Author's Note: This has to be my favorite chapter. Mom!Mary Margaret is pretty much the best thing that's ever happened to this world and if she's ever at least similar to this on the show, I will die happy. Have some adorableness to balance out the angst and why do I always think I'm writing the last chapter and at the end I realize... nope, there will be more. Every single time. Oh well. Reviews are love.

Chapter 6

You run back to Mary's with your tail between your legs like the foolish coward you are. You don't want to admit that your debt to them both is steadily rising, but it's the truth, and you mentally slap yourself for letting it come this far. How did Regina find you, anyway? Henry wouldn't tell her, unless she cast a spell on him. Humph. She seemed different than the night before, though; she didn't actually say or do anything to offend you and that confuses you more, because you highly doubt it was because your rosy demeanor had made its leave.

Mary scolds you for not even letting her know where you were for almost two days and you hang your head in shame because you know you deserve it. You forgot about her completely as soon as you stepped over the threshold of Regina's pseudomanor. She insists on fixing the bandage for you and when you open your mouth to protest, you're quickly silenced by a look that invokes a picture of yourself alone in a dark dungeon in you. With rats. A man-eating kind. Everywhere.

"So are you going to tell me what happened?" she asks as she treats your leg and sprays antiseptic over the wound. It stings and burns and you bite your lower lip but you've long ago stopped being a child who would wince. Mary isn't a volunteer at the hospital for no reason.

"Regina happened," you answer and shrug, hoping you've met the requirements for Mary to leave the matter at rest.

"Regina happened long ago. Did she have you arrested again? Did you do something?"

"What? Why should I be the one who did something?" you ask with a frown. How did she even come to this conclusion?

"Because when you do something, you run," is the answer, plain and simple.

You raise an eyebrow at her. "And how would you know that?"

"So you're not denying it?" she looks up at you and once again you reassure yourself that what you're sitting on is just a step and not the cold stone floor of a dungeon.

"I'm not confirming it," you mutter and decide that speaking of floors, the one in this house is a perfect object to look at right now just so you can admire the… tidiness… and stuff.

She finishes bandaging your leg and motions for you to sit down at the kitchen table. Before you know it and without asking for it, a mug is placed in front of you on the table filled with tea, complete with a spoonful of milk. It's a habit of yours to add some to your tea from time to time. Milk softens the flavor to a pleasant degree without sweetening it, but not enough for you to think you need cereal to get anything from it. You take the mug in your hands and absorb the warmth from it. It's a nice transition after a night out in the open.

"She invited me to her house yesterday," you say and take a sip. The liquid seeps into your body and its presence makes you feel more at peace and less alone. Or maybe it's Mary herself; you can't be sure.

"Why did you go?" she asks and you're not even that surprised that she knows you did. Mary seems to know everything these days. You just wish she would dig up the rest of the answers herself so you don't have to do it for her.

"I thought she'd grown a brain," you shrug.

"And she didn't?"

"She told me I was cruel and ignorant."

"Why would you believe that?"

"I never said I belie—"

She smiles; it's the kind of smile that people have when they know more than you do and they're amused by your inability to see it. You don't like it. "Yes, because the way you're tracing what you think are circles but are actually double-crossed capital R's on the table with your fingertips with that look on your face that my students have when I catch them cheating didn't give you away at all," she cuts you off, obviously finding your embarrassment entertaining as you quickly look at your hand and jerk away. "What happened next?"

You make sure you're not doing anything else you're not aware of before continuing. "I asked her how she could live with herself and left for the castle. I kind of fell asleep in there," you finish and hope she doesn't figure out there's more to it than you say.

"And?"

Fine, fine, you grit your teeth, there is more to it. "She came there in the morning and woke me up. Tried to get me to go to the hospital. When I wouldn't listen, she put her coat on my shoulders. I didn't want her to be cold," you mumble the last sentence almost inaudibly and pray to God this is enough. No more interrogation, please. You haven't felt this uncomfortable in ages, but you can't tell her to go to hell because you are in her house, after all.

Mary nods knowingly and drinks a bit of her own tea. "Want to hear my diagnosis?"

The tone of her voice makes you cringe and certain you're not going to like this, either. "…Yes?" you say because you know she's going to say it whether you like it or not.

"She likes you," Mary says matter-of-factly as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

You open your mouth, then close it, then open it again, then you frown and point your finger at the ceiling for no real reason and blink at least three times to make sure you're not imagining things. "Excuse me? In what universe does insulting me and putting me in jail and making people turn against me and countless death glares and all the other things she's done that I can't remember at the moment equal 'she likes you'?" you blurt out in one breath. "Wha-what do you even mean likes me?" You are one very confused bail bondsperson and can barely believe your own eyes and ears.

"You're looking at the results, Emma, not the reasons." You're instantly reminded of the promise you made to yourself when you walked into her house. You were there to fix the reasons. "She's lonely. Henry is the only one she has. Of course she's going to be cold to you when you spend more time with him than she does."

"So you're suggesting I should spend more time with them both," you deduce and raise a suspecting eyebrow at her. "She hates me."

"She came back for you, didn't she?"

"Well, yeah but—"

"She did nothing to hurt you then, or did she?"

"No, but—"

"There goes your answer," Mary smiles triumphantly and you think you can almost see Sherlock's hat on top of her head. "She knows she's crossed a line. She was trying to fix it."

"It certainly didn't look like it," you mutter and stare into the mug in your hands. "Look, I appreciate the help, but this is ridiculous. Don't you think you're trying a bit too hard to turn her motives around so that it looks like there's a speck of good in her?" you ask and imitate her all-knowing smile.

"Don't you think you're trying a bit too hard not to?" she replies.

You shake your head. Of course you're not. It's ridiculous to even suggest that. Whatever Mary sees in Regina, it's just wishful thinking. You drink the rest in silence and disappear behind the door to your room.