Emma finds her laying on the floor in something of a heap. There was something wrong, deeply so. Emma doesn't know how to explain it. The door of Regina's cell had been torn open but the woman inside hadn't moved an inch. She knelt down and gave the former mayor a tap. Thankfully she was still breathing. Breathing and seemingly unharmed, but she still didn't respond. Not an angry lash out nor a cheerful greeting. No, Regina didn't move at all and didn't give any indication of doing so. The woman was never one for indifference, at the best of times she was a menagerie of rather intense emotions, mostly on the negative side."Regina." Emma tried.

That time Regina looked back and up. But a distant acknowledgement of her presence was all that Emma received. Her eyes are so dead, so... null in some inexplicable way. Something was definitely amiss and for some reason Emma cared. She repeated Regina's name again, this time softer. The woman on the floor still didn't respond, save for a now unrelenting stare.

And then she reaches out forlornly. "It's so bright."

Emma cocked her head. "What is, Regina?"

Her hand quivered as her hands clamp, unclamp, and then clamp again around nothing at all.

"But...I. Can't have it." Her hand fell limp.

Emma furrowed her brows with a good deal of hesitation, she scooped Regina into her arms. The woman felt somehow so delicate. Her completely passive reaction to being lifted at all hiked Emma's unease to a new height. Mary...Snow...her mother-Emma still couldn't decide how to address her-was going to kill her for removing Regina from her cell. Granted the door had been open when she arrived.

Regina was slack all over for the duration of their walk. The rigid and tense poise she carried herself with regularly was as void as her eyes were. Her head drooped as though she couldn't be bothered to hold it up even slightly. Eventually Emma shifted her hold to accommodate, lest the woman's head flop around. What happened to you? She wondered to herself. The former mayor had been fine-relatively speaking, anyhow-the night before.

Mary wasn't home when Emma arrived, she counted her blessings for that; it would be easier to tell the woman about Regina before she saw the former mayor lying awake in her bed. Much easier than it would have been if she'd been caught carrying the woman inside. She tucked Regina under the covers, expecting some form of protest-be it about the position she laid her in or the manner in which she'd arranged the pillows and blankets. But Regina still remained startlingly impassive.

Henry wandered in hours before Mary and David, his eyes falling on his adoptive mother. His face scrunched, "is she okay?"

Emma stumbled over her words, only managing to get one or two starter words out before backtracking and trying again. Finally she sputters out the truth, "I don't know, Henry. I don't even know what happened to her."

That same part of her that churned with sympathy for Regina had her belly knotting more. She wasn't responding to Henry's voice either. And when he greeted, 'hi...mom' and cautiously touched her hand, she only stared at the ceiling. Even the grumpy, high-strung mayor that Emma knew, would perk up. Especially since he had called her 'mom'. Yet the woman before her couldn't be bothered to look at her son.

Emma came to conclude that Regina was severely depressed.

"What's wrong?" Henry asked.

Finally she averted her gaze from the ceiling, she turned her head only slightly and replied quietly, "something is missing." There was something else. Something whispered that Emma couldn't hope to catch. And then a single word, "hollow."

Hollow.

It was the prefect descriptor of what Emma was seeing.

Regina was hollow from her eyes to her demeanor. Sullen and withdrawn.

She supposed that it made sense considering that Regina had just lost everything from her curse to Henry. She had no companions that Emma could name and a town full of people who would have her executed had they been in their old world. Maybe she should take the woman to see Archie, he seemed like the kind who would lend an unjudging ear despite it all.

Instead she let Regina lay there as she worked out a way to explain things. Odds were that David had already dropped by the Storybrooke police station to find it empty. Odds were that he gave Mary a very quick dial. Odds were the she then phoned Ruby…

.oOo.

The day was merciful to Emma, neither of her parents had dropped by the police station at all that morning. They had planned on dropping by at noon as she had found out upon entering Granny's. She had been hesitant to leave Regina alone, but the more she thought about it, the less she feared. If the woman couldn't have been bothered to escape her jail cell, then she couldn't be expected to stir up any other kind of trouble. The company of Henry only sealed the deal, with any luck, he would be able to lift her spirits.

"Why aren't you at the station?" Mary asked.

"Well." She paused, all of that time and she still hadn't come up with anything good to say. "Something came up."

David prompted her to continue.

She decided, on the spot, that the truth would be a hulluva lot easier. "When I got there this morning, I found Regina's cell wide open." Before anyone could get a word out she continued, "but she was just laying there…" she paused once more. "She wasn't hurt but…" and when no one filled in, "but she didn't even seem to notice that the cell door was open." She ran her fingers through her hairline. "Or she didn't care." This time she looked around and dropped her voice a notch or two. "So I took her home."

"You what?" Mary mouthed.

"I took her home because, believe it or not, and I know it's hard to believe, I'm worried about her." Emma replied. "She isn't doing good."

David rubbed his forehead as Mary appeared to be turning it over in her mind. "What do you mean, 'she isn't doing good?'"

"I…" Emma started. "Just come home and look at her. It looks like she's one more bad event away from death."

"So, what? You're going to coddle and care for her now?" Ruby set a tray of fries before Emma. "She's the Evil Queen not the Sugar Plum Fairy."

Emma pinched the bridge of her nose. Normally she would have laughed. It was kind of funny, all the same this wasn't a giggly situation and it wasn't meant for Ruby's ears anyhow. "I'm not going to coddle. I don't know what I'm going to do."

Ruby snorted indignantly. "Has she done anything to deserve your help?"

No , Emma responded inwardly. "I'm the…" she loathed to say it out loud. "Savior. I can't just pick and choose who to save. I mean I can but, I think that I want to help her."

Ruby rolled her eyes and to Mary grumbled, "she's definitely your daughter, she has your hero complex."

"You should see how she looks at Henry." Emma suppresses a shudder thinking about how dreadfully absent that very look had been earlier. "If she's really as awful as people say, I don't think she would care so much about him."

Mary sighed and exchanged a look with David. One that indicated that discussing the saving of and moral capability of Regina Mills was somewhat commonplace and likely hadn't gone over too well in the past. Maybe she was as childish as Regina accused her of being, because with herself, she declared that things would go differently this time.

All she had to do was get to the core of what had left Regina looking and feeling so dismal.

.oOo.

Regina absently fingered the blankets, bunching them and unbunching them in her hands. She can't seem to figure out what is missing. But she wants it back so badly. A sort of hunger resides within her but she knew, from somewhere within, that it couldn't be filled.

Her eyes found Henry. The same part of her that is still trying to assess what is no longer there, is afraid. Fearful of her indifference to the boy. And that same part of her wants to feel joy, knows that she should feel at least a teeny prickle of delight. But she doesn't.

She is incapable.

She thinks that she might have always been this way.

Emptly.

Melancholy.

Hollow.