A/N: I hope I do this all justice …
She ran. Her feet pounded the sidewalk. Her bag slapped against her side. People looked at her. She didn't care. She ran as fast as she could, as fast as her work shoes would allow her. Outside her building, she was forced to stop to unlock the door before entering, heart hammering against her chest. She didn't take the elevator. She needed to run. Up the stairs, two at a time, until she reached the fourth floor and the burning in her lungs forced her to slow down. The last three flights were taken one step at a time, her legs now protesting too.
She fumbled for her key as she tried to get into the apartment, dropping it twice before finally succeeding in opening the door. Her bag landed on the couch, keys tossed after it. Breathing hard, she walked up and down the large living space. Up and down. Up and down. One, two, three, four, five, pause. One, two, three, four, five, pause. Breathe, Emma, breathe, she told herself. It wasn't working. She wasn't feeling calm. She wasn't in control. The edges of her vision blurred.
"FUCK!" she screamed, picking up the closest object which happened to be a pillow and throwing it at the far wall where it bounced and landed on the floor. Dissatisfied, she reached for another object, this time a photo frame holding an image of herself and her team at the five-year anniversary of Swan's Shelter.
Glass shards sprayed across the floor as the frame collided with the wall. Emma let out another scream and picked up a vase, lifting it high above her head.
"Woah, Emma!" Ruby yelled as she appeared in the room. "Ow, shit!" she cried as her bare foot was impaled on a sliver of glass.
"I hate her!" Emma screamed, ignoring her flatmate who was hopping around on one foot, trying to pull the shard from her toe, blood dripping onto the hardwood floor as she did so.
"Who?"
"Regina Mills!" Emma shouted. "I fucking hate her. She ruined my life." The vase followed the photo frame, ceramic daggers now adding to the minefield Ruby was surrounded by.
"Emma, stop!" Ruby bellowed back, limping towards her friend who was searching for something else to destroy.
"I hate her," Emma repeated, a half-drunk mug of coffee now in her hand.
Launching herself at the blonde, Ruby wrapped her arms around her distraught friend and wrestled her onto the couch. The mug dropped, unharmed, to the floor where cold, brown liquid spread quickly across the wooden boards, staining the edge of the rug as it came into contact.
"Emma, calm down. Talk to me. Tell me what happened," Ruby pleaded, struggling to hold the thrashing woman. Emma fought to free herself. She needed to throw things. She needed to be angry, to vent, to take out her frustrations, her pain. And then, quite suddenly, the body beneath her went limp.
The blonde let out a choked sob and buried her face in Ruby's neck. Knowing her friend would be unable to speak until she was ready, Ruby held her, wrapping her arms more closely around the shaking figure and trying to ignore the throbbing in her foot where blood continued to seep from the gash caused by the glass.
This wasn't the first of Emma's meltdowns which Ruby had experienced. They had been sharing an apartment ever since they met at college and Ruby was used to dealing with Emma when the blonde couldn't contain her emotions on her own. It was scary sometimes, to see the blonde lose control and be unable to calm herself down. Ruby had even had to call Emma's foster parents a few times but generally they managed to work it out between them. She just had to be patient and move at Emma's pace.
Already she could tell this was a big one. Over the years, Emma's breakdowns like this had become less frequent but also, in some ways, worse when they did happen. It had been a long time since the blonde had taken to trashing their apartment though. Ruby winced. Her foot hurt.
"Emma, sweetheart, what happened?"
"Regina Mills happened," Emma replied, words muffled in Ruby's neck. "I hate her."
"Who is Regina Mills?" Ruby asked.
"The woman from the shelter. The one you checked in last night."
"Oh, that Regina. You hate her?" Ruby had never heard her boss ever talk about one of their women in such a way.
"I hate her," Emma nodded as she pulled away from her friend at last. "I hate her." The look in Emma's eyes burned. Ruby shivered at the intensity. She believed those words.
"Why?" Ruby asked, completely puzzled about what could possibly have happened in the hour between her leaving the shelter and the two of them now lying on their couch, Emma's face blotchy and red and her eyes still wet with tears.
"She bullied me."
"What?"
"In high school," Emma clarified at last. "We went to high school together."
"Oooh," Ruby said. It was all making sense now. "You and Regina went to high school in Maine together?" She had temporarily forgotten that Emma had spent two years out of New York state after David had been transferred up to Maine for a short-term job.
"Yes. She was the school bully. She made my life hell. And now she's here. And she needs my help and … I can't do it, Ruby. I can't help her. I want to. I want to do my job but I can't forgive her for what she did to me."
Emma pushed herself out of Ruby's comforting grasp and stood up, resuming the pacing. Her shoes crunched over the glass and ceramics at the far end of the room but Emma didn't seem to notice. The sound reminded Ruby of her foot, however. Sitting up, she curled her leg so her right foot was resting on her left thigh and bent over to see the damage. It could have been worse, she mused as she pulled one final glass splinter out of the pad of her big toe.
"I hate her, Ruby," Emma said, her voice quiet now, the pacing ongoing. "I hate one of the women in my shelter."
"That's ok, Emma," Ruby assured her. "You don't hate her because of what she's been through herself. You hate her for what she did to you. That's ok. That's normal."
Emma ignored the use of the word 'normal' even though she hated it. "My job is to protect women. I need to protect Regina. I want to protect her from … whatever it is she's running from but -." Emma stopped abruptly, she looked down. "Shit, I'm sorry. I broke something."
She had no memory of throwing the pillow nor the picture frame nor the vase. This often happened when she lost control of her emotions and it was only when she came back to herself that she could take in where she was once more.
"Yeah, you kinda did," Ruby nodded. "But it's ok. We can clean it up. Keep talking about Regina. You do want to protect her, right?"
"Yes. Because it's the right thing to do," Emma nodded. "She needs somewhere safe but …" She stopped again. Ruby waited patiently, knowing she couldn't push Emma. "I hate her, Ruby. I hate her for what she did to me. She deserves to be safe and we can do that for her but … I don't want to." The final words were a whispered confession.
Green eyes, filled with tears, looked over at Ruby. Seeing the distraught woman, Ruby got to her feet and hobbled over, wrapping her arms around her friend. "It's ok," she soothed. "It's ok."
"It's not," Emma sobbed. "It's my job to keep women safe. How can I not want to? I'm a monster."
"No, you're human," Ruby said gently, hands rubbing up and down Emma's back. "You're not saying you want Regina to go back to whatever she was running from. You're just saying that you don't think Swan's Shelter is the best place for her to be. That's ok. We can contact Empower and see if they have space to take Regina and Henry. You won't be abandoning them or refusing to help them. You'll just be passing them to another great shelter."
Emma shook her head. "No, I can't do that."
"Why not?" Ruby asked. "Empower are great."
"Yes, but if I do that, I'm running away. I'm not facing my past. Regina Mills is one of the reasons I got into this career. I was victimised by her and her friends in high school. It's not the same as what our women go through but I've experienced those feelings of powerlessness and loneliness. Regina Mills did that to me and if I don't help her now she's a victim, I'm running from what made me who I am."
Ruby pulled back, forcing Emma to look into her eyes. "Ems, you're not running. You're doing what is best for you and all the other women. Do you think facing your past will help you become better at your job? Do you really need to take another trip down memory lane? I thought you were done with that. I thought we'd agreed your focus now is on the future."
"How can I have a future with this demon in my past?"
"Well, it sounds like the demon is in your shelter right now," Ruby remarked, even though she couldn't picture the woman she met the previous night being a bully. "You have to think about yourself and the ten other women we're keeping safe right now. With Regina there, can you do your job to the best of your ability for everyone else?"
"I don't know," Emma admitted. "I want to."
"I know you want to. But can you?"
Emma shrugged and stepped away from Ruby, heading towards the kitchen to find the dustpan. She needed to think. She needed to do something with her body to distract her mind. Ruby made her way back to the couch, plucking a tissue from the box as she went and beginning to wipe the blood from her toe.
"You're hurt," Emma noted as she came back, realising for the first time that Ruby's foot was smeared with blood.
"Oh yeah, but it's ok."
"Shit, I'm sorry," Emma gasped, dropping the clean-up equipment and rushing to her friend's side. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Ruby. I wasn't thinking. I just saw red, you know?"
"Yeah, I know. It's ok. I'm fine, honestly. The cuts are not that deep."
A wave of guilt washed over Emma. She had let her own emotions, or lack of control of her emotions, affect other people twice that day. She had screamed at a woman who had come to her shelter to be safe. She had caused Ruby pain. This wasn't Emma. This wasn't the woman Emma wanted to be. She was better than that. She was stronger than that.
"Regina stays," Emma said quietly as she helped Ruby clean her foot. "She stays."
Henry barely looked up when Regina entered their room. His eyes remained glued to the tablet as she walked over and lay down on her bed. She let out a sigh as she settled on the mattress, trying to process the events which had happened over the past hour. Guilt churned her stomach. She had no way of knowing who ran the shelter, of course, but she still felt bad for reappearing in Emma's life, fourteen years after they had last seen each other. It was obvious the blonde wasn't ready to see her again.
If she was honest with herself, Regina wasn't ready to see Emma either. For different reasons, of course. Emma was angry, and rightly so. Regina was ashamed, and deservedly so. She knew all teenagers did foolish things and made choices they weren't proud of. But Regina had been worse than most. She had been malicious, vindictive and downright mean. No one had ever said she was a bully back then but she now knew that was what she and her friends had been. It was embarrassing to think of how they had treated Emma and other peers in high school.
The irony was, Regina had been largely liked by her peers. To the majority of students she had been kind and pleasant. She was voted prom queen. She was a popular valedictorian. Her popularity, however, stemmed from a culture of fear. To be on Regina's bad side was a fate only a few people endured. Most of their classmates would turn a blind eye to the way in which she, Zelena and Vicky treated a handful of students, grateful it wasn't them and somehow accepting that this behaviour was ok, as long as they weren't directly affected.
She had been the ring leader; the one who chose their targets. Goaded, of course, by Vicky and Zelena but she was the boss. She was the one who could have stopped it. Yet she didn't. She had bullied Emma and other students, teased them, taunted them, made their school lives hell. Her gut clenched again, a physical representation of the emotional discomfort she experienced as she remembered how she had behaved.
Emma had never done anything to offend Regina or her friends. But she was an easy target. She was different, 'weird' as they had branded her. It took a while for the truth, that Emma was autistic, to come out. And yet that didn't stop them. If anything, it added fuel to the fire as the trio found other ways to taunt the girl. Regina sat up, stomach churning worse than ever.
"Henry, stay here," she said before dashing out of the room and running to the bathroom. Crouched over the toilet bowl, she threw up. Her ribs twinged in protest at the movement but she could do nothing to stop the emptying of her stomach. Eventually, she slumped, sweaty and exhausted, against the cubicle wall.
The nausea had gone, to be replaced by utter humiliation at the memories. Regina hated who she had been back then. Sure, her own high school experience had been amazing but she had destroyed those precious years for a number of others. She had created victims. Her stomach lurched and she heaved back into the toilet, bile burning her throat this time as she had nothing left to expel.
She was a victim now. She could relate now; she knew how those students felt. Alone, vulnerable, hurt, worthless, weak. She had made Emma feel like that and now she had, unknowingly, turned up at the woman's front door and asked for help. No, Regina said to herself, that wasn't fair. Emma deserved better. She pushed herself to her feet, flushed the toilet and exited the cubicle. Washing her face and rinsing her mouth in the sink, she returned to her room and began packing the few items they had used back into their case.
"Henry, can you go to the bathroom, please?"
"I don't need to go."
"Just go, please."
"Why?"
"Because we're leaving," Regina replied.
"But I like it here. They have burgers."
"We'll go for a burger tomorrow," Regina offered, anything to get her son moving. "Please just go to the toilet and then come back here."
The six-year-old huffed but left the iPad and climbed off the bed to obey his mother. Regina picked up the abandoned device and stowed it in her handbag. She unlocked the locker and pulled out their passports and the money she had stowed in there the night before. A final sweep of the room confirmed they had everything packed. Literally everything they owned now was sat in the suitcase beside her.
"Come on," she said as soon as Henry reappeared.
"Where are we going?" he asked as they walked down the corridor.
"We're going on an adventure," Regina replied. "Just me and you."
"And Dad?"
"Not right now," Regina said, not prepared to get into that conversation yet. She didn't even know how to begin talking to her son about the fact that he was never, hopefully, going to see his father again. At least, not before his eighteenth birthday. She knew she didn't have the right to keep them apart after that.
She pressed the button which activated the door release and steered Henry and their case through to the reception area. As she passed the front desk, she placed the locker key on it and muttered 'thanks' under her breath.
"Where are you going?" Ella asked, jumping to her feet at the sight of the two newest guests heading for the front door with their bags.
"We can't stay here," Regina said. "Thanks for everything but we'll be going now."
"Regina, you don't have to leave," Ella said, coming out from behind the desk.
"Yes, I do," Regina replied simply, turning back towards the door.
Before she could reach it, however, it opened. Emma's eyes locked on Regina's at once. Tension filled the room. Henry drew a little closer to his mother's leg, sensing something was off and needing the familiar comfort in this strange new world.
"We're leaving," Regina offered at last. "I'm sorry to have reappeared like this."
"Leaving? Where are you going?" Emma asked.
Regina hadn't thought that far. All she knew was that she needed to leave Swan's Shelter. She just shrugged. "We'll find a place."
"No, you should stay."
"I don't think that's a good idea, do you?" Regina sighed.
One, two, three, four, five, pause. "Yes, I do. You need somewhere safe, right? This is safe. I'm sorry about earlier. I let my personal feelings get in the way of my work and it won't happen again. I want you to stay here. We can help you. I … I can help you."
"Emma, I can't ask you to do that. Not after everything I did to you."
"It's in the past," Emma said firmly.
"It clearly isn't." Regina thought back to the explosion which she had witnessed only an hour earlier. Judging by the redness around Emma's eyes, the blonde had been crying wherever it was she had disappeared off to.
"It will be," Emma acquiesced. "I'm working on it. And while I'm working on it, you're going to be here. Safe. With Henry. Please, Regina. Don't leave. My work is to keep women safe and I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do that for you."
"Even after … everything?"
Emma nodded. "I'll keep you safe. This shelter will keep you safe."
There was another silence and then Regina seemed to sag where she stood. Nodding, she crouched down to explain to Henry that they weren't going to be leaving just yet. The boy was evidently confused but didn't question the change of plan in their already turbulent existence.
"Come on," Emma said, her hand on the handle of the suitcase. "Let's get you unpacked and settled. Once we've done that, maybe you should see if Belle is available."
"Belle?" Regina asked as they walked back into the main part of the building, Ella watching them go with curiosity.
"The psychologist," Emma reminded her. "I think perhaps you should talk to her before you and I sit down again. I've already made an appointment with my therapist for this evening. We can try again tomorrow if you like?"
"You're seeing a therapist? Because of me?"
"I mean, I'm not sure you can take all the credit. Autism affects my life in many ways. But I won't deny I've talked about my high school experiences with Archie before."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah, I think you've said that," Emma grinned as she pushed open the door to room 108 and let Regina pass through first.
Regina was dumbfounded at the change. Was this really the same woman who had disappeared, enraged, just an hour earlier? How was she now so composed, professional, friendly?
"Well, I am sorry."
"Let's just focus on the here and now. The wardrobe isn't big but many people find unpacking is an important first step. Makes them feel secure, like they have somewhere to come home to again. Do you want some help?" Emma offered.
"Mom, why are we unpacking?" Henry piped up from his bed where he'd already perched. "How long are we staying here?"
Despite the inner turmoil, Regina did the only thing she could: she turned to Emma for help. She had no idea how to talk to her son about what was happening. She had no idea what to tell him, how much to reveal, how much he'd understand. Emma would know, however. Emma would be able to help. The blonde shot her a reassuring smile before crouching down.
"Hey, my name is Emma. I work here. What's your name?"
"I'm Henry. What do you do?"
"I help people."
"Do I need help?"
"Not right now but I think you might need someone to play a game with. What do you say we go and see what games we can find in the common room?"
Henry's eyes lit up. "Yeah ok. Mom, can you come too?"
"Let me just have ten minutes to unpack and then I'll join. Is that ok?"
"Ok," Henry agreed, sliding from the bed and reaching for Emma's hand.
"Take your time," Emma murmured to Regina as she passed. "I'll keep him occupied and this afternoon we can talk about what you want to tell him."
"Thank you," Regina said just before Emma disappeared with her son into the corridor.
As soon as they were out of sight, Regina sank onto her bed, legs trembling. What was happening? How was Emma so ok now? Where had that justifiably angry, socially awkward woman gone and what was Regina supposed to make of the confident, accomplished, helpful and kind-hearted woman who seemed to have replaced her?
A lot had changed in Regina's life in the past twenty-four hours. Leaving her husband, driving across several states, arriving at a women's shelter. But for some reason, all of those monumental events paled in comparison to the fleeting, confused, emotional interactions she had just had with Emma Swan.
A/N: more character development. Don't worry, Emma will be addressing her compartmentalised emotions and you will see her session with Archie. And you'll also see Regina's session with Belle before our two women can start to grow closer. I am very conscious of making sure their dynamics are believable and that changes don't happen too quickly even if we all know what we want to see blossom between these ladies! So bear with me; it will happen but I need to get both characters into the right headspace before I can explore that element.