A/N: so can I PLEASE just thank everyone for their amazing responses to chapter 1?! Was not expecting that for buggery. Hence why I'm posting this chapter a tiny bit earlier than I originally intended :) hope you all enjoy! Please feel free to review with any feedback or suggestions that you may have so that I can steal all of your wonderful ideas and pass them off as my own...

Kisses,

starsthatburn xxx

Chapter Two

Regina leaned back in her desk chair, crossing her hands over in her lap. Sidney twitched nervously in the seat opposite her, tiny beads of sweat pricking up across his forehead as he waited for her to speak.

'Can I get you a drink, Sidney?' Regina asked after a deliberately lengthy pause. The man blinked, wetting his lips.

'I'm good, thanks.'

'Are you sure?' she said, leaning forwards across the desk with her arms neatly folded. 'You look rather… dehydrated.'

'No, thank you.' Sidney swallowed before he asked, 'Regina… why am I here?'

Regina offered him a tiny, tight smile. 'I wanted to check that you're okay.'

'I'm… fine,' Sidney said, blinking. 'Thank you.'

'I'm glad,' she replied, her white teeth showing from between the purple slash of her lips. 'But, you know, Sidney: you really should try and talk about what happened. And if you need an ear – well. I'm right here.'

Sidney's gaze immediately narrowed, taking in the way that the mayor's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. 'You want me to tell you about the... meeting?'

'Of course,' she said, tilting her head to one side. 'Why would I not want to hear about that? You went through something traumatic, Sidney. I want to make sure that you're coping with it.'

'I've said that I'm fine,' he slowly replied.

'Yes,' the mayor said. 'But I still think that it would be healthy for you to get this off of your chest.'

'Regina, I—'

'Sidney,' Regina interrupted, her smile flickering for only a second. 'I'd like you to tell me what happened now. Please.'

Sidney recognised the tone of a woman who would not stop until she had heard what she needed to hear. Licking his lips, he leaned forwards and asked, 'You really don't know anything about it?'

'The police were fairly unhelpful in providing substantial detail,' she gritted out, leaning back in her chair once more. 'Apparently they don't think that the mayor needs to be kept informed when half of her town council are taken hostage.'

There was a pause. Regina narrowed her eyes, watching as Sidney shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

'It was your gardener,' he slowly offered. 'Moe someone? He owns Game of Thorns.'

'Yes, thank you, Sidney, but I am aware of that much – I was there to witness him being dragged out of the building in handcuffs.'

'You were there?' he asked, frowning in surprise. 'Then surely you must have some—'

'Continue,' she interrupted, her face perfectly still. As she spoke she forced herself to ignore the image that was attempting to flash up before her dark eyes – the same image of a blonde woman, her face streaked with blood as she was ushered into a waiting ambulance, that had been haunting her for the past two days.

Sidney swallowed. 'He… he was in the meeting, waiting for you. Emma told him to leave. And then… I don't know, Regina; the gun came out and everyone was on the floor, except for her. He threatened her. Constantly.'

'He hurt her,' Regina said in a low voice, leaning forwards. 'How badly?'

'You want some kind of measurement?' the man scoffed. 'Badly. She's got a broken nose, for Christ sake, and from what I heard a few stitches as well. She stood up to him and he punished her for it. You surely know that – after all, you're the one who decided to give her paid leave from the sheriff station until she's recovered.'

'Yes, Sidney, I know,' Regina snapped. 'It was also me who asked you to stand in as her replacement until she returns. Please don't make me regret that before you've even done your first shift.'

Sidney fell silent, his forehead creased. Regina took a deep breath, counting to five, before she allowed herself to speak again.

'The phone call,' she said slowly. 'What happened with the phone call?'

Sidney shuddered.

'He told her she had to call you. To get you down there,' he said. 'She'd told him that you were supposed to be at the meeting and obviously, when he realised that you weren't going to show, he had to come up with some other way to bring you into it. But… I don't know. She wouldn't do it.'

'At first,' Regina said.

'No,' Sidney said, closing his eyes as he, yet again, relived the moment when the gun had been turned on him. 'Not at first.'

Regina watched the colour draining from his face and bit at the inside of her mouth.

'And why did she refuse?'

'She said she wasn't going to drag you into that, despite what problems you two were having,' Sidney said, reopening his eyes.

'And that's when he turned the gun on you?'

'Yes.'

Regina swallowed. 'So she protected you.'

'She protected everyone,' Sidney snapped. 'Yourself included.'

'I wasn't there—'

'But you should have been,' the man responded, unflinching. 'And you know it. If you hadn't have pushed that meeting onto Emma, then God only knows what would have happened.'

Regina simply shrugged like this thought hadn't been bothering her for the past two days. 'Well. I suppose I would be dead.'

'Or not,' Sidney said in a flat voice. 'Miss Swan defended you when you weren't even in the room, Regina. I highly doubt that she would have simply stood by and let him kill you if she'd been there to witness it.'

The mayor's bottom lip trembled for just a moment, her nostrils flaring. Her editor watched her, sighing as her dark gaze finally fell back onto the desk.

'Regina,' he said slowly. 'Like it or not, Emma put her life on the line for everyone that day. Including you. And yet you still haven't been to see her.'

'I've been busy,' she snapped in response. The man raised an eyebrow.

'You've been feeling guilty, you mean.'

'I hardly think that—'

She was interrupted by the scrape of Sidney's chair as he abruptly stood up, gathering up his coat and bag.

'Madame Mayor,' he said, taking a step towards the door. 'You asked how I'm coping: and I'm fine. Truly. But the one person in this town who most certainly is not is only a couple of streets away, and not matter how much you dislike her – you owe it to her to go and ask her that question.'

He swept out of the room in the most uncharacteristic manner possible. Regina was left alone behind her desk, running her tongue along the inside of her cheek, poking at a wound that she wasn't sure was even there.

The fact that she didn't like Miss Swan had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was the heavy, aching guilt that was still prodding insistently at her chest that had stopped her from going anywhere near her.

Henry picked at his dinner that night, resting his tensed jaw on one hand as he pushed mashed potato back and forth across the plate. Regina watched him, her own food sitting hardly touched before her.

'How was school today?' she eventually asked, her voice clattering through the silence of the dining room. Her son shrugged, not looking up.

After a few moments, she put her wine glass down with a sigh. 'Something's bothering you,' she said. 'Did something happen in class?'

'School was fine,' Henry said flatly, arranging his peas into a straight line across the centre of his plate.

'Then what is it?'

The silence that followed told Regina that she clearly wasn't going to like what he had to say next.

'Did you…' she swallowed, faltering. 'Did you go and see Emma today?'

Henry didn't respond. She took that as a yes.

'How is she?'

Finally, her son's hazel eyes flicked up to meet hers, that familiar crease resting between his eyebrows.

'You don't want to know how she is.'

'Yes, I do.'

'No you don't,' he rolled his eyes. 'You haven't even been to see her yet. You don't care how she is.'

'I…' the mayor paused, placing her hands in her lap. 'Henry. Please. Just tell me what happened.'

Her son slouched down in his chair, the anxious crease in his forehead deepening. A sigh finally escaped from between his lips.

'It was bad,' he mumbled. Regina waited for him to continue. 'She's really hurt and really quiet and she only let me stay for ten minutes before she told me that I should go. When I asked if I could come back again tomorrow, she said… she said that she needed time.'

Regina swallowed, shaking her head. 'Well. She has been through a lot, Henry. She's going to—'

'Now you're defending her?' Henry interrupted, his eyes flashing. 'Now that she doesn't want to see me anymore, you're on her side?'

'No,' Regina said. 'I'm on her side because she's in a lot of pain, and she probably doesn't want you to have to see her like that.'

Henry fell silent, staring down at the perfectly straight line of peas sat before him.

'Just be patient,' she said softly, trying to smile at him. 'She'll recover. And then things will go back to normal.'

'Things are never normal,' Henry mumbled. 'And you haven't seen her – you have no idea how long it's going to take her to recover from this.'

Regina's voiced cracked when she finally managed to reply to him. '...you know that she won't want to see me, Henry.'

'She didn't want to see me either. But I still tried.'

When Regina knocked on the heavy wooden door, flakes of old paint came away on her knuckle. She wrinkled her nose, brushing them away with her left hand and then going to wipe them off on the inside of her coat when they stubbornly stayed exactly where they were. Then she heard the soft padding of footsteps on the other side of the door. She straightened herself up once more, thrusting her fists deep into the pockets of her coat.

Mary Margaret jumped in surprise when she opened the door and found her to be standing there. 'Mayor Mills?'

Regina swallowed, her whole body feeling strange: like her arms were too long for her sleeves and her tongue was too big for her mouth. She didn't care for it.

'Miss Blanchard,' she said coolly. 'I'm here to see Miss Swan. If you don't mind.'

The schoolteacher's hand crept up to rest just below the hollow of her throat, nervously fiddling with the silver necklace that hung there. 'Oh. Well, she's… she's not actually here, I'm afraid.'

Regina heard a creak of furniture from somewhere behind her. She pursed her lips impatiently.

'Miss Blanchard, I appreciate that your roommate is probably not in the best position to be receiving houseguests right now,' she said slowly. 'But there are some things that we need to discuss. She is my sheriff, after all.'

Mary Margaret nodded like she understood, then replied in the irritatingly soft voice that never failed to make the palms of Regina's hands itch. 'I'm really sorry, Regina. But I'm not sure that—'

'Mary Margaret,' a flat voice came from behind her. 'It's okay.'

The teacher immediately turned to her left, looking to where her roommate was obviously stood just behind the door. Regina leaned slightly to one side, trying to catch a glimpse of her. All she could see, however, was a white sleeve and a flash of blonde hair.

'Are you sure?' Mary Margaret murmured, throwing the mayor a cautious look. Regina fidgeted impatiently on the balls of her feet.

'Yeah,' Emma said, reaching out her hand to squeeze her roommate's arm. 'You were just leaving anyway, weren't you?'

The brunette blinked. 'I was?'

'Yes,' she said in a low voice. 'You were going to… the store. Remember? Go ahead. I'll be fine, I promise.'

Mary Margaret nodded, then dragged her eyes warningly back to the woman who was still waiting on the threshold. Taking hold of her coat and bag, the small woman slipped past the mayor with a shake of her head.

'I'll be back in half an hour,' she threw back over her shoulder, giving Regina one last reproachful look before she took to the stairs. Regina watched her go. When she turned back to the front door, she found Emma waiting for her.

For a moment, the mayor couldn't speak. The face before her belonged to Miss Swan, but it looked like a reflection in a smashed mirror: only traces of the Emma that she knew still flickered on the surface. The flesh on the left hand side of her face was raised and fiercely purple, bulging out from her temple and cheekbone like someone has stuffed glass marbles beneath her skin. That purple then bled into a dirty green colour beneath both of her eyes; the result of the broken nose that was centred in her face. Emma kept her eyes down on the floor as Regina stared at her, allowing her to take in every tiny, shattered detail, before she finally spoke.

'Do you want to come in?'

Snapping out of her confused haze, Regina nodded. 'Yes. Thank you.'

Emma stepped to one side, still not looking up, and let the mayor slide past her. The door was shut behind her with a dull thud.

'I'll just, um,' Emma said, motioning towards the kitchen, 'I'll make us some coffee. Feel free to sit. You know… wherever.'

Regina nodded, but remained standing in the centre of the apartment with her hands resting awkwardly in her pockets. She watched as Emma moved across the room: she didn't limp, but the way that her body was tilted carefully to one side told her that every single step was agony.

After a few minutes of silence, Emma shuffled back over and handed the mayor her coffee. Regina forced herself not to stare at the angry black stitches that ran down her temple like a set of train tracks.

'You can sit, Regina,' Emma repeated, moving back to the other side of the breakfast bar and leaning her whole body against it.

Regina looked down at the nearest rickety stool with a wrinkle of distaste running down the side of her nose. 'Aren't you going to…?' she asked.

'No,' Emma replied. 'Broken ribs. If I sit down, I won't be getting back up again for a while.'

Unsure of whether this was meant to be a joke or not, Regina simply nodded. She slowly walked over to the stool and sat herself down on it, her eyes all the while fixed on the suspiciously murky cup of coffee that Emma had pressed into her hand.

The silence wore on. Regina bit at the inside of her mouth, counting to ten and then to twenty, wondering why on earth she had thought this would be a good idea and what the hell she could possibly say now to make things even slightly less painful for either of them.

Emma watched her squirming in her seat for a full minute, those dark red lips pursing in and out, looking so uncomfortable that, under any other circumstances, it would have been funny. But rather than laugh, Emma was eventually forced to heave out a sigh.

'Regina…' she asked. 'Why are you here?'

Two darks eyes slowly dragged their way out of their coffee cup in order to look back at her. 'I came to check on how you are. You look… well.'

There was a pause before Emma snorted with derision. 'Wow. You must be after something.'

'Excuse me?'

'I look well?' Emma said, drawing air quotes around the final word. 'I look like Harvey Dent, Regina. If Harvey Dent had been run over by a truck. So, you must want something. What is it?'

Regina offered a tiny, confused smile. 'I don't… I'm not after anything, Miss Swan. I was simply worried about you. I wanted to make sure that you're okay.'

'I'm doing alright,' Emma said, taking a small sip of her coffee. Regina left hers untouched.

'I…' she said slowly, rolling a flake of paint between her thumb and forefinger. 'What happened, Miss Swan. With Moe. I feel that I should—'

'I don't want to talk about him,' Emma interrupted. Regina looked back up.

'Sorry?'

'Moe,' Emma said quietly. 'French. Whatever his name is. I don't want to talk about him.'

'I understand that,' Regina said, biting at the inside of her mouth. 'But I just wanted to explain—'

'Regina,' Emma warned, narrowing her already-swollen eyes. 'I mean it. What happened… it's done. I'm over it. I got hurt but I'll be okay and he's going to jail, and that's all there is to it.'

Regina blinked. 'No. No, it's not.'

'It is to me.'

As Regina watched Emma putting her mug back down on the counter, she saw that her hand was trembling slightly. The skin on her face that wasn't purple or green was almost grey; sickeningly pale and clammy with sweat, and whenever Emma's green eyes flickered up to meet Regina's dark ones, they faltered. She couldn't meet her gaze for longer than a second before she crawled back into her shell and forced herself to stare down at the wooden surface before her once more.

Regina leaned forwards, reaching out a hand to her. Emma automatically flinched.

'Emma,' the brunette said with a small frown. 'You're not okay. I can assure you of that.'

'I'm fine. I've got a few weeks off of work to recover, anyway. I'll be alright.'

'I know,' Regina said, slowly pulling her hand back from its feeble, rejected gesture. 'I've got Sidney standing in for you while you're taking a break.'

Emma blinked. 'Well. That worked out pretty nicely for you then, didn't it?'

Rolling her eyes, Regina leaned forwards onto the counter. 'You think that I want this? Give me some credit, Miss Swan, please. I'm not that heartless.'

Emma merely shrugged, turning back to the sink and placing her half-full mug beside it. 'If you say so.'

A long pause stretched out as Regina let those words clatter around inside her head. She waited for Emma to turn back to her before she replied.

'Miss Swan… are you angry at me?'

'Why? Am I not allowed to be?' she replied, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back against the counter.

Regina frowned. 'I don't understand – I'm here to try and explain things. But you won't let me. How can you be angry at me if—'

'Because I have every right to be angry, Regina!' Emma suddenly exploded, making the mayor jump in her seat. 'Look at me! Look! Do you have any idea what that man did to me? Yeah, I get it – the police told me all about him: he's got rage issues and he's still recovering from the death of his daughter and all of this other bullshit. He's psychotic and is getting locked up now – I get that. But the simple fact is that if you were capable of showing even the slightest degree of civility to any person at all in this godforsaken town, then this never would have happened. If you hadn't deliberately wound him up until he snapped then he wouldn't have taken a fucking gun and tried to bash my skull in. He wouldn't have threatened to kill us all just because you were too proud to pay him his goddamn wages.'

Regina blinked, shaking her head. 'He… I didn't… it's not my—'

'No, it's not your fault – but you still could have stopped it.' Emma sighed, covering her eyes with her hand for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was so quiet that it barely passed for a murmur. 'I stood up for you in there, Regina – he was planning on dragging you in there and killing you, and I did everything I could to stop that from happening. And I don't regret it – but you coming in here to try and explain away your guilt isn't going to get rid of these bruises or this fucking headache that Dr Whale said might not ever completely go away.'

Regina swallowed, looking down at the table with her hands clasped in her lap.

'You could have told Moe that I wasn't going to be there. At the meeting,' she said in a tiny voice. Emma's eyes widened in disbelief.

'Yeah, I could have done – and then what?! He would have left and come to find you and shot you dead in your own home? Is that preferable to you? The fact that I stood in between you two is what – my fault?'

'No,' Regina shook her head vehemently. 'No, of course it's not. You… stood up to him. You did something that few other people I know would have been brave enough to do, regardless of… regardless of who you were defending. And I'm grateful, sheriff. Truly.'

Emma sighed once more, looking back down at the floor. 'Sheriff,' she muttered. 'You can't even use my name.'

'Emma,' Regina responded.

The word was met with a sad, solemn groan.

'I need you to leave now, Regina,' the blonde woman said, her head falling so far forwards that Regina couldn't catch her expression.

'No – I haven't had a chance to explain anything yet.'

'There's nothing to explain,' Emma sighed. 'I did my job. I got hurt for it. And you're grateful. That's all there is to it.'

'No,' Regina spat out, rising to her feet. 'Please, Emma – let me try and explain. I want to—'

'Regina, please,' Emma bit out, lifting her head for just long enough that Regina could catch the glassiness of her swollen green eyes. 'I'm not sure if you can tell, but I'm not feeling my best right now. Listening to you is a struggle, let alone talking to you. I just… I just need you to leave. You can explain yourself to anyone else who'll listen if that'll make you feel better about it. But right now, I just need you to go.'

The mayor took a step forwards, her mouth slightly open like she was planning on saying something else. Nothing came. Emma remained completely still, stood by the sink with her head hanging down over her chest and her eyes clamped shut. Regina took another step forwards and reached out to gently touch her arm; her last desperate attempt to get the blonde woman to listen to her. The moment that her fingers made contact with the sheriff's elbow, however, Emma's eyes snapped back open, her whole body rocketing to one side. As she flinched her half-full coffee cup toppled off of the counter and smashed onto the ground, murky brown liquid running through the cracks of Mary Margaret's floor.

Emma never looked down at it. Her eyes remained fixed on Regina; terrified and full of tears. Her chest heaved up and down as she struggled to catch her breath.

'Emma,' Regina stammered, looking down at her hand. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—'

'Please go,' Emma choked out, shaking her head. A single tear dribbled down her swollen cheek. 'Please.'

And finally, Regina did. She almost ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her and staggering down the stairs. The picture of Emma Swan's bruised, petrified face remained burned across her memory. As she drove back home that startled scream followed her, no matter how many times she shook her head to try and get rid of it. Even as she arrived back at her house and locked herself in her study, still it was all that she could hear.