Emma's heart races every time she sees Storybrooke's mayor.
Which, unfortunately for her poor heart, happens fairly often.
It goes from beating calm and steady to a uneven and rushed rhythm, adrenaline coursing through her veins like a raging river. It feels like...
It feels like getting caught. It feels like she needs to run.
Even worse, the Savior knows exactly what the feeling is. She had felt it the strongest the first time that she stole a tube of chapstick from a convenience store. It was a rush, a heady, dizzying sensation as she walked out the doors and further and further away from the building. But the feeling that made her heart really race? That came when she looked back.
Guilt.
Emma feels guilty every time she sees Regina because she had taken something from the former Evil Queen. And even if that someone used to be Emma's, he wasn't anymore and it hadn't been for a very long time. Eleven years to be exact.
Henry had come from her, but he was not hers as much as the yellow bug was still registered under it's actual owner.
She could see the trend now. She had been everything but nameless. Had nothing to her name. The things she had were never tied to her in any way, mostly because they were stolen, but also because she never tried to hold onto them.
Emma had gotten good at ignoring that guilty feeling, dozens of shoplifting incidents with Neal, but eventually it builds up. This guilt is different. This is more than remorse.
It builds and builds and builds until everyone has noticed how she avoids Regina, practically sprinting to get away from her when they cross paths in Granny's diner.
She never has a ready answer when Henry asks why she won't let him spend more time with Regina. David tries to question her in his roundabout, but still completely obvious way, so much like her. Then Ruby brings it up. She thinks she can feel Mr. Gold's stare following her. Finally, Mary Margaret corners her in the sheriff's office.
"What's going on, Emma?"
All prim and proper teacher-mode, closing the door to the hall and sitting herself in a chair with her ankles crossed, hands resting on her purse on her lap. Emma likes Mary Margaret's teacher-mode because it is easier for her to read, for her to handle, than mother-mode. Mother-mode sends off all sorts of red alarms in her head.
"Wha- Nothing! Nothing's going on. Nope."
Emma would have liked to be pretending to be this flustered instead of actually being this flustered.
Andddd there's mother-mode. Full force. It comes out in the blink of an eye, the tilt of a head, the pursing of Mary Margaret's lips.
"Mom," Emma warns. She's always surprised when the word comes out, her mouth used to be so unaccustomed to saying it. Now it's becoming familiar and that is perhaps even more frightening than never calling anyone mother at all.
"I'm just trying to help, honey. I know something has been bothering you..."
"Did David tell you something? What did he say?" Emma narrows her eyes, crosses her arms over her chest, and tries to sound gruff and stern rather than beat down and tired.
The guilt has brought on a wicked case of insomnia. She's played way too much GTA in the wee morning hours and slept far less than she'd care to admit to- well, anyone.
Mary Margaret insists that David did not say anything about Emma to her to put her on this mission and Emma finds that she doesn't even care enough about it to get to the bottom of the matter.
"Okay fine. Guilty as charged." She faces Mary Margaret. "And I know I'm being an idiot and not dealing with it head on; because I know what I need to do, I'm just choosing not to. But this is me and that's not gunna change so just- Let me deal with this. On my own. Please?"
Emma crosses her fingers behind her back and hopes that this will be enough to get Mary Margaret to leave. She knows that her mother truly only means well, but as the subject matter is one that she is barely even comfortable thinking about, Emma doubts that she'd be able to discuss it with Mary Margaret.
It seems to work. Mary Margaret gets up, looks disappointed, pats Emma gingerly on the arm and heads for the door.
But then she stops there and pivots on her heel. Her words tumble out gracelessly. "I'm sorry for trying to push you and Neal together!" she blurts.
Emma doesn't try to mask her look of confusion nor her look of anger that follows quickly after the moment of comprehension. This whole office visit had not been about helping Emma at all, Mary Margaret was trying to relive her own guilt over her constant match-making.
Neal was the last person Emma was currently concerned about.
Her fingers fly to her temples and she massages the dull ache of an oncoming headache. "It's not that. It's so not that. But apology accepted, I guess." Emma could launch into a whole discussion of this, but right now she has somewhere to be and she's late. She is terribly late.
She tries to smooth things over with Mary Margaret, grabbing her car keys and leather jacket."Here, let me walk you out," she says, stepping in front of the petite woman to hold open the door for her. "I'm headed out, too."
Mary Margaret seems satisfied with Emma's placating, and Emma sends her off down the street with a little wave and a thrown on smile that disappears when she slides into the driver's seat of her Bug. The blonde sighs and curses her birth born of True Love. Surely someone who wasn't the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming wouldn't have such moral conflicts as she did. That excuse was better than the truth.
Emma drives around Storybrooke for some time before finally pulling up to the curb on Mifflin Street. If this is going to happen, it has to happen before Henry gets home from school. No matter what she does, the kids seems to get into everything and no doubt would be here, sticking his nose into... Into whatever this was going to be and Emma may not know very much about being a good parent, or any sort of parent at all, but she was pretty sure this is not a conversation that needs his presence. After all, it was about him.
Everything was about Henry now. Maybe she was understanding what it meant to be a parent. Maybe that is why she ended up facing her guilt, rather than running like she always had. Emma's priorities were changing. For once, there was someone who was more important than herself.
"Miss Swan." Regina answers the door promptly, concealing her incredulity at finding the Savior at her door with what Emma used to think was an impenetrable mask of schooled emotion. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
Emma winces at the bitterness threaded through the Mayor's words. She feels about as small as a grasshopper. If she is to start here, she figures it ought to be with honesty. "My guilty conscious," she answers then, green eyes looking for reception in the Queen's. To her surprise, she finds a flicker of it and Regina pulls the door further open.
Emma hadn't missed the way Regina's head had lifted she she had first come to the front door, looking over Emma's shoulder with a hopeful shine in her eyes. Looking for Henry.
How many times had Emma blindly extinguished that hope?
"I've-" Emma feels her eyes water with unshed tears and she quickly blinks them back. The gravity of what what she has done is a heavy weight to bear and it pushes her closer to the floor, closer to her knees. Her voice cracks and she pauses on the threshold of the mansion. "Regina, I've-"
Done a terrible thing. Made horrible mistake. Perhaps it was an unintentional evil deed, but that made it no less cruel. Emma wanted to say that she hadn't meant to take Henry away from his mother, but she had. Oh she had wanted it with every fiber of her being. But she had been wrong.
This was going to be a difficult conversation to manage, even for the Savior.