A/N: This is the chapter I've been trying to get to forever and I'm so excited about it and where the story is going now! Just a warning, there is a major car accident mentioned, but I promise there will be no character deaths. Thanks to all who followed, favourited, and reviewed this story :)


Storybrooke 2 hours earlier

Mary Margret and David sat in their living room watching the evening news.

"You know, I could get used to this," Mary Margaret remarked as she worked on knitting a new hat for her 3 year old son.

"hmmm," grunted David from the beside her on the couch. His eyes were halfway closed as he was already drifting off to sleep.

"I said, I could get used to this," Mary Margaret replied, finally pulling him out of his stupor.

"Get used to what?" he asked.

"I don't know, just having Henry around more. It has been so fun having him over for dinner everyday this week. Between all of his school activities and sports, I feel like we never get to see him anymore. It's just been so nice to able to hear about everything he's been up to, and have him around to help out with Neal. Do you think Emma and Regina would let us have him over a couple times a week for dinner after they get back? I mean, I know we're stuck to our two times a month dinner schedule with them because Regina still prefers not to be around us, but I really miss Henry."

"I dunno," David mumbled tiredly, "you can ask. Worst thing is that they say no. Anyways Regina can't complain because it's not like your inviting her over. Although you know she hates missing out on time with him."

"I know," Mary Margaret sighed. "By the way, do you remember what time Henry's study group was supposed to end? He promised to call when he left."

"I think he said he'd be heading back to the mansion around 8:30. Don't worry, he'll call before he leaves and again when he gets home, just like he has every night."

"Yeah… I just don't understand why he can't just stay with us while his parents are out of town? Why does he have to stay all alone in that huge house?"

"Snow, we've been over this," David addressed his wife. "Henry is almost an adult. He doesn't need to be baby sat by his grandparents. He can be responsible for house sitting his own home for one week. We should be grateful he even agreed to have dinner with us everyday and call to check in. Most teenagers would consider themselves too cool to hang out with their grandparents when their parents are out of town."

"Ha, like he has a choice," Snow snorted. "Regina never would have left town if she hadn't made him promise to check in with us constantly. You know what she's like when she has to be away from him."

Just then Mary Margaret's cell phone rang.

"Ooh it's Henry," she squealed as she picked it up.

"Hey Gram," said Henry through the phone's speaker.

"Hey Henry, how was study group?" Mary Margaret replied.

"It was great. I think we're all really ready for this biology test tomorrow!" Henry exclaimed proudly. "Anyways, I just wanted to let you know that I'm leaving the Tillman's and will text you when I get home in like 20 minutes."

"Thanks for checking in Henry, drive safe!"

"No problem, see you tomorrow." Henry hung up.


Henry carefully tucked his phone back into the pocket of his blue jeans and fished out his car keys. With a strategic jiggle, he successfully unlocked the driver side door of the old yellow Volkswagen bug and got in. He still couldn't believe his parents had agreed to give him free rain in Emma's car while they were gone. He knew he definitely owed Emma big time for this, as his other mother probably put up a huge fight about it. He turned the key in the ignition and jabbed the radio to turn it onto his favorite classic rock station before carefully backing out of the Tillman's drive way.

One thing Henry had learned about living in a small town was that things close down early, and after nine o'clock, most people are already at home getting ready for bed, unless you are Leroy and are still at the bar. So the ride home was fairly uneventful as he drove down the quiet, nearly deserted streets of Storybrooke. That is until he turned left, crossing the intersection from Main onto Mifflin Street.

He had seen the car coming, had seen it approaching the intersection, but he knew he had a solid green arrow. He knew the car would be stopping. Then there was a deafening crash, and the bug went rolling. Henry felt his head hit against the side window as the car eventually came to a halt. Groggily, through the aching throb on the side of his head, he tried to dig for his cell phone in his pocket. When he found it, he managed to keep his eyes open long enough to dial 911, before he slumped forward, unconscious.


Present time, Boston

Jane and Maura were just climbing back into their car, all set to leave the Ritz-Carlton and end their surveillance mission for the night, when they heard the yelling.

"We should never have left him home alone! This is exactly why I never wanted to go on one of these trips with you before!" a woman was screaming angrily. A commotion was coming from the hotel's main entrance as Jane now recognized their blonde suspect, Emma, coming crashing out through the automatic doors hauling two large suitcases and in hot pursuit of the screaming brunette.

"Regina, would you please just calm down!" the blonde shouted after her. "Or at least just slow down so that I don't kill myself trying to get all this luggage to the car before you take off without me leaving me stranded here."

The brunette woman storming across the parking lot whipped around.

"NO, I WILL NOT CALM DOWN!" she screeched back at the blonde. "WHAT PART OF CAR CRASH AND UNCONCIOUS IN THE HOSPITAL DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND!"

With that she turned back around and continued barreling towards her car. As she drew nearer, Jane took in the absolute panicked look on Regina's face. She should have been worried about being discovered by the brunette, but at this point she realized Regina undoubtedly had tunnel vision and would not be taking in any of her surroundings. It seemed however, that by the time she actually reached her car, the brunette had lost her fire. A chirping sound revealed that she had remotely unlocked the car, but instead of getting in the driver's seat and speeding off, as Jane suspected she might, the woman seemed to lose all her strength. She leaned back against the vehicle and then crumbled, sinking down until she was sitting on the ground next to her car, head in her hands.

A few moments later, Jane observed the blonde finally approach the car with all the luggage. Producing her own set of keys from her pocket, she unlocked the trunk and dutifully packed the suitcases inside, before slamming it closed. Then she was walking cautiously towards the brunette who was still sitting slumped on the ground next the car. Very slowly Emma crouched down next to Regina, putting an arm around her.

"Come here," she said, so softly that Jane could barely hear from where she stood three cars away. The blonde pulled Regina into an embrace before pulling her hands down from her face, and turning the tear stained eyes to face her.

"I know you're scared," she started softly, "but we are not going to lose him ok? You hear me?"

"How do you know? We have come too close to losing him too many times. I don't think I could handle it if he doesn't survive," Regina gasped out through her tears. "This is all our fault. We could have prevented this from happening. If we had just stayed in Storybrooke, this never would have happened."

"Regina," Emma sighed, "this could have happened no matter what we did. Even if we had been home, Henry still drives himself to and from the Tillman's every Wednesday night for his study group. There is nothing we could have done."

"But how can you say that!" Regina shouted in frustration, "I am Regina Fucking Mills. That name is supposed to mean something. How can I be so powerful and yet not even be able to protect my own son? How is it fair that he fought and survived all the horrible things we've been through just to die in a fucking hit and run car accident? I swear to God I am going to find the bastard who did this, and I am going to kill him."

"Henry is NOT dead," Emma yelled forcefully. "Dr. Wale said he just suffered a minor concussion and should be awake by the time we get there."

"A MINOR CONCUSSION? A MINOR CONCUSSION? Tell me Emma, if it was such a minor injury, WHY IS HE STILL UNCONCIOUS NOW?"

"Fine, maybe it was a major concussion, but we won't really know everything until we get there. For now, we just have to have faith that he WILL wake up, and he WILL be ok."

"You always were annoyingly optimistic," Regina spat humorlessly. "You had better be right, but whether he wakes up or not, I am still going to find who did this and make them pay." Regina's eyes glinted dangerously in the dim light of the street lamp, and Jane shivered at the sound as her voice went cold as ice. Yes, Jane thought, I definitely do not want to get on the bad side of that one. Whoever she is, there is no doubt that she can be dangerous when she wants to be. The blonde was speaking again.

"I promise Regina, we will find whoever is responsible, but you have to trust me and let me handle it. I know if it were up to you they would be dead, but that is not how it works anymore. You know that, and I know you don't want to relapse. Just trust me to handle this. I'll even let you help as long as you promise to do things my way." Regina sighed.

"You know I trust you Emma," she said softly. "I know you will do the right thing. I just want justice for Henry."

"I know," Emma replied, standing up and offering an arm to Regina. "Now we need to hit the road," she said as she dragged Regina up off the ground. "And I am driving back. I don't care what you think, but you are not in any state to be behind the wheel."

"Yes dear," Regina groaned sarcastically as she rounded the Benz to get into the passenger seat. As Emma situated herself in the drivers seat, she leaned across to give Regina a comforting kiss on the lips before starting the car and speeding off into the night.


Jane got into the driver's seat of the Prius and quickly started the car, speeding out of the parking lot after the Mercedes.

"Where are we going?" Maura asked from the passenger seat.

"After them," came Jane's curt reply. After a few moments she explained, "They are leaving town, so we need to follow them. Here pull up the tracker app," she handed Maura her cell phone.

"Don't you think we should lay off?" Maura asked tentatively, "obviously they are having some type of family emergency. Shouldn't we respect their privacy?"

"I'm not trying to be insensitive," Jane sighed, "but you saw the explosion. You know they are up to something. I can't one hundred percent trust that this wasn't all just an act to throw us off their trail. We go after them, and if their son really was in a car accident, then yeah we'll lay off, but if not, and we can dig up more information by following them out of town, than that's all the better for us."

"Fine," Maura huffed, "but I'm going to start doing some research so that we know a little more about what we're getting into." Maura reached down and pulled her laptop out of her bag, opened it, and immediately pulled up the police database.

"All right, I just ran their plates," she told Jane a few minutes later, as they continued to speed through the city. "The vehicle is a Mercedes Benz registered to one Regina Mills. She's the brunette, so it appears they were using their real names. I wonder why Emma changed her last name but Regina didn't…" Maura mused, "anyways, all the information I can pull up on her says that she is the mayor of a small town called Storybrooke, is married to an Emma Swan (never mine, looks like the blonde didn't legally change her name either), and they have a son Henry, age sixteen. Hold on a minute, I'm going to do a little more digging."

Jane remained focused on the road and the black Mercedes ahead of them, making sure to always stay a few cars back so as to not raise suspicion. She could hear the frantic clicking of keys as Maura silently continued her search.

"Now this is interesting," Maura said a few minutes later, "Henry is actually adopted, which them being a lesbian couple isn't all that surprising in itself, BUT that is not all there is to the story. Emma and Regina only got married two years ago. It appears Regina adopted Henry alone sixteen years ago from an adoption agency here in Boston. The strangest part is that it appears, according to these records, that it was a closed adoption, but the birth mother is none other than Emma Swan."

"Wait, if it was a closed adoption, how did she end up marrying the kid's adoptive mother?" Jane asked glancing over at Maura.

"Exactly my question," Maura responded. "It get's a little fishy. At the time of the adoption, Emma Swan was only seventeen years old. I looked into her and found that she actually has a criminal record, unlike Regina who came up squeaky clean. It appears that she was actually in prison at the time of Henry's birth. What we can't know from these records is whether or not Emma and Regina knew each other at the time. If they did know each other though, then why would Emma have bothered with the closed adoption?

Also another somewhat suspicious thing I noticed is Regina's age on these adoption papers. According to these records, she was thirty-three years old, and already Mayor when she adopted him, but that would mean that she would be forty-nine years old now, and I don't about you, but there is no way that woman is forty-nine. If anything, she looks like she could be younger than thirty-three now, not sixteen years older."

"So you think that she lied about her age on the adoption papers?" Jane asked, "but that doesn't really make sense, because then how old do you think she actually was when she adopted? If we guess that she is somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five, that would put her between ages nineteen and twenty-nine when she adopted Henry."

"Right," Maura responded, "now it is possible that someone say twenty-five to twenty-nine could become mayor, but any younger they would still be in school. That's another thing that doesn't really make sense though, how did she manage to stay mayor for sixteen years running? Although it varies from city to city, most cities have a term limit of at most four years, and a re-election limit of two to three terms. That would allow her a maximum of twelve years as mayor, not sixteen."

"Is it possible that maybe in a small town like Storybrooke they don't have any term laws in effect for the mayor? I mean my experience with small towns is that they don't like change, so if they get someone in office they like, they probably wouldn't be opposed to keeping them indefinitely," Jane mused.

"It is possible," Maura conceded, "but I still think it is slightly suspicious. That still begs the question of why such a young woman pursuing such a demanding and high stress career would want to adopt a child when they are single and just barely considered an adult."

"That's probably exactly why she lied about her age you know," Jane answered, "if she had told the adoption agency that she was a say 23 year old single working woman, they would never have given her a baby."

"I just feel like we're still missing something with how this all played out," said Maura. "I'm going to run Storybrooke through the database and see what I can find on the towns history."

"Huh," Maura voiced a few minutes later, "According to the police databases, their supposed little town called Storybrooke doesn't exist."