A/N: The song for this chapter is "Falling Slowly," by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová. I couldn't fit the whole chapter title in, but that's it. You can listen to it on YouTube. Just add /watch?v=k8mtXwtapX4 after the YouTube URL.

"Is this really what you do for a living?"

"Yeah, it's called a stakeout."

"And you don't get… bored?"

"I don't know. I mean, you find ways to pass time. Eat. Talk. Listen to music." At that, Emma leans over and turns on the radio. A song filters out of the speakers, tinny and distorted through the aged stereo, but Regina thinks she recognizes it, anyway. Before she can place it, Emma interrupts her. "Mostly watch, which is what we should be doing."

So they sit and watch in silence for a moment, song swirling around them and filling the small confines of the Bug. But eventually, it becomes too much to take, and Regina finally asks the question that has been buzzing in her mind since a shattered mug in a diner. She doesn't say it like a question, though. Because she can't afford for the answer to be in the negative, not after what she did, not after what she gave up. "So he's happy. His life is good there."

And Emma, honest, truthful Emma, must sense the importance of the statement because she turns to her and gives her an answer of equal magnitude. "Yeah. I almost didn't come back because of that."

A beat. And then, "But why did you?"

Tell her tell her TELL HER, Emma's mind shouts.

But she doesn't.

Because you were the second thing I saw after I remembered.

"Because he may not remember all this, but I do. And I know what he would say: 'A hero would come back.'"

Emma doesn't feel like much of a hero when she says it. Not with the way Regina is looking at her, all silent expectance and honest eyes, like maybe she's starting to believe in hope again.

So Emma looks away, stares straight ahead through the windshield at Regina's office and pretends that her newfound focus has nothing to do with the way that her stomach is in knots from Regina's eyes on her. You're going to take him back, Emma's traitorous mind whispers. You're going to take him back to New York, and then where will that leave Regina? Her fingers tighten on the steering wheel. Because as much as she hasn't allowed herself to think about it, not when the town needs her, not when Regina needs her, the smoky tendrils of a half formed escape plan decided upon long ago wisp through her mind, just beyond her reach somewhere on the edges of her consciousness. And if Emma is being honest with herself, as she rarely allows herself to be when it comes to Henry's other mother, she knows exactly where that will leave Regina.

"You sure you don't want to meet him?" Emma bursts out when the anxiety of what she is eventually going to do becomes too much to bear. "We can just tell him that you're an old friend, like Mary Margaret and David." It is peace offering and distraction all at once, a poor attempt at making up for the hurt she has already decided, somewhere in the depths of her mind, that she will leave Regina come an end to this newfound threat.

But Regina is already shaking her head, and when she speaks, it sounds like she is swallowing back tears. "It would be too hard," she says with the utter finality of a woman who has resigned herself to a life of loneliness one time too many.

Emma turns away again so that she doesn't have to see even the poor facsimile of the pain that she is sure to cause Regina by the time this is all over. Because it isn't fair, that life can keep beating some people down when all they have ever wanted is to be happy. "I can't imagine—" she begins. But she can. She can. So when she sees the shadow in the window of Regina's office, she thanks her lucky stars for the distraction from finishing her thought and jumps on it with the desperation of a drowning person. "We got them!"

And then they are getting out of the car, and there is not much time to think of anything, least of all what a mother becomes if she has no child there to parent.

A/N: Although I've been writing fanfiction for several years now, this is my very first OUaT fic, so feel free to let me know if the characterizations I've got going on are wrong or if there was something you didn't like. I'll never improve without your help.

Also, obligatory comment about how the version of this story on AO3 is more complete because it contains the song lyrics I drew on. It's under the same username.

Thanks for reading!