Chapter Thirty-Nine

Again, the cold. Why was it always so cold?

She let her feet drag her over towards the cell in corner with tears already scratching at her pathetically half-closed eyes. Like if she couldn't see him, then he wasn't there. It was the nightmarish equivalent of curling up under the covers because if her feet were tucked up under her scrawny little body, then the monsters under the bed couldn't grab them – but the monster was fully grown now, and he had already caught her. He wasn't hunched in the corner of the cell like normal: he was sat on the bed, the gun dangling from his hand, with his eyes pink and bleary and watching her as she stumbled into the room with invisible hands pushing her until she nearly fell.

The door clanged shut, and it got colder.

And then the hands were on her, and the pain was upon her, and the smell of metal and sweat and salty tears was drowning her. She went down fighting, and she went down screaming, and she went down staring at the station door and just pleading pleading pleading for someone to walk in.

...she had never been the type of person to wait for someone to save her.

That was when she woke up.

Emma flung herself upright in bed, her sweaty shirt digging its cotton claws into her skin. Her hair hung loosely in a braid down the side of her face, slapping against her cheek when she moved. She reached up and flung it back again, desperate to get it away from her and away from her throat that still felt bruised from the hammy prints of Moe's fingers.

She waited a few moments until she had caught her breath, tugging her knees as close to her chest as they would go. The room around her seemed to be creaking.

It was the fifth time that week that she had woken up gasping and choking on her own sobs, stuffing her fingers into her mouth to try and smother the sound of her crying. Every time she would gather up the strength to force herself to look into the mirror afterwards and she would find that her skin was grey; like dirty water. Her hair was limp. She looked exactly like she had done when she'd staggered out of City Hall all of those months ago except now she didn't have the physical injuries to justify it – no one sympathised with her now. Even she didn't.

Her pain was incessant, and it was boring – it was in her own head and it was driving her insane and it was only the faint throbbing feeling against the inside of her skull that reminded her that something had actually happened at all. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten about it and, in time, they'd forgotten about her too.

She should be over it by now. She knew that. But the walls around her still had claws and all she desperately, painfully wanted was someone to protect her from them.

She took a deep breath and looked into those hideous shadowy eyes that seemed to loom down at her from nowhere. They'd been watching her for ever. They wouldn't let her sleep.

Only the guilty couldn't sleep – the guilty, and the victimised. And she was sick to fucking death of being the victim.

She took a look at the watery sunrise that was leaking over the Storybrooke skyline and shook her head.

'To hell with this,' she muttered, throwing her sweaty covers away from her.

'Again?' Henry asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. 'But you went to work early yesterday.'

'I know, sweetheart,' Regina said, perching herself on the edge of the bed. 'I'm sorry, I really am. But I've missed a lot of work recently and there's… There's a lot to catch up on.'

'Can I help?' her son asked, squinting through his exhausted eyes. He'd been up for most of the night reading his book, trying to search for some loophole that would actually give the Evil Queen a chance at a happy ending. Short of pixie dust, or of ruby slippers… he wasn't sure that it was likely.

'I'm afraid not,' Regina said with a sad smile, reaching out to push his hair away from his face. 'You're probably a bit young to try and run for office.'

'I'd be more use to you than I am at school,' Henry grumbled.

Regina tried not to laugh. 'You might be right. But, you know, Snow White wouldn't be complete without her little helpers.'

Henry glared at her. 'I'm not a dwarf.'

'No,' she said, leaning forwards to kiss his warm forehead. 'But stay at school and you'll at least have a better job than they did. Sidney will pick you up in an hour, okay? Don't fall back asleep.'

Henry fell back onto the pillows anyway, grumbling. 'You can't do anything to stop me.'

Suddenly hands attacked his stomach, scrabbling over his skin until he squealed. 'Oh, can't I?'

'Stop it!'

'Promise me that you'll get ready for school as soon as I leave and then I will.'

'You can't torture me, I'm your son!'

'I can do what I like,' Regina cackled, releasing his waist so that she could press another kiss against his grinning cheek. 'I'm the Evil Queen, remember?'

'No you're not,' Henry shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. '...the Evil Queen wouldn't care about making me go to school.'

Regina left the house a few minutes later, her coat wrapped around her and her brimming purse hitched up onto her shoulder. March was leaking into April and the mornings were suddenly less gloomy, but the air that day was still sharp against her skin. She glanced at her phone: it was barely 7:30. It was odd how she didn't notice how tired she was anymore.

She clambered into her car and started the engine, huddling against the cold leather seat for a moment as she waited for the air around her to warm up. The sun was barely breaking through the clouds and streets were deserted – they always were when she left for work at that time.

She sighed, shifting the car into gear before she let it creak down the drive.

She drove in silence, not even switching the radio on. It was mostly static nowadays anyway, but the few songs that it did manage to leak out always made her stomach hurt. Love songs and betrayal songs and hateful songs and all sorts of other things that she realised that she couldn't actually listen to anymore. She wetted her lips and carried on down the empty street, her eyes fixed on the cracking concrete.

And then there was a flash of blue. She narrowed her eyes, almost flinching with surprise at the presence of another person at that time of day. Snapping her head to one side, she peered across to the distant sidewalk and tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

She knew it was Emma before she was even in focus. But why it was Emma, she couldn't really say.

She was moving quickly. Her head was down and she hadn't seen Regina, that much was clear – but Regina found herself slumping down behind the wheel just in case. Just in case she saw her and hurriedly turned a corner just to get away from her.

She was wearing a glaringly bright blue shirt; the same garish colour as that hideous jacket of hers, and black sweats. Her hair was dirty and sweaty and scraped back from her slightly pink face. She had headphones planted firmly over her ears with music playing so loudly that she was visibly wincing as she ran – because she was. She was running.

Regina slowed the car down and watched her as she sped past, her teeth gritted and her eyes down on the deserted sidewalk and her hands clenched into furious fists that would break the first person who tried to speak to her. Her sneakers were pounding along against the concrete. She looked… terrifying. She looked strong.

Her skin was grey and her eyes were deep-set and she looked utterly exhausted, and yet she still somehow looked more like Emma than she had done at any point over the last six months. It made Regina's whole body ache – ache to touch the person whom she knew she'd lost the right to touch a long, long time ago.

She swallowed, her eyes still on the flash of blue in her rear-view mirror. She kept driving with her eyes never once looking at the road.

She found herself awake early on Saturday.

She hadn't slept properly for weeks, and Regina had gotten used to not being able to fall asleep until the moon had already long since disappeared from the sky. Recently, though, waking up the moment that the sun was trickling over the horizon had become her body's newest way of punishing her. And so, that weekend she found herself laying in bed with her eyes wide open and the watery grey morning light peeking insistently around her curtains.

She groaned, throwing an arm over her eyes. Her bed was always so goddamn empty. She was almost certain that, in actuality, she was just waking up from the lack of Emma every morning.

She waited for half an hour, hoping that some cloud of sleep would wash back over her again. It was 5:46am and her jaw was aching with the urge to yawn, and yet her eyes remained wide open – the barely-light sunlight was stabbing at them and she apparently couldn't do anything to fight it anymore.

She dragged herself out of her vile, lonely bed and forced herself into the shower. The water singed her skin but it still couldn't quite get hot enough.

After what felt like weeks, she switched the shower off and pulled clothes onto her body. It was aching from weariness by then but she'd almost stopped noticing it – when pain creeps through every bones and muscle and pore of your body, it becomes an armour. She pulled her armour on and made her way creakily down the stairs, wishing that it would stop trying to encase her stupid breaking heart quite so effectively.

She was sat behind her desk at quarter past six. Her computer was blinking its way into life, groaning at her for the impossibly early wake up call, but the rest of the house was silent. Henry would be asleep for hours, and Regina would be alone. She stared down at her coffee and blinked.

And then there was a knock at the front door. The tiniest, quietest knock that told her that it was someone who half hoped that she wouldn't be there to answer it.

Emma.

Oh, God… the name hurt her.

She edged out from behind her desk and made her way into the entrance hall, her fingernails digging ferociously into the palms of her hands. There was a flash of pink waiting for her through the misty glass, because apparently Emma just couldn't do normal colours.

By the time that she had actually opened the door, that flash of pink had turned away and started to walk back down the path. Emma heard the scrape of wood against stone and spun back around again, her tired eyes seeking out Regina's through the tiny, apologetic gap in the door.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Emma stood halfway down the path with her upper body gleaming with sweat. Regina could see the beads of it trailing down the muscular dips in her forearms. Loud music was still throbbing from the ear buds that were dangling around her neck, and Regina noticed with a sudden pang of pain in her throat that her dishevelled blonde hair had gotten longer since the last time that they'd spoken.

'Emma,' she eventually forced out, trying to swallow. Her mouth was dry and her throat felt raw as she tried desperately to tear her eyes away from the rapid rise and fall of Emma's chest.

There was a pause before she quietly responded, 'Hi.'

She was holding herself rigidly, like she didn't trust herself to stay five paces away.

Regina took a step out onto the porch, edging the front door closed behind her. Emma blinked, startled, and glanced behind her at the open gate.

'Henry's still sleeping,' Regina explained quietly, gesturing up towards the top floor of the house. Emma's shoulders immediately un-tensed.

'Oh, right,' she said, smiling weakly. 'I forget how early it is. What… what time is it?'

'A little after six.'

'Six? Really?' Emma scrunched up her forehead in surprise. 'God. I didn't realise.'

She fell silent for a moment, swallowing. Regina waited for the inevitable second half of her sentence.

'What are you doing up?'

Regina's own smile was plastic and looked like it hurt. She shrugged.

'I... I don't need to sleep as much as I used to.'

Emma seemed to shrink half an inch.

'You don't need to?' she asked quietly. 'Or you can't?'

'Does it matter?' Regina asked, folding her arms defensively over her chest. 'You're awake too.'

Emma's mouth opened automatically, but she soon realised that she didn't actually have a response. It slowly closed again as she nodded, clenching her fists by her sides. She was shifting from one foot to the other, her whole body trembling like there was a current running through it. It wasn't from the cold: she was nervous.

Regina waited patiently for another statement; another question, but nothing seemed to be stirring in Emma's lungs. She was glaring down at the expanse of path between them, her muscles twitching almost violently, waiting for Regina to come up with something instead.

Regina took a deep breath and asked the question as gently as she could, like she was afraid that speaking too loudly would scare her away again.

'…why are you here, Emma?'

Emma flinched, still not looking up. After a few moments she shrugged, and Regina realised with a cold drop in her stomach that she was taking a step towards her along the path.

'I was… running,' she mumbled, shaking her head. 'I was running and I ended up here.'

Regina nodded. 'I saw you running the other morning.'

'What?' Emma's head snapped up to finally, intently look at her. 'When?'

'…Tuesday?'

'Tuesday?' Emma said, thinking back to that evening's nightmare and visibly shuddering. 'What the hell were you doing driving around at that time?'

Regina watched her taking another half a step forwards and swallowed.

'I was…' she started, then lost the end of her sentence.

Emma finished it for her. 'You were not sleeping.'

'And neither were you.'

Emma had made her way to the foot of the porch. It was the first time that Regina could remember where Emma was actually smaller than her.

She looked down at her with a jaw that was trembling dangerously and swallowed back the desire to whimper.

'I just… I can't sleep,' Regina said quietly, knotting her fingers together in front of her. 'Not anymore. Not without you.'

Almost at once, Emma's eyes seemed bluer. She bit down on her bottom lip, kicking at the step up to Regina's porch with the toe of her sneaker.

'Regina…' she muttered, shaking her head. 'Don't.'

Regina groaned.

'Don't?' she asked, leaning back against the door frame and pressing her knuckles to her forehead. 'Emma. Are you serious? Don't miss you? Don't keep loving you?'

'I don't know… just…'

'You can't just show up here,' Regina bit out, still trying desperately hard to whisper even though her voice was already beginning to crack, 'of your own choice, and knock on my door and drag me outside and talk to me and then get angry at me when I actually decide to try and be honest with you for once.'

Emma peered apologetically up at her from beneath her clumped eyelashes. 'Regina, please. I didn't mean that.'

'Well, I did,' Regina choked out. 'I mean this, Emma. I miss you. I hate myself and I love you and I miss you and seeing you stood there… You're so far away from me. I've pushed you away and I can't stand that I've done that when I somehow managed to have you so close to me once before. I just want you back. That's all. And you can't just show up on my doorstep and expect me to not even hope that that's what you're here for.'

Emma shook her head, taking that final step up onto the porch until she and Regina were finally back on the same level.

Her eyes were wide and sad and shining. She gritted her teeth.

'You think that I don't miss you too?'

Something stung through Regina's nose and she knew that she was going to cry. She scrunched it up, rolling her eyes to the roof of the porch.

'Emma…'

'I hate you, Regina,' Emma whimpered. 'And do you know how hard that is? I can't sleep because even in my dreams you've started betraying me – you've stopped protecting me and you've stopped being mine and I can't believe how impossibly painful it is just to not be able to call myself yours anymore. So yes, I can't sleep and so I run instead, and yet when I run, I end up here. I end up here every single morning. Every morning I knock on this goddamn door, and every morning you're not here. You always used to be there, whatever door I knocked on – you were there because you were mine and I was yours and everything made sense. And nothing does anymore, Regina. Nothing makes sense at all.'

Tears were dribbling down her cheeks and her shoulders were shaking against the weight of it all. She shook her head at Regina, fiercely biting at her lip, waiting for her to reply – waiting for her to just make it okay, to make it alright, to make it all make sense again. She was Regina. She could do that.

She could break things so easily, and she could fix them.

But Regina was staring at her, her jaw set in a tight line and her eyes molten with apology. She shook her head frantically, praying for inspiration to come to her and feeling absolutely nothing. Her hands twitched with the desperate need to reach out and wipe Emma's tears away, but she pulled them back: hands that ripped out hearts didn't deserve that privilege.

And yet suddenly Emma was stumbling forwards, all at once and out of nowhere. Her own hands were outstretched and her face was streaked with tears, and all of a sudden her fingers were sliding easily through Regina's hair, tangling it through her fists, as her warm and teary and salty mouth collided with the Queen's trembling lower lip.

Regina sighed at once, reaching out to grip the front of Emma's shirt in one fist. It was warm and damp with sweat, and it was everything she'd been missing. The taste of Emma on her mouth; cautiously parting her lips with her tongue and moaning sadly when she felt Regina's tongue curling automatically around her own, was everything that she'd ever missed and everything that she never thought she'd feel again.

When Emma pulled away, she went cold. It was greyer out.

'I can't stand missing you,' Emma mumbled, scrubbing her knuckles across her face. Without thinking, Regina reached up and wiped a stray tear away with the pad of her thumb.

She spoke quietly, the words rolling from her constricting throat. '…I love you, Emma.'

Emma whimpered, placing her hand over Regina's and holding it there against her cheek. She opened her mouth – she wanted to say it back. They both knew that she was going to.

But the words were still suffocating to her and they never appeared. She leaned into Regina's palm, breathing in the warm, familiar, intoxicating smell of her, and sighed. Her lips grazed faintly over her skin.

And then she took a step back with her eyes still closed, shrugging away the feeling of wanting to break.

'I have to go,' she muttered, turning away. She didn't see Regina reaching out to her turned back, trying to get one last feel of her skin.

Regina watched the flash of pink – the only splash of colour across a life that was increasingly more greyscale every day – disappearing through the gate and down the empty street. She waited for it to come back. She kept her eyes on the road.

It had started raining and cars were beginning to crawl down the road by the time that she finally admitted to herself that it wasn't going to.