AHHHH! Sorry, my life is insane. I love all of you!
Song: Same Mistake by James Blunt
She shouldn't look.
Even her sensorimotor functions plotted against her, urging trembles down her fingers as she reached for the desk drawer in front of her stomach. Inside a flimsy piece of folded grey paper stared at her from beneath spare pens, stray paperclips, a dried-up container of white-out, and a shot of rum she kept for emergencies. Nudging the tiny glass bottle aside, two fingers pinched the neatly cut edge of paper and lifted the perfect fold that creased over her waist and just above Emma's belly. The tall, cheeky blonde grinned, whispered through clenched teeth on Founder's Day in front of the diner. Regina smiled. A perfect thumbnail traced the sharp curve of the girl's jaw, caressed wild golden locks. They'd made front page news that day, they'd saved her campaign that day. And now, after scraping the bravado off of the insecure and frightened young woman, Regina begrudgingly admitted her emotional investment. Emma needed more than a few weeks of medical care. She and her child needed a home.
"Madame Mayor?" Stacy's voice echoed into her office through a speaker.
"Yes, Ms. Cochran?" She responded without tearing her eyes from the photo.
"Do you require anything else, Ma'am? I've finished dictating the recording of the minutes of the Board of Education. They're in your mailbox."
"Could you come in here a moment, Stacy? Please bring your trashcan."
A moment later timid footsteps glanced across marble, reverberated on the cold walls of her office. "Ma'am?" Stacy's curvaceous form, buxom and beautiful in its fullness shifted in her peripheral, especially paired with her curly red hair kept perfectly maintained and bright green eyes. Regina appreciated a bigger woman as much as a toned one, but Stacy's loyalty and work ethic kept her at guard outside of her office more so than her appearance.
Warm caramel eyes remained on that defiant grin in the blurry photo, and a small bottle of liquor scraped plastic, bounced off thin wire, and disappeared in a bundle of crumpled sticky notes, pencil shavings, and ripped documents. Bright green eyes, much purer than Emma's rolling storm raised slowly from the bottle now in her possession to find a determined glint on Regina's face that she'd not seen since her first month of employment. The young mayor had fired nearly everyone on staff. A bunch of embezzling, bamboozling good-ole-boys, she'd called them when she hired Stacy. It'd taken her nearly a year, but she'd kept every single promise proclaimed during her run at the most powerful position in Storybrooke. She'd been determined then, even after her tragedy, but the fire faded as her tortured boss lost her heart to the grief.
"Ma'am?"
"Please clean my office, Stacy. I've no use for certain items any longer."
An infectious smile spilled slowly onto rosy cheeks. Stacy exhaled audibly through her nose, eyes closed and chest moving with the relieved breath. "Yes, Ma'am."
Regina squeezed her shoulder, lingered on the supple flesh beneath her fingers. "Thank you." They both understood she meant it far more than simply disposing of the alcohol but covering it up for the past few years. For staying when everyone else ran.
"Welcome back, Ma'am."
"Goodnight, Ms. Cochran."
Regina nearly reached the front door when the buzzing of her phone interrupted the confident stride. Without looking at the screen, she flipped open the device and held it to her ear. "Mayor…"
"Is she with you?"
"Hello Elizabeth, I'm fine. Thank you for asking. If the she you are referring to is Miss Swan, I have not seen or spoken to her since she ran out of my house this morning."
"She's gone, Regina."
"What do you mean she's gone?' Silence followed. Whatever happened between her and Emma after they parted had spooked the old woman. "Elizabeth," growled between clenched teeth. Nosy woman couldn't mind her own damn business.
"She was upset after seeing you this morning. I told her to take the day off because I didn't want to answer the questions she was asking."
"What questions?"
"Emma's a smart kid, Regina, and you need to keep your hands off her before you scare her away or worse." Oh, those types of questions.
"She's not your daughter, Elizabeth." The words flowed softly through the phone, a haunting melody of their past, their mutual grief.
"Anita has nothing to do with this," Granny huffed, the words strangled with emotional, deep and controlled.
"She has everything to do with this," Regina spat. Heat surged beneath her scarf, and she loosened the soft material before she suffocated from her own anger. "Emma reminds me of her, too, but she's not Anita.
"She's running from someone, and it don't much matter where she came from, she's my daughter now," Granny reminded her. A flush of terrified green eyes burned into her vision. Fear choked the girl too frozen to even write her real birthdate on an office form, and they all knew Swan to be an alias.
"I'll call Sheriff Hunter. We'll find her. Stay by the phone in the event she calls or returns." Disconnected, she dialed Storybrooke's sheriff, probably the closest thing she'd found as a friend. He bore her mood swings in stride and took her home if she drank too much working late. In return, she kept his tall dark drink of man cop in the city a secret.
"Madame Mayor," came his usual, partially amused greeting. Smug bastard.
"Miss Swan has gone missing. I need you to organize a search party."
"How long?" All levity left his voice. A low rumble of him talking to someone else.
"Approximately 10:30 this morning."
"I'm in Camden. I'll get Oscar working from there and check the roads on my way into town, but I think Emma would have found shelter by now. It's been snowing for two hours."
Regina swallowed the foreign emotion crawling up her throat. She cared. Like a flesh devouring parasite, Emma gnawed away at her heart and nestled her foul mouth and uncouth demeanor in less than three weeks of clipped interactions and stunted emotional connection. She liked the bad girls… or perhaps the girls who hadn't bothered to give a shit what other people thought of them, or her. Emma attracted her insecurity. Of course she had, brazen little tramp. It mattered little that she was 12 years older than the woman plaguing her thoughts. I know more than most adults.
"Ma'am?" Regina startled, nearly taking out Stacy's eye with her flip phone. "Are you alright?" Stacy's eyes lingered on her trembling hands clutching at her phone. Watery caramel shimmered, wavered. Such a long time had passed since Regina displayed an inordinate amount of vulnerability, Stacy stood as frozen as her boss.
The mayor sniffed and tugged at the sleeve of her coat, covering her feelings. "Miss Swan has gone missing. A search party is being organized." Someone else said that. Surely, that lost, dull, dejected voice hadn't belonged to her – not dark and dangerous.
"Oh, Ma'am," a comforting voice accompanied the warm hand squeezing her shoulder. "Should I call my brothers? They know the woods well, Robin practically lives there."
"I'm sure I'm overreacting, but if it's no trouble…" She wasn't even unnerved by the display of affection and allowed it to linger. She needed something, someone, or a drink. No, she needed Emma's stupid crooked smile to mock her concern and extreme action.
"Of course not, we all love Emma, Madame Mayor. It's amazing, and a little unbelievable what you're doing for her, but whatever the reason, it's making everything better." Regina read between the lines. It made her better, more tolerable, more human. She only nodded, hair falling into her face as caramel eyes ran from the emerald green of her assistant; they weren't the shade of green she yearned to see.
"Goodnight, Ms. Cochran. Please keep me informed of any developments."
Snow swirled in the gusts of salty air, scampered across dry concrete as though the tiny entities had places to be, things to do beyond taunting her. The snow knew where Emma had gone, whispered one to the other until even the flakes of darkest regions of the forest heard the secret knowledge. Regina stepped on a trail of conspirators, killing the silent perpetrators. Paranoid or delusional with irrational anger at nature, a twisted satisfaction took hold in her chest as her engine warmed and melted the surrounding white dust. She'd lived in Maine long enough to know not to take off with a cold engine, even for such a short drive. She almost stopped at Granny's, slowed to a crawl, glimpsed Granny hugging Ruby to her bosom behind the counter, kept moving forward. She'd hurt them enough.
Night descended quickly. Between the ten minute interval of starting her car and arriving at her mansion, she fumbled in the dark foyer for light. Her heart fluttered in anticipation, expecting the glow and faint sounds of the television to reveal Emma had broken into her house to find some peace. Poignant disappointment and silence greeted the broken mayor. Habit drove her towards the kitchen, always the first stop of the evening after work. She entered far enough to flip the light switch. The scotch her father taught her to drink called to her, strong and heady. She left it in the dark and tucked her trembling hands beneath her arms, pacing the foyer until the urge dissipated. All night if required, she determined. Emma wasn't wrong about her alcohol abuse, but no one bothered confronting her about it. No one cared enough. Emma cared.
"She's fine," Regina assured herself and squeezed already aching hands into tighter fists beneath her arms. A hundred times, she returned to the kitchen. Emma believed in her, tried to help her. So, she paced. To the stair case, to the living room, to the staircase. The consistent tap of her heels against the hardwood almost lulled the urge to drink. "She's fine."
And the call that came a few minutes after that statement confirmed it.
"They found her, Regina. She was wandering around at the old Toll Bridge. Damn fool got lost in the woods. She's frozen through, but she's alright. She's upstairs getting warmed up."
"I'm on my way." She snapped the phone closed before Granny elaborated. The display informed her that she'd paced for two hours. My god, Emma must have been in the middle stages of hypothermia.
A crowd of red-nosed faces sipping hot cocoa and coffee and hot tea met her in the diner. No doubt, their consolation prizes for bringing Emma home safely. The drive blurred, almost too quick and heavy to move from experience into memory. Granny punched a hand on her hip, the other supporting her weight on the stool side of the bar. Regina ignored all of them and charged ahead until floral print and a solid form stepped into her path.
"Leave her be, Regina," Granny ordered. She knew that tone, the one that left no room for negotiation.
"Step aside, Elizabeth."
"Go home. You've done enough for Miss Swan today."
"What the hell does that mean?"
Granny crossed her arms, glared over the clear plastic of her glasses. The group of people who had joined the search party shifted as one. The tension between the two women who practically ran the town had grown at a steady rate for years. Regina stepped to the side, only to be blocked again by the elder.
"Go home before you embarrass yourself, Regina. Emma is fine. I'd make her go to the hospital if she weren't," Granny tried reassurance, but her clipped tone destroyed any comfort it might have offered.
"Why are you so adamant that I not see Miss Swan?"
Granny stepped into her space, lowered her voice. "You're the one seducing a 19-year-old girl. She was upset today because she's dealing with the fact that she's getting ready to give birth to a child she can't afford to keep and now you've called her sexuality into question. I allowed you and Anita to carry on without comment because you made her and Ruby happy, but I will not allow you to destroy Emma, too."
"So, now I'm to blame for her death as though I pulled the trigger that night? Do you forget, old woman, that you've taken my child, too. You forbade me to see my daughter and I've done my best to honor that decision, but Emma is an adult and perfectly capable of making such a decision without your influence. Given the lengths she braves for my attention, I sincerely doubt it's unwanted." She'd not bothered to lower her voice, and the crowd shifted again, trying desperately to disappear into thin air. The small gasp, however, tugged at all of their hearts. Tiny, little Ruby with a silver tray filled with porcelain in the back hall, surely close enough to overhear the whole conversation. The girl looked terrified, big brown eyes shifting from Regina to Granny who wore a horrified expression identical to her granddaughter.
"What does that mean, Granny, 'carry on'?" She glanced desperately to Regina when the older woman failed to respond after a few seconds. "Is that…Regina, is that why he…"
"Ruby, I'm…" Regina's voice cracked, and she surged forward to comfort the girl. Two strong hands dug into her ribs, stopping her with pointy fingertips. "Elizabeth, step aside this instance." She pushed forward again, no match for the stout woman blocking her path. Tears she thought she'd shed years ago blurred the girl she'd considered a daughter once, perhaps still so. She blinked, swallowed the ache in her throat.
Silver and porcelain clanged and shattered against tile. Regina flinched, frozen as the girl she still loved ran away from the two women meant to protect her.
"Every time you reach out to her, you make everything worse. Get the hell out of my diner before I have you arrested for trespassing, Madame Mayor. This is still private property until I kick it."
Granny chased Ruby, and Regina turned on the toe of her heel and curled on herself, avoiding the pity and anger greeting her in the crowd. Her head never rose until she closed the door on the world, cradled in the safety of her mansion, the empty, echoing house with no soul despite its lavish beauty. She'd not redecorated in five years. She'd not decorated at all. Granny's daughter selected the furniture, the artwork, and crystal during the last weekend they'd spent together in the city. Her home was a ghost. Her life was a shadow moving through memories of the only time she'd ever remembered feeling happiness.
She pulled three photos from the pocket of her dark grey pea coat, two of Emma's son and one of the child who never had a chance. No one in the world except her remembered that unborn life. They'd decided to wait until the divorce was filed and kept it their little secret, her and Anita. It would have been biologically his and Anita's, but only blood and chemistry. Everything else would have been them, their child. With Regina's influence as mayor and her money, Anita's husband wouldn't have been able to touch her or their children. That child had died the night her lover told her abusive husband she wanted to be her partner. She hadn't known Anita's plan or she'd have damn well been there, but now everything was dead, including her heart… or so she'd thought. Emma's energy spread a soothing balm over the dry, shriveled organ, smoothing the roughened razorblade edges and mending the cracks in the desert soil with a thundering, wrecking ball sort of rain.
The pictures fluttered to the hardwood.
Without a second thought, the kitchen appeared before her, and she never looked back.
