Trigger Warnings: Implied abuse.

A/N:

Hey guys! Here's another chapter for you. This one is a little shorter than the last few have been but it sets up the next few chapters slightly. Something not so great is gonna happen but don't worry too much. I promise things won't be awful for too long. As you can see I've put a trigger warning on this chapter and there will be similar themes explored deeper in the next three chapters. It was only going to be one but I've spread all the action out because I ended up writing more than I intended! As I said before, if anyone is uncomfortable with reading this chapter or the next few then I will be happy to let you know what happens. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I would really like to know what you all think about the development of the story and criticism welcomed also.

Happy Sunday!

Rosie xx

It was just after noon when Emma Swan walked back into Storybrooke police station. She was still on a high from all the magic but she and Regina's encounter with Robin Hood had put a dampener on her mood which she suspected wouldn't leave for a long while. Instead of going with Regina to get Henry she decide to come back to work for a few hours. She thought it might clear her mind but all it was doing was making things worse. The look of pure joy on the other woman's face when she had realised that True Love might actually be a possibility for her had almost broken Emma's heart in two. She knew that Regina didn't owe her anything but that there had been a part of her which thought that all their progress was going to lead to something more than being really good friends and functional co-parents. Maybe she will realise, Emma dared to hope, Maybe one day soon she'll turn around and realise that her true love isn't Robin fucking Hood but someone who's been standing alongside her all along. The thought did little else than rile Emma up though. Robin? He was nothing. He didn't know Regina, or her life. He couldn't just look at her face for a split second and see what was underneath a mask so realistic that it was often mistaken for the real deal. He couldn't possibly understand the need to be accepted and loved, and the crippling fear that came with that need. There was something about the brunette, something about their understanding of each other which seemed to get deeper and deeper everyday and Emma was a fool if she thought she would or even could give that up now. She had come too far into this thing to try and weasel her way out or give over to a lesser opponent. But that didn't change the fact that Regina was fated to be with this man, her fate was already written and it was one which didn't feature Emma. The blonde therefore didn't see any other option at that moment in time other than to mope around the station and wait until it was time to go home.

Snow had come into the station briefly to bring Emma and her father lunch and to Emma's absolute dismay she had actually brought up the notion of Emma going on a date with Hook, which she rejected quicker than anything she had ever said no to in her life. It wasn't just her current mood that made her so irritable, though that surely had an effect but the whole thing was really more than Emma could deal with. After that Snow changed her tune and started talking about Neal and how maybe he would be good for Emma, how after Neverland they should really "catch up properly just the two of them". It made the blonde wonder whether her mother would get the gist one day that maybe the reason she was rejecting all these proposed dates was because of something other than her need to, as her mother put it "focus on being the Saviour right now'". Yes, she was the fucking Saviour, yes she needed to save the town from its usual uncertain doom, but did her continued apathy towards dates with all of the men her mother tried to set her up with really not tell her anything? As usual Snow only saw what she wanted to see, and clearly what she wanted was a heterosexual for a daughter. Sorry to disappoint Mom, Emma chuckled internally. It wasn't that she would never be with a man again - never say never and all that - but she kind of felt like she'd had enough of them for one life time; she'd always been on the fence anyway. But today more than ever Emma's mind was preoccupied with a brunette who was definitely not a man, though she doubted that would be a revelation she ever shared with her parents. That would certainly not go down well.

So there Emma was, stuck sitting in the station listening to her father babble on about the baby kicking and Mary Margret's eating habits and it wasn't as if she didn't want to hear about this stuff but she wasn't sure she could take much more. She was happy for them, and weirdly, she was actually excited about having a baby brother…even though he would be over thirty years younger than her and fourteen years younger than her son; being real-life fairytale characters really did screw up the family timelines a bit that was for sure.

Emma watched her father's mouth move but did't hear the words coming out. She occasionally smiled at him or nodded which seemed to be enough for him for the time being and allowed her respite to deal with her own thoughts. Though her mind was preoccupied with Regina and Robin and true love she knew that realistically they should be out doing something proactive rather than sitting in the station chatting, especially when there was a villain on the loose who just happened to be after her son. The dwarves had been watching the barn night and day but she hadn't yet returned, which worried Emma more than anything else. If she wasn't spending her time there it meant she was in the process of acquiring the materials needed to cast the spell and that meant that at some point she was going to come for Henry. When that happened though Zelena had to face the wrath of both her and Regina; and hell hath no fury like a threatened mother - especially one whose name literally used to include the word Evil. With one thought about the former Queen Emma was thrown back into her funk. She pictured a series of terrible things, consisting mostly of Regina looking at Robin with a look on her face that Emma had thought and hoped was reserved for her alone. She drifted back again to the fleeting moment she had experienced, of Regina's lips pressed against hers.

Before that train of thought could be continued the phone rang, and Emma was very glad that she finally might have an excuse to get out and do something, if not for any other reason that to escape the incessant chatter of her adorable but over-excited father, and distract herself from the mess in her mind. Emma motioned to Charming to pause for a second as she picked up the receiver.

"Hello, Storybrooke's Evil Villain hotline, how may I help?" Emma answered sarcastically earning herself a glare from her father. She was aware that she shouldn't be so flippant when it came to the mortal danger they were all actually in but at this point what else could she do but make it into a joke? There was a few seconds silence on the other line before a man's voice drifted through the speaker, it sounded unmistakably like Robin Hood.

"Hello, is this the Sheriff's department?" he answered.

Emma immediately went on the defensive. "It is. What do you want?" She said, her father confused as to why she was suddenly being so cold and rude.

"Yes, I'm fine…i just… I was walking in the woods out by the old mansion and I saw some green smoke coming through the trees. It was probably nothing but we were told to call if we saw anything suspicious, I thought you should know, Sheriff."

That caught Emma's attention, "Thanks for letting us know. Someone will be there to check it out right away."

Before Emma could get a reply the person on the end of the line hung up and the blonde was greeted with dialling tone in her ear.

"Who was that?" said Charming as he flicked through the pile of paper on his lap absentmindedly.

"One of the Merry Men, Robin I think," Emma replied, confused, "another call about stupid green smoke. I swear to god I'm going to kill this woman when we find her. I'll go take a look."

Her father moved to grab his jacket and gun off the desk when Emma stopped him, "Don't worry about coming. I'll be alright, its usually gone by the time we get there anyway. Its probably best if you stay here in case someone calls again. Stay on the walkie in case I need back up though?" she asked.

"Of course, are you sure? Its probably not safe to go on your own Emma," he stated, addressing her like a child; something which she really didn't appreciate. Everyone was getting on her nerves today.

"Seriously, I'll be fine. I know where you are if I need you," she replied as she grabbed her jacket and gun and headed out the door. "See you in a bit."

"Call me if you need anything," he yelled as she disappeared around the corner, but the sentiment fell on deaf ears.

Emma jumped in the her bug and sped away in the direction of the mansion. She knew that she shouldn't have gone alone but she just wanted peace and quiet to think about all the bullshit in her life and she also didn't want to give away her to her father her hatred for Robin for no apparent reason. Before she knew it she arrived at the mansion and pulled the car into park. She exited the vehicle, and walked up to the fence bordering the field alongside the mansion.

She immediately noticed a strange residue of green smoke, filtering through the trees and dissipating where it had spread along the ground and mingled with the overgrown grass. Carefully she walked away from the house, wary of keeping her wits about her even though she doubted that Zelena was stupid enough to attack her in broad daylight, even in such a remote place as this. Robin was no where to be seen and Emma assumed that his phone had died and he had just gone home. Huge lot of help he is, she thought. In truth, she felt bad hating the man when she had never really bothered to learn anything about him but his connection to Regina was something that simply couldn't go unresented. He had an advantage over Emma that he didn't even realise he had.

She made her way towards the line of trees, nothing too suspicious yet, she reasoned. Following the direction the smoke was coming from she made her way into the woods, senses on edge for anything out of the ordinary. She checked behind her every few steps and used her peripheral vision to scope out the maze of trunks and branches either side of her.

Distracted still by thoughts of her inevitably depressing future of watching Regina love someone entirely unworthy she wandered through the woods, following the smoke. Their kiss though, it can't have meant nothing. And Emma was reassured by the fact that Regina had said that she didn't want to know Robin and also by the fact that anyone who was going to make it into Regina's life would also have to make it into Henry's and the vetting process for that was extensive, with extremely tight requirements. All she wanted to do was get out of these woods and get home to her son and his mother, have dinner, and live to fight another day with the potential that everything could turn out the way it was meant to be.

It was only when she had followed the smoke about a hundred yards into the canopy of trees that she noticed something amiss. Her thoughts put on hold for a minute she saw that across the entire floor of the woods the grass and plant life was even, undisturbed, but as she inched forward, now on high alert, she noticed that the source of the smoke was a huge patch of empty ground. She could see right down to the dirt; no grass, no plants, nothing. The area of space was rather large, about the floor area of Regina's study if Emma had to hazard a guess. She bent down to touch the ground, her fingers coming back stained with soft brown peat as the smoke slowly disappeared around her.

She looked up, seeing something in the corner of her eye but when she turned her head it disappeared. The smoke was potent here, it smelt toxic.

Suddenly she and Regina's discovery the other night came flooding back to her as the atmosphere changed. She began to struggle to breathe and dropped her gun to the floor as she fumbled in her pocket for her phone. The screen lit up in front of her eyes and she managed to pull up a new text message to David. She didn't even get through the first word before her ability to control her movements stopped. As her throat constricted and stars began to blur her vision one last thought crossed her mind before everything went black.

Hemlock.

David had almost been ready to start pacing when his phone buzzed indicating a new message.

Checked everything out, all good here. Nothing to report. Do you need me to come back? I know its early but I want to go home and check on H&R. Ok? E.

He breathed a sigh of relief and tapped out a quick reply on his phone.

Thank god. U worried me there 4 a while. I'm gd here, see u tmrrw. Dad x

He threw his phone to the side and thought no more of the matter as he continued filling in the paperwork Emma had so graciously left for him.

Eyes flickered groggily open as she slowly came around and immediately she realised something was very, very wrong. Opening her eyes did nothing to help her figure out where she was or what had happened. She was curled in a ball on her side, hands tucked up by her face like a baby sleeping peacefully; but she was anything but peaceful. Her legs stretched out but met almost instantly with resistance and her hand reached upwards blindly, her arm extending three quarters of its possible length before it was pulled back down by the heavy weight of restraints. Her movements were stunted and she felt like everything was in slow-motion, the cogs in her brain moved as if they weren't even connected with each other as she struggled to process what was happening with any sense of immediate reality. By the time the haze in her mind had cleared a crippling sense of foreboding overtook her nervous system.

Her first coherent thought was about how Regina would be expecting her home for dinner. So by coherent she meant not coherent at all really. It was the most arbitrary thing she could have considered in such a situation, yet it seemed of the utmost importance at that moment.

Her second thought was that fuck, Regina was going to kill her if she actually made it out of this alive. She went out on her own and now she was what…? Trapped in Zelena's evil lair?

All the breath left her lungs at once. She flung her arms and legs out mindlessly only to again be greeted with the realisation that she was shackled to the ground and the wall. Suddenly the reality of her current situation dawned on her and she struggled to breathe. Though she couldn't see the walls containing her she could feel them and they terrified her. The blackness crept in on her like it was trying to get at her very soul. The dark air pulled itself through her lungs invasively with a heavy, bitter taste. She began to shake as the first of many tears fell vertically down her face, across her nose and down to the hard ground beneath her.

The darkness was suffocating and all too familiar. The concrete wall was smooth and froze to her skin like an icicle as her face pressed up against it. She wanted to move away but she couldn't, both the space and her own body prevented it. It wasn't that she didn't want to move; the woman she had become would not let herself be subjected to this, she would fight and scream and kick until all the energy she possessed had drained, only then would she give up, but the fearful pressure in her chest reminded her of times much like this; of things which happened many years ago that she had always tried but never managed to forget, not quite. The experiences had been blurred but now they came back in full force, tackling her to the ground, pinning her body into place so violently that her lungs became useless, she couldn't think, couldn't shift a single muscle. It did cross her mind that she could be subdued by magic but after a while that theory went out of the window. This was all her. Through the pitch blackness she could see nothing, not even her hand in front of her face, the total eclipse heightened all her other senses to the precipice of pain. The silence was deafening and the air around her was so bleak and raw with absolute all-encompassing nothingness that she slowly began to lose the concept of anything but her own consciousness. Her body became numb with cold and her thoughts were the only real thing she could hold on to.

There was no way for her to get out. She pulled at the chains until her wrists and ankles were too raw and painful to continue but they were unbreakable and it was stupid to even continue to try, Emma thought that maybe she could use magic to break them off but the more and more she tried to pull that force from deep down inside her the more exhausted she became. She focused so hard, picturing Regina's face in her mind telling her that she was capable of this, and there was a tiny flicker of magic, barely a spark in the darkness, barely a flicker of energy inside her. So instead she resigned to her thoughts of Regina and Henry. She hoped more than anything that they were safe and Zelena hadn't gotten to them yet. She berated herself, angry for being angry at Regina. She deserved all the happiness that life could bring her and if that consisted of Robin Hood then Emma was powerless to stop it. If she died and the brunette managed to defeat Zelena then she wanted her to be happy. Emma realised that she was being pessimistic, thinking about her own demise but she couldn't help it; the room was a box of memories for her and it took her back to a time in her life when she thought that there was nothing worth fighting for. She had learned since that in fact life itself is worth fighting for but the difficulty to grasp that fact when in a horrible environment, whilst living a horrible life, was something that Emma still appreciated to this day. She didn't know whether it was her parents influence or simply a consequence of learning more about herself but she did like to think that somewhere along the line there was some kind of fulfilment for everyone. All she had ever wanted was to have a home, and if thats all she ever got in the end then it would be more than she deserved, but it didn't mean that she couldn't wish for it anyway. She had found her parents, yes, and Henry, but there was still something missing. The puzzle was almost complete, but there were a few pieces missing. Important pieces. She just hoped that she would live long enough to find them and fit them in where they belonged. After a while - how long she could not have said - she drifted off into the troubled realm of her dreams.

There was a young girl; blonde, thin, drained. She watched from above as the girl shivered against concrete walls, her knees tucked right up to her face as she cowered in a corner, green eyes dull and lifeless, expectant, accepting but still terribly scared. She touched her face to ground herself, to pull herself back into the present but all it succeeded in doing was changing her perspective. Then she was no longer looking down on the girl, she was her. She felt a splitting agony in her side every time she took a ragged breath and the next time she reached up to her face she felt the throb of a tender, swollen mark and the wet trail of tears continuously falling. She didn't know whether they were her own or the girl's but it didn't matter. Her tears and the girls tears; she and Emma were one and the same.

"Well its just not good enough!" Zelena screamed in pure rage, vein on her forehead throbbing angrily. She absolutely despised having to ask anyone for help, especially when the only candidate she could find who could be easily bartered with was the most useless man in existence. However she needed someone's help; since she was unable to complete part of the plan herself. It would be more fun this way, anyhow. But only if the blithering idiot in front of her could get his act together. Her promise to him had been a simple one, one which she was happy to grant, given what she wanted in return. The man was miserable, pining over his lost wife and child and would do anything to bring them back to him. The problem was, he was lacking in intellect and lacked a certain spontaneity that she required in those who assisted her. She had never been one to play well with others but sometimes using people was the only was to achieve ones own ends, and Zelena stood by that. She had never understood the concept of putting another's happiness in front of your own, and she never would. Her happiness came first. She had suffered and she deserved have what she wanted in life for once.

"But…You have the Saviour now," he said nervously, "thats something, isn't it? I got her for you!" The woman in front of him visibly shook with anger. This had been a mistake; he was useless and even more importantly he was wasting precious time.

"You made a phone call, don't flatter yourself. And anyway, my capturing her is entirely pointless if the other requirement has not been fulfilled and it is entirely your fault that it is not. Do you not understand that, you absolute moron?" She advanced towards him as he backed himself into the wall behind them. Yes, he was a notorious thief but even thieves have to be scared of something and this woman definitely made that cut.

"I'm sorry…I didn't know what to say. I couldn't just force her to say yes…the sheriff was there…" he trailed off miserably. From what he knew of Regina from Tinkerbell he hadn't wanted to get on her bad side and the Sheriff was much more skilled than she looked, from what he had heard.

She span around and spaced away from him, head in hands.

"Of course you could!" She yelled, louder now as she raced towards him and put herself directly in his personal space, inches away from him. "If your appeal is not enough for her then you will have to find another way. Call that fairy friend of yours, pull some strings. Whatever it takes."

She looked him directly in the eyes and there was a twitch of nervousness in his eyebrow as she stared him down. The flecks of spittle hit his face as she spoke.

"Do I make myself clear, Robin?" she asked menacingly, a crazed look in her eye.

"Yes Zelena, very clear. I am sorry I failed you. It won't happen again."

"I doubt that very much," the redhead said as she left Hood to his own devices. From further down the corridor she heard a low mutter and strangled tears before they were drowned out by the man's voice. It seemed her prisoner was doing well.

"Hi Tink," Zelena heard as she walked back to the entrance, "Its me, Robin. Remember that thing you told me about? Well I need a favour."