A/N: Sorry it's taken me so long to update… I just stared back to school recently, and WOW, I had forgotten how much homework teachers like to give! I will try to update weekly, but please understand… school is hard :) But here it is; I present… Chapter 25!

David stood behind his daughter, both in the literal and figurative sense of the term, as the hairdresser dyed Emma's golden locks a dark, nearly black hue. They had already bought her chocolate colored contacts earlier that day, so her dark eyes matched her hair. Emma now seemed to truly embody the Dark One.

When the hairdresser was finished, Emma tousled her raven strands and twisted a few of them around her fingers. "I don't even look like myself anymore," Emma noted at the mirror. Her tone was flat, monotonous. David couldn't tell whether this was a good or bad thing. Emma lifted an exploratory finger underneath her eye, watching the mirror Emma do the same. "Dark eyes hold a lot more secrets," she said, somewhat distractedly.

David's eyes met Emma's in the mirror. A flicker of guilt shimmered underneath her contacts, and she quickly broke the gaze and looked down at the table.

The freshly unrecognizable Swan stood on the edge of the town line, outside the town, not for choice, but bare necessity. She could feel her son staring at her through the barrier. Her son. It never failed to amaze her that she had a son. It was something terrifying and exciting all wrapped up into one. Emma still sometimes felt like she was failing at motherhood.

On the other side of the line, Henry watched his mother stare at an empty stretch of road. It is hard not to have a family, but surely it is harder to know you have one and be separated from them. Henry toed the line with his boot. "Can I go? Please?"

Regina sighed beside him, watching Emma rather placidly through the town line with him. "She doesn't want to hurt you."

Emma was normally bursting at the seams with confidence and self-assurance, but now, rail-thin, forced to change her looks for safety, and searching desperately to find something to see besides an endless expanse of road, she just looked lost.

"She doesn't want to hurt you, either. Besides, look at her; can't you see it? She's still fighting it. She's safe. It's when she stops resisting that we have to worry."

"Fine." Regina grabbed her son's hand and pulled him through the barrier behind her.

Emma watched Regina emerge from nothingness; had she not seen this sight before, she might have thought it was God, coming to inform her of the most important and alarming of matters.

As soon as she saw Henry step out behind her, Emma folded her arms into her sides and shot her stare at the ground. Henry saw Emma's response and stood awkwardly several feet away from her, suddenly regretting his decision to cross the line.

"Charming," Regina targeted at a sleeping David. "Rise and shine, honeybunch. Time to go."

David stirred and awoke from his sleep. He said nothing, just walked over to Emma, placed a kiss on the top of her head, took the scroll from Regina, and left.

"You look different," Regina casually acknowledged Emma. The former blonde remained silent and expressionless. "You look like someone took Mary Margaret and me and smushed us together." She laughed at her own joke. "There's an idea."

Emma chewed the inside of her cheek. Regina sighed again. "Henry, go exploring," she directed the boy. Henry nodded and headed into the woods. "Keep track of the time; be back at three!" she called after him.

Once Henry was out of earshot, Regina turned to Emma, hands on hips. "He's your son, too."

"I told you not to bring him out here," was Emma's response.

Regina could see that every fiber of Emma was on high alert, her posture rigid, her body tensed, her face carefully guarded. "Let's go for a run," she suggested, changing the subject.

"I don't run," Emma replied, shrugging.

"Neither do I, but we do now." Regina took off running down the road before Emma could say anything else. Emma had no choice but to be alone or run after the other woman, so she ran. Regina obviously knew Emma was trailing behind her but didn't slow in the slightest.

Emma's feet pounded the road beneath her. Her untrained lungs grew tired after only a couple minutes, and breathing became a long, painful, drawn-out ordeal. She struggled for air. Her chest heaved and burned with the effort, but it was a fresh feeling, a welcomed change to distract her from the achy soreness that plagued her almost constantly.

Running was freeing. It loosened the hold of Emma's problems, and they floated away like balloons as Emma focused all of her thoughts on energies on increasing her speed.

By the time Emma had caught her second wind, she felt like she was running on air. She could still feel the Dark One lurking inside of her and her powers swirling with it, but she channeled those into the simple lightness of running. Before she knew it, Emma was running like the wind. Hell, Emma was the wind. Her feet took her at an un-human speed down the road, leaving Storybrooke behind. The further away she got, the better she felt.

Regina's voice broke her concentration and shattered the thoughtless peace she had been experiencing. All of Emma's burdens dropped back down onto her and pressed on her mind once more. "We have to go back; it's getting close to three. Henry-"

At hearing Henry's name, Emma skidded to a halt, and lightning struck and danced directly in front of her. It wasn't Emma's fault; she didn't do it on purpose. Hearing her son's name just turned her into a nervous ball of energy. The bolt of lightning did surprise Regina enough to stop midsentence, though. She stood there for a moment, staring, then shook herself out of her stupor and finished her thought: "Henry will be waiting for us."

Emma turned silently in response and ran back for Storybrooke. On the way back, she reflected on what was actually causing her to feel so heavy, and burdened, and stressed. Being the Dark One may have been draining physically, but Emma had determined that it didn't have to be emotionally, too. It was the fact that she cared so much about doing the right thing that was bringing her down, and she needed to fix that.

"Hey," Henry greeted his two mothers when they returned from the run.

Emma stared, stony-faced, back at him. She pointed at the town line right as Mary Margaret appeared, scroll in hand. Before she started doing anything or making any new decisions, she needed to get the person she loved most out of the way. "Just go," she said to him, honestly and bluntly. "I can't be with you."

Henry looked shocked and hurt by this, but he accepted the scroll from his grandmother nonetheless and followed Emma's orders. He retreated over the town line along with his other mother, back into the overwhelming safety of Storybrooke.