Chapter 1

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Emma smiled and put down her cup of coffee as she listened to Henry ramble on about his day at school and the science experiment his class was doing. It all seemed a bit complex compared to watching the evolutionary cycle of a caterpillar as it became a butterfly from when she was in school.

"Ma, are you even listening?" Henry complained, his voice cracking with a whine. Emma had to get used to the sound. His voice was beginning to show signs of changing.

It was impossible for Emma to realize that her little boy was 13 years old now and on his way to becoming a man. But he was still a boy and just as impatient as his mother was when she thought she was being ignored.

Emma was listening. She was just caught in a familiar memory of Regina standing behind Henry, her hand on his shoulders. Their eyes would meet as Henry talked about his day at school. She missed the way Regina's eyes would shine with happiness as she listened to every word Henry had to say, enthralled by the boy's retelling of his day.

"Don't…" Henry begged as he watched Emma's eyes brighten before they slowly darkened and creases appeared on her forehead. It was how he knew who Emma was thinking about. "She's gone. She's not worth thinking about." There was a dark bitter tone to Henry's voice that shouldn't be as mature, as knowing, as his was at thirteen.

Emma kicked herself for reminding them both of Regina's abandonment. Emma, as a rule, tried not to say Regina's name in front of Henry.

All the work that Emma was doing to find Regina was done in secret. She didn't want to burden Henry with it. He had asked her once to stop asking him questions. To stop looking for Regina and as much as she wanted to do as he asked of her, she couldn't.

"Sorry, kid. I won't." Emma didn't even try and defend Regina anymore. She had in the beginning. Now she just let Henry have his opinion of his mother. Lord knew Emma had her own opinion of Regina that was probably just as dark as Henry's.

Henry pushed around his food for a few more minutes before he gave up. Obviously he'd lost his appetite. "Can I be excused?"

Emma frowned; Henry was closing himself off to her like he did whenever Regina was brought up. "Sure….after you finish your vegetables."

"Ma…." Henry complained.

"Don't Ma, me. Finish your vegetables and then you can go."

Henry grumbled as he picked up his fork and started shoveling the vegetables in his mouth. It didn't even look like he was chewing.

"There. Now can I go?" He asked, showing Emma his empty plate.

"Yes, now you can. Mrs. Fredrick should be here soon. Is there anything you need help with before I head out?"

Henry shook his head, "No. I finished most of my homework during after school."

"Okay. Finish the rest of it and you've got the okay to use the X-box for an hour or two before bed."

Henry's eyes lit up at the allowance of video games. Emma had kept up the strict schedule Regina had originally implemented when Henry started playing video games. It was supposed to be beneficial for healthy development or something. She never really had listened to the specifics. She'd just went along with Regina's decision to limit his video game exposure especially when it came to the violent ones.

"Awesome! Thanks, Ma." He willingly kissed her cheek this time before he raced off to his room to finish the remainder of his homework.

"What about your…" The sound of his door closing echoed through the apartment. "…dishes." Shaking her head Emma picked up his dishes and went about washing the rest of them as well.

As she scrubbed at the plate in her hand, her mind wondered to Regina. Just like it always did. They used to do the dishes together. It was the one chore that Henry never had to do. There was something about the two of them washing the dishes together that always centered Emma. The way they worked seamlessly together, how their hands brushed together, how close they'd stand that she could feel Regina's body heat, it was always so serene.

Emma missed that. She missed Regina so much sometimes that it physically hurt. Her heart would ache so painfully she would lose her breath and her eyes would tear up. Sometimes she let that pain turn into anger. Other times she let it engulf her in sorrow. Most times she tried to ignore it and go on with her life.

Emma knew Regina. Regina would never leave Henry. She might leave Emma, but she would never leave their son. Henry was the apple of not merely Regina's eye but her very soul.

Emma had a feeling in her gut, which continued to grow stronger and stronger, that Regina's abandonment wasn't as cut and dry as Henry and the police made it seem. That gut feeling had served her well in the past. She tended to regret not following her gut feelings.

She couldn't even answer simple questions about her own life that should have been second nature to her. Like a phone number she was supposed to have for eight years. Why couldn't she remember it? Why could she picture the house that they all lived in for those eight years down to the color of the tile floors, but she couldn't remember the full address?

It wasn't normal for someone to forget so much about their life. She had seen several specialists in New York for a few months that gave her no substantial answers. A few of the doctors she'd seen told her she was fine and it was probably a result of the emotional trauma of her wife leaving her. They had recommended a psychiatrist or two that she refused to see. At first.

Emma had been so sure that what she was dealing with was physical, that she was seriously ill, that she didn't consider it could be rooted in the psychological realm. Surely there was something neurologically wrong with her. A disorder or a disease. Not her brain trying to protect her from the pain of Regina's abandonment.

She had been abandoned before. She had lost people she cared about. She had been betrayed by people she trusted before. She didn't need a shrink to tell her that she had abandonment issues.

The only other explanation the doctors she saw could come up with was early onset Alzheimer's or dementia. Some of her symptoms did resembled early onset Alzheimer's but there was no sign of the deterioration in any of her scans. No signs of a stroke having taken place to cause the long term memory loss. No tumors or cancer. Nothing.

So she took the name of a shrink and had an appointment every week to try and work through her issues. According to Dr. W. Ambroise Diggs, her psychiatrist, she was depressed and suffering from mild memory loss attributed to a severe case of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder of abandonment. Emma wasn't exactly sure she believed she had the disorder, but she'd accept just about anything before she accepted Alzheimer's before she was thirty.

Depression fit, as did a form of post-traumatic stress, if she went by the symptoms she'd seen on the internet were to be believed. She didn't have much of an appetite, didn't sleep regularly and when she did she was plagued with nightmares. She had bouts of anger and agitation for no reason. Memories associated with Regina were the ones most hazy. She had occasional panic attacks that were triggered most often when she didn't know where Henry was. She needed to be doing something, staying active. She had trouble concentrating on anything without conscious effort—unless it was Regina.

She just didn't understand how she could have PTSD when she hadn't been put in a situation where her life was in danger. Losing Regina was emotionally traumatic but not enough to cause post-traumatic stress disorder. But she wasn't a doctor. So what if she'd been in a car accident before, and she'd been in juvie, and was abused as a kid? How was it that she'd gone her whole life without suffering the effects of this disorder until her wife left her? She just didn't exactly buy the diagnosis she'd been given.

Four months into therapy and she was still as hazy on what her shrink called 'trigger memories' as she was ten months ago. She still had nightmares. Nightmares about a shadowed figure that resembled Peter Pan's shadow trying to take Henry; Regina poisoning Henry with Snow White's apple, a dragon eating her, a dementor stealing her soul as Regina watched, a zombie horde coming to kill her led by Cora, a giant stepping on her, Cora stealing her heart right from her chest, Snow White killing Cora, Regina saving her and Henry as a bomb goes off, and an impish creature with scales like a crocodile stabbing her with a weird knife.

She was still always on alert. Her appetite hadn't returned and she still had episodes where her heart felt like it was going to come right out of her chest when she thought about Regina.

Tonight wasn't one of those painful nights. Her heart was warmed with the memories she could recall of her wife Memories so real that she could recall the scent of Regina's perfume and the touch of her hand against her wrist. She could practically taste Regina's lips against her own. She could see the way Regina's eyes shone with touches of moonlight that'd shine in from the kitchen window, the small upturn of her wife's lips as they stared at each other.

"Ma. Ma….Maaaa!"

Emma shook away the visage of Regina and turned to see Henry staring at her, his face riddled with concern.

"What's up, kid?" Emma asked

Henry swallowed and looked between Emma and the knife she was holding. Emma looked down at her hands and saw the butter knife in her hand and dropped it to the floor with a clatter. Her eyes looked Henry over immediately for injury. She took a step towards her son who hardly flinched at all.

Behind them the sink was almost overflowing with soap suds.

"I'm so sorry Henry. I'm so sorry." Emma squeezed her eyes closed as she buried her head against Henry's and held her son tightly to her.

"It's okay. You were just washing it. You weren't going to hurt me. You weren't." He reassured them both. He knew deep down that his mom would never hurt him. Never. But that didn't mean her reaction to him calling her from her thoughts didn't scare him a little. "I didn't mean to startle you." He could feel how her body was trembling as he wrapped his arms around her.

"You okay?" He asked as he pulled himself away from her a little.

Henry knew that she was easily startled and could react violently if surprised. He had been the one to insist that she should see the shrink that all of the doctors were telling her was the best in the city. He was concerned for her. He knew that Regina leaving them had torn his mom apart. He just wanted her to be put back together again so that they could move on with their lives.

"I'm okay. I am. God, Henry, I'm so sorry…"

"It's okay, Ma. It's fine. You were just caught in thought." Henry rubbed up and down Emma's arms. "That's all, right?"

"Right." Emma nodded as she forced a nervous smile on her face. She took in several deep breaths to calm herself. "That's all it was."

Henry accepted her answer, but was opening his mouth to say something more when they both heard the doorbell.

"I'll get it." Emma volunteered, quick to escape the kitchen and Henry's questioning eyes. As Emma got the door Henry quickly turned off the faucet and pulled the plug so the water would go down.

Emma didn't like when she had an 'episode' in front of him. He didn't need anything else weighing down on him. He didn't need to worry about his safety around her. He never should have to worry about his safety while with her. Ever. Maybe it was time for an emergency session with Dr. Ambroise Diggs.

End Chapter One