Regina's heart plummeted into her toes. She tried to quickly mask her disappointment, but Ingrid caught it.

"Ah, you're looking for someone. Perhaps I can help?"

Regina watched Ingrid mix together a martini as she gathered her thoughts. "I…no, I'm not looking for anyone. You just reminded me of someone I once knew."

Ingrid pushed the glass of alcohol toward Regina with a large smile. "Here, on the house. You look like you need it."

Despite the fact that the statement could have easily been taken as an insult, Regina just sighed, pulled out a chair, and accepted the drink with a nod of thanks. "I actually do." She took a sip, letting the bitterness wash over her tongue and burn down her throat. "Oh," she commented after the first swallow. "This is probably the best martini I've ever had."

Ingrid grinned widely and went about making more drinks for the other patrons around Regina. "I'm good at what I do," she laughed. "My daughter and I worked hard to get this place. Speaking of which, I wonder where she ran off to. Oh, there she is. Em! Hey, Emma, we're almost out of glasses back here!"

Regina's very blood froze in her veins. It's not my Emma. Emma doesn't have a mother. Emma is a very popular name. Do not get your hopes up….

Despite her thoughts, Regina pivoted slowly in her bar stool to look toward where Ingrid had directed her call, and….

Brown eyes met green from across the room. Emma was dressed elegantly in black slacks and a button up, her blonde hair piled into a stylish messy bun and a few strands had fallen down to frame her face in loose curls.

She was older, more filled out, and stood with more confidence than Regina remembered, but she was still Emma. And she was right there. Her eyes widened and Regina saw her mouth move, a silent "Regina…" falling from them. And that's when Regina realized she couldn't do this.

Before she knew what she was doing, Regina's feet had led her through the door of the bar and onto the sidewalk outside. She couldn't breathe. Her heart felt like someone was squeezing the very life out of it. Leaning against the wall, she tried to take deep breaths that only brought pain, and closed her eyes tightly as she tried to focus on slowing her heartbeat.

She was here. She was alive, she was healthy, she owned her very own business. She had disappeared for years and here she was, in the very same city Regina had taken residence in. What were the odds?

"Regina."

The voice brought tears to Regina's closed eyes as the sound slammed into her memories. The voice was deeper, richer, less playful than she remembered, but it was still hers. Forcing her eyes open, she finally found herself face-to-face with Emma Swan for the first time in eight years.

"You're here," Emma said softly, taking a step closer, her hands clasped together in front of her hips. "Opening night, of all nights. It worked." She offered a small smile. Regina's eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean, it worked?"

Emma's eyebrows lifted and she gestured to the sign. "Queenie's. The swan. I tried to make it as obvious as possible. I knew if you were still anywhere in New England, you'd hear about it. You'd…I just didn't expect you here on the first night."

Regina's head was reeling. "So I was right. This…your ridiculous nickname for me…"

Emma chuckled softly. "Well, I owed you."

I owed you. What the hell did that mean? Regina found herself getting angry. "This makes no sense, Emma. I…I looked for you. For years. The last thing you said to me was that you hated me. Then you disappeared. So why the hell am I standing outside your bar, which you christened with my nickname, after…why didn't you come find me? What the hell is happening, Swan?"

Emma hung her head in shame. "Look. I can't talk now. Opening night…I have to be in there. But, um, here's my card. Feel free to stay, Ingrid will provide you with free drinks, and…call me?"

Emma handed over her business card gingerly, and Regina cautiously took it, making sure their skin didn't make contact. If she touched Emma now, after all these years…

And just like that, Emma was back inside the bar, gone from Regina's sight.

Regina stared down at the card, breathing heavily as her head spun. After everything she'd done, after everything she'd gone through to get where she was in life, after all these years of radio silence, Emma was here. And Regina decided in that moment that she was going to get the answers to all the questions raging in her head.

But first, she was going to go home, sleep, and try to process the shock that was raging through her.

It's funny that, even though Regina had looked for Emma for years, she couldn't bring herself to dial Emma's number or go back to the bar.

A week had passed since the encounter, and Milah had been a bigger bitch than usual toward Regina since she'd bailed on her that night. Though she'd apologized (half-assed apology and the excuse that a sudden migraine had come on, but an apology still), Milah remained short and unforgiving.

But finally, after a week of Regina merely floating through each work day and performing at less than half capacity, Milah stormed into her office and slammed the door.

"Spill," she demanded, pulling a chair up for herself and plopping down, crossing her arms expectedly. "What the bloody hell is wrong with you lately?"

Regina had been pouring over a few legal documents and minding her own business, so she shot an annoyed look at Milah over the top of her reading glasses. "There's nothing to spill," she said curtly. "Don't you have work to do?"

"No, I'm caught up. You, however, have fallen behind. As your partner, I have every right to be concerned with your performance at work. We can't afford to lose any cases. So, you need to talk to someone and I'm not sure you have friends, so talk to me."

"I have friends."

It was true. Regina still had Zelena, who had moved from California to New York to work for Cora since Regina had taken her own path in life. They still spoke on a weekly basis, and made it a point to take a vacation overseas every summer together. Then there was Kathryn, a fellow lawyer that had been her roommate at Harvard. She was a bubbly yet no-nonsense type of person, and Regina had grown to care for her deeply. She worked in Boston, so she and Regina still got together fairly frequently to catch up on life.

"Perhaps, but you're not talking to any of them either, or you wouldn't be so spacey. So, spill."

Caught and defeated, Regina sighed, then pulled Emma's business card out of her desk and dropped it on the desk in front of Milah, who picked it up curiously. "The bar we went to?" she asked, brows furrowing in confusion. "I don't understand."

Regina took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. She couldn't believe what she was about to divulge. But if she didn't get it off her chest, she knew she might just explode. "Emma Swan. The owner of Queenie's Bar."

"What about her?"

"If you'll be patient," Regina snapped. "This is hard for me. I haven't spoken about this in years."

Milah sat back and shut her mouth, staring at her partner expectantly, waiting for her to continue. After a beat, Regina did.

"When I first moved to Maine, I was a junior in high school. Emma was…my first friend here. She was a foster child in a bad situation…not poverty, but abuse…and after awhile, our relationship grew from friends to…well, eventually we had a falling out. She had begged me not to report her foster father for abuse, but one day he went too far, and…I've been looking for her for eight years. It was like she'd fallen off the face of the planet and yet here she is, using her real name on her business cards, naming a damn bar after this stupid nickname she had for me in school, acting like the last thing she ever said to me wasn't 'I hate you', and she wants me to call her but I don't even know what to say to her!"

She finished her outburst, then realized in horror that she'd ended up letting out much more information than she'd meant to. Milah was gaping at her with wide eyes.

"Whoa, wait, back up!" Milah said suddenly and loudly, launching out of her seat. "She named her bar after you? Your nickname was Queenie?"

"Hardly the most important part of this conversation, good to know you followed along," Regina quipped, turning to continue haphazardly reading the documents on her desk. Milah reached over and grabbed the papers, forcing Regina to look away from them. "It's the most important part of everything you told me," Milah exclaimed. "You said you had a falling out. You reported her piece of shit guardian and maybe she was mad at you for awhile, but she named her bar after you!"

"She told me," Regina sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose again, "that she'd done it on purpose. She'd meant to lure me to the bar, or something. What the hell do I do, Milah?" She couldn't believe she was asking, but she was at a loss.

"Obviously, you call her! She obviously wants to talk to you. Oh my God, she's the reason you didn't go into the fashion biz like your mum, isn't she? She's the reason you got into law!"

"We aren't going there," Regina stated firmly, stopping Milah in her tracks. "I can't call her. I'm the reason she was hurt by him. Because we…he was a bigot. And we…we messed up. Paparazzi…."

"Oh, I remember that!" Milah gasped. "You were featured in a gossip rag, kissing some blonde girl. That was Emma?! Wasn't there a suit or something against that company afterwards?"

"Milah." Regina felt sick at the mere mention of the incident that had changed her life forever. Their lives forever.

"All right," Milah conceded, holding up her hands and sitting back down. "I don't think I've ever heard you stutter over your words before."

"That's how unsure I am about all of this. I expected that when I found her, if I ever found her, she would want nothing to do with me. That I could apologize and she would tell me it changed nothing and we could have closure…"

"That's not what you wanted."

"Excuse me?"

Milah rolled her eyes. "You wanted, probably imagined for years, finding her and apologizing, Emma accepting, and falling back in love and getting married and being together forever."

"The immature pipe dreams of a broken little girl who'd lost her first love by destroying all her hopes and goals in one fell swoop," Regina admitted quietly. "I have since grown to understand how the world works."

"Maybe it doesn't always have to work that way," Milah said in a soft tone, softer than Regina was used to. Comforting, almost. "Call her," she continued, raising her voice again slightly. "Call her, meet with her, hash out whatever the hell you need to so that you can get your head back in the game here. You obviously didn't ruin her life, and she wants to talk to you. Woman up and do it." With that, she cleared her throat, put the business card back on the desk, then got up and marched out, shutting the door sharply behind her.

Regina picked the card up gingerly in her hands, even though she'd memorized the phone number days ago. Could it really be that simple? Could she really just pick up the phone and call?

Of course she could! She was Regina Mills, lawyer and businesswoman. She didn't get this far by being meek and hiding like a scared child.

Taking a deep breath, she picked up her desk phone, punched Emma's number in, and listened as it rang once…

And she slammed the receiver down, heart pounding in her throat and bile churning in her stomach. She couldn't do this. She-

The phone rang suddenly, the piercing tone making Regina jump in her seat, then sigh in relief. She could use a distraction from what she'd just been about to do. Hopefully it would be a pissy court clerk, so she could take out some of her frustration.

"You have reached the law office of Jones & Mills, Regina Mills speaking," Regina said in clipped, even tones as she answered the phone.

"Um, Regina? Really? I, uh, didn't recognize this number and was just…returning the call….is this really Regina?"

That voice. Even over the phone, it made Regina's heart clench painfully and her palms ache as her mouth went dry. "Emma…"

"Yeah, it's me. Hi…"