No, I don't wanna hate you, just wish you'd never gone for the man…

When she finally did look up, it was when Regina's body had finally relaxed, when whatever effort she'd put in previously took it's tool on her. Perhaps she didn't know it, but her rest seemed restless. The woman besides her didn't move in her sleep, not in the way that Emma did, but there wasn't peace on her face. Perhaps it was the paleness that had come upon her once dark face, the sickly look that made Emma cringe, but there was something else. As if she couldn't quite get comfortable in this mode of sleep.

She grabbed her phone, called the number Kathryn had given to her. To her surprise, it wasn't the woman that picked up, but the little boy with a raspiness behind his breath.

"Hello?"

"Hey, hey kid. It's Emma."

"Hi Emma!" There was crackling, and the sound of a woman's voice. Kathryn, she bet. The noise that had hit her originally, what sounded like a live action movie soundtrack, went silent so that all she could hear was the boy and the woman. "Imma gonna put you on speaker, okay?"

She chuckled softly. "Okay."

"Okay. You're on."

"Regina alright?" she heard Kathryn say, and without her realizing it, Emma glanced at the woman besides her and stayed glued. What was she going to say? Regina might have said that Henry knew, but knowing and knowing all of it was something else entirely.

"Yeah. She's fine. I'll probably bring her down there later."

Hopefully, to Henry, it sounded like she meant she was going to bring the woman down to see him. Which, no doubt, would happen. The real reason was because, honestly, this little moment had freaked her out a bit. And she wanted to make sure the woman was okay before this happened again and no one else was around, or she didn't have a phone.

"Sounds like a good idea," Kathryn's soft voice chimed in, and Emma nodded.

"Did you chase away the monsters?"

Emma paused for a moment. This told her more than she thought she was ever going to get. Monsters. She's originally thought that he meant only nightmares. Henry, however, had heard her brief conversation with Kathryn at the hospital. She knew he had heard her say that there were times when breathing was difficult. He knew they weren't nightmares. He was a kid, but he wasn't stupid.

"Yeah. Yeah kid. I chased them away."

There was silence on the line, and she wondered for a second if it had been disconnected. She wasn't sure if she minded so much.

"That's good," the boy chimed in. "See, you know more about superhero's than you thought."

She was silent for a moment, pondering this. Superheros. Right. The kid was into superheros, of course he'd mention them. She leaned her head against the back of the couch.

"Yeah. I guess so. What're you two up to?"

"Kathryn's losing to me in Fallout."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! Don't tell Mom, though. She doesn't like that game."

"Why's that?"

"Say's zombies are bad." She chuckled, rotating the phone to her other ear.

"Alright. So I guess it'll be our threes little secret, then?"

"Yeah!" the boy exclaimed.

"You're going to be ready to come home pretty soon then, if you're feeling good enough to play that game, aren't you?"

"I want to go home today. But they said next week."

"Well. Gotta listen to those doctors, you know."

"I guess…"

"Hey, kid, it's good talking to you. But I'm going to have to go, okay? Need anything?"

"Nope! Bye Emma!"

"Bye, kid…I'll talk to you later, Kathryn, alright?"

There was a shuffling noise.

"Alright. Take care of her."

"Yeah. Yeah, no problem."

"Thank you."

"Yeah. You too."

A disconnected line, and then silence. Silence had always been an eerie thing for her, the sound that meant that things were about to go to shit pretty quickly. But no. There was no proof of that. Silence, for now, meant something good. It meant that the storm was passing. At least, this one was.

She didn't move, afraid it would bring Regina back into the world when so clearly she needed rest, but she set the phone down and looked around. It was a big house, especially for only two other people, but it well worn. The wooden floors showed small indentations that told her that, once upon a time, there had been a dog here. The fireplace was unlit, but there was a small pile of wood, a poking stick, matches out of reach. Despite the fact that Regina apparently wasn't a fan of video games, the TV had an Xbox and a Playstation bellow it.

There weren't many picture frames, nothing aside of a few with Regina and Henry. She could see random places where some had been taken down. The spacing on some of them were off. Above the fireplace, there were an array of awards. She wondered if Regina was so self centered that she felt the need to display them or if it was simply a holding place. Emma herself had packed away most of her awards, she'd slipped them away with her discharge papers away from sight and out of mind.

There were some that she recognized. No doubt, from the perished husband. She couldn't find unit identification anywhere, as though Regina had hid those specific things away.

"Admiring my husband's accomplishments?" she heard a tired voice say. Her attention was drawn to Regina, whose eyes were closed. She'd folded her hands onto her stomach, much more regal now than the original form of letting sleep and gravity do the work.

"There were a lot of them, it looks like."

Regina made a noise, something between a huff and a sigh.

"Oh, Miss Swan. You know how they like to decorate the dead."

A medal for a dead man, an attempt to calm the family. Your loved one did not die in vain and this is living proof, forever, to every generation after yours. Perhaps they made a difference. Perhaps they did not. But here. This may calm your worries that their impact was in vain.

"He was Army, then. I know some of them. Killian said he thought he was in the Marines."

"He couldn't swim."

The comments of so many soldiers that would buff themselves up. I would have gone with the Marines, but I couldn't swim. Or, I would have, but honestly, I'm not crazy enough for that shit.

Just crazy enough for this shit.

She could remember Cassidy, soft Cassidy, who had barely graduated ROTC before he was commissioned, saying that once upon a time he'd thought being in the Marines would be the way to go. And then he'd decided this was for the best.

"He was a medic, too."

Silence. Combat medics were a dime a dozen, a job that many wanted and many got.

"What unit was he in?"

"I couldn't tell you that, Miss Swan."

No, but that didn't seem right. She knew many that cared much less than Regina did who could root out their loved ones unit, and there was no doubt about it with the medals on the wall. Regina had cared. She wondered if she had waited after ever deployment, if she had been one of the wives that Emma had been so jealous for, the ones that embraced their loved ones and kissed them while Emma walked past, her head tucked down. Because she had no one to come home to.

Still, she didn't push it. Aggravating this woman in her own house didn't seem wise, especially not while she was still warn down, while she seemed as though she could barely move at the moment.

"For a very brief while, he said he wanted to be a medic for Special Forces. We were trying to conceive at the time, but he wanted it so bad. I barely talked him out of it."

"What stopped him?"

"What you witnessed here today. Said he couldn't risk not being there for me."

And he wasn't here. Instead, it was Emma, who was barely a friend. Who had, not hours later, been trying to figure this woman out. Emma, who was now settled in this woman's house.

"Mi corazón está en su corazón. It was the only Spanish he knew, I think, and he said it to me often."

"I don't know Spanish."

"My heart is your heart. Me duele cuando te duele He learned that later. .Very rough translation. It hurts when you hurt."

Was that some kind of love? Certainly his words said it, it said it in more ways than one. But she kept going back to the idea of a rough soldier attempting to learn a language that he knew little about for a lover. For a wife.

Regina was more awake now, pushing herself up, and Emma found herself trying to help, trying to guide. Regina didn't protest, either too tired or too grateful, and upon sitting up found herself leaning on Emma for some kind of support.

"We really should bring you to the hospital," Emma commented. She didn't want to break whatever brief kind of moment this was, but whatever it was, it still worried her to some extent. The amount that Regina was leaning on her.

"I just forgot medication. It happens. I've been very stressed."

"Yeah. I get that." She didn't want to argue, not right now, not with this woman who seemed to have so much in common with her and oh so little. She didn't want to ruin it. Didn't want to go back to bickering and yelling, didn't want to go back to snide remarks.

"I'll go to the doctors later. But I'm fine."

"Okay."

There was no need for a fight. They had reached a standstill, the kind that Emma didn't like but, at the same time, didn't feel the need for interruption. She was a medic. She knew if she needed help right now. The fact that she was breathing and talking told Emma all she needed to know.

"Emma?"

Emma. A quick change, and for a moment she wondered if it would change back just as quickly. If, when the exhaustion was gone, it would go back to a formal sounding Miss Swan.

"Yeah?"

"Why do you keeping coming back?"

It was a question Emma often asked herself. Why on earth would she keep coming back? Why expose herself to more pain than necessary? Why not cut the ties and break free?

She could say that she felt some kind of obligation, that the back of that truck had reminded her of who she'd used to be. She could push it on Henry, say the kid had grown on her. She could say the obligation came from looking after someone who had lost a husband in combat, much in the way she lost so many brothers over there. But none of them were right. None of those reasons had been good enough for Emma to stay around in the past.

"I guess…I keep thinking that maybe we aren't so different. And maybe I could chase your monsters away."

She didn't expect the same from Regina, oddly enough. And it wasn't because of their interactions in the past. She had just learned not to expect much from other people.

"You've been listening to Henry for far too long. I think he's getting to you."

"Maybe."

Regina didn't push her away, didn't make her leave. In a way, it was sort of comforting. Any time they pushed away, Regina would reel her back in, as though she didn't want the consequence of the thing to be real. And perhaps that was another reason why she stayed. Because of all the people she'd known in her life, not many were willing to reel her back in.

Many just left her drifting. Only Stabler had ever been able to do that before.

"You remind me of a medic I used to work with over there."

"Yes?"

"Yeah. He…I think you and him would have gotten along."

"Comforting." There was a soft drip of sarcasm, and for a second Emma felt a flare of anger. It died out when Regina rested her head on Emma's.

"He was a good guy. A really good guy."

"Then perhaps we wouldn't have gotten along as well as you assume."

"No. No, you would have." There was a certainty in that, and she didn't know where it came from.

"Well, perhaps I'll meet him one day."

"He died."

"Yes. I assumed."

Then, there was silence again, but perhaps it had evolved into a more comfortable silence. One that she so often shared with Killian. The kind of silence that told of understanding. A soft reminder of the human condition.

A reminder that hearts weren't all that different.