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The next day, Emma trudged into the hospital loyally. The nurses gave her a knowing nod, not so much as questioning her presence anymore, before she went into the room. She had expected to just sit down, as she did almost every other morning, to see a sleeping Regina. Unlike any other morning, however, today Regina was up, she was pacing around on the phone talking in a hushed tone, quick responses, clipped voice. Emma almost walked out. Almost.

"Yes, yes, I understand why you can't come in. Okay. Fine. Fine. I'll. We'll figure something out. Yes. Yes, okay." She pulled the phone from her ear and clicked the end button before dropping the phone on the table and slumping down on her chair, shaking her head.

"Everything alright?" Emma offered, raising a brow. Regina, who seemed to be utterly focused on what had been going on in the call, looked up in surprise when Emma voiced her presence.

"Miss Swan. I suppose not. Grahm isn't going to be coming in today and we aren't exactly full staffed today and…" She cut herself off. "I'm going to have to go in."

"Well. That's alright, right? Henry's in good hands here." Regina looked up at her and for a second, with that cold, distant look, Emma was certain that she would run away. But no. It faded just as quickly as it had come.

"They've been pulling him off sedation. So he's been waking up more frequently. I don't…I really don't want him to wake up alone."

Emma slowly sat down, as if it were just another day, before thinking fast and talking faster.

"I can stay with him if you want." An amused look. "I mean. I know I'm not you, obviously, but we can talk like. Comics or something. I think I've learned enough in the past week to get by." She grinned a little bit and then crossed her arms over her chest. "Just until you can get back or whatever. If you want. I know I'm not you, but I'm someone."

"He doesn't know you, Miss Swan."

"I'm a friend. If he's nervous about me, I can just get a nurse or someone to come in and explain it, right? And you said he was pretty trusting."

Regina raised a brow with the mention of being a friend, but said nothing more. It seemed like she had run out of options. So she nodded and stood up. She held her hand out, and for a second Emma thought she wanted to shake, but when she went for the gesture Regina shook her head.

"You're phone. I'll put my number in. If he wakes up, just shoot me a message."

Emma fumbled, looking through her pockets until she found her phone and handed it to her. Regina typed it in quickly, as efficient as always, and then handed it back.

"He'll be fine with me. I promise." It was the sort of promise that was empty in most senses, because Emma didn't actually know. All she knew was that she had thought quickly, and she might be regretting it later. Still, with a short nod Regina started to leave, trusting her boy to someone she had only met a mere while ago.

"Thank you. You're…Effort hasn't gone unnoticed."

Emma smiled reassuringly at her before she was alone in the room, with only beeping machinery and a boy she didn't really know. For a few minutes, she just sat where she had, before she switched seats for the one next to the boy.

Well. This was fun.

She reached for one of the many books that Regina had hauled in here with her before her hand lingered over a stack of comics that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. She hesitated before grabbing the first one in the stack.

How ironic. Captain America. The only thing she knew about that was what she had seen in the movies, and to be honest, she hadn't paid much attention to those, either. It wasn't for lack of interest. She just had a hard time taking a movie hero seriously, even if it seemed like that one had a lot more in common with her than she'd like to admit. She paged through the comic, stopping occasionally to read something that sounded interesting. It passed the time, at least.

"What're ya read…reading?" The sudden noise in the room made her jump, dropping the comic in the process. She picked it up quickly and set it down on the table next to her, looking around to see who had talked to her before her eyes locked with the boy she'd said she would watch. His eyes were open, though they seemed to be drifting back to close every so often, staying shut longer than what a blink would allow.

"Ah…Captain America?"

"Which one?"

Emma wasn't sure. She didn't even know how to look for that information. So she shrugged when she saw him open his eyes long enough to look at her.

"I don't know, kid."

He accepted this, nodding and letting his head fall to the side. "Do you know where we are?

Well. That was an easy question to answer. She nodded and looked around. "We're in a hospital."

"Are you sick?"

"Not…Not quiet, kid. You got hurt pretty bad and your mom had to go to work…So I said I'd stick around to keep you company."

"Oh…" Perhaps it was good that he still had something in him. He didn't seem to be in pain, but he was aware enough that he could talk to her. He wasn't confused, but he was in a state of mind that let him shrug off a whole lot of information. He wasn't questioning anything. "My names Henry."

"Henry. Yeah." He gave her a blank look. "Oh. Right. I'm Emma. I'm, uh. A friend of your mom's."

"You're a medic?"

"Well. No. Not really. Not anymore. I'm a firefighter. I'm the one that got you out of the school. You remember what happened at all?"

The boy shook his head, instead deciding to stay silent in the mark of everything that was happening around him. He accepted it, though. Emma could see that much. She wondered if it was better, him not knowing anything. She certainly wouldn't want to remember being caught in flames.

"Okay. Well. That's alright." He nodded, sleepily again. "You can rest if you want. I wouldn't mind."

"Not tired," he muttered, and Emma could have laughed. If it weren't here, if they were just normal people who were living around each other, if she was just babysitting this boy, then maybe it would have seemed normal. It would have seemed like a kid that just wanted to stay up late to watch whatever TV show he was into.

"Okay. What do you want to do, then?"

"Can you read to me?" The request was also so normal that she didn't hesitate to pick up the comic on the pile and scotch over towards him. "Whatever you were reading? I can tell you what…What one it is if you read to me."

"You want to help me with my comic book knowledge?"

"It's important," he insisted. Emma held back a chuckle before she nodded again and propped the comic between them. She really doubted Henry would be spending much time looking at it, and it wasn't as though comic books could be easily portrayed through speech alone. It was better than staying here silent, though.

When she was done, it seemed that Henry had drifted asleep again, and she moved to put the comic book back. When comfortable silence had come back into the room, he talked again.

"That was 21."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It was one of the first ones I ever read."

"That's a pretty early comic, huh? Didn't it start…In the fourties?"

"It was my grandpa's. Mom let me read it when I found it in the attic…"

She nodded slowly and reminded herself to be careful with it, just in case it was worth something. Which, she wasn't so sure it would be. It looked like it had been heavily read, paged through a couple million times. It was worth something to the kid, though, so she wasn't about to do anything stupid to it.

"What's your favorite superhero?" she asked, even though she had long since heard that bit of information from Regina. Wolverine. It was better than Superman, she supposed, though she still couldn't get the hype around it.

"Wolverine."

"Awesome. Love the claws." She stuck her fingers out and curled them as though they were claws, and swiped playfully at him. Henry gave her a weird look before he giggled, and let his eyes drift shut again.

"You don't really know much 'bout superheros, do you?"

Emma almost defended herself, but then remembering that it was a little kid in front of her, shook her head.

"Yeah. I didn't think so. That's okay…I can teach you."

"Think you're mom would be okay with that?"

He gave her a wide eyed, serious look. "It's superheros. Of course she'd be okay with it."

She chuckled and leaned back into her chair, reminding herself not to put too much weight into it just in case it tipped. They seemed to have no short list of topics they could discuss on the matter, but sooner than later Henry was falling asleep again, what was left of his hair falling into his face. Despite the pinkish nature of his skin that told her that his face, too, had been burned, he still looked babyish. Still smooth, still young. Not yet a man-not even close. The rasping behind his every word told her there was damage there, that his lungs were going to be messed up for a while, but he was talking at the very least, and it hadn't altered any of the high pitched noises that she associated with young boyhood. He seemed…Well, alright.

Emma found herself drifting as well, her mouth shut tight as her head hung behind her.

She'd found a half decent resting spot.

Dreams were a constant in her life. Back in Afghanistan, whenever a buddy had asked her how her day was going, she would respond with a frown and a simple, easy to remember phrase. "Living the dream."

Of course, most of the time it didn't feel like a dream. It felt like cold, hard reality. It felt like a kick to the shin, it felt lonely, it felt isolating. And it was only when her NCO, Stabler, responded that she understood some of it. "Yeah. Living the dream. You know, nightmares are also dreams."

She always tried to avoid them whenever she was in a public place. Of course, they were hard to avoid, but she'd learned tricks to wake herself up if she figured it out. At the station, there were times when she would bolt out of her bunk, her face drenched in sweat as she tried to erase them.

Having any sort of dream in a hospital was not her ideal spot.

It was the normal sort. Laying in her bunk. Explosions. Waking up, grabbing her M16, running with her unit to a cover spot. Kevlar on their heads. Morter, dust. So much dust. So much dust that clung to her skin and wrapped around her nose. Inhaling it. Coughing. Coughing again. Thinking about damage. Thinking about pain. Thinking about death.

Oh, so much dust.

Crawling. Trying to get away. No escape. The FOB ain't so safe now, is it? Get out, get away. Come out and fight, come out and play. Come on. Don't be a god damned coward.

Her unit falling around her.

Remembering that none of it is real. Or at least, that none of it is memory.

Wake up.

Her ribs hurt by the time she jerked awake, the motion of breathing too heavily suddenly taking it's hit. It felt like there was a gas all around her, but of course, that wasn't the case. She was in the hospital. At home. She wasn't a soldier anymore, she was a firefighter. The danger was passed.

Emma glanced around, trying to familiarize herself again with the place, and when her eyes met Henry, it felt as though she had swallowed a rock. He was looking at her with glazed eyes, not confused but simply aware. She wondered how long he had been watching her.

"Monsters try to get you?" he asked, and oh the compassion in his voice. The empathy.

"I…I guess."

"Monsters chase Mom, too. She says she can scare mine away, but they're harder when they know you." He took a moment, and it seemed like they were catching their breath together, as though they had just run a marathon together. "She say's I help fight 'um, but I don't really know how. I can try for you, too?"

Emma gave a weak smile and shook her head. "You got your own battles to fight, kid. I'll be fine."

"Superhero's always put others first."

"Well, then you'd be one fine superhero, kid."

He shrugged, letting it go. Just like that.

Had she ever been like that? So easy to just let things go?

She didn't think she'd be falling asleep any time soon, so she went to her phone, thinking that she could surf the web for some information about whatever comics Henry seemed to be interested in, just in case he woke up again and wanted to talk about that. What she saw instead was a single text message from Regina.

Hope all's well. Quiet here, so feel free to call if you or Henry need anything.

She needed a drink, but she doubted that Mills would bring such a thing into a hospital. So instead, she shot back a simple message and hoped that the day would end fast so she wouldn't fall asleep again.

It's fine. Henry's woken up a few times. Talked about comics.

And monsters, but she supposed Regina wouldn't want to hear about them.