A/N: for those who haven't heard it, an outstanding SQ song to listen to while grinding teeth over this chapter and also undoubtedly crying over the sneak peek that they released today is 'The Author' by Karima Francis. Fucking gorgeous, seriously. Go have a listen.

Hope you enjoy the chapter! Please throw me some thoughts if you have any.

starsthatburn x

Chapter Four

Regina locked up her office and made her way back to her car, her left arm clamped around the stack of paperwork that needed looking over that evening. The majority of the papers had been confiscated from Sidney earlier that afternoon: as expected, his first week as Storybrooke's stand-in sheriff had not gone smoothly. Even answering the phone seemed to be a challenge to the man who had spent most of his life up until that point working alone; hiding behind trees and hiding behind his computer. Regina had taken one step into the sheriff station on Monday morning, seen the terrified expression on Sidney's face teamed with the teetering stack of incident reports and witness reports that Moe's little adventure with a gun had produced, and had only been able to groan to herself. She had ended up spending most of the week there, growing increasingly irritated as Sidney had stammered out question after question. The papers had eventually gone back with her to her office simply because she knew that she'd end up beating him to death with them if she'd watched him filling them out with blue ink, rather than the black that they clearly specified, one more time.

The streets surrounding City Hall were quiet as she left, a fact that, since the previous week's events, now made her feel grossly uncomfortable. She flicked her sharp eyes across the car park before she slid into the driver's seat, locking the doors behind her. Pulling out onto Main Street, her black car was the only one to roll slowly between the rows of shops. Regina blinked down at her clock – it was barely six o'clock. Where on earth was everyone?

A moment later a car pulled out in front of her, its bright headlights momentarily distracting her from where she was going. She instantly recognised it as Mary Margaret's grotesque little vehicle. The mayor gently pressed on her brakes, watching as the brown car picked up speed and drew away from her. At the end of the road, it followed the fork to the right: the track that led to the toll bridge. Regina rolled her eyes, cursing the woman's rotten name under her breath – did she really have no shame whatsoever? She shook her head to herself. It was clear to her then that her already rock-bottom opinion of the woman quickly needed reassessing.

Speeding her car up, Regina arrived home a few minutes later to see that the light was on in Henry's bedroom. She dragged the stack of papers off of the passenger seat of the car and slipped inside the house, kicking off her heels and leaving them neatly lined up next to the front door.

'Henry?' she called upstairs. 'I'm home. Do you want to come down and help me with dinner?'

She received no response. Sighing, the mayor placed the paperwork and her handbag on the nearest table and took to the stairs.

'Henry?' she said as she reached his bedroom door, knocking gently. She pushed it open a moment later when there was no reply.

She frowned when she found her son sat cross-legged on his bed, staring blankly down at his book. It was closed.

'Did you hear me?' she said, taking a step into the room. He looked up at her with heavily hooded eyes, shrugging. Regina sighed, taking a seat on the edge of his bed. 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing.'

'It doesn't look like nothing,' she said, reaching out to squeeze his hand. He didn't pull away, but he didn't squeeze back either. 'How was school?'

'Fine.'

'And after school?'

'Fine.'

'Where did you go?'

'I didn't go anywhere.'

'But you're upset.' Regina narrowed her eyes, forcing out a breath. 'You can tell me if you went to see Emma again, Henry. I won't mind.'

He looked back up at her with eyes that were full of tears, and before she knew it he had catapulted himself across the bed towards her. She blinked with surprise for barely half a second before she gathered her son up in her arms, feeling him shuddering against her chest.

'Oh, sweetheart,' she muttered, planting a kiss on the top of his head. 'What happened?'

He shook his head vigorously, swallowing down tears. 'I don't want to tell you.'

'Why not?'

'You'll get angry at her.'

'What?' she asked sharply, pulling away from him so that she could look him in the eye. He flinched. 'Henry – what happened? Why would I be angry?'

'You were angry when you came back from seeing her,' he mumbled, scrubbing his hand beneath his eyes. Regina sighed, pushing his hair back from his forehead.

'That was different,' she said softly, swallowing. 'I was… I was upset. I wasn't angry.'

Henry blinked, watching her questioningly. 'Upset? Why?'

'It doesn't matter,' she said quickly, trying to smile down at him. 'What matters is why you're upset, Henry. Please tell me.'

The boy bit at his bottom lip, his forehead creasing in the same way that his mother's would whenever she was thinking. When he realised that there was no hidden agenda in Regina's own face, just concern, he sighed.

'She was worse.'

'Worse?' Regina asked slowly, narrowing her eyes. 'How could she be worse?'

'I don't know,' Henry said quietly, leaning back on his hands. 'But she was. She and Miss Blanchard had been arguing when I got there, I think: Mary Margaret looked like she'd been crying, and Emma was angry and was slamming doors all around the apartment. And she looked worse as well. I don't think she's slept.'

'I don't think so either,' Regina said, thinking about how she'd seen her sat in Granny's yet again on her way to work that morning, her head rested in her hands. 'How long did you stay for?'

'Not very long,' Henry said, wiping away what remained of his frustrated tears. 'They didn't want me there. Emma said that they would spend the night talking, and then she'd hopefully be able to see me tomorrow.'

Regina opened her mouth to respond, and then the thought finally struck her: she'd seen Mary Margaret going to meet David. Not much talking was going to get done that evening after all, it seemed. Miss Swan was going to be alone.

Unsure as to whether she should be furious or deeply concerned, Regina ran her hand over her son's wet cheek and offered him a reassuring smile. 'I'm sure she'll do her best,' she said, rubbing her thumb in a slow circle across his skin. 'She's trying, Henry. She just needs time, and patience. She needs you to understand that. Can you do it, do you think?'

'Of course I can,' Henry nodded vigorously, forcing a smile. 'I just… I wanted her to know that I'm still here.'

'She knows,' Regina said quickly. 'Trust me – she knows.'

They sat like that for a few more seconds, Henry's face resting against Regina's cupped palm. A sharp pain beat through her chest as she looked down at him: there was no hatred there. No resentment. For the first time in weeks, or possibly even months, her son had simply let her in. She smiled weakly, a dangerous lump rising in her throat.

And then the worry returned to her – a vile, irritating worry over someone that she didn't even want to be thinking about. She sighed.

'Henry,' she said slowly, crossing her legs over. 'After dinner… will you be okay on your own for a little bit?'

The boy blinked curiously. 'Yeah, of course. Why?'

'I need to go out.'

'Where are you going?'

Hating the taste of the words as they rolled around in her mouth, Regina grimaced. 'I think that I should go and check that Miss Swan's okay.'

She could hear the music from the bottom of the stairwell. The heavy, crashing drumbeat of some god-awful rock music poured down the stairs, and when she tentatively placed her hand on the wooden railing so as to walk up to the loft apartment, she could feel it vibrating beneath her fingers. She groaned to herself: evidently leaving Miss Swan alone was like leaving a teenager unattended for the evening. The apartment would no doubt be in ruins by the time that Mary Margaret returned home.

The worry that was still knotted in her stomach forced her to keep climbing the stairs, however. She'd seen Emma that morning and, even from the distance of her car, Regina could see that she wasn't well. Regardless of what she and her roommate had been arguing about later that afternoon, she should not have been left on her own. Not in her condition. Certainly not for David Nolan.

Regina approached the front door with her breath caught in her lungs, quickly realising that no matter how loudly she knocked it was unlikely that Emma would be able to hear her. The music was almost deafening here, even through the heavy wooden door, and Regina had to wonder whether maybe Emma had passed out somewhere where she couldn't hear it anymore. She swallowed, then pounded her fist against the door regardless. She wasn't surprised when after a few minutes no one had answered.

Reaching into the pocket of her coat Regina pulled out the skeleton key that she'd suspected she might be needing, slipping it into the lock and easing the door open. The blast of the drums thudded against her temples. Narrowing her eyes, she stuck her head around the door and peered into the room. For a moment she saw nothing unusual, other than the enormous stereo sat on top of the kitchen counter that she suspected probably didn't belong to Mary Margaret.

Then she looked down at the floor, and she saw the half-empty bottle of whiskey. She saw Emma's feet sticking out from behind the counter.

Without thinking Regina entered the room and hurled herself over to the kitchen, her heart clenched like a fist inside her chest. Oh God, she thought to herself, she's probably dead. She's killed herself. And I'll find her and everyone will no doubt blame me and then what the hell will I tell Henry? How can I possibly explain to him—

And then she stopped, looking down at the floor. With her back leant against the kitchen counter, Emma was sat on the floor with a glass clutched in her left hand. In her right was a bunch of photographs. Spread on the floor all around her were more of them, all of them old and tatty and most of them ripped in some way, sat next to a box that had a yellow blanket folded neatly on top of it.

Regina nearly screamed. Slamming her hand down on top of the stereo, she shut the music off and watched with considerable satisfaction as Emma jumped in her seat.

'What the hell—'

'I thought that you'd died,' Regina spat out, her clenched fists visibly trembling by her sides. 'What in God's name are you doing, Miss Swan?'

Emma looked up at her through bleary, bloodshot eyes. The bruises that were strewn across her face didn't seem to have faded since she'd last seen her – if anything, they now only seemed to stand out more against the miserable white sheet that was the rest of her skin.

'I don't…' she mumbled, looking down at the photograph in her hand. 'I'm not sure… I…'

Regina blinked, realising that the photograph that she was looking at was a picture of Emma herself. She looked young – probably only barely a teenager – and fiercely skinny, but other than that she somehow looked exactly the same as the woman who was curled up before her.

The woman who, Regina was quickly realising, was blind drunk.

'Oh, for God's sake,' the mayor muttered, crouching down beside her and prising the glass out of her fingers. 'How much of this have you had?'

'I don't know,' Emma mumbled, shutting her eyes. A tear leaked out from beneath her clumped eyelashes.

'You can't have eaten in days,' Regina said. The last time that she'd seen Emma she'd been wearing a long-sleeved shirt: now, she was back in her grubby old white tank top. The arms that protruded from beneath it were pale and thin, peppered with bruises like islands on a treasure map. From beneath its fabric Regina could easily see the dark, inky patch that no doubt acted as the X on top of her broken ribs. 'Emma? How much did you drink?'

'Not much,' Emma said, shaking her head. 'It just… it sort of, hit me.'

'Alcohol can do that when you're emaciated,' Regina bit out, screwing the top back onto the bottle and placing it out of her reach.

Emma's head fell forwards, her shoulders shaking with a barely concealed sigh. It was the most pathetic sight that Regina had ever seen in her life.

She reached out to touch Emma's arm. 'Look. Miss Swan—'

The second that her fingers made contact with the pale, scarred skin Emma flinched, nearly falling sideways in the process. She quickly drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, without daring to look up at the woman kneeling beside her.

'Emma,' Regina said in a low voice, rolling her eyes at her own ineptitude before reaching out again, slower this time. When her fingers touch Emma's elbow the blonde woman still winced, but less violently. Her green eyes opened, staring down at the unfamiliar contact that was seemingly taking place against a body that didn't feel like her own anymore. 'Emma, why are you on your own?'

'I don't need a babysitter,' the sheriff muttered. 'You said it yourself, remember? I'm a grown up now. Grown ups take care of themselves.'

Regina opened her mouth to respond, and then her gaze was caught by the spread of photos next to Emma's leg. Endless photos of Emma; where she was young and angry and always, always alone.

'Miss Swan…'

'The problem is, though,' Emma said, her words dribbling out of her like warm beer, 'that I'm tired of taking care of myself. I've always taken care of myself. And it gets old really, really fast.'

Regina swallowed, realising that her fingers were still on the sheriff's arm. She pulled them away like her skin had burnt her.

She quickly stood up, and Emma somehow couldn't stop the crumpled disappointment that tore through her face. Glancing upwards, she waited for the mayor to turn and leave her. Instead Regina paused for a moment, and then she reached her hand back out again to the woman who was still curled up against the kitchen counter. Emma shook her head.

'Just go away.'

'I am not leaving you down here to wallow in self-pity all night. Now get up.'

'Please go away?'

'Miss Swan, I promise you that I'm stronger than I look: if you think that I won't drag you up every single one of those stairs then you will find yourself sorely mistaken.'

Emma groaned, her head suddenly thudding back against the cabinet door. Her green eyes had clamped shut once more, but the skin below them was slick with tears. Not for the first time that week Regina felt a sharp jolt of guilt hitting her in the stomach, spasming through every muscle in her body until she thought she might be sick. The feeling made her skin crawl.

Kneeling down once more, she took Emma's hands in her own and slowly stood back up again.

'I'm going to pull you up now, Miss Swan,' she said warningly. 'You might want to cooperate: this is going to hurt more than enough without you struggling against it.'

'Regina, don't—'

Ignoring her, Regina began to pull on her arms as gently as she could. Emma gasped as pain shot through her ribs, feeling like a sharp blade was suddenly sawing through every bone and muscle and nerve that it could reach. Regina didn't let go. She hoisted the blonde woman as high off of the ground as she could manage before quickly slipping Emma's arm over her shoulder, heaving her entire weight up against her body until she was finally standing.

'Oh God,' Emma muttered, swaying slightly. Regina clamped her against her side, gritting her teeth.

'No, no,' she hissed. 'No falling. And definitely no vomiting. We're getting you up those stairs if it kills me.'

'I'm going to kill you,' Emma groaned, pressing her hand against her face and then suddenly hissing in pain as she pushed against her stitches more heavily than she'd intended. 'Shit. Oh, God…'

Regina turned to look at her and, in that split second, watched as her pale face visibly crumpled. The tears had started spilling down her cheeks faster than she could register.

'Come on, Emma,' she said as patiently as she could manage, beginning to walk her across the kitchen. She felt the sheriff's arm squeeze more tightly around her neck, trying desperately to stay upright.

It was a slow, laborious process. After every stair that they climbed Emma had to stop, scrubbing at the tears on her face with one shaking hand. Regina could feel her teeth beginning to ache with annoyance, looking up at how far they still had to travel and with every ounce of her being wanting to simply leave the woman exactly where she was and go home. She didn't need this – she didn't owe her anything. Henry was at home by himself and Mary Margaret would surely be back soon: she was the one who could deal with the problem that she'd no doubt caused herself when she returned.

And yet the mayor only held the sheriff more tightly to her side, muttering fierce encouragement in her ear.

'You can do this, Emma,' she said as they reached the second step from the top. 'We're nearly there now.'

'Shut up,' Emma muttered in response, her eyes yet again closed. But she heaved herself up onto the next step nonetheless, her teeth gritted tightly together as her head and her ribs continued to burn like wildfire.

'I'll shut up when I get you into that damn bed,' Regina said, pausing as Emma began taking deep, stilted breaths through her nose. 'And not a moment before.'

'You're so annoying,' Emma groaned, shaking her head and finally lifting her left foot onto the firm ground of the upstairs landing. 'You'll never shut up.'

'That's certainly rich coming from you, sheriff,' Regina replied, allowing the blonde to press the majority of her weight against her so that she could finally heave the rest of her body onto the wooden floor of the hallway.

'You see?' Emma said, leaning against her, inwardly begging the floor to stop tilting beneath her feet. 'You just can't help yourself.'

Regina forced out a tiny snort of laughter, then hefted Emma's weight back onto the shoulder that had been screaming with the effort since the very first stair that they had climbed. Carrying Sidney's papers back into the office tomorrow morning would certainly be a challenging start to her day.

The door to Emma's bedroom was open, and Regina managed to shunt her into the room comparatively easily. They reached the bed together and Emma went to flop down onto it without thinking – Regina somehow managed to catch her before she did, grinding her teeth with the effort.

'Carefully,' she hissed, lowering her down slowly onto her unbroken right side. 'For goodness sake, Miss Swan, do you ever use your brain?'

Emma didn't respond. Her knees had automatically curled up against her chest despite the restrictive tightness of her jeans and her eyes had closed, one of her fists pressed up against her mouth. Regina frowned, wondering if she had fallen asleep already. Then she saw the sticky tears that were still leaking out from beneath her closed eyelids and the slight shaking of her shoulders against the pillows. She inwardly groaned, then sat down on the very edge of the bed.

When she placed her hand on Emma's shoulder, she didn't jump.

'Are you okay?' she asked in a low voice. Quite indiscernibly, Emma shook her head.

'No.' The single word was heavy with tears, like Emma was drowning beneath its weight. 'I'm not.'

'Is that the first time that you've admitted that?'

'I thought you were going to stop talking once you got me up here?'

Regina couldn't help but smirk to herself: even now, drunk and miserable and clearly in pain, Miss Swan managed to be just as pigheadedly hostile as ever.

'I lied,' she said simply, beginning to rub a small circle against the skin of her shoulder. It was a tiny, pathetic gesture, but one that she had used so many times with Henry as he had grown up. Whether he was feverish or upset or just simply tired, it had always calmed him down. She thought about that very evening and the tiny circle that she'd brushed against the hot skin of his cheek, and the small smile that he'd offered her in return.

Something sharp caught against her throat, and she automatically pulled away from the woman lying beside her.

'No surprises there,' Emma muttered in response, but it was clear that there was no malice in it. She sounded exhausted.

Suddenly she groaned, reaching up to press a hand over her eyes. 'Jesus Christ. I feel like I'm on a fucking carousel.'

Regina sighed, pursing her lips together. Slowly, she reached down for the sheriff's leg.

'Put your foot on the floor,' she said, lifting it up on her behalf and pushing the ball of her foot against the wooden floorboards. 'It'll ground you. That should help.'

'How the hell would you know something like that?' Emma asked, trying to look over her shoulder and failing. Regina swallowed, thinking back to the first night that Emma Swan had spent in Storybrooke: the night when Henry had run away, the night when he had returned with his birth mother, the night when she had shut herself away in her office and drank scotch until her teeth had gone numb.

After a pause she replied quietly, 'I just do.'

As she sat, Regina found her eyes being drawn to the stitches that were still running down Emma's temple; their black lines fiercely marking possession of the damaged, dented skin there. The swelling of her cheekbone had barely gone down, she noticed. The mayor bit her lip, noticing for the first time just how small Emma actually was: physically, of course, she was taller than the mayor. But beneath her at that moment it was painfully apparent just how tiny and how damaged she actually was.

And that's your fault, you know. The thought entered Regina's head before she could stop it. She blinked.

It was her curse that had caused Emma to grow up alone; her behaviour that had caused her to have her head beaten in and her sharp, bare bravado to be completely torn from her. It was her who had labelled Miss Swan as a liability and as a threat. The woman lying beside her didn't seem to be the same as the one that she'd painted a dangerous picture of in her head: all she could see was the same little girl who was in the photos downstairs; one who had never learned to trust anyone because she'd never had any reason to. One who got attacked by life at every single turn.

Regina closed her eyes for a moment, sighing.

'I'm sorry for what happened, Emma.'

She said it quietly, and for a moment she wasn't sure whether the blonde had heard her. Then she heard a sniff, and Emma turned her cheek to look up at her.

'I know,' she murmured, her head quickly flopping back down again. 'It's okay.'

'No it's not.'

'Well, no,' Emma admitted, rubbing her fist beneath her eyes once more. 'Not okay, exactly. But it will be. I just need a bit of time to get over it.'

Her words were still slurred, although Regina was struggling to deduce whether it was from the whiskey or just from plain exhaustion. Her eyes were shut once more, but she didn't seem anywhere closer to falling asleep just yet.

Regina swallowed before she asked, 'Why were you alone when I came round, Miss Swan?'

Emma wrinkled her nose, ignoring the pain that pulsed through it. 'Because Mary Margaret went out.'

'I realise that,' Regina rolled her eyes. 'But you said to Henry that you two were going to talk about it tonight.'

'About what?'

'The arguing.'

'Oh,' Emma said flatly, pausing. 'Damn. He really is a smart kid.'

'What were you fighting about?'

Emma opened her mouth to respond – to tell Regina that she had told Mary Margaret not to go and meet David. Not because she had wanted her to stay at home with her, but simply because she was sick of the whole thing and because she thought that her roommate was being an idiot. It was a statement that Mary Margaret, exhausted after yet another hour of trying desperately to get her to eat something, had not appreciated.

The warm haze of whiskey that filled her head nearly let all of this slip off of her tongue. At the last minute, however, she remembered who she was talking to – Regina was friends with Kathryn. And she was certain that Regina didn't know about the affair – she couldn't. She would have done something about it by now.

'Nothing,' she eventually muttered. Regina frowned. 'Just… nothing important.'

A silence followed as Regina mulled this over, trying to decide what Miss Swan could be hiding from her this time. Then Emma spoke again, her voice cracking.

'My head hurts, Regina,' she mumbled.

'Do you want me to leave?'

'No,' Emma replied without thinking. Regina wavered for a moment before she reached her hand back out again, wanting to rest it against the back of Emma's blonde head so that it could rub its tentative, comforting circle there instead. Then at the last second she pulled back, clamping her fists between her knees.

Emma suddenly choked out a sob, an agonised murmur erupting from her throat.

'No one gets it.'

Regina frowned at the abrupt admission, watching Emma as she clenched and unclenched her fists against the sheets.

'Gets what, Miss Swan?' she asked slowly.

'What it's like,' Emma said, sniffing. She suddenly buried her face into the pillow and Regina found herself leaning forwards, trying to catch what she said next. 'What it's like to be so fucking lonely, all the goddamn time. Even when you're surrounded by people. Like… like, even when I'm sat with Mary Margaret or Henry or August or anyone, I just feel like I'm stood in a room full of people who are all laughing at some joke that I'm not in on and so I just have to chuckle along like an idiot, but all the time I feel like what they're all actually laughing at is… is me. It's like the fucking lights are always turned off around me, and I can never find the light switch. And people will always be there as fast as they can, rolling their eyes, saying, 'God, Emma, just turn the lights back on, will you? What's the big fucking deal?' But I can't find the light switch, Regina. I don't have a light switch. I'm always scrabbling about in the dark and I'm always confused and always on my own. I've never had a light switch. And no one fucking gets that.'

Regina could only blink. She had no idea what to say to something as bluntly, cruelly honest as that.

The silence bore on, and eventually Emma's pathetic hiccups subsided into sniffles: after five days of seemingly no rest whatsoever, she slipped into a shaky, fitful sleep with one of her legs hanging off of the bed. Regina stayed by her side for the next few minutes, watching the tears as they dried on her cheeks. Finally she heaved herself back to her feet, her shoulder still aching, and made her way back to the door. Leaving it ajar, she snapped the lights off and went back downstairs without looking behind her.

She realised as she reached the wooden floor of the kitchen just what a mess Miss Swan had managed to leave behind her: besides the carpet of tattered photos that filled the space between the breakfast bar and the rest of the room, there were sporadic puddles of whiskey splashed all across the floor. The bottle that Regina had confiscated was sticky and had already left a faint amber ring on Mary Margaret's counter. Part of Regina wanted desperately to leave everything exactly as it was – it would serve the schoolteacher right if she came back and had to spend the next ten minutes scrubbing the stains out of her kitchen. But another part of her – the anally retentive part or the part of her that for some reason gave a damn about what Emma had to face in the morning, she couldn't tell – forced her to stop in her tracks and clean it up before the blonde's roommate got home.

Gritting her teeth, she hunted down a dishcloth and began to wipe up every inch of the mess that the drunk sheriff had managed to leave behind her. She then started on collecting up the photos, picking up the box with the blanket in it and placing the whole lot on top of the counter.

Just as she was putting the photos away, however, the one on the top of the pile caught her eye. She separated it from the rest of the stack: Emma couldn't have been more than six in it, her skinny legs sticking out from the bottom of a pair of ill-fitting boy's shorts. She was wearing a pink top that didn't suit her even then and her blonde hair was about three shades lighter than it was now – but she inexplicably looked exactly the same. The same fierceness hung about the angles of her face, as well as something else: something in her eyes that closely resembled fear.

'Mayor Mills?'

Regina violently jumped, her heart clunking to a halt in her chest. She looked up to find Mary Margaret stood in the open doorway, her forehead creased into a frown. The mayor noticed with considerable distain how flustered her hair was, and how the buttons on her cardigan were all done up wrong.

'Miss Blanchard,' she said, swallowing. 'I'm sorry. I was just… tidying.'

Mary Margaret's eyes immediately narrowed, taking in the bottle of whiskey and the box of Emma's possessions that were sat in front of her. 'Tidying.'

Regina rolled her eyes to herself, thrusting her hands deep into her pockets. 'Yes. I thought that it might be a nice thing to do, to save you from having to do it yourself when you got home from… wherever you've been.'

She forced herself not to smirk as she watched the fierce blush spreading through Mary Margaret's cheeks.

'Regina, why are you here?' she quickly asked, taking a small step into the apartment. Then she looked about her. 'Where's Emma?'

'Upstairs,' she replied as coolly as she could manage.

'She's asleep?'

'In a sense.'

Mary Margaret's eyes drifted back to the half-empty bottle on the counter and immediately widened in outrage. 'You gave her alcohol?!'

Regina let out a despaired groan. 'Yes, Miss Blanchard, that's exactly what I did – I waited for you to leave, and then I snuck around here with the cunning plan of giving a fully grown woman a bottle of whiskey in the hopes that she would pass out in her bed. Then I cleverly planned to clean her kitchen. That is why I am here.'

Her sarcasm somehow seemed to roll cleanly off of the school teacher's back, however. Her hazel eyes softened as she examined Regina's pursed lips, her tired eyes, her messy hair.

'You came round because of Henry,' she said slowly, clutching hold of her necklace with one hand. 'You were worried about her?'

The muscles in Regina's jaw clenched, and suddenly she realised that she was far too tired to deal with either of the women in that apartment. She straightened her back beneath her coat.

'I'm leaving now, Miss Blanchard. Good night.'

She stormed past her and moved towards the open door, all too prepared to slam it behind her and never come back. As she reached the threshold, however, something stopped her in her tracks. With one hand on the door handle she found herself turning back again, sighing to herself. Mary Margaret still had her eyes on her, waiting for her to speak.

'She's in a bad way, Miss Blanchard,' she said in a flat voice. 'She needs someone to look after her.'

Mary Margaret blinked, her mouth opening and closing several times before she managed to respond. 'I… I know. I just…'

'Good night, Miss Blanchard,' Regina repeated, turning away once more and shutting the door behind her. Quietly.

She drove the whole way home in silence. It was barely ten o'clock, and yet she felt exhausted, like she'd spent the entire night by Emma Swan's side. Her body slumped down in her seat, her aching arms struggling to hang onto the steering wheel. When she arrived back at home, Henry's bedroom light was off.

It wasn't until she was back inside the house, trying to shrug her coat off, that she realised that the photo of Emma had found its way into her pocket. She pulled it out, peering down at it in the dim light of the hallway. The sadness in the small girl's eyes was unignorable, even then.

Going into her study, she went to throw the photograph in the trash. Instead, she opened the bottom drawer of her desk and pushed it to the bottom. The drawer was quickly locked, and finally she went upstairs.

She stopped off in Henry's room to kiss him goodnight. He was lying beneath his covers, curled up in the exact same position that she had left his mother in half an hour before. She pressed a kiss onto his hair, but he didn't stir. Sitting down on the edge of his bed, she placed her hand on top of his and began to rub a tiny, gentle circle against his skin, all the while looking down at him with heavy, sad eyes and a heavy, sad heart.