Chapter Ten

Emma was on the main street in Storybrooke, and the town was empty. She couldn't tell what time it was. There was no sun in the sky, but it was still light, though everything was black and white. She started to walk, having no idea where she was headed.

She soon found herself standing at Regina's front door. There were lights on inside, and the sound of voices. Emma wasn't sure what she was doing there, but she was sure she needed to get inside.

She found the knocker on the door and banged hard. Footsteps approached the door, and Regina opened it with a smile, that quickly faded. Everything inside Regina's house was in colour, but outside was still black and white. Emma wanted to be inside with Regina so badly.

"Hello, can I help you?"

"Can I come in?"

Regina stepped to block Emma as she attempted to step in the house. She cocked her head to the side, in confusion.

"I'm sorry, who are you?"

"Regina, it's me! It's Emma."

"Sorry, dear, but I don't know an 'Emma'."

"Henry!" Emma called out, as she saw him over Regina's shoulder, walking through the foyer.

Henry furrowed his brow in confusion. "Mom, who is that?"

"Henry, it's me," Emma tried to call out, as Regina turned from her, closing the door.

"Nobody, Henry, just a drifter," Emma heard Regina say, just before the door clicked shut.

"No! No! It's me," she cried out, banging on the door, but no one came.

Emma woke with a start, disoriented, as her panicked eyes darted around the room. She was on her pull-out couch, in her Boston apartment, covered in an off-white afghan blanket. She tried to calm herself, but tears were flowing uncontrollably. She couldn't regulate her breathing.

She pushed the blanket off of herself, and sat up, trying to orient herself to her surroundings. Her eyes shot immediately to her old bedroom door, and she remembered that Regina was here, and she wasn't alone.

The door was cracked slightly, and Emma debated whether or not she should peek in just to be absolutely sure that Regina really was there. She told herself she was being ridiculous, and of course Regina was there, but a nagging feeling inside her told her she should check, anyway.

She got up and tiptoed across the room, pushing the door open silently.

Well, almost silently.

She had forgotten that the door creaked at the halfway point, and by the time she remembered, it was too late. Regina shot up in her bed, and blinked a few times at Emma's silhouette in the doorway.

"Emma?" Regina asked, her voice still husky from sleep.

"Sorry," Emma mumbled, "I was just…" Her voice trailed off, but she made no attempt to leave the doorway as she continued to stare at Regina.

"You were just? Emma, what's wrong?" Regina asked, the concern evident in her voice.

Emma's first instinct was to lie, and say everything was fine, but considering that Regina had just dropped everything in her life to travel to Boston with her, she supposed she owed her the truth, at the very least.

"I had a dream," Emma said, as she took another step into the room.

"A nightmare?" Regina asked, holding out her hand and motioning for Emma to come closer. It was all the invitation that Emma needed, as she quickly closed the distance between the doorway and her old bed, and climbed in next to Regina.

"I dreamt I came to your house, and I knocked on the door, and you didn't know who I was. You couldn't remember me. And Henry was there, and he didn't know me either. You shut the door and I was outside yelling and knocking but you wouldn't come back. When I woke up, I was crying, because I was so scared because I thought I was alone again, like I didn't have Henry, or you, anymore."

With the revelation, the tears started again, and almost as if it were instinct, Regina wrapped her arms around Emma and pulled her closed, rocking her just as she had in Storybrooke the night before.

"It's okay now," Regina whispered, as she stroked Emma's hair, "I'm right here."

Emma sobbed silently against Regina's chest as she wound her arms around her and held on tight. She focused on the smell of Regina's skin and the rhythmic sound of her heartbeat to help her calm herself. It didn't take as long for her to regain her composure this time as it had the night before, and she was grateful for that. Even when she stopped crying, Regina continued to rock her and stroke her hair.

"And you should know by now, you can't lose us, Emma. It's never going to happen. You will always have me and Henry."

Emma snuggled in closer to Regina. "Do you promise?"

"Of course, Emma, no matter what. I know you've never been used to people staying in your life before, but we've fought too hard to get to where we are now."

"Where are we now?" Emma asked, softly.

"I'm not really sure." Regina admitted. "Friends, I hope."

"Friends… I kissed you," Emma reminded her.

"I know."

"I don't know what that means," Emma admitted.

"Well… I guess the question would be, was it the curse, or was it you?"

Emma chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. "I honestly don't know, Regina. I don't know what of anything I did was the curse, and what was me." And that was the truth. The time since she tethered the Dark One to herself, up until this moment, all seemed like a hazy blur of action and impulse and she couldn't remember what had really driven her to do any off it.

"Maybe we don't need to figure it out right now," Regina offered.

Emma nodded. She could tell that the line between friendship and something more was starting to blur, for her at least, but she wasn't sure if she was ready to talk about it. "All I know is this is where I want to be. I have never felt safer than I do with you," she said.

"You will always be safe with me, Emma, I promise," Regina said, hugging her tighter.

Emma wasn't sure exactly when she fell asleep, but when she woke up, she was still in Regina's arms, in her old bed, in Boston. Thankfully, she hadn't dreamed again, but now she was face to face with Regina, whose dark eyes seemed to be studying her intently.

"Morning," Regina said, softly.

Emma blinked at her for a moment, chasing the last remnants of sleep away. "Morning," she whispered back, before finding her voice. "You could have sent me back to the sofa bed."

Regina shook her head. "I wanted you to stay here, in case you had another nightmare."

Emma supposed that made sense. She'd had two nightmares in two nights, it wasn't much of a stretch to assume she'd have another one.

So she nodded. "Thanks."

"So," Regina sighed, still making no attempt to release Emma from her embrace. "At the risk of sounding like a broken record, how are you feeling this morning?"

"I…" Emma let her voice trail off, as she realized she'd taken no inventory of her emotional state yet this morning. "I feel the same, but less."

Regina rolled her eyes. "Well, that's helpful."

"I think the curse changed me, Regina. I don't feel like I did yesterday, but I don't feel like myself, either. I'm caught somewhere in between."

"Fair enough," Regina nodded, as she finally let go of Emma and sat up. "So, I suppose we'll need to go grocery shopping?"

Emma groaned as she stretched. "Yeah," she agreed, "there's a supermarket not far from here."

Regina nodded as she got up from the bed. "Do you want the shower first?"

Emma smiled and shook her head. She'd never really lived with anyone - other than her parents, and Neal, if that even counted - and she wasn't really sure what she was expecting from this. She was sure that grocery shopping and politely asking who wanted to shower first wasn't it, though.

Then again, neither was cuddling up in bed and sleeping next to Regina.

Regina's behaviour was actually baffling her. In the past twenty-four hours, she'd told Regina she wanted to fuck her, she'd nearly killed her boyfriend, and then she'd kissed her directly after that.

Regina should want to kill her, but instead, she dropped everything to drive her four hundred miles away, and rocked her to sleep.

It didn't make sense.

Something was definitely up.

"Look at us, acting all domesticated," Emma commented, as she and Regina walked down an aisle of the supermarket together. The situation was awkward, to say the least, and Emma hoped that a joke might alleviate some of the tension.

Regina raised an eyebrow as she watched Emma drop a box of Pop Tarts into the cart. "Seriously?"

"What?" Emma looked at her, in utter confusion. "You think because I'm the darkest evil in the universe I don't like red velvet flavoured toaster pastries? They're only here for a limited time, you know."

Regina rolled her eyes, but held back the biting comment that was on the tip of her tongue, since this was the most Emma-like she'd seen Emma act since she became cursed in the first place. "Can you at least refrain from talking about curses when we're out in public?"

Emma shrugged. "This isn't Storybooke," she reminded her. "You can be out all day in Boston and not run into a single person you know. No one's going to care what I talk about, trust me."

"I see why you like it here. Anonymity," Regina commented.

"Yeah, well, I mean that helped with the line of business I was in. But it was more than just that," Emma sighed. "I know you think I didn't stay any place very long, before I came to Storybrooke, because of all that digging you had Sydney do into my past, but the actual truth is, I was in Boston a lot longer than you think I was. Sydney just didn't know that, because I had no permanent address for a lot of that time."

"What do you mean?" Regina asked, confused.

"I mean, I didn't have a place to live. I was living in my car, I couldn't get a job, I didn't have any money and I… well, let's just say, it wasn't a great time in my life," Emma admitted. "But, this is also where I finally got back on my feet. I made a life for myself here, and I learned I could survive. Like I said, it's not home, but I feel safe here."

Regina sighed and nodded. "I didn't really expect to get into such deep discussions in the supermarket," she said, smiling.

"Me either," Emma shrugged. "But we kind of need to, don't we? Get into deep discussions, I mean."

"Yes, very much so," Regina agreed, and cringed as Emma dropped a box of Froot Loops into the cart. "And if you don't stop with that sugary crap, a deep discussion of your eating habits is going to make it onto the agenda as well."

Emma laughed, and reconsidered the box of Lucky Charms. "It's kind of nice though, isn't it?"

"What's nice, dear?"

"Being here without magic. I mean, I miss Henry and my parents, but… there's no pressure here."

"No savior pressure, you mean?" Regina asked, to clarify.

"Yeah, exactly."

"That is definitely going on the agenda," Regina noted.

"Yeah," Emma nodded. She knew there was no use in fighting it now, as it was the one thing that she need to talk about the most. "So what else is on the agenda? The curse… and I'm assuming everything from yesterday? What else?"

"Well, let's start with those things, and go on from there, shall we?" Regina suggested.

"Okay," Emma agreed, though she was in no way looking forward to this.

"So what's first? Curse? Savior-hood? Robin Hood… or?" Emma said, once they were back in the apartment, and had put all the groceries away.

"Or perhaps what happened in the back alley behind the bar, or what you confessed to me yesterday morning?" Regina suggested, knowing full well that's what Emma was alluding to. "What would you like to discuss first?"

Emma thought for a moment. "Robin."

Regina raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Really? Why?"

Emma shrugged. "Seems like the easiest place to start."

"Okay, so start."

Emma breathed a heavy sigh. They were sitting on the couch in the main room, which faced out to the city. It was a big room with big windows but suddenly it felt claustrophobic.

"How mad are you?" Emma asked, taking Regina by surprise, again.

"What makes you think I'm mad?"

"How could you not be? I tried to kill him… we can't just act like it didn't happen, because it did. And yeah, it was the curse, but… it was also me. It's not like thoughts like that never crossed my mind before, it's just that under the curse, I can't control them."

"The man is the curse; the curse is the man," Regina muttered.

"What?"

"I found it, in one of the books I was researching in. A Dark One, I don't even know who, but he wrote that on a piece of paper. I brought it with me," Regina said, getting up to retrieve the paper from her suitcase in the bedroom.

She returned a moment later, and began to read aloud: "My darkest desires boil just below the surface now. It is not a man and a curse any longer. The man is the curse; the curse is the man. Perhaps it's not a curse at all. Perhaps it is just the man, amplified."

Emma looked down at the paper in Regina's hand. "Looks like gibberish, from here."

"It's Elvish."

"Of course it is. Whatever it is, it's pretty damn accurate, actually. That's what it's like. It's like Emma, amplified."

"So you wanted to hurt Robin," Regina nodded, letting that information truly sink in.

Emma shrugged. "He hurt you first."

"So, what, you were defending my honour?"

"In my own fucked up way, yeah, I guess I was," Emma nodded.

"Because if you want to punch Robin, then all those things you said about wanting me were really you, too, weren't they?"

Emma bit her lip and continued to look straight ahead as she nodded.

"How long have you felt this way."

"A hell of a lot longer than I've been cursed," Emma admitted. "It was just easier to push it down, before then."

"Why didn't you ever say anything?"

Emma turned to look at Regina, with her best are-you-fucking-kidding-me look. "Seriously?"

"Nevermind. Stupid question," Regina admitted. "So I guess the question remains, then, where do we go from here?"