I've been getting a number of questions about why Regina hasn't told Emma about Walsh being a monkey yet, so I wrote this to kind of explain my thinking on that one.

Chapter 10

Killian Jones leaned forward between the two front seats and reached for the radio dial in the center console.

"Touch that, pirate, and you'll lose your other hand," Regina said stonily as she watched the red taillights of Emma's yellow Bug.

Killian's fingers stopped just short of the buttons before he pulled his hand back and returned to the backseat.

Ursula stared out the front passenger window with her arms folded across her chest. "I can't believe I'm stuck with the two of you. Has-been villains. Perfectly pathetic," she grumbled. "I think I prefer cleaning tanks at the aquarium."

"Speak for yourself, love," Killian interjected from the backseat. "I was never quite evil, just a pirate."

"Right. A thief with a boat," Ursula snorted.

"A ship."

"Where's your ship now, Captain?" Ursula snapped back.

"Keep it up, calamari," Killian threatened.

"Will you two stop squabbling? You're worse than children," Regina steamed. Her leather gloves gripped the steering wheel tightly, making an audible creaking noise.

"How else are we to pass the time if you won't allow any music?" Killian complained.

"We make plans," Regina said. "We start figuring out this new curse and what happened during that missing year. What do you know about Emma's boyfriend, Hook?"

Killian's features scrunched in confusion. "Tall, lanky wanker?"

Regina couldn't help her smile. "That sounds about right."

"Nothing out of the ordinary there," Killian remarked.

Regina flicked her hair out of her eyes. "I think that's where you're wrong."

"If that man is evil," Ursula interjected, "he's the most boring villain in the books. When I was watching him all he did was tend his store and smile stupidly at clients."

Emma had a gift for knowing if people were lying to her or not. How could she have tied herself to someone like Walsh? Regina thought about the flash of green she'd seen in Walsh's eyes when he'd confronted her and had told her to stay away from Emma; it had been the same color of their winged primate attacker. The monkey hadn't been a figment of her imagination; Emma had seen it as well. But had she imagined that gleam in Walsh's eyes? Did she want Walsh to turn out to be something other than advertised simply because he was Emma's boyfriend?

Before Regina could continue their conversation, her cell phone rang with an incoming call from Emma. "What?" she answered with impatience. They'd been driving for little more than an hour and she was already annoyed with their road trip.

"Henry's hungry," Emma said, ignoring the shortness of Regina's demeanor. "Are you guys cool to stop someplace for dinner?"

"You really want to bring this little freak show of ours to a restaurant?"

"I'm not talking about a candlelight dinner, Regina. Fast food."

"You feed our son trans-fat garbage?" Regina chastised.

"It's just this once," Emma defended. "Besides, like you said, we shouldn't risk..." She trailed off, unable to finish her sentence with both Henry and Walsh in earshot.

"Fine," Regina sighed. "Next roadside trough you see, we can stop."

"And we should probably look for a place to spend the night," Emma added. "I don't think we can make it straight through tonight."

"Storybrooke's not that far," Regina protested.

"Storybrooke will still be there in the morning, Regina."

"Alright," she huffed. "I suppose one more night won't hurt."

"You're being awfully agreeable," Emma observed, a smile in her tone.

"I'm hanging up now," Regina snapped. "I have to call your parents and let them know when to expect us."

Regina was tempted to throw her phone out the car window, but she reigned in her quickly unraveling emotions. This is why she preferred being one of the Bad Guys. Villains tended to work alone; too many egos were counterproductive to evil plans. Heroes used teamwork though, and she was finding all of this togetherness insufferable.

It was a sun-soaked, warm evening, and rather than sit inside the roadside diner, the group ate their cheeseburgers and fries outside at picnic tables in a rest stop surrounded by a thick forest. Henry, Emma, and Walsh sat together at one of the picnic tables, laughing and tossing French fries to squirrels. Killian and Ursula had disappeared nearly the moment their food had come. Nothing had happened yet to make Regina second-guess allowing Ursula to come back with them, but it was only a matter of time.

Regina sat at a table by herself with a white takeout bag, marbled with grease stains.
She took off her leather driving gloves and peered between the top and bottom bun of her hamburger. She wrinkled her nose at the unrefined mess. Fast food was so pedestrian.

"So who's the perp?" a young voice asked.

Regina looked up from her mangled burger. "Excuse me?"

Henry's inquisitive eyes regarded her. "You hired my mom to find someone, right? What's the case?"

The gears in Regina's brain churned rapidly when Henry took a seat at the wooden table across from her, but the lies couldn't come fast enough. "Oh, uh...It's actually more of a job interview," Regina said. "I'm the mayor of my town, and we're in need of a new sheriff." She had yet to speak with Emma about if she was planning on returning to New York City when all of this was over, but this lie would at least buy them some time.

Henry frowned. "My mom said you had a job for her. I thought maybe your boyfriend or something jumped bail."

Regina tried not to smile at the thought. "No. Nothing like that," she said, her tone becoming more warm and gentle. "Storybook is in need of a new sheriff, and after meeting your mom, I thought she might do a good job."

Even when she'd loathed Emma's existence, Regina could admit that Sheriff Swan had been an adequate law enforcement officer. Her methods had been a little unorthodox, but she'd gotten the job done. It must have been all that Hero DNA in her blood.

Her answer seemed to satisfy Henry for the moment. "Oh. Cool." Luckily he hadn't inherited his birth mother's secret power. "So we would, like, move to your town?"

Regina opened her mouth, but Emma's boots crunched on the underbrush before she could reply. "What are you guys talking about over here?"

"Mrs. Mills said she wants you to be her sheriff," Henry spoke up.

Emma raised a pale eyebrow. "Oh, she did?"

"I was just telling Henry that you're coming to Storybrooke as a kind of audition for the position," Regina explained. "And you don't have to be so formal with me, Henry," she added. "My mother is Mrs. Mills, not me."

"Okay," Henry agreed. "What should I call you instead?"

Mom. Regina coughed delicately. "Um, Regina's fine." She stared down at the picnic table and at her cooling dinner. The cheese on her cheeseburger was beginning to coagulate. She refused to look in Emma's direction, sure of the guilt and sympathy she'd find there. She didn't want that from anyone, least of all from Emma.

Emma cleared her throat. "I was talking to one of the waitresses inside," she said, jerking her thumb in the direction of the roadside diner. "She said there's a motel a few miles down the road. Nothing fancy, but the beds are clean."

"That sounds fine," Regina said, still staring at the wooden picnic table. She ran her fingertips over a deep grove where someone had carved their initials into the table.

"Are you gonna eat that?"

Regina finally looked up when she realized Henry was speaking to her. "Oh, um, no."

"Can I give it to the squirrels?" he asked with a broad, dimpled smile.

Regina couldn't recall having seen a smile that large on Henry's face in years—not in the years leading up to the curse being broken, at least.

It killed her to interact with her son and not have him know who she was, but the price of her happiness was in Henry's smile. He only knew a world where his birth mother had loved him enough to keep him. He had never been orphaned or had felt unloved. She saw Emma in that smile.

"Go ahead, kid," Emma approved when it was clear that Regina was too overwhelmed with emotion to respond.

Henry glanced again in Regina's direction, and she finally nodded, still unable to vocalize her consent.

Henry eagerly grabbed the bag that held Regina's mostly untouched dinner and ran off to feed the squirrels.

"Sorry," Regina said, hastily wiping at eyes that had unwilling grown damp.

"You're fine, Regina," Emma assured her. "I know this is hard."

"There's still time," Regina said thickly.

Emma sat down, sensing Regina wanted to talk about something serious. "To do what?"

"To go back to New York. You and Henry, you don't have to come. I'm sure we can figure out this curse on our own."

"I'm the Savior," Emma remarked. "Do I have a choice?"

"There's always a choice," Regina countered.

"I don't see it that way."

Emma picked at the peeling brown varnish at the edge of the picnic bench. She didn't want to admit it, especially not to Regina, but being the Savior had brought purpose to her otherwise unexceptional life. If she turned back now instead of helping out the people in Storybrooke, she would still have Henry, but she would also still have her memories and the knowledge that when her family needed her, she'd selfishly chosen herself over them.

Regina rolled her eyes. "You Charmings are all alike."

Emma's smile returned. "I'm going to take that as a compliment."

The sounds of laughter drew both women's attention away from the conversation. Across the rest stop, Henry and Walsh tossed bits of hamburger bun to a pair of squirrels.

Regina watched the lanky man and her son with growing trepidation. "Emma, about Walsh—"

"I know," Emma jumped in before Regina could continue. "It was probably a bad idea to let him come along. But he gave me these sad puppy dog eyes, and I just couldn't say no," she said, shaking her head. "We're going to have to be really careful when we get to Storybrooke."

"Do you trust him?" Regina pressed.

Emma's forehead crunched. "He hasn't given me a reason not to?"

Regina tucked her lower lip into her mouth. She wanted to tell Emma about her suspicions, but what if she had been wrong about the man? What if she'd misinterpreted everything because of some unfounded jealousy or maternal instinct need to protect Henry? When she'd given Henry and Emma new memories, it had been about giving Emma a second chance as much as it had been for Henry. And if she told Emma that she thought Walsh was a flying monkey, she might ruin this tenuous ceasefire that was occurring between them.

"We should probably get going," Regina announced.

"Are you sure? You barely ate any food," Emma pointed out.

Regina stood from the picnic table and brushed her hands over the front of her dress pants. "I would hardly call what we just had food, dear."

TBC