The dreams begin shortly after she and Henry return from their road trip. She'd taken him all over New England before his Christmas break just for fun. They've been West and they've been South, but never North. So she'd shown him parts of Maine and Vermont and upstate New York before their return to Boston.
That first night back was when she had the first dream. It was disjointed and incredibly hard to follow. Something about magic and a book and a small fishing town somewhere on the Eastern seaboard. She had awoke feeling as though she knew the place well.
She has another the next night and it's virtually the same. Nothing cohesive that she can make sense of, but the small town is there again and she awakes feeling as if she'd been close with many of the citizens. All of them had been faceless and yet somehow she felt warm around them, as if they were close friends or family.
She tells Henry about the dreams and he looks at her like she's nuts. He doesn't say much about them except for "Oh" or "weird" when it seems appropriate for him to add something. She thinks he knows less what to do about the dreams than she does.
The third one is even more disjointed than the others. In this one, there's a woman - faceless, like all the rest, and yet she's quite different. She hears her voice - it's a distinctive, smooth cadence. She sees flashes of brown eyes and hears various iterations of her name. Sometimes it's her first, other times she's called 'Miss Swan' or 'Sheriff Swan' by the mystery woman.
What's more strange is the polarizing emotions she volleys between throughout the dream. Occasionally she feels anger toward the brunette, and a bit of jealousy. Others she feels concern and fear and care. And no matter which end of the spectrum, the feelings are always intense. She wakes up confused and in a fog, trying to place the brown hair and brown eyes.
Again, she tells Henry about the dream - this time she's rewarded with a big grin and a question as to whether she's seeing someone. Emma rolls her eyes and sends him to school.
The next night, the mystery woman returns. She still can't see her entire face, but she feels the same polarizing emotions toward her, and a strong undercurrent connecting them. She keeps feeling like this woman is important, but she can't figure out how.
Somewhere around a week in, her dreams get even more abstract. There are billowing purple clouds, rainbow-edged pulses of light, potions and magic spells. All contained within this small fishing town, and all seemingly commonplace for its inhabitants. There's a girl that can turn into a wolf, and a nun with a magic wand. She gets a flash of herself and the brunette somehow kicking up swirls of violet smoke just by touching one another.
Then there's a searing fear as a cloaked black figure swoops toward the faceless brunette. Emma lunges for her, shoving her out of the way, and she finds herself yelling "Regina!" as she wakes abruptly.
Luckily, that's when Henry's in his room playing video games, and she's left to recover from the dream... and wonder who this 'Regina' is... on her own.
Her work suffers because of the recurring dreams. Her one-cup-a-day coffee habit has been upped to three, and even her disgruntled partner takes on an air of concern.
"Look kid," he tells her, watching her blow on another steaming Styrofoam cup of the high-octane blend, "If things are tough outside work, you can tell me, got it?"
Emma just nods off his concerns and keeps trucking - it's how she always handles things. She doesn't have time to let a few crazy dreams take over her life, anyway. She's incredibly close to making the detective squad at her precinct and she's not in the mood to shoot herself in the foot.
Whatever she can do to get a little more money for herself and Henry. Mostly for Henry - the kid is going through shoe sizes like nobody's business. And she thought his toddler years were tough, trying to keep him in clothes that fit. Since puberty has reared its head, it's been fifty times tougher.
"Swan! Sullivan! You're on the streets today," her captain announces during their morning pow-wow, and it leaves Emma reaching for more high-octane black coffee.
"Great," she sighs, side-eyeing her partner. Street duty is never a favorite within the precinct, and always equivalent to drawing the short straw. They all take turns, but it seems as though she and her partner have been getting more of it than usual.
"This must be his way of telling me I didn't get the job," she huffs as she climbs out of the squad car a half hour later.
Sullivan, in his usual manner, just shrugs and offers, "Maybe it's his way of puttin' ya to the test."
"Well if I get one more day of this, I'm just gonna go ahead and take a big fat 'F' on that test." Chucking her now-empty coffee cup into a nearby trash bin, she zips her jacket all the way to her neck.
Despite it being only early December, winter has already settled itself in to Massachusetts, and her blue uniform has been taken over by a standard-issue BPD down jacket and black leather gloves.
"Well look at it as a way to window-shop for Christmas on the precinct's dime," Sullivan tells her with a grin. Then he asks, "Whatcha gettin' the kid this year?"
Emma smirks ruefully. "New shoes. He's starting to break out of the ones I got him on his birthday." Shrugging, she adds, "Maybe a video game too."
Sullivan launches into a story about his grandson's last growth spurt, and that's when Emma sees it. A scuffle on the corner just two blocks down. She nudges her partner, "Sully," and gestures where she's staring.
It appears a mugging is in progress during their usually-boring patrol, and they both take off. Sullivan's no spring chicken and Emma beats him to the corner just as the mugger knocks a woman to the ground and takes off with her purse. "HEY!" she yells, and is torn between chasing the mugger and tending to the victim.
He's already a block away and she grabs for the walkie-talkie on her shoulder. She gives the dispatcher her coordinates and the direction the mugger is headed even though she knows it's useless. On the rare occasions they do encounter a mugging, the belongings are almost never recovered.
"Ma'am?" She addresses the victim, crouching down beside her and touching her shoulder.
There's a flick of brown hair, and then a pair of brown eyes meet hers. "Officer..."
Then all at once it's too much. Emma's heart practically stops at the rush of images from her dreams. The hair, the eyes... the voice. It's all the same. She sees the cloaked figure and the swirls of violet and her mouth runs off without her:
"Regina?!"
TBC