There was smoke everywhere. And no escaping it, save for the oxygen bottles they had strapped to their backs.

When the call had gone out, Regina and her partner were on standby, both half asleep and in a daze. However, the panicked tone over the radio made them jerk into action. Daniel had gone for the keys, already in ignition and on, and they had lurched forward without another thought in the world. There was one thing that kept Regina on edge.

"Your mom will be fine, Gina. I promise." Regina wasn't so sure, herself, but it was impossible to call home and figure out if she was in or out of the office today. Even more impossible was the trying to figure out the radio traffic, the constant signals coming in. For a second, she wondered if there was training, and if someone had messed up and not used a private channel. It was in vain. As they got closer to the location, she could see the smoke.

The World Trade center, tower 1, was hit by a plane. We'll need all available resources.

Shit.

Daniel parked, sweat already starting to pour down his face as they got out. Regina, still young and fresh out of school, jerked towards the scene before Daniel caught her. "We need to figure out what's going on first. What they want."

Oh, how things fly when disasters happen. Getting information, being told where to go, get in there, be careful, watch out for your own back.

"Come on," Daniel muttered, already suiting up. Regina nodded in agreement, and even though she hadn't started to shake, she knew her eyes were wide, terrified. "Mills. Come on."

Smoke, so much smoke, go in, go in, get as many people out as you can, move, move, move, move.

Soot covered face, masks put on survivors, help them get out, forget about yourself. Service before self. Service before self.

Coughing.

So much death.

"Wheres D…"

Wake up.

Nothing dramatic ever happened anymore when Regina woke up. She didn't jerk to life like she had so many years ago. She just stayed. There wasn't ragged breathing, no sound of terror in her voice. It wasn't so much that she had gotten over everything, it wasn't that the memories, the nightmares, didn't scare her. It was the fact that she had relived it enough that her body had adapted. Most of the time, anyways.

There were times when Henry had found her in a cold sweat, crying, and he'd sat at her bed with his legs crossed, holding her tightly and offering her a stuffed dog for comfort. There was the time that Kathryn had woken her up when they were still partners, when they were in the rig and Regina had fallen asleep deep enough to dream. When Grahm had spent the night at her house and she had woken up screaming, and he had left her to calm down a terrified Henry.

Now, mostly, she awoke with a need to cough deep in her lungs, a relieving of the urge, and a ducking of her head to hide any tears that needed to escape. A glance at Henry to make sure that he hadn't woken up and noticed.

He was sleeping soundly. The mask was off of his face now, the burns starting to heal. He would be okay to leave soon, doctors told her, and even though she wanted nothing more than her boy home, a part of her wanted to tell them to keep observing him, make sure that nothing went wrong before he came home.

A knock on the door frame made her glance, and the words, "Miss Swan…" were on her lips before she could stop them. Except that it wasn't Emma, it was Kathryn who was coming in, out of her uniform, in street cloths. She sat down without an invite, looking at Regina carefully.

"Sleep well?" Her voice was much softer than Emma's would have been, and it was only a reminder that the other blond wasn't here.

"I…Yes. Very."

Kathryn nodded, even though her eyes gave away the fact that she didn't believe her, that she hadn't thought Regina had had a good nights sleep in a great many weeks. Maybe longer.

"You should really take a break. Henry's stable now. He'll be okay."

"I can't just leave him alone, Kathryn, you know-"

"I know. But I can stay here. I need to spend some time with my god son anyways, don't I?" Kathryn offered the smallest of smiles and leaned forward. "You, on the other hand, need a good drink, a good time, and a good rest. Before the rest of the city is more afraid of you and they go charging for a new director. Which, to be frank, I don't think I'd trust with much of anyone else."

Regina's gaze lingered on Henry before she tore it away. "I don't really do the whole drinking, having a good time thing anymore. You know that."

"Maybe you should start. You don't have to keep punishing yourself, 'Gina."

The statement was like a punch in the gut, and she looked down at the floor when Kathryn brought it up.

"It's been years. A long, long time. It's not your fault that Daniel-"

"Don't. Don't say his name. This isn't about him, this is about Henry."

"Henry's growing up."

"You don't need to remind me." She looked up at Kathryn, who sighed.

"It's something that we do. We take them in, we raise them as best as we can, and then they go off into the world. That's what we all do. You don't need to look after him all the time. He's not going to slip away."

"Everyone else did." A soft, spoken fact. A broken sentence, said by a woman who said she could never be broken. "I almost lost him. The same way that I lost D…The same way that I lost Daniel."

"Daniel didn't die in a fire, Regina."

"He died in violence. And I couldn't…I couldn't imagine Henry dying in violence."

Fire was violence. It was angry, it was biting. A force that humans thought they could control and so often failed at. It was, in a way, the thing that every human feared about themselves. Perhaps that was why they wanted to control it oh so much. Because fire was so human, so essentially human, that it hurt just to touch it.

"I know that you think that this is best. That you think keeping him close and not letting anyone but him near you the best option…But it's not. He could chose something that will lead him to the same things that your choices led you to. And you have to let him do it. Because he will resent you otherwise."

"I don't need your input," Regina snarled, curling her hands but refusing to look up at the woman.

"And so will everyone else. Regina. Pushing people away does the same thing."

"Perhaps that's how you figure out if they're worth it."

"But how do you know unless you give them a chance?" Kathryn studied her. "You have me a chance. A great chance. What happened?"

"You know what happened. You were my partner. We didn't have a choice."

"You had a choice. Professionalism is one thing, friendship is another. Why did you give me a chance?"

She thought back to those days, to spending time together in the rig. She thought of the time when she had introduced Daniel to the town, clad in uniform, happy to be there. She remembered Kathryn bringing over a beer when things had gone to hell.

"You wouldn't leave me alone." It wasn't mean, it wasn't dripping in venom. If anything, it was a sort of good job gesture. So few people refused to leave her alone, most just drifted away in the second that they got close.

"That's it?"

"I don't know, Kathryn. Maybe."

She nodded and got up, placing a single hand on Regina's shoulder. "Go. I'll watch Henry tonight. He can kick my butt at some video game that you, undoubtedly, would disapprove of, and we'll pretend that you know nothing of it in the morning. And you'll have a good time today. It'll be fine, Regina. It might even be fun."

With a reluctant sigh and another lingering glance at her son, Regina pushed up from her chair and walked out.

Emma stretched out on the couch inside the fire station, glancing very briefly at the TV and then at the recliner. Killian, who had been asleep there not an hour prior, was now gone. Rubbing her eyes, Emma pushed herself up and slowly started down the hallway, hoping to find someone to grab a bite to eat with before they got unlucky enough to get a call.

The beeping sound of the code being pushed in made Emma turn her attention to the doorway, and there was Killian, holding up two bags to display proudly to her before walking in.

"So," he started, stretching out one of the bags to her. "I got us both a sandwich. And chips. And if you don't like it, love, I would appreciate you not saying a word."

"Double meat?"

"Oh, you know it love." A wink. She shoved him lightly, grabbing the bag and setting it down.

"Shut up," she mumbled, unwrapping it and taking a large bite, hoping to preoccupy herself with eating so she wouldn't have to talk. Killian was sitting on the table behind her with his feet on one of the chairs.

"Now, I must ask, why on earth were you not late to the station today?"

"Got up late," Emma mumbled after swallowing, taking another bite. Killian didn't seem to grasp the hint.

"Is that so? Alarm clock didn't go off at 3 so you could stay at the hospital until 7?"

"Something like that."

"So why not stay there until 8? Or 9, for that matter?"

"I'm on call."

"Doesn't stop anyone else in this town."

She snorted. No. It didn't. People went on with their business and did what needed to be done when it needed to be done.

"Trouble in paradise, love?"

"It's a hospital. I wouldn't call it paradise."

That got a laugh out of him, though lord only knew why. "I thought for certain you'd have at least attempted something with Mills by now, and if you have and I haven't heard about it, then I'm hurt and disappointed to not be in your loop."

"There is nothing. She's not interested."

"You asked?"

"No. But she's not too interested in the friendship thing so I can't imagine there will ever…" she trailed off and looked at Killian. "Not that I want anything, anyways."

"Oh?" He smirked.

"Yes."

"Weird. I could have sworn that's what you were going for."

"Well. It's not. I just thought we could be friends. But that isn't going so well. So. I might as well stray from that."

"Something happen?"

"Yeah, yeah something did happen."

A long silence. "Are you going to tell me what it was, or…."

Even longer. She focused on eating her sandwich before she tore into the bag of chips and shrugged.

"She's just so damned….I don't know what's going on with her."

"Her son's in the hospital. I'm sure that's very stressful."

"And he's okay. He's being pulled from meds, he'll be home soon. Damn it, Killian, we're the ones that got him out of the fire, the least she could do is give me the time of day."

"She is. I don't know many other strangers that she'd let into his room."

She paused at that, taking her time to observe the cheeto in her hand before chewing and swallowing.

"She's lost a lot, Swan."

"Yeah, well. So have I. Which she'd know if we ever talked about anything without it becoming, inevitably, awkward."

"Some people can't deal with it as well as others. You know that just as well as I, love."

"What the hell happened to her anyways? What gives her the free pass?"

Killian seemed to hesitate. It seemed like something he didn't know if he should talk about, if he knew much at all.

"Well. From what I've heard, and I've heard very little, New York wasn't kind to her. She learned a lot from that. And then she moved here with her husband. Died overseas, he did. Not sure which branch he was in. Want to say Marines, but I could be wrong. And then she got little Henry. There's more in there, I know that much, but it's mainly hushed around the town."

She didn't say a word for a while. Well. It explained a lot. Not everything, but a lot.

"Story sound at all familiar, Swan?"

It sounded hauntingly familiar, but she saw it from the other side of things. Like their lives paralleled each other to some extent.

"I just…I don't know what to make of her, is all."

"Aye…That's the hardest part of knowing someone, isn't it?"

She was about to say something when the doorbell to the station rang, and Killian was swinging his legs around to get down and take it. She could hear brief conversation but decided not to stick her head out and check it out unless she heard anything weird.

"Aye, she's here."

And that was her cue.