'd gone. They'd all come in right after she crossed the border. Emma had ignored them, pointedly, and she tried her hardest not to think about them now. Knowing that whatever had affected her had affected Regina as well hurt so much that it left her breathless. She'd felt it too. She knew she had. Thankfully, Regina had not attempted to contact her a single time since then.

After several minutes, Emma started to breathe normally, and she opened her sore eyes just in time to see a star streak across the sky, barely visible even this far out of the city, but undeniably there. For the briefest of seconds, Emma almost wished…well, she almost wished for everything on it. But then she just shook her head and headed back to her beers and solitude and sadness.

Chapter Text

Same lawn chair, one month later.

Emma could tell something was bothering Henry in a big way. The kid was trying his very best to hide it, but he was doing a lousy job of it. She could hear it plain as day in his tone of voice. He was starting to sound just like she did when she was trying to mask her feelings. Trying to sound nonchalant and unaffected when she felt like exploding from big feelings. She didn’t want that for him.

She waited for him to finish the story he was telling her about one of his buddies before taking a deep breath and diving in. She wasn’t confident in her ability to parent over the phone, but here went nothing. “Alright, Kid, what’s going on?” She asked.

“What do you mean?” Henry asked, trying to feign ignorance. Emma wasn’t buying it.

“Henry, I can tell something is bothering you,” she said, leaning forward in her lawn chair and giving her phone a serious look, as if he could see it. “What’s going on?” She asked again.

Henry let out a heavy sigh then. “Are you sure? It’s town drama, and uh, stuff to do with Mom and Robin,” he said uneasily.

Emma couldn’t help but cringe. She really didn’t want to know any of the drama going on in Storybrooke. It made it easier to be away. Keep the break clean. And honestly, having to hear about anything having to do with Regina and Hood felt like just plain torture. And Henry, fucking bless him, had seemed to know that without her having to say it and avoided the topics when they spoke. But if this was bothering him so much, she knew she had to suck it up. “It’s alright, you can tell me,” she said, trying her best to mimic that warm thing Regina did with her voice and mentally preparing herself for a million potentially soul-crushing scenarios. If they were about to have a “true love baby” or some wild fairy tale bullshit like that, she was going to move to Alaska and live in a tent.

It was all the encouragement that Henry needed. He blew out a breath then, before launching straight into it. Emma could tell right away that he was really happy to be getting this off his chest. She hoped it was because it was her he was getting to talk about it to. “Alright, so, you know how when you resigned, Mom just gave your job to Grandpa, and everyone in town was cool with it?” He asked.

“Yeah,” Emma said slowly, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. She had no clue where this was going. Her father had obviously been the logical choice to become the Sheriff. Hell, since the first curse broke, half of the townspeople had pretty much acted like he already was. Emma wasn’t too salty about it. He had been their actual King or whatever. It made sense.

“Right, so, on Wednesday evening at the town hall meeting, when Mom opened the floor up at the end for like, people to talk openly, one of the Merry Men suddenly stood up and said that they thought that we should hold an actual election for Sheriff, and then Robin seconded the motion and announced that he was going to run against Grandpa. Like they for sure rehearsed it. And like, he obviously didn’t talk about any of this with Mom beforehand because she was really surprised and also got annoyed right away. She said the matter was already settled and tried to move on, but then some of the Merry Men started making a bunch of noise and Leroy and the other miners started yelling back at them, so Mom agreed to take a vote by show of hands right then and there over whether they should hold a new election. Robin lost super bad. Like him, the Merry Men, and a few of the new people in town from the last curse were the only ones who held their hands up in favour of it. And then he got all pissed off and stormed out, and Mom had to end the meeting early because the Merry Men were arguing with everyone,” Henry rattled out, barely taking a breath at all.

Emma was more than a little gobsmacked by Robin’s boldness. Trying to process what she’d just heard, she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, trying to imagine the scene that had just been described to her. Her brain snagged on a relatively unimportant detail, considering everything else in that story. “Wait, you went to a town hall meeting?” She asked incredulously.

“God no,” Henry said with a snort and a few chuckles. Emma relaxed just a bit in her chair. It was the first genuine chuckle she’d heard from him in the last twenty minutes. “Everyone in town has just been talking about it nonstop since it happened. I’m surprised Grandma hasn’t told you about it.”

Emma grimaced and rubbed the back of her neck. “I haven’t talked to them in a few days. Been real busy with work,” Emma said. It wasn’t a total lie; she was working close to sixty hours a week now, but she’d actually been dodging their calls and texts for going on six days now. She was experimenting with how long she could go without talking to them before her mother lost her composure and bombarded her with messages demanding she check in. So far, eight days was the max.

“Well, like I said, everyone’s talking about it,” Henry said, either buying her lie or letting it go. He was quiet for a moment then before letting out a frustrated-sounding little huff. “They also got home that evening and got into a really, really massive fight about it,” he admitted.

Emma tensed up immediately. A lot of emotions rushed through her all at once, and she had to quickly weed out and push past the ones brought on by her own selfish desires so that she could focus on Henry’s well-being first. Growing up, Emma had had a front row seat to countless adults fighting with each other, sometimes just verbally and a few times physically as well. Foster parents and their friends, group home employees, a few surly case workers, you name it. It had always fucking sucked, and when she was little, it had scared the hell out of her. And she couldn’t just fully tune it out either. She did for a while, and then one time she found herself getting bellowed at by two adults with no clue as to what had happened around her for the last fifteen minutes. Not smart.

“They fought in front of you?” She asked protectively, hopping up from her chair so that she could pace back and forth across the concrete slab called her deck.

“Nah,” Henry said with a sigh. “They went straight into their bedroom. And Mom also put up some kind of sound buffering spell after they really started getting into it, cause I suddenly couldn’t hear anything even with my ear pressed up against the door. But the bit I heard at the beginning was intense. I’m glad Roland was over at his friend’s house, cause he would have freaked out.”

Emma really, really wanted to know word-for-word exactly what Henry had heard Regina and Robin say to each other. Like GOD did she fucking want to know what they said. The nerve of Robin. But she knew she couldn’t ask. Nosing into their marital problems was not only undoubtedly bad for her mental health, but she also didn’t want to invade Regina’s privacy. She still cared too much about her. Huffing softly, she looked up at the sky, searching the stars for some parenting advice.

“You shouldn’t be trying to listen in on them, Kid,” she said after a few moments of thought. Henry immediately tried to throw in a ‘But something’, and she quickly cut him off. “It’s not fair to your mom. She always gives you your privacy.” She did not add the word ‘now’ to the end of that sentence. Even passively alluding to Regina’s past parenting mistakes when she was terrified she was about to lose Henry wouldn’t do anyone any good.

“I know,” Henry said after a moment, guilt evident in his tone.

Emma smiled a little. He really was a good kid. “It’s also just not good for you to hear Henry; them fighting… that negative energy–” she said, rolling her head on her shoulders. “If they get into an argument again, put in your earbuds or something, alright? Or go for a walk if you can,” she said, tone serious and knowing.

Henry was quiet for a moment, long enough that Emma actually held her breath, before he said, “Okay, I will,” in a tone that matched her own, seemingly understanding she was making a point here, not just nagging at him. After a second, he sighed again. “I think they’ve mostly made up already anyway. At least they seemed fine with each other at dinner tonight, and when I left the living room earlier to come talk to you, Robin had his arm around Mom’s shoulder on the couch, and she didn’t look annoyed by it.”

Big, angry tears immediately welled up in Emma’s eyes at that, and she had to take several deep breaths to keep her cool. Definitely too much information. She tried to swallow down the lump in her throat so she could say something, anything, and then end the call, but Henry spoke again before she could. “Also, speaking of Mom, she wants to talk to you,” he said with a sudden small yawn at the end.

For some reason she could not begin to explain, she reflexively ducked down a little as if Regina was somewhere nearby and could see her. “Right now?” She asked, voice breaking, heart threatening to pound out of her chest.

Henry seemed to be semi-aware of the panic he’d just caused in her. At least he let out a little chuckle. “No, she just wants you to call her soon. She said as soon as you have the free time works for her,” he explained.

Emma took a very deep breath and tipped her head back, closing her eyes. Fucking heart attack averted. The EMTs would have been hella confused going to her trailer for a change. They were in the neighbourhood often, given the average age of the other residents being near seventy. “Do you know what she wants to talk to me about?” She asked, swallowing softly.

“Yeah, she wants to talk to you about me visiting over Spring Break,” Henry explained slowly, sounding a tad bit confused as to why she was asking him.

Emma’s face scrunched up. She knew that Regina had already okayed the visit, and promised Henry he could even. “What about it? Like, do you know what about the visit she wants to talk about?” She asked, rather dumbly, like a jackass.

“I don’t know, Mom details? Dates and flight stuff, I guess,” Henry answered, moving past confused-sounding to actually sounding a little annoyed.

Emma winced and shook her head. In that exact moment, she had to accept that as much as she had hoped to never, ever speak to Regina again, she was going to have to. And she was going to have to be mature about it, too. She could not keep using Henry as a go-between. That was not fair to him at all, and he was obviously over it. “Right, sorry,” she said quickly, rolling her head again. “I will give her a call asap then, and we’ll iron that all out,” she said, still grimacing.

“Alright,” Henry said, his tone notably tired and sullen now.

Emma really wanted to brain herself with a two-by-four. She scrambled to recover. “Do you know if she’s free tonight? I could give her a call in like, thirty minutes,” she said, pulling the number out of her ass as quickly as she could and hoping she was giving herself enough time to mentally prepare for this.

“Oh, yeah, she should be,” Henry said, his tone perking up immediately. “I mean, her and Robin are just chilling in the living room watching a kids’ movie with Roland. And she isn’t even really watching it; she has her work binder in there with her.”

“Alright,” Emma said quickly, nodding her head as nervous energy started to swiftly coil up tightly throughout her body. “Then I’ll give her a call in a bit. I just have something I need to take care of real quickly first,” she said, bouncing on the heels of her feet.

“Mkay. You’ll call me on Tuesday night, right?” Henry asked then, using the same hopeful tone he used every time he confirmed their next call.

Emma’s eyes were squeezed so tightly her face hurt. “You bet,” she said, digging the nails of her free hand into her palm. “I love you, Henry.”

“I love you too, Ma,” he said, mood clearly so, so much better than it had been when they’d started the phone conversation. It helped to calm Emma down just enough to finish the call.

“Alright. Have a good rest of your weekend, Kid. I’ll talk to you Tuesday,” she said, breathing in deep through her nose.

As soon as Henry hung up, Emma took off, power-walking off of her “deck” in a straight line out into the desert. She was going so fast that she was kicking up dirt, but not so fast as to hopefully not alarm any neighbours that happened to be looking her way. Although by then, she supposed they were used to seeing her march out into the cacti and sand every other night. She wondered what kind of back story they were all writing up in their heads about her. Whatever their theories were, those poor people had no idea how far off they were from the truth.

She was just glad that, aside from regular, always polite greetings when they caught sight of her, none of her neighbours had really tried to talk to her. She felt like she’d accidentally left what few social skills she had back in Storybrooke. Like a phone cord or a favourite pair of socks. Also, her parents were fucking Snow White and Prince Charming. She’d already decided that if anyone pressed her for details that she would tell them she had left a “secular religious community” in Northern Maine

Emma kept walking as far away from her trailer as she had the nerve to, considering how dark it was. The last thing she needed to do was trip over a cactus or step on a fucking snake. She also didn’t fancy running into one of the coyotes that could be heard roaming around out here every night. The whole neighbourhood was covered in signs reminding people to keep a close watch on their pets.

As Emma stomped through the sand that was only now beginning to cool down from the day’s sun, she picked apart every single second of the conversation she’d just had with her son. She was grading herself, harshly. Analysing the things she believed she’d done right, and the things she’d done wrong. As always, she felt like she had a couple more tallies in the “wrong” column. She had to get better at this, being there for Henry without actually being there. She just had to.

Away from the electric hum of the trailers, out in the silence of the desert, Emma’s mind wandered to an old memory she’d been revisiting as of late.

When she was eleven years old, she’d stayed with a pair of foster parents for half of the year who had seven other foster kids on the roster besides her. And that was on top of their own three kids. In Emma’s kid mind, it hadn’t been too bad of a place. The busy foster parents barely paid any of them any sort of attention whatsoever, but the house was mostly clean, and they were fed regularly. She was left alone at least. She also only had to share a room with one other person. A real privilege in her eyes. Some places really packed kids into bedrooms like sardines.

Emma had shared the walk-in closet-sized room with a girl the same age as her, whose name was Crystal. There was an odd sort of friction between them right away, even though they actually had a fair amount of common interests. Crystal was a “part-time foster kid”, a frequent flier of the Massachusetts Child Protective Services, but not a “lifer” like Emma. She had a mother, but the woman just couldn’t keep her shit together. She kept losing custody of Crystal, regaining it, and then fucking it up again. When Emma met Crystal, she was going on a year and two months in state custody, her longest stretch yet. Even still, Emma was jealous of her as all hell, figuring having a flakey part-time mom was better than no mom at all. She felt that way for a while, at least.

Every Wednesday night and Sunday night, like clockwork, Crystal’s mother would call her, and they’d talk for twenty or thirty minutes. Emma would sit on her bed with her headphones blasting, stewing, trying not to hear her roommate laughing at whatever hilarious thing her mother had just said. It took a couple of months for her to start feeling sorry for the girl. It was obvious that she was so, so dedicated to her mother. She clearly had her up on a mental pedestal, talked about her all the time, wanted to emulate her…Meanwhile, her mother left a LOT to be desired.

The thing was, what felt like every other damn week, that woman would tell Crystal that she was either going to stop by and visit her that weekend, maybe even take her out for lunch. Or she’d go several audacious steps further and promise that she would have custody of her again in just a few days for sure. It never panned out. Ever. Not one single visit in the six months Emma was there. Not even on Crystal’s birthday. But Crystal just kept on believing her Mom every single time she sold the same story. She’d talk nonstop about supposed upcoming visits or “getting to go home”, and every time she’d end up disappointed. Hearing her quietly cry herself to sleep a few dozen times really had Emma reevaluating her prior thoughts on the matter of having a flaky mother.

Now, decades later, staring up at the sliver of a moon in the night’s sky, Emma wondered how Crystal’s life had turned out, if she was carrying around as much resentment as Emma was. She hoped for her sake that she wasn’t and that her mother had finally gotten her shit together at some point. She hoped that Crystal had gotten out of that place where cold, hard neglect had somehow translated to peace in Emma’s young mind. She hoped that Crystal was taken care of the right way by her mom until she became an adult, and even after.

If Emma was going to be an absent parent, she absolutely could not be a flaky one on top of it.

She had to call Regina– learn to work with her over the phone, too. At least in regards to Henry, so he didn’t have to play messenger boy between his parents. Emma lifted her phone and checked the time. She had to call her in ten minutes. She doubted Henry was like, sitting there timing her, but she’d said thirty minutes, so she was going to follow through. And she’d already spent twenty of them freaking out about her own inadequacies in relation to Henry.

Emma took a deep breath, hoping to find some kind of calm amidst her scattered emotions, when the stupidest, most annoying thought hit her. She fucking felt like she was divorced. She did. She felt like she was calling her ex-fucking-wife, so that they could negotiate a custody hand-off.

And the part that had Emma so pissed off was that she felt divorced, but she had never, ever gotten to feel even a little bit close to married to Regina. And she would have been a damn good wife to her too! But they hadn’t even kissed. They stalled out at almost, and then Regina bailed out like the town would have surely burned her at the stake for having feelings. And then she married Robin Fucking Hood!

Unable to help herself, Emma let out a loud snarl of frustration and kicked at the sand in front of her. “First, I find out I’ve got parents, but I still feel like an orphan; now I’m divorced, but I never even got married,” she grumbled, her steel-toed work boots sending up clouds of sand and pebbles. Countless houses she’d lived in, but not one goddamn home.

Her little fit lasted a few moments longer than it really should have, but she needed it– needed to let off that steam. When she was finally done, she turned around, intending to call Regina right away and talk to her as she walked back to her trailer, but she stopped short and let out a stunned-sounding little “fuck” at first when she realised just how far she’d stomped out into the desert. The row of trailers ahead of her was barely visible besides the lights coming from them, the fine details of their shapes lost in the darkness of the night. She was going to have to get a big stick to leave out on the deck to take with her whenever she stomped out here. She’d feel better with a big stick.

With a big huff, Emma started trudging towards her trailer. She held her phone in front of her, staring at Regina’s contact information for several feet, planning exactly what she was going to say. She aimed to get this over with by the time her feet hit concrete. And she also wanted this conversation to be efficient. Preferably, she would not be talking to Regina again until just before Henry’s Spring Break.

Finally, after stalling for as long as she could, Emma jammed her finger against the screen of her phone and held her breath. She was hoping Regina would give her at least three rings to prepare herself, but she picked up immediately. “Hi Emma, will you give me one moment, please?” The woman said quickly.

“Take your time,” Emma said, freezing midstep and taking a deep breath. Regina had sounded so polite that her tone almost reminded her of when she’d very first arrived in Storybrooke, and the woman was plotting to kill her. Overly polite with the air of a second, hidden, nervous emotion simmering on the back burner.

She heard Regina talking to someone who was undoubtedly Robin then, telling him that she was going to speak to her in her study, and then the sound of shuffling. A few moments later, she was back on the line. “Sorry about that,” she said quickly.

“It’s fine,” Emma mumbled as she resumed walking to her trailer. “Henry said that you wanted to talk to me about him visiting?”

“Right, yes,” Regina said quickly. She was silent for a few moments then, before letting out a stunted, VERY awkward-sounding, “Oh–” and then going quiet again.

Emma frowned immediately, slowing her walk. “What?” She asked bluntly.

Emma had never heard Regina sound so unsure and awkward before. The woman actually stuttered for a few seconds then, obviously struggling to choose her words. Finally, she cleared her throat. “I guess I’m just a little confused, Emma,” she admitted. And then, after another second’s pause. “You’re living in Las Vegas?” She asked, the incredulous tone of her voice speaking volumes.

Even though Emma knew it was pretty fair for Regina to be confused about her seemingly random living choice, defensiveness rushed to the forefront of her emotions. “I’ve always wanted to live here,” she said. Lied. Emma had recently accepted that the reason she chose Vegas was that she wanted anonymity, and she realised in the hotel that Vegas offered it in spades. She just wanted to disappear, and this was a great city to do it in. She took a deep breath then to calm herself down. She couldn’t fight with Regina. “It’s not as crazy as the movies make it out to be, not anymore. There are a lot of family attractions and stuff. I’m gonna take Henry hiking,” she added lamely.

Regina cleared her throat again. Emma would have given anything in the world right then to see the woman’s face so she could know what she was thinking. “And the neighbourhood you’re living in, I assume it’s a safe one? For Henry?” Regina finally asked after a few seconds, still sounding very confused about the whole situation.

Emma chuckled at that. She was close enough to the trailers now that she could see the badminton net that her neighbours four trailers down had put up right off of their concrete slab in the sand. “Oh yeah, it’s a nice neighbourhood. Very quiet,” she said, smirking in the darkness. She sighed then, imagining for just a moment that Regina’s concern was for her safety as well. “I’ll text you the address. You can look up the stats online,” she offered, slowing her walk now almost comically. In her mind, she decided that from now on, when and if she had to talk to Regina, she would do it out in the sand, so as not to taint her relaxing deck. “Any other questions?”

Regina was silent for a few moments before letting out a little huff, barely audible over the line. “I’m not comfortable with him flying by himself,” she admitted, unease clear in her tone.

Emma barely managed to suppress a snort of sarcastic laughter. She wanted to remind Regina that this was the same kid who had hopped on a bus to Boston all by himself when he was just ten years old, but she resisted the urge. No use bringing up history, and she was more than ready to get the conversation over with. “I can fly there to get him and drop him off,” she offered up quickly.

Again, Regina fell to silence, this time for longer. “That’s not fair to you,” she finally said. “I will fly him there, and you can fly him back.”

Emma closed her eyes and rolled her head on her shoulders. She was trying to ignore the fact that she’d undoubtedly have to see Regina face-to-face when this all happened. “Whatever works for you,” she rushed out. “Anything else?”

“Emma–” Regina said, irritation obvious in her tone now.

“What?” Emma snapped right back, leaning into her own frustration.

“Can’t we just talk to each other for one minute?” Regina asked, audibly trying to control her temper. Emma could just imagine the look on her face, the way her lips were no doubt pursed together. She was probably glaring a hole through some innocent floorboard.

Emma stopped walking and pinched the bridge of her nose. She could tell from Regina’s inflection that she wanted to talk not as two mothers sharing a son, but something else. What? Emma wondered. Ex-nothings? Almost-somethings? Friends? Get real. They were never going to be able to just be friends. Since romance was off the table, it had to be this. Or they could go back to trying to kill each other. Emma really just wanted to be immature. Pick a fight. Really dig that knife deeper into her own heart until Regina could feel it too. Make goddamn sure they could never come back from this in any sense of the word. If she were still in her early twenties, she would have. But she wasn’t. She’d learned some hard life lessons since then, and Henry was first on her mind. “What else did you want to talk about?” She asked, her voice stressed from trying to keep it even and polite, emotions walking a fine line between explosive rage and desolate sobs.

“Are you…how are you doing?” Regina asked after a moment, sounding a little bit helpless now.

Emma squeezed her eyes shut and raked her nails against her scalp. She hated everything about Regina’s tone. Guilt and worry. It just made everything worse. “I’m fine. Busy with work,” she said, swallowing around her words. Again, Emma wished she could see the expression on Regina’s face.

For several moments, there was nothing but the sound of Regina’s breathing, and then she let out a deep sigh. “Emma, I hope-” Whatever she was about to say, she stopped herself and cleared her throat, before Emma heard her tell Robin she’d be right out. “Thank you for getting back to me so quickly,” she said to Emma

Emma suddenly felt more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life. Regina sounded disappointed and sad, and it just made her feel like crawling into bed and hiding under her blanket for a year. Rubbing the back of her neck, she shook her head. “No problem,” she grumbled. She rolled her eyes at herself and Regina, and the whole situation then. “If you need anything else having to do with Henry, just text me from now on,” she added. She’d stopped only a few feet away from the concrete, and she started toeing towards it again, eyes focused on her little beer-filled ice chest.

“He doesn’t like playing messenger,” Regina said knowingly, her tone soft. “Good night, Emma,” she said then. Emma could tell from her voice that she had her big, sad brown eyes on when she said that. It made her head hurt to hear. She quickly returned the sentiment before hanging up.

Emma stood out on the sand for several minutes before stepping up on the concrete, trying to calm her simmering emotions all the way back down to numb. She didn’t want to take them “back” with her. She wanted to leave all of her sadness and loneliness out there in the sand with the tumbleweeds and lizards. The last thought about Regina for the evening that she allowed herself was imagining for one brief moment the timeline where she got to be married to Regina before divorcing her. She was pretty sure they would have made a good family if given the chance. And then she pushed that fantasy away and stepped up onto the concrete slab, back into reality.

Chapter Text

How do you ever gain any traction in life when it feels like you can barely keep your hands on the steering wheel of your own destiny? If every single move you make really is one step forward, one step back, at what point is it understandable if you just quit taking any steps at all? Is there ever any dignity in a person giving up?

Week after week crawled by until Emma had been gone from Storybrooke for six months. She barely noticed the passage of time as she attempted to pick up the pieces of her old life and put them back together. Her routine hinged on going to work, calling Henry every three days, and sitting in her loneliness. If she hadn’t been x-ing out days on a calendar, counting down until Henry’s visit, still months away, her concept of time would have no doubt disappeared entirely.

Desperately, she tried to remember what she’d done before Henry had come knocking on her front door; how she’d filled the lonely hours when she wasn’t out chasing bail-hoppers. Her life definitely wasn’t what she would have described as happy, but she knew that she managed her loneliness a hell of a lot better back then. At least she was sure that she didn’t spend ALL of her free time drinking beers in the dark and feeling sorry for herself. She felt like a stray dog that had finally been adopted, only to be thrown back out right away for biting. She didn’t remember how to live on the streets anymore.

As aforementioned, Emma spent a lot of her time at work. Like as much as she could. She liked the casino. As far as places to have a full-on mental breakdown to rock bottom went, it was Aces. It had a genuine Hotel California vibe from the dingy casino floor all the way up to the roof. Emma spent a lot of time up on that roof staring out at the city skyline. She had a mostly unobstructed view of the strip from there.

As far off the main strip as it was, the casino rarely saw any of the tourists that flocked to the city looking for sin. No, the players they had were long-time residents of Vegas, nearly all addicted to the feeling of chips in their hands and the sounds of bells and whistles going off. These people came on a schedule to blow half of their paychecks on the slot machines and bad poker hands and considered it to be part of their routine, like going to the gym or picking up groceries. Emma found herself oddly in love with them all, especially the regulars. Every time one of them hit a jackpot, she did a little mental cheer for them. Even though she knew they would likely lose it before they left. She figured at least they’d gotten that win. Everyone deserves a win now and then.

Emma liked her co-workers too. Nearly everyone, from the bartenders to the blackjack dealers to her fellow security guards, gave off the same air that she did. Friendly enough, good for a laugh in the locker rooms, fine to share some light conversation with, but no one who was clocking in there was looking for work besties. Nobody asked real personal questions or wanted to hang out after work. Nobody worried whether or not you’d be alone for the holidays, so it saved you the embarrassment of having to say you would be. And nobody was trying to improve themselves or climb some big corporate ladder either, so there wasn’t any type of competition to excel at her job. They were all just coasting by, doing enough to keep their equally unhappy bosses satisfied, and hoping they wouldn’t be stuck there forever while making zero real plans to move on.

Emma tried to work every day, usually in ten-hour shifts. The pay was so lousy that her bosses didn’t care if she got overtime, and she was more than happy to take it. The one time one of them had pressed her about why she wanted all of the hours so badly, she had spontaneously decided to amuse herself by lying and saying that she was sending alimony back to the ex-wife. After that, the boss, a divorcee himself as it turned out, told all of the bartenders that she could have a few beers on the house during her shifts. Emma counted it as a sorely deserved little win in her column.

Eventually, though, her bosses kicked her out and told her to take a couple of days off, usually right around the time the bags under her eyes needed carry-ons. When she first started the job, Emma would go straight home after work to her beers on the deck, but after a few months, even they started to lose their appeal. One night when she clocked out around midnight, she decided to take a little walk instead. It was a Friday night, and even their dingy little corner of the city was still bustling with revellers.

That quickly became Emma’s new favourite pastime, walking around the city, people-watching. On any day she wasn’t scheduled to call Henry, she spent hours just walking around Las Vegas. She liked coming up with stories in her head for the strangers she passed, imagining good or bad lives for them based on the half-second impression she got of them just passing by. Whatever she imagined, she always envied the normality of their lives. She could come up with the most insane, bizarre back stories for them, and they still wouldn’t hold a candle to her own.

Emma also did a lot of thinking on her walks. Mostly she thought about her life, the things she’d seen, the things she’d done, the dreams she was still hanging onto by the fucking skin of her teeth… And she thought about Henry and all the things she hoped he would get to do someday. He was such a good, smart kid. She would give anything in the world to see him succeed. She knew that he would. She wasn’t putting a whole lot of stock in destiny these days, but she knew with all of her damaged little heart that Henry had a great future ahead of him.

And of course, she thought about Regina. She tried her best not to, knowing it was no good for her mental health, but she couldn’t help it. Henry still didn’t talk too much about her daily happenings, seemingly understanding how sore a spot she was to Emma, but her mother and father didn’t have any such reservations, and so every other week or so, she had to listen to an update on her former almost-something’s marriage and life in general. It always felt like getting bamboo shoved under fingernails.

The spat that Regina and Robin had gotten into over the subject of Storybrooke’s Sheriff position had indeed been as short as Henry believed it to be. According to her mother, Regina had come up with a compromise that everyone from the Merry Men to the miners was happy with. Her father would remain right where he was, the Sheriff of Storybrooke, while Robin had been given the newly created position of Head Game Warden. Her father would continue policing the town proper, and anything having to do with the rather large forest inside their small pocket realm, like hunting licenses and search parties, would become Hood’s responsibility.

Her mother had lauded how smart and fair a decision it was on Regina’s part. Ingenious, she’d called it. Emma had been forced to end the call then. That, or snap, saying that it sounded to her like Regina had come up with an unnecessary, imaginary position to appease her dirty ass man-child husband and keep him busy and out of her hair. The last thing Emma needed to hear was her mother defending Regina or Robin Hood to her about anything. God fucking forbid that she realise Emma was hung up on the woman. She couldn’t even imagine how her mother would take that bit of trivia. No use rocking that particular boat when it was never going to happen between Regina and her.

Emma was out on one of her long walks the night that she met Laura. It was late, already close to two a.m., and she’d spontaneously decided to stop into a lounge and down a few beers before starting her long walk back to the bug. It was a nice place that she ducked into, far enough away from the strip that it was filled with mostly chilled-out regulars, and it had a decent house band playing jazz music, with some actual thought put into the decor.

Emma went to the bar first to open a tab and grabbed two beers and two shots of whiskey before heading towards an empty little table at the back of the semi-crowded room to drink them alone and stew. She was feeling especially venomous towards both Regina and Robin that night, as it was actually their six-month wedding anniversary. Twenty minutes later, after polishing off her drinks, she was looking around for a waitress to flag down for more when her eyes landed on Laura. It was like time stopped moving then. For a brief moment, just a few impossibly long seconds, Emma really thought that Regina had boarded a plane and come to Las Vegas to see her. Never mind that she was having drinks in a lounge at two a.m. She was there. Surely she was there for Emma.

But then reality caught up with her. The woman that she was now ogling turned her head to the right to say something to one of the other women she was seated with, and the illusion was broken. Not Regina. Just a woman who bore an insanely striking resemblance to her. Still, Emma didn’t look away. It was uncanny how similar the woman looked to Regina. It was in her smile and the way she laughed. And she was all smiles and laughs at the moment. Whatever she and her friends were talking about must have been hilarious. The woman looked so much like Regina had a different life ago, when they were sharing lunch together daily, and she was laughing at Emma’s lame jokes, that it actually struck Emma breathless.

Emma felt like she could have sat there and watched her all night, and that might have very well been how her night would have played out if happenstance wasn’t on her side, but then she felt a warm hand on her shoulder. Looking up, Emma immediately recognised the older blonde woman standing in front of her, and a warm, genuine smile stretched across her face.

Sandra was one of the regular “escorts” who frequented the lounge area at the casino Emma worked at. After a few days working there, she’d taken note of the small group of women who regularly disappeared into the adjoining seedy hotel with random men and questioned one of her fellow security guards about them. He’d confirmed they were sex workers on the job. “Mid-price hookers,” he’d called them, actually.

The casino’s official stance was, of course, that they didn’t tolerate prostitution on their property. Off the record, though? The women were good for business. Emma made it a point to look out for them when she could, always greeting them and keeping an eye on the men who propositioned them for any shady-looking ones. She’d bounced a handful of rough-looking guys out the door already for being too aggressive or handsy with the women.

“Emma, right? From the Grand Lion?” Sandra asked with a wide, friendly smile before taking a sip of the fruity-looking cocktail in her hand.

“Right,” Emma said with a nod and a little chuckle. She could tell that Sandra was several cocktails in.

“Out on the town by yourself?” Sandra asked, her eyes going to the empty chair across from Emma.

“Yeah, wanted a change of scenery for the night. Just having a couple of drinks before I head home,” Emma said, trying to sound as nonchalant about it as she could. Already, this little bit of socialising was starting to wear on her. She didn’t want to be rude, but she hoped Sandra was just saying hi and wasn’t looking to sit down and have a conversation.

Sandra let out a little chuckle, and then an impish little smirk replaced her smile. “I couldn’t help but notice you eyeing up my friend over there,” she said, nodding towards the woman that Emma had been hungrily leering at just moments ago.

Emma followed her eyes and swallowed, looking at the strange woman again. One of the other women at the table had her cracking up over something, and she looked so goddamn much like Regina that Emma was unconsciously clenching her hands. “She’s fucking gorgeous,” Emma said, the words coming up reflexively, unaware of just how intense she sounded.

Sandra let out a devious little giggle and then said the words that would send Emma’s night rocketing down a path that she never thought she’d visit in her life. The idea had never even occurred to her until that moment. “You know, she’s on the clock. If you’re interested,” Sandra said, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. “Her name’s Laura. I could talk to her for you, set you two up. She’s a real nice gal. Really great at her job, and she loves lady clients.”

Emma’s eyes snapped to meet Sandra’s for a millisecond, to make sure the woman was suggesting exactly what she thought she was, and then they shot back to the woman. Laura. She swallowed as a foreign, dangerous feeling started to coil up in the pit of her stomach. She had never once in life considered paying for sex. She didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong with it; she had just never felt the need to, never even been in a situation where it was an option. But she was more than considering it now. Suddenly, she was desperate to have sex with that woman who looked so damn much like Regina, and she didn’t care if she had to pay her to get it. She was suddenly convinced that she could fuck her wanting of the real Regina out of her system; finally satisfy that itch once and for all, and then finally move on with her life.

Next to her, Sandra let out a very amused-sounding little giggle “Well, what do you say, Dollface? Want me to send her your way?” She asked, obviously knowing the answer she’d get. Emma felt herself nodding as if the muscles in her neck were moving of their own accord. Sandra leaned over then and pressed a wet, friendly kiss to her cheek. “She’s a little pricey usually, but I’ll get you a friend’s discount. You’re good people,” she gushed before heading off, hips swaying through the packed tables.

Emma watched Sandra walk back over to her friends and slide into a chair next to Laura’s. She leaned into the woman, talking in her ear, and then both of them looked Emma’s way. The lascivious smirk that stretched across Laura’s lips sent a sharp buzz of electricity running through Emma’s system. Already, she could feel wet, hot arousal pooling between her legs. The last time she’d been this turned on, she’d been moments away from kissing Regina. Nothing could have stopped Emma then. It was the first time she’d felt anything besides loneliness or anger in months.

A moment later, Laura said goodbye to her friends, hugging a couple of them quickly, and then she made her way over. Emma reflexively stood up when she got close, and the woman let out a warm laugh. “Hello there, Emma. My friend Sandra says that you’re looking for some company tonight?” Laura said, slowly walking around the table opposite Emma.

Feeling like her throat was filled with concrete, Emma could only nod in response. Her eyes were riveted to the woman’s face, taking in every little detail about her. Up close and personal, she still looked like Regina. But an older Regina for sure. Emma wasn’t sure if Laura was really that much older than Regina was, or if she’d just done some hard living. Either way, she made Emma’s mouth water. Her voice sounded like Regina’s, too– almost at least, a little bit. Like a Regina that had been raised in Brooklyn instead of the Enchanted Forest. Emma was already imagining that voice screaming her name.

Laura let out a little chuckle at her expense. “How about we sit down for a little chat then?” She asked, nodding down at the table.

Regaining use of her voice and muscles, Emma quickly agreed and pulled a chair out for Laura. A moment later, just as she’d sat down herself, a waitress appeared at the table asking if they needed anything. “I’ll take a double of Jack on the rocks,” Emma said, her voice tight, barely able to take her eyes off of Laura for more than a second. “Do you want something? I’ve got a tab,” she offered quickly.

Grinning like the cat that ate the canary, Laura ordered herself a dry, top-shelf martini from the waitress with a wink. In retrospect, Emma was sure the elusive waitress and Laura were friends and that the waitress always promptly stopped by whatever table Laura had just sat down at to do business. Speaking of. “Ugh, how much?” Emma asked, nerves bleeding through the gruffness in her tone as she shifted to reach for her wallet.

Laura let out an amused little laugh at that. “Whoa there, slow down, Beautiful Girl,” she said, reaching across the table to put a hand on hers. “Since I am planning on heading home after we’re done, and because you’re such a cute little treat that my dear friend has vouched for, eight hundred dollars gets you, me, until we’re both too tired to keep going. But you can give me that once we’re somewhere a little more private. If that price works for you, of course,” she explained with a salacious wink, gently dragging her perfectly manicured nails up and down Emma’s forearm, causing goosebumps to erupt all over her body.

Emma found herself quickly nodding. “Yeah- yes, that’s good. I mean that works for me. I’ll have to stop at the ATM real quick,” she said, swallowing around the words and shifting in her seat, so unbelievably turned on now that it actually hurt. It was nearly impossible to think clearly. She had no idea what the going price for sex was. But Laura could have asked for anything at that point, and she would have given it to her. Just a full emptying of the savings account. For the first time in months, Emma wasn’t thinking about anything except for what was happening at that very moment. She didn’t have her tragic past or uncertain future on her mind, just pure lust– pure wanting to feel good.

At that moment, the waitress arrived with their drinks, and Laura thanked her for both of them before relaxing back into her seat. Emma quickly picked up her glass and took a healthy drink. Smiling, shaking her head, Laura relaxed back into her seat and looked her up and down, clearly studying her. “You’ve never done this before, have you?” She asked, tilting her head to the side just a bit, her eyes sparkling with mirth.

Seeing no reason to lie, Emma shook her head. “No, never,” she admitted, clearing her throat a little, trying to calm herself down even just a tad. And then, for some unknown reason, she felt the need to add, “I’ve uh- also never been with a woman.”

Laura's eyes narrowed just a little at that, and her smile became even more amused than before. She took a sip from her martini then, before setting it down and leaning back across the table to stroke the back of one of Emma’s hands with her own. Emma almost whimpered at how much the expression on her face made her look like Regina. If she just unfocused her eyes just a little bit…

“I remind you of someone, don’t I?” Laura asked knowingly, biting her lip playfully. Emma’s shock must have been clear as day on her face. Laura laughed lightly at her, head tipped back, shaking her long curls out. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’m very good at reading people,” she explained without needing to be asked.

And then, Laura practically purred out what amounted to “the magic words” in Emma’s mind. “Don’t worry, Baby, I’m going to take good care of you tonight, I promise,” she said, gently squeezing her hand and looking into her eyes as she said it. Emma swallowed the rest of her whisky in one gulp and flagged down the waitress to close her tab after that.

Twenty minutes later, they walked into a reasonably priced, nice-ish hotel room with a generous queen-sized bed in it. Completely lost in an aroused daze, Emma could barely remember how they’d gotten there. She just knew that Laura had practically led her by the hand to an ATM and then a desk, and she’d tapped her debit card against the little machines, and now they were alone together in the dimly lit room. The click of the door locking behind them actually made her jump a little bit; she was so out of it.

Chuckling softly, Laura stepped out of her heels and then walked across the room to the dresser, where she started taking off her dangly gold earrings. Emma felt frozen in place, but her eyes were definitely moving, roaming up and down the woman’s body from behind, taking in the shape of her firm ass in the tight black dress she had on. She’d never felt so fucking intense in her life, like she was about to explode. She didn’t know if it was going to be a good or bad explosion either.

Laura cleared her throat then, and Emma looked up to meet her dark brown eyes in the dresser mirror. “Come unzip me, Darling?” The woman asked, smirking at her and shaking her shoulders a little.

Emma nearly tripped over her own feet in her rush to close the distance between them. When she first reached for her zipper, her hands were shaking so badly that she could barely grab it. She took a deep breath to calm herself down, and tightly balled up her fists for a moment before shaking her hands out and trying again. Emma’s mouth watered at the sight of all of the smooth, bronzed skin being revealed to her as she slowly slid down the zipper.

When the dress pooled down around Laura’s feet, she looked up and let out an audible whimper at the sight of her full breasts spilling over the lacy cups of her red bra. Laura chuckled softly, and Emma looked up, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “You’re so gorgeous,” she blurted out, squeezing her thighs together and licking her lips.

“And you’re just so delectable,” Laura said, chuckling again and shaking her head before slowly turning around. Looking deep into Emma’s eyes, Laura reached behind herself to unhook her bra and then let it fall to the floor with her dress.

As much as she wanted to look down, and dear fucking God did she want to look down, Emma felt frozen in place by the intense eye contact Laura was giving her. The woman had to actually take one of her hands and place it over her breasts to get her moving. As soon as she felt her hard nipple against her palm, though, it was like being shocked with a cattle prod, and she lunged forward, dragging her lips and teeth against the crease of Laura’s neck as she greedily groped at her chest.

Laura let out a pleased-sounding little peel of laughter and wrapped her arms around Emma, pulling her tight against her body. “You know, I don’t normally allow kissing on the mouth, but I think I’ll make an exception for you, Sweet Girl,” she said before burying a hand in Emma’s hair and dragging her lips up her neck into a kiss filled with passion and lust.

Emma groaned loudly into the kiss, the word “finally” sounding in her head. Her hands roamed up and down Laura’s body, grabbing at the smooth, naked skin, pulling her tight against her body. Laura controlled the kiss, aggressively nipping at her lips and battering her tongue with her own. With every second that passed, every swipe of Laura’s incredibly skilled tongue, Emma felt the fire inside of her growing into an inferno.

Quickly, Emma felt frantic with want. She needed to make this woman scream her name. “I wanna fuck you,” she growled against Laura’s lips, both hands digging into her ass cheeks. “Wanna make you cum.”

“Come on, Emma Baby, I’m all yours,” Laura groaned against her lips, as she started walking her backwards to the bed. The older woman’s voice was husky now, breathless. Between the whisky coursing through Emma’s veins and her own desperate wanting, it was so easy for her to imagine that’s what Regina’s voice sounded like when she was on the verge of getting fucked, and it about drove her crazy.

Emma felt like she was on every drug possible at once, so lost in her arousal. She barely registered Laura undressing her as she pushed her back, dominating the kiss that was all teeth and low moans. All Emma knew was that when Laura pushed her down onto the bed, all of her clothes were gone, and Laura’s garters and thong had disappeared along with them.

Her nostrils flared and her mouth watered at the sight of the neat, full patch of pubic hair between the older woman’s legs as she stretched out next to her on the bed. “You’re so fucking gorgeous,” she repeated, sliding her hand down the length of her firm, tanned body to rest on her hip. Emma swallowed then, feeling suddenly very nervous. She wanted to be good. “I don’t- I’ve never-” She said, trailing off, licking her lips and looking up at Laura hungrily.

Laura just chuckled softly and put her hand on Emma’s. “Don’t worry, Darling. The lesson is included in the price,” she husked, slowly guiding Emma’s hand between her legs and pressing her fingers down into the sticky, hot wetness pooled between them.

Emma’s head dropped down as her world narrowed to the feeling of Laura’s pussy against her fingers. She’d spent countless hours imagining putting her hands on Regina, and she was also no stranger to porn, but she still felt so inexperienced. Thankfully, Laura was patient and so helpful, guiding Emma’s fingers against herself, pressing them against her clit, softly moaning that she was doing such a good job. Every little praise and encouragement from her felt like it was travelling straight between Emma’s legs.

Quickly, Emma found a rhythm that had the older woman tipping back her head and letting out low, deep moans. Emma watched her, mesmerised, taking in the way her expression was changing second to second; hanging on every little sound that escaped her lips, working her fingers in tight, controlled circles. The woman’s generous breasts were heaving in the dim lighting, and Emma’s eyes were drawn to them like moths to a flame. Following her instincts now, she leaned over Laura’s body and wrapped her lips around one of her nipples, pulling the hard nub between her teeth and fervently suckling it.

“Oh, good girl, just like that,” Laura moaned, one of her hands immediately tangling in Emma’s hair to hold her against her chest.

Emma was in heaven. She’d long ago lost track of the hours she’d spent thinking about Regina’s tits, thinking about having her mouth on them, and she was so far gone in her fantasy now that it felt like the real thing to her in those moments. She lavished Laura’s breasts with attention, nipping at the perfectly smooth skin, running the flat of her tongue all over them, hungrily sucking her nipples in turn. The only thing that could have gotten her away from them was the mouth-watering scent wafting up from between Laura’s legs. As soon as she smelt it, Emma felt insane with the desire to taste the woman.

“Oh fuck, you’re a natural, Baby,” Laura groaned when Emma put her mouth on her cunt, her hands grasping at the fitted sheet and balling up the material.

An indescribable sort of pride welled up in Emma’s chest, not only from Laura’s verbal praise, but from the way the woman’s toned thighs were trembling against the sides of her head. It was an ugly pride that was spurred on by some truly ugly motivation. Emma didn’t want to just make Laura cum, she wanted to make her fall apart at the seams, as if Regina would somehow feel it and know from three thousand miles away what she was missing out on.

Shifting, Emma pushed two fingers and then three into Laura, making the woman cry out and dig her nails into her scalp. “Oh yeah, Emma, fuck me hard. Make me cum, Baby,” she moaned out, spreading her legs as far as she could for Emma now.

Emma speared her fingers into the older woman over and over again, fucking her hard and fast with her fingers. She kept her mouth on her pussy, lavishing her swollen clit with attention from both her tongue and teeth. Completely unaware she was doing it, she began rambling between licks and sucks, telling the woman to fucking take it, groaning about how good she tasted. She’d never felt so turned on and focused in her entire life, her entire world narrowed down to the space between the older woman’s thighs and making her cum.

Laura’s moans turned deep and guttural the closer she got to her orgasm, her nails digging sharply into Emma’s scalp and shoulders, holding her firmly, demandingly against her cunt, as she rocked against her face and fingers. “Fuck- fuck I’m about to cum for real. Of Jesus fuck-” the woman groaned out as she started to shake apart.

Emma wasn’t too far gone to take note of the genuine surprise in the woman’s voice, and it emboldened her. She doubled her efforts, fucking the woman so hard with her fingers now that her arm was a blur and lewdly slurping up all of the arousal covering her face and hand down to her wrist. And then Laura was coming, ripping at Emma’s hair and riding her face with a long, drawn-out moan as several jets of wetness started squirting out of her. Emma licked it all up with a fervent zeal, and she kept licking until Laura literally pushed her away.

“A moment- I need a moment,” the woman gasped out, body still quaking with pleasure.

Emma let up licking her pussy, but nothing could have peeled her away from Laura’s body at that moment. She clung to her, pressing wet open-mouthed kisses against her thighs and stomach. Clenching her own legs tightly together in search of some type of relief. After a few moments of heavy breathing, she felt Laura pulling at her shoulders, and she let herself be dragged up the length of the woman’s body.

“Fuck, you’ve really never been with a woman?” Laura rasped against her lips, arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders. All Emma could do was shake her head curtly as she kissed her back. She was so aroused that she couldn’t form words to save her life. Thankfully, Laura picked up on it. “You poor thing, you’re just about to die if you don’t get touched, aren’t you?” The older woman teased, lightly scratching her fingernails down Emma’s abdomen and ghosting them across her pussy. The sound Emma let out in response was so pitiful she would have been embarrassed if she weren’t so far gone. She could feel Laura smiling against her lips.

The older woman pushed against Emma, guiding her to lie down on her back, and then settled down on her side next to her. Emma’s eyes were immediately drawn back to her heaving breast, and she surged forward, enveloping one of her hard nipples between her lips and sucking hard. “Oh, good girl,” Laura chuckled, her voice breathless and husky as she reburied one hand in Emma’s hair to hold her in place. And then finally, Emma felt skilled fingers press between her legs, and it was like being dunked into boiling lava.

Eyes closed, sucking on one of the woman’s breasts for all she was worth and getting worked up closer and closer to her orgasm, it was so, so easy for Emma to fall into the fantasy that it was Regina touching her. And she happily dove into it, imagining in her head that the last six months had never happened and that she was in the former queen’s bed making love. Her orgasm came on fast and hard, making her entire body tense up and then shake apart like an earthquake had struck. She cried out against the nipple in her mouth, jerking and writhing as expert fingers drew out her orgasm, making it last for what seemed like forever.

When Emma collapsed back down onto the mattress, trembling as if she’d just been born, there was a very brief moment where everything in the world seemed right to her. It was the closest she’d come to feeling happy in what felt like ages. There was a warm body against hers, holding her, stroking her hair, and for that stolen moment in time, she felt loved. But of course, reality has a way of brutally asserting itself.

The thoughts started hitting Emma like a firestorm then. Pelting her over and over again. Regina didn’t love her. She wasn’t being held by Regina. Regina was three thousand miles away. Probably asleep in bed with her husband at the moment. And Emma was in bed with a stranger whom she’d just paid to have sex with. Just someone who looked like Regina. Not Regina. Regina didn’t love her, and Emma was just another client to Laura. Regina didn't love her.

Unbidden, large, hot tears welled up in her eyes, and a truly tortured little sob escaped her lips. Laura went still for a moment, and then, mercifully, Emma felt herself being enveloped by the woman’s arms. “Oh, Sweetheart,” the woman cooed, pulling her tightly against her chest and holding her like a child. “It’s okay, let it out, Darling. I’ve got a hold of you,” she said, soothingly running her hands up and down Emma’s back as she started to cry out her pain and anguish in earnest. Once more, Emma felt like she had just crossed the boundary line a few minutes, and her cries quickly turned to truly anguished sobs. She missed Regina so damn much. "Poor thing," Laura sighed, gently petting back her hair. "Someone's got you all fucked up, don't they?" she cooed softly. Emma could only sob and nod her head yes. Fucked up was the understatement of the century. Emma felt like she was dying from heartbreak.

Emma cried herself to sleep in Laura’s arms. How long it took, she had no idea; she just knew that, like some true angel of mercy, the woman never let go of her. When Emma woke up the next morning, close to ten a.m., she wasn’t surprised to find herself alone in the room. In the light of day, she had zero misgivings about what had happened that night. Still, she was beyond pleased to find a note written on the hotel stationery from the woman, thanking her for a great time and including her number in case Emma wanted to “make regular arrangements”. Emma folded up the note and tucked it into her wallet, knowing that she would be using it soon.

Was making regular plans to sleep with a prostitute that looked like Regina healthy? Surely not. All Emma knew was that for the first time in over six months, she hadn’t felt miserably alone, and she was willing to do anything to achieve that feeling again.

Chapter Text

Some days, Emma really did feel like she was getting better. She’d wake up and just feel good. Not great, mind you, but good. Her head felt clearer on those days. She’d get out of bed as opposed to dragging herself out of it. She’d make an effort to take care of herself– eat something that actually constituted a square meal, maybe go for a run, actually use her conditioner in the shower. On those good days, the sadness and loneliness that had been bearing down on her for so long felt lighter, manageable even. She could even convince herself that she was getting over Regina on those days. Finally, right? She’d say to herself. Only took three thousand miles and the better part of a year. She didn’t count that one year she’d been in New York and couldn’t even remember the woman. In retrospect, how fucking blissful had that been.

Of course, then there were the bad days. Days when Emma felt utterly alone and unloved. The sadness on those days was more than just oppressive. It had teeth. Sharp ones too. Her sorrow physically hurt, like some phantom hand was reaching into her chest and squeezing her heart. She felt so fragile on those days that one strong gust of wind would have surely knocked her over. Her throat stayed tight. She went to work and barely said a word to anyone. And the tears, god…She felt like crying just all day on the bad days, from the moment her eyes opened to the moment when exhaustion finally gave way to sleep. She had to stay constantly vigilant on bad days, never letting her grief break the surface, never even letting it get close, for fear that she wouldn’t ever be able to push it back down again. Even when she was alone in her trailer at the end of those days, she held her tears back. She couldn’t stand the thought of crying all alone. That just made it worse.

Most days, though, Emma just felt numb. Numb and frozen in place in her life. It was as if she were treading water, barely keeping her head above the surface. Her arms and legs were long, long past tired, but there was no shoreline in sight, no safe place to rest, and no idea even which way to swim. And always, it felt like she was running out of time. For what exactly, she wasn’t sure. But the window was definitely closing.

Thankfully, blessedly, she had finally found one source of relief from her all-encompassing depression. Despite how certain she’d been that she was making a horrible mistake that first night they met, Laura turned out to be a sorely needed friend.

After that first night, Emma met up with her five more times over the next three weeks, and it was the sixth time that did the trick, so to speak. Everything was different about the experience from the beginning. For starters, the sun was still up. It was barely ten o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, and Emma’s boss was forcing her to take the weekend off. He’d even doled out some fabled vacation pay to sweeten the deal. As if she really needed it.

Emma had awoken around five that morning, after going to bed at midnight, and she only made it till nine watching TV before she pulled her phone out from underneath her ass and texted Laura. She’d really just been thinking they’d set something up for that night, as per usual, but the older woman had surprised her by inviting her over to her house “as soon as she wanted to,” instead, another first for them. Laura had explained it away, saying that she was taking a rare “Saturday me day” off, but would make an exception for her. Emma had tripped over herself rushing to get dressed and broke a couple of laws speeding to the address she’d been given.

Driving there, she couldn’t help but notice that the closer she got to Laura’s house, the nicer the houses got. They weren’t massive mansions by any means, but the old, two-story Spanish-style homes were quite obviously expensive, and the lush green lawns in front of most of them definitely didn’t come cheap in the desert. She noticed it, but her mind was pretty focused on getting to have sex, so it was filed away in her mental file on the woman.

One thing that wasn’t new was how quickly they went from saying howdy doo to fucking. Laura had greeted Emma at the door, wearing a full-length, leopard-spotted silk robe, pulled her into her house, and a raunchy kiss, with a firm, insistent hand on the back of her neck, and had proceeded to all but drag her upstairs to her bedroom.

A little over an hour later, they finally collapsed from exhaustion, both with heaving chests and sweaty bodies. Laura had surprised Emma up in her bedroom, pulling a rather large, neon yellow strap-on out from a large, ornate chest at the end of her massive bed, and asking Emma if she wanted to give fucking her with it a go. Emma had been quick to say yes. It admittedly took her a little while to figure out the technique, but thankfully, she had an amazing, patient teacher. And once she got the rhythm down, she really got it. Her hips and thighs would be burning for days, she was sure.

Laura ended up flat on her back, and after taking off the toy, Emma fell back onto the bed, resting her head on Laura’s hip in a daze. Several minutes later, her breathing had just returned to normal when she felt Laura patting her head. “I’m giving you…your money back,” the older woman panted out, still obviously way more winded than Emma.

Emma turned her head, looking up at the woman. “You don’t have to do that,” she said with a chuckle, her eyes following the rapid rise and fall of her shapely breasts.

“No, I do,” Laura said with a breathless chuckle. “It would be unethical…for me to keep it… after…that performance.” She lifted her hand off Emma’s head then and left it hovering a few inches above her face. “What do you say to a friends-with-benefits arrangement…from here on out?”

“Deal,” Emma said with a wide, happy grin on her face, twisting her arm into the most awkward position imaginable so that they could shake on it.

Laura’s hand went back to Emma’s head after that, and she began running her fingers through her hair, seemingly mindlessly scratching her long nails against her scalp. Emma zoned out for a while, then, feeling so relaxed she could have sworn she was high on something. Her eyes trailed across Laura’s bedroom, taking in the little details she saw here and there, happy to get this look into her life. She had been curious.

Over the course of their previous “meetings”, Emma had already realised that, despite looking so damn much like Regina, Laura was nothing like her in most ways. But the brightly coloured bedroom, filled wall-to-wall with everything from dozens of porcelain, animal-shaped knick-knacks to a collection of kabuki masks to a massive painting of an Incan temple, really drove it home for her. Not to mention the heart-shaped bed they were lying on, or the massive zebra-striped shag rug that covered most of the tiled floor. Emma just barely kept herself from flinching when she spotted a rather large lizard of some sort that was perched on a branch inside of a massive glass tank next to her overflowing vanity desk. She also noticed a few smaller tanks around the room after that, but their inhabitants were either hiding away or too small for her to see from her viewpoint, and she refused to lift her head and give up the amazing feeling of Laura's nails against her scalp.

Emma didn’t realise that thinking about the ways that Laura was different from Regina would make her sad, but eventually it did. At least a little. It just made her miss Regina so much, made her wonder how it would feel to collapse with her head resting on her hip after making love and if she would scratch her head too. She’d only been in her bedroom a couple of times and never for very long, never long enough to take it in. She didn’t even notice the long sigh that escaped her chest. She was just thinking that she should force herself to think of something else when she felt Laura stretch out like a cat underneath her before she gently pushed at her head.

Emma dutifully shifted off of Laura, bending an elbow against the mattress and resting her head on her hand while Laura got comfortable on her side, looking down the bed at her. “Hey Chiquitita,” she said with a wide, relaxed smile, her breathing fully back to normal. “Now that we’re friends, why don’t you tell me about this Regina woman that has you so twisted up?” She asked, her tone curious but still warm, genuine.

Emma cringed a little. She’d accidentally cried out Regina’s name once, the fourth time that they met up. It was the first time in her life that she’d let someone penetrate her anally, and it was safe to say the effect had been intense. Laura had never mentioned it, so she’d hoped that she hadn’t heard it. Obviously, she had. Laura gently nudged her elbow with one of her feet then. “It’s okay, Doll. I’ve lost track of how many different names I’ve been accidentally called in bed by clients. Means I’m doing a great job,” she said with an amused chuckle.

“I’m still sorry,” Emma said with a frown.

Laura just let out a small huff, but her smile was obviously appreciative. She nudged Emma’s elbow again then. “You might feel better if you tell me the story. It’s never good to stew in your own heartache. You gotta get that whole tale of woe off your chest if you ever want to move past it,” she said knowingly.

Emma’s eyebrows furrowed together in thought at that. It only took her a few moments to realise that yes, she absolutely did want to talk about Regina. In fact, she now felt desperate to get it off her chest. Mostly, she just wanted to know if Laura thought she was as crazy as she felt for being so hung up on a relationship that never even happened for real. She also realised right away, though, that it was a…weird story at best. “It’s pretty fucked up,” she warned, wrinkling her nose.

That just seemed to make Laura more interested. “Baby Girl, if you can actually manage to shock me, I’ll make you a mountain of waffles and bacon when we’re done in here,” she said, chuckling and arching an eyebrow at her.

Emma chuckled too before letting out an overwhelmed little breath. It took her several long moments to think about what to say. Or rather, how exactly to say it. She was acutely aware that if she told the story as the facts stood, with the magic, curses, fairy-tale parentage, and Regina trying to kill her a few times and all, it would definitely make her sound crazy. So she had to do some editing of the facts, whilst trying her very hardest not to tell any outright lies. She didn’t want to lie to Laura. Even a necessary one would feel dirty in her mouth.

Finally, she flexed her neck and softly cleared her throat. “Right, so uh, for some pretext here, when I was seventeen, I went to prison for eleven months. How I got to that point is a whole other long story, but to make it short, my boyfriend at the time let me take the fall for some stolen watches,” she explained, trying hard not to rush it out, but eager to get past the damn pretext. She knew it wasn’t really that relevant, but she didn’t want Laura wondering what the hell she’d done to put herself in prison. And she was defensive by nature. There, she said it. Thankfully, Laura just nodded along with a thoughtful expression and did not stop her for more details.

Emma cleared her throat again and then sat up, mostly to work out some nervous energy. “Anyway, while I was locked up, just after I turned eighteen, I gave birth to a son fathered by said boyfriend. I knew that I couldn’t take care of him, so I put him up for adoption right away,” she admitted, swallowing hard and looking down at her hand, rubbing them together for a moment. She resisted the urge to talk about that decision more. There was that defensiveness again. And she could tell that Laura was starting to get pretty confused as to what this all had to do with Regina. She couldn’t blame her.

She looked back up at her new friend then and popped her neck before taking a deep breath. And then, like pulling off a band-aid, she rushed through her and Regina’s ‘meet-cute’ story. “Right, so, Regina was the woman who adopted him six weeks later. In a closed adoption, I might add. But then a few years ago, while they were going through some problems brought on by Regina’s role as the mayor of the town they live in, ‘Henry’ managed to track me down to Boston, cause he’s a crazy smart kid, and hopped a bus with a stolen credit card to come find me. So, of course, I had to drive him back up to their tiny town in Maine, and he wouldn’t even give me her number so that I could at least call her and give her the four, one, one on his whereabouts. So that’s how I met Regina. Showing up on her doorstep in the middle of the night, the ex-con, biological mother of her adopted son, bearing said son, who had just run away from her to find me, leaving her beyond scared out of her mind and with no clue where he’d gone.”

Emma couldn’t help but note that Laura was already so frozen with shock by that point that the woman could pass as a statue. But she soldiered on. Rushing, but still trying to be coherent and as truthful as possible.

“Also, fairly relevant to all this, my parents, who gave me up for adoption when I was a baby, just happen to live in that town too. And they're kind of a big deal. Like socially. I actually became pretty good friends with my mom for a bit before she and my father realised I was their kid. Much to everyone’s surprise. And Regina and my parents were pretty much arch-enemies at the time. Old, bad history. They were all but divorced because of her. The whole town was actually upset with her performance as the Mayor, too, and it was reaching a pretty bad point. Like she was for sure not winning any re-elections. Oh, and that credit card Henry stole? My mother’s. She was his teacher at school,” she explained, taking as few breaths as she could until her face was scrunching up, reflexively holding her hands out a little, palms up.

There was a moment of silence, and then Laura’s eyebrows nearly hit her hairline. “Holy shit,” she said before slipping into jaw-dropped, stunned silence.

Emma couldn’t help but let out a big chuckle. “I know, right? I swear it’s all true. Like I said, it’s just…really fucked up,” she huffed, shaking her head and giving the woman some time to take that all in.

Saying it all out loud, Emma realised how wild it sounded, even without the magic bits. Like, she’d known, but she actually hadn’t. Not really. It was some daytime talk-show, Maury Povich-style family/relationship drama for sure. They probably would have gotten an entire episode with him. Maybe a two-parter if they brought in all of the “supporting characters” like Gold and Blue, who’d been pulling strings in the background of all of their lives. And she wasn’t even done yet.

After several long moments, Laura finally visibly blinked away her shock, and then she too sat up, leaning back against her plush, velveteen headboard. “So…I mean– Well, how did Regina handle– you? Being there, I mean…she couldn’t have been thrilled about the situation,” she asked, eyebrows furrowing together, clearly getting very invested in understanding this story now.

Emma let out a sardonic little bark of laughter at that, her mind going back to a certain poisoned apple turnover and the resulting fallout it had brought about. “Oh yeah, it’s safe to say she wanted to wipe me off the face of the earth at first. And to tell the truth, I wasn’t her number one fan either. She had some MAJOR anger issues going on,” she said with a smirk.

She took a very deep breath then and shook her head. And then her eyes turned wistful, and her lips turned up into a small smile. “But then, somehow, amazingly, after a LOT of really intense fighting and drama, we found a way to work together, for Henry’s sake, because he wanted us both to be his mom. And then, we even became friends, like really good friends. The best I’ve ever had, actually. And then everything else got better along with us. She chilled out, I stepped up, her performance as Mayor drastically improved, her relationship with Henry healed up, my parents got back together better than ever, and she and them buried the hatchet... I started getting to know them better… I got to know my son, something I thought I'd given up the chance to do for good. It all got better,” she said, swallowing softly. Her heart ached, reliving the memories. No one had ever understood her and where she was coming from like Regina had. They’d made the impossible happen together.

Laura’s expression had turned deeply sympathetic while she spoke, and when she finished, the woman pointedly held an arm up, wordlessly inviting her to come sit next to her. Emma was quick to scramble across the bed, relaxing against her warm body with her head on her shoulder. “So just best friends?” Laura hummed curiously, putting an arm around her.

Emma let out a sigh, nodding against her warm, smooth skin. “We almost started something up,” she explained in a dull, tired voice. “There was a lot of flirting, a lot of innuendo– and then we nearly kissed after a few months of that. Like we were both leaning in, just a couple of inches from it, but Regina pulled back at the last moment.”

“Did she give you a reason?” Laura asked, resting her chin on top of her head.

“Yeah. Things had finally gotten good after all the drama, everyone was happy…she was afraid that us getting into a relationship so soon would just stir everything back up again. She said maybe someday, after some time had passed and everyone was really for sure alright with her,” Emma told her, closing her eyes and thinking of how to explain what happened next. Her head was starting to hurt from bending the story to make it work. Finally, she settled on what to say.

“But we never got that chance. I had to go spend about a year in New York for a work thing that I couldn’t get out of. And while I was gone, Regina happened to reconnect with a guy she’d nearly dated when she was younger, and they fell in love. When I got back to town, they were already really serious. I tried to date this guy named Killian that I know, to get over her, ya know? But I couldn’t make it work. I think he knew I was kind of using him. And then Regina and Robin got married, and between that and some recurring drama with my parents, I just had to leave the town. I couldn’t handle it there anymore,” Emma rambled out, her heart aching with every word. She was surprised she wasn’t crying. She chalked it up to feeling extremely cared about in the moment. While she’d been speaking, Laura had been holding her tight and rocking their bodies side to side just a little bit.

“I’m so sorry, Darling. That’s a straight run of the shittiest luck,” Laura said, genuine compassion heavy in her voice.

Emma let out a heavy sigh and sank impossibly further into her friend’s body, soaking up the empathy being shown to her like a lifeline. After a few long moments of silence, she lightly cleared her throat. “Do you think I’m crazy for being so hung up on Regina? We never even really made it into a relationship, and seven months after running, I still have days where I just wanna cry about it all day,” she admitted, shaking her head at herself.

Laura was quick to answer. “I don’t think you’re crazy at all,” she said immediately, shifting so that she could look Emma in the face. “Getting over heartache is different for everyone, Emma. There’s no timeframe for healing. You won’t always feel this way, but you have to go through it; there are no shortcuts either,” she explained as she brushed her curls out of her face.

Emma sighed and leaned into her hand. “I wish I could at least get a rough estimate of when it won’t feel like this,” she admitted.

Laura let out a soft chuckle at that and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It’ll hurt for exactly as long as it needs to, Chicky, and not one minute more or less. I promise you that,” she hummed.

Emma’s lips turned up in a little half-smile, then, feeling a surge of affection towards the woman. “You’re really good at this, listening, I mean. Sorry if it felt like I was unloading at all, but thank you,” she said, trying to cram as much genuine appreciation as she could into her tone. Her heart really did feel just a little bit lighter.

Laura obviously appreciated the words. “Nothing to be sorry for,” she chuckled softly, and then, her eyes grew a little wistful. “In another life, a long time ago, I wanted to become a therapist,” she explained.

“Really? You would have made a really great one,” Emma said, meaning it from the bottom of her heart.

“I know, right?” Laura chuckled.

Emma chuckled too, then, and now it was her turn for her expression to become curious. “Will you tell me about that other life? Since we’re friends now,” she asked, genuinely wanting to know everything she could about the woman she already felt like she owed a hell of a lot to.

Laura seemed to think on it for a moment, and then a warm smile turned up her lips. “I will,” she said, tone soft, a little sad. She took a deep breath then and rocked against Emma’s body. “But we’ll save it for another day. I said I’d make you a mountain of waffles and bacon if you managed to shock me, and I’m a woman of my word.”

Emma’s stomach growling loud enough to be mistaken for thunder at just that moment was as good a reply as any.

Laura ended up putting back on the leopard-spotted, silk robe she’d answered the door in, and at her insistence, Emma donned one with a peacock feather pattern, leaving her clothes where they’d fallen earlier for now. Following Laura out of her bedroom and downstairs, Emma couldn’t help but immediately notice that they were not alone in the large house. When she’d arrived earlier, she had noticed at least two different cats, but she’d been so focused on getting upstairs she’d barely had time to file the fact away. Now, though…well, she quickly realised that there were definitely more than just two. Passing through the living room, she quickly counted at least a dozen cats all lounging on different surfaces.

“I swear I’m not insane,” Laura laughed, leading her into the kitchen, obviously noticing Emma’s slightly overwhelmed expression when she saw another three cats stretched out on the floor in front of a glass patio door. Emma looked at Laura, cringing a little at being caught out, and the woman grinned and shook her head. “They’re all fosters for the humane society. I run a kind of ‘spicy feral kitten boot camp’ here, getting them ready to be adopted out for good,” she explained as she started pulling ingredients out of her refrigerator and lining them up on the island.

Understanding immediately bloomed in Emma’s mind. Honestly, nothing had ever checked out more about a person in her entire life. Of course, Laura fostered animals. Emma had felt like a stray for ninety percent of her life, and look where they were in their relationship now. A speed run of strangers to sex-worker and client, and now friends.

Laura let out another laugh then and nodded her head pointedly towards the dining table. “Besides my tank babies, Hippo under there is my only non-foster, actually,” she said.

Emma followed Laura’s eyes, and as soon as she spotted ‘Hippo’, she let out a bark of laughter so hearty it nearly knocked her off the barstool she’d perched herself on. “Oh my god. Very spot on name,” she said, face red with amusement.

Hippo was without a doubt the biggest pit bull that Emma had ever seen in her entire life. Just an absolute unit of a dog. Comically big. She was sure his head alone weighed forty pounds. And said big boy was passed out cold on his back under the kitchen table, legs up in the air, tongue hanging most of the way out of his mouth, while two little calico kittens used his massive body to play hide and seek with each other.

“He sleeps more than the dead do, and he’s the world’s worst guard dog, but I love him with all of my heart and soul,” Laura chuckled, shaking her head with a wide, fond smile on her face.

Emma smiled, looking back over at the all grey pit bull, watching and chuckling as one of the kittens hid from his buddy behind Hippo’s head. She was about to admit to Laura that she’d never actually had a pet of her own in her entire life when she felt something using the silk robe she was wearing to crawl up into her lap. Emma looked down, expecting to see a normal cat, but nothing could have prepared her for the one she saw instead. She was honestly stunned silent by its appearance.

Emma didn’t need to be a detective to know the long-legged kitten in her lap had been in a very serious fire. Almost the entire left side of its body was completely hairless, covered in tell-tale greyish-pink burn scars, and its left eye was completely white, obviously a casualty of the fire as well. Its left ear and little tail were mostly gone too, just scarred little nubs left of them now. Fully in her lap now, the kitten “stood up”, putting its front paws on Emma’s chest and meowing loudly in her face, demandingly. Feeling a bit shaky, she put a hand on its back, running it down the kitten’s spine. The physical sensation was nothing she’d ever felt. The side of the kitten’s body that wasn’t burned, the right side, was covered in long, silky fur, all black, and the contrast between it and the burn scars was wild. Immediately, the kitten broke out into loud, appreciative purrs from the petting.

Emma looked up at Laura as she continued to run her hand up and down the kitten's back. “What happened to this one?” She asked, eyebrows furrowing together.

Laura let out a warm chuckle as she stirred up her waffle batter. “Oh, I see Phoenix found you. She’s a little miracle story, that one. Escaped an abandoned warehouse in Reno that caught fire a few months ago. Came streaking out of it, still on fire, mind you, right into a firefighter’s arms. She saved herself,” the woman explained, clearly a big fan of the kitten. And then, her voice got softer and became sad. “She was the only one who made it. Her mom and siblings were found in the cleanup,” she said, shaking her head with a sorrowful expression.

Emma's eyes snapped back down to meet Phoenix’s eyes at that. The eye that wasn’t completely white was the most vibrant shade of yellow that Emma had ever seen. She felt mesmerised looking into both of them. Emma never thought that she’d be able to relate to a cat, but her heart undoubtedly went out to the little orphaned kitten that had escaped a burning building to save her own life. She couldn’t help but see the thematic parallels with her own story.

Still purring like a motor boat, Phoenix stretched out then to butt her head against the underside of Emma’s chin, and that sealed her fate for sure. When Emma looked back up at Laura, with the most helpless little expression on her face, the older woman was looking back at her with a smile so wide and excited it nearly looked menacing.

Several hours later, after an afternoon of signing paperwork and being led around by the hand by Laura through a massive pet store, Emma settled down onto the couch in the ‘living room’ of her trailer with Phoenix in her lap. Her very first pet. Ever.

“So there’s a litter box in the bathroom and then one over there in the closet, cause Laura said it was best to have two boxes per cat,” she explained to the kitten, her eyebrows knitted together in concentration.

Laura had given her a large tube of medicated lotion that had to be rubbed into Phoenix’s scars twice a day, to help the skin stretch as she grew, and Emma was taking it hella seriously, making sure to spread the product evenly across the baby-soft skin. Meanwhile, Phoenix was obviously used to this routine and was blissfully purring up a storm with her eyes closed. Emma felt ridiculously touched at how much the kitten trusted her already. She was like a little ragdoll in her lap, letting her manipulate her fragile little body every which way so that she could rub the lotion in thoroughly.

A thought hit Emma then, and she paused at her task. “Hey, how do you feel about me calling you Nix for short? Is that alright with you?” She asked. Phoenix cracked open her good eye to look up at her, so Emma took that as a yes.

As a side note, Emma did realise that talking to her cat like it was going to answer could have been a sign that she was, in fact, crazy. But she figured it was a better crazy than the one that had had her working sixty-hour weeks and drinking case after case of beer for the last seven months.

“I can’t work that much now, can I? I have to be home to take care of you,” she said to Nix, tenderly scratching underneath the kitten’s chin. In response, the kitten wrapped both paws around her hand, holding it in place. Emma felt like her heart was melting.

Emma never actually slept in her bedroom; she passed out on the couch every night in front of the TV without fail, and that night was no exception. But it was the first night since she’d gotten to Vegas where she went to sleep feeling good…light…like maybe everything wasn’t going to be hopeless forever. She replayed the day she’d spent with Lauren in her head. She had a friend now. A really good one. And she had a freaking awesome cat, too. She still couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but at least she believed there was one now. It was undoubtedly a good day.

Chapter Text

Emma had finally done it. After months of ignoring her and pushing her away and just generally treating her like she wished they’d never met, she’d pissed her mother off badly enough that she was no longer speaking to her. And by extension, her father wasn’t talking to her either. Of course. They came as a pair or not at all.

It had been three weeks now with complete radio silence from both of them. No calls. No texts. Nothing. Not even on Christmas Day or New Year’s. She’d done it alright. Stepped right in the shit and rubbed it around for good measure. Yep, she sure fucking had…If they started handing out awards for Grade A Jackasses of all the Realms, she’d sweep every category they had.

And she couldn’t even lie and say some bullshit about how “in retrospect” or “looking back” she realized how badly she’d acted. Oh no, even though she’d been fairly drunk, Emma had still known full well at the time of her crime that she was acting beyond immature, beyond inconsiderate. She just, for the life of her, had not been able to stop herself. She didn’t even try to tap the brakes once. It was like some flip had been switched in her brain, and then everything had just spun out of control so hard and fast she didn’t know if it could ever be recovered.

It was the baby that did it. The third one. Her mother had finally given birth halfway through December. Much to the glee of the entire town, of course. Yippee.

Emma had gotten the call that she was in labor at the crack ass of dawn that Monday. Of note, she had a pretty nasty hangover from a weekend spent pity-drinking alone in front of the TV. She was taking weekends off now to pay attention to Nix, and she’d been hoping to get freaky with Laura at least once, but the older woman had gone to LA at the last minute to visit a sick friend. Emma also hadn’t been able to talk to Henry for five days. He was out on the outskirts of the border in the woods, camping with fucking Hood and the Merry Men for a “guys week”. Along with Roland and half the other boys in town, it sounded like. So that had her feeling a certain type of way. If it weren’t for having to take care of Nix, Emma probably would have melded with her goddamn couch; she was feeling so sorry for herself. Thank god for Nix.

Needless to say, Emma was already irritated the moment her father’s call woke her up that morning instead of her work alarm. But him skipping the hello and just excitedly bellowing in her ear that her mother was in labor? Well, that pissed her off.

All throughout work, while being bombarded with text messages from both her parents, along with several pictures and videos documenting the whole event, a metaphorical storm of the century was building up force inside Emma. She had what she was aware her co-workers secretly called, one of her dark and moody bitch days. Which means she spent the majority of the ten-hour shift just doing rounds and scowling at every person she crossed paths with. When she did speak to people, it was short, direct, straight to the fucking point. And nobody got so much as a bye, on her way out the door at the end of her shift, either.

Incidentally, she knew her co-workers always chalked her bad days up to “problems with the money-grubbing ex-wife”. That little white lie had breached containment on a casino-wide scale a while ago. Even the valets and laundry room attendants were aware of the supposedly outrageous alimony payments she was making monthly. Regina was really raking her balls over the coals.

When Emma got home, she felt like she was hanging on to her sanity by a thread. She was preparing Nix’s dinner when she got the call from her father letting her know her mother had given birth. Another girl. They were naming her Abby. Fucking yay. The very thing she had not wanted to hear. Emma had felt so many bad emotions hit her all at once that she just straight-up hung up on her father. And then she didn’t pick up when he tried to call her back three times. She was too busy getting hammered after all.

A lot of thoughts were going through Emma’s mind, but the main one that had her spiraling was that her parents were for sure going to try for another boy after this. They’d already said as much, that if they had another girl, then they’d try for another boy in a few months. Emma felt like she was going to be trapped in an endless cycle of pregnancies and babies for the rest of her life. By the time her exhausted mother called her around midnight, the meltdown that occurred was all but inevitable.

Emma’s brain didn’t properly absorb the part where her mother said she was calling mainly to check on her, since her father hadn’t been able to get a hold of her. And she practically ignored her claiming that Emma was “always going to be her first baby”. But she damn sure heard Snow when she said that she wanted Emma to come visit soon so that she could have “all of her babies under one roof”.

It was scary how quickly Emma went ballistic– how quickly her mind twisted everything around. It’s just… the first time her mother ever mentions Emma coming back to Storybrooke since she left, and it’s for this? Not because she just misses her daughter? Even if that was her reason, Emma had moved well past reasonable thinking. Years of resentment boiled over, and, practically swimming in beer, she got really mean, really fast.

Emma told her mother a laundry list of things. Or rather, she yelled one at her. Most of the things she said were not true in the least, but once she got rolling, she decided to go for blood.

“She didn’t care about her younger siblings whatsoever. She actually couldn’t stand them and didn’t want anything to do with them. Ever again.”

“She thought her parents were both selfish jackasses trying to make up for stuffing her in a tree and her shitty childhood by popping out do-over babies and spoiling the hell out of them. They would never be able to make up for any of it by the fucking way.”

“She thought the little sitcom of the ‘all-American dream life’ that they were acting out was as stupid and ridiculous as their fairy tale lives had been.”

“She wished they had never been reunited.”

By the end of the call, her mother was sobbing so hard that her father eventually took the phone from her. Fine. Emma was more than happy to turn her vitriol in his direction until he finally tapped out and hung up on her.

And that had been that. Not a word from either of them since. For the first week, Emma had tried to convince herself that she was just fine with it too. And then the regret had started to kick in.

She’d just been so mad. And she’d felt so, so hurt. So fucking expendable– replaceable. And she knew that all of her feelings were the epitome of immaturity, but she couldn’t just change them. She couldn’t make herself feel any other way. She’d tried. Hard as hell too. She just couldn’t do it.

After months spent out in the desert, thinking late into the nights, staring out at the sand and cacti, Emma had come to understand something very fundamental about herself. You could say it was the base reason she’d left Storybrooke. She believed it to be a really selfish desire, no doubt born from her fucked up childhood, but it’s where she was at.

Emma wanted, more than anything in the world, for just fucking once at least in her life, to feel unconditionally, unequivocally, chosen by someone. Not like destined to save the day, chosen. Been there, done that, got the battle scars to prove it. No, Emma wanted to be someone’s most important person. The one they couldn’t imagine ever being apart from. The one they’d do anything to be with. The one they cherished like she was priceless, someone they wanted to take care of. She wanted to be someone’s everything – their obsession, even. She wanted to be wanted not for what she could do, or who she could be, she wanted to be chosen for who she was already. And if she couldn’t be that, if she couldn’t have all of that, then Emma didn’t want to be anything. She would rather be alone, hiding in the desert. A sort of, if they won’t love me like I need them to, then I’ll leave and make them hate me for good measure, way of thinking. Burn the fucking bridge to the ground so no one tries to follow.

The only good consequence of tanking her relationship with her parents was that it convinced Emma that she needed to start making some more friends besides just Laura. She clearly couldn’t leave herself to her own devices anymore, but she also couldn’t put all of her social needs on the woman who was actually quite busy nearly all of the time. So Emma finally spoke more than a few words to her co-workers. Turns out her initial assumption that nobody was out to make friends there had been her projecting. It didn’t take her much work at all to secure a few people that she could at least share a few beers with after punching out– maybe even hang out with on the weekends whilst watching a sport of some sort. There were even standing group plans amongst the security guards to go see a big boxing match together at The Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace in March. Great seats too. Her main boss seemed to be so excited about her change in attitude that he’d paid for all of them.

Emma also caved to Laura’s pestering and let her start introducing her to some of her friends. And Laura had PLENTY of friends. She was a big fan of inviting people over for group meals, bbqs and potlucks mostly, so that’s where she practically put Emma on display what felt like every other evening. It was a big eclectic group that seemed to pull from every walk of life possible in Las Vegas. A lot of sex workers like Laura, but there were also numerous card dealers and bar tenders, bouncers and professional gamblers, employees of five-minute wedding chapels and celebrity impersonating drag queens, tour group guides and lounge singers. Laura even introduced Emma to a few people from the various non-profits that she volunteered for, including one that worked in the foster system. Emma ended up donating a mountain of Christmas presents to a group home through him, mostly sturdy suitcases and new shoes, but also toys for the littler ones and gift cards for the tweens and teens.

So between her work friends and the people Laura had introduced her to, Emma’s holidays were not the lonely, miserable parties of one that she’d expected them to be. She ached to hear her parents’ voices again, sure, but she was at least distracted from that ache for most of the time.

Emma let out a long, relaxed sigh. She was currently stretched out on the couch, with Phoenix sprawled out on her upper torso, burn side down, running a slicker brush through her long, black fur over and over again. Nix’s eyes were closed, and she was purring up a storm, happily kneading her tiny little claws into the front of her thick work shirt. It was part of the little routine they had going now. As soon as Emma got home from work in the evenings, she’d flop down on the couch, and Nix would hop on top of her for a long and thorough brushing, followed by tending to her burn scars and then fixing her dinner.

Bending her neck forward to the very limit, Emma pressed a gentle kiss on top of Nix’s head and was rewarded with a big stretch accompanied by a little trilling sound from the back of her throat. “At least I have you. And we’re obsessed with each other,” she murmured, relaxing her head back against her pillow again with a content little smile on her face, eyes riveted on the slumbering cat. Laura had told Emma that all cat owners believed that their cats were the best and cutest cats ever. To that, Emma had said, respectfully, that was just because those other cat owners had never met Nix.

Nix was an adventure cat. She did cool stuff like accompanying Emma as she finally started to venture out into the state park located conveniently right beyond the trailer park. The cat split her time between walking around on a harness and leash, and perfectly balancing on Emma’s shoulders. Emma was still wary of going out too far, but on Saturday mornings, they always hiked a fair distance out into the sand and cacti together. Emma wanted to be able to confidently take Henry on a hike when he visited, and Nix was all about exploring every damn inch of the park with her.

Twisting her head so that she could see into the kitchen area, Emma looked at the clock on her microwave. She was due to call Henry in a little bit, and she was more than a little nervous about it. Something about him had seemed off for the last few weeks every time she spoke to him. He brushed off her asking what was up, but he was definitely moody and distant. Getting him to string together more than ten words felt like hard physical labor. When he did want to talk, it was mostly about the new group of kids he was hanging out with now, mostly made up of former Lost Boys and some of the children from families that had gotten stuck in Storybrooke thanks to the last curse.

Emma could tell that Henry really liked his new friends. She, however, did not. She couldn’t explain it, but despite Henry singing nothing but praises about how cool and awesome they were, she just had a bad feeling. It also did not help their case at all that she knew Regina didn’t like them either. Henry had told her as much. The last time they spoke, he had started to complain about Regina restricting his time with a couple of the older boys in particular, obviously hoping to pit Emma against her, and Emma had quickly made it clear that was a very bad idea on his part. The conversation had ended shortly thereafter, with Henry clearly irritated with her, and her frustrated with him.

Emma was just about to check the time yet again when she felt her phone buzzing from underneath her. She paused brushing Nix mid-stroke when she yanked it out and saw Regina’s name in bold letters on the screen. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she chanted, anxiety racing through her body like lightning as she tried to quickly get Nix off of her as delicately as she could before she jumped up to her feet. Nix let out a VERY affronted-sounding meow, letting her know she’d done a piss poor job of that. “I’m sorry, Nix. Freeze-dried minnow treat as soon as I get back inside, I promise,” she threw over her shoulder as she jammed her feet back into her work boots.

Emma practically exploded out the front door and barely managed to make sure it had securely latched closed behind her before racing across the patio. She’d sworn to herself that all conversations with Regina were going to take place out in the sand, and she meant it. As soon as her feet left the concrete, she jammed her thumb against the little green phone on her screen.

“Hey,” she said breathlessly, bending over at the knees and grimacing from a stitch in her right side.

Emma was woefully unprepared for what came next.

Regina either didn’t care why she was out of breath, or she didn’t notice. The older woman came in hot and heavy right away, skipping the formality of a greeting altogether. “Hey? Hey?! I need you to be on my side, Emma!” She snapped immediately, her tone practically crackling with anger across the line.

Emma was so surprised and caught off guard by the heat suddenly being thrown at her that she nearly fell over in the loose sand. She knew Regina, especially angry Regina. Thus, she could tell instantly just how incredibly pissed off the woman was. Like at least a seven on a scale going up to eleven. It was a nuanced point system. Any higher than that was poisoned pastries and sleeping spells territory. She was incredibly pissed off, but also quite obviously hurting about something emotionally. There was a little waver to her tone– Emma immediately picked up on it. She just knew that Regina was barely holding back tears.

Reflexively, that little waver in Regina’s tone immediately tapped into the part of Emma’s psyche that was dedicated to protecting her in every sense of the word. But given what Regina had just said, once Emma finally looked past her tone to her actual words, well, she couldn’t help but get pissed off too because– “I’m always on your side!” She cried out defensively, her face twisting up in angry confusion. She assumed this was something to do with Henry, but she was ready to argue the same for any other situation as well.

“Well, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like you are,” Regina fired back immediately. “It feels like you’re thousands of miles away, not having to care about what happens in this town anymore.”

At that, Emma started power walking away from her trailer, out into the desert. It was only a little past eight pm, but half of her neighbors were more than likely already in bed or heading that way. She tried to argue that that wasn’t fair. She’d never asked to become responsible for an entire town. All she got out, though, was, “That’s not fair-” And then she was cut off.

“I’ll tell you what’s not fair, Emma Swan,” Regina snarled out across the line. “What’s not fair is me having to be the bad guy, every single day, all of the time, because I’m the only one here to enforce rules!”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Regina. You can’t just call me and start yelling at me without telling me what's going on first,” Emma ground out, angrily kicking her feet as she walked and sending up little showers of sand and pebbles. Her mind was racing, trying to get a grip on things, but Regina always just made her so goddamn mad when she was like this.

“That right there is part of the problem, Emma!” Regina bellowed into the phone. “You have no idea what is going on in this town anymore because the only person you talk to is Henry. If you would just call your mother and talk about-”

“Shut up!” Emma yelled, rage rushing through her veins like magma heading for the surface.

“How dare you! Don’t tell me-” Regina started to yell back, only for Emma to cut her off again.

“No, Regina! You don’t get to talk about my mom and me. It’s none of your business,” Emma snapped as blood started rushing past her ears.

“She makes it my business! She won’t shut up about you! And it’s not my job to explain to her all of the ways that she consistently fails to parent you!” Regina argued back. “If you would at least just visit for-”

“Goddamnit, Regina, just stop!” Emma shouted, her voice breaking as tears welled up in her eyes. As unprepared as she’d been to talk to an angry Regina, she was a hundred times less prepared to talk about her mother right now. And dear God, hearing Regina say that her mother was “failing to parent her”, thus validating her very complicated feelings…That was way too fucking much for Emma to deal with at the moment– too many feelings for her to even begin to pick apart.

Thinking quickly, she pinched the bridge of her nose and took a shuddery breath. “Just drop it, unless you want to get into why I left Storybrooke the night I did in the first place, and why I can’t stand to stay there now, because that’s where this conversation is gonna go if you push me,” she ground out.

She was gambling on a theory she had, and she knew right away it was correct. Regina definitely didn’t want to touch the subject of why Emma had pretty much fled Storybrook on her wedding night with a ten-foot pole. Emma was sure the woman never wanted to even think about their almost-relationship again at this point. Her frustrated little snarl, followed by a huff and then silence, said as much. Thank god because Emma really didn’t feel like getting into that conversation either. Good to know that she could hold it out in front of her like a defensive torch though.

She took a VERY deep breath then and closed her eyes. She was so glad this wasn’t happening a couple of months ago. She’d felt so unstable then that this probably would have sent her cannonballing over the side of the Hoover Dam. She was better now, though. At least better enough that she could handle whatever the fucking hell this was with a modicum of calm.

“Okay,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Now, will you please explain to me what is going on, Regina?”

Regina was silent for a long moment, long enough that Emma thought she’d been hung up on, but then the woman finally muttered out, “Fine. Let me walk you through it then.” Before she started explaining what had her feeling so upset that she’d turned both barrels on Emma the moment she said, ‘Hey’. Emma had been right in guessing that it was something to do with Henry, but it was more complicated than just their son, who was indeed acting like a little jerk suddenly. It had to do with the entire town, both all of the citizens, and the town in the physical sense of the word “town”. Everything kind of seemed to be going to hell in a handbasket fast.

Storybrooke just wasn’t large enough. They couldn’t build housing fast enough to accommodate the rapidly changed population. If they were just dealing with the people Regina had brought over during the first curse, it would be at least manageable. But between curses bringing over new citizens, a baby boom, and a lot of children finally aging into adults, there just was not nearly enough space. They didn’t have the manpower or resources. Everyone was starting to do more than grumble about it at town hall meetings. Regina had talked herself hoarse trying to make them understand why she couldn’t just magically build a couple of apartment complexes. Even the Blue Fairy had stood up next to her and reiterated her points, but all the explanations seemed to be falling on deaf ears. People were quickly starting to lose patience with her.

And the housing crisis was just the tip of the iceberg. The real issue was the matter of the town border and letting people cross it. They were all starting to develop a hellish type of cabin fever from the sound of it. Even before Emma had blown out of town, they’d set hard rules about who could leave town and when. And Regina had gone on to codify those rules into legit town laws since Emma’s departure. They were reasonable enough rules, meant to protect both the location of the town and its citizens. They couldn’t all just go steaming across the border for weekend trips. Even if they could enchant items for every single person so they wouldn't lose their memories when they crossed, only the people from the first curse had a legitimate U.S. legal identity, with the documents to back them up, courtesy of Regina's strong-ass dark curse. Technically speaking, the rest of them were undocumented immigrants the moment they crossed the border.

Emma began to get the feeling at one point that Regina was dancing around something vital, and throwing caution to the wind, she pushed her to find out what she wasn’t saying. Finally, Regina muttered that the “hunting issue” was what was really driving the push to open the border up. They’d practically killed off every single deer, rabbit, and fox living in the woods around Storybrooke, and now they wanted access to the massive national park that surrounded their mini-realm.

Emma didn’t need to push to know that “they” mostly referred to the Merry Men. They refused to eat store-bought food and were accustomed to gigantic, magical forests, teaming with endless game animals. Of course, not a one of them had a legal state ID. Nor did they have any frame of reference for things like hunting seasons and bag limits. And surely the Park Rangers wouldn’t notice the game animal population suddenly plummeting. Emma could tell from what Regina was pointedly not saying that Robin Hood was for sure on the side of opening up the border, if not leading the charge for it.

However, she did make a point of saying the older Lost Boys were some of the loudest and most irritating supporters of it. They were also trying to push through a separate but related matter. Currently, nobody under the age of eighteen was allowed out of Storybrooke without an adult to chaperone them, and they wanted to change that. They’d actually tried to bring it up at a town meeting, arguing that anyone fifteen and older should be allowed to come and go as they pleased, too, but Regina had shut them down immediately. And this is where Henry came in.

Regina didn’t think it was a coincidence that right after that town hall meeting, those same boys had swiftly befriended Henry. Emma couldn’t help but agree with her. According to Regina, they were “over the top” in how they treated Henry. “Like a little boy king,” she said. And then right after that, Henry had begun trying to use his “position” to sway Regina on the issue. He’d started out trying to play it innocent, but apparently, they’d just had a massive blow-out argument about it.

It all made Emma cringe, reminding her of how the Lost Boys had been in Neverland with Pan leading the charge. She instantly regretted wondering out loud why Henry would fall for it. The stomach-roiling guilt that bubbled up inside of her when Regina very castically reminded her that Henry had always been a lonely child, and her leaving town had hurt him, was so intense that it stole her breath away momentarily. And then Regina just kept going.

Henry was lonely. He’d always had trouble making friends. His position as their son and the grandson of Snow White, Prince Charming, and Rumpel-fucking-stiltskin had only served to alienate him even further from his fairy-tale born peers. She was the mayor of the town, the former Evil Queen, and now her approval rating was tanking. He’d actually quite recently, in the grand scope of things, met his birth father, only for him to die shortly thereafter. Hook had played stepdad for an hour before he left. And now, cherry on top, his other mother, the one he’d worked so hard to reunite with, only exists over the phone. Jeeze, Emma, wonder why he’s choosing now to act out? Is it so unbelievable that he's hungry enough for friends that he'd "fall for it?"

Mercifully, Regina had ended the conversation shortly after that. She honestly sounded so disgusted with the entire situation, and Emma, that by the time she hung up, Emma wished quicksand was real and beneath her feet at that very moment.

She stood out in the desert thinking for several long moments after slipping her phone into her back pocket. She’d promised Regina repeatedly that she was on her side on all the issues, and that she was going to talk to Henry about it, and she’d meant it. She just couldn’t imagine how that impending conversation was going to go.

For the first time since she left, Emma regretted not “settling down” a little closer to Storybrooke. She could have at least dropped her shit close enough that she could feasibly pick him up for the occasional weekend out of town. Then she could have these kinds of conversations face-to-face with him. “Hey Kid, don’t be an ass to your Mom, she's got enough on her plate right now. Also, your friends sound like bad news.”

Finally, she trudged back to her trailer. Nix was waiting for her when she walked in the door, sitting on the couch. The reproachful look she gave Emma when she stepped through the door could have peeled paint off a wall. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Emma chanted, actually cringing under the cat’s glare as she kicked off her boots again. She’d been talking to Regina so long that Nix’s dinner was already fifteen minutes late.

All through preparing the cat’s meal, watching her eat it, and then doubling back to rub the medicated lotion into her burn scars, Emma fretted about what to say to Henry. The fretting did her zero good, of course. She still felt completely unprepared to talk to him when she sat down on one of the stools at the bar in her kitchen and pulled up his contact information on her phone. She was hoping for the best, but Henry truly was his mother’s son. When he picked up the phone, he came in just as hot and heavy as Regina had.

Emma tried to feign ignorance about everything at first, as if she hadn’t been informed in detail about the situation. Her thinking was, give him the chance to get everything off his chest first, and then give him her opinion, hoping he wouldn’t feel ganged up on by her and Regina. It was a big mistake. He called her out on it immediately.

“I know that Mom called you earlier,” he said, tone contrite and resentful. “I can tell by now when she’s cast a silencing spell, and Robin isn’t home, so I know it was you she was in her den talking to.”

Emma sighed softly and rolled her head forward. “She just wanted to let me know everything that’s going on, Henry,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck.

“No, she just wanted to control the situation. That’s what this entire thing is about– her trying to control everyone in Storybrooke like she used to,” Henry muttered.

Emma had never experienced wanting to rip her own hair out, but she was there now. “You can’t think that’s actually true. You know her better than that, Henry,” she said, attempting to keep her frustration out of her tone.

Henry was silent for a long moment, and then he let out a disgusted-sounding little sigh. “I know,” he admitted. “It’s just not fair. The guys just want to be able to go camping. Or maybe go eat a burger or something every now and then in a different town. But she won’t even talk to us at all about it.”

“That’s because it’s already been settled, and she’s right,” Emma said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “Look, Henry, I know that you’d be just fine outside the border by yourself, and your mom knows that too, but the rest of the kids in town? Especially the ones that don’t have any kind of ID cards, like your friends? It’s just too big a risk. She’s just trying to keep everyone safe,” she argued.

Emma was trying her damndest to sound passionate and not preachy, but she could tell she had missed the mark. Even if Henry knew she was right, he was obviously not in the mood to concede defeat yet. He was silent for another long moment before letting out an even more disgusted-sounding huff. It reminded Emma so much of Regina that it made her want to cry. “Whatever. I’m going to go to bed now. Talk to you in three days,” he grumbled across the line, sniffling a little at the end.

Emma’s heart plummeted at that. She started to plead with him to keep talking, but he just rushed out a goodbye and then hung up. Emma stared at her phone for a beat and then smacked it down on the table in front of her with a loud “fuck”. Raking her fingers through her hair, she tried to think of what to do now. It didn’t take her long to realize there wasn’t a goddamn thing that she could do. As Regina had said, she was thousands of miles away from them. And she still couldn’t bring herself to go back to Storybrooke. Not for this. Not for anything. It made her feel selfish and useless at the same time.

Emma’s turbulent emotions very quickly turned into pent-up energy, and she only sat on her barstool for another minute or so before she had to get up. Feeling seconds away from exploding, she hurried over to the front door to get her boots back on. On the floor, Nix rubbed against her legs, and she sighed down at her. “Extra cuddles when I get back in,” she said as she jammed her feet into the steel-toed boots. “I just need to go…crazy or something.”

Emma opened her front door then and was seconds away from bolting out into the desert until her lungs gave out, when she just happened to catch sight of something that had her freezing in place like a statue. Two guys, one tall and skinny and one short and skinnier, were standing in the shadows behind her neighbor’s trailer, trying to force open a window with a crowbar. Emma couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she could hear them hurriedly muttering to each other. And just like that, her night changed gears again.

Heart racing and reflexive instincts kicking in, Emma quietly shut her front door before grabbing her phone and dialing nine-one-one. As soon as she was sure they had units on the way, she set her phone down and took a deep breath. The dispatcher had, of course, told her to stay put, but Emma was not about to wait around for backup. She only knew her neighbors from polite greetings in the driveway, and she couldn’t confidently remember their names, but the married couple both looked like they were at least in their late seventies. The wife had to tote around an oxygen tank half of the time, and the husband walked with a cane for crying out loud. And Emma was positive they were in bed, fast asleep already. Like hell she was going to risk letting those guys get in before the cops got there.

So, Emma took a deep breath, and then she slipped out her front door, closing it silently behind herself. For a moment, she panicked, not seeing the guys and fearing they’d either already gotten inside, but then she realized they were just trying to pry open a different window. Quietly, she made her way across her patio to her little table. She’d recently bought a device that was meant to pin down snakes. She carried it with her when she took Nix for walks just for insurance. God fucking knows what she would do if she pinned one, though. But the thing was made from sturdy aluminum, so she figured if it was a life-or-death thing, she could just wack the shit out of the snake with it. And if she could wack a snake with it, she could definitely wack a couple of would-be burglars with it, too, if she had to.

Emma had just stepped off her patio when they finally managed to pry the window open, and then the adrenaline flooded her system. She took off towards them at top speed, yelling at the top of her lungs for them to stop. The taller one was still on the ground and saw her coming. He bolted off to the left, racing out into the desert. Emma let him go, focusing on the shorter one who had already managed to boost himself through the window and was now trying to scramble inside.

Dropping the snake-stick, Emma grabbed him by the ankles and started hauling him back out the window just in time. “Not tonight, Buddy!” She ground out through her teeth, dragging him back until he smacked to the ground like a wet mop. Emma was on top of him immediately.

“Get off of me, you crazy bitch!” The guy, who Emma now realized couldn’t be older than twenty, bellowed as he tried to kick his way out from underneath her.

Heart pounding and fighting for breath, Emma managed to twist one of his arms around behind his back. “Stop trying to get away, or I’ll break it,” she shouted into his ear, barely managing to keep from being bucked off.

Thankfully, at just that moment, the lights started flickering on all around the trailer park, and her people quickly began shuffling outside and making their way over in their robes and dressing gowns. Emma finally heard the approaching sirens in the distance just as her neighbors made their way around their trailer.

To her confusion and shock, the dude she had pinned underneath her started begging them, his grandparents apparently, to tell her to get off of him. The husband, whom Emma now remembered at that moment of all moments, was named Martin, looked shocked as well for a few beats before he saw his pried open window, and then his face hardened. “Don’t let him up,” he groused, disappointment clear on his face.

Emma thankfully only had to spend less than a minute holding him down after that before a handful of cop cars screeched to a stop at the end of the shared driveway. She was more than happy to let them take over from there. She also told them about the other guy, and a handful of officers went out into the sand with dogs. Thankfully, they ended up finding him quickly and frog-marched him back to the trailers.

It was another hour before she got to go back to her trailer. Of course, the police needed statements from everyone. And then her neighbors all but forced her into their trailer to have a drink and “visit” with them. Emma was actually glad she let them once Martin poured her a very generous glass of eighty-year-old, barrel-aged scotch. Her nerves were only just starting to settle at that point. And then his wife, Stella, was her name, also plopped a gigantic wedge of pound cake down in front of her that was covered in strawberry compote and whipped cream, and Emma was sold on talking with them for as long as they wanted to.

Once she did get home, she had dragged herself through taking a shower, completely exhausted by the last few hours of her life. The surreality of what had just happened in particular, caught up with her once she stretched out on the couch with her blanket pulled over her. “That was wild, Nix,” she said, petting the cat who’d immediately curled up on her chest the moment she’d settled down. Nix didn’t seem very impressed. “I’m sorry our little routine got messed up,” Emma said with a chuckle, scratching right under her chin. She was rewarded with loud purring and little dagger nails making biscuits against her chest.

Resting her head back against her pillow, Emma let out a very long sigh. She supposed, in a very roundabout way, that having to stop her neighbors' crusty ass grandson from robbing them had been a good thing for her. At least it had been one hell of a distraction from her own problems. Chances were high that if she’d not spotted them when she did, she would probably still be out in the sand, blowing off pent-up energy, kicking rocks and shadow-boxing invisible Robin Hoods.

Emma sighed and closed her eyes, replaying the conversations she’d had with Regina and Henry over again in her head. She felt so goddamn ineffectual to put it lightly. If only she could get some kind of weekly newsletter from Storybrooke that filled her in on all of the pertinent information without her having to interact with anyone there. She’d subscribe to the damn paper, but she’d never trusted Sydney Glass’s version of things even before finding out he was a genie, and she wasn’t going to start now.

A thought hit Emma then, and she let out a little snort of laughter before grabbing her phone and pulling up Regina’s contact information. She shot off a text to the older woman, letting her know that Henry was apparently on to her silencing spells. Regina must have had her phone in hand because her reply came through almost immediately, just a short and direct, “Noted.”

Emma chuckled and was about to set her phone back down when it buzzed in her hand. Another text from Regina. “Thank you for speaking with Henry. He has apologized for a few of the very hurtful things he said to me earlier today.” Emma smiled softly, reading it, and thanked any deity listening that apparently some of her words had gotten through to their son. She sent back a simple, “No problem.” Before silencing her phone completely and tossing it back on the coffee table. If Regina had anything else to say to her, she didn’t want to read it that night.

For the life of her, Emma could not help but think about Regina and Robin, and the problems she at least suspected they were having. She wondered how Regina was managing on that front. You would think she would be happy that there was trouble in paradise, but she wasn’t. In her mind, Regina had clearly chosen Robin over her. The way she figured it, the very least they could do was be happy together. Someone deserved to be happy. She wanted Regina to be happy.

Her mind drifted back to Henry then. God, did she ever want him to be happy, too. She wondered, lying in the darkness of her trailer, how long she could actually keep up this parenting from thousands of miles away business. She was already clearly missing out on major events. And Henry had only just turned fourteen, which meant at least four more years of this. She knew this wasn’t fair to him, her being so far away, but she also knew she still couldn’t go back to Storybrooke. Even if they weren’t living out Happily Ever After, Emma knew she still wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of Regina and Robin with each other. Just thinking about the damn ring on Regina’s finger made her heart ache.

It took Emma forever to fall asleep that night. Even though she was exhausted in both the physical and mental sense of the word, her thoughts kept her up. Thoughts of Regina and her potentially unhappy marriage, thoughts about the fairy-tale citizens in Storybrooke and how they were treating Regina, thoughts about her mom, about Henry’s new friends, Henry, Regina, Henry, Regina…If Nix had not been purring up a storm on her chest, keeping her grounded, it would have surely qualified as a dark night of the soul for Emma.

Amusingly, the last conscious thought she had before sleep finally did claim her was that, since it was her neighbor’s grandson who’d been trying to rob them, to pay for a street-racing hobby apparently, she was not going to tell Regina about it. She’d boasted about the ridiculously low crime statistics in her “neighborhood”, and she believed this shouldn’t count against them. It wasn’t a random event. It was a targeted event perpetrated by two very incompetent twenty-year-olds who knew exactly where Grandpa kept his baseball card collection. “Doesn’t count,” she grumbled into the darkness before passing out for the night.

Chapter Text

Storybrooke showed up to surprise Emma the same way that it had the first time, uninvited and unexpected.

The day started out as most of Emma’s Saturdays did. She woke up before the sun was up and spent thirty minutes trying her hardest to fall back asleep before conceding defeat and turning on the TV. After watching three episodes of The Nanny and drinking half a pot of coffee, she was feeling mostly human, so she fed Nix her breakfast, took a quick, lukewarm shower to wash the rest of the sleepy off herself, and then they took off to go exploring for a couple of hours in the park. When Emma got back to her trailer, she was planning on settling in for a long, lazy day watching old movies on the couch. But instead, she received a booty call from Laura and got to her house so fast it was as if she’d momentarily regained her poofing powers.

As per usual, Laura had dragged Emma up to her bedroom the second she crossed the threshold. Sometime later, after going down on Laura until she was screaming her name and then forcing her head away, Emma rested her head on her “place” on the woman’s hip with a hungry glint in her eyes. She watched the rapid rising and falling of her breasts as she tried to get her breathing under control. Laura always looked so fucking sexy right after cumming. Emma squeezed her thighs together, forcing herself to be patient while the older woman recovered.

One of the most serious things Emma had learned about Laura since they became friends was that she’d actually been diagnosed with lung cancer a couple of years ago, the byproduct of smoking a pack a day since she was a young teen. Thankfully, after what sounded like some crazy aggressive chemo, she was in full remission now. She stressed her energy and stamina had recovered marvelously, but she also admitted that her recovery time between rolls in the hay was nowhere near what it used to be. Emma had tucked the information away into her mental file on the woman that she was very protective of now.

Emma had learned at the same time that Laura was much older than she’d thought she was. When they first met, she had reasoned that she was older than Regina was, or at least as old as Regina physically appeared to be, but not that much older, maybe fifty-one or two, if she were really stretching her guess out. She’d been way off. Laura’s sixty-third birthday was actually at the beginning of April. Thankfully, Laura had taken Emma’s very unsmooth, obvious shock as an ego boost. She’d actually called her charmingly sweet.

Emma had learned a lot of other things about Laura’s life over shared meals and hours of pillow talk. She’d had a colorful one for sure, but also a very hard one at times. She’d called her childhood a very harsh experience, growing up in the fifties and sixties in Brooklyn with violent alcoholics for parents. And she’d “flown the coop” as soon as she graduated from high school a year early with only a tiny suitcase of clothing and less than a hundred dollars to her name. After that, Laura described her life as a mountain range of cloud-breaking peaks, interspersed with dark, seemingly bottomless ravines. For every happy memory she regaled Emma with, like her two years spent in the Peace Corps in her early twenties, volunteering abroad, there was a bad one, like the three years she’d then spent doing hard time in prison in her late twenties. Emma had felt particularly bonded to her after that story. Laura’s old boyfriend had left her holding the bag when the cops showed up as well, only that bag had contained cocaine instead of stolen watches.

Unfortunately for Laura, that was only the first of over a dozen times that she’d been arrested, slash, served time back then. Most of her arrests were for prostitution, but she also admitted to a couple of other drug charges, and incidentally, a drug problem in her thirties. She called it a short-lived phase though, and blamed it on it being the eighties at the time. And she also hadn’t been arrested in over twenty years by now. “I don’t know if I just got slyer over the years, or if the cops just got stupider, but I can spot a sting operation from five miles away,” she’d explained smugly to Emma, resting back against her chest in a bathtub filled with hot, soapy water and orange-scented bubbles. The older woman found the fact that she was banging a former sheriff now endlessly amusing. Emma didn’t feel like dimming her amusement even a little bit by explaining that being the sheriff of Storybrooke, Maine, wasn’t really as impressive as it sounded.

Everything Emma had learned about Laura thus far had just made her more curious about the older woman. She wished she could learn everything there was to learn about her, but she knew she couldn’t, for now, at least. Their friendship was still new after all, and thus, there were some subjects that Laura just danced around entirely, none more so than her line of work. All she’d said on the matter to Emma was she didn’t have much of a choice when she’d started sex work back in the day, and then somewhere along the way she’d decided to “make the job work for her”. Emma’s unrelenting concern for the woman must have been obvious on her face, because Laura had just wrapped her in a hug and promised her that she was very happy with her life.

There was, of course, a small part of Emma that wanted to push a little more. She knew it was a little hypocritical of her to be concerned for Laura, over how her job related to her physical safety and mental health, considering how they’d met, but it’s just who Emma was. Regina had tried to kill her, and she’d still fallen in love with her. She didn’t push though. She understood that there were sometimes limits to what you could tell a person, even one you cared about and trusted immensely.

She might have talked Laura’s ear off by now about Regina and Henry, but she did her own dancing whenever the subject got close to parents. In her defense though, she still wasn’t sure how she would even spin the story of her troubles with them if she wanted to. Thanks to all the curses, they were physically the same age as she was. Even if she lied and said they’d had her very young, Laura would still assume them to be around fifty now. Not exactly the age for suddenly having three more babies in rapid succession and already planning a fourth. And that’s not even touching the whole business of them shoving her in a magical tree trunk and sending her to this realm in hopes that she would save their asses from Regina someday.

It all made Emma’s head ache to think about. Thankfully, before she could think too hard about her parents, she felt Laura starting to do her signature move, stretching out like a big cat. “My God, Emma, you’re soooo good at that,” the older woman exclaimed with a big, relaxed smile on her face.

Emma didn’t bother to temper her proud expression even a little bit. “I aim to please, Ma’am,” she chuckled, turning her head and pressing a kiss against Laura’s warm, silk-smooth skin, right below her navel.

“Well, you succeed,” Laura laughed, shaking her head and reaching down to ruffle her already wild curls up. “You know, Chicky, if you’re ever up for it, I know a handful of rich closeted women who would pay you several thousand dollars a night for your skills. One of them has two Oscars, and one of them is a senator’s wife,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows down at Emma and grinning like the devil incarnate.

“Noted,” Emma laughed, with a wide, relaxed smile on her face. She didn’t think she’d ever take Laura up on that offer, but it was nice to know it was an option if her financial situation ever went up in flames. She was just about to ask which actress it was anyway, and also what political party the senator represented, because now she was curious as all hell on both fronts, but then Laura’s phone buzzed on the nightstand beside her, and she held up a finger, signaling Emma to hold that thought.

A second later, Emma’s eyes narrowed playfully when she saw Laura’s lips curl up into a smile, looking at her phone’s screen. “Is that one of the others looking to steal you away? Tell them you’re busy,” Emma said, feigning over-the-top jealousy. She was well aware that she was just one in Laura’s veritable stable of fuck buddies, and this had now become a fun running bit between them.

Laura pressed her head back against her pillow, shaking it and laughing as she typed in her response. When she was done, she tossed her phone back on the nightstand and looked down at Emma. “Oh, Pretty Girl, it was indeed someone hoping to spend some quality time rolling around naked with me, but I told them that they’ll simply have to wait until I’m free. You know I’d never kick you out of my bed without blowing your mind first. You are currently, my favorite little sweet treat after all,” she cooed, walking her perfectly manicured fingers up one of Emma’s biceps and then scratching her softly under her chin.

“And don’t you forget it,” Emma said, stretching her neck out and grinning up at the older woman as she soaked up the affection. She didn’t know if she was actually Laura’s favorite, or if everyone in the stable was eating the same carrot, but she did not really care either. Not as long as she got her mind blown. A moment later, Laura applied just the slightest bit of pressure under her chin, and she crawled up the woman’s body and let herself be pulled into a wet, languid kiss.

Emma quickly got lost in the moment, her world narrowing back down to just her and Laura. It was always like that. Laura was so skilled at touching her, at saying all the right things, that Emma would just…slip away, for lack of a better term. All of her troubles were put on pause, all of her worries momentarily forgotten. It was like getting to live in a dream for a little while.

When Emma felt Laura gently urging her to get off her, she obediently began to move, intending to roll over onto her back. But Laura grabbed her wrist and pressed her lips to her ear. “On your stomach,” the older woman growled hotly, nipping at her flushed earlobe.

The whiny moan that Emma let out would have been embarrassing if she had any real shame left. But she did not, so she eagerly did as told, stretching out on her stomach and then lifting her hips up so that Laura could shove a few decorative pillows under them. Once she’d settled onto the pillows, Laura started trailing her nails up and down her back. “God, you’re magnificent, Emma,” she sighed dreamily.

Emma bit her bottom lip and buried her face against the mattress as she squeezed her legs together. She could already feel herself dripping down the insides of her thighs. Of course, Laura noticed it. “Already soaked for me, I see,” she hummed, gathering the slick on her fingers and teasing the entrance of Emma’s pussy with them.

“Oh fuck- please, please, please,” Emma half-whined, half-begged as she greedily pushed her hips up against Laura’s hand.

“Shhh, Pet,” Laura cooed. Emma could feel her grinning against the shell of her ear.

Laura was draped over Emma’s body, full breasts pressing into her back, hard nipples against her overheated skin, it further overwhelmed her senses. Laura’s fingers dipped lower then, slowly dragging them across her clit and swirling them around the swollen bundle of nerves. At the same time, she forced her other hand underneath Emma’s torso, searching for one of her nipples to roughly pinch and twist. Emma dug her fingers into the top sheet, bunching up the silk in her fists, bracing herself as Laura started to work her up. It didn’t take long until she was out-of-control trembling, and shamelessly begging to get fucked.

“I swear, you’re just the most delectable little treat ever,” Laura chuckled in her ear, suddenly rubbing her fingers hard against Emma’s clit for a few seconds. Emma jerked away for a split second before pushing back, trying to get the wonderful pressure back, but Laura was pulling away from her entirely, leaning over her body and reaching for the top drawer of her nightstand. “I stopped into Lucky D’s last night to pick up some new lingerie I special-ordered, and I found a little present for you in their toy section,” she said, rifling around inside the drawer for a moment before pulling it out.

Emma had been watching Laura over her shoulder, and her eyes went wide at the sight of the shimmery, blue vibrator she’d pulled out. It was easily the thickest one Emma had ever seen in her life, and it had a wicked-looking clit stimulator as well. For a second, she just stared at the toy with a dumbfounded expression, and then it was like fire was roiling through her body. “Oh God- fucking please,” she moaned, lewdly shoving her ass up into the air, her voice so needy and desperate she sounded like she was about to start crying.

Thankfully, Laura was not one for teasing. “Shh, I’ve got you,” the older woman said with a soft chuckle as she switched the toy on.

The strong vibrator was comically loud in the quiet bedroom. If Emma hadn’t been so horny, she probably would have laughed; she just whined instead. Laura didn’t waste any time, rubbing the thick head of the toy up and down the length of her pussy a few times, lubing it up with her own arousal, before she started working the thick head inside of her. Emma’s knuckles went white around the silk sheets bunched up in her hands, and her bottom jaw dropped as a lurid moan escaped her chest. She heard Laura teasing her, calling her a “size queen”, but she was already so overwhelmed that it sounded like she was underwater.

Laura knew Emma’s body so well by then, knew exactly how to play her like a fine instrument. Gently, she started to pump the toy in and out of Emma’s pussy, every slow thrust going only just a little bit deeper than the last. Emma felt like her entire body was gradually being dipped into hot, thick honey. She pressed her face to the mattress, swallowing hard over and over again as Laura slowly fucked her. When the vibrator was finally deep enough for the attachment to start brushing against her clit, she let out a pitiful-sounding, broken cry and jerked hard.

Laura let out a loud, amused chuckle and shifted, draping herself back across Emma’s body, holding her down with her weight. “Take a deep breath, Lover Girl,” she whispered hotly into her ear before biting down on her earlobe.

Emma knew Laura well enough by then to heed her warning. She took that deep breath and managed to strengthen her grip on the top sheet, just in time for Laura to turn the toy up several speeds. “Oh fuuuuuck,” she groaned, twisting up underneath Laura in agonized pleasure as the vibrations stimulated seemingly every nerve ending in her body.

“Just let go, Emma,” Laura purred, as she continued turning the notch up on the vibrator until it was at its maximum setting.

And oh God, did Emma ever let go. With Laura whispering dirty things into her ears and the toy so deep inside of her, pressing firmly against her G-spot. Not to mention the clit attachment, which was like nothing she’d ever felt before. Emma didn’t just get overwhelmed with pleasure. It was like a cataclysmic wave suddenly crashing into her. She could have been flying through outer space for all she knew, so far out of touch with reality she was.

Underneath Laura, her body spasmed violently, the veins on her neck standing out as she tensed up over and over again in tune with the powerful toy buried all the way inside of her. It was all so much that her orgasm was practically instantaneous, forcing a loud, sharp squeal out of her that was so sudden it caused her jaw to pop.

And then Laura just kept fucking her, turning the vibration up and down over and over again with expert precision, making her pitch and roll violently, until she was literally screaming her name out. Emma couldn’t tell you how many orgasms she had; they all started to overlap until it felt like electricity was being run in a full, non-stop current throughout her body, from her head to the tips of her toes. She couldn’t even tell you when Laura actually stopped fucking her; she just blacked out at some point.

The long period while she regained consciousness, slowly coming back down to earth, all wrapped up in a cloud of happy feel-good brain chemicals, were undoubtedly the most peaceful moments of Emma’s life to date. Outside, the sun was high in the sky, and its rays filtered down through the stained-glass skylight in Laura’s bedroom, bathing her naked skin in warmth. It felt like every bone in her body had disappeared, leaving her a spent, relaxed pile of muscles melted into the heart-shaped bed beneath her. When she finally dipped back out of the clouds, she became aware of Laura’s body pressed against hers. The older woman was trailing her fingers up and down the length of her back, down over the swell of her asscheeks, and it drew a long, relaxed sigh out of her.

Laura chuckled softly at that and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Welcome back,” she hummed softly. Emma could feel her lips curling up in a smile, and she let out a small sound from the back of her throat in response, too lazy to form words yet.

Laura chuckled softly again and then noticeably froze for a second with a small, “Oh,” her fingers resting on Emma’s left wrist. Turning her head, Emma cracked open an eye and arched her eyebrow curiously up at the older woman. “Do you want another tattoo?” Laura asked, tilting her head to the side and looking at Emma with a wide smile on her face.

That was enough to get Emma looking at her properly. She realized then that Laura’s fingers were resting on her flower tattoo. She was still confused though. She could tell from Laura’s inflection that she wasn’t just asking because she was curious; there was clearly an offer in her tone. Laura laughed, shaking her head, and patted her wrist. “I have a dear friend who is actually quite a well-known tattoo artist, and I helped her out financially when she was in a very tight spot a few months ago while going through a divorce. I did it because she’s my friend and I love her, but she’s just demanding that I let her pay me back now that she’s square again. I was thinking I could take services in lieu of money to get her to shut up about it,” Laura explained, chuckling and rolling her eyes a few times as she traced the petals of the flower with the tips of her fingers.

“Ohhhh,” Emma exclaimed. Her eyebrows quickly furrowed back up though. “You wouldn’t want one for yourself?” She asked curiously.

Laura immediately scoffed at that. “Oh hell no. I have a high pain tolerance, sure, but only when it’s necessary. And besides, this is already a masterpiece,” she said, gesturing down at her own naked body.

“I can’t argue with that,” Emma said with a little chuckle, shifting onto her side so that she could properly leer at Laura’s body. The fact that she looked like a goddess, despite having struggled with a serious drug addiction for over a decade, having very recently undergone aggressive chemotherapy, and having had zero cosmetic work done on her, was insane to Emma. Especially since the woman had professed to doing zero work to maintain her figure by means of either diet or exercise. According to Laura, she was just “winging it”. Emma felt like she couldn’t leer at her enough, honestly.

Laura appreciated the leering though, laughing, and reaching out to run her fingers through Emma’s wild curls. “And that, Sweet Girl, is why I’m offering the tattoo to you first,” she said, her eyes starting to turn hungry again.

Emma’s lips immediately curled up into a cheeky grin. “Because I’m the favorite in your vast harem?” She asked, eyes twinkling impishly.

“Exactly,” Laura laughed, shaking her head and leaning in to reclaim her lips.

They went another round fucking after that, finishing together that time. And then they spent another hour and a half together hanging out, first in bed, tangled up in each other's arms, and then downstairs, bottle feeding the youngest of the kittens in Laura’s Hissy Kitten Bootcamp. Once they’d come up for air from fucking, Emma had graciously said, yes, please, to the offer of a tattoo. She’d never put much thought into getting another one, but the tattoo artist that Laura knew was apparently an amazing artist, and also, free was free. So that’s mostly what they talked about, ideas for what Emma could potentially get inked. She was thinking something small, but Laura was in camp, “get a half-sleeve”. By the time she headed out to the Bug to go home, they had come up with a few contenders for ideas, and she had a consultation appointment already set up for the next weekend.

Leaving Laura’s place and hitting the highway, Emma was feeling on top of the world. She’d had the best sex of her life hands down, and her mind was suddenly abuzz with tattoo ideas. She really wanted to get something for Phoenix, like her paw print at least. Because she loved spoiling the cat, and since she’d been gone all afternoon, she actually decided to stop off at the pet store on her way home to grab her a few new toys. And then she stopped off and got herself a big ass burger and chocolate shake from her favorite local spot.

Thus, a little under an hour after leaving Laura’s house, entering the trailer park from the highway, happily listening to classic rock with a big, silly grin on her face, Emma, of course, was the picture of unprepared for the true jump scare that was shortly awaiting her. Storybrooke, and the issues and people associated with it, could not have been further from her mind.

The trailer park was actually quite large, with well over a hundred trailers in it, most of them doublewides, and the gravel roads winding through them were narrow and always lined with cars. Emma’s trailer was located at the very far east corner of the park too, furthest back from both entrances. Between that and the ten-mile-an-hour speed limit, it took her a while to make it back to her trailer.

She also got stopped by a neighbor whose name she could not remember to save her life. He had shoved a plate of his wife’s blonde brownies through the window at her and made sure she’d be attending the next bi-weekly community barbecue mixer. Emma thanked him for the brownies and assured him she would be there with the napkins. Ever since she’d stopped Martin and Stella from getting robbed, and it had gotten out that she was a former sheriff, she’d seemingly become the adopted granddaughter of the entire damn park. She’d had to buy a weight bench to slap down on her concrete patio to balance out all of the baked goods and plates of various grilled/smoked meats they’d been stuffing her with. She wasn’t complaining, though. Not even a little bit. She’d always been so jealous growing up of the kids at school when they talked about their grandparents spoiling them. Now she had like a hundred pairs of her own.

Emma didn’t see either of her surprise guests when she pulled up at first. The sun was in her eyes, and her mind was fixated on crumbling up one of the brownies into the remains of her shake and enjoying it while she watched Nix play with her new crinkly tunnel and jingly plastic balls. After that, a nap, probably. So Emma got out of the Bug, closed the door, stretched out her back a little, and then turned to face her front yard. And then she froze like a deer caught in the headlights of a thousand trucks.

She saw Killian first. The front of her trailer faced Martin and Stella’s backyard, and he was up on their deck. Standing next to Martin by a smoking grill with a big smile on his face, chatting with the elderly man as if they were friends from way back when. AND, he was drinking one of her beers. She knew it was one of hers because of the brand. It was one of her “special beers”, an ale made by a small company in Boston. She had to drive halfway across Vegas to buy it, and half of the time they were out.

Already feeling like she’d stepped out of her car and into some bizarre parallel dimension, Emma reflexively looked towards the front door of her trailer, so surprised by suddenly seeing Killian that she was wondering more about how he’d gotten one of her special beers than what he was doing there in the first place. And then she saw her. Lily, her complicated teenage bestie, was sitting in one of the wrought iron chairs on her patio, staring out into the desert just like Emma often found herself doing, seemingly lost in thought. AND, she also had one of Emma’s beers in her hand.

Emma just stood there for a long time in abject shock, her eyes going back and forth between Lily and Killian like she was seeing them on TV instead of right in front of her. A small part of her inexplicably expected someone else from Storybrooke to just suddenly appear on the scene. She probably would have stood there into the night if Martin hadn’t noticed her standing there with her jaw in the gravel. “Oh, hey there, neighbor! Why don’t you come on over and say hi?” He called out, waving her over with a big, friendly smile.

Unsure of what the hell else she was supposed to do, Emma started walking towards them with a dazed expression. On her way over, she looked at Lily, and her old friend flashed her a big, shit-eating grin and tipped her beer at her before looking back out at the scenery.

Just as Emma had climbed the small staircase up onto the wooden deck, Stell came out their back door holding a tray of shrimp skewers. She smiled widely when she spotted Emma. ‘Well, hey there, Sweetheart,” she exclaimed, shoving the tray into Martin’s hands and shuffling over to Emma for a hug. “Emma, Dear, you have to warn us when you’re going to have guests over,” she said, pulling away and giving Emma a reproachful look.

“Yeah, you do,” Martin said with a chuckle. “When I saw them moving around through your front window, I thought I was too late to have to return the favor you did us, keeping our idiot grandson out. Thank god I went over and checked before calling the cops.”

Emma was still struggling to string words together, but of course, Killian had never had that problem. “Oh, in Emma’s defense, this is sort of a surprise visit,” he said, flashing his toothiest grin at her.

Stella’s eyebrows furrowed at that. “I thought your lady friend said Emma told her where she could find the key,” she said, confusion mounting on her face.

Finally, the wheels and cogs in Emma’s mind started turning all at once. “I did, but she didn’t say when they’d be visiting, though. I didn’t expect them for a few weeks,” she quickly lied. She cleared her throat then and took a deep breath in through her nose, trying to calm herself down a bit. It didn’t do her much good.

After a polite, but hasty goodbye, Emma practically shoved Killian off the deck ahead of her, only barely resisting the urge to grab him by the hook and drag him behind her with it. “That Martin’s a really great guy,” he said with a wide smile, ambling along beside Emma across the sand.

“Shut up, Killian,” Emma snapped through her teeth. Now that she wasn’t in front of her neighbors, reality was hitting her like a Mack truck.

“Did you know he was in this country’s navy? Stella told me he won an award called the Silver Star during a war against someone she called the commies,” Killian carried on as if he hadn’t heard her, clearly curious from his tone about the U.S. Navy, the medals it awarded, and communists now.

Lily looked up and smiled like an ass again when they stepped up onto the patio. “Hey, Bestie, classy little place you got here. You should get a couple of plastic flamingos and a lawn gnome for some color,” she teased.

“Inside. Now,” Emma ground out, shaking from pent-up emotion. A thought hit her then, watching Lily haul herself out of the folding chair with a laugh. “And you better not have let my cat out when you picked my lock,” she snapped, power walking to her front door.

“Chill, your gnarly ass looking cat is just fine,” Lily chuckled from behind her. “She growled at us when we walked in, tried to take a swipe out of Crusty the Sailer Man here, and then ran off down what I guess you can call your hallway.”

“She growled because you were breaking in,” Emma retorted, entering her trailer and immediately looking around her living room. Thankfully, Nix was waiting for her by the front door. She quickly put down her milkshake and the bag holding Nix’s toys, and then swept her up into her arms. “And she is not gnarly-looking. She’s a survivor,” she grumbled, burying her face against Nix’s furry side while the cat let out a low growl, looking over her shoulder at the people invading their home.

“I didn’t want to wait out there without something cold to drink. It’s too fucking hot for February. It’s stupid. And she looks like Sarah McLachlan should start blasting from hidden speakers every time she walks into a room,” Lily shot back as she shuffled into the trailer ahead of Killian, who followed her in and shut the door behind them with an endlessly amused smile on his face.

Emma took several deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. She felt like she might be on the verge of a panic attack, so unprepared for the crashing together of her two lives was she. “What are you two doing here?” She asked finally, looking up from the security of Nix’s side. Her gaze quickly swiveled to Killian, and she leveled him with a stern look. “You first, and if this is about you and me getting back together, you can save your breath,” she said, her insides churning with anxiety.

Killian let out an over-exaggerated scoff at that and waved her off with a large grin. “Ah, no, Swan, I know that ship sailed a long time ago,” he chuckled.

Emma could just make out the lingering sadness in her ex’s eyes when he said that. “Then what are you doing here?” She asked warily

“Right, well, I recently came into possession of a small wealth of magical beans in my travels, and I decided I would donate them to Storybrooke, as a sort of peace offering to you,” he explained. Emma arched an eyebrow at Killian, and he chuckled softly and shook his head. “The way I left, in the middle of the night with only a short note… It’s bothered me since the moment I went through the portal. It was bad form. I apologize, Emma, I owed you a proper farewell,” he said, his tone and expression full of sincerity.

Emma hadn’t realized until just that moment how badly she’d wanted that apology. “Thank you,” she said, shifting on the balls of her feet and absentmindedly scratching up and down the length of Nix’s neck.

“Of course,” Killian said, flashing her a wide, friendly smile. He chuckled then, and his smile turned more playful. “Imagine my confusion, though, when I dropped anchor in the harbor, only to be told you’d been gone from town for the better part of a year now,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her a little bit.

Lily chose that moment to interject a loud, pointed “Mmhmm,” and Emma turned to look at her oldest friend with a raised eyebrow, silently asking for her side of the story now. Lily cleared her throat and shifted forward like she was pushing off from an invisible wall. “Right, so my mom wanted to visit Mayor Bitchface, and I got the same surprise that Fishhook Man here got when I decided to look you up.”

Emma couldn’t help but huff when Lily called Regina that, but she at least didn’t chastise her. “So you just decided to come here instead?” She asked instead, still feeling fairly confused. She had not believed Lily cared that much.

Lily chuckled and shook her head. “No, last night Mayor Bitchface got messy drunk on that insane apple cider of hers and begged my mom to send me to come and, 'check up on your physical and mental health'. And my mom is cool as hell, and I’ll do anything she asks me to do. So here I am. I’m supposed to say I just wanted to see Vegas,” she answered truthfully, with a little casual little shrug at the end.

Emma was so preoccupied with forcing herself to not tell Lily to not call Regina Mayor Bitchface again, that she couldn’t help what slipped out instead. “Regina sent you to make sure I’m okay?” She asked, her heart clenching tightly in her chest.

Lily stared back at her with a blank expression for a couple of beats, and then she let out a little bark of laughter, and her eyes shot to Killian. “Holy fuck, you were right about her,” she said, shaking her head.

“Told you,” Killian chuckled softly, holding his hands up a little bit.

Emma looked between the two of them with a confused expression, and it just made Lily laugh harder. “He told me you had a thing for her, but I didn’t believe him,” she explained, still shaking her head.

Emma’s attention pivoted towards Killian, utter shock and surprise etched into her face. “It was all I could see once I recognized the way you looked at her for what it was,” he said softly, his eyes and smile sad again.

Emma was still so surprised she could barely see straight, but she did have the decency to feel a little guilty. “I’m sorry, Killian. I never should have tried to force a relationship with you,” she said, swallowing and squeezing Nix in her arms.

Killian chuckled and waved her off again. “No hard feelings, Swan. At least you gave me a chance,” he said, before looking towards Lily with a smarmy smile. “Besides, it’s left me available for Lily to fall madly in love with,” he said with a grin.

Emma immediately looked at Lily. “In your dreams, you knock off Jack Sparrow,” Lily said, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes.

Even as she protested, Emma could tell that she was fighting back the ghost of a smile. She only had to think about it for a moment to realize that they were actually kind of scarily compatible. They were definitely more well-suited for one another than she and Hook had ever been.

Lily looked back at Emma then, and her face scrunched up in obvious distaste. “So what gives with Regina and fucking Robin Dudd then? I spent all of an hour with them eating dinner last night, and they’ve got the chemistry of two strangers being forced to share the same stick up their asses.

Emma’s heart plummeted very suddenly at that. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at Lily’s assessment of their chemistry. She just knew she didn’t want that for Regina. “They don’t need chemistry,” she said with a sigh. “They’ve got fairy dust ordained True Love.”

Lily let out the loudest scoff yet and rolled her eyes all the way around in her head. “Jesus Christ, what is it with those fucking fairies? Even my mom is up their asses. She hates them, but she still has some weird kind of respect for them, and I just don’t get it,” she groused, crossing her arms over her chest and shifting on her feet.

Emma let out an exasperated sigh and looked to Killian. He let out a small chuckle and looked at Lily. “You’ve got to understand, Lass, the Fairy Brigade are a bit like demi-gods back in the Enchanted Forest, and most of the magical realms for that matter. They’re so powerful, and what they say is usually the last word said on any topic,” he explained, slowly, clearly putting some thought into it.

“Exactly,” Emma said, gesturing towards him but looking at Lily. Lily just rolled her eyes for the nth time. Emma was about to reiterate what Killian had just said when he let out a little “meh” sound suddenly. She looked back at him with an intense stare.

“But I also think her Majesty and Old Hoody-boy missed their chance,” he said, shrugging her expression off. “What? I do,” he argued. “Tink sprinkled that dust fifty years ago or something like that, well before Regina went on a one-woman warpath against your mother, and well before Robin started a family and became the people’s thief. They might have been perfect for each other back then, but they’re not anywhere near the same people now.”

Emma had never thought about that. Mostly because she went out of her way not to dwell on Regina and Hood’s relationship. This was all just hurting her head and making her heart ache. She really did want Regina to just be so, so happy. She believed with all of her being that the older woman deserved it.

Because Emma felt so heavy emotionally now, and because they’d been standing right by her doorway for far too long, she moved the conversation along forcefully then. A little bit later, helping them to move the bags they'd brought with them back to the two small bedrooms, a question had suddenly struck her like lightning, that question being, how the hell had they gotten there. She knew that there was no possible way Killian had gotten on an airplane. Besides the fact that he didn't have a real ID card, he was on record saying he’d rather tie himself to a dragon’s ass. Emma’s instant fears were confirmed when he told her with a wide smile that that’s why he was there too. He’d offered Lily a ride when he found out she needed to come this way. The Jolly Roger was currently anchored out on Lake Mead, right next to the Hoover Dam, hidden from sight by a cloaking spell. Emma nearly made herself sick imagining it being discovered. She was just glad it was winter, so hopefully a lot of people weren’t out on the water.

After that, they all settled down in the living room to hang out. Despite her initial surprise at seeing them both so suddenly, Emma gradually found herself becoming very, very glad that they were there. Really, she realized that except for Henry, of course, there really were no better people from Storybrooke to visit her than the two of them. Maybe it was because neither of them was really from Storybrooke. They were just Storybrooke adjacent, like her. She also would admit, to herself at least, that she was very…touched that Regina had sent someone to check up on her. She didn’t know if that’s how she’d feel in a day or two, but it’s how she felt that evening.

Because they really couldn’t leave a whole ass pirate ship parked in a public reservoir for too long, and because Lily apparently had impending plans with her mother to do “dragon shit” in a different realm, they were planning on leaving very, very early the next morning. Emma liked that too. She really wasn’t used to having people in her space, and Nix was the definition of unhappy. She was also highly amused that Killian was going to be transporting Lily and her mother to the other realm to do their dragon shit. For some reason, she really liked the mental image of him ferrying them all over the place.

The three of them stayed up late into the night talking. Mostly about what Emma had been getting up to in Vegas. She got the feeling that Lily had been sent with a short list of specific questions Regina wanted answered. She didn’t know if the older woman was just ensuring Henry would be in a safe environment when he visited her, or if she was just genuinely worried about her, but she answered everything truthfully all the same.

Lily went to bed first, surprising Emma with a short, welcome hug, but Killian hung back. When the door to Emma’s room closed, where Lily would be spending the night, he turned to Emma and softly cleared her throat. “You know, Emma, I don’t want to alarm you, but Regina and Robin aren’t the only ones in Storybrooke who seemed off,” he said, clearly trying to be delicate with her.

Emma reflexively puffed up, making an instant assumption about where he was going with this. “If this is about my parents, just leave it alone,” she warned.

Killian quickly shook his head. “No, no. I mean, they’re acting off as well, but it’s like the entire town is a powder keg waiting to explode,” he said, her eyebrows furrowing together.

Emma could tell that he didn’t have any theories. “I know they’re dealing with some issues over the border,” she said with a frown. It had been a couple of weeks since the day she’d spoken to both Regina and Henry. And according to Henry, the only thing that had changed since then was that his new friends had stopped hanging out with him when they realized he couldn’t force Regina to change her mind. He was understandably feeling a very certain type of way about that, and getting him to talk to her now every three days made Emma feel like that one dude fated to push the boulder up the hill for eternity. God, she couldn’t wait for him to visit her.

“I guess it could be that,” Killian conceded, tilting his head from side to side.

“What else could it be?” Emma asked, with a frown.

“No idea,” Killian admitted. “I just know that every single person I crossed paths with over the last few days was walking around like they were ready to fight.” He added, his voice growing dark. “Something is building up in that town, and when it blows, it’s gonna blow sky high, mark my words.”

Emma stayed up for a long time after he slipped off into what would be Henry’s bedroom to go to sleep. She kept replaying his words of warning in her mind, wondering what was happening in Storybrooke, if it was really just continuing tension over the border line. Those thoughts and unanswered questions would plague Emma relentlessly for the next couple of weeks, especially as Henry grew more and more distant with her during every single phone call. What was actually happening in Storybrooke, and the cataclysmic finale that would happen very soon…well, Emma never could have guessed, but it would go on to change her life again forever, despite her not being there to witness even one second of it.

Chapter Text

Emma watched the coffee slowly dripping into the glass pot with an exhausted, impatient scowl on her face. The machine sputtered and pffted away, struggling to complete the sole task it was made for. She was going to have to get a new one for sure. This one was the old ass one that she’d brought with her from Storybrooke, a vintage first curse appliance. It had taken up most of the space in one of her two boxes.

Emma’s scoIt was early. Stupid fucking early. Even for her. And for once, she wasn’t awake because she couldn’t fall back asleep. Oh no, Emma had had to force herself to wake up, and she actually didn’t know if she was ever going to be able to fall asleep again. Every single time she had drifted off to sleep in the last six hours, she’d been assaulted by the worst nightmares she’d ever had in her entire life. And that was not an exaggeration in the fucking slightest.

The nightmares Emma had been subjected to were insane. Just beyond terrible. So many, one right after the other. And all medling together like some godawful short horror movies anthology.

Short one, her parents die very suddenly and very violently. She never gets to say goodbye. Never gets to fix anything. There aren’t even bodies for her to bury. And she has no idea where her younger siblings are, either. They’re just lost…Three more angry orphans out in the world.

Short two, Henry is at the bottom of a deep, dark pit, crying out for her to come save him, but she can’t find the opening no matter how hard she tries. She is distinctly aware that time is running out. Neal is in that one, and even though he doesn’t say a word, she knows he’s judging her for leaving Henry after everything they’d been through.

Short three, Regina, screaming in agony, her entire body being consumed by flames burning hotter than the surface of the sun, set alight by the citizens of Storybrooke that the woman was so goddamn dedicated to serving to assuage her own never-ending guilt. All Emma could do in that one was watch and cry. It was like she’d been frozen in place.

And those were just three examples of what felt like hundreds of nightmares. They’d all been like that, though. Every time Emma so much as blinked now she heard screaming. She’d actually been trying to wake herself up for the last few hours fully, but felt like she was fucking trapped asleep somehow. She’d startle awake from one horror show, for barely a few seconds, long enough feel terrified, and then she’d fall right back asleep, as if she were being dragged back into them by force.

She must have been tossing and turning like crazy because the thing that finally woke her up all of the way was Nix mauling her right hand with her claws and biting her pinkie finger hard enough to break the skin. Emma assumed she’d accidentally slapped the hell out of her in her sleep. The cat was currently sitting on her pillow, licking one of her paws and still giving her the stink eye.

Once the coffee pot finally finished doing its thing, Emma poured herself a big mug of it, mixed in her cinnamon and hazelnut creamer, and took it back into the living room. “Sorry again, Nix. Extra treats after breakfast,” she murmured, sitting down carefully with her coffee. She reached out to gently scratch Nix under her chin and around her ears. She didn’t know if she was forgiven or not, but Nix started purring and accepted the affection for a few moments before curling up on top of her pillow and going back to sleep. Emma smiled crookedly and gave her a bonus scratch behind the ear before really settling down with her coffee. God, she was tired.

Emma still couldn’t believe how insane her nightmares had been. She’d always had some pretty terrible ones, sure, and pretty regularly at that, ever since she was a little kid, but these had all been on a whole other level. Sitting with her coffee, she thought about the previous day. For the most part, it had been a normal Monday for her; an okay day at work, a walk in the park with Nix afterwards, nothing out of the usual. And then she got the news, and she supposed it had to be why her nightmares had been so bad in turn. She couldn’t think of any other reason at least.

The shit was finally hitting the fan in Storybrooke. When she’d called Henry for their usual three-day call, Regina had picked up instead, sounding as if she were at her very wits’ end, and told her the entire story.

Yesterday, two of the lost boys, and one kid whose father was one of the Merry Men, had managed to break into Gold’s shop with the help of an incredibly wayward fairy. Together, they had stolen the enchanted shawl Gold used to cross the border with. They almost made it out of his shop scot-free, but Gold had more magical alarms than they were prepared for. Emma’s father and Hood found the boys before they could cross the border; however, the fairy had managed to escape. And it was an escape.

Worryingly, it sounded like the fairy had used the boys to do the heavy lifting to get the shawl and then actually stopped the three of them from getting to leave Storybrooke herself. The engine in the car that they’d stolen had just suddenly seized up a mile from the border, and she’d literally flown off, enchanted passport shawl in hand, before they could even get their seatbelts off. Regina told her that Blue had inspected the car and confirmed fairy magic had been used. And then Blue admitted that she had been covering up some ongoing bad behavior from the fairy in question for months.

If all of that wasn’t enough drama in and of itself, there was no question about how they’d known exactly where to find Gold’s shawl. Henry had told them. Several weeks ago, when they’d been his “friends”. They’d been planning this for a while. After Regina told her the entire story, Emma was still hoping to talk to Henry, but it didn’t happen. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. According to Regina, he’d been up in his bedroom since everything had gone down in typical Storybrooke over-the-top fashion. He was furious at everyone now, Regina and herself included, for the sin of being right about his supposed friends’ intentions.

Emma’s heart clenched up, thinking about Regina’s tone of voice during their conversation. The older woman was obviously too tired to even be mad. She’d sounded so hollow…defeated. She’d promised to keep Emma informed if anything new happened, and then Emma had heard her sniffle just a little when she said goodbye.

Staring down at the last few sips of her coffee, Emma came to a decision that she had been dreading for weeks now. She was going to have to return to Storybrooke, and soon, at least for a short visit. She couldn’t in good conscience leave Regina to sort this all out by herself. That fairy could be a threat. And she also had to make sure that Henry was okay; she couldn’t wait the three weeks left until his planned visit. He might really hate her by then.

Emma got up from the couch carefully, so she wouldn’t disturb Nix’s beauty rest, and headed back into the kitchen to pour herself another cup of coffee. While stirring in her cinnamon and creamer, she absentmindedly scratched an itch on her right bicep and then winced, both from pain and because she was stupid. No scratching fresh tattoos, Dummy.

She looked down at the new ink, and even exhausted, feeling put back in the trenches by all of the drama, she couldn’t help but smile a little as her eyes danced across the vibrant colors. She’d gotten it after work on Friday evening in one six-hour session. Laura had won out with the size suggestion of go big or go home, and she’d gotten a half sleeve done that covered everything from the swell of her shoulder blade down to her elbow. After a long consultation with the artist, whose name was Priya, she’d ended up deciding on a gorgeous desert scene, with a fiery red sun setting over a mountain range and sand and cacti, which were all abloom with flowers. The tattoo was done in the watercolor style that Priya was very rightfully well known for, and Emma could not stop staring at it, amazed by every single little detail.

For the Nth time since saying goodbye to Priya on Friday night, Emma thought about the business card the woman had given her. She had very pointedly written her personal phone number on the back of it and told her to call if she ever wanted to get dinner. She knew a few great spots that only the locals were on to. She said she would love the opportunity to get to know Emma better. Emma’s voice had broken a little when she thanked her, and Laura had gently teased her about it the entire way home.

She had been crazy beautiful, Priya. Emma had honestly been a little intimidated by the very intense sex appeal that the woman just fucking oozed. She licked her lips and huffed softly, thinking about the business card. Maybe she’d call her when she got back from Storybrooke. She couldn’t just stay in one-sided love with Regina for the rest of her life after all. Maybe trying to date someone for real could help her finally get over her. Lord knows just giving it time wasn’t doing a damn thing. If anything, the ache was just getting worse with every passing day. It felt as if her longing for Regina was taking up a physical place in her chest. She could feel it pressing against her heart, putting down roots deep into her veins and arteries.

Rubbing the back of her neck, Emma padded back into the living room and resettled on the couch. She was debating whether to start looking up plane tickets now or save it for when she got home from work that evening, when her phone started vibrating on the coffee table in front of her. For some reason, without even seeing the screen of her phone, she knew that it was Regina calling. What she didn’t know was how life-changing this particular phone call was going to be.

In a now practiced routine, Emma quickly put on a pair of shoes and headed outside. “Hey, Regina,” she said quietly as soon as her feet touched the sand. She braced herself out of habit then, which was a good thing because Regina nearly blew out her eardrum.

“We were cursed!” The older woman shouted across the phone, her voice so raspy that it sounded as if she’d been smoking ten packs of cigarettes a day for her entire life.

“Who was?” Emma asked immediately, whipping around uselessly to face the mountains as panic flooded through her system.

“Me! Henry! Your parents! The entire damned town was! We’ve been trapped in a shadow realm by an insane ex-fairy for the last six months!” Regina bellowed, her voice cracking a few times.

“Six months!? What? No, that’s impossible! I just spoke to you last night!” Emma shouted as she quickly started putting distance between herself and the trailers. All of her neighbors were likely already awake, and she definitely didn’t want them to overhear her yelling about curses. She felt like her heart was about to break out through her ribs.

Regina started to yell right back at her. She managed to get out an infuriated-sounding, “Obviously, time passed diff-” And then she was overcome with coughs that sounded so painful they made Emma’s chest hurt.

“Are you okay? Regina, are you okay? Try to take a deep breath! Can you get something to drink?” She said, or rather pleaded over Regina’s coughing fit, as big, fat, terrified tears sprang to her eyes. She was so panicked now that she was reflexively trying to poof to Regina, even though her magic was well locked inside her body and had been for a long time now.

After several long moments of coughing, Regina managed to get it under control. Emma was still rambling out her concern. “I’m okay now,” Regina assured her a few times, obviously struggling to breathe, her voice sounding like it was going to give out entirely any moment. The coughing fit had seemingly taken the angry wind out of Regina’s sails. After taking a few more deep breaths, Emma could hear her swallow. “Time passed differently there,” she explained, just sounding exhausted now. “Less than five minutes after we hung up, last night for you and six months ago for me, the Red Fairy breached the town barrier with Gold’s shawl and immediately cast her curse. It swept over the town so fast there wasn’t anything any of us could do to stop it.”

“The Red Fairy? What kind of a curse was it? What did she want?” Emma asked immediately, utter confusion mixing in with her still very present sheer panic. She was close to ripping out her own hair.

“It is a very, very long story, Emma, and I have a lot of things I still have to do now,” Regina said, exhaustion evident in her tone.

Emma could tell that it was hurting Regina to speak now, but again, she was still very panicked. “Is Henry okay? Is he there with you? Can I talk to him?” She shot off in rapid-fire succession.

“He’s right in front of me, but he’s asleep,” Regina said. “The whole town is. I had to put everyone under a temporary sleeping spell so that they would survive leaving the Shadows. They’ll all start waking up in the next couple of hours,” she explained, voice pitchy and strained, clearly running out of patience with her.

Emma couldn’t help herself. “How did you survive it?” She asked, wiping the tears off her cheeks.

“By absorbing a lot of pain, Emma!” Regina snapped.

Again, Emma couldn’t help herself to save her life. “Are you okay?” She asked immediately, fighting to keep her voice from breaking. That physical longing for Regina that she kept in her chest was bearing down on her heart like a jackhammer to a bruise. She didn’t know what she expected to hear back, but the sound of Regina suddenly letting out a sharp sob sent her panic careening higher than ever. “Regina, talk to me, please tell me you’re okay. Please? I’m going to book the next flight I can to Portland and-”

“No, Emma! Don’t come here!” Regina shouted, her voice filled with tears and even raspier because of them. She also sounded as panicked as Emma felt.

“What?” Emma asked immediately.

“Do not come here, Emma,” Regina repeated firmly. “There is nothing you can do right now.”
Emma wanted to argue with her. She really, really did, but there was a certain desperation to her tone, managing to make its way through the raspiness and tears, that kept her from it.

Regina sniffled into her ear and then swallowed a few times. “I know Henry is going to be calling you the second he wakes up,” she said, sniffling softly. “He’s missed you so much, Emma. He was so brave the entire time. He saved me over and over again.” Her voice broke at the end a few times.

More tears spilled over Emma’s cheeks at that. “I miss him too,” she said, shaking like a leaf and wiping her cheeks. She was so confused and scared without the whole story. She had so many more questions that she was forcing down. Saved her over and over again? From what? Or who?

Regina was quiet for a long moment. Emma could tell that she was trying to get her emotions under control. Finally, she let out a shuddery little breath. “Emma…I know as soon as your mother wakes up, she’ll be calling you, too. Please pick up and listen to what she has to say,” she said quietly, obviously trying to approach Emma with kid gloves about the topic, even though she was still highly emotional and in physical pain.

Emma’s mouth opened, but she had no clue what to say to that. Regina sniffled again. “For me?” She asked softly. “She’s the only reason that Henry and I are alive, Emma.”

Emma experienced her heart dropping deep down into her stomach at that. There was no way she could deny Regina’s request after hearing that, just no way. “O-okay,” she said shakily, balling up her free hand and pressing it against her forehead. “Yeah, I’ll talk to her,” she said. And then, even though she definitely didn’t need to tack it on, she added a “for you”.

Regina hung up then, after promising she’d call again after she finished doing what she had to do now and got some rest. Emma just stood there for several minutes afterwards, watching the sun rising over the mountain tops and feeling like the most useless person to ever walk the face of the planet.

Regina, Henry, her parents, and apparently the entire town had been locked away in some goddamn shadow realm for six months of curse time, and where was their Savior? Just a fucking clueless lump, lying on her damn couch, bitching and moaning because she couldn’t get her damn beauty sleep. She hadn’t even known they were gone. Didn’t even know what a fucking shadow realm was.

It was her alarm going off, telling her it was time to put Nix’s burn lotion on, that finally got her heading back. She’d really managed to put some distance between herself and the trailers this time. Trudging through the sand, she realized there was no way she’d be able to go to work today. Thankfully, her boss was exceedingly cool about her calling in when she told him there was drama back home. She went through her morning routine with Nix when she got back inside, hoping it would calm her down a bit, but her nerves were beyond fried. After she’d stretched out tending to Nix’s wounds and feeding her for as long as she could, there was nothing left for Emma to do but sit and wait.

Sit and wait, whilst her mind came up with a million different horrifying scenarios about what her family had just gone through for the last six months of their lives. She didn’t turn on the TV, didn’t pull up YouTube videos to distract herself with, she just sat on her couch, holding her phone in her hand, and stared down at it, waiting for it to ring. When Henry’s name finally flashed across her screen, she felt for a second like she could pass out from sheer relief.

“Ma! I’ve missed you so much!” Henry cried into her ear, his voice thick with emotion.

Emma noted right away that his voice was not raspy like Regina’s had been, but it did little to calm her down. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are you okay?” She rambled out, heart beating erratically in her chest. She’d jumped to her feet when she picked up, and she started pacing around the room like a bird looking for an exit.

“I’m okay, I’m OK! I’m so sorry, Ma. I’m so sorry about everything. I was such a jerk! I’m so sorry,” he rambled out just as fast as she had, his words garbled with tears.

Emma started shaking her head violently from side to side, as if Henry could actually see her. “What? No! Henry, you don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she quickly replied, running her free hand through her hair and going for the roots already.

“But I do,” Henry protested. “I saw it all, Ma, I saw how lonely you were here! The mist showed me everything! And I brought you here in the first place and then was a jerk and just left you and-”

“Henry, please! Please slow down, Kid! What are you talking about?” Emma interrupted loudly, her heart hammering away in her chest. She felt like she was about to explode from confusion and worry. She just wanted to pull him into her arms so bad she was almost reaching out for thin air. And then Henry switched gears so fast it made her head spin.

“Can I come and see you now? Please?” He cried, sounding completely desperate. “I know I’m supposed to go there in three weeks, but I want to see you now! It’s been longer than a year for me! Please? I know Mom will say yes!”

Emma had to fight to get control of herself. She was so panicked that it was hard to breathe. “Yes! Yes, of course!” She said quickly, swallowing hard and looking around her trailer helplessly. In her ear, she could hear Henry struggling right along with her.

“I’ve missed you so much, Ma. I love you. I’m so sorry for everything,” he said again through his tears.

“I’ve missed you, too, Henry. I love you so much,” Emma replied, sniffling hard and roughly wiping her cheeks. She wanted to beg him to please stop apologizing to her, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to get the words out.

She could hear Henry trying to calm himself down, breathing deep and sniffling. “I have to go find Mom now. I know she’ll say yes to leaving now,” he repeated, his voice shaking.

“Okay. Okay,” Emma said, swallowing hard, trying to calm herself down as well. “Just have her call me, and we’ll work it out, okay?” She said, taking in some deep breaths through her nose. And then Henry said something that raised the stakes immeasurably.

“They tried to kill Mom,” he said, his tone going low and dark.

“Who did?” Emma asked, freezing midstep, a mask of anger already starting to overtake her worried expression.

“The whole stupid town did,” Henry ground out with a sniffle. “We were only in the Shadows for a few weeks before the Red Fairy had everyone manipulated into believing that Mom had gone evil again and trapped us there herself. And then they chained her up in one of the cells in the station like an animal. Grandma and I were the only ones who never believed it. It took over three months for Grandpa to come around and help us to break her out, and she was nearly dead by then,” he muttered, his voice rising and falling with anger. He wasn’t crying anymore, instead he sounded like he was seriously considering committing murder.

Emma was already right there beside them. She was quaking where she stood from anger. One question in particular was at the forefront of her mind. “And Hood?” She asked, jaw clenched.

“She turned him first! He was the one who put the chains on her!” Henry spat out.

It was a very, very good thing that Emma’s magic was safely locked away in her body, because she probably would have unintentionally burned down the trailer park with the sheer force of her rage. If Robin had been in front of her, she surely would have launched herself at him and strangled the life out of him. She didn’t need a full explanation; that was enough for her.

Henry said a quick goodbye, then, eager to track down Regina, and Emma sat back down afterwards on the edge of the couch, putting her face in her hands. Her mind was racing, unanswered questions piling up on top of each other faster than she could come up with them.

What was this shadow realm? What was the mist that Henry had mentioned? Who was this Red Fairy? What had been her goals? Was she like most of the others they’d faced, there to settle an old score? Who pissed in her breakfast cereal back in the Enchanted Forest? How had she convinced the entire town, including fucking Hood, that Regina had “gone evil again” in just a few weeks? Enough so that they chained her up like an animal?

Lost in her panicked, scattered thoughts, Emma completely forgot that Henry’s was not the only phone call Regina had told her to expect. When her phone started vibrating on the coffee table, she shot forward to grab it, thinking it would be either Henry or Regina with an update about him visiting. Instead, of course, she saw “Mom” flashing across the screen.

Emma’s mouth instantly went dry, and her palms turned cold and clammy. Swallowing hard, like she was trying to get down a gallon of molasses, she stared down at the screen on her phone for a few moments, trapped by indecision. A small part of her didn’t want to pick up, too afraid of what was ahead. What if her parents were mad at her for not being there for the curse? Was she just going to be expected to let everything go that had hurt her so badly in the first place, because they had suffered through another curse for half a year while she slept? It was only remembering she’d assured Regina she’d pick up when her mother called that eventually gave her the strength to do so.

Emma was still reeling a bit from all of the apologizing that Henry had started doing the moment she picked up earlier. She was wholly unprepared for the force of the ones that started spilling out of her mother just as quickly. Snow wasn’t just apologizing; she was practically prostrating herself at Emma’s feet. Over the phone at least.

“I’m so sorry, Emma,” she said over and over again, her voice thick with tears.

Emma was already crying again as well. She kept trying to tell her mother that it was ‘okay’, but Snow wouldn’t hear of it.

“It’s not, Emma,” she said firmly. “I never, ever, should have cut you off like that, and I am so, so sorry Sweetheart. I’ve missed the sound of your voice so much every day. And all I could think about in the Shadows was how I wasted a month not talking to you every chance I had, and I’m so, so sorry.”

Emma was already getting overwhelmed by this point. “It’s alright. I was a jerk to,” she tried to argue, her voice shaking, feeling lost for anything else to say.

“No, Emma, you weren’t. Not at all. You were pushed up against a wall and reacted,” her mom said, sounding just a tad exasperated. Emma heard her take a very deep breath then. “Emma, Sweetie, I have so, so many things I want to apologize to you for. Your father does too. As soon as things are figured out here, we’re going to fly out and see you. Granny and Ruby have already said they’ll watch the babies,” Snow said.

Emma’s face crumpled up as fresh tears made tracks down her face. Her mother sounded so damned determined to see her, but also so out-of-character sad that it was making her heart ache. “Okay, just um, let me know when,” she said, trying to sound as casual as she could whilst low-key blubbering.

“We will, Honey, we will. I promise. I promise we’re going to come see you and we’re going to talk about everything.” Snow said, before adding on the words that would really wreck Emma. “But Emma, I have to tell you now, I have to make sure you know that I love you with all of my heart, Sweetie. You always have been and always will be ‘enough’ for me, and I’m so, so sorry for ever making you feel like you weren’t. After things started to settle down in Storybrooke, I was being selfish, trying to make the life that I had envisioned for myself when I was still a naive little girl in the Enchanted Forest work in this completely different world. And I didn’t know how to fit you into those dreams, all grown up already, when in my mind, I had just given birth to you a few years ago. So I convinced myself that you didn’t really need me as anything more than a really good friend, and it was so insensitive of me, and I’m so, so sorry. I promise I was never trying to replace you. You’re irreplaceable to me. You’re my baby.”

Emma all but collapsed into a sobbing mess after that little monologue. If there were a list of things she had wanted to hear her mother say, she’d just cleared at least half of them in one fell swoop. She just hoped that she was going to back her words up with actions now. And she wanted to hear them again, said to her face this time.

It took a WHILE for her to recover. Her mother also started crying again fairly hard at one point, and it caused Emma to just start back up again. When Emma finally felt like she could breathe normally and think somewhat coherently, she asked her mother to please, for the love of God, answer some of her questions about what the hell had just happened to them over the last six months. Thankfully, her mother had had the foresight to ‘order’ her father to go help in handling the waking up citizens of Storybrooke, explicitly so that she would be free to catch Emma up.

Her mom did warn her at the beginning, though, “I won’t be able to tell you everything that happened, Emma. There are some things that only Regina and Henry can tell you themselves, and there was a lot about the Red Fairy that only Blue knew the details of. And she…well, the Red Fairy killed her and took on her appearance as soon as we all got to the Shadows.” Emma knew at that moment she was in for one hell of a story.

Snow talked for the next hour, telling Emma the broader strokes of everything that had gone down and answering her questions as best as she could. When she said her goodbyes and hung up, Emma still had a LOT of gaps in her knowledge, and she was already coming up with new questions that she wanted answered, but at least she no longer felt completely clueless about what had just happened to her family.

Chapter Text

It had all started a long, LONG time ago in the Enchanted Forest, hundreds of years before even Rumple was born. The Red Fairy was one of the very first of the Blue Fairy’s proteges and also one of her biggest failures. And her biggest secret. They’d had a hell of a time finding out anything concrete about those early days, before the Red Fairy turned down a dark path and kept running till she hit full-blown evil monster. All they knew for sure was that she’d been Blue’s favorite for a time, and in addition to a powerful wand, she’d given the Red Fairy the ability to sense independent magical signatures and some pretty strong ‘powers of manipulation’. Both gifts given were meant to aid her in the task Blue had assigned her.

A fun little fact that the Fairies had apparently been sitting on in total secrecy for hundreds of years, about half of the children from the Enchanted Forest are born with some type of magic inside of them. However latent it usually is, it’s still there, just waiting to be developed. It’s literally in their blood.

Back then, it had been more than half of the children, too. Nearly the entire lot. Blue had given the Red Fairy the job of sussing through the newborns to find the ones whose powers weren’t so latent. Those that could be of use to Blue were brought into the fold, taught to use their magic under her strict control. If their parents resisted, that’s what the Red Fairy had been given the gift of magical manipulation for. Just a little twinkle and sparkle, and she would have them fervently believing that sending their babies off to live with the Fairies was their idea all along. It was easy because almost everyone already trusted the Fairies implicitly. It didn’t take much to plant a seed in fertile soil.

And for those children who didn’t make the cut? The Red Fairy was under orders to magically neuter them, so to speak. They wanted to make damned sure they could never develop those powers on their own someday. After all, if the regular everyday citizens of the Enchanted Forest realized that by and large, most of them had magic of their own that they were perfectly capable of using with some dedication and practice, what would they need the Fairies for? And worse, what if they become a threat?

A cold shiver ran up Emma’s spine when she thought about the next chapter in the story. A fucking fairy vampire is what she was, the Red Fairy, a fairy vampire– complete with the blood sucking.

As said, magic was literally in the blood of the children of the Enchanted Forest. So in order for the Red Fairy to “neuter” them, she had to drain some of it. She would make a small incision in their necks, and then, using the wand given to her by Blue, she’d draw out about a pint of blood. A pint contained just enough of their magic that they’d never be able to do much more than turn a green leaf brown in late summer.

Medicine had never really advanced in the Enchanted Forest past leeches and tonics, so it was easy for the Fairies to pass the practice off as letting out blood to treat an ailment. And the siphoned off magic would go to Blue to be ritualistically ‘returned to the magical balance of the Forest’. Emma had been genuinely surprised while talking to her mom about that. She would have bet money that Blue would have been the one to figure out how to use all of that excess magic for herself, but apparently, she was legitimately letting it go. No, it was the Red Fairy who took that step.

After years and years of loyal service to Blue, she started skimming off the top, taking some of the magic for herself. At first, she figured out a way to keep the magic stored in a necklace, but at some point, she crossed the line and just started straight-up drinking the blood, thus taking the magic into herself. And then she figured out that if she took all of their magic, not just a pint’s worth, the effect would be tenfold, so she started draining the children of every last drop of magic and blood they had in them.

She got away with it for a while, using her powers to make the parents believe they’d sent their children off to become great assets to the Fairies when she was in fact murdering them. But then she got greedy, started taking the children of not just peasants but the nobles as well, the Fairies very benefactors. It didn’t take long for Blue to start running into noble parents asking how their darling children were doing under her tutelage and figure out what was happening.

By then, the Red Fairy had gotten quite powerful, powerful enough that Blue was too scared to take her on in a fair fight. She probably would have won, but not before the Red Fairy would have given her a very public humbling first. And Blue refused to ever appear weak. And she also would have had to admit that the Red Fairy had not only committed her crimes under her watch, but that she herself had gifted her the tools to do it with.

So, what do you do with a criminally insane, power-hungry, rogue fairy that’s developed a taste for the blood of magical babies, so your loyal, naive subjects don’t clip your wings when they do hers? Chuck her through a one-way portal to the Land Without Magic of course! Make her some other realm’s problem.

And apparently, from the bit of bragging the Red Fairy had done to Snow and Regina, during the climactic showdown that had actually happened over a month ago, she had made herself a massive problem everywhere she went.

Emma could understand Blue’s logic in sending her here, at least somewhat. She’d thought that without magic, she was effectively declawing the bitch. But Blue had been so hasty to get rid of her that she’d been sloppy. She failed to take the necklace the Red Fairy was still holding onto, a necklace filled to the brim with her backup store of magic. And Blue also didn’t realize that with fairy magic being as strong as it was, it couldn’t be caged completely. The Red Fairy didn’t age, and her abilities to sense magic and manipulate a person’s mind was still very present. They weren’t as strong as they had been in the Enchanted Forest, sure, but the Land Without Magic was teaming with weak, greedy minds. A little manipulation went a long way.

According to her, she’d made sport of this realm’s children in staggering amounts, draining them not for magic now, but just because she’d developed a taste for it after so long. For nearly four hundred years, she’d been slithering he way around the world, leaving a trail of little bodies in her wake and using her powers to secure a very cushy existence whilst she searched for a way back to the Enchanted Forest. Emma wondered how many old stories and legends meant to scare kids into saying their prayers and not going out after dark alone were inspired by her. A veritable real-life boogeyman, er, woman.

So the Red Fairy hunted for victims, and for her ticket home. It was Emma’s opinion that the name, the Land Without Magic, was a misnomer at best. Because there was magic, if you knew where to look, if you searched hard enough, asked enough questions, took rumors and legends and local lore seriously, you could find it in one way, shape, or form. On top of all of the countless magical artifacts that had somehow ended up in this land, a few of which the Red Fairy had come into possession of, there were also plenty of other people from magical realms who had ended up there, either by accident, on purpose, or by force.

The Red Fairy sought out any hint of magic she could for years, collecting her little magical trinkets, making connections here and there with other magical refugees. And then one day, purely by chance, she happened to hear about a man who had made some very interesting claims concerning a small town in Maine he’d visited as a child. That had, of course, been Greg Mendell. The Red Fairy had never managed to meet Greg herself, as he was already dead by then. But she did find the group that he’d been a part of, the “Home Office”, and they had pointed her to Greg and his companion Tamara’s last known location. Just a couple of feet from Storybrooke’s boundary line.

The Red Fairy had been able to feel the intense energy that Regina’s barrier was putting off. She could sense just how much power was behind, not just Regina's, but everyone's. Emma’s magic and all of the latent magic that at least half of the Storybrooke citizens didn’t even know they possessed. She could even feel Ruby’s lupin magic and the coming and going of Hook’s ship in the harbor. And best of all, she could practically taste fairy magic. She knew that Blue was inside the barrier. She just couldn’t find a way through it, no matter how hard she tried.

Eventually, though, using her ability to sense magic like a hound, she found the crack. No one had ever realized that a small stress fracture had opened up in the town’s barrier after that first curse broke, not even Regina. Why would they? It was so small. Minuscule. Just a tiny little sliver of shimmering light. And it was deep in the woods as well, far away from any of the hiking trails, not too far from the spot where the Merry Men would someday build an encampment, in fact.

And then came more curses, and the breaking of said curses, which widened it even further, and then inevitably, it started widening on its own, buckling under magical stress and fatigue. And finally, one day, it widened up enough for the Red Fairy to start exploiting it.

That crack was like a window into their world. She’d been looking through it for at least a year, learning about them, studying their weaknesses, trying to figure out how to get inside. Finally, she’d accepted that the only way for her to get in would be if she could get someone else to come out first to lead her in. So she’d used that crack to lure a young fairy into the forest, playing a melody through it on an enchanted pan flute she’d collected during her time in the Land Without Magic.

It hadn’t been all that hard. The discontent that had been building up in Storybrooke was very genuine after all. And the particular fairy that she’d happened to get her hooks into was one of the youngest of the order. She’d only gotten her wings a very, very short amount of time before Regina cast the first curse, and apparently, she’d spent the twenty-eight years in-curse being a pain in Blue’s ass for Regina’s amusement. She’d imbued her with a rebellious, promiscuous side, and after the first curse broke, the fairy wasn’t super keen on returning to a pious life, obeying Blue’s commands, and no time left for socializing.

The Red Fairy had figured out that she could get her magic through the barrier to a degree. Enough to manipulate the fairy into doing her bidding, first by just stirring the pot, so to speak, starting to get everyone really riled up over the borderline issue. Eventually, though, after the crack finally gotten wide enough to slip something very through it, she’d had the fairy steal a vial of fairy dust to pass to her. The Red Fairy had poured four hundred years of vengeful spite into that dust and had tossed it back through the crack. The first stop her little puppet made was the Merry Men Encampment, and she made a beeline for Hood. He’d been half in the Red Fairy’s pocket from that moment on without knowing it.

Snow had apparently felt compelled at that moment to make it clear to Emma that the Red Fairy’s ability to magically manipulate people at that point had still been rather limited. She also made a point of expressing that she was no longer on team Hood. In her words, “She wouldn’t have been able to twist him up as easily as she did if he wasn’t already resenting Regina. The bastard.” Emma was already so overwhelmed by that point she’d just asked her next question without acknowledging anything her mother had just said. Not that it was about to get any better whatsoever from there.

Eventually, the Red Fairy had the town just where she wanted it, on the verge of exploding. And when her little spy fairy reported back what the Lost Boy she was sleeping with had told her about Gold’s shawl, it wasn’t long before she put her plan into motion. Emma knew what happened next, the break-in at Gold’s shop, the race to stop the kids, only to find them all, sans the fairy, sitting in the middle of the road in a busted car and with flabbergasted expressions on their faces.

Not long after that, right after Regina and Emma finished their conversation, the Red Fairy metaphorically kicked down the door to Storybrooke. The curse came as a vibrant red smoke that blew through the town faster than most of them could even notice it. Snow only saw it because she’d already been staring out the open window, looking up at the moon, and then it enveloped her so quickly that she didn’t even have time to shout David’s name. When it cleared, the entire town had been plunged into a shadow realm.

Snow described it as always being on the edge of freezing, with no night or day, no sun or moon, no stars; it was a world stuck at perpetual late dusk. At all times, a dense, foggy mist hung in the air, even inside. Visibility was maybe four or five feet ahead of you, and it severely muffled sounds as well. If you strayed too far from a light source, you’d be able to see the shadows moving ahead of you, but not well enough to stop whatever was coming at you.

And there were quite obviously things in the shadows, things that nobody had actually seen and lived to tell about. Over a dozen people had been dragged away by them during the first week, while they were all still trying to figure out what the fuck had happened. After that, everyone learned to keep their loved ones within arm's reach and stay in the light.

The Red Fairy’s decision to drag them all into the shadowy realm was strategic. Her endgame was sucking every single magical being in Storybrooke dry before she killed the rest of them for sport and used their magical bean stock to go on tour throughout the realms. To do that, she needed to put a lot of people under her thrall and use them to corral their neighbors like cattle to slaughter. And to do that, she needed time.

She wasn't stupid. She’d been camped outside the Storybrooke barrier for a long time. And during that time, she’d sensed several powerful beings popping in and out for visits. Zelena, Maleficent, and Lilly, the gang from Arendelle– And she had, of course, noticed Emma’s sudden departure. She was aware that if she just rolled into Storybrooke and started raising hell, chances were high she’d be fighting off outside attacks left and right before too long. So she cursed them to a shadowy little realm that Blue herself had told her about centuries ago when she was still her student, knowing that time moved differently there. If everything went according to her plan, nobody in the other realms, Emma, Zelena, and their other powerful friends, would even realize they were gone.

Of course, like every villain that had squared up against them, the Red Fairy underestimated Storybrooke. Taking over the Blue Fairy’s identity and immediately turning the public opinion against Regina had been exceedingly easy. Between her gift for manipulation and Regina’s history, everyone was ready to believe this was her at work again, if only because there’s comfort in thinking you know whose foot is on your neck. The townspeople had all but carried Regina to the jail to chain her up themselves.

But the Red Fairy had not counted on, or was even aware, that Henry and Snow, arguably two of the most stubborn, loyal people in existence, would be so resistant to her magic. Emma was still a little breathless from what her mom had said when they were talking about the two months that two of them had been coming up with a plan to break Regina out of the jail. She’d asked her mom why they were different. She said it was because Henry’s trust and firm belief in Regina’s goodness was so unshakable that even the Red Fairy’s powers couldn’t turn him.

And as for herself, even though she should have been one of the easiest to turn, she knew with all her heart that Emma would have believed in Regina’s innocence, and her belief in Emma was so unshakable that she couldn’t be manipulated either. Emma could not even begin to express how much that meant to her.

The Red Fairy also had not accounted for the insane true love that her parents had going on. David might have been initially under her control once the curse was cast, but Snow was apparently able to figure out a way to break it after a while. To Emma, it sounded a lot like her mother was insinuating she’d used some sex magic she’d found in a book down in Regina’s mausoleum. She was infinitely glad when Snow moved on quickly after half-explaining it.

They managed to clear the minds of a few other people as well, Ruby and Granny, for example, and then mounted a successful breakout of Regina just in the nick of time. The chains Regina had been placed in were meant to nearly bleed the life out of her, so that when the Red Fairy sank her teeth in, she wouldn’t be able to fight back. She was so weak that she couldn’t walk on her own. She could barely lift her head. David carried her on his back as the four of them retreated deep into the woods around the shadowy version of Storybrooke. Snow shakily told Emma that she’d made the very hard decision to leave her siblings behind with Granny and Ruby. A smart decision, but no doubt one of the hardest ones she’d ever made.

From the sound of it, the next few months were a test of the skills that Snow had learned back in her bandit days, when she’d been hiding from Regina. Now she was using those skills to hide Regina and give her time to heal. Going far, far past where the barrier should have stopped them, Snow was able to communicate with the few animals they encountered in the dense, dark forest, and they told her it went on infinitely. They also warned her that the things in the shadows, the ones that had dragged people away screaming, never slept and were always on the hunt.

Snow’s new animal friends eventually led them to a small, hidden cave where they could hole up to recover and plan their attack. They weren’t able to stay in that cave for long though. With every day, Regina got stronger, meaning it got easier for the Red Fairy’s henchmen, the fully enslaved army of Merry Men and Lost Boys, to track them down. It quickly turned into a game of cat and mouse, and learning to use the misty shadows and the things inside of them to their advantage. And then finally, one day, Regina was back at full force. And boy was she pissed off.

The dieciest moments yet came then, when they had to sneak back into Storybrooke so Regina could get to her mausoleum and figure out a plan. They were aware by then that the Blue Fairy was not herself, but they didn’t know the full extent of it then. Snow said Regina nearly got caught twice trying to get into the Abby to find out more. And then she did get caught by Hood on her third attempt, only to escape after a day. Emma pressed her there, for details, but Snow told her that was just one of those moments she’d have to ask Regina about. Emma could tell she knew, but it was clear she wasn’t going to tell her.

Before Hood caught Regina, she had managed to find a secret room that Blue had hidden deep in the cellar of the Abby. The Blue Fairy had used the room to store a lot of things, the most important being a vial of her own shimmery blood. Regina had been able to use it to come up with a little curse of her own. Though apparently, making the curse did not come without some sort of sacrifice, and not just from Regina. David, Snow, and even Henry had to give something up to make it strong enough to kill the Red Fairy.

“What do you mean? Sacrifices? What did you give up? What about Henry?” Emma had asked instantly.

Her mom has sniffled softly then. “It’s really personal, Sweetie. I’d rather tell you in person, if that’s okay? I’m sure Henry would too,” she said, sounding like she might cry if pressed. Emma had dropped it even though it was eating her alive with worry now.

There was a big, final showdown in the townsquare then of course. Her mom did a great job of painting the picture, but Emma was so overwhelmed by then that she mostly just absorbed the important part. The Red Fairy and Regina went toe-to-toe, trading fireballs and bolts of energy back and forth, and for all of the magic that she’d stolen over the years, the Red Fairy was still no match for a Regina at the top of her game and determined to get back to their home. It ended with Regina hitting her so hard with the curse she’d made that the Red Fairy literally exploded into a million, fiery little bits, before the bits, and her soul, were all sucked into the equivalent of fairy hell.

After the Red Fairy was thoroughly annihilated, they weren’t out of the woods yet, though, or rather, the shadows. As soon as she died, everyone immediately came to their senses and realized they’d been very effectively brainwashed, but they were still in the shadow realm. Stuck actually.

Emma noticed her mother starting to get a little hesitant about describing how that realization had gone over. “Well, Regina, she was very angry,” she said very delicately. “She’d assumed we’d return to our realm as soon as the Red Fairy died. I think she took it a little personally when we didn’t.” Even though she felt like she’d been hit by a few trucks and dragged for miles, Emma couldn’t help but chuckle softly and shake her head. Yeah, that sounded like Regina.

They spent a month stuck in the shadow realm. Regina went back down to her mausoleum to figure out a way to get them and their town back to where it was supposed to be. Given that they had all just nearly caused her death and then been saved by her from fates worse than death, every single person in town was uncharacteristically patient about the wait. Even Leroy was going around saying they just had to wait and make the best of it in the meantime. Emma couldn’t help herself, asking what Hood was up to during that month. Snow ground out that he and Regina had had one long conversation down in the mausoleum that she still didn’t know the details of, and then he’d retreated out to the Encampment and stayed there.

Except for that one meeting with Robin and, of course, Henry, Regina didn’t really talk to anyone while she was figuring out a way to get them back. Snow said she tried to talk to her, see how she was doing, considering everything that had just happened, but she realized very quickly that the best thing she could do was just support her. She made sure her coffee stayed full, brought her food to eat, put a blanket over her when she passed out over a book…

And then finally, Regina figured out a way to get them home. And she didn’t tell any of them about it at all. She just did it.

Chapter Text

“What do you mean?” Emma asked, her eyebrows furrowing together.

Her mom sighed softly across the phone. “I mean, I was sitting next to your father on the couch talking, purple smoke started coming in under the door, mixed up with the mist, and then we both passed out. When we woke up earlier were just…back home, and Regina and Henry were here checking on us. The only clue we have that anything even happened is that we’re here and it smells really strongly of smoke despite nothing being on fire,” she explained.

As great as that should have been, there was a decidedly troubled tone to her mother’s voice. Emma swallowed hard. “Why didn’t she tell y’all she had figured it out?” She asked, chewing on her bottom lip.

Snow sighed again, deep this time, and was silent for a few long moments. “She probably thought Henry and I would try to talk her out of doing whatever it is she did. And we probably would have. She got hurt pretty badly, Emma.”

“How badly?” Emma asked, her heart clenching painfully in her chest. In her mind, she recalled Regina saying she’d survived the trip back through a portal by absorbing a lot of pain.

“I’m not exactly sure, Sweetie,” her mom admitted, concern thick in her tone. “I only saw her for a few minutes earlier. She said she was fine, but she obviously isn’t. She looks exhausted, and her right hand is all wrapped up in gauze. And I think some of her hair was singed at the ends. I’m going to go track her down and make sure she’s actually okay,” she said.

“Will you message me and let me know? If she’s okay?” Emma asked quickly, swallowing hard. She was starting to feel nauseous from emotional overload.

“I will, I promise,” her mother said firmly.

They talked for a little bit longer after that before her mother said her goodbyes and promised that she’d call again that evening, along with her father. Emma found herself a little unenthused about that, to say the least. She understood he’d been magically manipulated into helping the Red Fairy at first, but it did little to get him off the hook in her mind.

After hanging up, Emma sank back into the couch and rubbed her face with both hands. Her head felt like it was about to explode. She didn’t feel out of the loop anymore, sure, instead, she felt insane with her inability to do anything to support her family now. She was also feeling guiltier and guiltier with every passing second that she hadn’t been there with them in the “Shadows”. It was clear now that she should have made the decision to go back two weeks ago when Killian warned her things were going south fast. If she had, she would have been cursed along with them, and she could have kept them safe.

She hoped that she would get a little bit of time now to mentally go over everything her mother had just told her. She was just thinking that maybe she could take Nix out for a short walk so she could start filing all of the information away in the appropriate files in her head, when her phone started buzzing yet again. She picked up quickly when she saw it was Henry.

“Mom said I can come see you now instead of waiting,” he said excitedly.

“Awesome, just have her text me with the flight info,” she said, running a hand through her hair. She was definitely going to take that walk.

“I’ve already got it for you. Do you have something to write this down on?” Henry asked.

Emma blinked several times, surprised by how swiftly Regina had gotten that done. And then she nearly fell over when Henry told her their flight would be getting in at Harry Reid airport around one in the morning. Regina obviously wasn’t playing around with their son's desire to see her in the flesh as soon as possible. Emma couldn’t imagine how much the last-minute tickets cost; she was just glad they’d been available.

She swallowed down all of her complex feelings about what had just happened, then, to focus on getting the place ready for Henry. First, she did some cleaning and dragged all of her clothing and bedding back into her actual bedroom. Even though sleeping on the too-large king-sized bed in there meant she’d get even crappier sleep than usual, she didn’t want Henry thinking she was a total bum. With that squared away, she broke out the vacuum cleaner she’d bought shortly after getting Nix. Despite only half of her hair remaining, she shed like a fucking one-cat colony.

After she was sure the trailer was as clean as she was going to get it, she headed out to get supplies. She was initially just going for groceries, but she also ended up stopping off to buy a gaming station with all the bells and whistles, a stack of games she hoped Henry would like, and the dozen or so comic books the guy behind the cashier suggested for him. After putting everything away when she got home, she lay down to try and get a nap in. She managed to sleep a few hours off and on, getting interrupted a few times by her mother and father and once by Henry, letting her know he and Regina had landed in Chicago for their short scheduled layover. He sounded as exhausted as she felt.

Unable to help herself, Emma left way earlier than necessary for the airport. She was buzzing with energy, unable to stay still. Her eagerness to see Henry was matched only by her anxiety over seeing Regina. Snow had told her that Regina was definitely hurting physically, but that they’d only been able to talk briefly before she and Henry burned rubber out of town in the Benz.

The hour or so she was waiting for their plane to land felt like one of the longest hours of Emma’s life. She was certain she looked like she was on drugs, but thankfully, Vegas was one of those types of cities where that kind of behavior garnered very little attention. She’d been sure that when she finally laid eyes on Henry, she was going to run towards him at full speed, but when the moment came, she froze where she stood. She was infinitely glad that she spotted them first because she was sure her expression was close to horrified.

They looked so bad, Henry and Regina. Both of them looked beyond exhausted, sure, but it went way beyond that. They were both so skinny that their clothing just seemed to hang off their bodies, and their skin had been rendered deathly shades of pale thanks to six months of living in the Shadows. Even from a distance, Emma could see how dark and sunken their eyes were. Henry had easily grown a foot since Emma had last seen him, and he was walking with one arm protectively wrapped around his mother. Emma didn’t notice until they were halfway across the terminal that Regina’s right arm was in a sling under the coat she was wearing. Realizing it snapped her out of her shocked stupor over their appearances, she quickly started making her way through the crowd towards them.

When Henry spotted her, a huge smile broke the careful expression he’d been wearing. “Ma!” He shouted, closing the couple of yards left between them to run into her arms.

“Hey Kiddo,” Emma said, her voice immediately cracking with emotion. She’d hoped she was going to be able to keep herself together, but the effect of having him safe in her arms was overwhelming. Pushing back just a bit, she put her hands on his cheeks and looked into his eyes. “I’m so happy you’re here,” she said, sniffling hard through her words.

“Me too! I’ve missed you so much, Ma,” he said, pulling her back into a tight hug.

They shared a very long moment, just standing there, holding each other tightly, before Emma remembered Regina. When Henry stepped away, she looked past him to thank Regina for bringing him to her and ask how she was doing, anything…And that's when she noticed the airport employee standing behind Regina with his hands on a trolley that contained way more luggage than just Henry required.

Regina cleared her throat, obviously seeing the confusion in Emma’s eyes. “I needed to get away from Storybrooke as well,” she said, shifting uncomfortably where she stood. Emma could tell that the statement, and the reasons behind it, were beyond loaded. Regina shifted again. “Could you please help me find a suitable hotel?” She asked, her voice still as raspy as it had been on the phone that morning. And then her eyes flitted to Henry for just a second. “Preferably close to where you live?” She stressed.

Emma felt like all of the air had been pressed out of her lungs very suddenly. And also, like she was teetering on the edge of a cliff, with no idea how far below the ground was. She didn’t need to look at Henry to feel his eyes on her. She knew exactly what he wanted. Really, in her eyes, the split-second decision she made was the only option she had. It could potentially backfire. She could end up with her heart getting even more damaged than before by Regina. But after what they’d just endured, there was no way she was going to split them up.

“No,” she said quickly, and then, when Regina’s eyebrows started to furrow together frustratedly, she held up her hands. “I mean, you don’t have to stay at a hotel. You’ll stay with Henry and me…at my place,” she explained, feeling close to passing out. She couldn’t seem to take a full breath to save her fucking life.

Regina looked more than hesitant, but she did chance a look at Henry, and whatever his eyes told her did the trick. “If you’re sure,” she said, swallowing around the words.

It was a quiet trip back to the park. Henry passed out in the back seat as soon as she hit the highway, and Emma couldn’t even begin to think of what to say to Regina. She really, really wanted to call Laura and get one of her little peptalks, but she hadn’t even given the older woman a heads up that Henry was coming early, she was almost afraid to tell her Regina had come with him. Glancing over at Regina, who was staring out the window with her eyes barely open, Emma worried her bottom lip. She was going to have to come up with one hell of a white lie to explain this away.

Driving through the trailer park, she couldn’t help but notice the slightly alarmed, slightly confused, somewhat judgmental look on Regina’s face. She would have thought that Lily would have reported back that she was living in a trailer park, finally breaking that little tidbit of news, but obviously, that wasn’t the case. “It’s a really nice neighborhood, and I wanted to own without completely blowing through my savings,” she said quietly, feeling defensive. She was pretty sure that Regina was still judging her living choice, but at least the older woman fixed her face.

Henry barely had the energy to walk from the bug into the trailer. Emma guided him straight into the small bedroom that would be his, and he immediately collapsed on the bed and fell back asleep. Emma took a few moments to get his coat and shoes off before covering him up and pressing a kiss to his forehead. And then, feeling every bit like she was walking back towards that metaphorical cliff, she quietly closed his door and walked down the short hallway into her conjoined kitchen and living room.

Regina didn’t notice her when she walked in, and she took the chance to observe her. The older woman was standing by the bar, staring down at Nix and gently scratching her neck and ears. She looked more than exhausted. She looked like she had just avoided death’s door, and there was a hurt, haunted look in her eyes that made Emma want to physically fight someone. Regina had taken off her coat, and Emma could tell from the bulkiness of the flannel shirt that she was wearing that her entire right arm was covered in bandages.

Regina noticed her then and looked up from Nix, who was loving the affection. “What happened to her?” Regina asked, motioning down to the cat with her eyes for a moment.

Emma was so overwhelmed by the day's events and from having a very obviously injured, traumatized-looking Regina in front of her that it took a few seconds for her brain to process the question. “A fire–” she said quickly. And then, clearing her throat, “she ran out of a building fire in Reno. Her mom and siblings were found during the cleanup in a part of the structure that didn’t go down. They died from smoke inhalation. My friend Laura volunteers for the Humane Society. She gave her to me a couple of months ago. Her name is Pheonix, but I just call her Nix most of the time…” She trailed off at the end there, both because she realized she was rambling, and because Regina suddenly looked like she was about to start crying.

The older woman took a shuddery breath then. “Thank you. For letting me stay here, Emma. I don’t want to be away from him right now,” she said, clearly struggling to get the words out.

“Hey, it’s okay. I get it,” Emma said quickly, shifting nervously on the balls of her feet. Half of her wanted to chance wrapping her arms around Regina to comfort her, and the other half of her wanted to run out into the sand.

Thankfully, Regina seemed to wrangle control of her emotions. “If it’s alright with you, I’m very tired,” she said quietly, wrapping her good arm around her body and tucking in her chin. She looked like she wanted to disappear a little. It made Emma’s heart just ache.

“Of course,” she said quickly, taking a step back. Her eyes flitted over to the couch, and she chuckled in her head. Guess she could have left all of her shit in the living room after all. “Come on. You’ll sleep in my bed,” she said, gesturing back towards the hallway.

Regina bit her bottom lip and looked over at the couch for a moment. “Are you sure?” She asked with a swallow.

Emma couldn’t help but grin a little. She could tell that Regina would rather have eaten nails than have to sleep on her couch. “I’m sure,” she said with a chuckle. And then, because she was so tired and her guard was not even in the same hemisphere, meaning she was more honest than she should be, she added. “I want to make sure you’re comfortable, and I sleep on the couch every night anyway.”

Regina looked like she was too exhausted to know what to make of that. Either way, she let Emma lead her back to the bedroom and waited patiently for her to gather her pillow and some clothes. “I’m going to go to work tomorrow. At least so I can ask face-to-face if I can have my vacation time early,” Emma said, setting her uniform on top of the pajamas she’d pulled out. She’d made that decision earlier in the day. She highly doubted they'd say no, but she could always find a different job if she had to. And she would if she didn't get at least the next week off.

“Alright,” Regina said softly. “I suspect that both Henry and I are just going to mostly sleep for the next few days. It was nearly impossible to get any in the Shadows.”

Emma swallowed, that guilt bubbling in her stomach. “Okay,” she said awkwardly. She stood there for another moment before realizing that if she didn’t get out of that room quickly, she was probably going to start to visibly freak out. The realness of everything was suddenly hitting her like a fucking freight train. Regina was standing right in front of her. She was sleeping in her bed. And she was going to be staying with her for who knows how long. Emma practically ran out of the room then after saying a hasty goodnight.

She just stood in the small, dark hallway of her trailer after that, just holding her pillow and small pile of clothes. Behind the door, she could hear Regina unzipping her suitcase and getting ready for bed. Emma had winced, wondering if she would need help changing, considering her arm was in a sling. For a second, she almost knocked to offer some, but caught herself. If Regina wanted help, she’d surely ask her after all. It was only when the light went off under the doorway that Emma finally headed into her living room.

After shrugging on her pajamas, Emma stretched out on the couch. By her reckoning, she could get four hours of sleep before she had to go to work. When Nix jumped up on her chest, she started petting her with both hands. “So that’s Regina. Henry was too tired to meet you tonight,” she murmured softly to Nix. “Will you take care of them tomorrow while I’m at work? Show them the ropes? Answer any questions they may have?” She added on with a tired crooked smile. Nix started purring like a motorboat, so she took that as a yes.

Emma of course didn’t get even a moment’s rest that night. She was too aware of Henry and Regina’s presence in the trailer. It felt too surreal to be believed. She was still reeling from the second-hand account she’d gotten of the ordeal they’d just gone through, and stressing over what would happen now. The only thing she knew for sure was that whatever they needed while they were here, she was going to give it to them.

Chapter Text

The first couple of days Regina and Henry were there were a fucking catastrophe. Almost entirely because Regina was the most stubborn, guarded being who had ever walked the face of any realm, especially when she was hurting, be it physically or mentally. And, as it turned out, she was hurting very, very badly. On both accounts.

That first morning, after not getting any sleep, Emma headed into work early. She wanted to talk to her boss before she punched in, sure, but honestly, she’d been so anxious that either Regina or Henry was going to wake up that she was just about crawling out of her skin. She was still very overwhelmed, worried on multiple fronts, and knew she wouldn’t be able to hide it from either of them. She desperately needed some time to think about everything.

Since she was so early, and since morning was just a state of mind in Las Vegas, she headed straight for one of the bars first to grab a beer and chat with her favorite bartender, Zeke. In the interest of at least looking half-ass professional, policy was that you had to get your drinks in a plain styrofoam to-go cup if you weren’t gonna finish them at the bar, and Zeke always drew cool pictures on hers. She also knew that her boss, Lou, would be stopping by the bar first thing, too, so she figured two birds with one stone. Sure enough, she’d just taken her first sip when she felt a large, meaty hand clamp down on her shoulder.

“I swear, Swan, I see you more than I see my goddamn wife,” he said with a big smile, the bright bar light gleaming off of his golden right incisor tooth.

“Lucky her, Lou, think she’ll tell me her secret?” Emma quipped, chuckling and shaking her head.

Lou got a kick out of that, throwing his head back and laughing as he clapped her on the shoulder. “Always something smartass to say back, you. That’s that fucking East Coast, I tell ya,” he laughed, finally letting go of her shoulder so that he could take a seat next to her at the bar. Zeke immediately appeared in front of them with Lou’s morning drinks: an unstirred whiskey flip, a bloody mary, and a huge styrofoam cup filled with seltzer water and a whole chopped-up lemon.

Emma watched him down the flip, raw egg and all, with a crooked smile on her face. She genuinely liked Lou. He was an old-school, 'you get exactly what you see' kind of guy. Fun to joke around with, but you’d be an idiot to fuck with him for real. He looked like he should have been cast in any mafia movie ever as one of the guys who ordered other guys to break people's legs, but also like he could very easily break the legs himself if he so chose to do so. Emma still wasn’t one hundred percent sure whether or not he was actually connected to the mob, but that wasn’t any of her business now, was it?

After the flip, Lou picked up his bloody mary and gave it a good swirl with the celery stick before gulping half of it down. He smacked his lips happily then and looked back at Emma. “So how’s that drama at home? Your kid okay?” He asked, stirring up the rest of his drink.

Since Emma hadn’t been able to sleep at all, she’d had a fair amount of time thinking of how she was going to explain Henry and Regina’s sudden appearance on her doorstep. She was still at a loss to explain it to Laura, but she had some good bs to serve Lou. “He’s not good at all, actually,” she said, taking a deep breath. Lou’s forehead immediately wrinkled up in concern, and she shook her head. “I had to pick him and the ex up at Harry Reid this morning around one,” she explained with a grim expression.

“No shit? Were you high?” Lou asked loudly, his expression shocked.

“Oh my god, really? Why? Spill!“ Zeke said at the same time, practically teleporting from the other side of the bar where he’d been doing prep work.

Emma took a big sip of her beer then, both for dramatic pause and to keep from smirking. “Yeah. Whole lot of drama went down back home for both of them. She’s fighting with that jackass husband of hers,” she said.

“And you’re letting her stay with you? You’re better than I am, Swan,” Lou said, clapping her on the shoulder and shaking his head before chugging the rest of his bloody mary.

Opposite mood from their boss, Zeke reached out and put a hand on her wrist. “Is your son okay? Is she okay?” He asked, looking very concerned.

Emma had to fight the urge to chuckle. She knew Zeke was actually concerned, but also practically salivating. Man loved gossip. He’d have this spread casino-wide by noon. She took another deep breath and shook her head, face growing genuinely stony, thinking about the state Regina and Henry had been in last night. “They’re both really shaken up and exhausted. And one of Regina’s arms is in a sling,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck.

Even in a full suit, she could tell that Lou had suddenly flexed like every muscle in his body at once. “That prick husband of hers didn’t lay hands on her, did he?” He asked, cracking his thick neck from side to side menacingly.

Emma had not expected such a demeanor shift from her boss. She was actually very touched by it. He looked ready to get to leg-breaking for her. “I don’t think so. She said she got injured at work,” she said, her nostrils flaring a bit. She knew Robin wasn’t responsible for whatever was wrong with Regina’s arm; she’d clearly done that herself, doing whatever it is she did to get them out of the Shadows. But just the idea of him hitting Regina had her feeling ready to commit murder.

Lou only looked a little chilled out at that. “If you’re sure,” he said, shaking his head, before adding with a sneer, “I hate a wife beater. Wife starts driving you that crazy? You take a long walk, sleep with her sister, or something. Go blow a couple grand on coke and poker. You don’t beat on her. Might as well box with the Blessed Mother.”

Emma was still taking all that in and understanding a big chunk of why Lou was on his fourth marriage, but Zeke didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah! Who says chivalry is dead!” He faux-cheered with a dramatic smack of his hand on the bar. Emma couldn’t help but let out a small snort of laughter into her beer.

Lou let out a chuckle and shook his head good-naturedly. “Couple of smartasses the both of you,” he said, plucking the celery stick out of his finished bloody mary and picking up his seltzer.

“You wouldn’t have it any other way, Lou,” Zeke said, throwing a wide grin over his shoulder at Lou before suddenly walking away from them.

Emma followed Zeke with her eyes for a few moments. He made a beeline for a few of the servers who had just shown up to get ready for the morning ‘rush’. She doubted he even said hello to them before telling them that The Regina was staying with her. Chuckling, she looked back at Lou and grimaced slightly. “Hey, Lou, I hate to be a pain in the ass, but I was hoping that with Henry and Regina here, I could get those two weeks off now,” she said, her stomach churning lightly over the prospect of him saying no.

Thankfully, Lou immediately said yes. “It’s no problem, Swan. Family is number one around here,” he said, pointedly holding up a finger.

Relief immediately washed over Emma. “Thanks a lot, Lou,” she said quickly.

“Like I said, no problem. I’ll get that lousy step-nephew of mine to cover the hours. Do you wanna head home now? I can drag one of them lazy jerks out of the camera room and make them walk beat today,” Lou offered with a wide grin.

Emma laughed and shook her head. “Naw, that’s okay. I’m already here, and they’re going to be sleeping all day probably.”

“Suit yourself,” Lou said before bidding her goodbye. Emma was just about to call Zeke over to top off her beer when Lou stopped and turned around. “Hey, you want me to get your kid a ticket for the fight?” He asked, and then, before Emma could answer, “Yeah, I’ll get him a ticket. Every kid should get to see a match at The Colosseum,” he said, already walking away.

“Thanks, Lou!” Emma called after him with a big smile on her face. Regina probably wouldn’t be thrilled about that, but she knew Henry would be.

Once she got her top off from Zeke, she made her way downstairs to the always slightly dank, windowless basement of the casino to clock in and grab her taser and baton. After that, she quickly made her way back upstairs to start her rounds. The rest of the morning guards all had a habit of showing up at once, usually about ten minutes late, and she didn’t want any of them to invite themselves to join her on rounds.

Most days, she wouldn’t mind, depending on the guard, but she wanted some alone time. Two weeks off secured, she had to figure out how she was going to get through them without sliding back on all of the progress she felt like she’d made over the last few months. Assuming they were only staying two weeks, of course.

It took four hours of walking around the casino until she finally started to feel like she could breathe normally. It was remembering that she didn’t need to borrow stress from her future that finally calmed her down a bit. What was going to happen while Regina and Henry were there was not totally in her control. What she could control was herself and her actions. She’d already decided that she was going to be there for them however she could, but she had to set some boundaries for herself when it came to Regina. She had to protect her heart. It helped to tell herself very firmly that Regina was only here because Henry was. It didn’t mean anything else.

Emma was just about to head over to the buffet to get her lunch when she felt her phone vibrating at her hip. Pulling it out, she reflexively froze, feeling a little panicked when she saw Henry’s name on her screen. “Hey. Everything okay?” She asked as soon as she picked up. Thankfully, her worry was for nothing.

“Everything’s okay,” Henry said, yawning through the words. “I was just wondering where you are? And if I can eat the dino nuggets in the freezer?” He asked, yawning again twice as he spoke.

Emma let out a relieved chuckle and resumed walking. “Sorry, Kid, you were so out of it last night I didn’t get to tell you I had to work today. But it’s only for today. I’ll be off for the next two weeks,” she stressed. “And have at the dino nugs. And anything else you want from the fridge or pantry. I went shopping yesterday after I knew you were coming.”

“Sweet, I woke up starving,” Henry said. Emma could hear him rummaging around for her one baking sheet. “You know Mom’s going to throw a fit when she sees all this junk food and nothing green,” he said with an amused little chuckle.

Emma had just stepped into the dining area of the large buffet room, and her face paled, realizing he was spot on. “Crap. Yeah, I didn’t think about that,” she said with a grimace. “We’ll go grocery shopping tomorrow. Is she still asleep?”

“Yep,” Henry hummed. “I popped my head in when I woke up, and she was passed out hard.”

“Alright,” Emma said, cutting ahead of the small crowd of buffet goers to grab a tray. She heard at least one of them huff at her, but she could not care less. “I’ll be home around five thirty, okay? There’s a PlayStation and some games in the living room if you're interested. And some comic books.”

“Aw, thanks, Ma. Maybe this evening. I’m gonna pass back out after I eat,” Henry said, his mouth already half full of something.

“Alright, Kid. See you in a few hours,” Emma said with a chuckle as she swiped a tray.

After Henry said goodbye, she was about to hang up her phone when she realized that at some point in the morning, she’d missed a text message. Eyebrows furrowed, she opened it up and then grimaced. It was from Laura, asking if she wanted to come over after she got off work, before Laura went out for the night. Emma’s thumb hovered over the keyboard on her screen, thinking of how to reply. Like a coward, she reasoned that just not answering would be better than lying, and her phone went back in her pocket instead.

Suddenly feeling tired as hell, she skipped the mountain of food she normally piled on her tray and just grabbed a baked pork chop and some shrimp fried rice, a very balanced lunch for sure. Sitting down in one of the empty half-booths, she leaned back against the cracked vinyl-covered cushions and rubbed her face. She was going to have to ask Regina what she did to her arm when she got home that evening, or at least how badly it was hurt.

Her loose plan for Laura at the moment was to tell her that Regina had been falsely accused, briefly jailed, and then cleared of money laundering charges. Even though it was very obvious from the beginning that she was innocent, most of the town had immediately jumped on the bandwagon against her, including her husband, and she was understandably hurt by that. Also understandable, all of the drama had stressed Henry out to the point that he wanted to get out of town early. And Regina had to, for that matter. Just like the truth of it, when she’d realized Regina intended to stay in Vegas, she’d offered to let her stay at the trailer since Henry obviously wanted her there after what they’d just gone through.

With a little tweaking, she was sure she could make that story plausible. But none of that explained why Regina’s arm was now in a sling.

Emma fully intended to introduce Laura and Henry. The older woman was very important to her, and thus, she wanted Henry to meet her. It was important to her. Plus, she firmly believed Henry would like Laura. She was hard to dislike. For most people, at least.

Emma was fully aware of the fact that under normal circumstances, Regina wouldn’t have any right to ask to meet Laura. If this were just the normal vacation they’d had planned out three weeks from now, and Regina wanted to vet all of her friends before letting Henry stay there, she would have told her to go kick cans. None of your business. This is my time with Henry.

But things weren’t normal. The Red Fairy and the Shadows had happened, and Emma didn’t have to be a psychic to know Regina was going to be wary of strangers for a while, to say the very least. Which was fair. If the roles were reversed, she’d be the same way. Emma would probably just introduce them herself and skip asking Regina to do so. So she needed an explanation for the arm sling.

Emma spent the rest of her shift lost in thought, mostly about Regina. Thankfully, nobody bothered her. But it wasn’t the wide berth she was usually given on her ‘bad days’. No, this was a respectful berth. She could tell that news of Regina’s sudden appearance had reached critical mass around two, when she was doing a round through the parking garage, and one of the valet guys saluted her like she was a war hero who was re-enlisting.

She made it to four thirty before she decided to call it quits for the day. Lou barely even looked away from watching the news when she popped her head into his office to tell him she was leaving thirty minutes early. He just told her to have a good time off and that he’d see her and her boy at the Colosseum for fight night.

The main reason Emma wanted to leave early was to pick up something for dinner. With every passing minute, she was getting more and more anxious about Regina waking up from sleeping for over twelve hours and realizing her kitchen was stocked like a cliche frat house kitchen. It really hadn’t occurred to her that Regina would be staying too when she cleared out the frozen snack foods section at the grocery store. Truthfully, she’d been planning on taking Henry out to eat for most of their meals. She’d told him as much when they were planning his visit, and he’d been thrilled.

One of the things about living in Storybrooke that Emma had always hated was how limited the dining-out options were. Like, don’t get her wrong, she loved burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches, sure. But she had spent almost her entire life in a large city, living almost exclusively on takeout as an adult, and she was used to variety. Greek one night, Thai the next, Soul Food, Sushi, Italian, Ethiopian, Brazilian, etc, etc. And then, maybe a week of eating nothing but lobster rolls or street truck tacos or scrambled diner eggs or whatever other food she was momentarily fixating on. Variety for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

When she and Henry had been living in New York for that one curse year on Regina’s gifted memories, she’d done a lot more cooking than she’d ever been capable of before, courtesy of said memories. But even Regina couldn’t work miracles. Like reverting to muscle memory, she had ordered takeout for the two of them at least half of the time they were there. After she and Henry had returned to Storybrooke and both of their memories had been restored, they’d privately lamented over the loss of the Chinese restaurant that they’d been regulars at.

Getting into the bug, Emma drummed her fingers on the steering wheel for a few moments, wondering what to get them all. Back when they were on the verge of something, Regina had admitted to being very curious about the different cuisines the Land Without Magic had. She’d tried her hand at making more exotic dishes than she could remember at home, but with no real-life experience for comparison, she could never know for sure whether or not she’d hit the mark taste-wise.

Recalling that conversation now, Emma decided on Indian food. Regina had wondered out loud, specifically, whether or not her vindaloo actually tasted like vindaloo was supposed to taste. Emma quickly sent in an order for pick up on her phone to her favorite place and hit the road. A little over an hour later, pulling up next to her trailer, food in hand, Emma would dare to say she was in a good mood. At least she was really excited about feeding Henry and Regina– like a stray dog that does tricks and fetches. She, of course, had no idea everything was about to go sideways real fucking fast.

As soon as she walked into her trailer, she could tell something was off. Every single day when she got home from work, Nix would be waiting by the front door for her, ready to start rubbing up against her legs in search of some loving and a treat. But Nix wasn’t there. Emma immediately started searching for her, setting the food down on her countertops like it was old news. The trailer was notably quiet. She guessed that Henry had indeed gone back to sleep after foraging for food. She wondered if Regina had gotten up at all.

Not seeing Nix in the living room, Emma softly called her name and headed for the short hallway that led to the bathroom and two bedrooms. She immediately spotted Nix in front of her bedroom door, staring up at it. She was hunched down, still as a statue, and the fur left on the unscarred half of her body was puffed out as if she’d chewed through a live wire. The fine hairs on the back of Emma’s neck stood up at the sight of her.

Swallowing, Emma padded down the hallway and knocked on the first door, Henry’s, while keeping her eyes on Nix. When she didn’t hear an answer, she opened up the door and quickly popped her head in. “Henry? Wake up, Kid,” she said, managing to keep her tone cool.

Rubbing his eyes, Henry sat up in the small twin-sized bed that just barely fit into the bedroom. “Hey, Ma,” he greeted, yawning and stretching his arms over his head.

Emma’s eyes flitted back to Nix, who hadn’t moved an inch, and then back to Henry. “I brought home a truckload of Indian food for dinner. Will you start unbagging it while I go wake up your mom?” She asked, shifting on her weight from foot to foot.

Still blinking himself awake, Henry didn’t notice her nervous energy. “Sweet,” he said, yawning again and holding a thumb up at her.

Swallowing hard, Emma closed the short distance to her bedroom door and did the same thing she’d done to Henry’s, knocking on it softly first. When she didn’t hear anything, she took a deep breath and then slowly opened the door and peered her head in. Immediately, she could tell something was very, very wrong with Regina.

“Fuck, fuck, shit,” Emma cursed, flipping on the overhead light and rushing to the king-sized bed. Regina was lying in the middle of the bed, with all of the blankets kicked off her, and she was covered from head to toe in sweat, trembling like a leaf. Most worrying, there were several patches of blood seeping through the stark white bandages covering her right arm. The bandages around her hand were nearly completely soaked through with blood.

Scrambling across the bed, Emma felt Regina’s forehead and then nearly let out a scream when she realized how hot she was. Quickly, she grabbed both of her cheeks and gently shook her. “Regina? Regina, wake up. Regina, can you hear me?” She rambled out, panic hot in her gut like lead.

Regina was completely out of it. She cracked her eyes open at Emma’s shaking, and her lips started moving, but no sound came out. Trying to not completely lose her shit, Emma called out Henry’s name a couple of times. He quickly appeared in the doorway, still half-awake at first, but as soon as he laid eyes on Regina, he did lose his shit. “Mom! What’s going on? Mom!” He called out, starting to rush around to the other side of the bed.

Emma quickly held a hand up at him. “Henry, go into the kitchen and open up the freezer door. There is a big ass bag of tater tots on the bottom shelf. Bring them here and put them on her forehead to try and cool her down,” she ordered her son, already pulling her phone out of her back pocket.

Holding her phone up to her ear, waiting for emergency services to pick up, Emma leaned over Regina, pushing the hair away from her face with her free hand. “Regina? Regina, can you hear me?” She called out, lightly shaking her cheek. Regina’s eyes cracked open just a tiny bit, but she was clearly far, far past anything resembling lucidity. Her lips were moving, but between the trembling and her voice already being so strained, Emma couldn’t make out a word she was saying.

Big ass bag of tater tots in hand, Henry scrambled onto the bed opposite Emma just as emergency services asked what her emergency was. Keeping one hand on Regina’s shoulder, Emma fought hard against the nausea settling in the pit of her stomach. Quickly, she rattled off her address and told the operator the details of Regina’s condition. When they asked if she’d been injured recently, Emma’s eyes darted down to the bandages, which were growing bloodier by the second. “She got injured at work, but I don’t know the details,” she admitted. Over Regina’s trembling body, her eyes met Henry’s, and she could tell he didn’t know what his mother had done to herself either.

Thankfully, all of the ambulance companies in Vegas knew the trailer park like the back of their hands. They also immediately assumed that any callout they received was for an elderly person who was already hovering on the edge of their deathbed, so they always came in with a sense of urgency that Emma had never seen anywhere else. As soon as she heard the sirens, she raced out of her trailer to flag them down and direct them to Regina. It only took them a few moments to decide she needed to get to a hospital and fast.

“Which hospital are you taking her to?” Emma asked, rushing behind the EMS workers as they rolled Regina out of her trailer on a stretcher. Henry was barely a half step behind her.

“Spring Valley,” one of them told her as they started loading Regina into the back of the ambulance.

Knowing they both wouldn’t be allowed to ride in the ambulance, Emma quickly pushed Henry towards the bug. Sprinting, she hurried back into her trailer to grab her keys and lock the door, and then raced to get behind the wheel. She turned the key in the ignition just as the ambulance whipped out of her driveway at full speed with the sirens blaring, sending a shower of gravel and sand up in its wake.

Emma caught up with the ambulance at the exit to the trailer park, and when she saw how fast they gunned it when they turned on the highway, her willingness to obey traffic laws went fully out the window. After so many years working on the fringes of law enforcement, Emma understood they wouldn’t be driving like that if Regina’s condition wasn’t deadly serious. “Hold on, Henry,” she said, shifting into gear and slamming her foot down on the gas pedal.

Henry braced himself, grabbing the dashboard. It was clear he was barely holding back a full-fledged panic attack. “What’s wrong with her? She looked alright earlier when I looked in there! She was just sleeping!” He rambled out quickly, his voice strained, breaking a few times.

“She’s going to be okay, Henry. Just focus on that,” Emma said, her heart hammering in her chest as she sped to keep up with the ambulance.

As soon as they got to the hospital, Regina was rushed inside through the emergency bay. Just a bit behind them, Emma screeched the bug to a stop in the adjoining parking lot and quickly turned the engine off, watching as hospital staff swarmed the ambulance and then whisked Regina through the open doors. She and Henry both ripped off their seatbelts and hit the ground running after them.

And then came the most frustrating wait of Emma’s entire life up to that moment. With Henry hot on her heels, she made a beeline for the nurses' stand. Of course, seeing as Regina had literally just been brought in, they didn’t really have any information for her. All they could say was that the EMT had recorded her temperature as being 102.9°F, that she was extremely dehydrated, and that she’d been rushed into surgery. Emma had plopped down into a plastic chair with Henry next to her and a clipboard of paperwork in her lap, feeling like she’d aged a hundred years in the last twenty minutes.

It was an hour before the nurse at the front desk finally had an update or any type of news for her. It was actually a question, the surgeon asking if she or Henry had any details about what substance had caused the burns that were apparently covering Regina’s entire right arm. Emma felt like she had been punched in the stomach, and Henry looked like he was about to throw up. Reading the note in her hand, the nurse told them they were mostly second-degree burns, but there were a fair number of serious third-degree ones as well, and those were located mostly on her wrist and hand.

After they’d both stammered out that they didn’t know what had happened, they sank back into the plastic chairs together. Emma wrapped an arm around her son and tried to take a few deep breaths, but it felt like her lungs were filled with cement.

“It smelled like smoke,” Henry said suddenly, staring down at his hands, his expression terrified.

“What did?” Emma asked, craning her neck to try to meet his eyes.

“Everything,” Henry said, looking at her as fat tears started rolling down his cheeks. “When we woke up yesterday morning, after Mom did whatever she did to get us all out of the Shadows, it smelled like there’d been a forest fire, or something; the smell was so strong.”

Emma swallowed, remembering her mother had said the same thing over the phone to her, that everything smelled like smoke when they woke up. And she also remembered Regina saying that she’d survived leaving the Shadows by ‘absorbing a lot of pain’. The tight hug she pulled Henry into then was just as much about comforting him as it was hiding the expression on her face as she wondered just what the fuck Regina had done to herself.

It was another hour and a half before a haggard-looking surgeon appeared and called out for the ‘Mills Family’. Emma and Henry practically hurdled chairs and people alike to get to her. “I’m Doctor Alberado. I operated on Ms. Mills,” she introduced herself, quickly shaking Emma’s extended hand. “She is in stable condition now, still running a fever, but I expect it’ll break sometime tonight after the antibiotics have a chance to work through her system,” she explained.

“Do you have any uh, update about her burns?” Emma asked nervously, gripping Henry’s shoulders tightly.

The surgeon’s brows wrinkled together, and she let out a small huff at the question. “I had to remove some severely damaged tissue from the most serious burn on the palm of her hand. It’s too soon to say if, or how it could affect her long term, but in my professional opinion, the odds are very likely that she’s going to be left with permanent dexterity issues. She’s definitely going to need multiple follow-up visits and possibly a few small skin grafts on her finger pads,” Dr. Alberado explained plainly.

Henry turned in Emma’s arms, burying his face against her shoulder, and she wrapped her arms firmly around him. She felt like she was about to throw up.

Dr. Alberado cleared her throat then and looked down at the clipboard in her hand. “The nurse said you didn’t know how she got the burns?” She asked, forehead still tightly wrinkled together.

“That’s right,” Emma confirmed over Henry’s shoulder. “She told us she was injured at work.”

The surgeon looked back down at the clipboard and the intake papers that Emma had filled out, searching them for just a second. “And she’s…the mayor of a small town?” She asked incredulously, looking back up at Emma.

The frustration flaring quickly up in Emma must have been visible in her expression because Dr. Alberado held a hand up. “I’m sorry. I’ve just never seen a burn pattern like the one she has,” she explained, “I can’t even begin to imagine what could cause it. Other than wrapping a white-hot rod of molten metal around her arm and pulling on it tightly. Or possibly sticking her arm into a very large pot of swiftly spinning, boiling water. And the palm of her hand and pads of her fingers, they way they’re burnt, it looks like she was literally holding a ball of fire,” she added, sounding a little more than fascinated now.

Henry flinched in Emma’s arms and rubbed his face against her shoulder, and this time, Emma’s expression told the surgeon to move it the fuck on. Dr. Alberado quickly cleared her throat. “We’re definitely going to keep her overnight, but as long as her temperature breaks and her vitals are okay, she should be able to go home sometime tomorrow evening. Once they get her settled into a recovery room, a nurse will call you over with the room number,” she explained before quickly excusing herself.

Emma felt like a zombie leading Henry back to their chairs. It was another thirty minutes before a nurse finally called out for them, and of course, there was a problem. Emma felt like she was about to rip her fucking hair out. Hospital policy stated that only one person, an adult, was allowed to stay in the room out of normal visiting hours. And Emme could tell from the tired expression on the nurse's face that they weren’t going to budge on it.

Emma looked around the crowded waiting room and swallowed. There was no way she could leave Henry out here all night, but she couldn’t just leave Regina alone either. The nurse said she was pretty heavily medicated, but Emma didn’t want to chance her waking up alone. She knew Regina, knew she’d be beyond freaked out waking up in a strange hospital when the last thing she likely remembered was going to bed at the trailer early that morning, if that.

“I can sit out here and wait, it’s okay. I’ll be okay,” Henry said, interrupting her jumbled thoughts in a shaky voice. At that exact same moment, a very drunk man started yelling at one of the nurses, and a baby started wailing in their exhausted mother’s arms.

Emma shook her head and licked her lips. She had one idea. She just didn’t know if he would agree to it. “You can’t sit out here alone,” she said, biting her bottom lip. She took a deep breath then. “But I have a friend who I’m sure would come pick you up and take you back to her place for the night. I promise you that she’s really cool and that she’ll bring you back in the morning as soon as visiting hours start. You can absolutely trust her,” she said, bracing herself for an argument.

For a split-second, Henry did in fact look like he was about to argue that he, a fourteen-year-old in a strange city, would be fine sitting in a hospital waiting room by himself all night. But then, surprisingly, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, swallowing and nodding.

Emma couldn’t help but blink a few times. “Okay?” She asked, still slightly braced.

“Yeah, if you say I can trust her, then I do,” Henry said, this time with a firm nod. “I promised Mom in the Shadows that once we got out, I would work on remembering I’m still growing up and that you two always have my best interests at heart, and sometimes I just need to accept that the best thing I can do to help is exactly what y’all ask me to do,” he said, sounding beyond overwhelmed, and also as if Regina had drilled that specific phrase into his head. His eyes were bright red and teary.

Tears welled up in Emma’s eyes, too, and she pulled Henry back into her arms. “You’re the best kid in any realm, I promise I’ll tell her you said that when she wakes up,” she said, pressing her lips firmly against the top of her head and taking a deep breath.

After a few long moments to calm down, Emma led Henry outside. The fresh air was a welcome change from the stuffiness of the waiting room, and she took several deep, greedy breaths of it to clear her lungs before pulling out her phone. She paused for a second, appreciating for one last moment the strict divide her two lives had had up until that moment, her life back in Storybrooke and her life here in Vegas, knowing there would be no going back now. And then she called Laura.

Emma winced as soon as her friend picked up. She could tell from the jazzy piano music and cacophony of voices in the background that she was already out looking for clients. “Hey, Hot Stuff, finally getting back to me? You just missed the last call for free fucking by thirty minutes. I’m on the clock now,” Laura gushed, tone happy and carefree.

Emma swallowed. She could picture the big smile on Laura’s face, likely sitting at a table with a few of her friends and scoping out wealthy, lonely tourists. At least she sounded like she’d only had one or two drinks so far. Emma decided that straight to the point was best, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “Hey, Laura, I need a huge favor. I’m at the Spring Valley ER right now with Henry. Regina just got out of surgery, and they’re keeping her overnight for observation. They don’t let minors stay in the recovery rooms overnight. Only I can,” she explained, before taking a deep breath and holding it.

Of course, Laura stayed true to form as the best friend Emma had ever had. The older woman was silent for a long moment, no doubt sorting through confusion and shock, but then she got herself together. “Say no more, Chicky. I’ll be there to fetch him for a sleepover in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” She said before adding a split-second later, “Hey, does he like Cuban food?”

Relief flooded through Emma’s body like a warm shower on a cold day. “He loves Cuban food,” she said, taking a deep breath and looking up at the rising moon.

They waited by the bug for Laura, leaning against the rear together in silence. Emma could tell that Henry was trying hard to calm down, and she wished with all her heart that she could say something to help him, but she was going the exact opposite way in terms of nerves. She was so fucking anxious to get in and see Regina that she felt like she had ants under her skin. Thankfully, they were only waiting for fifteen minutes before she heard the distinct roar of the V8 engine in Laura’s ‘65 Mustang convertible over the traffic as she turned into the hospital parking lot.

“That’s your friend?” Henry asked, his voice a little more than stunned, watching Laura as she expertly backed into the parking spot across from them. As per usual, Laura had the drop-top down, and she waved excitedly at them after putting the neon yellow car into park. “She looks kind of like Mom,” he added, still sounding a bit stunned.

Emma had to bite her tongue to keep from groaning, her face turning bright red in embarrassment. She’d almost completely forgotten how alike Laura and Regina looked. “Really? You think so? I hadn’t noticed. I guess a little bit, sure,” she quickly rambled out, putting her hands on Henry’s shoulders and rushing him forward.
.
They got to Laura just as she closed her car door, and the older woman looked Henry up and down before breaking out into a wide, warm smile. “Well, jeez, I see where Emma here gets all of her good looks from,” she said, shaking her head and chuckling.

Emma couldn’t help but smirk and chuckle softly at the way Henry’s face turned bright red. “Henry, this is Laura. Laura, this is Henry,” she said, gesturing back and forth between them.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ma’am,” Henry said quickly, holding out a hand towards Laura.

Laura’s smile became amused, and she reached out to shake his hand back even as her eyes turned to meet Emma’s. “He gets the manners from Regina,” Emma explained with a chuckle.

“Clearly,” Laura said with a wink. She clapped her hands together then. “Alright, Henry, drop the Ma’am bit, and then how do you feel about stopping off to get some Cuban sandwiches before helping me bottle feed a dozen kittens?” She asked, her smile widening as she looked at Henry.

“A dozen?” Emma asked in surprise at the same time that Henry excitedly asked, “Kittens?”

“Picked them up this morning,” Laura said with a chuckle. “The city had to relocate a large colony of ferals from a few buildings that are getting demolished next month.”

“Laura volunteers with the Humane Society. She’s the one who gave me Nix,” Emma explained to Henry.

“Ohhh,” Henry said, understanding dawning on his face.

“Speaking of that precious angel, do you need us to go feed her dinner?” Laura hummed.

“Oh my god, would you please? And breakfast? If you could? And don’t forget to warm them up?” Emma asked. She hadn’t even thought about poor Nix needing to eat. “She also still needs to be lotioned up,” she added after a second thought.

Laura chuckled softly. “We’ll just go catnap her for the night. I’ll drop her back off tomorrow after I deliver Henry here.”

“Thank you so much, Laura, you really are the best,” Emma sighed, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around the older woman.

“I know I am,” Laura chuckled, patting her on the back. When Emma stepped away, Laura turned her attention to Henry. “So, Cuban sandwiches, swing by to get Nix, and then those dozen kittens?” Laura asked, bopping her head from side to side a little.

“Sounds good to me,” Henry said with a small grin.

After promising Henry she would text him if Regina so much as woke up for a minute or two, Emma gave him a firm hug and watched him walk around Laura’s mustang. At Laura’s urging, the teen awkwardly hopped over the door frame and landed in the passenger seat instead of properly getting in. Emma watched with a huff of laughter. If Regina had witnessed that, she’d have a small fit about it.

“So,” Laura said, pointedly catching Emma’s attention. “This will all be explained to me in due time, correct?” She asked. She was playfully narrowing her eyes and using a teasing tone, sure, but Emma could tell that she really, quite seriously wanted that explanation.

“Absolutely,” Emma said, reaching out and grabbing her hand. “Thank you so much for doing this, Laura.” A thought hit her then, and she quickly reached for her back pocket.

“Stop that,” Laura said, reaching out to grab Emma’s hand, clearly understanding what she meant to do.

“You said you just started for the night. I know you didn’t make any money yet. Consider it payment for watching Henry,” Emma argued, still trying to get her wallet out.

“I won’t take a dollar from you, Emma Swan. Now stop that before I have to taze you in front of your kid,” Laura ordered.

Emma relented with a tired smile. She knew Laura well enough to know that she didn’t make idle threats. The tiny taser on her keyring was actually crazy powerful. “Alright, alright. The visiting hours start at ten tomorrow,” she said, going ahead of Laura so that she could open her door for her.

“Then Henry and I will be here at nine forty-five, ready to break down the doors if we gotta,” Laura quipped, giving her a quick peck on the cheek before sliding into the driver’s seat and telling her to call if she needed anything overnight. After handing over her house keys, Emma watched them until the Mustang disappeared into the street traffic, and then she took a deep breath to prepare herself before heading back into the hospital.

It took several minutes of walking down long hallways and through sets of double doors until Emma found the ward with Regina’s room. She let out a huge sigh of relief when the door that the overnight nurse at the desk pointed her to turned out to be a single. The last thing she could handle at the moment was having to make small talk with someone else’s worried loved ones. The small room had just enough space for the hospital bed where Regina was asleep, a small table, and an ugly, vinyl-covered recliner. There was also space for, of course, all of the expensive technology that was wired up to Regina, monitoring her vital signs and administering some much-needed fluids. Just the sight of it all made Emma feel queasy.

She moved towards the right side of the bed, every step feeling as if she were wading through quicksand. She couldn’t stop her face from instantly crumpling up like a napkin when she properly looked down at Regina. Her dark hair and sunken eyes stood out in such a horrible contrast to the stark white sheets that Emma didn’t think she would ever be able to get the image fully out of her mind. And the thin gown she had on– it just accentuated how much weight she’d lost in the Shadows between being tortured and then running for her life. Her collarbone was so pronounced above the hospital blanket. She just looked so frail and sick in the large bed that it hurt Emma’s heart.

Sniffling, she reached a trembling hand out to brush a few stray hairs off of Regina’s forehead before trailing her fingers down her arm, ghosting them across the fresh bandages that were covering her arm from shoulder to fingertips. Swallowing hard, Emma shook her head. Before she could stop herself, emotions that had been brewing since she spoke to the surgeon boiled over. “You’re such a jackass sometimes, Regina,” she said, her voice shaky and loud in the small, quiet room.

She sniffled again and then angrily wiped away tears that were making their way down her cheeks. “You had to know how hurt you were– third degree burns? Third? Even I know that’s ‘go see the damn doctor’ bad! And you just wrapped some gauze around it, got on a plane, and flew across the country? Did you even think about–” Emma stopped herself before she really went off, taking a deep breath instead. Now was not the time. Pinching the brow of her nose, she shook her head. “You scared me half to death, Regina,” she whispered.

Emma’s face crumpled up again, and she was about to sink down onto the recliner and maybe bawl her eyes out for a while, when Regina let out a low, moaned-out word and raised her left hand just a little bit. “Regina?” Emma asked, quickly wiping away her tears and leaning over the hospital bed as far as she could.

Regina’s eyebrows furrowed together, and she swallowed. “‘M sorry. Had to get out,” she slurred out, her head tilting towards Emma.

Emma took a deep breath, relief filling her up just as much as oxygen. “It’s ok. We’ll fight about it when you’re really awake,” she said with a sigh.

When Regina didn’t respond, Emma assumed she’d passed back out, but then her eyes fluttered open just a bit. “Is Henry okay?” She asked, her words coming out so slurred now that they would have been completely unintelligible if Emma didn’t know her so well.

“He’s alright. Shook up, but he’s a tough kid,” Emma said, chuckling softly and pulling the hospital blanket just a bit further up Regina’s body. “He’s staying with a friend of mine. Didn’t even argue with me about it. You can grill me about her in the morning,” she explained.

To that, Regina just nodded slightly before exhaustion and the pain meds she was on pulled her back under. Emma chuckled softly and spent another few long moments standing there, just watching her sleep, before finally settling down on the ugly recliner to try and get a little sleep herself.

Surprisingly, she managed to get a fair amount. The recliner was deceptively comfortable, and the steady rhythm of Regina’s heart-rate monitor beeping was like a lullaby. She woke up a couple of times to check on the injured woman, but for the most part, it was, mercifully, a heavy, dreamless slumber.

Chapter Text

When Emma finally stirred from her deep sleep in the morning, a little after six, it was because Regina, staying true to brand, was harassing the shit out of some poor doctor. Her eyes fluttered open just as she’d asked the very young man if he’d gotten his medical license out of a slot machine at the airport. “Oh my God, Regina, will you ever chill out?” Emma groaned, sitting up in the recliner and rubbing her face.

“Emma! I want to leave now,” Regina ground out.

The tone of Regina’s voice had Emma immediately snapping to attention. That was pure Regina on a ledge right there. Looking at her, Emma’s heart jumped. The older woman looked just as ill as she had last night, but now she also looked like she was on the verge of crying. Her eyes were already red and shimmery.

Helplessly, Emma looked at the very frustrated-looking doctor. Clearing his throat, he crossed his arms over his white coat defensively. “I was just explaining Miss Mills’s condition to her and told her that while her temperature has returned to normal, the surgeon said to keep her here until at least around eight this evening to make sure the antibiotics are working through her system okay,” he explained, shifting his weight and nervously glancing at Regina a couple of times.

Emma turned to look at Regina, and the woman sliced her good arm up through the air. “And?” She pressed the doctor loudly.

Huffing, the doctor shifted again, and now his expression grew helpless. “I just said I was going to have a nurse stop by to remove her IV and bring some Vicodin for her pain,” he said.

“I do not want or need pain medication. What I want is my discharge paperwork,” Regina ground out, flexing her good hand in the air.

Emma actually gulped a little, knowing that if Regina had her powers, there would be a fireball hovering in the palm of her hand. Jumping up from the recliner, she stepped over to the doctor and started ushering him towards the door. “We just need a quick moment,” she explained. He looked patently offended by being practically pushed out of the room. Peaking through the small window, Emma was relieved to see he was at least staying put across the hallway and not just walking off.

When she turned back to Regina, the woman had her good hand pressed against her face and was taking very deep breaths. She could just tell from the way her jaw was clenched and how she was hugging her bandaged arm tight against her stomach that she was hurting. And, considering that Regina acted so goddamn feral when she was in pain and hid it, the fact that Emma could tell she was hurting meant she was probably close to agony.

She started to say her name, but Regina quickly turned her hand around, firmly signaling her to stop. Like Emma ever stopped. “I know you’re in pain, Regina,” she sighed, putting her hands on the bed's footboard and leaning against it.

Regina started to reply, but all she got out was, “I’m not arguing that I’m not–” before her voice broke and her face scrunched up, the tears in her eyes spilling over down her cheeks. Reflexively, Emma started to walk around the bed, but Regina held up her hand again. “Please, Emma,” she said, taking a shuddery breath. “Yes, I am in pain, but I do not want hard drugs,” she said. Emma let out a frustrated little huff, and Regina visibly swallowed, looking down at her bandaged arm. “I am very uncomfortable being without my magic, Emma. I want to stay alert,” she explained.

Emma sighed and rolled her head around on her neck, looking up at the tiled ceiling for a moment. She hadn’t even thought for a moment about how Regina would be feeling without her magic. She knew how important it was to her. Like a security blanket. Or an addiction. Though she would probably kill Emma if she heard her say that. The few times Emma had seen her cut off from it, the woman had been bothered to say the very least. But now she was thousands of miles away from it, essentially. And so soon after everything that had just happened.

Rubbing the back of her neck, Emma looked back at Regina. “Okay, I get it. I’ll see if they’ve got some of those good, extra-strength ibuprofen that won’t make you loopy,” she said, hoping to appease her.

“I also want to leave now,” Regina reminded her, forehead pinching together.

Emma sighed and pressed her face into her hands for a moment, thinking of what to say. She knew there was no point in fighting Regina head-on when she was like this. All she could do was stall for time. “I will talk to the doctor and see if we can try to get out of here earlier than eight,” she said, taking a deep breath in through her nose. Regina started to argue with her, and she quickly cut her off. “My friend isn’t going to be dropping Henry off for a few hours anyway, so we’re here for now, okay?” She said, already backing up towards the door.

Regina let out a loud huff and looked away. Emma knew that if she could use both of her arms, they’d be crossed over her chest right now. “Fine,” she spat out before taking a deep, shuddery breath.

After speaking to the still offended doctor, Emma waited in the hallway for a nurse to bring Regina a horse-pill-sized ibuprofen pill. Stalling out there, both because she needed a moment just to breathe and because she wanted to give Regina a moment to calm down. She took the time to text Henry and let him know Regina was awake and already raising hell, affectionately, of course. When he didn’t text back right away, she assumed that he was still passed out in one of Laura’s many guest rooms.

When a nurse arrived with the ibuprofen, Emma followed her back into the room. She could tell that even though Regina was still royally pissed off about having to be there, she’d gotten her emotions well under control. She even managed to drum up a friendly tone when the nurse made some small talk with her about the weather while removing her IV line.

Just as soon as the nurse left the room though, Regina turned to look at Emma and cleared her throat. “About the friend that you left Henry with? She’s…trustworthy?” She asked, swallowing around the words

Emma licked her lips then and paused for a few seconds, studying Regina. She knew how worried and anxious the woman was right now about her son being with a complete stranger. She understood, given everything they’d just gone through over the last six months of their lives.
She was even willing to give Regina some massive points for at least trying to use her ‘calm and casual tone’. Emma had assumed she’d come in guns blazing. Still, she knew that Regina was no doubt about to start asking a lot more questions than just that one. The innocuous, ‘What does she do for a living?’ question would surely be towards the top of the list.

Even if she was a little terrified of how Regina was going to take this, Emma knew she couldn’t mince words. And, what’s more, she didn’t want to. Laura was a very forthcoming person. In her own words, unless you were a cop, she didn’t have the time or energy to sugarcoat or lie about how she made her money. She also said she’d given up the feeling of shame entirely during the early nineties.

To Emma, Laura was easily one of the best friends that she had ever had in her entire life, on top of being one of the best human beings she’d ever met. She would go toe to toe with anyone who had a problem with her. And that included Regina if it came down to it. She just hoped it wouldn’t.

She sat down on the edge of the recliner then, taking a deep breath before speaking. “I would trust Laura with my life, Regina,” she said firmly.

Regina swallowed hard and looked away for a moment before clearing her throat. When she looked back at Emma, her expression was guarded, but Emma could see a LOT of emotion swirling in her eyes. “What does she do for a living?” She finally asked, her voice coming out slightly shaky.

Emma’s eyebrows furrowed, studying Regina. Even though that was the question she’d been expecting, she got the distinct feeling that that was not the question Regina had wanted to ask at first. Regina didn’t let her wonder about it for long, though, clearing her throat softly and raising her eyebrows at her expectantly.

Emma took a deep breath then. “Laura does a lot of things,” she said, a bit too slow to be at all normal-sounding. In her head, she could hear Laura telling her to just rip the damn band-aid off. Taking a deep breath, she met Regina’s eyes. “She volunteers for about two dozen non-profits, all different kinds, she runs a feral kitten rehab program out of her house, and professionally, she’s a sex worker, though she prefers the term escort,” she said, finishing it off by neatly drumming her fingers on her knees. Another fact popped into her mind then, something she’d recently learned about Laura, and she held up a finger quickly. “Oh, and she also performs at a few lounges on their regular open mic nights, singing and playing piano. Whenever she can find the spare time at least. She’s a busy woman,” she added, trailing off in volume at the end just slightly.

You could have heard a cell split in half for how quiet that small hospital room became.

Regina blinked a few times, her eyebrows furrowing together. And then she closed her eyes and took a very deep breath. She raised her good hand up then, in a stop motion, and opened her eyes, leveling Emma with a wholly disbelieving stare. “I’m sorry, did you just tell me that you left our fourteen-year-old son in the care of a prostitute overnight?” She asked, her head tilting dangerously to the side.

Emma took a very deep breath, desperately trying to center herself. Her expression was unapologetic. “Regina, the hospital would not let Henry stay in this room overnight, and I could not leave him sitting out in the lobby by himself,” she explained, her jaw tensing.

If Regina had been trying to stay calm, she lost the battle then. Momentarily at least. “So you sent him off with a hooker instead?” She snarled, smacking her good hand against the bed frame.

“Hey! Escort, dammit!” Emma snapped, hopping to her feet and smacking her hands together. The only reason her anger didn’t go harder from there was because Regina suddenly looked like she was about to start angry crying. Balling up her hands into fists, she pressed them against her forehead and took a couple of deep breaths before looking back at Regina. “Laura is an escort. It’s what she does, it’s not who she is,” she said, jaw clenched tightly.

Regina huffed deeply, slightly shaking her head, and she opened her mouth to say something before obviously thinking better of it and looking away. Emma sighed and tilted her head back. Her brows furrowed together after a few moments, remembering a fact about Regina she’d learned what felt like a different lifetime ago, when they were actually getting to know one another for real. “Didn’t you tell me that you want to legalize prostitution in Storybrooke?” She asked, her face scrunching up.

Regina looked back at her like she was the world’s biggest fucking idiot. “I want sex workers to have safe work environments and equal protection under the law, and more importantly, to pay taxes. I never said I wanted to put them in charge of our childcare. Your mother was doing just fine as the Principal before the Shadows,” she spat out, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

Emma sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. There was that sarcasm she loved so much. Time for her to pull out the big guns of their relationship. “Regina, you know I’d never do anything that could put Henry in danger,” she argued.

Regina huffed at that and rubbed at her temple with her good hand. “I know that,” she ground out, looking pissed off about the fact more than anything.

“Then you should know I would never send him off with someone I didn’t trust with my whole heart,” she said plainly. Regina huffed again, even louder, but Emma could tell that very surprisingly, the older woman’s anger was already starting to dissipate. Emma chalked it up to her being exhausted and injured.

After a few moments of silence spent scowling and huffing, Regina tipped her head back and shook it. “Is it at least a safe environment where she lives?” She asked with a sigh.

Emma couldn’t help but let out a snort of laughter, picturing the gorgeous neighborhood Laura lived in with all of the old Spanish colonials and lush lawns. “She lives in one of the nicest areas of Vegas,” she chuckled.

“When compared to your…trailer park?” Regina asked, arching a brow at her.

If Emma didn’t know Regina like she did, the comment would have come off as straight judgy bitch, but she could detect the subtle hint of teasing in her tone. “You leave my trailer park alone, Lady,” Emma chuckled, shaking her head. “Price-wise, it was a steal, and all the neighbors are all really great. I’ll introduce you and Henry around when you’re up on your feet. You’ll see,” she said with a tired, crooked smile.

“If you say so,” Regina huffed softly, the very corners of her lips turning up into a minuscule, amused smile. Her eyebrows furrowed together then, ever so slightly, and she looked at Emma. “Where did you meet her? Laura?” She asked curiously. Emma felt like all of the moisture had suddenly been drawn from her body. Her face must have spoken for her because Regina’s expression quickly turned into one of obvious surprise, and she let out an understanding little, “Oh…”

Even though Emma knew she didn’t have to explain herself, what followed was some truly involuntary word vomit. “I wasn't like, out looking to pay for sex. It just kind of happened one night. A mutual acquaintance set us up,” she rushed out awkwardly, looking up at the ceiling with a huff before looking back at Regina. “Now we’re just really great friends,” she added.

She hoped that would be the end of the conversation, and indeed it was, but the awkward, slightly tense silence that followed was no better than the actual conversation had been. In her mind, Emma questioned why the hell she always had to be so honest with Regina. For her part, Regina seemed to be very fixated on smoothing out the wrinkles in the thin blanket covering her legs. Emma could tell from the way her lips were pinched together and how her eyebrows were furrowed together that her mind was likely racing.

Sighing, Emma sank back into the recliner and rubbed her face with both hands. She was so tired she felt like she could sleep for a year. The events of the last two days felt like a life’s worth of stuff. A thought hit her then and she lowered her hands and lightly cleared her throat. “Hey, uh, the doctor that was in here earlier, did he tell you everything the surgeon said?” She asked nervously, her eyes drawn to Regina’s hand in particular, remembering what the surgeon had said about possible permanent issues with it. When Regina swallowed and looked away, sniffing softly, Emma knew that she had indeed been told. “Regina?” She questioned softly.

Regina let out a shuddery breath. “He told me I could have long-term…problems,” she said, with a small nod, looking down at her bandaged hand like it had betrayed her.

Emma rubbed the back of neck for a moment, considering her next move carefully. She could tell that Regina was just about maxed out for how much stress she could handle, but she couldn’t not push. “What did you do to it? Your arm?” She asked plainly.

Regina let out a deep sigh and reached up with her good hand to run it through her hair. “We had to get out of the Shadows. I made it happen,” she answered, as if that explained it all.

Emma studied Regina for a moment, wondering what it was about whatever she had done that had her getting cagey and defensive so quickly. Time to start picking. After a second, she hauled herself up from the recliner to go sit on the edge of the hospital bed. She barely resisted the urge to smirk as the offended little huff Regina let out when she pushed her blanket aside. “How did you make it happen?? She asked, giving her an expectant look.

“Gods, what does it matter what I did Emma?” Regina snapped, crossing her good arm over her stomach and looking away with a frustrated little frown.

Emma took a deep breath. For years she’d had so goddamn much patience when it came to Regina that she felt like she should qualify for Sainthood. Apparently not so much any more. This wasn’t Storybrooke. She just refused to do this back and forth game with her any longer. And she was also a lot more open about her feelings these days. Not a great combination if you were Regina and preferred doling out short answers and avoiding conversations about feelings at all costs. So she just let loose about why it mattered to her so much Regina had done to herself.

“It matters because you’re seriously injured now Regina,” she said, coming just short of shouting. And then not giving Regina even a second to respond, she kept going. “You scared the hell out of Henry and me last night. That’s why it matters. It matters because I care about you and I want to know if you knew this could happen to you when you did it, so that I can decide just how angry I am about it.That’s why it matters,” she said, angry tears straining her voice.

Regina clearly wasn’t prepared for the unguarded display of emotion. Her expression quickly went from pinched anger to surprise and no small amount of shame. She tried to say something, but Emma beat her to it. “Did you know?” She asked again, turning on that built in lie detector she had.

After a few moments of holding her gaze, Regina looked down at her hand. “I knew it was not without risk,” she finally admitted in a tightly strained tone.

Emma huffed and shook her head, translating that to she knew she could get hurt and she did it anyways. “Will you please just tell me,” Emma sighed out. When Regina rolled her neck around and huffed, Emma nearly launched forward to strangle her. She settled for snapping out her name insistently. “Regina!”

“Give me a moment, alright!” Regina snapped right back at her, scowling intensely. “It was complicated magic, Emma.”

Emma couldn’t help but let out a very tired chuckle. Regina thinking that she was to stupid to understand her was at least better than her just refusing to talk about it. Emma rubbed her face then and stuck out a hand to bear her weight on, getting comfortable on the edge of the hospital bed. “Explain it to me like I’m Hook,” she said with a crooked grin.

That got an equally tired chuckle out of Regina. “I don’t have time to draw pictures,” she said, shaking her head. She sighed then and closed her eyes for a moment. “Your mother told you everything that happened in the Shadows, right?” She asked, when she reopened them.

“She gave me a good cliffnotes version,” Emma said with a nod. “But she did say there were a lot of things she didn’t know the details on.”

Regina sighed and nodded. “That was a running theme for everyone in the Shadows,” she grumbled. She was quiet for a few moments and then took a deep breath, her eyebrows furrowing together. “So you know that after we dealt with the Red Fairy, things didn’t just return to normal?

“Right,” Emma hummed, her eyebrows pinching together “Mom said y’all were stuck in the Shadows for another month.”

Regina nodded as her expression grew even more serious, her lips pursing together. Emma could tell she was trying to organize her thoughts. Finally she seemed to settle on an explanation. “Alright, after going through nearly every single book on magic we had in Storybrooke, I finally found a few old ones in Gold’s collection that had faint descriptions of the Shadows creation in them. Putting that information together with what I figured out while making the curse to kill the Red Fairy, and from what the bitch told me herself, I realized that she never actually cursed us to the Shadows, she cursed the Shadows to Storybrooke,” Regina explained, her voice clear, concise.

“How’s that even work?” Emma asked, her forehead wrinkling up in confusion.

Regina let out a small huff and then one of the corners of her lips turned up a bit. Emma couldn’t tell if it was exasperated fondness or exhaustion for her. Either way, after a moment, her expression grew determined. “Storybrooke, Neverland, Wonderland, Oz, Arendelle, this land; all of the other realms. One thing that they all have in common, is that they all occupy permanent points in space and time. If you were to draw a map of reality, they would all have fixed coordinates on that map,” she explained slowly, watching Emma closely for any signs of confusion.

“Alright. Fixed coordinated. Copy,” Emma said, following her for the most part. Kind of. She wasn’t totally lost at least. She understood maps.

Regina’s eyes narrowed at her for a second, obviously trying to figure out if she was actually following her or not, before she clearly decided to just go on. “What I realized while researching the Shadows is that the entire realm is constantly in a state of flux, usually drifting freely between the different realities and realms, and even time itself. The Red Fairy managed to metaphorically drag the Shadows across Storybrooke and the entire realm immediately became snared on ours like velcro,” she explained.

Emma could detect just the slightest bit of…call it academic excitement, in Regina’s tone. She knew the older woman always got off on cool magic stuff. And Emma wasn’t a hundred percent sure she followed everything she’d just said, but it definitely sounded like cool magic stuff. “How did she manage to do that? Drag another realm across Storybrooke?” She asked curiously.

Regina’s expression immediately turned frustrated. “I still don’t know,” she admitted, her nose curling up a little bit. “By all rights she shouldn’t have been able to. She might have thought she was, but the Red Fairy was not actually very powerful or intelligent. She was just arrogant and manipulative. And like most fairies, her understanding of magic was fundamentally flawed and twisted to fit her own desires. And what powers she did have, she drastically overestimated, especially her powers of manipulation. She mistook it for mind control. And she didn’t even really understand the Shadows. She thought she’d have instant dominion over them because she managed to bring them forth, like an entire realm was going to bend reality to her desires,” she muttered and ranted, shaking her head and rolling her eyes the entire time.

Emma couldn’t help but chuckle and shake her head a little. Regina’s tone was just filled with so much acidic judgement. It really brought her back. Regina rolled her eyes at her obvious amusement and huffed. “Regardless, I don’t know how she did it,” she admitted, her nose raising a little bit in the air.

“Alright,” Emma said, putting that info in the ‘always gonna be a mystery’ file in her head. How the Red Fairy got the Shadows there wasn’t really any of her concern anyways. Bitch was dead. What she wanted to know now was– “So how did you end up getting rid of the Shadows then?” She asked, eyes drawn back to Regina’s bandages.

And just like that, Regina started to shut down again, cracking her neck and looking away with a huff. Emma sighed and reached over to nudge her leg, prompting her to look back at her with a glare. “Why are you stalling so hard?” Emma asked with a sigh.

Regina swallowed and then looked up at the space right above Emma’s head. “Because in retrospect, I now realize I acted rashly. I lost my patience,” she admitted through clenched teeth, lightly raising her bandaged arm for emphasis. Emma could tell she regretted moving it from the way she took in a sharp little pained breath.

She sighed softly. It was obvious to her that Regina was embarrassed. She knew how much the woman hated admitting to even the slightest mistake or lapse in judgment on her part. Always appearing put together, in control, and most importantly, correct, was one of the most important things in life to Regina. The need went very, very deep. It was like one of the fundamental cornerstones of her personality. God help Emma, but it was also one of the many quirks of hers that she found wildly attractive.

Huffing softly, she shook her head and gave Regina’s leg another little nudge. “It’s just the two of us in here, Regina. And I’m like, the reigning champion of leaping before I look, remember?” She asked with a half grin and a small shrug.

Regina huffed and closed her eyes, her eyebrows pinching together. She was silent for several long moments, long enough that Emma was about to go in for another round of pushing, and then she sighed and looked down at your lap. “Your mother told you what they did to me? How they chained me up? How I was nearly dead by the time your parents and Henry rescued me? ” She asked, spitting the words out.

Emma could hear the betrayal in Regina’s voice. And she could hear just how hurt she was emotionally by what had been done to her during their first few months in the Shadows. The pain in her voice was so raw and honest. Emma would have felt privileged to be allowed to witness the outward display of emotion if she weren’t so very, very angry over the cause of it. Swallowing, she thought about the conversation she’d had with her mother the day before, and her expression grew dark, just shy of murderous. “She told me that my father had to carry you out,” she said.

Regina nodded, still looking down at her lap. “I was practically paralyzed from the neck down. A few more days and I would have slipped into a coma,” she murmured before shaking her head and looking back up. “I couldn’t stay there any longer, Emma. Trapped with all of them there,” she said, her tone growing tired, almost mournful. She sighed then and rubbed her good hand back across the blankets to smooth them out. “I found an incantation that I realized could work with a little tweaking to get rid of the Shadows,” she said, her expression growing dark. Emma was about to ask what the incantation was, but then Regina kept going. “It was hidden in my mother’s spellbook under a blood lock,” she said.

“Jesus,” Emma exclaimed, unable to help herself as she recalled the indecipherable book Regina had shown her a couple of years ago during magic practice. She was for sure biased on account of how much she hated Cora, but she’d swear that little spellbook had a physical presence, and it was dark as fuck. Shaking her head, she only had to think for a moment to know the rest. “So you found it, and as soon as you realized it could work, you just went for it?” She asked, arching a brow at Regina expectantly.

Regina swallowed and nodded, looking back down at her lap. “I was at the end of my rope, Emma,” she said, her voice straining with emotion. Emma shifted forward just a little bit on the hospital bed, drawn towards her like a damn moth to a flame. Regina swallowed again, her expression becoming slightly pained. She started to say something that began with Robin’s name, but her voice cracked on the second syllable, and she covered her mouth with her good hand while firmly shaking her head, clearly not intending to finish the sentence.

Emma sighed and rolled her head on her shoulders. She was conflicted, wanting to push her to go on and not wanting to know what she was going to say at the same time. Either option felt like it would be painful for the both of them. She’d rather never have to talk about Robin ever again in her entire life. Taking a deep breath, she looked back at Regina. “So what did the incantation do then? I mean, it obviously got rid of the Shadows, but how? You said you knew it was risky.”

Regina went silent again for several seconds, bobbing her head from side to side slightly, obviously lost for words. She pinched the brow of her nose with her good hand, her face scrunching up just a bit. Her lips kept moving, trying to sound out sentences, Emma figured, but she couldn’t seem to figure out the right ones.

Finally, Regina sighed and looked up at Emma with a tired expression and said, in just the most deadpan voice imaginable. “I took the original, pure source of elemental fire magic that predates good and evil into my body, my right hand specifically, and then I harnessed it to burn a hole through reality.”

All Emma could do was stare back at Regina, blinking, with her eyebrows furrowed together. After several long moments, all she managed to muster up was, “well fuck”.

Regina stared back at her for what felt like eternity, and then her lips turned up in a tired, fond smile, and she rolled her eyes. “It was meant to completely annihilate an entire realm, the incantation. Burn it out of existence. I suppose you could call it my mother’s D plan of sorts. Take everyone and everything down with herself if she had to,” she explained with a small, but heavy sigh.

Emma licked her lips, starting to understand. “So you…destroyed the Shadows?” She asked, her forehead wrinkling up.

“Essentially,” Regina said. She huffed then and looked up at the ceiling for a moment before looking back at Emma with a determined expression. “Imagine putting a stone on the ground and placing a piece of paper on top of it. And then strike a match at the very center of the paper. The stone is Storybrooke, the paper was the Shadows, and I was, for a brief moment, the match,” she explained.

That certainly cleared things up. Emma could easily visualize a piece of paper burning outwards from the center, revealing the stone underneath. “Are the Shadows still on fire then?” She asked with a grimace.

Regina seemed to consider the question for a moment before nodding. “I would assume so. If the forest actually was endless at least,” she said, that hint of academic interest back in her tone.

Emma’s brows furrowed together, imagining an entire realm burning outwards forever. It made her shiver a little. “What was it like, for you, I mean?” She asked, rubbing the back of her neck.

Regina sighed and used her good arm to sit up straighter in the hospital bed, leaning back against the headboard. “I was having to concentrate very hard on keeping the fire contained to just my hand, and I was already in a lot of pain, but it was actually quite breathtaking,” she said, looking down at her bandaged arm. “I said the incantation on the top of the clock tower, and that insufferable mist that always hung around was what caught fire. It started burning outwards in all directions, and the sun was just starting to come up over the harbor. It was like morning rolling through town on the heels of a wall of fire. I swear I’ve never been so happy to see a sunrise in my life,” she said, tone growing a tad wistful.

“It sounds beautiful,” Emma said, staring at Regina, studying her. She was always such a sucker for the older woman when she got like this, all unguarded and genuine… She couldn’t help but let out a little sigh, though. “It also sounds crazy dangerous,” she said, her face pinching together a little.

Regina let out a tired chuckle and nodded. “It was,” she admitted before sighing and rubbing her face. “But once I realized that my original curse would physically protect Storybrooke, I could theoretically survive the incantation, and I could for sure protect everyone else from being burned alive with a separate spell-”

“Then it was game time,” Emma interrupted with a tired, crooked smile. Regina returned the smile with a small shrug. Sighing, Emma shrugged as well. “I mean, I probably would have done the same damn thing,” she admitted.

Regina snorted softly at that. “You definitely would have,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Emma chuckled and shook her head, her eyes trailing down Regina’s bandaged arm. “You really should have at least gotten Whale to look at that before you flew out here,” she chastised with a tired sigh.

Regina arched a brow at her. “Whale’s dead,” she said bluntly.

“What?” Emma asked, jerking her head back.

“He was one of the very first people who died. He got dragged off into the Shadows on day two. Didn’t your mother tell you?” Regina asked, shaking her head.

“Jesus,” Emma said, blowing out a low breath. “Mom said a bunch of people got dragged away at the very beginning, but she didn’t list off the names.”

“Well, he was one of them,” Regina said with a little grimace.

Emma sat there shaking her head for another few moments, remembering the smarmy doctor from the Land Without Color. RIP. Her eyes quickly returned to the bandages though. She couldn’t help herself. “You could have gone to the hospital in Portland,” she said, staring at her hand, thinking about what the doctor had said about permanent dexterity issues.

Regina immediately put her hand against her face, covering up her expression. There wasn’t any way she could cover up her tone though. “I just– I wanted to get here as quickly as possible, Emma. That’s all I was thinking, get myself and Henry here with you, and then I would see to my injuries,” she said, sniffling lightly, voice thick with frustration and turbulent emotions.

All Emma could do was sit there for a few moments, processing. It was totally not the time for this, but she couldn’t help feeling a certain type of way about what Regina had just said. She didn’t say that all she could think about was getting Henry to her, or even just getting there in general; no, she said she wanted to get herself and Henry to Emma. Both of them, to her. She wanted both of them there with Emma. Badly enough that she had ignored her own physical health. And just like that, all of Emma’s anger and frustration about the situation melted away. Picking at this any more, pointing out that Regina had, in fact, not seen to her injuries, wouldn’t do any good, she knew. Regina had flown her wounded ass across the country to be there with her. She’d just said so. Knowing that more than made up for getting the shit scared out of her, even if she didn’t know what to do with it.

She didn’t really know what to say next. Thankfully, she was spared having to figure it out by a nurse rolling a cart into the room. Breakfast. Regina had taken one look at the runny eggs and hard as rocks toast and turned her nose up at it. Emma had just chuckled and thanked the nurse before pulling out her phone and asking Laura if she would please bring them some food when she dropped off Henry. Laura had, of course, sent back a ‘no problemo’ text.

At Emma’s urging/mild pestering, Regina lay back down to try and get a little more rest while Emma pulled her earbuds out and stretched out on the recliner with her phone. She spent the next three hours staring at YouTube videos without actually watching them. Her inner monologue was way, way too hectic for her to concentrate. She couldn’t even stay on one subject in her head for more than a few minutes, worrying about Regina’s hand, wondering how long she and Henry would be staying with her, worrying about Henry’s mental well-being, remembering her mother’s mentions of personal sacrifices they’d had to make in the Shadows to defeat the Red Fairy and then worrying about what they were. When Henry and Laura finally rolled through the door, she let out a large sigh of relief at the very welcome escape from her own damn psyche.

Regina sat up as soon as they walked into the room. Emma could tell the woman hadn’t been sleeping. If anything, she looked more tired than she had earlier. Regardless, she opened up her arms immediately for Henry to run into. Their son had walked in carrying a couple of reusable shopping bags in his hands, and he all but threw them at Emma whilst making a beeline for Regina. “I was so worried about you,” he said, carefully wrapping his arms around her.

“I know. I’m so sorry, Henry,” Regina immediately apologized, returning the embrace with her good arm.

Emma watched them for a moment before getting off the recliner and stepping over to Laura, who also had a few bags in her hands. “I brought grub,” the woman said, proudly holding them up.

The next few moments passed for Emma as if someone had just hit the slow-motion button on reality. She turned to look at Regina and Henry, intending to get to the introductions. At that very same moment, Regina looked up from over Henry’s shoulder and saw Laura, and her expression immediately turned into one of mild shock and disbelief. It was only then that Emma remembered, once again, how very, very similar Regina and Laura looked to one another in the physical sense. It was obvious that Regina had more than noticed it. Her eyebrows pinched together after a very heavy pause, and then her eyes turned questioningly to Emma just as Henry backed away from her.

Emma swallowed, feeling like her mouth was suddenly drier than the desert. And then she heard Laura let out a little chuckle, and felt the older woman give her a light kick in the leg with one of her snake skin boots. Just like that, time fixed itself. “Regina, this is Laura Stone, Laura, Regina Mills,” she quickly said, gesturing between the two of them.

Regina was obviously still trying to process the situation, but Laura, thankfully, was quick to bridge the gap. “Great to meet ya, Regina. Y’all’ve got a swell kid there,” she said, nodding her head towards Henry.

“Her house is so cool, Mom. I got to hold a huge monitor lizard and play with a bunch of kittens all night. It was great,” Henry quickly said, rocking back and forth on his sneakers. Emma wanted to hug him.

Regina still definitely looked a little out of sorts, but she couldn’t resist a happy Henry, or be rude to the cause. “It’s very nice to meet you, Laura. Thank you for taking care of Henry last night. It’s greatly appreciated,” she said in a reserved but polite tone. Emma worried her bottom lip just a little bit. She knew Regina. That was a very mixed tone at best for her. Emma couldn’t tell how she was actually feeling about Laura.

Laura waved Regina off. “It was no problem at all. Like I said, he’s a goodun,” she said, winking at Henry. She pushed past Emma then and headed for the little table in the room. “Anyways, you must be starving, Girl. Hospital food sucks,” she exclaimed as she started pulling containers out of the bags in her hands.

“What did you bring?” Emma asked, taking a page out of Laura’s book and deciding to just steam past the still slightly awkward energy in the room.

“I’ve got breakfast burritos for you and Henry,” she said, holding up one container. She turned to Regina then. “And Regina, I hope you like Thai food? I got you some Tom Kha soup from my favorite place. I swear this stuff is like magic when you’re sick or injured,” she explained.

Emma quickly turned her face to hide her little smirk at the hungry expression that quickly wiped the reserved one off of Regina’s face. She looked at Laura then. “Did you bring something for yourself? Can you hang out for a bit?” She asked.

“Yes, you’re very welcome to,” Regina interjected, her tone still unreadable to Emma. She couldn’t tell if the woman was just being polite or if she really wanted Laura there.

“Thank you, but no can do,” Laura said with an amused grin. “My car's running out there with Nix and three other kittens in it that I’m taking to the vet after I drop off Nix,” she explained. “But maybe this weekend I can drop by the trailer for a couple of hours.” After both Emma and Regina agreed she should, the older woman turned to Emma. “Walk me out to my car?” She asked, her smile growing pointed.

Emma chuckled softly. It was time to get to the explanation that Laura was owed, and she knew it. “Of course,” she said with a soft chuckle.

After Laura said goodbye to Henry and Regina, they were just about to walk out of the room when Laura stopped. Emma’s brows furrowed together, and then her heart skipped a beat at the suddenly very impish twinkle in her friend's eyes. “Oh, Regina. When Henry and I stopped by to grab Nix last night, I had him grab you some shoes and a fresh change of clothing for when you break out of here later,” Laura said, pointing towards the reusable shopping bags Henry had carried in with him.

This time, Regina’s smile was for sure genuine. “Thank you so much. That was very thoughtful of you,” she said.

“The least I could do,” Laura said, waving her off. She turned to Emma then, with a very, very flirty smile. “I grabbed you an outfit too, Beautiful Girl. You must be dying to get out of that uniform,” she said, reaching out to playfully tug at the collar of the thick, button-up shirt Emma was still wearing from the day before. She followed it up by neatly smoothing the collar down.

Very uncooly, Emma reflexively looked at Regina to gauge her reaction. She looked as if she’d just bitten down on a lemon. And like she was trying to cut Laura’s hand off with her mind. Not knowing whether to laugh, cry, or faint, Emma thanked Laura and then practically pushed her out of the small room, telling Henry and Regina over her shoulder that she’d be back in ten or fifteen minutes at the most and to start eating without her.

Out in the hallway, clearly amused by riling up Regina a bit, Laura immediately started pushing for Emma to tell her the story of what had happened in Storybrooke. In Emma’s mind, she imagined the true story playing out for just a few moments, the Red Fairy, Regina being chained up, Regina burning a freaking hole through reality…And then she took a deep breath and launched into the cover story about Regina being accused of fraud and embezzlement by everyone, including her husband, before being jailed for a short amount of time, and then cleared.

When it came time to explain Regina’s arm, she ended up impressing herself with her ability to spin a convincing cover story on the fly. She missed her calling working for the Witness Protection Program. As she told it, a few townspeople had not accepted that Regina was innocent and had tried to burn down her house with her inside it. She and Henry both had been so freaked out after she barely escaped the inferno that she hadn’t been thinking clearly. They had hopped on a plane as soon as she finished giving her statement to the police, skipping the hospital in favor of getting the hell out of dodge.

“Well, hell’s fucking bells, I don’t blame them for being freaked out,” Laura said as they walked out of the hospital into the bright morning sun. “I didn’t realize small-town politics could get that damn cutthroat,” she exclaimed, shaking her head.

“You have no idea,” Emma said, blowing out a little breath and rolling her eyes as she thought about all of the other near-death experiences they’d survived. Small-town politics indeed.

“Do you know what their plans are now?” Laura asked, slipping her hand into Emma’s and squeezing it as they walked into the parking lot.

“I don’t,” Emma admitted, biting at her bottom lip. “I don’t even know how long they’re staying for.”

“What about the husband? Are they still together? Separated? Divorcing?” Laura asked, walking close to Emma.

Emma swallowed, her expression pinching together. “I know even less there,” she admitted, suddenly feeling a little as if she could cry just as they reached Laura’s car. Laura dropped Emma’s hand and leaned against the driver's side door with a big, dramatic sigh. The look she gave Emma then was downright mournful. “What’s wrong?” Emma asked, her bottom lip pouting out a bit.

Laura sighed again and shook her head, reaching out to grab Emma by her beltloops and pull her closer. “Oh, I’m just sad for myself. I wish I’d known on Friday morning that it would be the last time we fucked. I would have tied you up,” she said, reaching up to scratch the back of Emma’s neck.

Emma’s pout became even more pronounced, her spine curling from the pleasurable scratching. “It doesn’t have to be the last time,” she argued. Very weakly.

Laura chuckled and shook her head slowly. “You and I both know that’s not true, Sweet Girl. Not as long as she’s here, and there might be a chance things are going to pivot your way. And from that glare she gave me when I put on that tiny, little show up there, I’d say there’s a chance they will.”

Emma let out a long sigh at that and looked down. It was one-hundred percent true. There was already a little ember of hope burning hot as shit in her heart, hoping beyond hope that Regina wasn’t just here because she’d had nowhere else to go. “I’m sorry,” she said with a sniffle, looking up at Laura through her lashes with shimmery eyes.

Laura just smiled and shook her head again. “Oh no Darling, there’s no need to apologize,” she said. “I promise you that there’s nothing I want more than for you to be insanely happy.”

Emma sniffled hard at that, and then swallowed. "Do you think I'm stupid for hoping this is like, the beginning of something with her finally? For still being so stupid in love with her?" She asked, the fear suddenly bubbling up to the surface like lava in her throat.

Laura quickly put a hand on her cheek and gently bade her to meet her eyes. “Not even the tiniest bit," she said firmly. "But promise me, though, that you’re going to protect your heart,” she said, her tone growing serious.

“I will. I am,” Emma said quickly.

“I mean it,” Laura said, narrowing her eyes a bit. “You’re too good of a human being to get played with or just be a rebound, Emma Swan. Before anything happens between the two of you, you find out what’s up with the douchebag husband and her, and what she’s offering you long-term. And you don’t accept anything less than what you deserve. Promise me,” she said sternly.

“I will. I promise,” Emma said, nodding her head and meeting Laura’s eyes with a firm nod.

“Good. Because I’d hate to have to beat her ass when she’s already hurt,” Laura said, her expression turning to a crooked smile. She gave Emma’s beltloops a sharp tug then and pulled her flush against her body. “Now, can I get one hell of a possible last kiss ever out of you, please?” She asked, playfully wiggling her eyebrows.

The speed with which Emma closed the distance between their lips then was damn near desperate. Never in her life had she tried to put so much meaning into a single kiss. And she still didn’t feel like it was nearly enough to express just how much she cared. She knew for sure that regardless of what happened with her and Regina, she was always going to have a spot in her heart reserved solely for Laura. She’d saved Emma from herself in all the ways a person can.

Emma waited in the parking lot until Laura drove off, and then she made her way slowly back into the hospital and up to Regina’s room. She couldn’t help but shed a few tears along the way. She felt better when she walked into the room, though. Henry was practically unhinging his jaw to get at his breakfast burrito, and Regina was just as enthusiastically downing her soup. The sight made Emma feel very content, at least for the moment, seeing them both safe and eating after months of danger and nearly starving to death.

They spent the rest of the day in the hospital room, mostly just resting. Both Regina and Henry passed out not long after eating, and Emma stayed perched on the end of Regina’s bed, watching them sleep, thinking. She had no idea what was going to happen now, if that little ember of hope in the pit of her stomach was warranted or not. One thought that she kept coming back to though, one sentence that kept repeating in her head, was Regina saying that she’d just wanted to get there and be with her after they left the Shadows, badly enough that she’d ignored her very serious injuries. That had to mean something, right?