Hi. So, Trigger warning: child abuse mentioned, feels trap, and all around sadness. Gotta put that before anyone starts reading, ya know. Fair's fair.
You know that gut feeling you get when you know something's wrong? It's that horrible churning that makes you want to run, but at the same time, it makes you curious as to what is wrong to begin with. Emma looks around the room, trying to ping what exactly is making her so nervous. It has to be something she sees, but the only thing that stands out is Regina.
Regina stumbled into the classroom rather weakly compared to last week's haughty entrance. She even had to brace herself on the doorway before shakily sauntering to her seat. The flinch she suppressed as she squares her shoulders is hardly noticeable. To anyone else, it would have been mistaken for a shiver, especially with how she folds her arms over her stomach, but ti Emma, it's a telling sign. Emma just hoped she's wrong, just this once.
After class, Emma tried to catch Regina in the halls, but it seemed the brunette was faster, even if she was seemingly injured. "Regina, wait!"
Emma saw Regina duck into the bathroom, and she followed. What the blonde saw, though, struck her cold. Regina was at the sink dabbing at a scabbing and slowly bleeding puncture wound. Regina quickly covered the small hole with her shirt when she heard a soft gasp. "What are you staring at?"
Regina's glare would fell someone with less determination, but Emma stood her ground. "What happened?" Emma's question came out a little more breathless than she imagined in her head.
"Nothing that concerns you. It's not like you actually care."
Emma caught the brunette as she tried to leave. "I just want to help."
Regina looked away, trying to hide the tears accumulating. "No one ever just wants to help." She yanked her arm from Emma's grip, not that it was very tight to begin with.
Emma quickly hid her frown behind concerned eyes. "I understand…"
She's cut short with a "You can't possibly understand anything!" Regina's anger was something she was used to after so many years of their game of insults, but Emma had never felt anything like this from her. The amount of venom in her glare and words makes Emma recoil.
Regina stormed out of the bathroom with renewed vigor instilled by her anger. Halfway to her next class, she understood the faint "I understand way too much," and it deflated the anger, aking her weaker than ever. The only thing getting her through the day was repeating the mantra "one more day" in her head. One more day at school, a perfect day, and maybe her mother would finally be proud of her. Maybe today was the day that Mother's wrath won't touch her.
Emma, on the other hand, was in shock and barely got through the day without the occasional daze. She couldn't get Regina out of her head, get the fact that someone hurt her so badly and scared her so thoroughly that she won't seek help. It worried Emma that Regina pulled away when she obviously should have let someone see to the puncture.
Emma thinks back to her own experiences, the times she was sent to uncaring and abusive foster families. Verbal abuse was the most prevalent, but occasionally, one of them would hit her or throw her or decide to use her as an ashtray. She understood the fear behind not telling anyone, but it's always better to say something, and if Regina can't do it herself, Emma will help her along.
When Emma got home that afternoon, she sat at the kitchen table unceremoniously awaiting her adoptive mother's arrival. As soon as Mary Margaret opens the door and saw the pensive expression on Emma's face, she asks, "What happened?"
"M&M, I found out something today. Regina lies." The soft reply was shaken off by the older woman.
Mary Margaret shuffled out of her coat nonchalantly. "Doesn't she do that often?"
Emma's face tightens. "Not like this, Mary Margaret."
Mary Margaret's eyebrows drew up in confusion. "How so, then?" She couldn't comprehend how someone could lie differently. Lying is lying, no matter the statement uttered.
"This isn't some little white lie like her telling Katherine that that ugly cap she wore looked good. This is huge. She's lying to teachers, the school… Me!" Emma jumped up and started pacing the length of the room.
Emma's turmoil confused Mary Margaret to no end. Regina was an unusual topic for the blonde unless she was angry AT the girl, but this seemed more like her daughter was angry FOR Regina. "What is she lying about?"
Stopping her pacing, Emma thought in whether or not to tell the older woman a secret that Regina obviously wants kept quiet. Though, really, did Emma have the right to give this secret away if Regina didn't want it to be known? She knew it was wrong to withhold information that caused someone further harm, but what if she was overreacting? What if Regina just had an accident?
Emma shook her head violently. No. That wasn't something that happened on accident. Even if it had been, Regina would have gotten it taken care of quickly. There would be no secret to keep, and Emma wouldn't have had to contemplate bringing the authorities into this.
She steeled her face and looked at Mary Margaret. "I think someone is hurting Regina. Bad."
The pixie-haired woman went from confused to concerned in a flash. "Hurting her how?"
Emma told her what she saw, and it made both of them cringe. A wound such as the one that Regina endured could hold the potential to incapacitate a grown man, but Regina was still walking the last time that Emma saw her. For how long after, though, remained to be seen. The two resolved to tell the school on Monday. Maybe Mr. Gold could do something about it.
That night, Emma did something she never imagined she'd do again. She prayed. "God, really, it's been a long time, yeah? Sorry 'bout that, seriously, but I lost a lot of my faith a long time ago. You know, what with everything that happened and all. I wanna say thanks for Mary Margaret and David, though. They got me out of some bad stuff. Now, though, I wanna ask for you to do the same for Regina. She needs you bad, or at least someone to drag her out of whatever she'd been forced into. If no wish of mine is granted for the rest of my life, please let this be it. Amen." Emma curled into herself after she finished the prayer, hoping for the sleep that never comes.
The weekend was a stress-filled mess of concern and pacing. Monday, though, wasn't much better. When Emma pulled up in the parking lot, the first thing she noticed was that the silence that pervaded the air. The school was never this quiet, not even on Mondays.
She walked towards her first class, the one she had with Regina, when she snapped out of her daze to head toward the principal's office. On the way, she literally almost ran into Principal Gold. "Mr. G, how's it going?"
"Not terribly well, dearie." He responded with a frown, tightening his grip on his cane.
Emma looked around at the downturned lips and sad eyes she had barely noticed earlier. "Is that why everyone's in a funk?"
He pursed his lips. "Indeed. It seems we have lost a beloved student this past weekend. The entire school is in mourning." His head dropped in deference to the dead.
The blonde licked her lips, nervous and dreading what she's about to ask. "Who was it?"
The answer that slid out of his mouth chilled her blood. "Regina Mills. Unfortunate, what her mother did. It's sad what transpired throughout her short life."
That sounded like… "You knew." Emma stared at him incredulously. "When did you know?"
Gold tried to smile that kind of smile that would disarm any other individual. "I have been a family friend for the majority of Regina's life. I know far more than the public."
Emma blinked at the man. "And you did absolutely nothing." By then, she was seething with anger with grief bubbling just under the surface.
"Mayor Mills is a very powerful woman. How would I expect a child to understand the complexity of the situation." He huffs like she's the one that had just forfeited a young girl's life for a career.
Tears brimmed in Emma's eyes. "You're a monster." She turned away from him, disgusted with his callous attitude. She didn't feel like staying at school anymore, so she marched out to her car and just drove.
She wasn't invited to the funeral, but she did visit the burial site after everyone had gone. She stood there, staring at the stone that shouldn't yet exist. Sitting on the grass, she took up vigil until well in the evening. As the sun set on the marble littered horizon of the cemetery, Emma fund herself devoid of the anger she held onto for so long that afternoon. All that was left for her to cling to was sadness, an emptiness she never realized could belong to a human being.
"I should have realized sooner, Regina. I mean, really, I was the one that had the most contact with you, whether we were fighting or laughing. I'm so sorry that you had to continue going through that. The monster should have at least been arrested or something, but they didn't even question her. Everyone knows she did it." Emma paused to sigh heavily. "The world is cruel, Regina. You were such a good person, a pain in my behind, but so very good. All heart, and she's evil to have snuffed that out."
Standing, Emma places her hand on the cold stone. "After graduation, I'm leaving this town. I'll be back to visit you, but I have to get out. It took this, this travesty to shock me enough to get me motivated, but I know what I want to do with my life. I wish it hadn't taken this." Emma wipes the tears steadily falling. Her vision blurs spectacularly even after clearing the existing drops from her eyes. "I wanna keep as many kids from this kind of pain as possible. Watch over those kids and give me a helping nudge every now and again, yeah?" Emma hand slips from the marble in a gentle caress. "Bye for now, Regina. See you soon." With one last look back, and her hopeful, sob soaked words floating on the breeze, Emma leaves the cemetery with some of that emptiness alleviated with this new purpose.
A/N: Okay, so, I wrote this at work. Do you know how hard it is to explain to your coworkers and boss why you're crying all of a sudden? So hard! O my god. And just trying to capture everything without blatantly using Regina's actual experiences to push the plot was so hard. I didn't want to write something like that right then. I'd have gotten so many bad looks for trying to write that while working in a theme park.
Favorite and Review, please!