I've decided to change the rating on this story. Nothing graphic, just thought that the themes were a little more adult than I remembered. Things from canon but adapted for this story.

Chapter Three: Trust

Four years later.

Near Boston MA

It took Arizona's social services weeks to track down the people who had kidnapped Emma and moved her several states from her place of birth. Since she had taken to escaping and wondering the streets so often, she had a good memory of the route back to the single-story house they occupied. No one told her exactly what happened to them, but she saw and heard enough to know that they'd been carried from the property in body bags. Since she had been half afraid that the police would send her back to them once Regina returned to her life, Emma was more than a little relieved when she realised that they were dead.

Returned to Boston, two years passed while she was sent to doctors, counsellors and specialist children's homes. Eventually, when they realised that she wasn't going to open up to anyone, they threw her back into the foster system. Fortunately, this time a genuinely nice couple, David and Mary-Margret Blanchard, took her in.

But nice as they were, Emma never managed to find the courage to completely let her guard down with them. They had a son, James, who was three years younger than her and a model child. When she got into trouble at school or in public, he never failed to ask if she was ok, and it unnerved her. How was she supposed to compete with that? As she aged through her teens, becoming increasingly disillusioned with high-school and finding her place in the world, tensions began to run high.

"You missed your curfew again last night, Emma," David said as the now fifteen-year-old stumbled into the kitchen, wearing the same outfit she'd gone to sleep in. "What was it this time? Got the wrong bus again?"

Emma grunted and fell into her usual seat at the table. "Just lost track of time I guess." She pushed her glasses further up her nose and avoided eye contact. Being able to see clearly had been a novel experience after several years of blurry reality, but being able to see the stark disappointment on her guardians' faces, or the pity on their son's was not such an exciting prospect.

Mary-Margret placed a plate of eggs, sausage and pancakes none too gently in front of the teen. "Well, if you won't even try to make an effort to be home on time…" she trailed off as she often did when she knew she needed to be firm.

David picked up the threat though and finished it, "…then you won't be going out at all."

The teen shovelled a forkful of pancake and sausage into her mouth, but barely tasted it. A white-hot anger grew from the back of her mind. They couldn't lock her away. No one could. She wouldn't let them. She wasn't a weedy little kid anymore. Four years after an angel had come to her rescue, she'd gained a healthy weight and through her own excursions – climbing trees, fences and various other vertical challenges – she was stronger than she'd ever been. The jocks at school had learned to leave her alone after she broke the star player's nose and the other kids knew her only by her reputation for being unstable and violent.

The world didn't want her. Somewhere beneath her anger, she knew that David and Mary-Margret were trying to do the right thing, but she wasn't in a compromising mood. She glanced at James and wondered again why he'd gotten the chance for a stable upbringing and she'd been thrown away like trash?

All week, Emma's anger simmered. Why should she be held to account by all of these adults? Even the ones who claimed to care gave up eventually. So, it was only a matter of time before David and Mary-Margret joined the ranks of the defeated. She needed to get out – to leave before they had a chance to throw her out.

With these thoughts buzzing around her head, her mood swings intensified and so did the rows with her foster parents. Since it felt like a foregone conclusion, Emma stole a handful of cash from a tin in the kitchen, emptied her school bag, filled it with everything she thought she might need and climbed out her bedroom window.

Though she told herself not to look back, she reached the end of the street and felt compelled to stop. Am I really doin' this? she wondered briefly, the magnitude of her decision hitting her. It was a question she'd asked herself many times already, but each time she came to the same dilemma; what was the alternative? If she was going to end up wandering the streets again, looking for a way to survive, she wanted to be the one making that choice. She struggled to admit it to herself, but her greatest fear now was being told that David and Mary-Margret didn't want her. If they told her to go, it might destroy her, but if she left first, she could always pretend that they might have wanted her to stay.

Dinner that night had been another tense affair after the school called to question Emma's absence. When asked why she'd skipped, she squirmed inside and gave her usual shrug. It was the same old story. "No one wants me there, so why go?" she'd muttered eventually. David had sighed long and hard and Mary-Margret whispered a soft 'oh, Emma', but that was it. Emma took it as the sign it had to be; they'd given up.

There were no lights on when she gave into temptation and turned to take one last look at the Blanchard residence. The neighbourhood was quiet, peaceful, completely opposite to the chaotic noise of thoughts and feelings raging around the teen's brain. Emma felt herself waver and gritted her teeth. She pulled the straps of her bag tighter and pulled her hood over her princess curls.

As her boots pounded the pavement, her thoughts turned to her saviour from four years ago. Regina had been a part of her life so briefly that the woman should be no more than a passing thought, but she had ridden in like a Valkyrie, chopped heads and ridden out just as swiftly, leaving Emma with whiplash and a void that nothing else had filled.

In her darkening thoughts, it was yet more evidence that her life was meant to be lead alone.

Phoenix AZ

Regina Mills stood in the cemetery, red-rimmed eyes fixed on her father's grave and feeling like the world had just ended. He hadn't even been sick very long. Or, at least, it felt that way to her. She'd returned home after her last year of college to find Henry Mills looking frailer than her last visit just the month before. Over a period of three weeks, he then went from stumbling around the house, to bed-rest, to an induced coma – all without the doctors knowing what was wrong with him.

And now this, she thought solemnly.

He was never coming back. Her beloved father had met his untimely end and left her alone with her mother. It pained her to realise how selfish the thought was, but part of her felt dread at the prospect of a lifetime with Cora Mills for company without the buffering effect of Henry Mills' calm interventions.

Years ago, after a few semi-public incidents involving her mother's over use of corporal punishment, Mr Mills had put his foot down and threatened legal action against his wife if she beat their daughter again. Since then, Mrs Mills had kept her disciplinary strategies to verbal punches and made sure to do so out of her husband's earshot, but near constant criticism had hurt Regina nonetheless and her father's warm presence had been her only refuge.

As an adult, she should have felt able to assert herself, but Cora had a way of always making her feel like she was five-years-old again. Now, with the assets of her father's company landing in her lap and her mother salivating already at the thought of what a widow was entitled to through her husband's life insurance, Regina felt little hope. Her mother was a leech and would keep her close, now more than ever.

Her fears were confirmed at the wake, where Mrs Mills acted the epitome of the grieving widow, all while hissing demands at her daughter to 'stand taller, cry less, eat more – but not too much…' the list went on. They were all the things that Cora Mills considered to be human. As if she had an internal repertoire of emotions and behaviours that she'd practised through the years to pass amongst the general population.

Through the next few days at home with her mother, Regina tried to seek out a place where she could be alone with her misery, but no matter where she hid and no matter how distraught she was, Cora needed her for one mundane task or another and insisted that she dry her eyes and stop behaving like a toddler.

"Honestly, Regina," Mrs Mills huffed after a week of hunting her daughter down in every possible hiding place in their sprawling home. "I might think that a loving daughter would spare a thought for her mother at a time like this. As usual, you think of no one but yourself." Her expression appeared more annoyed than usual but it wasn't until the next words fled her mouth that Regina understood why. "Your father has made settling his estate far more onerous than needed by tying everything up with legal barriers and I need you to sign a few things."

The young woman barked a humourless laugh. "So, you can't get your hands on his money because he gave it all to me in trust?" she concluded and felt something of a victory when her mother's already irate expression soured further.

Cora stormed off and left Regina to pick apart her deepening suspicions regarding her mother's motives and behaviour. Much as she didn't like the conclusions reached, increasingly, she wondered at the circumstances of her father's illness and ultimate death. The coroner would have found evidence of poisoning during the inquest, surely? But doubt continued to nag at her. While she couldn't prove foul play, Regina knew in her heart that Cora Mills was more than capable of murder if it suited her ambitions. It was for this reason that she swallowed her own heartbreak and joined her mother in all further meetings with her father's lawyers.

Several days into this process, Regina decided she needed a break and left after dinner to drive into the city centre. She parked half a block away from her favourite restaurant and waited. The sky darkened with heavy clouds and before long, fat drops of rain began to beat a rhythm against the wind-shield. She watched the drops gather and fall in rivulets down the glass. They reminded her of the many tears she'd cried the last couple of months, but it wasn't until the passenger door opened and a figure slid into the seat beside her that she realised how many more she could shed.

"Daniel," she sobbed as her face crumpled.