A/N – Sorry for the long delay, real life got in the way. So thanks once again for all the encouragement you guys have given me with this story, it means a lot that you take the time to do it!

Chapter 3: Before and After

For all the warning she has had that Emma would soon be back in town, Regina feels horribly unprepared for it when it happens. She had expected a planned meeting, an email from Graham or a phone call to ask her when it would be convenient for the new deputy to be brought to her office, and she had prepared herself for that. In her office she was the Mayor, she had power and control and she would be able to face Emma Swan, face the weakness inside her that her mother always warned her about, with dignity and the professionalism she was known for.

Dignity is not grabbing hold of a filthy countertop to keep you upright. Dignity is not feeling the blood drain from your face and pool sickeningly in your gut. There is nothing dignified about your world coming to such an abrupt stop that you feel the air pressed from your chest as if you've hit some invisible wall with extreme force.

There's definitely no dignity in the fact that the only thing you can really think about as you watch her approach is that ten years have only made her lovelier.

As a girl she had been somewhat awkward, all long arms and legs that lacked a measure of co-ordination, not comfortable and sure in her body as some people her age already were. Now though. Now there is something rather graceful about the way she almost stalks toward Regina. There is pride evident in the way her jaw is set and held, chin angled up like she's quite prepared to take the world head on and win. Her confidence so clear that Regina would believe it too, would believe Emma if she told her she hung the moon and painted the stars in the sky simply because she felt like it.

It's stupid and weak, her heart, it always has been and never more than when it came to Emma Swan.

As luck would have it, for once in her sorry life, Mary Margaret Blanchard flies into Emma's arms with a cry of delight and Regina can suddenly breathe again. She watches as they embrace, arms tight and smiles big, then move towards a booth by the window. They all look so very happy. Even Emma who Regina can't help notice brushes a tear off her cheek, is smiling in a way she can't interpret as anything other than joyful.

"Mom, are we getting smoothies or not?"

Henry's voice startles her, body jerking in surprise and finally forcing her to look away from the almost sickeningly happy picture that Emma and her friends make.

"I…no…I mean yes, you can have one. I'm just going to…coffee or something." It is absurd and unacceptable, the way she's still so distracted, so very weak.

"You're being weird."

Regina looks down at Henry, at her son, and wonders how that was one of the nicer things he'd said to her lately. How weird now rated in her book, simply because the alternatives are dead silence or things said in outright dislike and anger. At least he pays enough attention to notice she's being weird.

"I'm just tired, Henry. It was a long week." And it has been, a long week and a long year and a long life, and Regina is so very tired of it all.

Henry just nods, shrugging it off easily and proceeds to break her heart a little more when he smiles at Ruby Lucas, all toothy and genuine, the expression so foreign on his face when directed at Regina herself.

"Hey there, what can I getcha today, champ?" Ruby smiles down at Henry and gives Regina a small nod, but Regina is suddenly in no mood to play nice with her constituents, not when she's so burningly jealous of her son's easy affection for them.

"Coffee and a strawberry smoothie to go, please." Ruby's smile eases off a bit at her tone, while Henry tugs on her sleeve, the move somewhat reminiscent of when he was a toddler and wanted her attention constantly. "Why can't we have it here, like we always do? I like having it here."

Unlike when he was a toddler, his voice isn't filled with love and admiration, he merely sounds annoyed and disappointed. Regina feels herself sigh in defeat. Again. For probably the hundredth time that day alone.

"Fine, alright, we'll have it here." So very, very weak she was.

She watches as Henry makes his way to the only available booth left; one that had to be right across the small aisle from the one that Emma Swan currently sits in. So there would be no mercy for her, no reprieve. She chuckles humorlessly at that and shakes her head as she follows after Henry, trying to keep her eyes steadily on the linoleum floor under her feet.

"Hello again, Mayor Mills."

Regina doesn't cringe at the greeting, but she wants to so very much. Reluctantly she looks up at Henry's teacher and gives her a polite smile. "Miss Blanchard." She tries her best to not let her eyes stray across the table towards Emma, but much like it was impossible to defy gravity, she finds herself doing it.

"Hello Regina." Emma's eyes are more grey than green. Regina swallows hard. "Hello Emma."

A small part of her had hoped that Emma would pretend they hadn't met before, that ten years before their lives hadn't collided so intimately, but mostly she had known this was coming.

Luckily Henry saves her from Miss Blanchard's impending questions, because the look on the woman's face says there is many a question she wants to suddenly ask.

"Hi Miss Blanchard, Deputy Nolan." He gives each a polite head nod and Regina has to smile. However he viewed her, she was still very proud of what a good boy he truly is.

"Hello Henry." The teacher gives him a bright smile and points across the table. "I'd like you to meet my best friend, Emma Swan. She's going to be working with David and Graham at the Sheriff's office."

Henry reaches a hand out and Emma solemnly shakes it, eyes darting up at Regina and back at Henry again quickly. "It's very nice to meet you, Miss Swan. Or, I guess it's Deputy Swan?"

Emma smiles at him and Regina feels that tug of nausea again, remembering when that smile was so easily given to her.

"I guess either works, Kid." Henry nods happily.

"So how do you know my mom? I mean you're new in town aren't you, I haven't seen you before."

Emma looks back up at her and Regina steps closer to Henry, puts her hand on his shoulder. "Emma grew up here, just like I did. We met, well, it was long ago. Before you were even born."

There is a moment of quiet, Emma just staring at her and Regina calmly looking back, ignoring the look Mary Margaret Blanchard is giving them. She knows Emma had never told her friends of their relationship, if one could call the weeks they spent together that, but logically she also knows that Emma's absence that summer would have been noticed by her best friend.

"Oh." Henry stares at Emma for a moment, head tilted to one side and eyes squinted as if he's thinking very hard. "Right, that makes sense. I recognize you from the picture now."

There's silence for a few seconds as Regina stands and has a rather spectacular internal panic attack. She knows the picture Henry is talking about, she only ever had the one of Emma, but she had always been very careful about keeping it not hidden exactly, but private. She isn't an overly sentimental person, but there are things, tokens, that everyone has in their lives to remind them of a time or a place or a person and Regina is no different.

It doesn't mean that she's comfortable discussing that with anyone else and surely not people who don't know her as anything other than the person who runs their town. The thought of accidently being outed as it were, because she'd kept a picture from ten years ago, grips her with fear and anger.

"Your mother has a picture of Emma?" Mary Margaret directs the question at Henry, but her eyes are on Regina. "Uhm, yeah, I guess." Emma still says nothing and the tension between them is now obvious to everyone. Henry finally senses that the adults are acting strangely, Regina guesses, because he starts to twitch a little and throws a look or two her way as if checking if he's done something wrong.

He hasn't, not purposefully anyway, so Regina swallows down her embarrassment and tries her very best to just ignore Mary Margaret Blanchard's inquisitive eyes and Emma's calculating look.

"I'd forgotten I had that." It's not a complete lie. Regina has kept it all these years, but she could not remember the last time she'd looked at it. "I think I took it the night we watched the Perseid meteor shower."

There is no denying that they know each other as more than simple acquaintances anymore, so Regina shares the information with a shrug. Emma frowns at the mention of the night as she just keeps watching Regina steadily, but Mary Margaret is basically bouncing in her seat.

Regina pulls herself up straighter and gives the woman a hard stare and watches as Henry's teacher finally realizes she's dealing with the Mayor of Storybrook. It's not something she likes, the way some people feel intimidated by her, but Regina's not above using it when it suits her. When Mary Margaret finally drops her eyes down to the table and suddenly finds the salt shaker incredibly interesting, Regina clears her throat and guides Henry firmly towards their own booth.

"Well, I think we've taken up enough of your time, so enjoy the rest of your day." She directs it to everyone at the table and without waiting for a reply, she turns away. When her back hits the booth she lets out a sigh, feeling inexplicably tired.

The whole exchange had been incredibly awkward. And draining. Regina runs a hand through her hair and ends up digging her fingers into the muscles at the base of her skull. The muscles are tense, painful and she knows a headache is soon to follow.

She watches Henry as he sits across from her, silent once again. Feels as tension wins out and a dull throb starts in her temples. She's almost used to this quiet between them and normally she'd bear it, but her usual composure was shattered by Emma's appearance and now she just wishes he'd talk to her. Even if only to tell her how he wishes he was with his father instead of her.

"Did you want something for lunch as well? I mean I was going to make you sandwiches when we got home, but you could order if you wanted to." He doesn't bother to look up, just sullenly shrugs before answering. "I guess."

She sighs and lets it go.

She won't order anything, not when he's as unenthusiastic as that, because at least at home there is wine. Wine which she will be drinking copious amounts of if she can help it. She doesn't make a habit of drinking and definitely not during the day on her own, but she reasons that she's earned a reprieve after how her day has gone.

Her thoughts are interrupted when Ruby Lucas drops their drinks off with a nod for her and a bright smile for Henry. The coffee is warm and burns her throat, but she simply closes her eyes and takes another sip, let's the bitter taste of it settle in her stomach as she drifts back into thought.

She has made many mistakes in her life and whether she likes admitting it or not, letting Emma go and marrying Killian is probably the biggest one. Not that she thinks things would have worked out much better if she'd listened to her childish heart and ran away with the girl, but things couldn't have possibly worked out any worse.

Killian despises her for the most part, her son dislikes her greatly and she is as ever alone. The only thing she finds any joy in is Storybrook itself and her friendship with Katherine. It isn't much though, not when she looks at others and the lives they live in comparison.

She sighs again and finds her eyes drifting towards Emma, towards her smile and her golden hair and her eyes that are more green than grey when the light hits them just so.

What a beautiful reminder she makes of Regina's mistakes.

The heat is unbearable.

The night air around them is cloyingly damp and Emma has shamelessly stripped her shirt off, leaving her in shorts and a sports bra. So naturally Regina is utterly incapable of looking at anything that isn't Emma's smooth back or rounded shoulders, despite the fact that they're out there in the first place because she herself wanted to watch the meteor shower.

Emma for her part doesn't seem to notice, her eyes fixed firmly on the sky above them, her lips pressed into a slight smile that Regina can only barely see in the darkness. It's a beautiful little smile, so soft and genuine compared to Emma's usual smirk, and Regina can barely breathe she's so filled with the want of tasting that smile. Of pressing her mouth against Emma's and sharing the soft happiness so openly displayed there.

She doesn't though, settles for sighing softly to herself and biting her lip.

Regina is in so much trouble. For weeks she's known it, reveled in it quite spectacularly really, but with every passing day now she feels the world closing in on her a little tighter. It's hard to breathe most days, her chest constantly constricted as she listens to her mother and Killian and even Katherine talk of her impending wedding day.

The only time she seems to be able to take an easy breath is when Emma holds her, or touches her or kisses her or simply looks at her. Everything about the girl seems to soothe Regina in some way, settles the twisting of her stomach and slackens the tension in her shoulders. They've barely known each other for more than a few weeks, a single shared summer, but Emma is her world now and she's terrified she's going to lose that.

"I'm going to call the wedding off."

Regina doesn't mean to say it out loud, but she's been thinking it for days now, saying it to herself in those moments when her mother and Killian and their shared vision for her future had smothered her. It feels right though, saying it out loud finally and to Emma.

"Yeah? I was kinda hoping you would, seeing as how I'm in love with you. Like, stupidly in love with you."

Emma leans over and kisses her gently, just a soft press of lips that's over in a heartbeat, but it feels right. It feels easy, like everything else with Emma has been even when it shouldn't have.

Falling in love with a girl should have been hard, turning her whole world view upside down should have been hard, but it's been the easiest thing in the world for Regina. It's everything else in her life that has been hard up to this point and it makes absolutely no sense, but she accepts it. Easily, because she has Emma and that makes it easy.

"I love you too." It seems like nothing at all, like there should be something more she could say than those few words, but it's all she has.

Emma nods, eyes more green then grey as she leans closer again, and the kiss this time lingers a bit longer. Lingers long enough that when Emma pulls away Regina is a little breathless and filled with that ever present feeling of needing more of Emma, of wanting to be even closer.

"I know. I mean maybe it's stupid to say, but I think I knew the minute I kissed you that first time."

Regina shivers at that, feels the words slide down her back and settle low in her belly as please. Emma had known and hadn't pushed, hadn't made plans and demands, just waited for Regina to decide for herself. To choose Emma or not.

Other than her father, no one had ever done that for Regina; given her the chance to choose what she wanted with her life.

It exhilarates her, pushes heat and blood through her already pulsing veins and leaves her lightheaded, giddy even.

"I'll tell them first thing in the morning. Get it over with so we can start, I don't know, being together. Making plans I guess? Or is that presumptuous of me? I mean I know you got into UMass, so you'll be leaving soon and I…I want to go with you. I want to go to Boston and make a life there, get a job and an apartment and spend whatever time we have together. I want that, do you?"

Regina is breathless and rambling and Emma is smiling at her. Then Emma is on top of her, skin damp and warm under Regina's palms, breathing her air they're so close.

"You're kind of a moron, you know that? What part of I love you didn't you understand, because generally that means I want you. I want you in my life and I want to have a place in yours and we can't do that if we're not in the same city. So yes, come with me to Boston, let's be happy together."

It's probably stupid and foolish and a childish dream, but Regina thinks they can do just that. Go to Boston and be happy, make a life together. She doesn't care that they're young, or that her mother is going to kill her, or that most people don't end up having happily-ever-after with the first person they ever fell in love with.

She just knows that this is right, feels right, that nothing said beneath a sky streaked with speeding, burning rock could be wrong.

The next morning her world falls apart when she opens the bathroom cabinet in search of a Band-Aid for her bleeding leg, having nicked a good portion of skin off with her razer, and the first thing she sees is a box of tampons.

Tampons that she suddenly realizes she hadn't needed for some time. For a long time really. For a long enough time for it to mean something.

The car ride home is quiet, just like it always is. She doesn't put the radio on to hide it, takes a perverse kind of pride in facing her painful failures head on. She bares Henry's silence, because she deserves it, because as much as she wishes it wasn't really true, he has a right to blame her. Killian may have slept with every available woman he could find during most of their marriage, but it's because she hurt him first. She cheated first and instead of doing the right thing, the brave thing, she married him anyway. She married him and didn't love him and he knew it, let it fester in him until he did what he did.

So Henry blames her and she bares it, because she doesn't know how to fix it and make it better for all of them.

"I'm sorry, Henry."

He startles a little at the sound of her voice, eyes wary as he flicks them over her face once before looking down and away again.

"For what?"

Regina shrugs.

"Doesn't matter, just know that I am."

He doesn't say anything and she lets it go, drives in silence all the way back home. When they get there they both go their own way, Henry to his bedroom to read and Regina to the kitchen in search of the bottle of wine she promised herself. She takes a detour to her office before heading upstairs, grabbing her father's battered copy of 'Poetry of Robert Frost'.

When she gets to her room, door firmly shut behind her and high heels kicked off, she sinks down on her bed and pours herself a generous glass of wine. Regina sips it absently as she brushes fingers gently over the book, remembers the sound of her father's voice when he would read some of the poems to her.

With a sigh she finally lets the book fall open. The photo is tucked between two pages, marking her father's favorite poem for her. Emma is so very young in it, hair glowing almost silvery against the darkness behind her and eyes narrowed as she looks towards the camera over her shoulder.

That version of Emma, young and beautiful, had loved Regina. Loved her and trusted her and Regina misses her. Misses that feeling.

Regina doesn't cry, even though the desire to do so is there. Instead she reads her father's collection of poems and remembers the Perseid meteor shower, drinks her wine and eventually falls asleep, photo of Emma tucked firmly between much loved pages once again.

Ok, hope you enjoyed that. All mistakes are mine as this story is un-beta'd. Quick question, should I keep doing the flashback scenes or not? Are they working for you guys or just distracting from the story?