Author's Note: Wow, thanks so much to everyone that has reviewed to this story. I think that is the most reviews I've gotten for one chapter of a story ever. So thank you! And thanks to everyone that has taken the time to read this story, favorite it and put it on their alert list. I hope that you'll ALL continue to enjoy the story. Feel free to drop me a PM if you feel like asking any questions or ask them in a review, I try to do my best to answer them all as they come.

Author's Note 2: I've done a bit of research on Henry's illness but I also want to make it clear that I am not a medical professional so don't quote me. The information I am putting in this story is from the research I've done and found on websites. There is also going to be a bit of fabrication for the story's purposes and you will see the reason why as the story continues. ;-D

Again, thanks to everyone that had read, favorited, put on alert and reviewed. Hope you'll continue to enjoy the story as it develops.

Chapter 2
'Sleep It Off'

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The hotel room was passable. Honestly, it was a dump. But a clean shabby dump in comparison to her home, like everything was in comparison. All she needed was a clean bed and bathroom. The bed was a twin and she worried she might fall off she was so unaccustomed to such a small sleeping arrangement. It would have to do. She was not staying in this room more than one night. By tomorrow she was going to be back in her own home with her son in her queen sized temper-pedic mattress. She was used to being swallowed by her bed. Now she was afraid the rug was going to swallow her when she fell off this one.

Careful she hung up her clothes in the small closet. It wasn't even a sixth of her closet at home. She had one dress bag to hang, her current outfit and her trench coat. She did not plan to stay here long. She had hoped to already be on her way home, but obviously that was not how it was meant to be. Sighing, she settled down onto the miniscule bed and without warning fell into a restless sleep.

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"Damn it!" Regina cursed as she stood in front of Emma Swan's apartment door. Her knuckles were red raw from all the knocking she had been doing. She'd taken to banging on the door with her closed fist, so now from her pinky to her wrist was just as red. On both hands.

There was no answer. She'd been here for hours. Hours!

She knew she shouldn't have left last night. She should have insisted that Ms. Swan come with her then. She knew her history. She knew how Ms. Swan didn't stay in one place for very long. She knew how Ms. Swan had a tendency to disappear. She should have known better. She did know better but she had been angry, distraught, and just so bone wearily tired.

Everything in her life had been a fight. Everything since she was a girl she'd had one uphill battle to surpass after the other. This was just another one of those battles and she feared, for the first time, that she would not come out on top.

She'd lost before. She'd lost loved ones and friends and maybe even a bit of her sanity in the past but she'd always come out of each battle. She'd never perished in the fight. It might not be winning but she didn't consider it a full loss. She still had her life, her health, and her heart (which had been full of anger and hatred before). Now she was about to lose two of the three.

Henry was everything to her. He was her whole world now. He held her heart more than anyone had before. He'd given her a reason to try, to really try and be a better person. He'd brought such joy to her life, such happiness. If she lost him she might as well die. What would she have left? Her health…the one thing she wished she could give to Henry. Good health. Ha! Perhaps physically. Mentally she'd be as bad off as Jackson.

Dropping her forehead onto the blue door, Regina squeezed her eyes closed and banged on the door. Her arm was as heavy as her heart as she banged, banged, banged, banged. Nothing. Not even the sound of shuffling footsteps. The room behind the locked door was as silent as the calm in the eye of a storm.

"Please…" Regina begged, her voice hoarse from the shouting she'd done in the last four hours. She was only now beginning to realize just how hopeless all that shouting had been. Emma Swan was obviously not home and she'd already been asked twice by neighbors to get lost. She'd merely spared them a glance and they'd quickly vacated the hallway and turned up the music in their own apartments.

No one, it seemed even here, could withstand the angry haunted look that promised the cruelest of tortures if they did not leave her sight. A lot of good her perfected minion glare did her now.

"Please…" Regina whispered her shoulders shaking as she fell to her knees her arm dragging down the door with her. She banged her forehead against the metal again before wrapping both her arms around herself.

She was helpless to stop the tears as they fell continuously down her cheeks. Her last hope, Henry's last hope, was nowhere to be found and it was because of her. Henry was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it. She had nothing more to give. She'd done everything, even made another deal with Mr. Gold and just like it always had been…it wasn't enough.

Screaming against the ache in her chest, Regina dropped her chin onto her chest and cried. She released all the pain and frustration she had felt for the last few years. How ironic it was that she finally broke here. Kneeling in the middle of a foreign public hallway in Boston while staring and leaning against the door that might as well be the brick wall that'd she'd faced her entire life. This time, like all the others, she found herself lacking and could not vault herself over it. Did she have energy to climb up it? Ha, she didn't even have energy left to lift her arm to knock on the door again.

Calming herself, Regina leaned away from the door and rolled her shoulders. This…pathetic show of emotion would not do. She was better than this. She was Regina Antoinette Mills. She was not a woman to toil with. She was and would be Emma Swan's greatest nightmare. Ms. Swan thought she could run? There was not a rock that Regina would not have upturned to hide the rat Ms. Swan was.

After she left this building she would call Sydney Glass and Mr. Gold. They would need to find Ms. Swan. No matter what it took, she would get that cursed woman to Storybrooke. She was not going to ask again. She would hire private contractors to bring her the woman alive. If Ms. Swan wanted to run, then Regina would chase her.

"To the ends of the earth…" Regina promised as she stood up. She brushed off her pants, wiped at her eyes and fixed her makeup. She gave the thick door one last scathing look before she turned on her heels and left. There was work to be done and a blonde woman to find and drag kicking and screaming to Storybrooke.

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Emma was having little success in finding a comfortable position. She'd spent the last two hours tossing and turning in her bed. She'd smacked her pillow enough that if it were sentient it would probably be dead.

Her couch was looking better and better as the minutes continued to tick by. Her mind was restless, and honestly? That didn't happen very often. Usually she could shut her mind off and rest like a baby. But that was the problem. She had a baby in mind. Not just any baby, but her baby, her son, Henry.

He now had a name and a face. That bitchy Madame Mayor whatever-her-last-name-was had decided to leave not only her number but a picture on her counter. Henry was a cute kid. He looked like, well, he looked like the perfect mix of his father and her. He had his father's nose and the shape of his eyes but everything else was hers. He even had her colored eyes. She stared at the picture for what felt like an eternity before she'd thrown it away from her and finished off the three beers she'd had in the fridge. The one time she didn't have enough alcohol to numb the pain she felt in her chest was the one time she needed it most.

Emma growled into the darkness of her room. The shadows around the walls looked like monsters ready to swallow her whole the moment she closed her eyes. They hadn't scared her this terribly for years. She'd watched that movie with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore where after someone died the shadows would come to life, moaning and groaning before they attacked you and took your soul to hell. Emma had been six or seven at the time. She had been afraid to turn off the lights for weeks when she went to sleep afraid the shadows would think she was dead. She was a heavy sleeper, even their moaning and groaning wouldn't wake her up if the screaming of her then foster parents didn't wake her up.

Her need for the light to be on hadn't gone over well with her foster parents at the time. They let her keep it on though after the first time they'd turned it off on her and she'd woken up screaming crying. They didn't want a crying six year old in their bed at one in the morning any more than she wanted to be a six year old crying because she was afraid of the dark without someone to comfort her. Their biological son tortured her for being afraid of the dark for the next year she was with them.

Emma hadn't known the difference between hell and heaven at the time. She was too young to really understand. She knew the difference between good and evil and could put faces of fairytale characters and cartoon characters in each category. She'd never known where to put herself. Not when Tommy, the foster couple's biological son, told her that she was going to go to hell because she was a bastard. Emma had believed him, she was six, she didn't know any better. He was fourteen and she adored him, even as she feared him.

Now she wondered if he wasn't right. Maybe she wasn't going to go to heaven. Not after all she'd done in her life. Certainly not after the things she'd done in her past. But now? After turning the Mayor away, thinking about herself rather than her own child? She knew, without a doubt, that she was no hero, no good guy. She had her faults but she never thought they went as deep as they apparently did. She was selfish bitch when it came down to it but she never realized just how selfish she was. She'd deluded herself into thinking she was the good guy. That what she did helped, made her a better person, made up for all the crap she'd done.

Emma knew she was no innocent young damsel in distress. Maybe as a child she could have been considered innocent and a damsel, but as the years passed and she grew older she became what she needed to be to survive. It was hard sometimes to think about what she might have been if things were different. She tried not to think of the what if's of the past. She had too many what if's of the future to worry about. At least those ones she had a chance of changing. There was nothing she could do about her past. There was only the here and now and what could be done presently.

So, where was she? She was here, the biological mother of a ten year old boy who needed her more than he'd possibly ever needed her in his whole life…and she was what? Going to turn the other way? Walk away? Run? Like she did with everything else?

This was where she needed to draw the line. She needed to do the right thing here. She hadn't had a choice—not a real one—in the past, but now she had one. She'd done what she thought was best for the kid ten years ago. She'd given him up so that he'd have his best shot because that wasn't with her. She was an eighteen year old kid just getting out of juvie and the foster care system. She had dark shadows looming over her that no one should ever have to worry about while also worrying about a kid too.

She didn't want him to go into that system but she couldn't let him stay with her. She'd ruin him, maybe even get him killed, and there was a better chance of him being adopted as an infant without ties to her than if she kept him, struggled with him, and then had to give him up when he was older. Older kids rarely got out of the system she knew from experience. She wanted him to have a chance. She wanted him to have more than she ever had and more than she could ever give him. She was lucky. An adoption agency got in touch with the warden around her eight month. He wouldn't see the inside of the system. He'd be with a nice family.

He got that, or at least it seemed like he did. He'd found where he was meant to be. His mother, his real mother, had come all this way to beg for her to help him. She had some brass ones to do that. Especially since the Mayor knew about her history. Not everyone would come knocking on her door knowing the crimes she'd committed but Regina had. Regina had come knocking on her door ready to drag her from her own apartment kicking and screaming—of that Emma was sure.

Good. Henry deserved that kind of love and devotion and care. He deserved Regina, Mayor—what was her last name? Something with an M…Emma shook her head as it went through the possible last names. Myers, Michaels, Miller, oh oh! Mills! Mayor Mills!

What Henry didn't deserve was the lot in life he'd been dealt. He didn't deserve to be in the hospital as much as the Mayor said he was. No kid deserved to go through everything he was probably going through. What was it that she could really do for him anyway? He didn't need her in his life. He had Regina—even if she was kind of scary—she was scary because she was scared she was going to lose her son.

She wouldn't. Emma didn't know how that'd happen but she knew that Mayor Mills would not lose her son. Emma just, well she couldn't be the one to save him. She was no savior. She was no ones last hope, only hope. She couldn't be. She wasn't ready for that kind of responsibility. She honestly wasn't ready for that much heartbreak. She'd want more. She'd wanted more of the kid after he'd been born. She'd even thought to keep him. She'd wanted nothing more than to keep him with her and hold on to him forever. But she pushed him away. She gave him up. She didn't keep him.

She didn't keep him because she was doing what was best for him. He wouldn't be safe with her. Still wouldn't be. She needed to keep her distance from him now.

Now she was going to do what was best for her. She was going to stay away from him.

Beyond the door of her bedroom and the walls of the apartment building the rain storm continued to rage, the wind howling as it swept through the breaks between the buildings. Lighting flashed, thunder crashed, and the night wore away to morning. Morning became afternoon and before Emma could understand where all the time had gone there was knocking at her door.

The phone had been ringing, she was sure of it, but she didn't even bother to pick it up. She let the machine pick it up as she curled into her blankets and hid under her pillow.

The shadows were gone, leaving a constant stream of gray light coming from the window and from under the crack of her door. Her eyes were tinged red from all the staring she'd done through the night, and possibly crying, she couldn't really recall that much. Her eyes stood out deftly against the dark circles that rounded out her eyes.

She didn't even think she'd gotten any sleep. She hadn't even closed her eyes in what felt like years they were so sore and itchy. She blinked and it felt like there was a gallon of sand stuck between her eyelids and her eyes.

Hissing Emma kept her eyes closed even as they burned. If she kept them closed she could pretend to be asleep and if she was asleep she wouldn't hear the calls of Mayor Regina Mills of Storybrooke Maine, mother to her dying kid, standing outside her apartment knocking on her door. She could pretend that last night was nothing but a horrid dream—or maybe a lucid daydream, or would it be night-dream since she'd had it during the evening?

Breathing in the scent of her pillows Emma remained hidden under them. The air grew warm and stale and she wondered if she could just suffocate herself to death. Then whatever organ Henry needed could be his because she wouldn't need any of them anymore.

The banging at the door didn't go away for two and a half hours. There was screaming and shouting in the mix too but that was fleeting and only lasted as long as it took one of her neighbors to come tell Regina to shut up.

Emma was afraid to move out of bed and honestly? She felt like the shittiest person alive. She had no reason to get out of bed, so she stayed until the sun went down and the rain began again but this time it was softer, just like a spring shower rather than a full on thunder storm.

There wasn't any disappointment placed on her shoulders here, not in her bed, her place, her sanctuary. There wouldn't be any further thought of Henry or his mother or what his voice sounded like or what his favorite color was. He wasn't her responsibility. Not anymore. The only person she had to worry about was herself.

She didn't deal with things like this. She ran from them. And as soon as she could convince herself to get out of bed she would be gone.

No one would find her. Not even Mayor Regina Mills with her sad desperate eyes, Prada clothing, her nice shoes, phone number and picture of a smiling handsome dirty blonde ten year old boy who needed her.

Well…almost no one would find her.

"Damn it!" Emma growled as she threw her blankets off of her. In her aggravation she cleared off her bed of all the pillows, sheets and even had thrown her bedside lamp against the wall. The metal base of the lamp hit the wall and left an indentation. Looking up from where she'd sat on the edge of the bed her hands nearly ready to tear at her own hair, she saw the mark and stared.

She stared and stared and stared before she fell onto her side and stared some more.

There went her security deposit.

Laughing, choked at first, but then a full on belly laugh, she laughed and laughed. Before she knew what she was doing she had a duffle bag with most of her stuff in it, her hand-gun included. She was looking for her car keys and having a bit of trouble finding them in the dark. Outside the sun had long since set and she was getting a late start on running, but she couldn't stay here anymore.

Not anymore. She'd leave a note or something. That'd offset any search party looking for her.

Seeing her keys by the coffee pot, where she must have left them two days ago, she walked around the counter and stopped. Her hand came away with a piece of paper stuck to her sweaty palm. Looking down at the number she sighed, stuck it in her pocket before moving to grab her keys. Seeing the picture of Henry on the floor she smiled, picked it up in the same downward bend as she did her duffle bag and left her apartment.

Throwing her stuff into the back seat of her yellow bug she started the engine and peeled away from the curb, heading north.

Emma only realized a half an hour into her trip that she had no idea how in the hell to get to Storybrooke freaking Maine.

End Chapter Two

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