longing will snag itself on the reeds

by insanetwinn

One day the dead wake up to return to their families. Zombie AU. Set sometime in 4b

3. the fire drowned

Thank you everyone for reading and reviewing! This is the last chapter!

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Emma is already breathing assurances to her father on the phone by the time they parked at the hospital.

"Yeah, I know what it looks like," she says as she slams the door shut. The hospital doors open in one sudden movement, the cool air surrounding them smelling like medicine and plastic. "Okay, slow down Dad. I'm already half way there. Just let me find out who did this first, alright?"

There is a short pause, a shifting of breath as they continue down the hall; the small muscles in Emma's jaw clench tight. "Yes, Regina is with me."

When Emma hangs up, Regina says, "I shouldn't be here."

"You've done nothing wrong," Emma grumbles, angrily shoving her phone in her pocket. "You don't have to do anything for them."

"They're afraid, Emma."

"They shouldn't be. Not of you. They have no reason to be."

Regina doesn't say anything more, but as they walk, their steps seem to echo the answering fear like a moth bumping along all the walls, returning inevitably to the bright, painful thought of: not yet. When? Emma must feel it too because her hand slips into hers only a moment later, gripping tightly as they walk down the hall. Regina squeezes twice and doesn't let go.

In the morgue, the body lies flat on the metal slab. Regina only glanced at it briefly before looking away, watching the light flicker above their heads instead. Emma is taking notes; she can hear it from the faint scratch of her pencil and so she focuses on that instead, the quiet, steady sound. It keeps the sight of the body away, flickering to some distant corner of her mind. She doesn't think about the blood or the places where the sheet sinks down the way her heels would on soft hollow ground.

No, think of Emma instead. Think of Emma. The cold bright day they had spent on the beach, the sand and sea-water between them, how the wind had lifted up her blonde hair like the sand. Closing her eyes, she thinks of her until the sharp ache in her stomach becomes distant and shallow. A rainy puddle instead of the ocean.

Distantly, she can hear footsteps approaching and voices muffled through the heavy door. As they approach, Regina recognizes Blue's sharp voice. "We should have been keeping a closer eye on them."

"There is no way to watch all of them," a softer voice answers. "And we still don't know who is responsible."

"We know which of them are dangerous," Blue says as she steps through the door, her voice was clipped and steady as her heels on the floor. Belle glances into the room, freezing as her eyes find Regina's for a brief, fleeting moment as Blue continues. "We need to review the list again. We will check with the violent ones, first."

Blue sees them only a moment later. "Well," Blue smiles coolly. "Don't you have good timing?"

"She's not here to be interrogated," Emma slaps her notebook closed, sliding it back into her pack pocket. Her face is calm but her body hums with tension, tightening in her shoulders and arms. "You got a whole list of more probable suspects and you damn well know it. Go interview Graham if you want to be productive."

"We already have," Blue's mouth ticks up into a neat smile. "He's still staying with Snow and Charming, who have rules and a lock on the outside of his bedroom door, just in case. I'm assuming you haven't taken the same precautions?"

"No, I haven't," Emma snaps.

"Then you wouldn't mind me asking a few questions."

Emma glances back at her, her mouth set with anger but her brow beginning to crease with worry. Regina understands. She has devoted years of her life protecting her family from the large devastations – the sweeping curses and cold murder – and punished horrifically for not thinking of the little things instead. The absentminded mistakes. The quiet violence. Regina can see her thoughts running quick in her mind, wondering: how can I save you from this?

"I know this may be difficult for you, Sheriff," Blue started and Emma whirls around to look at her, eyes hard enough to make even Blue step short. "But those that have returned…we have to admit that they've changed. They're not the people we lost. They're not the people we missed."

"Yeah, I haven't see anyone come back for you," Emma stands tall and erect against the woman across from her. "I don't see you missing anyone all that much, actually. I think you just want to screw Regina over. Look at her – this guy was attacked only an hour ago, maybe. Do you honestly think she'd have time to clean up this well if she killed him?"

"For her, easily I'm sure," Mother Superior says, lips pressing tightly together as she peers absentmindedly over their shoulders to the wide glass behind them, the body still covered. "But with gore like this, there are always remnants. Things she couldn't have gotten rid of: beneath the fingernails or between the teeth. Details too small to hide."

Emma steps in front of Regina like a closing metal gate. "This has nothing to do with her."

"Well," Blue smiles thinly. "Then there's no harm in asking a few questions, is there?"

"Fine," Regina sighs.

Emma twists to look at her, aghast. "Regina."

Regina is just tired. Tired of being in this room, tired of waiting for arguments going on without her to decide on what she will do, tired of feeling the dead pressing up against the window behind her.

"It's fine," she says and doesn't look away from Blue, her expression contained in the small twitch in the corner of her mouth. "Just lead the way, dear."

They lead her into a small white room with nurses already waiting for them. Regina sits down beside the small window, staring out at the pale sky as a nurse begins to unpack a small bag of strange, sterile utensils, setting them out onto the cold metal slab beside her.

As the nurses approach her, she can hear Emma's worried questions and their quiet, impatient answers, but the only thing Regina can focus on is the cold plastic touch of the nurse's hands along her chin and hands, holding her fingers still and her mouth open, shining a hollow yellow light along the backs of her teeth.

The nurses do not press any harder than they need to, their touch continuously gentle, but there is something in their touch that makes her shiver, something dehumanizing; if she closes her eyes, she can imagine the soft powdery hands of the king instead of their own. If she looks at them, she might find a smile from Snow White on their face, pitying and self-assuring. She does neither, watching the ceiling instead as a kernel of hatred sits in her throat.

Finally, the nurses step away with clear answers in the press of their lips and Blue sighs. "Very well," her mouth settles with disdain. "You're no longer a suspect."

"Great," Emma grumbles. "Can go now?"

"No. I still have a few questions."

It is in no way surprising, but still, it never ceases to irk Regina how innocence is either worshipped or ignored. "What could you possibly learn from me?" She sighs and tries her best not to fidget in her chair, the cold metal pressing uncomfortably against her legs. "I was with my family all night yesterday."

"You might be able to point us to the one responsible for this," She takes out a small writing pad as she speaks in a tone of casual condemnation. "Have you been in contact with any others?"

"Oh yes, I'll be sure to invite you to our next lunch."

Blue doesn't look up from her writing pad, "You can evade my questions all you want, but there are some things we already know. Like your relationship with Gus. I know he's been struggling to support himself and his brother. I know you left your house early in the morning, and I know you didn't come back until almost an hour later."

Regina's heart curls like dry leaves in a fire, burning quickly and closing up with its smoke. "Gus has nothing to do with this," She sneers, though she knows it will not matter. Innocence never seemed to make a difference when it lives in someone just struggling to hang on; she remembers what it felt like as a child, her heart still warm and red like a bird fluttering in her chest, everyone just watching as the world pushed in, wreaking havoc on her ribs.

"Well. We will just have to see about that, won't we?"

Regina's hands shake in her lap and she looks out through the window to calm herself again, slow the quick growing rage inside of her. Even without blood on his hands, Gus's innocence would be hard to prove without the Sheriff standing in his room to rattle against each word. She would need to provide a threat more dangerous than Gus...

Drawing in a deep breath, her hands clench into her lap, fighting back the love that lives like thin, suffocating roots in her heart. "I think…" she starts, feeling breathless. "I think I may know who did this."

"Really?" Mother Superior lifts an eyebrow. She had not expected cooperation. Regina can sense from the hard lines forming around her mouth that she had not entirely wanted it. "Who?"

"My mother."

The room settles in complete silence.

"Cora?" Blue asks after a moment, her voice sounding thing. Regina nods and she taps her pen against the page, preparing. "Very well. What's her location?"

"With my sister," Regina whispers and Blue nods, the room filling with a mild commotion as the nurses and Blue leave, the sound of their conversations trailing behind them.

Emma stares at her, a vacuum hush surrounding them as the doors close. Regina stares out of the small window into the cold white sky and the distant trees below them, trying not to think of her mother and sister hiding in a cabin between, soon to be turned inside out. Scraped clean.

"Your mother came back?" Regina looks up to find her still in the distant corner, standing stiffly. "When did you find out?"

"A few weeks."

"A few weeks?" Emma shakes her head in disbelief. "You have known for weeks, and you didn't tell me?"

Regina purses her lips as something tough and stubborn inflates inside of her, lifting up between her lungs. "I don't owe you every one of my secrets, Miss Swan. I didn't know what you would do with this information so I kept it. If you remember you are my friend, not my keeper."

"You didn't know what I would do? I'd be on your side, like I always am."

"Well I wasn't so sure. I didn't want to give her up just yet, considering what happened last time."

Emma caves fast, her eyes blinking back an emotion too large to hold back completely.

"Okay," Emma says at last, nervously tucking away her long blond hair. "I get it. I know that what you have with your mother is complicated, I shouldn't have expected you to just tell me everything. I'm sorry."

After a deep breath, Emma says. "This is just – this is huge. I thought the town was enough to worry about, but now…God, now there is just so much, and I don't know - I don't know if I will be able to protect you from all of it."

Emma looks at her like she had that first night, body pressed against the counter while something enormous opened all around her. She had acted quickly then – resting it all on her shoulders, but now she trembles.

"I know," Regina whispers and opens her arms to her again.

Emma has to maneuver around the chair a little, pressing her hip against the metal arm so that they can align their bodies close together. She lays her forehead along the curve of Regina's neck, wrapping her arms around her shoulders.

Regina can hear the soft-roughness of Emma's voice, muffled against her loose shirt. "You don't have to tell me everything," Emma mumbles. "But please trust me."

Turning her head, she rests her cheek against the cold shell of Emma's ear. "Alright," she whispers.

They stay like that for a little while, silent except for the sound of the rubber soles of the nurses' shoes outside the door, passing along long, distant hallways. Regina closes her eyes, Emma's breath warming her neck.

Eventually, Emma squeezes her gently. "Do you think – do you think maybe I'm a little more than your friend?"

Regina sighs and slides a hand up grip the back of Emma's neck, gently encouraging her closer. "Yes," she whispers against Emma's mouth, kissing sweetly. In the cool hospital room, they make out slowly, resting against each other.

They bring her mother back in handcuffs. There are two sturdy men on either side of her, guiding with their large hands and presence, but she follows them without struggle, looking wan and sallow as she walks down the hallway. Regina shivers, watching her from the safety of a shadowed doorway.

"She doesn't look so good," Emma whispers at her side. "Did she look like that when you saw her?"

"No," Regina answers dryly. "She didn't look quite so…." She can't say dead, so she doesn't. She leans against Emma instead. "I wonder what they did with Zelena."

They don't wonder for long. In the distance there is the sound of struggle, the loud clatter of footsteps and shouting. Above all the noise and movement is her sister's sharp voice, sweeping high and clear above the rest. "You unhand me right this minute! I have a right to see my mother, you can't just take her from me – let go of me!"

"Fuck," Emma sighs, but Regina is already stepping out and walking down the hallway, turning the corner. Her sister is half bent over the counter with her hands locked behind her back and plastic wire around her wrists, an agitated security guard holding her down as she squirms and yells against the nurses' desk.

Somewhere along the struggle, Zelena finds her. Her eyes flutter wide, her narrow face spreading into something that vaguely resembles relief, and it jolts something inside Regina. Straightening, she stalks forward with all the authority of the town's mayor.

"Alright, that's enough," she snaps, and though her position has likely been filled for as long as she's been dead, the security guard still releases Zelena and shuffles back a step. Zelena, with all her fury and motion suddenly released, nearly falls on her face, but Regina catches her quickly by the arm.

"I wasn't going to fall," Zelena grumbles, but still uses all of Regina's weight to help her straighten up again.

Carefully, Regina settles her sister back against the counter, glaring up at the security guard. "Was the plastic wire really necessary? You already had her pinned to the desk."

"She kept trying to scratch my face," the guard grunts. "Got sharp fingernails."

"Zelena," Regina sighs.

"Whatever," Zelena mutters and glares moodily down at her shoes.

Silly child, Regina thinks, but she still helps her up from the counter.

"I'll take it from here," she says and the guard nods, watching them as they walk back to Emma, an odd smile on her face. Zelena leans her body against hers.

"You want me to cut the wires?" Emma asks when they're close enough. .

"No, let's not," Regina says, Zelena still against her. "I like your face enough without scratches on it."

"That's not very nice of you, sis. I wouldn't dare think of hurting your dear Sheriff," the light tone of her voice seems to give away by the end, deflating her entire body until her thin shoulders sink against the wall. "What are we doing here?" Zelena asks wearily.

Regina doesn't look away from her sister's eyes, but she can feel the tension of what she has done –these white walls like a cage closing forever around her mother. Zelena would not have to stay, she knows. But her mother will remain, and Zelena, struggling to breathe beneath the love in her chest, would be trapped here with her.

The space between them rings with silence. "A body was found yesterday," Emma eventually answers, glancing nervously at Regina, but she doesn't know if a lie will make any difference, so she says nothing. "He's- um - been eaten. The same way the dogs had been. They think it was your mother."

"But how did they know we were here?" Zelena asks, and doesn't look away from Regina. The answer sits plainly in the silence between them but Zelena waits, watching until Regina has to look away. Her mouth curls into a sneer. "And yet somehow you're her favorite."

Regina turns away to stare down the long silent hallway, the walls a bright white all the way down into the dim corner where her mother sits behind a door and a small window, surrounded by nurses. She cannot see what they're doing, but she can imagine the restlessness in her mother, standing perfectly still with a hateful smile on her mouth as white plastic hand press around her face their own kind of hate.

She cannot save her from this – she is not sure if she wants to – but still, she walks forward.

The window is small. Through the huddle of nurses she can see her mother's face, staring defiantly ahead, refusing to look at anyone even as a woman grips her jaw tight enough to open her mouth. She stares out into the window with sharp, seeing eyes, and it's with a sudden prickling fear that Regina becomes aware of her mother's attention, watching her carefully with an expression she has feared all her life.

Instinctively, she steps back and nearly bumps into Emma. "You're okay," Emma whispers and knows not to try and hold her while her mother watches them through the glass.

The inspection lasts only a few minutes later and ends in agitation, the nurses stepping away with tightly pressed lips, sliding off their white plastic gloves. Her mother remains completely motionless, but even through the glass and space Regina can see the small curve of her smile. It takes a moment for Regina to fully understand, settling like cool, icy air: it is not her mother.

Blue walks out quickly, her frustration struggling to hide in her tightly formed smile. "Well, it appears it's not your mother, either."

Regina has no idea what else to say. She is caught by relief and horror.

"Great," Zelena snaps. "Can we leave, now?"

"You're welcome to leave anytime," Blue barely glances at her, already turning to Emma. "We'll need to put Cora in the jail for the time being, just while we search for an empty space in the asylum."

Regina stiffens. "You said it wasn't my mother."

"Yes. But we can't just let your mother walk free."

"Why not?" She snaps though it's the same answer as always - guilt and blame seem rarely connected in the constant drawing of sentences, grabbing handfuls of people's lives, uncoordinated.

"Regina," Blue tips her head down, smiling knowingly. "You must have expected this. We can't let someone as dangerous as your mother wander around on her own free will. Not unsupervised at the very least."

"She's not unsupervised!"

"Zelena is a prior villain and has done nothing to either redeem herself to the town or involve herself with it," Blue says, distractedly taking out the flat silver of her phone, quickly unlocking it as she distances herself from the conversation. "She is not reliable in the least."

"I'll take her, then," Regina says, and doesn't let herself think about what she's said, even as Emma shifts nervously beside her and Blue looks up into her eyes, shocked.

"You would take her?" She echoes, incredulous. "Really?"

Regina stands tall, unrelenting even as the idea opens a sharp horror inside of her. Her mother in the same house with her again, becoming a cage, holding all the cold empty silence and quiet horror that it has held before, waiting tremendously for the doors to open and for her father to laugh and save her for once.

She can feel her mother staring at her through the glass, and though she doesn't dare turn to look, love stirs inside like the wind that carries the embers of a dying fire out to the long yellow grass, immediately catching spark. Helplessly, she caves. "Yes."

Blue's mouth settles harshly. "Very well." she snaps and turns away, back into the room.

Regina sighs and feels Emma nervously slide up beside her. She doesn't say anything and Regina is grateful for it - for the way Emma understands the small things. The need for silence. Emma remains at her side, steady and warm.

After a while, she slowly returns. "We'll put her in our basement," She affirms, and though her horror is still there, she is momentarily soothed by the idea of a lock and a closed room.

Noticing the silence behind her, she turns to see Zelena staring despondently at the room their mother is in. There is a grief there that Regina understands entirely – she had learned from her own child that love is not weakness but she was a child once, too, and living with her mother had taught her enough about love to know that it is not always strength. It is not always good.

Reaching for her sister's hand, she squeezes it gently. "You're coming, too."

In the basement, her mother sits on a small cot, prim and self-contained; her hands rest peacefully in her lap with a gray wool blanket covering her legs. A flashbulb hangs from the ceiling, offering a dark wan circle of amber light, touching all the walls of the small, cold room. And though it is larger than a prison cell – at least larger than her own– her mother still watches the dark stairways with eyes full of resentment. It makes the plate of warm food in Regina's hands feel cold.

When she is all the way down the stairs, Cora raises her hands. "Is this really necessary?" The handcuffs fall against her sharp knobby wrists, the dark wiry veins looking pronounced beneath her paper-thin skin.

"I can't have you here without them," Regina doesn't look at her mother's hands, the thin, knobby bones and long fingers - though far older than she remembers them to be - she remembers watching them squeeze the most important things into nothing.

"Honestly dear, you don't think you're being a little ridiculous?" Her mother sighs as her hands drop back into her lap. "I can't even use my magic anymore and you have me handcuffed and locked in your basement."

"You're lucky to even be here, Mother."

"Oh, sure. I'm lucky to be shivering in your cold wet basement." her mother snarks and idly picks at the wooly blanket on her lap, her handcuffs jingling quietly. "You couldn't have bothered to bring your mother a heavier blanket?"

"I'll look around for some more," she sighs, but does not move. She's still holding the warm plate of food she had made for her, waiting anxiously in her hands. And though she would like to simply set it down on the desk beside her mother's bed and walk away, she remains standing. Waiting.

"Have you been able to use any?" Her mother asks eventually. "Magic, I mean. Have you been able to use it since waking up?"

"Only once so far."

"Really?"

"I saved Emma." Regina answers though she had not intended to reveal anything on the matter her mother's eyes are like a dangerous riptide when focused only on her. They always pull her in.

"That's wonderful, dear." Her mother smiles. It makes Regina's heart beat fast. "You've always been very capable in magic."

"It feels different than before." she answers, despite herself. "It doesn't feel tied up in my anger anymore."

Her mother hums. "I suppose you think love is the answer in this, too." Her smile turns cold. "Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that. Love never seemed to work very well with us. We're the same, in that way."

Regina shivers, feeling a cold horror slide down her back. She seeks out the familiar warmth of her magic, the way it had burned wildly inside from a simple careless touch - Emma knocking into her, blindly pulling something up from deep inside.

Like feeling a loose thread, Regina feels Emma's theory tickle in the back of her head. She stares down her mother. "What about Zelena?"

Her mother immediately stiffens, "What about her?"

"Can she not use her magic, either?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Regina purses her lips, hesitating. She doesn't want to reveal too much about Emma's theory, about the love that ties one another through life, holding strong even through death. The love that can twist you up inside, disorganize you, make impossible things happen, and the most natural things become impossible. Her mother waits edgily in the silence before scoffing, a hint of frustration in her voice, irritated by the distraction of her other daughter – a mistake of her youth. A careless and edgy reflection of herself. "I have no idea, dear. I don't ask her these things. I don't really think Zelena is any of our concern."

"She's my sister." Regina barks, "Your daughter. Don't you care about her at all?"

"Oh, so blood matters to you, now?" Cora sneers nastily. "I thought it made no difference to you, darling."

Regina seethes silently, wanting words powerful enough to hurt her mother. But the moment slips away as something shifts above them. Her mother stops listening; she is staring up at the floorboards above them, dust and voices drifting down, falling around them. Regina wishes there were thicker walls and stone floorboards. Regina wishes she did not understand her mother so much. The quiet flicker near her mouth at the sound of Zelena's voice, suppressed quickly, fighting against love the way that Regina had once fought to breathe through the water. With a heart in her chest, her mother is not untouched by love, but still she turns away from it.

Suddenly tired, she brings the plate forward. "I made you dinner, Mother."

"I can't eat it." her mother answers, barely glancing at it.

"It's good. I cooked it myself," Regina sighs, and even though she knows why it doesn't keep the rejection from tickling the back of her neck, "I promise the meat is all fresh."

"You know what I mean." Cora snaps. "You must know, by now. You feel it too. You have to." The coils of the mattress shift stiffly beneath her fidgeting; her voice lifts up into a nervous tone Regina's never heard before. "I'm sure it tastes fine. I'm sure it tastes wonderful, dear, but it won't taste like it should. Not anymore."

"I know." Regina gently sets the plate aside. "But I don't know what else to do for you, Mother. We can't just start killing pets to keep you satisfied."

"It's been harder to catch any, regardless." Cora mutters, and suddenly her frail skin and thin, knobby hands make sense, her hunger pressing up from just beneath her skin. She probably hasn't eaten properly in a week. Not now, with pet owners locking their dogs and cats inside their houses. Not if food turns to dust in her mouth.

"Why?" Regina asks with something sharp pressing against her chest, pressing deeper with her breath. "Why are you so angry all the time, Mother?"

"Because I'm here." Cora answers immediately, as if only to answer a question she's asked herself. "Everything I've worked for – everything I've done to actually mean something has led me here." Her hands twist sharply, jangling her handcuffs. "Dead and handcuffed in my daughter's basement."

"I'm sorry."

"No you're not." Cora stares up at her with cool, dark eyes. "You don't know what it's really like. I gave you so much. So much that I never had. A bed, food in your belly every morning and night. You were Queen. I gave you that!" Her mother snarls, the volume of her voice lifting beyond her thin bones and fragile skin, all the changes in death that has softened her. "You have no idea what it really feels like to fight for your life."

"Yes I do." Regina murmurs quietly and lifts a hand to her mother's cold cheek, gently stroking the soft, pale skin with the back of her knuckles. "I had to fight it from you."

Her mother's face falls. Slowly, she slumps back into her bed, her frame returning to the shape of this fragile mother she has known only recently, the mother with a bitter corner to her mouth, who watches her from the side of her eyes, trying to catch something she hasn't seen before. Her mother watches for as long as Regina's hand is on her cheek, soothing back and forth, but when it falls her mother looks down again. She does not watch her leave.

Regina slowly walks up from the basement and onto the spiraled stairs. In the hallway, she sees Henry walking around in his room, picking up clothes and tossing them into a laundry bin with a book underneath his arm; Emma's room is open, voices drifting out from the wide-open door. Emma. Zelena. Then Emma again.

Moving closer, she stops at the entrance of the room where Emma is wiping a ragged towel across the window glass with a disgruntled expression as Zelena watches from the chair in the corner.

"There." Emma sighs and drops her hand, "Now it's clean."

"I don't think so, there's still a smudge."

"Okay, bull shit, I've wiped this glass down three times now. It's perfectly clear."

"Go get your glasses, Savior. I see a smudge in the corner."

"I have contacts, I see just fine!" Emma huffs and wipes a curly blonde hair from her forehead. "Why don't you jump up and do it yourself if it bothers you so much?"

"What? And clean up your mess?"

"It's a smudge on a window!" Emma groans and Regina has to press her lips tight to stifle the sound of her quiet laughter. "You could be sleeping on the couch, you know. I didn't have to give up my bedroom."

"Oh, you mean your gracious offer to move into my sister's master bedroom?" Emma blushes and though Regina means to watch longer, the laugh in her chest bubbles out into something warm and large, filling the entire room. As Emma hides beneath a hand, her face darkening even more, the happiness continues to climb inside of her, reaching the top and spreading out through all the difficult parts of her. After a while, Emma's shoulders jump with her own suppressed laughter, followed soon by Henry, down the hall, and then finally by Zelena; and though Regina knows they're amusement has more to do with her own laughter than the odd happy feeling inside of her, Regina leans against the door frame and laughs.

The sky outside is still a dark when she hears the guest room door creak open, the house still quiet all around her. Emma is beside her, snoring lightly, warming the back of her neck with her breath. Their hands are still loosely entwined, held gently through the night by the grip of Regina's fingers.

Dazedly, Regina listens to the soft patter of her sisters feet across the hallway towards her room, watching the door open into the dark of the hallway. Her sister remains by the door, only a faint outline in the dark.

Frowning, she lifts up on her elbow to peer more closely. "What are you doing here?" she whispers.

"I thought we could take this time to talk." The only sound in the dark is Zelena's pajama pants scuffing quietly against the floor, a pair Regina recognizes vaguely, something she's thoughtlessly washed and folded a hundred times before.

"And you couldn't have waited for a more reasonable hour?" She makes a show of looking at the wrist watch beside her bed but she can only hear the faint ticking, its face too dark to read.

"Oh please, you don't sleep anyway.'"

"That doesn't mean I don't rest." Regina grumbles and settles back into the warm spot of the bed, Emma's body warming the curve of her back. "And regardless if I sleep or not, my mood will still be affected if I don't have a full eight hours of quiet."

"Sounds like the Savior already ruined that for you."

Regina sighs. "What do you want, Zelena."

She can hear the faint creaking of the floorboards as Zelena moves closer, her voice as soft as the sound of her bare feet along wood. "What are we going to do about Mother?"

Closing her eyes, she slowly turns her head away from the direction of Zelena's voice and the subject of her mother. But the darkness doesn't become sleep and Zelena doesn't leave. Breathing in deeply, she waits for the clamor of her heart to rest, like a stressed bird in a wire cage, it slowly settles back inside her ribs.

"I don't know." she says finally, still looking away. "She won't eat anything I make."

"Because she can't." Zelena entreats quietly, moving closer. "You know that. You must."

"I do." she whispers.

"So we won't let her starve, right?" There is a faint tremor in Zelena's voice, like a frightened child wandering into her bedroom to seek out assurances. Regina wants to reach out for her hand, but the distance between them feels impossible. Regina feels it the way she feels the two set of stairs spanning the space between her and her mother. And yet, still, she shivers. The coldness below seeps through the distance the way the rain would fill cotton or cloth.

She presses her body more firmly against Emma's, the soft underside of her chin resting against her shoulder. "I don't know if we have any other choice." she whispers, "We're not going to release her on unsuspecting citizens just so she can feel comfortable, dear."

"Not people." Zelena appeals, but her voice wobbles, "Just animals."

"People are already aware of the reason why their dogs are missing." Her upper lip stiffens, because a heart is a heart, and it had sat there on the front of her door step instead of bones and skin. "And don't believe for a second that our mother would ever hesitate before taking a person's life. She might even prefer it."

Zelena pulls in a wet breath, "So that's it, then?" Her voice rises in volume, caught between anger and hurt. Feeling Emma stir against her, Regina shushes her warningly, but Zelena only scoffs, "Oh my god, please. She doesn't hear anything."

Regina hushes her again, but as she looks back, she can see through her hair and the shadows of the room that Emma's eyes are still closed, her breathing still calm.

"You're right." She smiles, gently rubbing her fingers along the back of Emma's hand. "Still. You might wake Henry."

"The kid's probably listening already." Zelena huffs and crosses her arms, "Can we just decide on a plan?"

"I don't have one."

"So let's make one."

"I don't think there is one, Zelena."

When she looks up again, she finds Zelena staring down at her, struggling with her words. Isn't as noticeable as it would have been with Emma or Henry. Their nervousness is caught in their habits of motion, in the idle cracking their fingers or in the way they comb through their hair – she could track their progress effortlessly. With Zelena, there is only silence.

Regina waits, but Zelena's mouth eventually presses into a small frown. She stares silently down at the floor like a scolded child.

Regina sighs and pulls the sheets away from her. "We'll go to the local butcher." she says, and gently tucks the sheets back around Emma's body. "The meat is sold fresh every morning. If we go early, the meat will be almost freshly killed."

"That will work?"

It's so hopeful, so frantic. "It might." Regina says, but she has suspicions. She's starting to understand that meat makes very little difference, that it's just the killing that matters. Which is neither new nor surprising. After all, what had delighted her most about magic was not that she could control a heart with her voice and her hands, but that she could reach past the bones and skin of another person and take away the most living part of them and keep it for herself instead.

"I'm not sure." she says instead, a far-off truth. She pulls on her coat. "They'll be open in an hour. We'll be the first ones there if we leave now."

"Okay. Good." The quiet relief in her voice seems to fill the space in the dark.

"Get a coat and shoes."

She leaves a note for Emma before she leaves, hoping she sees it before her arms find the cold spot on her bed, before worry finds its resting spot in her chest. She'll be gone for work by the time Regina comes back and so before she leaves she sighs a soft sweet kiss against Emma's cheek; against the ticking wristwatch, she rests the words, I'll be home soon

The store is still closed when they get there, the windows dark. Peering inside, Regina can only see a faint light in one of the distant rooms in the back where the offices sit. Early shift workers will still be rubbing the sleep from their eyes back there, ignoring all other noises but the drip, drip, drip of coffee. Rapping lightly with her knuckles, she watches for movement on the other side.

"You have to knock louder than that." Zelena's teeth chatter as she shivers in her thin coat.

"I told you to bring a heavier coat."

"And I told you to knock louder." she grumbles and shifts forward, pounding repeatedly on the glass. "Open up, it's freezing out here!"

"Oh my god," Regina sighs and considers walking back in the car to simply wait, but lights begin to flicker inside and she can only imagine Zelena lasting a few minutes on her own before getting thrown out. Likely before the subject of a purchase can even be brought up; then she'd have left bed for nothing. By Zelena's side, Regina waits for the locks on the door to slide away.

The door opens to a deeply irritated and familiar vaguely face. "We're closed." He grunts and is already in the motion of closing it again when Regina steps forward.

"Excuse me – are you Jaq?"

His face flickers with surprise. "Do I know you?"

"I'm a friend of Gus's."

"Oh."

Regina smiles. The way his face softens is subtle and unremarkable but she is touched by it all the same – by the fierce, impossible love between siblings, something she is only beginning to understand. "How is he?" she asks.

"Good, he's good." Jaq doesn't smile like Gus. It doesn't pop up in every pause, but there is friendliness in his posture, in the gentle way he leans an arm against the door frame. "There have been a few people bothering him about the dead body they found. Came around his work and our house for a little while, so he's lying low." His voice is light, but somewhere deeper metal breaks up through his throat. "What can I get you?" He asks.

Regina wants to return to the conversation about Gus, to worry the details out of him, but she recognizes a redirection when she hears one. Smiling, she lets it goes. "We wanted the freshest cut of whatever is available." She gently clears the discomfort from her throat. "As fresh as possible."

Jaq stares at her for a moment, watching her shift uncomfortably. "Right." he says, and opens the door wider. "Why don't you come in and wait."

Regina walks in first, the cool dark room surrounding her like a heart, smelling richly of blood and metal. Her mouth waters and she instinctively draws her arms tighter around her chest, closing herself to the urgent feeling inside.

"I'll have to check what we have in store. But it's all pretty recent." Jaq blows warm air into his hands and rubs them together before closing the door behind them. "You were at the welcome back party, weren't you?"

Regina goes still. Even with the majority of the town aware of her death, she still feels the admission like a stone weight on her tongue. "Yes." she says at last.

"I thought so. I recognized you." Jaq says, rubbing an uneasy hand against his neck. "So you're like Gus, then, right? You're – "

"Dead, yes."

Jaq nods and doesn't move. There is something hesitant in the silence that follows, in the way he rubs the back of his neck as they stand, his mouth gently pressed into a frown of concentration. Finally, he breathes out a big breath and turns to her. "I don't – I don't really know anyone else whose returned other than Gus. We kind of keep to ourselves."

Regina nods warily and waits.

"Would you –would you mind if I asked kind of a personal question?"

Regina manages to keep her smile. "I suppose."

"I was just wondering if there are there like…lapses of time where you can't eat at all."

Her lungs tighten in her chest. She breathes sharply through her smile. "There is. It's happened a few times."

"So it…comes and goes...?"

"For some."

He sighs. "Alright."

"Is Gus…?" she can't make herself finish. She doesn't want to blend ideas that she's trapped inside her mother with Gus's warm boyish smile, the dimples in his cheek, his gentle, firm handshakes.

But Jaq shakes his head. "No, it's not bad. It's only happened once or twice. But a few nurses have come along with brochures and stuff." He shrugs, his body caving to the weight of worry beating like a hammer in his heart. "They said it would only continue to happen. That...the hunger would grow until they would need to start eating people just to survive it."

Regina feels stunted still. "Do you…do you believe that?"

Jaq shrugs, his eyes clear and gray. "I don't know. It wouldn't really change anything for me, if it were. Not with Gus. But things will start getting out of hand if it is. There has only been on incident and they're already building a facility for you guys."

Her heart jumps in her throat, caught. "What?" she asks weakly.

"Started calling it the Helping Hand. Here, I still have the brochure." He turns away to the counter, picking up a thin package, flipping through it absently. "It's like a clinic or something. To control your urges and keep you in one place, like rehab but they don't need your permission. All you need is a family member to sign you in."

"Oh."

"Here." He tips the packet towards her to take, and though Regina wants nothing to do with it, her hands lift instinctively towards it. The pages are thick and glossy, the pictures all of large rooms with smiling participants. Jaq gently clears his throat. "You're uh, good with your family, right?"

"Yes." she assures immediately, glad at least for one thing she can know for certainty. "Emma would never. Henry wouldn't either."

"Didn't think so." Jaq say with a small smile. "Alright, I'll go see what we have in the back. It'll just be a minute."

As he disappears into the back rooms, Regina folds the paper and tucks it away, not wanting to look at it anymore. But she can't help but imagine the cold windowless rooms in the pictures, the long white walls and locked doors. In these rooms, she can imagine the nurses with their plastic hands, their patient, resentful smiles.

Her family would never turn her in, she knows, but there is something horribly inevitable about it. Like the long hallway she once walked down, her mother's hand gripped around her arm as she walked her calmly to where the end of her childhood stood, smiling.

It's all voluntary, she assures herself, but the folded paper feels like a rock in her pocket and Regina can't stop imagining her mother beside her, clutching her arm, smiling as she walks her calmly, determinedly into the cold hush of locked rooms.

They leave a moment after Jaq returns, the car ride back to the house long and silent. Zelena has the package on her lap, the meat still warm, and Regina only stares at the road ahead of her, dread sitting like a stone in her throat.

When they pull up into the driveway, she feels the cold dread in her expand, stinging as tears in the back of her eyes; the garage door opens to only one car, Emma's yellow bug already gone and parked somewhere else as the house in front of her seems to grow larger, the hate seeping up through the doors of the basement to fill all the rooms of her house the space between them.

Quickly, Regina starts the engine again. Already halfway out of the car, Zelena looks up at her with wide eyes, "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to the station." She says, the need to see Emma gripping her heart like a hand.

"Wait – you're not doing this with me?" Zelena's voice sweeps high and clear, "What do I do? I don't even know how to cook."

"She'll want it raw." she says, her hands tightening around the wheel, "Please Zelena. I can't do this."

There is a brief moment of silence before the folded skin between her sister's eyebrows ease, softening. She sighs. "Okay." she says and steps away, closing the door gently behind her.

Driving away, she glances briefly at the review mirror where Zelena waves weakly with the ends of her fingers, her face cloudy through the glass. Regina tries not to think about anything else but the road, steadily leading her far away from her house and her mother. Back to Emma.

She parks in the front of the building but doesn't enter it. She doesn't want to risk exposure to anyone else, to David or possibly Snow, their wary glares, their morals balancing evenly on the beliefs they assure are true only through themselves. Instead, she rounds the building to where she knows Emma's office window is, the aluminum blinders shuttered close.

Leaning through the tall grass, she raps her knuckles on the window and waits only a moment before she sees the blinders shift, Emma peering out at her with her wide gray eyes. Just seeing her face relaxes something stiff in her spine, unfurling the stress there. She smiles and watches Emma's fingers flutter away, the blinders falling back as she stands and moves out to meet her.

Emma walks out only a moment later, bundled in a heavy blue jacket.

"Hey," she says, smiling warmly. "What's up?"

"Nothing, dear. I just wanted to see you." Regina quickly walks the short distance to be close again. "And maybe steal you away for a bit."

"Okay," Emma smiles so happily that Regina has to close her arms around the love inside her ribs, as steady and warm as the light streaming in from wide open windows. Impossible to contain.

She presses close against Emma's shoulder as they walk quietly side-by-side towards the most remote part of the town, the pier silent except for the sound of waves and seagulls. Distantly, a fog horn calls out across the white rolling sea.

When Emma sits at a bench, Regina immediately sits beside her.

"So what's wrong?"

Regina huffs and peers out towards the sea, "Why does anything have to be wrong?"

"You're here to visit me." Emma's fingers feel light and cool against her cheek as they gently brush back her dark hair, tucking it behind her ear. "That usually means you're going through something."

"Maybe I just wanted to visit you." Regina says, but the paper in her pocket still feels like a rock. Emma's fingers brush gently against her neck and up her cheek; she sighs, softening. "I don't think my mother will make it through this."

Emma sighs. "I know. "

"I'm worried I'll become like her."

"You won't."

"I have before." Regina looks out towards the ocean, the sea large and green, birds swooping low to steal fish from their homes. "I didn't want to become her then, either. But it was easy, so easy to just follow in her footsteps. I hardly realized I was doing it."

Emma is quiet for a while, staring out at the sea with her. "You came back from that, though." she says finally, "You changed."

"After years of being cruel, Emma."

"Do you think it's going to happen again?" When Regina looks up, Emma's face is open and bare. Regina glances quickly over her expression, looking for fear.

"I'm not sure." she says, and when Emma remains warm against her, a solid presence, she sighs and looks out towards the sea again. "Of course I do. Anger comes so easily to me."

"Maybe it does. But you're also the only person I know who has been able to come back from it." When Regina purses her lips and Emma gently pushes closer, their shoulders jostling as she smiles. "Just listen to me for a second, alright? I know you think you're somehow weaker because you gave in once, because you were dark, but I don't see it that way. I think it makes you stronger. I think it shows just how capable you are to change."

Regina only hums dryly, but Emma leans forward, smiling warmly, beautifully, "You're always coming back, Regina. I think that's proof of something."

All the awe in Emma rushes out and touches her, reaching to all the cold distant corners of herself. It fills her with a love and fear so great she has to touch a trembling hand to Emma's cheek just to calm it.

She wants to believe in what Emma says, but she fears it more. She fears the loneliness Emma will feel if she does fail, if she loses herself like her mother is beginning to. She fears for that warm hopeful heart, battering against her ribs, stuck in a dark enclosed place.

The thought of it makes her want to reach through the skin and space between them, to rescue Emma from her heart, from all the pain and love and hope it must endure. But she wouldn't – she would never; instead, she presses her cold numb fingers against Emma's chin and pulls her mouth to hers.

They kiss for a while, the cold air making them shiver, their teeth clattering between every press of their mouths.

Emma hums against her, breath tickling her lips as she asks, "Wanna go back to the office with me?"

Regina raises an eyebrow, and chuckles lowly when she feels Emma's hand moving up her leg. "Isn't David there?" she asks, and nearly gives in when Emma presses a few wandering kisses along her jaw.

"Yeah, but I have a door and a lock."

Regina scoffs, "You're too loud to do anything like that in public."

Emma smiles into her, "So make me be quiet."

She shivers, arousal warming inside of her. It's not an easy thing to say no to. "I think I should go back." she sighs finally, "To check on Zelena. I left her with a project she might not entirely be fit for." But, gently, she brushes her fingers along Emma's mouth and smiles, "But later."

"Okay." Emma smiles wider, cheeks now pink in the cold, "Later, then."

Regina smiles and leans back for one more kiss. And then another. They stay there for a little while.

When Regina returns, the house is silent. There is late morning light tilting in through her kitchen, warming the back of her son as he eats cereal, smiling sleepily at her as she closes the door. She starts towards him instinctively, but she stops when she sees Zelena in the living room, tucked into a chair with bare feet, her hair covering most of her face as she idly flips through an old magazine.

It is so oddly comforting, watching her sister read in the living room, in the house she raised her son in. She approaches quietly, coming to stand behind her. "Were there any problems?" She asks gently and has to conquer the urge to comb her fingers through Zelena's hair when she tilts her head up to look at her.

"No," She says lightly. "She's fine."

Regina keeps herself from balking just in time. "Really?" She asks, and maintains her smile. "So she ate, then?"

"Yup."

There is something in the tone of her voice that seems forced but her sister is in her living room with a blanket around her legs, reading a meaningless magazine and Regina lets it go. She wants the moment to last as long as it can, for the rooms of her house to be lived in, filled with the people she loves.

"Alright," she says simply and combs her fingers gently through Zelena's hair before she leaves for the kitchen. She does not check the basement.

Henry nods to her when she walks in, still finishing up his cereal. "Don't you have school?" she asks, and glances at the oven, green numbers blinking back at her.

"Not yet. I don't have a first period," Henry says and shifts back, the late morning light falling around his shoulders, coloring the tips of his ears and hair. Sometimes she's still surprised by just how much he has grown; his body no longer thin and knobby, carrying in him the five years lost between them.

A sharp pain pierces her heart. She wants to ask about college, about his new interests, about majors. She wants to live the years that were filled with her absence, the years that cloud in her head with questions too large and painful to put into words. She stands in the quiet of the kitchen, struggling with a painful smile.

The silence falls heavily around them. Gently, Henry sets his bowl aside. "Have you had any breakfast?" He asks as he walks over to a cupboard. "I was thinking of making pancakes."

Confusion gently crinkles her brow. "You've already had breakfast."

"But you haven't."

Oh. She smiles. "That's alright, dear. You're probably busy with getting ready for school." It is a point she argues only half-heartedly.

"Nah, I got time," Henry glances back at her over his shoulder. "We can make apple pancakes like we used to."

She breathes. "Okay," she says, and smiles.

As she watches him stretch out towards the taller cupboards, she thinks of the Saturday mornings they spent together; when Henry was still just a little toddler wanting to watch her cook, resting sleepy and heavy her hip as she moved around the kitchen, helping measure out cups of flour and milk.

It's hard to remember, sometimes, that it's been years since those Saturday mornings. Years since she has been able to lift her son up in her arms. But still, when Henry returns to the counter, she steps in close, sets her hip against his as they follow the old familiar routine of making breakfast.

Henry leaves after breakfast, and though she is still vaguely hungry she carries the plate out into the living room, and then further when she spots the empty seat on the couch. After a few more rooms, she walks hesitantly to the basement door and down the stone steps, preparing for the quiet hush of the room once the door swings shut behind her.

What she is not prepared for, however, is the empty bed. The handcuffs are resting atop the neatly folded towel, the silence nearly deafening.

"Zelena," she calls breathlessly, panic beating a pulse behind her ears. "Zelena, where is she?"

The door creaks quietly, and when she turns around Zelena is there, slumped against the doorframe with her arms wrapped tightly around her. Her face is hidden mostly by shadows, but she can see the sunken shape of her shoulders, collapsed onto herself with nothing but the door and her arms to keep together.

Shakily, she asks. "What have you done?"

"She was hungry."

The air around her is freezing, stinging in her lungs like ice water. "You said she was fine." Regina steals another sharp breath, voice rushed. "You said she ate."

Zelena shrugs. "I lied," She tilts her head away, the light touching the side of her jaw, the cold twist of her mouth. "What else could we do? She was starving down here. I had to do something."

"So you set her on the whole town?" Regina snaps, climbing up the stairs in a sudden burst of motion, pushing past her sister. "What do we do now, then, Zelena? Just let her kill someone? She could be anywhere – if we don't stop her, she could kill anyone." She loses her voice in the sudden well of breathlessness, a ball of panic tightening in her stomach.

Emma. She draws in a shaky breath, struggling to remain calm as something stirs inside of her – like it had that day, in the stables when she watched her mother's hands curl into a fist and turn a heart into dust – and as panic beats hard against her ribs, the thought drums loudly in her ears: not again, not Emma, not Emma.

Starting forward, she moves blindly toward the door, the hard rushing in her urging her on. She imagines Emma on the ground, heavy and cold, her body opened up like a suitcase to the parts of her hidden by skin and bone, turned out by her mother's cold hands. Zelena clatters down the stone steps behind her, struggling to keep up.

"Regina wait, she said she wouldn't kill anyone – just an animal!" Zelena argues behind her, breathlessly trying to catch up to her somehow, "She's not going to hurt anyone," she calls and Regina doesn't listen. Fear is climbing high inside her, recognizing the danger in every second that passes. Every moment where her mother is somewhere she is not, somewhere where Emma might be. (She had been devastated by Daniel's death. She would not survive Emma's.)

At the end of her driveway, she comes to a heavy stop, having no idea where to go – where her mother might have gone. It's an accidental glance to the ground that she finds the footsteps in the damp, white ground, veering off to the edge of the forest in large strides, as fast as a run. Her heart jumping in her throat, she follows them.

As they trek through the forest, she can't help but start hoping for a body – for some unknown victim to claim the horror of her mother's hunger, anyone but Emma or Henry. Anything that might keep the ones she loves from her mother.

It's no more than a few minutes before she finds her mother again.

She hears the sounds first – the wet scrape of teeth and flesh, the sound of tearing – but she doesn't let it slow her down. She needs to see the body. Splayed out against the ground, it's nearly unrecognizable in its gore, twisted in impossible angles, but as she glances quickly over the ravaged skin and untraceable details of their face, she finds short black hair.

"Gods." Zelena breathes against her, but Regina doesn't say anything. To pump blood back through her heart, she stares at his dark hair and the unwavering fact that his death was not Emma's. That Emma is still out there, alive, unknowingly spared.

"Regina," Zelena shuffles close and the sheer sound of her fear returns Regina to the moment, the sickening sounds around them. "Regina, what do we do?"

Regina doesn't answer. The blood is nearly black in the places where his body had caved. There is only a stump for his arm, shiny red muscle clinging stubbornly to bone, and Regina has to close her eyes beneath the sudden immensity of her hunger.

When she feels Zelena start to move closer, Regina snatches her arm and pulls her back. "Behind me," she snaps, and doesn't let go. She holds Zelena's hand as she steps closer, the glinting white snow slowly turning pink and then red as she moves towards her mother.

"Mother?" Regina quietly asks, but Cora makes a noise in the back of her throat, inaudible but awful, somehow. Inhuman. It rumbles lowly in her throat as she eats and Zelena whimpers quietly against her. Regina squeezes her hand once and steps a little closer. "Mother, can you hear me?"

Cora pauses, frighteningly still in the horror around her, still kneeling beside the broken body. Gently, very gently, as if she were touching a child she doesn't want to wake, Regina lays a hand on her shoulder. Her mother stiffens, her lip slowly curling upward and Regina has to fight the urge to turn away and flee.

"Mother," she whispers, and nearly startles when her mother looks up at her, half her face soaked in blood, staining her white teeth. But the most frightening part isn't the gore, or the dead body (it's not Emma), but her gray, cloudy eyes – as blank and unblinking as an animals. "Oh Momma," Regina breathes heavily, the name tripping out of her mouth as helplessly as it had as a child, caught in all the grief and love in her heart.

Her mother's face contracts. An odd noise hums in the back of her throat, a mix between a snarl and something else, a gentle struggle to come out as words.

She is not sure what she would have done if not for the distant sound of car doors slamming closed, of incoming footsteps. She might have continued stroking her mother's shoulder until her mother snapped again. She might have left her there in the middle of the forest – as Zelena had been left.

But the sound of people strikes her fear, the need to save her mother bulging like a knot inside her throat. She shakes her mother's shoulder a little more roughly, "Mother, you have to come back now."

Cora's face flickers, and Regina nearly stands in shock when her mother's eyes begin to clear, opening like the basement door to the darkness behind it, all the rage and hatred, a cold malevolence. It lasts for a moment before she realizes where she is. What she had done.

The wind carries the sound of voices to them, fluttering lightly with the dead leaves. Regina does not expect the fear in her mother's eyes; watching it cloud her face strikes her heart like a stone, her mind reeling with a range of ideas, ways to get them all out of this.

The men are too close to avoid, she knows. Their voices are already creeping up from the top of the hill. And even if they do hide, her mother is covered in blood and is in no position to run or hide for too long.

She could leave her mother. She could escape what is about to happen.

But her mother grips her arm. "Don't you dare leave me," she snarls, her voice harsh even as she pleads. Helplessly, Regina is drawn down to her again, still wanting everything that was refused to her. Slowly, after a deep breath, she pulls her mother up to her feet.

Though she knows they won't make it, she helps her mother move towards the trees. The voices behind them rise suddenly as they discover the body, filled with anger and fear. The shouts shorten into quick exclamation, coming closer, following their footsteps.

They don't go very far. She knew they wouldn't. Behind them is the heavy sound of rubber boots in the icy dirt and snow, following their clear, bloody path. They're coming in fast - like hard determined horses - and though it is hopeless, Regina still closes her eyes and imagines that they are far enough through the trees not to be seen. That somehow, they won't see her.

But she hears the familiar click of a gun, and the ringing silence after it. "Don't move," a man rumbles, and she feels her mother grip tighten on her arm, pressing hard with her bony fingers.

"Turn around," he says.

There is the rumble of nervousness at the sight of Cora when they turn around. Anger presses down their mouths, their rifles aimed to kill.

"That's it," one of them says. "I'm sick of this shit. Dead people walking around, taking lives. I'm sick of it. I'm not letting it happen again."

"She lost control – it was a mistake," Zelena grits out through clenched teeth. "It won't happen again."

"Right." The man starts forward, rifle still lifted. "The last guy was a mistake, too, I guess."

"That wasn't her!" Her sister snaps, warily watching the rifles as they point above her head to Cora, covered in blood. "If you want confirmation, you can ask that Blue Fairy bitch."

"What about her, then?" Someone says, and though Regina doesn't look at them, she knows they're looking at her. "The Queen might have done it. Your whole lot is a ticking time bomb, but her especially."

"No," Zelena shakes her head, looking back at her. "Regina didn't do anything. She just came here to help -"

"Right," one of them says, taking a step forward. "Just came to help hide her mother's little accident. Maybe join in on the fun too."

"No, she just – Look, it was my fault alright? She had no part in this!"

The men don't even look at her. "Maybe it's best if you leave. Let us take care of this now."

"You're not just going to shoot them," Zelena laughs, wildly, incredulously, but the hard faces looking back at her drains her face of blood. "You can't, you – wouldn't. This is just one time – it won't happen again. Regina hasn't even done anything! She's the more innocent one of all of us!"

Regina wants to hush her, but she can't reach her voice through the tightness in her throat. She can only look above the heads of the men and through the trees to the red brick roofs still visible in the distance. Her own is not too far away. She imagines her house now, the square, central hallway, the spiral stairwell, the slanted steps and her room, the warm bed. Emma's long blonde hair and her son's wide smile.

The thought of her absence fills her like a slow flood – it rushes through her as it had once filled her house, running along the hallways, creeping up the stairwell and through the cracks of closed doors, filling the rooms and all the long lonely years.

"Not innocent enough," the man grunts and steps over a tree root, his rifle pointing at Regina's chest. "Come on, we're going for a walk."

Zelena steps back, breathless as another man moves around her, pointing a rifle to Cora's chest. "You too," he says and doesn't even blink when her mother sneers at him.

"Fine then," Zelena rasps, following closely behind. "But I'm coming too."

But the men pay her no mind, moving carefully over the rocky terrain, they keep their eyes on Regina and her mother, the tip of their guns poking into their back. Her mother is still clutching her arm as they walk, and though it isn't a hallway, she still feels as though she is being led calmly to the end.

Stepping unevenly from the dirt to a loose cement road, Regina understands suddenly where they are taking her. You want to go where there's no magic? Emma had asked her once, gripping the car wheel tightly. She could predict the way it would end, like smoothing out a wrinkled shirt – every last pocket of air leaving all at once.

"Why not just shoot us?" She asks as they walk toward the edge of town.

"You'd leave a body behind," one of them says.

She clamps her mouth shut and refuses to speak again. She will not beg for her life.

As the town line creeps up, she feels a cold hand slide into her own and Regina just squeezes, recognizing her sister's bony knuckles and long fingers.

The air is damp with coming rain, the trees whipping back and forth with a cold wind and Regina watches as the town line approaches with a steady gaze, her mind calling back old, comforting memories. Emma on her back laughing, soaked and sandy. Henry's arms trembling as they wrapped around her in a hug, trembling with his laughter, his tears wet on her neck.

At the edge, she breathes in a sharp watery breath, her chest tight with the thought of her family breaking down like the planks and sea-softened boards of an old ship wreck. God, she just wants to be home.

"Alright, one of you first." A gun pushes on her back and she stumbles forward, the town line nearly touching her toes.

She breathes in a sharp breath, fear skittering up her back as she presses back, as far as she can from the dangerous death humming just a few inches in front of her – but there is still the gun poking a bruise between her shoulder blades, keeping her there.

She's not ready – god, she's not ready – there's still so much she wants, so many years she has not lived.

Her mother's hand slides down into Regina's open palm, feeling dry and chalky with dried blood, and though Regina's instinct is to recoil – to separate herself completely from the violence of her mother – she is too scared. She doesn't have the strength to let go of anything yet.

When she looks at her mother, she finds something calm and determined in her features. Her mother doesn't say a single word as she steps on to the other side, Regina's hand in hers.

"No!" She breathlessly gasps, horror rushing through her as her mother stiffens and immediately falls to her knees. Her mother's grip tightens, the last part of her still alive holding with all she can to the bones and flesh of her youngest daughter, pulling her quickly toward the silence on the other side.

She would have been pulled the whole way if Zelena's arms hadn't jumped out across her body, yanking her away and falling heavily to the ground with her, the cement bruising their ribs. Zelena's arms remain wrapped tight around her. They both stare with silent horror at their mother's silent body, curled towards them on the other.

The town line is so close she can feel the silent hum of its magic against the tips of her fingers, still connected to her mother's deathly cold hand. Zelena is shuddering all around her, magic humming inside of her too – released suddenly of her mother and the terrible love that knotted them together, through death and life.

Her mother is dead and she is alive and for a moment Regina is filled with only relief.

But then she feels the steel push of the gun against her side again. "You too," a man grunts.

The metal pushes hard into the soft space between her ribs and Regina breathes in sharply, sliding an inch too close, feeling the stale, deadly air brush against her chin like a kiss.

"No, not her," Zelena snarls and roughly pushes the gun aside. The man behind the gun scoffs and grabs a fistful of her shirt to push her away, to press the sole of his foot against Regina's back and push. He moves her no more a centimeter before Zelena's magic bursts from inside of her, flowing out of her like a raw, jagged scream.

The man arches high into the air and then comes spiraling down, his head hitting the cement in a loud, sickening crack. And then there is silence. He does not move again.

The other, still standing, glances wildly between his friend and Zelena, "What did you do!" He yells, voice cracking in sudden grief, and lifts up his rifle.

Zelena paralyzes him with a flick of her hand and stands.

"Zelena," Regina manages weakly, slowly lifting onto an arm. But she still holding her mother's hand, and to stand is to let go, so she remains where she is. "Stop. Zelena, stop."

"Why." She says flatly, monotone.

"Because." Regina draws in a deep breath, feeling it ache in her lungs. It's a question she's asked herself countless times in her life. It's a question that she's never been able to completely answer. "It won't help with anything," she says, which is true enough. But with her mother's hand still cold against her palm, she knows it only answers so much.

Zelena glances back at her, her hair blowing dark across her face – so much darker in the cold light, so much like her mother, so much like her own. She stares at her for a while, her hand still extended out to keep the man's body still, his organs functioning within like a fluttered frantic bird.

"You could kill him," Zelena says, and Regina feels it hit her like a fist.

"No."

"You're angry, aren't you?" She asks, and Regina has to close her eyes because it's there, that immense anger – it wraps around her chest like a strong embrace, pushing together until her ribs feels like an iron cage around her heart. She can feel the anger in her jaw, in the warm red behind her eyelids, in the sharp pangs of hunger in her stomach. "You want to, I know you do. I know anger like yours. Mother did too. Make him feel it."

"Don't bait me," Regina snaps, but she glares at the man across from her, his expression one of fear and hate. And it is so tempting to give into. It is a warm promise, telling stories of a future where she can be cruel and still win, she can have everything. And it is so tempting to give into.

But she can still feel the cold dead grip of her mother's hand, the skin still chalky with dried blood as her mother lies curled on the other side, dead and alone. She does not crumble or turn to ash. Her skin still looks freshly touched by life, only now beginning to fade, but her body is diminished, reserved now to only her small frame and bare feet, her small curled fingers and the certainty of death in her face.

Regina stares at her, knowing just how little separates her from her mother. How close their fates are entwined. How easily her mother's death could have been hers – how much it could still be.

"We have to call Emma," she says, and Zelena's shoulders slump.

Her sister doesn't look at the body curled on the floor, not when she finally fishes a phone out of the man's pocket and not in any of the steps she takes towards Regina. She is still staring at the ground when she passes over the phone – and Regina only has two hands, both busy, but there is something in Zelena that strikes as more important. And so, to hold her sister, she lets go of her mother.

Zelena curls around her like a child, her head in her lap. The man is still frozen, staring at them with an anger and fear she knows intimately, so she does not release him as she puts the phone to her ear and calls Emma.

Rain slowly falls around them, a light tapping on the cement. She hears the rain on Emma's side too, through the buzz of static and the distance between them, stretching through the long roads and the dead that seem to surround them all.

"Emma."

"Regina, is that you?" Emma's voice lifts up with amusement. "What phone are you using? I don't recognize the number."

Her heart catches at the sweet sound of Emma's voice – but the moment Emma is in is stretched too far away from her, only connected through a fuzzy phone call and the cold rain.

"Emma," she doesn't bother to hide the quiver in voice. For a moment, the only audible sound is the rain on either side, in opposite parts of town. "Emma, I need you to come and pick us up, please."

"Okay," Emma voice is filled with immediacy. "What's wrong? Where are you?"

"The town line," she says, answering all at once.

Emma's pulls up in the cruiser only minutes later, blue lights flashing. Stepping out, she grabs the guy by the jacket before Zelena can even release his paralysis and throws him in the back of her cruiser, his body stiff as a board, hitting knees and arms against the metal frame before she shoves him through and closes the door.

She looks back to the other man, still lying on the cement, but Regina shakes her head and Emma doesn't speak, her teeth clenching hard against each other. She just nods and opens up the driver door to drive them home.

Regina sits in the passenger seat with Zelena balancing precariously on her lap as the man in the back glares with dark eyes through the metal gate dividing them. No one speaks, Emma's mouth still holding back all the tension in her jaw as she drives through the streets with a white-grip. At the Sheriff station, David is already waiting at the curb with handcuffs.

Getting the man out of the car is too difficult frozen stiff, but when he was released, the snarling words that falls out of his mouth fills the car through the entire drive home.

It was not the words that mattered – promising death and future hurt – Regina hardly blinks at that at all. But the vehemence in them seems to sit with them the whole way back, determining a part of her future Regina hadn't wanted to know about, yet. It draws to a close a conclusion she both feared and expected: that it won't get any easier.

Henry is there when they open the door, ducking immediately into her arms. His arms press along her back as he grips her shoulders tightly, and she presses her cheek against his and closes her eyes. Zelena stays by her side, still holding her hand, unwilling or just unthinking to remove it.

"It's alright, dear. I'm here," she assures and presses a soft kiss on his cheek and then another. "I'm alright."

Henry nods but he does not let go.

It is only when they have separated minutes later, all settling quietly into the living room, that Regina notices that Emma is gone. Frowning, she looks to Henry, sitting obligingly beside Zelena, who looks back and frowns with understanding, nodding to the kitchen.

As she walks through the doorway, she remembers the conversation she had with Emma in the Sheriff station so long ago – how much they had leaned on each other, mother and son, learning to live through her absence.

It is a small comfort to know that they will have each other, regardless of what happens to her.

But whatever small comfort she gathered falls away at the sight of Emma in the kitchen, in the corner, her back facing her. Her arms are cradling her ribs, and Regina can hear the noises she is trying hard not to make. The peeping sounds, the odd catch of breath.

"Emma," she sighs and gently closes the door behind her.

Emma breathes out and gently presses the heels of her palms to her eyelids. "Sorry…" she mumbles, voice thick with tears. "I'll come out soon, I promise."

"It's okay," she soothes. "Take your time." But as she steps forward, Emma shifts away. And while the rejection does not sting quite as much as it had that first night, she still comes to a stop. Her heart aching, she leans against the counter, pressing the tips of her fingers against the cool hard marble, making the decision to wait instead.

It does not take long. Emma's breath slowly evens out, hitching only occasionally as she dries her wet cheeks.

"I'm sorry," she says at last and tilts her head up to stare at the ceiling. "You're the one who almost died today. I should be trying to comfort you." Her voice wobbles weakly and Regina wants to close the space between them so much, but she presses her fingers harder against the counter and stays where she is.

A part of her thinks, for a moment, about preparing her for what might happen. For a future that might go on without her. But the thought of it constricts painfully in her chest. "Please don't worry about that," she finds herself saying instead. "It didn't happen – I'm still here, Emma. Just focus on that."

"But it almost happened."

"I know. But I'm here now," she says again, as though it could push the possibility of her death farther away. It doesn't, she knows.

Emma breathes in deeply and looks at her with tired, red eyes. "It's not going to get any easier, is it?"

"No," she agrees and watches the pain across Emma's face. The hope is still there, beating in her heart, but it is aching now, battering inevitably against the reality of the bones keeping it in.

"I almost lost you again," Emma says and shivers, crossing her arms around her chest as she shuffles closer. "I didn't expect to. I didn't last time either. I saw you just a few hours ago and didn't suspect a thing, not as you were being walked with a gun against your back. Not as they pushed your Mom over and almost did the same to you – I didn't suspect a single thing. I was still thinking I'd come home and we'd have dinner and go to bed and make love." She rasped hoarsely and steps closer.

"Oh Emma," she breathes. "This wasn't – how could you possibly know?"

Emma trembles and drops her head to Regina's shoulder. "I can't lose you again," she whispers, shaking gently, shuffling forward a few inches just to lean against her. "I couldn't survive it, if I did."

Regina closes her eyes and curls her fingers through Emma's hair. "Don't say that. Please don't say that."

Emma just trembles and Regina holds her closer, gently combing through her hair, and though she knows exactly what to say – the common, soothing assurances – she stares out at the wall behind her, at her face reflecting back in the sleek black refrigerator.

And though it is still hers, she can't stop imagining her mother's face instead. Those dim cloudy eyes and a mouth covered in blood.

It is her mother's violence that ultimately sets everything in motion. The Helping Hand opens its doors, a recommendation that is posted as fliers on every door with returned loved one at home. And then it becomes required. It comes as a signed law by Belle, written clearly from the words in Mother Superior's mouth.

Some turn themselves in willingly, others by frightened family members. Most, she knows, are forcibly removed. Ripped from their families and dragged down their stairs, forced into the back of a car; into the cold hush of locked rooms.

A part of her is impressed by the point-blank attack on the town, Blue's influence leaking out from the Mayor's office, uncurbed by Belle's hesitancy, making rights for the dead a simple and unexplored gray area. She'd have called a town meeting, at least – but well, she's not Mayor, and likely never will be again if her house is the next one on the list to visit with a van.

Henry is on the couch next to her, sitting stiffly as they both listen to Emma on the phone in the other room, pacing back and forth again and again. Regina's heard her enough on the phone to recognize there is a script in every person on the council Emma fights with. It always ends the same – the quiet, calming excuses; that it's all just temporary, a holding place to figure out what next, a safe place.

But the underlying point is: no there is nothing you can do. And so every day, Regina watches for a car to pull up.

When the phone finally ends, Emma falls heavily into the seat next to her. "We can hide you."

It almost puts a smile on her face. "Emma," she sighs lightly, "What would that do?"

"It could give you time."

"Not much. There isn't enough places in town where Blue wouldn't look," she says, and watches Emma's brow furrow into a familiar crinkle, the stubborn line that's pushed every one of their arguments into something terrible, ending in either loud voices or tears. She moves on quickly, "Where would I go?"

"Snow's?"

"Snow," Regina sighs. "That would be the first place they'd look. Isn't Graham still there?"

"No, he was one of the first to turn himself in." The side of Emma's mouth pulls up uninvited with an amusement she struggles to ignore, the moment too hard, too difficult for a smile, but Emma's humor often cradles the difficult love she has for her mother so the smile remains. "Better prison than another morning with Snow, I guess."

She might have agreed on that, but to say it out loud would take away Emma's smile, so instead she says, "What makes you think she will hide me?"

Emma shrugs. "She loves you."

"She doesn't even believe I'm here."

"I think she does. She must at least a little, by now." Emma leans her head back against the couch. She doesn't close her eyes, but they droop heavily, tired from the day. "She rallied the searches for you, you know. We all hoped you'd be found somewhere, injured, but alive, waiting for assistance – we all thought that for a while. But I don't think she ever really considered…" Emma sighs heavily, and closes her eyes. "I just don't think she knows how to accept anything else."

Regina doesn't say anything else. She thinks of Henry in the car, gripping the car wheel hard as they stared out into the cold morning, graves poking out of the ground. He had needed an empty casket to make the dead woman in his head fade away. Emma had needed a hug. She wonders what it would take Snow.

"So how about it?" She glances over to see Emma looking at her again, sleepy but focused. "You wanna stay at Snow's for a little while?"

Regina blinks. She hadn't thought of it as a choice but rather simply the next course of action, decided already. But as she sits there, she feels both Emma and Henry warm against her, turning to look at her, waiting for her decision. Even Zelena, pretending not to notice the conversation as she muddles aimlessly around the kitchen, pauses to look at her.

She has a sudden moment of clarity. She is the engine in this family, moving all three of them forward, through their lives, deciding when and where to turn. If she dies, if she disappears…

She doesn't want to think about it. "Yes," she says, just to make a decision, to change something. "We'll go to Snow's."

It is still dark when Emma parks at the side of Snow's apartment. "We can't hang around for long, or people will notice our car." Emma leans closer to Regina to look out of the passenger seat window, "But I think it's early enough to still go up there with you. I don't think anyone's watching you."

Regina doubts it, but Emma's face is already edgy with anxiousness so she nods and steps out.

Doors slam closed behind her. Emma and Henry are warm at her side as they walk up to building and up the three flights of stairs, all the way to Snow's door. As Emma knocks, Regina looks out the small window to the other buildings to where the lives of people are displayed in clothe lines and potted plants, shirts hanging dry and tea cups absently on porch chairs.

She breathes through the sadness crammed close in her chest, her fingers curling into the silky fabric of her pocket at the thought of her house empty of her again. To keep from crying, she stares at the hard lines in Emma's back and waits.

When the door cracks open, Regina can only see the tip of Snow's nose and her forehead before it closes again, sliding away a metal lock and opening to Snow's hard face and the quiet rooms behind her.

Regina wants to turn back and leave for her own house, but instead she smiles and follows Emma and Henry inside.

"I'm not sure how you expect this to work, Emma," Snow whispers, gently disapproving as she closes the door behind them.

"I'm just trying to take it step-by-step at this point Mom."

"She can't stay here forever."

"I know," Emma heads into the living room with a heavy sigh, letting the overnight bag Regina had packed onto the flat cushion of a chair. "But she'll be safe here for at least a little while. I'll figure out the rest later."

Snow's lips press hard together, but she nods. She glances only briefly at Regina before quickly looking away again, clearing her throat. "You two should be heading out soon," she nods to the door and the long, dark hallway behind it. "People will notice your car."

"Right," Emma says, but she stands silently, hesitating to start the next moment. Regina is aware of the seconds that pass, stuck somewhere on a moment before the goodbye – the kisses and hugs, transitioning from being together to being apart.

Henry is the one to step forward first, pressing a gentle kiss against her cheek. "Bye, Mom."

"Bye, sweetie," she sighs and gently squeezes his arm. "You be good to Emma. And please look after Zelena."

He smiles, "I will."

When she turns around Emma is at her side, struggling to hide a tremor in the corner of her mouth as she presses a quick kiss against her cheek. "I'll call later," she whispers and pulls away again, too brief.

"Alright," Regina already misses the faint tickle of Emma's hair against her cheek and the touch of her lips. She wants to go home with her and sleep in their bed and have a real kiss, one that does not feel like a goodbye, but instead she steps away and does not watch them leave.

Snow stands stiffly in the silence that follows. "Thank you for letting me stay here," she says and walks to the small black overnight bag on the chair just to touch its familiar weight. Something brought back from home.

"Right, sure," Snow quickly clears her throat and looks away, the silence falling heavily around them.

Regina gently lifts the strap over her shoulder and presses the bag close to her side. "Are you working today?"

"Yes."

"Alright," she says, and tries not to feel distressed with the thought of long, empty hours in a silent house. "Where is Neal?"

"Still asleep. Though, if he hears your voice..." she trails off, and Regina recognizes the familiar scorn in her voice, remembering the quiet, exhausting pain in the muscle across her breastbone as she watched her son daily begin to favor someone else. Snow notices and looks away, "You can stay in Emma's old room."

Gently, she nods and distances herself again.

The stairs creak softly beneath her heels and she holds the thin metal railing to lean her weight elsewhere, recognizing Emma's room as the empty one she had woke up in with a rough bruise on the back of her head. Now, she coasts the perimeter of the hardware floors for something familiar, the white windows and nicked desks all holding memories she is not familiar with.

When she finds a photo album on the bottom rink of a drawer, she sighs in relief and settles onto the corner of the bed. Her fingers smooth over the wooden cover, the spine creaking gently when it opens. The glossy pages are heavy with pictures.

The first one she finds is old but it puts a smile on her face. Mary Margaret is smiling obliviously beside a clearly uncomfortable Emma Swan, still rough and unknown, a stranger to them both. But she is smiling hesitantly with the corners of her mouth and Regina traces the lines with a tender finger.

A few pages in, she finds herself in a few photos. Smiling with Henry. Distracted at Granny's, sipping coffee. A family dinner she only vaguely remembers now, still new and tentative, but the picture captures what she is sure would have been a tradition had she lived longer. One or two are of her standing tentatively beside Emma with a closed-mouth smile, waiting for the click.

Turning the next page, she catches her breath, the grief as immediate as a car crash, as quick and unseeing. Her fingers hesitate at the corner as she stares at a picture of Henry, standing solidly beside Snow, his smile forced and eyes flat.

It looks like a family get together, Snow's arm wrapped around his waist, but he stands as rough and uncertain as Emma had in the first picture, like a stranger. Just passing through.

Her fingers tremble as they edge along the corner of the page, turning slowly.

Her absence is as clear and immediate in the picture as the flare of birthday candles, Henry looking up with an expression of someone who doesn't want their picture taking, but yields to it graciously. She glances quickly across the whole page, her family's life spilling out in odd pockets, uneven and uneasy.

One catches her eye more than most. It is a group photo of the family at the beach. Henry stands obligingly beside Snow in the front. But in the back row, something is happening. David's profile is turned toward Emma, his face caught forever in concern, filled with a question he never finished asking.

The wind has blown Emma's hair partially across her face, but even with it as a curtain, it is clear she is not smiling. She stands there behind Henry and Snow, staring at the camera with a dull, unresponsive state. She looks completely unconnected from the act of picture-taking.

Regina breathes in shakily and touches Emma's face, the grief in her face as plain as the empty place beside her where should have been standing.

"I never knew how to handle her grief," Snow says quietly at her place by the door and Regina does not stop tracing the hard lines in Emma's face, the corner of her mouth touched by grief. "It never seemed to get any smaller. I thought it would, gradually. Over time. But she seemed just as unreachable to me as she had those first few days we found you, five years later."

Regina just nods and turns another page. Emma is less frequent in them, but even when she's present, she isn't there. In one picture she stands off to the side of Snow's shoulder and though she is standing completely still, her face looks unreadable as though dimmed by sudden motion, her smile like a passing blur on her face.

Gently, she traces the places where grief touches Emma face. "What did it feel like when your heart split in two?" She finds herself asking and looks up to Snow.

Snow stares down at her with confused eyes. "Why?"

"I always wondered," she says, and it was true.

"Terrible," Snow says eventually, staring down at the photo album. "But not for the reason you might think. Splitting my heart hurt, but it was necessary, I didn't think twice about it once I realized it might bring him back to life. It was the moment before that that was insufferable – with David on the floor, his heart gone. I never knew more about death than I did in that moment. I never want to know it again."

Emma's face looks up at her from the album, her eyes dark and distant. "You brought your husband back from the dead," she says, and in a moment understands. Love powerful enough to bring people back doesn't live in Snow White's heart alone. When she looks up, Snow is staring at her, connected at once in a rare moment of understanding. Regina smiles, "You're more familiar with your daughter's grief than you think, my dear."

Snow stares at her for a while. She opens her mouth and then closes it. Her face is moving steadily towards a slow understanding, like the feeling before rain begins to fall, before anything can form, there is the prickle of awareness. It dawns and breaks into Snow's face.

The front door opens before any of them can speak, the sound of David's voice drifting up through the walls, pulling Snow's attention instinctively to his movement. When she glances back, it's with an expression of a rushed uncertainty.

"I have to go to work."

"You should probably go then."

"I can probably still call in a substitute." Snow twists her fingers together, "I – if you want, we can keep talking."

"I'm not sure if that would be wise," Regina replies as gently as she can, to the soft vulnerability in Snow White. "It would seem suspicious if you didn't show up today."

"Right," she sighs, and Regina understands, because it's been five years and months since then and the thought of wasted time must feel suffocating.

"It's fine," she says, and closes the photo album. It rests as a pleasant weight against her legs. "I'll still be here when you come back."

Snow nods, smiling faintly, relieved. The stairs creak gently and David's voice rumbles deeply from the hallway, calling for his wife. Snow turns to him, and then turns back. "I was going to take Neal to his day care…" Snow looks at her, and Regina tries to steel back the quiet horror welling in her throat at the thought of the silent hours, with nothing to do, walking aimlessly in a house that isn't her own. "I can leave him here. If you wouldn't mind. He would most certainly prefer it."

"Yes." she sighs softly, relieved. "I would love that."

"Alright," Snow nods and tucks her chin in, barely hiding her shy smile. "See you later, then."

She listens to their steps across the hallway and down the stairs, moving all the way to the door and closing it again. The house settles around her in their absence, quiet and cold. In the silence, the thoughts and worries creep through her like a fog, large and formless. Slowly, she pushes the photo album from her lap and slides off her heels, stretching out across the bed that once belonged to Emma. Closing her eyes, she tries not to feel the empty space, waiting for time to pass more easily.

When she opens her eyes again, Neal is climbing up into bed with her. "Hey," he mumbles sleepily, and scoots closer.

"Hello dear," she whispers with a smile. "How are you?"

"Good." He blinks tiredly at her. "Why are you in Emma's room?"

So inquisitive. Just like Henry. "Well I thought I'd spend some time with you. I haven't seen you in a while."

He nods, accepting and she gently brushes back his dark hair. His eyes grow heavy, his eyelashes casting thin shadows across his cheek. Quietly, so quietly she almost doesn't hear it, he says, "You're like Graham, aren't you?"

It takes a moment for the words to sink in; her thumb pauses on his cheek as she falls through a moment of breathless horror. She had allowed Graham's presence to drift away from her mind, but now the fact of him has burrowed into this house, into the soft open eyes in Neal as he opens them to look at her. She searches his face quickly, looking for fear.

"What do you know about Graham?" She asks quietly.

"He doesn't sleep. And he eats a lot." He mumbles and stares up at her. "He said he died, too."

She sighs deeply, her stomach tightening into a fist. "Okay." she thinks quickly, over all the range of possibilities. "Well. How do you feel about that?"

Neal shrugs and doesn't look away from her. "Do you get tired if you can't sleep?"

Slowly, slowly she lets out her breath. "No," she presses the back of her knuckles against his cheek, relief warming inside of her like his the touch of his skin against her fingers. "I still use that time to rest. Even if I can't sleep."

"Sounds boring."

"Well," she chuckles. "Usually I have your big sister to cuddle with me."

"Ew." He groans and pushes his face deeper into the mattress.

Laughing, she loops her arms around his waist, pulling him against her as he squirms like Henry would as a child, his grimacing face erupting suddenly in hard laughing lines and breathlessness.

After a while, when they are both quiet and the morning light is stretching out across the room, Neal shuffles close. "We can snuggle if you want," he whispers sleepily and falls asleep. She presses a kiss against his head and smiles, for a moment completely relieved of her strange, difficult life.

As she closes her eyes, she imagines a world where she survived the crash. Where the photo album on the bed is filled with all of them, instead. For years and years, blending seamlessly into the next. Warm and steady: nobody missing, nothing misplaced, and Emma's eyes full of life.

The hours pass lazily. By mid afternoon, Regina is close to forgetting the worry and fear that had crept into her chest that morning as she stepped into the car. She is kneeling beside a small coffee table where Neal is drawing, his crayons scattered across the butcher paper. She watches him draw, listless in the warmth of the afternoon, enjoying the quiet as Neal's bare toes occasionally wiggle where they are pressed against her knees.

When she hears the sound of footsteps in distance, she is not alarmed. She wonders if it's Snow, coming back early. "When does your Mother's work end?" She asks, glancing at the clock. It's barely 1 o clock. Briefly, she imagines Emma jogging up the stairs in her red jacket, coming to visit.

But she wouldn't, Regina knows, and remembers why when Neal says, "Not till a while."

The footsteps are closer now, followed by the heavier sound of heavy boots. Heavier than the ones Emma or David wears. They sound like the hunter boots she had heard in the forest, clobbering over stones and icy tree roots, chasing after her. Her heart seizes in sudden fear, lifting her shakily to her feet.

"Neal. Does your father usually come in at this time?" Neal slowly shakes his head, putting down his crayon. Her heart fluttering high and red in her ear, Regina allows herself a moment of panic before she cuts it away, like a rusty faucet, squeaking shut all of her fears.

She grabs the phone on the kitchen counter and keeps walking, moving quickly up the stairs to the darker rooms above. She can hear Neal following hesitantly, and below that the familiar sound of Blue's voice through the door, "Hello? Is anyone in here?"

Filing away the flutter of anxiousness, Regina slides into the bathroom door and locks it. Almost immediately, her heart bounces hard against her ribs, regretting the pale yellow walls and narrow tub, too small to hide in, too bright. She had known hiding spots as a child – the cold dark holes in a house where danger might be avoided – but she's not hiding from her mother anymore and she is no longer a child.

Sitting tiredly on an old wicker basket in the corner of the room, she breathes.

"Are you okay?" Neal asks quietly, his voice small.

"Of course." But she can hear the voices below, feet shuffling in with heavy boots, their hushed search for her mixing with the hushed sound of both her and Neal's breathing. Below, she can hear Blue beginning on the first step of stairs.

She's not getting out of this, she knows. It would be cruel to call Emma, now. Not when there is only a small lock and a door between her and capture. But she might not have another chance, and that thought alone pushes her thumb along familiar pattern on the keycode.

"Sheriff speaking." Emma answers, assuming the quiet boredom of a slow day.

Regina smiles, "Hello."

"Oh. Regina hey," Emma's voice becomes immediately warmer and Regina closes her eyes, listening to it. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to hear your voice."

"Miss me already?"

Disastrously, her throat fills with tears. "I do." Sorrow swells in her stomach like a wild, raging ocean. "I can barely get through an afternoon without needing to call you." She says and imagines the large spacious hours waiting for her, locked into those small cold rooms. Shaking her head, she stares out at the small window, into the expansive blur of clouds and pale blue.

"You alright?" Emma asks tenuously, "You want me to come by?"

"No." She sighs and presses the cold clump of her fingers against her forehead, shaking her head. She can only imagine the horror of that situation, Emma rushing out with wide eyes as they push Regina into the back of a car. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it dear, I'm only being mawkish."

The moment might have been saved had the house not been so old, had they not been wearing boots. But it is, and they are, so the whole house groans and creaks like an old wooden ship, growing louder as their boots clatter up stairs and up and down the hallway. They've noticed the sounds within the closed bathroom door just as Emma noticed theirs.

"Who's that?" Emma asks, but the tone of her voice is already knowing, filled with terror. Regina can only shake her head and press her fingers harder against her forehead, throat tight and eyes blurring with tears. "Regina. What is going on right now?"

"Emma."

"I'm coming right now."

"They're already here." She means only to deflate the growing purpose in Emma's voice, to deter her. "Dear, it's too late."

Emma's breath revs against her ear.

"No it isn't," she denies quickly, filling the other side of the line with motion. She calls to someone in the other room as cupboards slap close and keys rattle, the heavy doors swooshed open and shuddering closed. "I'm getting you out of there."

"Emma. Emma, no."

"Just stay where you are."

"It's not going to work, Emma."

"Please, Regina, please. Just stay hidden," she urges frantically. "I'm coming to get you."

The line ends and Regina shivers with what she's done, pulling Emma into the already collapsing curtains of an ending scene. Someone on the other side of the door knocks hard, the sound reverberating into the plaster and boards between them. She shivers and Neal shifts restlessly closer, pressing his leg against hers.

"Anyone in here?"

Neal wraps an arm around her and she pulls him on her lap. "Shh," she hushes. "Everything will be alright."

She hears the report of a voice from beyond the door and then Blue's quiet, tapping shoes moving closer. "Is that you Neal?" Blue asks as the men with hunting boots and grabbing hands wait behind the door, "Are you there with Regina?"

Neal trembles, yelling out recklessly, "Go away!"

"Neal." Blue's voice is calm and warm, a trick. "Honey, is it just you in there?"

"It's just me," he says, and Regina just holds him closer. Knowing it won't matter. No one listens to a child.

The lock slides away with a bright flash of blue magic. She delivers two kisses against the top of his head and whispers against his hair. "It's okay, it's okay."

She squeezes one last time before one of the men yanks her up by the elbow, her knee joints popping quietly as her legs stretch out, struggling for balance in their rushed movement.

Neal begins to wail, heaving heavy, shuddering sobs as a man roughly turns her around, snapping metal handcuffs around her wrists.

"Is this really necessary?" Regina snaps, as they push her by the elbows. "I'm not fighting. I can't even do magic."

"We can't take you in without them," Blue says, and Regina doesn't speak again, filled with hate and anger and sudden horrible understanding for her mother.

Neal's cries follow them all the whole way down the stairs and out of the room and through the door as it shuts behind them.

Emma's car doesn't pull up on the driveway as they leave. It's one relief, she thinks. Maybe not.

It's only a few minutes later that she finds Emma's cruiser barreling past them, blue lights flashing. She watches through the dark tinted windows, paralyzed, as Emma's cruiser skids on the asphalt, whirling back around and roaring after them.

Emma's car approaches quickly and for a moment Regina breathes in hope, thinking of that of that day so long ago, when Emma had sped recklessly through the city, chasing after Lily and her stolen car. Her hands had been sharp and precise, moving the wheel in quick, competent movements. Regina had come to understand in that moment why Emma had been such a successful bail bondsperson. She knew how to capture.

But this is not Boston, and Emma is not chasing her old Bug in a world without magic.

Blue magic blows like a cold wind and halts Emma's car immediately, tires screeching terribly against the asphalt. It comes to a halting stop.

That might have been the end for anyone else. But Emma – stupid, stubborn Emma – is already slamming the door closed behind her, running, running, running after them. When the passenger door pushes out, she cries out, watching as Henry catches up, running after her.

Emma, a runner all her life, is already hitting the flat of her palms against the edge of the glass. Regina can see the frantic twist of her expression as she attempts to keep up, yelling loudly through the barriers between them. Her son quickly rounds the other side, running with a strength she would not have suspected in the bones of his knobby, thin childhood. She sees it in him now, as he strikes the glass with the flat of his hand.

Helplessly, she presses back, touching palm to glass where their hands strike, again and again. The sound of their distress reverberates around her.

They are not fast enough. All it takes is a slight touch of gas for the car to bump up past their beating, red palms, their yelling hoarse voices, getting lost in heavy breathing. Through the dark tinted window, Regina watches Henry grip desperately onto the metal bunk of the car, as though simply clinging onto something might make it stay.

But eventually, the car is too fast to keep up at all – a force too strong for legs and arms and beating hearts.

She watches them run, their faces strained and blotched, heavy with distraught as they keep running. They run even as the distance grows wider. Until it becomes impossible to see anything more through the glass than the long stretch of road and the foggy outline of someone not keeping up.

She watches them until she can't, until they fade away completely; until the distance is too great, too difficult to recover, only then does she turn away.

The moment the car pulls up to the Helping Hand, the door opens and a hand reaches through to grab her elbow. Jerking away, she stands on her own with only mild difficulty, her hands still handcuffed behind her back. She walks towards the large facility nearly a step ahead of everyone else.

The doors slam close behind her automatically, the smell of antiseptics surrounding her like the bright white walls of the room. She breathes in hurried breathes, feeling her confidence fall down between her ribs like a deflated lungs. But as the guards step up beside her, her spine blooms with determination. She stands tall, holding her chin high even as her fingers curl uneasily behind her back.

The process is quick. In another room, she is asked to undress and change into a clean white gown instead, waiting on the seat of a chair. On a tag, they wrap impatiently around her wrist is her name and room number. She is not spoken to. She does not speak. As they move her towards her own room, the limp collar tickling the back of her neck, she holds onto the anger beating hard against her rips, anything but the fear, the black fluttering panic filling the space of her head every time she blinks.

The hallways are long, crisscrossing with stairs and large metal doors, locked shut. Filled with people like her. She can almost feel their hard, hungry eyes boring through the metal doors, staring at her.

A guard eventually opens one of the doors to a small empty room. There is a cot pressed up against the corner with lamp and a desk. A pile of books sits uneasily on a blanket on her bed, as bare and unappealing as the walls they push her towards.

"Am I just supposed to stay here now?" She snaps, feeling wild and reckless, finally too upset to keep silent. "What about my family? What about my life at home?"

"You'll have visiting rights once every week." A guard performs his usual voice, answering a question Regina only now realizes must have been asked a hundred times before. "The length of time will be based on good behavior."

"Good behavior," she snarls. "And just who is to determine that?"

The guard stares just to the right of her eyes. "Dinner will be in a few hours."

She hesitates, even as her anger deepens. "I forgot to eat lunch," she strains through tight teeth, hating herself for it – for the way her hunger makes everything else fall silent. "I need to eat something."

"In a few hours," he says, and closes the door.

Regina paces her room angrily.

She has no way of knowing how time passes now – with no windows, the only light she can see is the small glow streaming in through the small crack below the door. But even that is steady with artificial light, flickering only occasionally with a passer-by, moving quickly past her door. She doesn't stop pacing. (She is afraid what her anger might become if she lets herself settle, lets her anger seep).

When a shadow stops at her door, she halts immediately, filled all at once with fury and relief.

The door opens.

"Finally," she spits out, but follows their orders quietly, allowing herself to be handcuffed again. Her freedom to the guards is like a door with hinges, constantly being pushed shut.

There are stone stairs and then a long hallway and a door, opening up to a sea of strangers in white clothes. She blinks and momentarily pushes back, wary at the sight of so many people. But they move around the room, oblivious to her, talking in small tight clusters like they had that day a few months ago, at the welcome back celebration.

But this time she does not have Emma to lean back on. As they unclip her handcuffs and close the door behind her, Regina presses back against the wall like a bird trapped inside the house, keeping to the far distant corners of the room where commotion cannot reach her; she stays there, unseen, gently rubbing her wrists.

It is Gus who she sees first. She can see the dark curve of his forehead and the tall boyish stoop of his shoulders as he looks shyly around the room. Relief and anger collides in all at once, knotting in her throat. Gus is here. She won't have to do this alone. But he's here and she knows how – dragged out of his life, into the back of a car, a sad little cat and mouse game.

Regina struts forward, warding off the others with her glare as she cuts through the crowd. When she is close enough to call his name, he looks up at her, his face collapsing in the familiar lines. She envelops him in a hug, black stubble scratching against her cheek. He smells of gasoline and sweat, a world of struggle, and helplessly, she holds him tighter.

"When did they get you?"

"It's been a day. You?"

"A few hours." She sighs, "I'm so sorry, dear. How did it happen?"

"They dragged me out of my pickup truck when I was at a stop sign." His hand forms a fist on her back. "Couldn't even wait for me to get home. I'm guessing it was similar to how they got you."

She closes her eyes, feeling momentarily pulled back to the last few minutes of her capture: the panic and fear, the stinging urge to cry, Neal's wailing following her all the way down those stairs, hands slapping against the glass as the engine guns, the sound of shoes falling farther and farther away.

"Yes," she grimaces and gently steps away. It's all too much, the violent way she'd been ripped from her family life; like a hand pulling out from between her ribs, carrying the heavy muscle of her life. She's angry, true. But beyond all that rage and hunger is an emptiness opening inside of her, like her mother's dim eyes, like Graham's blank stare.

"Hey. You okay?"

Looking up, she catches the soft concern crinkling around Gus's eyes and immediately feels ashamed. He's searching for something – the very same thing she searched in her mother's face in the middle of the forest. It's the expression she had cautiously looked for in her own face each morning, fearful of anything as blindingly hateful as hunger.

Gently, she squeezes his arm and steps back. "I'll be fine," she smiles, but her voice sounds thin and strained. "Dinner will be soon, anyway," she adds vaguely and Gus nods and doesn't look away.

Pressing her thumb nail hard against her palm, she reminds herself to stay sharp and clear headed. To remain herself.

But when the doors open, guards walk out stiffly with guns strapped to their belt, the metal carts clicking quietly on rusty wheels. They don't look anyone in the eye, staring only at the metal tins of food and the plates in front of them. She moves with everyone else through the line, rolling a dry anger in her mouth. She doesn't want to think about what that means.

In line, Gus pops a bread roll into his mouth and says, as he chews. "Mills, grab me another bread roll."

"You're disgusting." But she's smiling, watching his smile push a dimple into his cheek. She nudges him lightly with an elbow. "And you're halting up the line, dear."

"You're halting up the line," Gus grins and nudges back. "Could you, please? You're closer." He tilts his head back the way Henry used to as a child, trying to wheedle indulgences from her. Instinctively she softens, her chest blooming with both love and grief; she leans towards the wide plate of bread, the warm dough touching the tips of her fingers before she is stopped by a hard, calloused hand.

"No seconds." The guard's voice is as flat and angry as the palm of his hand.

Her skin prickles, jerking back her arm, but he holds firm. "Let go of me," she warns.

The tone of her voice lifts his brow a centimeter so that his forehead is creased. His fingers press tighter, sliding down to hold her elbow. "I suggest you keep the line moving, then." he grunts, and presses his thumb hard against the inside of her arm.

White hot rage rattles through her and she feels suddenly as though she's falling through it, grasping at air as she falls deeper. Her upper lip curls, staring hard into his face, flat and mulish.

Her rage must have frightened him because he shifts only a moment later, his other hand back to the gun on his hip.

"Hey, man. Let her go." Gus steps in.

The guard turns to him, face clenched. "You want to get into this, too?"

"No, all I want is for you to let her go," Gus says, his voice still calm, but his hands are tightening into hard fists at his side. She sees the guard notice, watches the way it changes his face. Her skin prickles with awareness; she knows men like this, knows what will happen if Gus gets more involved. She's about to disengage, step away, but Gus (sweet, gentle Gus) puts his hand on the guard's arm.

And the guard rears back, his gun out.

"Step back!" he shouts.

And though Gus is already stumbling back, hands in the air, there are guards closing in around them, the sound of their handcuffs mixing with the other sounds of the room. With Gus stumbling, the cries of surprise and fear, with the heavy boots of the guards. Regina knows her own voice is somewhere in the room as she moves to cover Gus, as a guard presses her arm behind her back and her head against the table – but she doesn't hear it. She doesn't hear any of it.

The only thing she hears is the hard beating of her blood, ramping in her ear. Some place inside her chest opens like the valves in her heart, pumping blood and rage through her, shutting doors and opening new ones. She doesn't hear anything, not even as they lock the door behind her and leave her in a dark closed room.

She hears the beating of her heart and nothing else.

Her door doesn't open again. Days pass, she's sure, but she doesn't know how many. She stares up at the unfamiliar ceiling, breathing quietly in the darkness; the feeling of something immense is all around her, like a bottomless ocean that lifts up around her arms and beneath her breast, floating her gently. She closes her eyes and doesn't open them again.

There are moments that help pull her back – like in that car, the radio humming old 80s music while someone sings, the warmth of skin against the palm of her hand, the smell of salt and sand, the sun on her neck as she plays cards and wins, the stumbling steps on the stairs as a body brushes warm and steady behind her, the warm press of a mouth, the laughter and the sand.

But every memory she pulls up slides away again, even farther than before. Her mind hums, churning in constant movement, dragging up old memories and flattening them out again, into the dark ground of her mind like the soil she once pressed around garden flowers, their roots buried deep.

For a moment, a single moment, there is the smell of salt and sand, the cold air whipping around her, ringing with laughter. There is a flash of blonde hair and someone pressing against her back. Someone warm. And then it's gone. She cannot think of it again.

When the doors open again, there is no guard on the other side.

Her room is flooded with red light every other second; it colors the walls of her room and the hallway outside and she stares out at the people streaming past her door, their bodies moving through the flush of red and then disappearing again. She watches them stumble in the dark, some breaking out into a blind run. It's loud with the sound of voices and something else: the sound of her heart beating, hot and red in her ear.

She doesn't remember standing, but she is aware of the moving room. A siren wails, the red light coloring the narrow hallways and stairwells and the open door. The open door. She is filled with the red light, disappearing and reappearing again, filling her head with its sound.

She hears a voice down below, rising up along the walls and hallways, calling her name. She follows the stumbling path towards the first floor, her stomach empty and her legs weak, but she moves her hands along the wall to keep her upright.

She hears the voice again, a familiar, soothing chant: Regina, Regina, Regina.

At the end of the hall is a face and a world of memories churning like waves in her head, the blonde hair and the smile, the large blue eyes and the sound of someone laughing, salt stinging her cheeks, the smell of the ocean all around her as someone presses against her back, still laughing, and the name – the name –

Someone bumps past her and the memory falls away, her head filling with red instead. The noise surrounds her, loud and chaotic, the red disappearing and flashing again like the beating of her heart, beating inside her ribs. Her vision blurs, darkening with a wild, reckless hunger.

The face is slowly changing, the smile disappearing, still calling out her name. Someone yanks her away. They yell, "We gotta go!" her red hair flashing wildly in the lights. Their movements urge her forward, toward the open door. To run, run, run.

Her vision blurs entirely as she starts forward. Then everything goes black.

A gentle voice calls for her, and though she is not asleep, Regina feels herself slowly climbing up from some kind of restfulness deep inside, rising to the surface of herself. The room is dark, the yellow haze of evening light touching the far corner of the ceiling. A familiar face looms closer, her blonde hair nearly tickling her cheek before she tucks it behind her ear.

"Regina, come on. You gotta come back now," she whispers, her voice sounding strained and painful and Regina catches herself on it, lifting herself back into the present. The walls of her house surround her again, more permanent than before. She's in her room, in her bed. The ceiling above her is her own.

She blinks again, groggy as though rousing from a full night of sleep. "Emma?"

The hand on her cheek pauses then slips away as Emma stands, her knees cracking gently as she looms above her. "Regina?" She asks, her voice watery and unsure. "Regina, you okay?"

"Yes," she sighs. "I'm fine. What happened?"

Emma hesitates, her face full of something Regina can't understand. "We broke you out. Me and Zelena."

"Oh." Something is pressing against her memory, something urging, insistent, "I don't remember…I don't remember much."

"Um. Yeah." Emma quickly clears her throat, brushing back her hair again. "That's alright. That's probably – that's probably for the best." She looks flighty, and nervous.

Instinctively Regina reaches towards her, but her hand stops immediately, painfully, her skin pinching against the metal handcuffs around her wrist. She grunts, surprised, and tries to straighten up again, but stops. And stares.

Her hands are red. And handcuffed to the bed post.

Dread jabs in her chest like a jut of steel, like a sudden mouthful of ocean water. A mouthful of blood. She breathes in sharply, and can't breathe out. "Emma," she rasps, and jerks her hands uselessly. It's not just her hands. It's not just blood. She can feel it suddenly in-betweens her teeth, underneath her fingernails, in the damp clothes still pressing against her skin. The gore of someone else. The violence of her hunger.

"No, no, no," she yanks at her hands, anything to get out of this bed, out of the handcuffs, out of this moment.

"Hey, hey," Emma's voice jumps urgently, rushed into a soothing tone that doesn't quite fit. "It's okay, you're okay."

The door opens, Henry's face poking out. His eyes widen at the sight of her and her heart crumbles inside. "Get out of here kid," Emma snaps, her face strained as she tries to calm Regina in some small way, but Henry just stares, blinking, frozen at the doorway, and Emma whirls around. "Zelena, get him out of here!"

Regina can only see the door slam closed again, and the quiet, panicked sound of her breathing, a wordless horror drumming behind her ears and buzzing around her chest, an evacuated cavity. Across the wall is an oval mirror and Regina closes her eyes only a second too late, finding her dark eyes staring back and her mouth covered in blood. Like Graham's once was. Like her mother.

Emma keeps whispering, "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay."

But it isn't.

She isn't.

The faucet squeaks as she turns it off, the bathtub full of scalding, clear water. She slides into it, resting against the side as the water laps around her chest and shoulders, turning her skin pink. Gently, from behind the door, she hears Emma knock and call for her, her voice muffled through the distance. Regina doesn't answer her. She doesn't say anything.

She watches the blood slowly lift from her body, coloring the water in swirls of red. She stays there until she comes to a decision.

When she's dressed, her blouse tucked neatly into her slacks, she has to steel the tremble of her fingers against the door handle. With a deep breath, she prepares for the long hours ahead, for all her quiet, painful lies.

And yet, when Emma pulls her into a hug, she wobbles, the feeling of Emma's chin against her shoulder somehow bringing her to the brink of tears. Gently, she steps away.

"I'm fine," she smiles and brushes an airy hand through hair, struggling to breathe easily. "Where is everyone else?" Out of the sphere of Emma's arms, she can blink back the blur of her vision.

As they walk down the stairs, Emma slides a hand into hers, and though it's warm and familiar, she twists out of it, turning quickly at the bottom stair to step out of all the small habits of comfort – from the reach of Emma's fingers. As steadily as a highway, she moves on to the next room.

Henry sees her first and stands up. "Mom." His voice is quiet and rough, sore-sounding, and she feels a sharp, gutting pain at the look on his face – relieved and frightened, a ten year old all over again.

As she pulls him into a hug, a sudden fright opens from inside of her, expanding in her lungs as she breathes; with the memory of blood so close, it's impossible not to feel like a trap, dangerous and deadly, filled with sharp metal and blood.

"How do you feel?" She asks, maintaining her smile even as she slides a careful step back.

"I'm fine," he swallows, and slides his hands around his chest. "How about you – uh, do you feel fine?"

"Fine, honey. I feel fine."

"Do you remember anything yet?" Zelena asks from the couch, and then clarifies. "From last night."

Regina flinches.

"Zelena," Emma snaps harshly, but Zelena doesn't even flinch. She is watching her with sharp, focused eyes.

"No," she answers, and there is no way to hide the tremor in her voice, the lie. "Nothing."

Because. There are small details (the sharp sounds of bone breaking, the taste of skin, the ragged flare of a scream before silence – moments that snag like thorns and thistles against her skin, catching parts of herself as she runs blindly through them in her head) and though she wants to trap them inside, never let them leave again, a part of her still thrills at the memory.

A part of her yearns – remembering the thrill of a curse blowing darkly around her, the thunder of horse's hooves, a heart in her palm as she curls her fingers – and that's why. That's why.

Emma quickly rescues the moment from silence, moving them gently onto easier topics, away from the blooming blood and horror of last night, of the future, and although conversations change, Zelena never stops watching her.

Later, after another brief hug from Henry and a moody glare from Zelena, she slips into her room and sits on the stiff chair beside her desk. The silver wristwatch ticks quietly in the silence.

When Emma enters, she undresses quickly and slides into bed, pulling back the covers to where Regina usually rests. Regina remains where she is, allowing an emptiness to settle like air through an open window.

Emma hesitates, her hand sweeping over the pale blue sheets. "Aren't you joining me?" Her voice fails to be light and coy; it falls under the weight of her dark eyes, the deep lines around her mouth.

"No," Regina smiles lightly, brushing an airy hand through her hair. "Not tonight, dear."

"Oh," Emma's face is mostly shadow, her white tank top taking on a dim blue, full of the dark in the room. She gently smooths a hand across the empty space beside her on the bed. "We can talk, if you want."

"No," she says, because she can't manage the thought of it though she knows this moment will be remembered again and again in the morning, agonized over in a rush of other things more unforgivable.

Emma nods again and sighs, slowly sinking down into bed. There is a moment of quiet, the room full of Emma's gentle, worried breathing and the sound of the clock ticking.

"I love you," Emma whispers, her voice trembling quietly, and Regina's chest collapses under all the grief and love in her chest. The urge to cry struggles on her face in the dark.

She knows she can't say it back – not now, not with what she's planning in mind. It would sit silently in Emma's chest for years, like all the belongings in her room, gathering dust.

Still, she stands and slides out of her heels, struck by the need to communicate somehow. Sliding into bed, she leans her back against the headboard and stretches out her legs waiting for Emma to knowingly shift into place, laying her head onto Regina's lap.

She sits there, gently combing her fingers through Emma's hair – until Emma's breathing evens out, until her eyelids fall closed, until the room is full of only the sound of sleep and a gentle, constant ticking.

She waits a few hours. She waits as long as she possibly can. But when the hours start leaking into a gentle light in the sky, she forces herself out of bed, gently laying Emma's head back against the mattress. As she leaves, she takes the silver watch from the desk and slips it on her wrist. She never wants Emma to hear that sound again.

As she steps out into the hallway, she hears Zelena shifting in the guest room. She pauses, listening, waiting for her to come out, but the door never opens and the silence in the room returns. She leaves down the stairs into living room and out toward the front door.

Air bursts against her face as she opens the door, smelling sharp and cold. She had considered taking a car, but the thought of Emma or Henry needing to get it later set her stomach to stone. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she tucks her fingers under her arms for warmth and prepares for the long walk to the town line.

By the time she reaches the town line, she is shivering from the cold fighting against every urge to turn back and return home. Through the thin trees she can see glimpses of the clapboard houses beside the sea, sitting silently like her own house, still slumbering.

She steps close enough to feel the gentle push and pull of the town line, the other side waiting like a large immense ocean, waiting to reclaim her. She stands, shivering as it rushes around her legs, sucking away the soft ground from underneath.

Regina steps forward and then comes to a stop, her heels settling firmly against the cement. Although the other side of the road is clear, removed of her mother's body, she can't stop imagining what she would look like to whomever finds her first (please, please, anyone but them), curled lifelessly on the other side of town.

The thought sits in her as solidly as a sinking ship, and she stands there waiting for courage to return, to pull her along like a dry wind to the other side – but instead, she stands. The distant sounds of morning traffic drift along down the road, the random clatter of birds, and something else, something softer but growing louder. Picking up speed.

She understands a moment later, whirling around to stare wide-eyed as Emma's bright yellow bug roars up the road, turning off suddenly, its engine still rumbling as the door is yanked open.

Emma steps out, wide-eyed and furious. "What the hell are you doing?" she snarls, moving in too fast, too close, her voice rumbling like an engine. "What the hell is this?"

Startled, cornered, Regina stumbles back a step, feeling the deathly buzz of the town line brush against the back of her heels. Seeing this, Emma comes to a sudden, jerky stop, a sharp, metallic sound coming out of her throat like when a machine breaks down and locks up.

"Regina." She chokes, her face deathly pale in the cold light. "Come over here, right now."

She doesn't move. She can't. "How – how did you know where I would be?"

"Zelena warned me. She dumped ice water on my face. Will you please come back here, now?"

She holds her breath, trying to think quickly, to figure out what to say next, but it bursts out of her all at once instead, "Emma please, please leave. I don't want you to see this."

"I'm not walking away from here until I have you back here with me. Take my hand." Emma's voice shakes uneasily as she reaches out a hand towards her. "Regina, come on. You're terrifying me."

"Emma."

"You can't be thinking this. You can't possibly be thinking – you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do that to me. You wouldn't do that to Henry."

Emma's voice sends shivers down her spine, her eyes as painful to look at as the barrels of those hunting rifles pointed at her heart. She conquers the urge to look away. "Henry will understand." she says; she knows this fact like she knows the other impertinent details, the width of his hands and the shape of his face, his boyish smile and the final height marked on the door frame; it's a fact that makes Emma flinch.

Because Henry will understand. He will continue to live as he has since her first death, injured but surviving.

But Emma…

The thought of it makes her weak. That Emma might return to the still-life of those pictures, her face flat and unsmiling as she moved through the motions, living separately, distantly, from everyone else; she'd continue to live in her cold immaculate house, long after Henry moved out, her life steeped in loneliness and an unhappy determination to keep living.

Regina closes her eyes, but can't remove the images, the thoughts. She breathes in unsteadily, and sighs. "I don't know what you expect me to do, Emma. I don't know what else I can possibly do."

"That's okay – that's okay, we'll figure it out. Just come over, take hold my hand, alright?" Emma's voice is coiled into a false calm. In her face Regina can see her thoughts working quickly, climbing through a wide range of possibilities to get them out of this. To get them home.

Regina doesn't move. "Emma." she sighs, "I killed someone. I lost control and ripped a person to pieces. How do you come back from that?"

"I don't know, but I swear to you Regina, we'll figure it out. Please, please, just step away from there."

"What happens when I lose control again, Emma? Do I get locked up in the basement like my mother?"

"No. God, never."

"So what's your back up plan, then Emma?" She asks, "How are you going to stop me from killing people when I'm too far gone to stop myself?" Emma opens her mouth and then closes it, her face flushing with panic as she struggles with her words. Regina continues ruthlessly, "and what about the town? How long do you think it will take for me to come back here again, but on somebody else's terms? How long before I'm forced over the line like my mother?"

Emma's wide grey eyes fill with tears, "I would never let that happen." But her brow is already folded with all of the other promises they have made, back when they thought they would be able to keep them. She drags pointed fingers through her hair, uncaring on how it snags. "How do you know it'll even happen again?"

Regina closes her eyes, the memory of blood filling her mouth as the dark churning of her hunger spills over like a river, overflowing, flooding the rest of her, inundated and uncertain.

"Because I want it to to," she says finally, tired and weary. "It'll happen again because I want it to happen again."

There is a moment of silence, filled only with the sound of Emma's quiet restlessness, her chattering teeth and shifting feet as she struggles for something to say. Regina watches her hands move in tight circles around her arms, her hair blowing lightly across her face as she squints at her through the morning light.

Emma lets her hands drop. "Okay," she says, flatly, and Regina blinks, startled by the sudden certainty in her voice, in the sureness of her face. Emma stares back steadily, unflinchingly. "So it might happen again."

She blinks. "What?"

"You might backslide, you might even do it a few times."

Regina stares and stares, but Emma's face doesn't give. "You can't possibly be telling me you're okay with that."

"I'm telling you it doesn't change anything for me," she says firmly. "I told you I was here for all of it. I still am."

"Emma," she warns sternly.

"No, listen. I know you got a whole life behind you, telling you to get out of this before it gets bad. I know you're scared to be back in this place, feeling helpless like this – but this isn't you right after the curse. This isn't you, stuck with your Mom while everyone cuts you out of your life. This isn't you alone in a castle. This is us. This is you and me and Henry. We've always leaned on each other. So lean on me."

Regina tries to steel herself from Emma's words. "What about my mother, then?" She asserts wearily. "Love didn't save her. What makes you so sure yours will?"

"Regina, you're not your mother," Emma's wide grey eyes are suddenly clear and bright. "Maybe I'm Zelena - maybe I'm hopeless, maybe my love is exhausting - but you are nothing like your mother. You might have learned violence from that woman, but that doesn't make you her -not even close. There is nothing about you that your mother could reach."

For a moment, she simply stands, blinking back the warmth in her eyes. Emma's words make their way through her, stirring inside something large and wild like a flock of birds lifting into the air all at once.

"You saw me, Emma," she tries weakly. "There wasn't a single part of me that wasn't covered in blood. How do you get over that?"

"I don't know. How do you get over anything? I'm still working on losing you the first time." Emma asks, her voice raw and honest, and Regina feels pulled towards it despite everything. "I might always have that part of me that feels less sure, less alive than the rest of me. You will too. We'll work on it together – like we always do."

Regina opens her mouth, but she can't speak. Something is lifting inside of her. For a moment, she can see the span of years between them – the whole curve of their story – filled with moments, with clumsy hugs and arguments, the cautious starts and stops of a relationship, their love and their fear catching each other, pulling them up through impossible distances; all the love and lost and longing – the sum of their life – rushing all around her. Pulling them back together.

"Please," Emma whispers, and reaches out for her again. "Come back. We can do this. What we have – it's enough. We're enough."

Against the back of her ribs, she feels the faint beating of her heart, and something else. It hums in her ear: come back, come back, come back. With the danger of the town line still buzzing against her heel, the distance between her and Emma feels suddenly vast and exhausting - as though she was back in the ocean again, numb and stiff, struggling to see the blurry edge of the shoreline. But she moves for it anyway, cutting through the cold air and her terror, through her numb fingers and the weight of her whole life around her. She doesn't stop moving.

Emma's breath tumbles against her mouth as she leans up to kiss her, and though a white light doesn't sweep away her hunger or her fear, something grows certain, pulling her up from the dark the way she had that day, collapsing against the beach, breathing in a new life heavily.

She closes her eyes and kisses Emma deeper, and deeper still. She breathes. She's here. She can do this.

She's alive.

She's alive, she's alive, she's alive.

---

Thanks for reading everyone!