Chapter 3.

Outside the school Mary Margaret sighed as her daughter hung up. She burst in tears clutching the phone to her chest. The other adults surrounded her to hear the news.

"She is okay...for now." David held his wife close to him, wrapping his arms around her waist. "Honey, did Emma tell us what to do?"

She nodded against his chest and pulled back to speak. "Yes, we are gonna need a few people and you need to go to the station."

"Anything we can do to help you your Majesty." Marco told them and Archie nodded in agreement. "Me too." Leroy tipped his head in an informal bow to his prince. "I can get the other guys in to help too."

David smiled at them. "Thank you." Ruby raised her hand. "Count me in too." She gave a lopsided smile to Mary Margaret.

Henry watched all this and noticed they hadn't mentioned his mom in all this. He had overheard one or two teachers mention they had saw her inside the school. He had heard two shots go off since he had gotten to safety. He worried for the worst.

"Grandma...What about my mom?" Henry asked trying not to keep it together. He didn't want to be seen as someone who wasn't mature enough to be part of his family's round table. He wanted that more than anything.

"She was injured...Emma didn't say much." Mary Margaret offered as gently as she could. He shook his head. He felt conflicted. 'She is the evil queen maybe she brought this on. Maybe this was all her doing.'

He was shaken from his thoughts when a 2nd grade teacher patted him on the shoulder. "Your mother is a hero."

"No not Emma...Regina." He corrected with a heavy sigh. 'I really need different mom names for them.'

"I was talking about Regina." The teacher said with a soft smile. "Some man had a gun pointed to my head and she made sure my whole class was safe...She offered herself. So if she did get injured, she did it for good."

"My mom is not good. She's evil." He whispered not sure if he was telling the teacher or reminding himself.

"I don't think she is, Henry." Mary Margaret mused. She began telling David and the others what Emma had ordered.

He looked over the hill to the school in the distance. 'I just hope they're okay.'

...

Inside the school Emma put back on her red leather jacket zipping it up halfway. She didn't fail to notice the mayor pout at that. Regina sat gracefully onto the floor of the room. She followed Emma's orders to sit beneath the window so any shooter walking by wouldn't see them.

Emma sat beside Regina on the floor of the nurse's office. They sat in silence after the news that their son was safe.

"You pushed Jefferson out a window?" The mayor asked curiously after she had gone over their run in with him in her mind.

Emma laughed and looked to Regina on her left. "That was Mary Margaret actually. She had no idea how she knew how to do that."

"I bet..." The mayor grew somber as she waited for the woman next to her to bring up the curse. She sighed and pursed her lips. The silence filled them again.

"Can I ask you a question?" Emma whispered unsure how to bring it up any other way.

"I guess." The mayor was fixing the makeshift bandage on her right arm.

"Why did you cast the curse...you never killed Mary Margaret...What was the point?" Emma looked at her and saw her smooth out her dress and sigh again.

"Fun to watch her all alone." She lied with a fake smirk on her face as she stared straight ahead. Emma raised an eyebrow.

"You know I can tell when people are lying...and that was bullshit."

Regina frowned at the use of language. "Must you always be so crass?"

"Crass?" The Sheriff asked scrunching her face,

"Yes, deplorable." She spelled out.

"I...am 98 percent sure you are insulting me judging by your tone..."

"Thank god Henry doesn't get his brains from you?" She rolled her eyes making Emma narrow her eyes and scowl.

"Whatever, you are lying. Is it because after all you went through you still, in a small way...feel a love for Mary Margaret?"

The mayor scoffed. "No."

"Then what was it?" Emma pushed on.

"I wanted to go somewhere where I wasn't seen as Evil. There is good in me...at least I think so. And no one saw that...not a soul...I just wanted to be seen as Regina but now..."

"It didn't matter who you hurt to get here?" Emma asked, her tone bitter. Regina snapped back. "I saved you. I have travelled to many lands and though this one is flawed it is better."

"You ripped me away from my family." Emma replied in barely a whisper.

"I never told them to put you in a box and ship you to Maine!" Regina stage whispered back at Emma. Emma sighed. "This is getting us nowhere...not like we can go back and change any of it." She ran a hand through her hair and looked at the woman next to her.

"For what it's worth...I am sorry." Regina whispered lower than she had been before. Emma smiled at her not sure how to respond. Another small silence took over. Emma tapped her hand onto the linoneum floor impatiently until Regina held her hand down and gave her a look that said without words. "Stop."

"Regina? Out of curiousity...if they didn't send me through the wardrobe would I have been cursed as a newborn for 28 years?"

Regina thought about it and nodded. Emma raised her eyebrows. "And if you didn't cast it. You would be 28 years older than me?"

Regina nodded again. "Strange to think about right?" She offered the blonde a weak smile.

Emma laughed. "Even weirder to think you raised my mom."

"I was only seven years older than her at the time." Regina pointed out. Emma looked down at her wrist that Regina was still holding down. The mayor dropped it like it would burn and held her own hand tightly.

Emma blushed at Regina's actions. "I really hope they hurry up."

"Wouldn't want to stay with the 'Evil Queen' for long." Regina mumbled. "Shut up not that. I am starving. I didn't have lunch today. I was going to go to Granny's."

"Heaven forbid you skip a meal."

"Are you calling me fat?" Emma looked down self consciously.

"What? No. Although I have to say I have no idea how you are not. You are constantly knawing on something."

"Knawing on something? Did you really just say that? I exercise. We can't all eat rabbit food."

"I eat more than salads. I just keep everything in moderation. It has worked for the past 40 something years. Although admittedly, I can never keep the weight off my lower back area."

"You mean your ass? Why would you want to. You have an amazing a...uh what I mean is...it's a...People want your ass...Not your ass...Not to say your's is not desirable...it is...Oh god..."

Emma blushed and covered her face in her hands while the mayor smirked at the flustered blonde.

"Hard to find dresses though that fit 100 percent they do tend to cling to that area." The mayor teased. Emma licked her lips. "I may have noticed that..."

Regina let out a light laugh followed by a large yawn.

"Hey, stay awake. You can't go to sleep." Emma turned to face the mayor better. She inspected her arm. Regina winced as Emma held her right wrist raising her limb lightly into the air.

Her blue shirt sleeve that was wrapped around it was a dark wine color. Emma knew it meant that the wound wasn't healing anytime soon. The blood was still pouring out of the mayor. She also knew that she needed to keep the woman conscious for at least another hour.

"Um, we don't you tell me about a good day."

"What?" Regina asked.

"Tell me a story about a good day." She smiled encouragingly.

Regina's brows knitted together as she thought back. "The day I got my son..." She grinned widely as she remembered that day. "He was so tiny...with a tuft of black hair on the top of his head."

Emma smiled sadly, she remembered it too. She had never held her son. She asked it to that way. She knew if she did that she would never be able to let him go but she had seen the social worker take him away wrapped in blue blankets.

"What about a day from when you were a child?" Emma asked not sure she could handle hearing about the years she had missed out on with her son.

Regina looked down and tried to find a happy memory from her childhood. There was silence for a small bit as she thought back.

"Oh on my tenth birthday...my father bought me my first horse; Rocinante. A beautiful brown steed. My father got me riding lessons and when my mother was gone he taught me how to ride like men do."

Emma scoffed. "Sorry...go on." Regina shook her head at Emma's immaturity.

"He was such a beautiful creature. When I was on him I felt mighty even before I was a Queen. He was a true friend for so many years of my life. Being royal I never knew if people were nice to me to get something in return but he never did. All he wanted was love and carrots." She sighed trying to not think much about killing him for her curse. Emma watched how passionately the woman was talking. It made her heart swell in ways she couldn't quite comprehend.

"Have you ever riden a horse?" Regina asked snapping Emma out of a Regina induced trance. She laughed and shook her head as she thought back to the state fair she went to in 6th grade.

"One time I rode a pony at a state fair but I fell off...landed almost an inch from it's...droppings." The sheriff shuddered at the memory.

"Ponies don't count." Regina rolled her eyes. Emma patted her knee. "How about when we get out of here you can teach me?"

The mayor nodded and smiled.

"Even riding like a man?" Emma smirked and received one back at her. "Depends on how well the lesson goes." She blushed the second she uttered it. "I meant on the horse."

Emma bumped her shoulder. "Sure you did. So do you have riding clothes? Oh do you have that little whip thing?"

"A crop? Yes...in the back of my closet."

Emma licked her lips and couldn't stop herself from asking. "Kinky."

Regina blushed darkly and looked down making Emma blush herself. 'Oh fuck, so she might be into that...she is blushing really badly. Oh she is so into it.'

"Henry never mentioned your ride horses." Emma said as she tried to calm herself.

"I haven't in a long while."

"Any reason?"

"While I love it, horses remind me of...my old life...what I lost..."

"The stable boy..." Emma said out loud unaware that she sounded exactly like a much younger version of her mother when she did. The words made Regina look at her with wide eyes. She scowled and gritted. "His name was Daniel."

"Yes...sorry Henry's book doesn't name him...It does say what happened to him though. I am sorry about that." She touched Regina's hand softly.

"It was a long time ago." She muttered. Emma moved her finger over the ring on Regina's finger with her thumb. "Was this from him?"

Regina shook her head. "No, this was my mother's. I wear it as a reminder...to not become like her with my son..." She looked down to Emma's thumb that was gently moving over her hand.

"You aren't like her." Emma offered her a smile. Regina looked down ignoring her. Emma moved her hand under the mayor's chin. "You aren't."

She looked into Emma's eyes seeing sincerity behind her eyes. The idea that someone saw that in her made Regina tear up against her better judgment. She faked a yawn to draw attention away from her eyes.

"I wish Henry would see that." She mumbled but Emma heard it. "He will. When we get out of here."

"If we get out of here." Her eyelids started to feel heavy,

"We will. I promise." Emma took Regina's hand in hers and squeezed it. "Even if I have to carry you outta here myself."

"Why are you always saving me?"

"Somebody's got to." Emma smirked as Regina rested her head on her shoulder.

"If I tell you something will you hold it against me...it could be from the blood loss..." Regina drolled out as she looked up to Emma.

"What is it?" Emma asked curiously.

The mayor looked at Emma and whispered. "It's a secret..."

"You can whisper it." The Sheriff offered realising that the wound must be getting worse by the way the brunette was acting. She leaned her ear closer to the mayor expecting to hear her low voice whispering in her ear but instead felt a pair of lips over hers.

Emma opened her eyes widely she barely had time to respond when Regina moved back with her eyes closed whispering. "I love you."

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