"I want to be discharged. Today." Regina sat upright in her bed and looked at her doctor during the ward round the next morning.

"Roni, didn't we just have this recently? You gave me and yourself a week."

"Right, but that was before my... friend came to town. So I won't be alone and I'll have help," she explained firmly. She would be a burden to Emma, nothing more, a soft voice whispered in her head, trying to push it back into the far corner of her consciousness.

"Well, I can't stop you. Then I'll get your papers ready. However, under no circumstances should you neglect your rehab. And you won't be allowed to drive for at least six months, possibly longer," Dr. James told her.

Regina nodded slowly and wished her roommate would at least pretend that she wasn't following the conversation with the utmost interest. "Thank you for everything," she said sincerely. Even though she had cursed the hospital and its staff in her mind more than once, she knew that she would not be alive without their help. And even though she had thought more than once in her life about putting an end to it herself, she had now reached a point where she no longer wanted to. She had found her place in a community, a son she loved, a granddaughter she loved and Emma, who she hoped she would one day be able to approach again without it feeling strange.

"You're welcome. And take better care of yourself in the future. No more late-night walks during storms," he winked at her.

Regina returned his smile and looked after him and the nurse who had accompanied him.

"Then you'll be leaving the hospital sooner than you thought," the lady in the bed next to her promptly said, but Regina didn't mind anymore. She would be leaving today and that was all that mattered now.

"It looks like it. I wish you a speedy recovery." Emma had hung some of her clothes in her wardrobe the night before. As they were almost the same height and figure, at least that hadn't been a problem. Regina had insisted that it wasn't necessary and that she would simply buy some clothes the next day, but her complaint that she no longer even had her own underwear had probably triggered Emma's sense of duty.

So she took a few items of clothing into the cramped bathroom and changed. The dark blue jeans she had been helped with earlier were slipping a little and the light gray shirt was hanging a little too loosely from her shoulders after she had really lost some weight in the past week. But she didn't care, as she would be wearing her own jacket over it anyway. However, there was nothing she could do about her hollow-cheeked face staring back at her from the mirror. She simply combed her hair again and tied a fresh plait. She repeated this several times, as it was only after the third attempt that she managed to hide the white band-aid.

When she had finished, she picked up her crutches and returned to the hospital room. This little excursion had already exhausted her again, so she was glad that Emma wouldn't be coming to pick her up for another hour or so.

Emma had spent the night in a small hotel with only a few rooms and, after a hearty breakfast, had made her way downtown before sunrise to buy a new cell phone. She couldn't risk losing sight of Regina again for whatever reason. It had been hard enough to find her the first time and she didn't want to repeat that odyssey.

A strong kick from the baby made her take a deep breath as she scanned the rows of cell phone models on display in the electronics store, looking for an inexpensive but functional device. She plopped down on one of the office chairs for sale and held her belly. "Someone must have slept in and had too good a breakfast," she muttered, smirking slightly. "You know, today's not going to be such a crazy day. I'll just pick up Regina later if everything goes well and then we'll have to wait until your brother and dad get in touch," she explained quietly.

"Is there anything I can do to help you with your search?" the voice of a sales assistant asked behind Emma.

She only briefly described her request and was then shown a more limited selection of three cell phones, from which she chose one without thinking twice. Just ten minutes later, she was the owner of a brand new phone, in which she had already inserted the sim card she had also purchased and saved Regina's number.

Back in her car, she dialed the latter straight away and waited for Regina to answer her call.

"Yes?"

"Good morning, it's me. I bought myself a cell phone, that's the number you can reach me on now," Emma greeted her. "What's the situation? Can I come and pick you up or won't they let you go?"

"I'm ready to go," Regina replied and Emma could hear the joyful anticipation in her voice.

"See you soon then!" Emma pushed the smartphone back into her jacket and put her hands around the wheel.

Now things would get serious. As soon as she picked up Regina, they would never part ways again and she was afraid of how the mood between them might develop over the next few days. She loved Killian, but she hadn't forgotten the look Regina had given her on her return to Storybrooke, even after so many months. She had nodded; it had been a nod of encouragement. 'Do it,' she had told her wordlessly. But her eyes had said something completely different.

Emma didn't know whether she should bring it up or just leave it at that. If Regina brought it up again, she still wouldn't have an answer for her, because she didn't even have one for herself. Was it possible to love two people equally? But even if it was, one of them was going to end up hurt no matter how she turned it around.

Drenched in sweat, Zelena woke up from her sleep and the first thing she did was reach for the cord around her neck from which the potion bottle was hanging. But, as expected, it was still the muddy green color it had been all along.

Zelena walked barefoot across the stone floor of her chamber and propped her hands on the windowsill to get some fresh air. It was still dark outside, but dawn was already breaking on the horizon and the first birds were singing in the nearby forest.

Her nightmare had not been new; it was more like it haunted her almost every night and only the details always changed a little. She usually woke up from sleep the moment her father hit her particularly hard, but for the past week her biological mother had been coming into play more and more often, spurring him on to hit her harder. This time, however, nothing of the sort happened.

Zelena had been in the hut where she had grown up. There was no trace of her mother, father or Cora, but this fact did not reassure her, but made her heart beat even faster as she suspected an ambush. Slowly, she crept to the fireplace and picked up the poker so that she had a weapon just in case. She anxiously climbed up the rungs of the ladder that led to her sleeping place under the roof. The height of the ceiling barely allowed her to stand upright. But even here she didn't meet a soul. Just as she allowed herself to think that she might be able to spend a quiet day for the first time in her life and that no one would torment her, the wooden floorboards cracked behind her. She was so startled that she jumped and struck without thinking. Regina collapsed with a profusely bleeding head wound, her dead eyes staring at her reproachfully.

Zelena shook her head to dispel the images of her dream and, shivering, wrapped her hands around her bare arms, which were covered in goose bumps. She desperately needed to know how her sister was doing or her subconscious would drive her mad sooner or later. Henry and the pirate had the crystal, but just talking to someone was different from actually seeing them.

She knew that in her current agitated state she wouldn't be able to come up with a safe portal, but she could use the time until everyone woke up to pore over the spell books and look for a spell that would allow her to reach Regina. It would be a laugh if she couldn't do it as the Witch of Oz she was known to be.

Regina was glad that Emma had come when her roommate had just been picked up for an examination. Even though she knew that the older woman didn't mean any harm or want to be intrusive, Emma's inspection the previous evening had been enough for her and had already bordered on embarrassing.

"Looks quite okay. But I'd still suggest that we get you your own things as soon as we can," the blonde said after briefly checking Regina out and then collecting her few belongings scattered around the room and stuffing them into a bag.

"Absolutely. But there's still time; you've had a long drive and I'm sure there are more tempting things than having to go shopping with me straight afterwards." Regina bit her lip and looked away from her friend as she moved from the bed, which thankfully would no longer be hers, into the wheelchair and pulled the crutches onto her lap.

Emma swung the packed bag over her shoulder and turned back to her. "Why didn't you say anything? I could have helped you."

Regina shook her head and moved the wheelchair. "You shouldn't even be carrying the bag, let alone me."

"I wasn't going to carry you," Emma stated, rolling her eyes. "And the bag weighs next to nothing. If you behave like Killian from now on, I'll leave you here."

Regina's brown eyes met Emma's green ones and scrutinized her questioningly. "Your husband is getting on your nerves because he's worried about you?"

"He gets on my nerves because he pretends I'm ill. But I'm only pregnant and I don't let him tell me how to behave and when. Besides, you can see what happens when I decide to live a quiet life in my little house in a small town: I drive all over the country looking for a missing person."

"I'm sorry," Regina whispered after a short pause.

"I didn't mean it like that..."

"I know you didn't mean it like that. But it's true. I'm sorry. Actually, you shouldn't have to worry about how I am at all, let alone look for me and play nurse."

Emma handed Regina the bag on her lap and stepped behind the wheelchair to push her instead. "You save me, I save you, remember? And besides, I can call Operation Peregrine successful now, I'd say. At least in part." She squeezed her shoulder briefly.

"Operation what? Sounds like one of my son's ideas," Regina said in astonishment.

Emma shook her head. "I thought it up all by myself. Okay, of course it's his fault that something like that even occurred to me, but I came up with the name." With that, she pushed Regina, who was grinning to herself, to her car.

"I can do this," she said as Emma tried to help her up. She stood up shakily and leaned on the yellow Beetle, slowly feeling her way to the passenger seat, onto which she then dropped. Her guilty conscience grew immeasurably as she watched the pregnant woman fold up the wheelchair and heave it into the tiny trunk. "You should leave me here," she said when Emma had taken a seat next to her behind the wheel.

"And you're only telling me this after I've loaded the car?"

"I'm serious. I can't ask you to do that. You shouldn't be lifting so heavy and serving me. And who knows when we'll manage to see our family again. It could take forever and even though they say I'll recover, no one knows exactly when that will be and who knows, maybe they're wrong and I'll never walk properly again. Maybe the splinter they removed has permanently damaged my spinal cord after all." She shrugged her shoulders and immediately regretted it when her ribs throbbed painfully.

Emma looked at her for a long time before taking Regina's hand, which was resting in her lap. "We'll do this together, just like we always do. Nobody said it would be easy, but we're already used to it. And you'll walk again, at the latest when we can use our magic again or meet someone who can."

"I don't know if I even want to use magic for this anymore," she confessed, wresting her hand as subtly as possible from Emma's loose grip. "Up until less than a week ago, I would have agreed with you and healed myself as soon as I could. Things are different now. I'm proud of any progress I make and as you say, we don't usually take the easy road, but we take the right one. It would feel like a solution my mother would come up with. You can always fix everything with magic, but people tend to forget that all magic comes with a price. If I don't get better, then maybe that's the way it's supposed to be and that's how it was always meant to be."

Emma looked at her questioningly, whereupon Regina, after a brief hesitation, told her her story of the time when she had fallen from Rocinante's back onto the stones.

"I understand you, honestly. But would you really give up a cure if there was an easy way to do it? Your mother is no longer alive, you don't have to show her how tough you are and play the martyr."

"Is that how you see it?" Regina asked her in a cutting tone.

"No, I just mean..."

"You always just mean, Emma. Please just drive now." She didn't even sound angry at these words, just tired and exhausted. One hand was already on her head again, as if she could stop it from continuing to throb so painfully to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

Emma understood the gesture and started the engine of her car without responding.