A/N So this is officially Back to the Start week for me XD For this week I will be giving all of my attention to this fic and trying to update everyday. If I do update tomorrow will be a shorter chapter (maybe around 1000 words), since I have work, so please don't blame me if there's no chapter tomorrow, I'll extend it to Monday if not though XD Hope you guys enjoy and thanks for sticking around for fifty chapters :D

Chapter fifty

Emma brought her books closer to her body and began to walk faster having reached the rough part of her current neighbourhood.

Her foster parents were nice enough, but they were both super busy with their jobs and often failed to notice the cuts and bruises that the fourteen year old received from local bullies and she had learned long ago that she shouldn't show them that she has issues. Most of her foster parents seemed to prefer a kid that they could just kind of ignore, and honestly as long as they were feeding her and not hitting her, she was happy, but it did mean that she had to try and deal with her issues alone.

The fourteen year old passed an alleyway and took a deep breath, and looked down it. If she decided to go that way, it would shave twenty minutes off her walk, but it also posed the risk of being randomly ambushed.

For about a minute she looked down it and finally decided that it would be worth the risk, especially since her leg hurt from yesterday anyway.

Slowly, she began to walk down it, and by the time she was halfway she took a deep breath of relief, beginning to return to her normal rushed pace.

However, just before she took another step, her gut wrenched in fear as someone grabbed her backpack and brought her back.

Alex smirked at her, he was one of her many bullies, and today he was accompanied by his two moronic friends, each wearing similar idiot smiles.

Emma felt herself being pushed against the wall, and took a deep breath to try and make sure he didn't know she was afraid, though it was fairly obvious.

Originally Alex had been nothing but nice to her, and eventually Emma had found out that he had a crush on her. The problem was that she had a crush on his sister, and when he found out he made it his mission to make her life a living hell for humiliating him. The worst thing of all was that someone had told the entire school of her crush, including the very straight person that it was aimed at. So now Emma had become a complete social outcast: the school's resident lesbian orphan and she wasn't even sure if she were gay, not that it mattered to her peers.

"I told you Swan, there's a toll down here," he sneered.

Emma shook her head and replied, "I don't have any money."

Alex tilted his head, and began to speak slowly as if he were speaking to a child, "then you can't come down here, am I not explaining this properly or are you just a idiot?"

"I-I'm sorry, I won't do it again," she said pleadingly.

Alex looked to his friends who each shook their heads and he smirked deeply, "you said that last time, Swan, I can't keep letting you get away with it."

Emma bit her lip, trying not to mention that last time he had given her several bruises, and simply just stared at him, clearly begging to be released.

"Teach her a lesson, Al," one of his friends said, and he nodded with a grin.

The first thing he did was knock the books out of her hands, leaving her completely defenceless, and then he clenched his fist and delivered a blow to her stomach.

The young blonde instantly coiled over, falling to ground and letting out small pathetic sounds of pain, the only consolation that it would be over soon. However, Alex seemed to be enjoying the howling laughter too much, and then proceeded to kick her as she tried her best to curl into a ball.

This went on for a full two minutes, until she heard a random passerby shout 'hey' and then allowed herself to pass out.

"Emma?" came a soft voice from beside her bed, and the blonde blinked a few times before turning to see her mother with a concerned expression.

Emma offered a small hesitant smile, and looked back down at her legs, "hey," she mumbled.

"Did Whale talk to you?" David asked cautiously.

The saviour nodded, and each of her parents noticed the way that she stared longingly at her legs, David and Snow exchanged a look, both silently assuring the other that they could do this.

"He said that you could be released today," Snow smiled, "is that alright?"

"Yep," she muttered.

Snow held back a sigh, reminding herself to be patient, and to possibly get advice from Archie.

"Do you need anything?" David tried.

Emma closed her eyes in frustration, before a thought occurred to her, "can I see Henry?"

David looked shocked for a moment, and was about to answer, before the door opened revealing exactly who she asked for, followed closely by his other mother.
Henry ran over to the bed, and smiled broadly at Emma, he handed her a to go cup from Granny's, "Hot chocolate with cinnamon," he explained, and the blonde returned with a weak smile.

"Thanks, kid," she replied, feeling the urge to ruffle his hair, but her arms hurt too much to stretch that far so she just pushed it aside. She wanted to see her son simply to see with her own eyes that he was okay, but now that she was faced with him, she felt infinitely guilty. She was completely ashamed that she had put him in any danger, and she couldn't help but imagine Regina's disappointed expression if she found out.

However, when she looked up at her girlfriend, she saw nothing but sympathy.

Emma quickly looked away from her, she felt the urge to tell Regina that she shouldn't feel sorry for her, that she was too weak to protect their son, that all it took to get the better of her was a tiny nick of the skin. She didn't deserve sympathy from the woman that had just shaken off the same torture.

Regina furrowed her brow, at Emma's reaction to their eye contact.

She couldn't help but wonder if she had done something wrong. Her first theory was that Emma was bitter that it had taken so long to find her, and honestly she was rather bitter about that herself. She couldn't believe that Neal had somehow managed to take all but one of Emma's belongings and hide them in the cabin with the kidnapped sheriff, she refused to believe that she had been outsmarted by that man, but in her quest to find the blonde, she was beginning to believe that she had been blind to the signs of the criminal within their search party.

Henry smiled awkwardly at his recently found other mother. This was not how he had imagined this would go at all. He had thought that Emma would make some stupid jokes and then Regina would roll her eyes and call the blonde an idiot, but Emma seemed to be completely withdrawn.

He inspected the many bandages across her body, and wished that he would never have to see what was under them, especially since nobody had actually told him what Greg had done to her.

The stifling silence was interrupted when Dr Whale walked in holding a paper bag.

He looked around at each person in the room, and gave them all a tight smile, handing the bag to Snow, "all of the medications have instructions on them, but feel free to call with any questions."

She looked into the bag, and suddenly thought a question though she felt like a moron for asking it, she just had to stop the silence, "where do we get a...err."

Emma hit her head against the pillow, and Snow cringed for asking.

Whale looked at Emma for a moment, and then replied, "The hospital will loan Emma a wheelchair for as long as she needs it."

Regina rolled her eyes at her former stepdaughter and wished that she could smack Snow up the side of her head, but settled for narrowing her eyes at the younger woman.

Whale looked down at his watch, and turned to Emma, "you'll be discharged into your parents care in an hour, I'll set up a check up in a week from now, and then we'll see about starting physiotherapy."

Emma nodded without looking up, and Whale quickly turned on his heels, promptly making his way from the room to collect the paper work.

Silence fell again, and Snow looked at the clock, finally saying, "come on Henry, David and I will give you a ride to school. Regina brought you breakfast, Emma."

The blonde looked up, finally noticing the take out bag, and suddenly felt panic rise at the thought of being left alone with her girlfriend. She was sure that she wouldn't be able to handle the shame, so out of desperation she said something that she knew would make Snow stay, "please...mom, stay."

Snow's mouth fell open slightly and she looked apologetically at Regina before she quickly took a seat next to her daughter.

Regina sighed, and placed the bag onto the table next to Emma, "enjoy," she muttered before she brought her arm around Henry and led him out of the room, the boy just about managing to offer Emma a small wave.

Henry walked slowly behind his mother, as they solemnly made their way to her Mercedes.

He knew that there was obviously something keeping Emma from wanting to spend time with Regina, and he imagined that his mother was probably imagining reasons that were actually far from the truth.

Finally they were both seated in the car, and Regina furrowed her brow at her contemplative son, "no," she said.

"What?" he asked indignantly.

"No operations."

Henry sighed dramatically, and replied, "how did you know?"

"You always get that look when you're planning something," she shrugged and started the car.

"Well then, why not?" he whined.

"You need to understand, Henry, that Emma is in a lot of pain, physically and emotionally, you can't expect everything to go straight back to normal, we just need to be patient."

"But I want to help her," he sighed.

"I do too, but we can't force her to accept our help, so what we need to do is just wait for her to ask for it," Regina replied, desperately trying to justify to herself why she hadn't fought to stay with Emma. She knew that whenever she needed help she wouldn't have asked anyone, but then again she didn't have Snow White and Prince Charming for parents. Gripping the steering wheel, she came to a stop outside of the school and turned to her son, expecting him to get out.

Instead, he just sat there staring at his lap, "what if she never asks?"

"Then we'll force her," Regina smiled, which caused a huge grin to spread across her son's face.

He quickly nodded in agreement, and leaned forward to kiss his mother on the cheek, "see you later," he said quickly noticing the other kids running towards the school, he realised that he may be slightly late and leapt out of the car.

Once he was out of sight, Regina just sat there for a moment.

She took a deep breath, and picked up her phone at the sound of a text, but sighed deeply when she saw that it was Ruby, simply saying, 'Kurt and Owen want to talk to you.'

Rolling her eyes, she threw the phone onto the seat next to her, and started the car, hoping that this would serve as a distraction from her relationship issues, at least for a little while.

"Do you need anything else?" Snow asked, sounding almost hopeful after Emma swallowed the last pill for the morning.

Emma shook her head, still rather embarrassed about the way her father had to pick her up to get into bed, and immediately after Snow had called Whale. The doctor had offered to send a nurse over to help show Emma the best way to get in and out of the wheelchair, and her mother had accepted after seeing the blonde's downtrodden expression.

"Emma..." she began, only to be stopped by a raised hand.

"Not the time, Snow," she mumbled feeling the effects of the pain killers starting to kick in, not that she would want to have this conversation yet anyway.

Snow nodded, now realising that the 'mom' thing earlier may have been a one time thing, she closed the curtain separating the bed from the kitchen and walked away. Regina had sound proofed it since she had been aware that Emma would probably be spending a lot of time in the bed, and Snow was beginning to think that she wasn't the right person to be looking her daughter, after all, the mayor clearly knew her better.

Shaking her head against the thought, she fell onto one of the stools in front of the kitchen island, where her husband instantly pushed a mug of coffee towards her.

"She's barely been home an hour," he said softly.

Snow sighed and looked down the counter, "I know, it's just..."

David nodded, and placed his hand over hers, "you don't have to feel bad for wanting to look after her."

His wife looked over her shoulder, and had to remind herself that their daughter couldn't hear her when she said, "this isn't what I had in mind when I thought about looking after her. I thought she would get like a cold or something and I could spend her week making her feel better, but this..."

"I get it," David assured, "we just need to be supportive."

Snow tilted her head and finally decided to air the thoughts that had been bothering her since last night, "or we should convince her to get help from someone else."

"Regina?" David sighed.

"I want to look after her, but I don't think that we're the people that she wants help from."

"But she asked for us, why wouldn't she have just said Regina?" David asked, looking more confused than insulted, he had, after all, been having the same thoughts as his wife.

Snow shrugged, she had been wondering the same thing. Before Emma had gone missing, their relationship had seemed perfect, in fact the blonde couldn't seem to get enough time with her girlfriend, but now she wouldn't even look at her.

Snow almost knew for a fact that Regina had done nothing to earn Emma's distrust, so there was clearly a deeper issue at play. The problem was that she knew Regina very well, which meant that she was very aware that Regina would likely be finding any reason to blame herself for the saviour's distance, and that was certainly something that Emma would regret.

"What do we do?" she sighed.

"We look after our daughter," David said, his confidence seemingly high, "and we wait until she tells us what's really wrong."

Ruby turned away from the distrustful looks from Owen and Kurt Flynn as soon as she finally heard the signature clicking of heels.

The wolf offered the mayor a tight smile, having already received the news of the saviour's condition from her best friend; she knew this wasn't the best of days to cross the woman.

"Hey Regina," she greeted.

"What do they want?" Regina returned without pretence.

"They said that they want to talk to you," she shrugged.

Regina nodded, and with a sigh she dismissed the waitress with a "thank you."

Slowly, the former queen walked into the room.

Greg, or probably Owen now, no longer looked to be in pain, probably because Regina had asked her mother to stop by and heal his wound.

Regina imagined that it must have come as a shock to wake up to his father, but he seemed to be dealing rather well with it. Then again, this is exactly what he wanted, so she wasn't sure what he wanted of her now that he clearly couldn't get his revenge. Regina thought back to Emma refusing to look at her, and she tried to push past the thoughts that he may have actually succeeded in getting back at her in a way that hurt far more than the torture she had suffered in the other timeline.

For a moment, she just stood in silence at the door, until finally Kurt stood from his seat next to his son, and asked, "are you going to allow us to leave this town?"

Regina tilted her head, she hadn't considered that he was possibly still afraid of her, but then again she did have Graham chase them to the town line, so she had to admit they did have their reasons.

"Of course," she replied.

Kurt looked down at the floor and nodded, "we will be leaving soon then."

"You called me here just to tell me you're leaving?" Regina asked with a furrowed brow, "what if I had said no?"

Kurt shrugged, "you seem different now."
"That doesn't mean you are forgiven!" Owen finally spoke up, "everyone thought that I was crazy my whole life. Reuniting me with my dad doesn't make that go away!"

Regina nodded; his words instantly reminded her of what she done to Henry since he had found that storybook.

"Perhaps there is a way to make it go away," she said after a small hesitation.

Owen furrowed his brow and said, "What do you mean?"

"It's a simple deal, you leave town and I don't have you arrested for torturing the town sheriff," she replied, still considering whether her plan was wise, this was a man dead set against all things magical after all.

"How would that make it go away?"

"The moment you cross the town line, I can make it so you will never have come to Storybrooke. In your mind you will have never lost your father and you will have never spent a day in the institute."

Kurt's eyes widened and he turned to his son with a pleading look.

"Owen, we could have been happy."

"But it won't be real," Owen said clearly thinking out loud.

"Does it matter? If the illusion is better than the truth, why would you choose reality?" Regina asked.

Owen blinked a few times, he hated to admit it, but the former queen did make a lot of sense, "so what are my options?"

"Either way you are leaving my town Mr Flynn, it's up to you the life you want to have led when you do so."

A/N Reviews would be much appreciated XD