Chapter Ten

'Henry's certainly perked up,' Regina said as she walked over to her drinks cabinet. 'It's good to see him smiling again.'

Emma, sitting rather anxiously on the same couch that she'd been perched on the edge of the last time that she'd been in this room, nodded.

'Yeah. It is.'

There was a pause while Regina poured out two glasses of scotch. She took a deep breath before she spoke again. 'And you as well.'

'What?'

Returning to the sheriff, she held out a glass. Their fingers brushed momentarily as Emma reached out to take it.

Regina sat down on the sofa opposite her, swallowing against the dryness that had filled her mouth.

'It was good to see you smiling again.'

Emma blushed. 'Oh. Yeah. I guess… I guess tonight was one of my better nights. I really enjoyed it.' She offered the mayor a tiny smile, one that made the dark circles under her eyes all the more prominent but somehow lit up her face nonetheless. 'I really do appreciate you inviting me, Regina.'

'It's not a problem,' she replied, sipping her drink. 'I'm just glad that you came.'

'For Henry,' Emma clarified.

Regina nodded slowly. 'Yes. For Henry.'

That silence fell again: the one that told Regina that the woman sat before her wasn't quite the same woman as the one who had come storming into her office five weeks earlier. She frowned, watching as Emma tentatively sipped at her scotch.

As she did so the blonde's eyes closed, feeling the warm buzz of the alcohol already beginning to dull the edges of the room around her. Despite how hard she'd tried to eat the food that Regina had presented to her, she had failed. Her stomach remained resolutely empty and now the scotch wrapped its way around her like a warm blanket.

'I'm sorry, by the way,' Emma mumbled after a few moments. 'You know; that Henry's still on board the whole Evil Queen train. I thought he would've given up on that by now.'

Regina winced, the way that she always did. Then, forcing a gracious smile onto her lips, she nodded.

'It's alright,' she said. A tiny sigh escaped from her chest before she could stop it, and she forced herself to ignore the crumbling expression of guilt that immediately spread across the blonde's face. She was the one who was supposed to feel guilty here: not Emma.

'If it helps,' Emma said, taking another sip of her drink. 'I think he's changed his tactic.'

'He has?'

'Yeah,' Emma said, almost laughing. 'I think that he's decided that the whole 'final battle' thing might be overplaying it a bit. It seems that now my new job is just to be nice to you.'

A burst of laughter escaped from Regina's lips. 'Well. I think that the final battle scenario actually seems more viable, if I'm honest, Miss Swan. But I'm all ears – what does he expect that to achieve?'

'He seems to think that if the Evil Queen is no longer evil, her curse won't last very long,' Emma shrugged, smiling. 'And, given that he's apparently realised that you're not actually evil – congratulations. Consider your curse effectually weakened.'

She expected the mayor to laugh in response. But, as Regina took this information in, she could only blink. At first the idea seemed completely ridiculous to her: nothing could break her curse. Rumplestiltskin had said so himself – nothing can stop the darkness.

And yet… no. She shook the thought from her mind, smiling to ease the confusion that had already appeared on the sheriff's face. It was ridiculous. It was sweet, but it was ridiculous.

'Well,' she said, raising her glass in a mock toast. 'I suppose I'll take my victories where I can get them.'

Just as Emma went to smile in response, she felt herself beginning to shudder under the weight of a yawn. It was one that she had been trying to stifle all evening, but now that the warmth of the scotch that she was drinking had numbed her muscles and relaxed her eyes, the damn thing tore through her jaw before she could stop it.

Regina blinked. 'Am I keeping you up, Miss Swan?' she asked. She didn't look annoyed, however. Something else was flashing across her face.

'No,' Emma immediately shook her head, putting the glass down on the table. 'God. No. I'm really sorry, that was so rude. I didn't mean to—'

'It's quite alright,' Regina said slowly, leaning forwards. '...I'm guessing that you're still not sleeping then?'

Emma merely shrugged. 'I've never been much of a sleeper anyway.'

'And yet I suspect that there might be quite a significant difference between sleeping fairly sporadically, and not sleeping at all.'

When Emma didn't respond, Regina folded her hands over in her lap and frowned.

'Emma,' she said in a low voice, her eyebrows creasing together. 'Other than… what happened. Is there something else that's bothering you?'

Two green eyes snapped up to look at her with more ferocity than Regina had imagined possible. She flinched under the weight of them, watching as the sheriff bristled with resentment.

'I'm sorry,' Emma drawled out, narrowing those laser-pointer eyes. 'Are you implying that what happened to me isn't enough to stop me from sleeping? Because, honestly Regina, I'd be more than willing to go outside right now and pick out thirty people at random and ask them what they think, because I'm at least ninety-nine per cent sure that they would all agree with me and say that being held at gunpoint and beaten down into the floor for the majority of a morning is probably sufficient reason to not really feel up for taking a power nap every goddamn afternoon.'

For a moment Regina could only blink. Emma's cheeks had flushed deep red, her chest heaving as she struggled to control her breathing. It was the most that she'd said out loud about what had happened in that room since the moment that she'd walked out of its doors, and forcing herself to think about it again had obviously shaken her. The anger left her as quickly as it had come.

She collapsed back against the couch, covering her eyes with one hand.

'Oh, God,' she muttered, shaking her head. 'I'm sorry, Regina. I didn't mean to say any of that.'

'Don't apologise,' Regina said, taking a deep breath. She hoped that Emma wouldn't notice that her hands were trembling. 'It's my fault – it was a stupid question. I shouldn't have asked it.'

Emma pulled her hand away from her eyes, frowning. 'Are you apologising to me?'

'Yes… is that not okay?'

'It's fine,' Emma said, shaking her head. 'I'm just not exactly used to you doing that.'

Regina forced herself to smile. 'Consider it a part of my Evil Queen rehabilitation.'

Emma snorted, rolling her eyes back. 'Henry will be thrilled to hear that it's going so well.'

She settled back in her seat, obviously slightly calmer after her little outburst. Regina, however, still felt remarkably shaken. She had seen that flash in Emma's eyes; the shot of fear and then of self-loathing that she'd obviously spent the last five weeks trying so desperately to hide. Even now, only thirty seconds later, it was already buried beneath half-closed eyelids and clumped lashes. Regina bit at her bottom lip for a moment, gauging how reckless it would be to raise the question again. She decided that it was probably wisest not to.

But, then again, she had always had trouble listening to her own advice.

'I'm sorry for asking it,' Regina said quietly. Emma gave her a weak smile of acceptance. 'But… I have to ask it again. Because I know that something else is bothering you.'

Emma's eyebrows knitted together. 'What makes you think that?'

'Experience,' the mayor said simply. 'Sleep doesn't come easily when being awake is already driving you to despair. It's like having two conflicting realities in your head, each one worse than the other. No one wants to sleep when they have no idea what horror they're going to end up dreaming about.'

Emma leaned forwards in her seat, frowning. 'I don't…'

'I'm not going to tell anyone,' Regina said, her eyes completely level. 'I just want to make sure that you're okay.'

'You sound like Archie.'

'You've been to see him?'

'No,' Emma admitted, her gaze falling to the coffee table sitting between them. 'I thought about it. But… you know he was there. In the meeting. He… he was the one who knocked Moe down. Who got him off of me. I can't imagine really wanting to speak to him about what a hard time I'm having when he's the one who ended up doing all of the rescuing.'

At this, Regina blinked. 'I'm sorry – you think that Archie was the hero in this scenario?'

'He certainly managed to save me,' Emma said flatly, picking up her drink and swallowing it in one bracing gulp. 'I only riled Moe up. I made everything so much worse. And then I probably would've died if Archie hadn't come along and taken him down and gotten him off of me. So, yeah, Regina – I'd say that he was the hero there.'

'Emma,' Regina stammered, shaking her head. 'How can you think that? You—'

'You weren't there,' Emma said simply. Her eyes were dangerously shiny, her hands trembling against her empty glass. 'Yeah, I took all of the blows. I stood up to him and I tried to talk him down and then I got him so angry at me that he threatened to shoot Sidney. I did nothing of any use, Regina. The only thing that he asked me to do was to call you and I couldn't even do that right.'

Regina flinched. 'You… wanted me to come to the meeting?'

'Of course not,' Emma sighed, shaking her head. 'That's not what I meant – I've never, not once, regretted letting you know that something was wrong. If I'd thought that you were actually going to come I would've screamed at you not to and taken that bullet myself if it was the only thing that would have stopped you. It's just… you know. It's Henry.'

'Henry?' Regina frowned.

'Yeah. Henry still thinks I'm… the saviour,' Emma said, her voice utterly devoid of expression even as tears began to scratch at her eyes. 'He thinks I'm this hero, this knight in shining armour who's come along to save this town and everyone in it. But, in that meeting… he didn't see me there, Regina. My only job in there was to save about ten other people and I nearly killed every single one of them in the process. I would've died myself if Archie hadn't done all of the saving.'

'Emma—'

'And then I cried. I cried, Regina, in front of all of those people, sat on the floor with my hands shaking like some tragic little kid. They all saw, and they left me there. They didn't look at me like I was brave, or a hero, or anybody's saviour. They looked at me with pity, because I was pathetic and had no idea what I was doing, and I couldn't even make a simple phone call right.'

The words had dribbled from Emma's lips in a stream of pain and scotch and, without thinking about what she was doing, Regina suddenly got up from her seat and moved over to the space on the sofa next to her. Emma looked round at her, her face already crumpling. She was trying so desperately hard not to cry that it was all Regina could do not to wrap her arms around her and hold her close, the same way that she had done with their son a hundred times before.

Instead, she reached out and squeezed her shaking hand. It was cold.

'You need to listen to me now, Miss Swan,' she said in a low voice, forcing Emma to look up and meet her gaze. 'Because I'm about to be nice to you, and it may not ever happen again.'

A waterlogged choking sound came from deep within Emma's throat, one that almost resembled laughter.

'Fine,' she said, scrubbing a hand beneath her eyes. 'Go on.'

'You're right,' Regina said, nodding. 'I wasn't there. And I can't thank god enough for that fact, because I wouldn't have been able to do half of what you did: I wouldn't have been able to defend a room full of people that I didn't know, nor would I have been able to take every single one of Moe's blows without so much as a whimper of complaint even five weeks later. And I especially wouldn't have been able to call a woman to whom I owed absolutely nothing, watching as a gun was pointed at one of the only men in that room that I actually cared about, and then risked my own life by letting that woman know that things were definitely, definitely not okay. Archie may have saved you, Emma, but you don't quite realise what you did – you saved me. You protected me for reasons that I will never quite understand and you protected every single other person in that room. Because that is the saviour that Henry sees – that's the kind of hero that you are. You are one who takes absolutely zero shit from a bully, Miss Swan. It's a trait that's only ever annoyed me because that is the exact reason why we've always locked horns so badly. Because you never took any of my shit either.'

After she had finished speaking, Regina finally let go of Emma's hand. The sheriff had watched her the whole while, utterly speechless with her green eyes still gleaming with tears.

Eventually, she shook her head. 'Did you just swear?'

Regina rolled her eyes. 'Really? That is what you are taking away from this conversation?'

'No,' Emma laughed slightly, wiping her eyes. 'I'm just shocked. That was the easiest point to try and address first.'

Regina smiled tightly, crossing her legs over as she waited for a proper response.

For a few moments Emma just stared down at her knees, biting her lip. Thoughts were crashing about in her head and absolutely none of them made any sense. She shook her head to try and silence them, all the while entirely too aware of the warmth on her hand from where Regina had been holding it and the steady burn of the set of dark brown eyes that were closely watching her.

'Thank you,' she eventually said. It took every ounce of strength that she possessed, but she forced herself to look up as she did so. 'I don't really know what else to say. I just… thank you.'

'It's the truth,' Regina said quietly.

'Some of it,' Emma shrugged. 'You put quite a spin on it though.'

'It was the only compliment that I'm ever going to give you, Miss Swan. It had to be good.'

Yet again, Emma found herself laughing. She rolled her eyes, just about catching the tiny, genuine smile that tugged at the corners of the mayor's mouth.

And then she caught sight of the clock. She flinched.

'Oh,' she said with a groan. 'I should probably get going. I promised Mary Margaret I wouldn't be home too late.'

'She sounds like your mother,' Regina said before she could stop herself. She almost bit her tongue off the moment the words had passed through her lips, waiting with cold dread for Emma to pick up on this comment.

Mercifully, however, she seemed to miss it altogether.

'She's still worried about me,' Emma said, slowly standing up. 'I think she just doesn't want me running into any bars and then ending up comatose under the toll bridge.'

Regina smiled, standing up to join her. 'Then whatever you do, please don't tell her that I gave you scotch. I'm not fooled by that demure schoolteacher exterior for a moment – I'd imagine that she could pack quite a solid punch.'

'You don't say,' Emma snorted to herself, digging about in her pocket for her keys. As she did so, however, she found herself swaying slightly. She lurched sideways into the couch, the numbness of her teeth suddenly becoming startlingly apparent. 'Oh. Right.'

'And on an empty stomach,' Regina rolled her eyes, walking over to the door. 'Do you want me to call you a cab, Miss Swan?'

'No, I'm alright,' Emma replied, following the mayor into the hallway. 'I can walk, it's not far.'

'Are you sure?' Regina asked doubtfully. 'I can walk with you if you like?'

'And leave Henry alone again? Don't worry. I'll be fine.'

They had reached the front door. With her hand on the door knob, Regina worriedly eyed the hollowness beneath Emma's eyes and the now permanent shaking of her hands. But she forced herself to nod.

'Okay,' she said slowly. 'If you insist.'

She opened the door and Emma stepped outside, turning back to face her before she walked down the path. There was a small but entirely genuine smile on her face as she spoke.

'Thank you again,' she said quietly, tucking her mess of blonde curls behind one ear. 'For inviting me. And for… you know. What you said.'

'It's quite alright,' Regina said, leaning one shoulder against the door. 'I did mean it. All of it.'

Emma nodded, swallowing. 'I know.'

There was a beat, and Emma found her eyes locking firmly onto Regina's dark ones. Something caught in her throat. She could see the concern in the mayor's face, tinged with something utterly unfamiliar. For a split second it almost looked like longing. But then it disappeared, brushed away by the familiar cool expression of a mayor who didn't long after anyone.

'I'll come and get my car tomorrow morning,' Emma said.

'That's fine,' Regina replied, smiling at her. 'Goodnight, Miss Swan.'

'Goodnight, Madame Mayor.'

And Emma finally forced herself to turn away, walking down the path and feeling a sad lump rising in her throat when she heard the front door shutting behind her.

With the light of the hallway no longer shining across the front yard, the path was dark. Emma swallowed, her anxiety now so familiar to her that she almost didn't register it, before she zipped up her jacket and forced herself to hit the sidewalk with her head down. The street was deserted. With her thumbs looped through the pockets of her jeans, she took a few steps into the darkness. It was only the faint rustle of bushes nearby that caused her to look up again.

She froze.

The shadow of a man was stood barely ten feet away, tall and completely still and looking straight at her. There was a beat where Emma's body simply stopped working; her lungs drying up and her muscles turning to lead. The shadow stepped forwards. Half a second later Emma registered the cold, screaming fear that rocketed through her body, sending her tumbling backwards into the nearest tree with a thud.

Her shoulder knocked against the trunk, her boots skidding over the exposed roots, and then she was on the floor, the shadow still standing ahead of her. It was moving closer. Her hand reached instinctively for her belt, fumbling in the pitch darkness for her gun. With a stone-drop of panic in her stomach, she realised that she didn't have it with her. The man shuffled closer. Without thought, an agonised scream ripped forth from Emma's lungs, tearing down the deserted street. As it echoed the man stopped moving, his head looking wildly around to see who had heard it. He got his answer when the mayor's front door opened once more, bright light streaming across the yard and lighting up the image of the sheriff, sprawled across the floor with tears streaming down her face, like a Times Square billboard.

Regina tore down the path without a moment's hesitation, running towards Emma even as her heels slipped across the damp bricks. She reached the sheriff's side and crouched down, trembling hands reaching out to calm her down. It was then that she heard the panicked cough from ahead of her and looked up to see the man who was stood before them. A hiss of annoyance escaped from between her teeth.

'Sidney,' she barked, her voice seething with venom. 'What the hell are you doing here?'

Wrapped up in his beige trench coat and hat, a camera clasped between his hands, he simply shook his head in response. No words came. His dark eyes fell back to the blonde woman on the floor before him, mud smeared up her jeans and hot, terrified tears still slick across her cheeks. She was shaking so violently that he began to panic. He took a tentative step forwards, one hand outstretched. He was immediately cut off by the snarl of the mayor's voice.

'Don't you dare,' she said, shaking her head. She reached forwards, helping Emma to sit up. 'Get the hell off of my path, Sidney. Now.'

He opened his mouth to respond. 'I'm so sorry, I—'

'Go!' Regina all but screamed. Sidney barely flinched before he turned on his heel and ran, the camera clutched pathetically to his chest.

Regina turned back to Emma, sliding her arm around her waist like she had done on another night painfully similar to this. Forcing her to stand up, she led the trembling, sobbing woman back into her house. As she guided her into the living room, she didn't notice the small boy who was sat nervously at the top of the stairs.

'Sit down,' Regina said, gently steering Emma over to the sofa. In the bleak light of the house she couldn't quite believe how pale the sheriff was: her skin was sickly and translucent, the scar on her temple now obvious and cutting a trench through the clammy flesh. 'I'm going to get you some water. Wait here.'

She paced across the house and into the kitchen, returning moments later to find Emma leaning forwards with her head buried in her hands. Regina sat down close by her side, holding out the glass. 'Here.'

A violently shaking hand reached out to take it. 'Thanks.'

Silence fell, only sporadically interrupted by the clink of Emma's teeth against the glass and the gargling sound of her holding back sobs that came from somewhere deep within her throat.

The question that eventually came was one that Regina had been silently pleading with her not to ask.

'What was he doing here?'

It had almost been rhetorical. The silence that followed it, however, was heavy and charged with something that felt dangerously close to guilt. Opening her glassy eyes, Emma looked suspiciously round at the woman sat beside her.

'Regina?' she asked slowly, putting down the glass. '…what was he doing here?'

The mayor opened her mouth to reply – to lie, to say that she didn't know; she wasn't sure which. But nothing came. Her dry throat cracked and she realised with a drop of her stomach that she could no longer hold Emma's questioning gaze.

The moment that her eyes fell back down to the carpet, Emma inched away from her on the couch.

'He…' she choked out, shaking her head. 'He had a camera, Regina.'

Regina's bottom lip was trembling as she opened her mouth once more, trying to force words out. Any words. But still nothing came, and Emma's whole body thudded back against the couch.

No, her eyes shut momentarily. There's no way.

'Regina,' she said, hating herself for how pleading she sounded. 'Please, please tell me that he wasn't spying on me. Please.'

But Regina just looked up with an expression that begged for forgiveness before the words had even formed on her tongue. Emma's face collapsed. She had jumped to her feet and was tearing towards the closed door a moment later.

'No,' Regina stammered, following her and grabbing hold of her wrist. 'No, Emma, wait – please. I can explain.'

'Get off of me,' Emma tried to put away, realising with a rising panic that the mayor was a lot stronger than she'd ever given her credit for. She reached for the door handle with her other hand, missing it by an inch as Regina tugged her backwards.

'I can explain,' she whimpered. Her dark eyes were swimming, scattering across Emma's face as she tried desperately to read her expression. 'He… after the sheriff's election, I had him keep an eye on you… I didn't trust you and—'

'You didn't trust me?!' Emma exploded. Her breath was catching in her lungs and every word was painful, struggling to form and blocking her throat. She couldn't inhale properly. The air in that room was poisonous and she needed to be out of it.

'But since what happened, Emma, it wasn't like that – I was worried about you and I realised that he was still following you so I thought—'

'You thought what? What, Regina? That you could just use your little puppet as a fucking informer on me? What?'

The sheriff was looking at her with an expression that nearly destroyed her. Her green eyes, enormous and still spilling over with tears, wordlessly screamed the one thing that Regina did not want to hear: I thought that I could trust you.

'I just needed to make sure that you were okay,' Regina said, still clinging onto Emma's arm.

'Then ask!' Emma's voice was verging on hysterical now. She finally managed to tug her wrist free of Regina's grip but she didn't reach for the door again. Her breathing had become stilted and the room was crumbling beneath her feet, but she forced herself to keep speaking. 'That's what people do, Regina! You even managed to do it yourself a couple of times, so why the hell would you think that something like this would be okay?'

'I didn't… I wasn't thinking,' Regina shook her head, her face collapsing. 'Emma, please. I was trying to help you. I just wanted to know that you were okay.'

'Well, guess what, Madame Mayor?' Emma hissed, throwing the door open and storming out into the hallway. 'I'm not okay. I've never been less okay. You told me once that the world isn't all teeth and claws, and, as it turns out, you fucking lied – the world is nothing but teeth and claws and shadows and people that you can't trust. My world is one big fucking nightmare with the goddamn lights switched off, and I'm not okay. I don't know how to be okay anymore. My light switch has fallen off of the wall and you just smashed it beneath your stupid fucking heels.'

She had reached the front door, pulling it open more vigorously than she'd intended and slamming it so hard behind her that the surrounding windows shook in their frames. As she retreated down the path the house fell oddly silent.

Stood in the middle of the hallway, Regina's hands tugged at the bottoms of her sleeves. She waited for the cold feeling of absolute self-loathing to leave her. The pathetic tears that had started to dribble down her cheeks let her know that it wasn't going anywhere. She turned and walked into her office, taking a deep breath before closing the door behind her with a click.

At the top of the stairs, Henry sat with his forehead resting between two of the banister rails. The rest of the evening disappeared from his memory, replaced only by the slamming of doors and Emma's terrified, utterly betrayed screaming. He realised after a moment that he could hear crying from his mother's office, but he didn't go down. Not because he didn't want to see her: because he knew without question that she wouldn't be able to face him.

A/N: so I realise that a lot of you are going to HATE me for what I just did here, but please keep your toys in the pram ;) it's all under control, I promise!

Come and say hello on tumblr if you're got one, I love to hear from you lot :) I'm starsthatburn over there as well.

Also this is REDONKULOUSLY close to getting its 200th review - I'll be doing another one-shot for whoever gets it so if you have any ideas then throw them at me!